‘Assisting you to become a local’: NGOs and constructed foreign spouses in Eastern Taiwan

As social and cultural contexts change and globalization spreads, the number of transnational-marriage migrants mainly from Southeast Asia has increased in Taiwan. Using institutional ethnography, this article investigates the roles of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and projects aimed at helping foreign spouses to adapt to their new life. I mainly elaborate that NGOs emerge as important actors in assisting and empowering transnational spouses to ‘become locals’. In empowerment projects, foreign spouses are given a voice to elaborate themselves. However, this article elaborates that these projects are a scheme of education to shape each such migrant into a proper ‘Taiwanese wife/mother/daughter-in-law’. Also, these projects particularly promote ‘exoticism’ of migrants and become key sources of how local people understand the images of ‘foreign spouses’. As a result, though NGOs play positive roles in empowering foreign spouses, we need to be aware that NGOs’ efforts may ironically become a mechanism to strengthen transnational spouses’ gender roles and cultural stereotypes.     

Middle power,status-seeking and role conceptions: the cases of Indonesia and South Korea

This article examines how role theory can enhance the middle-power literature in understanding the role preferences of middle powers. Rather than treating it as merely a function of material capability or good international citizenship, this article resituates middle power as a concept of international status that states aim to pursue through the enactment of role conceptions. Thus, it reinstates a conceptual distinction between ‘middle-power status’ and ‘middle-power roles’. The article suggests that the notion of role conceptions can analytically connect the status-seeking behaviour of middle powers with their foreign policy agenda. In so doing, it provides a more nuanced explanation of middle-power behaviour, which might differ between one middle power and another. Using Indonesia and South Korea as case studies of middle power, this article contends that foreign policymakers have strategically conceptualised and enacted several main roles that aim to capture historical experience, as well as ego and alter expectations, in order to pursue middle-power status. These role conceptions determine the foreign policy agenda of states in articulating their middle-power status.     

FROM LEFT‐WING TO COMMUNIST MELANCHOLY: TRAVERSO'S WAGER

Enzo Traverso's inspired book Left‐Wing Melancholia revisits iconic representations of revolutionary hopes and defeats not to draw up an inventory of what has been lost but rather to remind his readers that past defeats also contain the traces of unfulfilled possibilities. After the end of the Soviet Union and the global triumph of neoliberal capitalism, the communist utopian imagination of a classless society, Traverso suggests, can be reignited through memorial practices of resilient, resistant melancholy. Traverso's argument draws on Walter Benjamin's notions of materialist history, redemptive memory, and knowing melancholy. Yet the nameless vanquished masses to whom Benjamin's concept of history seeks to do justice remain marginal in Traverso's book. Instead, revolutionary defeat is cast in the tragic mold of succeeding by failing, a trope exemplified by figures such as Auguste Blanqui, Charles Péguy, or Daniel Bensaïd. In response to Traverso's reliance on the transhistorical category of the tragic, this essay argues for a more abstractly theoretical understanding of left‐wing melancholy as conditioned by historically specific class relations that constrain and challenge the engaged intellectual. Moreover, this essay questions Traverso's dualistic treatment of politically committed (Benjamin, Brecht, C. L. R. James) and elitist intellectuals (Adorno) and concludes that the concept of left‐wing melancholy must ultimately be interrogated against the backdrop of a lingering uncertainty about the relationship between theory and praxis that, as Adorno claims, one can already find in Karl Marx—an uncertainty that is hence inscribed into the history of any Marxist theory of revolution and history.     

清末民初农会组织述论

清末民初的农会组织大体经历了酝酿、兴起、发展、隐退四个阶段.其基本结构表现为组成了一个层层连接的直属组织系统;建立了较为完备的领导体制;实行了严格的民主选举制度、议事办事原则以及定期的会议制度等.呈现出组织制度的近代民主性、一定程度的自治性、成员构成的复杂性、机构权限的官督性等基本特点.所从事的活动内容相当广泛,主要表现为编辑农报,翻译农书;创办农业学堂;开办农业试验场;举行农产品评会,设立陈列所;开展调查研究;向主管官署建议农业改良进行事宜,等等.这对推动近代中国农业发展具有重要的影响与作用.     

部门管理人员感知的组织支持与组织氛围对旅游企业员工角色压力的影响

欧美学者普遍认为,角色压力是影响员工服务态度和服务行为的一个极为重要的因素,包括角色负担、角色冲突、角色模糊等3个组成成分.本文对我国11个地区的33个旅游企业进行了一次实证研究,检验部门管理人员感知的组织支持、企业的支持型领导氛围、授权氛围和员工服务行为评估氛围对员工角色模糊的影响.多层次线性模型分析结果表明,部门管理人员感知的组织支持会通过企业的支持型领导氛围,间接影响员工感知的角色模糊.企业的支持型领导氛围会通过企业的授权氛围,间接影响员工感知的角色模糊.此外,部门管理人员感知的企业支持还会调节员工感知的角色负担和角色冲突对他们的角色模糊的影响.     

工会组织在西部民族地区经济发展和社会稳定中的角色定位与责任担当

西部民族地区面临着经济发展与社会稳定的两大任务,构建和谐劳动关系、保障劳动就业权利是二者的主要结合点。文章就工会组织在西部民族地区发展中具有重要的社会角色和责任担当进行了论述。     

现代技术与文博工作者的主体性——试论数字博物馆建设中“人”的作用

在人类各个技术发展阶段,技术与人的主体性之间互相消长,在数字博物馆建设中,文博工作容易出现傻瓜化倾向。为此,数字博物馆的建设应是文化创意的过程,在使用现代设备、系统、工作流程的同时,文博工作者要发挥自身的主体作用。     

The Role of Reading in EFL Writing Curriculum

As an attempt to explore the role of reading in EFL writing classes,the paper aims to prove appropriate reading sections can contribute to writing improvement in EFL context and provide a series of EFL writing instructional recommendations based on the analysis of theoretical and pedagogical perspectives associated with the relationship between reading and writing,the contributions of reading in EFL writing classes as well as the critical reviews of reading-assisted writing.     

Construction of Student Groups Using Belbin: Supporting Group Work in Environmental Management

Belbin team role self and observer perceptions were applied to a large cohort (145) of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences undergraduates in a module assessed through two separate group projects. Students self-selected groups for the first project; for the second, groups were more ‘balanced.’ Results show slight improvement in group performance compared with that of previous years, with a significant increase in first-class grades. No evidence was found linking group balance to performance; however, students recognized the value of their Belbin report when entering the job market. Belbin usefully contextualizes regularly occurring group work issues and provides students with ways of managing these issues.     

邓小平“南方谈话”的理论贡献、历史作用与现实意义

"南方谈话"深刻回答了长期束缚人们思想的许多重大认识问题,丰富和发展了党的基本理论、基本路线,标志着邓小平理论的最终形成。"南方谈话"有力地将中国的改革开放事业推进到建设社会主义市场经济的新阶段,对于坚持党在社会主义初级阶段的基本路线不动摇和全面建设小康社会具有重要的现实指导意义。