Chinese popular music as a musical heritage and cultural marker of the Malaysian Chinese

Chinese popular music, inspired by pre-war Shanghai music known as ‘shidai qu’ (时代曲) (songs of the era) and evolving to include Canto pop and Taiwanese Mandarin songs, has always been popular among the Chinese in Malaysia. This music is featured on radio, television, karaoke, and performed by orchestras such as the Dama Chinese Orchestra (大马) to enthusiastic reception. The songs have a broad appeal that transcends time, generation, and place. Of significance is the observation that the music has become a cultural marker and musical heritage for Chinese in Malaysia and in the region. The paper looks at factors behind this development.     

Exploring Relationships Between the Global and Regional Measures of Spatial Autocorrelation

Abstract The objective of this research is to investigate dimensions of geographic variation in spatial dependency contained within large multilevel data sets. We calculate 1990 population density by census block group, county, and state for the 48 coterminous states and the District of Columbia of the United States, calculations of interest to a wide variety of spatial scientists. We explore relations between these levels and their variation across the nation. The empirical findings generated by this work furnish implications concerning the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP), spatial autocorrelation statistics, scale effects, and resolution.     

Exploring Spatial Patterns Using an Expanded Spatial Autocorrelation Framework

Spatial autocorrelation (SA) is regarded as an important dimension of spatial pattern. SA measures usually consist of two components: measuring the similarity of attribute values and defining the spatial relationships among observations. The latter component is often represented by a spatial weights matrix that predefines spatial relationship between observations in most measures. Therefore, SA measures, in essence, are measures of attribute similarity, conditioned by spatial relationship. Another dimension of spatial pattern can be explored by controlling observations to be compared based upon the degree of attribute similarity. The resulting measures are spatial proximity measures of observations, meeting predefined attribute similarity criteria. Proposed measures reflect degrees of clustering or dispersion for observations meeting certain levels of attribute similarity. An existing spatial autocorrelation framework is expanded to a general framework to evaluate spatial patterns and can accommodate the proposed approach measuring proximity. Analogous to the concept of variogram, clustergram is proposed to show the levels of spatial clustering over a range of attribute similarity, or attribute lags. Specific measures based on the proposed approach are formulated and applied to a hypothetical landscape and an empirical example, showing that these new measures capture spatial pattern information not reflected by traditional spatial autocorrelation measures.     

Resistance,Symbolism and the Language of Stateness in Timor‐Leste

On gaining independence in 2002 after a protracted struggle against Indonesian occupation, the sovereign Timor‐Leste state began to assert its sovereignty in a range of discursive and expressive media. These assertions developed a distinct ‘language of stateness’ that is the focus of this article. This East Timorese expression of state sovereignty draws heavily on the legacy of the Timorese resistance struggle and on a variety of other sources of symbolic power such as flags, buildings, logos, and uniforms. Yet these efforts have been contested by a range of non‐state actors in Timor‐Leste and the shape that this language of stateness has taken now evokes complaints from martial arts groups (MAGs), ritual arts groups (RAGs), and veterans' organisations that seek to ‘become like the state’ themselves, and who also employ a ‘national language of stateness’ in the form of flags, graffiti, and official buildings. While not challenging the idea of an independent East Timorese state per se, these groups question the prerogative of the state to use and define the language of stateness. In this article I explore the way the state and its challengers use ‘languages of stateness’ and how this shapes their ambivalent stance vis‐à‐vis each other, with both sides often drawing upon a discourse of the fulfilment of the millenarian promises that have for a long time been tied to the achievement of independence.     

Stocking Up: The Role of Temporal and Spatial R&D Stocks

Endogenous growth models are built around the concept of a knowledge stock. This knowledge stock can also be interpreted as a localized stock that operates at the regional level, as is common in the regional innovation systems literature. We use data from the second, third and fourth Community Innovation Surveys (covering 1994–1996, 1998–2000 and 2002–2004) to measure the build-up of knowledge at a very low regional aggregation level (“across streets and hallways”) in the Netherlands. In doing so, we account for regional agglomeration effects. We find that such local knowledge stocks have a small influence on innovation and are far outweighed by firm-specific characteristics.