Die Geschichte politischer Informalität. Ansätze und Perspektiven neuerer Forschungen
Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Volume 42, Issue 4, Page 661-673, 2015.
Archiv für Januar 2016
Buchbesprechungen
Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, Volume 42, Issue 4, Page 675-809, 2015.
Political travel across the ‘Iron Curtain’ and Communist youth identities in West Germany and Greece in the 1970s and 1980s
10.1080/13507486.2015.1113935<br/>Nikolaos Papadogiannis
Identity negotiations in conflict-ridden societies: historical and anthropological perspectives
10.1080/00309230.2015.1133674<br/>Zvi Bekerman
No “fear of flying”? Worrals of the WAAF, fiction, and girls’ informal wartime education
10.1080/00309230.2015.1133667<br/>Stephanie Spencer
New Bottle, Old Wine: China’s Governance of Hong Kong in View of Its Policies in the Restive Borderlands
This paper reviews Beijing’s Hong Kong policy, arguing that the policy mirrors China’s policy towards its restive borderlands represented by Tibet and Xinjiang. The rule of Hong Kong and other borderlands in China will be understood in an analytical framework that highlights four broad policies of governing borderlands: promises of a high degree of local autonomy; extension of politico-administrative control; cultural assimilation; and economic integration and domination. These policies may be conceptualised within the term “coercion.” It is argued that before Hong Kong’s retrocession to China in 1997, the PRC’s approach to the territory, in comparison to its approaches to Tibet and Xinjiang, was the least coercive – that is, China initially promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy over domestic affairs. The degree of coercion was stepped up when Hongkongers were perceived as becoming increasingly alienated from the new regime.
The Currency of Historicity in Hong Kong: Deconstructing Nostalgia through Soy Milk
In the 1980s, as the end of the millennium approached, the production of nostalgia exploded all around the world. For Hong Kong, nostalgia became a reminder of the golden age that had transformed the city into one of the “Four Asian Tigers” in the decades following the end of the Second World War. While yearning for the better days of the past, Hong Kong coincidentally experienced destabilisation. As the rest of the world, especially the “baby boomers,” mourned the end of a productive era, Hong Kong locals were disturbed by the affirmation of the handover to China in 1997. In the context of these events, a creative rush to nostalgia in cultural manufacturing swept across the city. In the hope of highlighting the uniqueness of nostalgic production in Hong Kong, this study analyses two sets of TV commercials produced by local beverage company Vitasoy. Through the deconstruction of selected historical events, Vitasoy successfully reinvented its brand and, in contrast to general criticism of the concept, generated a positive connotation for nostalgia on the path towards Hong Kong’s search for an identity.
African Logistics Agents and Middlemen as Cultural Brokers in Guangzhou
This article begins by asking how African traders learn to adjust to the foreign world of Guangzhou, China, and suggests that African logistics agents and middlemen serve as cultural brokers for these traders. After defining “cultural broker” and discussing why these brokers are not usually Chinese, it explores this role as played by ten logistics agents/middlemen from Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As logistics agents, these people help their customers in practically adjusting to Chinese life, and as middlemen they serve to grease the wheels of commerce between African customers and Chinese suppliers. This is despite their own ambivalent views of China as a place to live. They play an essential role in enabling harmonious relations between Africans and Chinese in Guangzhou, even though they see themselves not as cultural brokers but simply as businessmen.
Landscapes of Aspiration in Guangzhou’s African Music Scene: Beyond the Trading Narrative
This article is an exploration into the personal aspirations that converge in Guangzhou’s African music scene. I argue that despite being often traversed, articulated, fuelled, and constrained by economies and economic discourses, aspirations are not necessarily economic or rational calculations. I contend that the overarching trading narrative about “Africans in Guangzhou” has left little space for issues of agency, emotion, and aspiration to be considered in their own right. Drawing on a year of continuous ethnographic fieldwork, I show how aspirations are crucial arenas where the rationales behind transnational mobility are developed, reproduced, and transmitted. Indeed, aspirations can be thought of as “navigational devices” (Appadurai 2004) that help certain individuals reach for their dreams. By bringing the analysis of aspirations to the fore, I intend to provide a more complex and nuanced landscape of the multiple rationales behind African presence in Southern China; promote a better understanding (both conceptually and empirically) of how individuals navigate their social spaces and guide their transnational journeys; and draw attention to the incessant frictions and negotiations between individual aspirations while on the move and the constraints imposed by more structural imperatives.
Healthcare-Seeking Practices of African and Rural-to-Urban Migrants in Guangzhou
Taking the examples of Chinese rural-to-urban migrant and African migrant businesspeople in Guangzhou, this article inquires into the commonalities and differences in the health status and healthcare-seeking practices of both groups. While both populations of migrants are diverse and heterogeneous, there are many commonalities with regard to the challenges they face compared to the Chinese local population. Mixed-methods research frameworks and qualitative and quantitative methods were applied. While existing publications emphasise lacking financial access to healthcare, further individual and social factors account for migrants’ healthcare choices. Their access to healthcare can be improved only by introducing insurance schemes with portable benefits, providing localised and culturally adequate health services adapted to migrants’ specific needs and health risks, and enhancing patient orientation and responsiveness by health professionals.