Gender discrimination in Vietnam: the role of personal face

This paper examines gender discrimination using two novel perspectives: its relationship with personal face and its manifestation in contemporary Vietnam. Interviews with a sample of college teachers in Nha Trang city suggest that gender discrimination is reflected in and institutionalised through learning and enacting ‘acceptable’ face-related behaviours. These processes are exemplified in gender based linguistic conventions, role differentiation and segregation, the higher value associated with male roles, the (surface) acceptance of double standards by both genders and the recognition of public sanctions as effective reinforcers of gender inequality. Despite limitations in generalising from this research, an approach based on personal face-related language, behaviour and attitudes has promise for understanding how gender inequality functions at both individual and societal levels.     

Stealing into the wild: conservation science,plant breeding and the makings of new seed enclosures

Faced with pressing climatic changes, scientific and industrial interests are vying to develop crops that can survive drought, floods and shifting pest regimes. Increasingly, they look for solutions in an unlikely place: the gene pools of wild plants. Crop wild relatives (CWR) – species closely related to crops, including their ancestors – offer breeders the allure of retracing the domestication bottleneck, infusing genomes of modern crops with ‘lost’ genetic variety. Yet wild relatives also confront threats from climate change, urbanization and expansion of industrial agri-food. Thus, CWR, seen as both salvational and threatened, have become an international conservation and food-security priority. It is my contention that, in their common project to harness wild-relative potential, conservation and breeding science are co-evolving to extend seed commodity relations into new spheres. I examine enclosures along two fronts: first within ‘systematic CWR conservation’, where ‘in situ’ approaches, typically regarded as empowering and sustainable alternatives to ‘ex situ’, instead may support a complementary system of value extraction; second, in breeding and biotechnology research, which produces new value for CWR while profoundly shaping upstream conservation priorities. An important finding is that although today’s ‘ex situ-centric’ complementarity favors dispossession, an ‘in situ-centric’ approach could foster democratic renewal of biocultural diversity.     

就业困难大学生群体的特征、成因及对策研究——基于对上海某高校2010-2011届毕业生就业状况的调研

本文以上海某高校2010-2011届毕业生的就业调查数据和历年访谈资料为基础,以就业不困难大学生群体为对照组,以就业困难大学生群体为实验组,从就业目标、就业准备和就业能力等方面分析就业困难大学生群体的特征,从劳动力市场机制、教育体制、家庭教育方式以及学生个体特征等方面分析其成因,进而提出相应的对策建议.     

论工会在推进新生代农民工城市融入中的作用

与老一代农民工相比,新生代农民工城市融入愿望更为强烈。然而,受到城乡二元结构的限制与自身文化、技能的制约,新生代农民工城市融入水平较低。工会作为党联系职工群众的纽带和桥梁,作为职工利益的代表者和维护者,理应发挥组织优势,加快推进新生代农民工城市融入。     

资本主义国家工会危机对中国工会的警示

目前资本主义国家工会正在遭遇重大危机,大部分资本主义国家的工会组织建制率出现了持续下降的趋势.与之相反,中国工会“一枝独秀”,工会组织建制率和职工入会率不断攀升.但是中国工会不能在数字面前盲目乐观、高枕无忧,应警惕资本主义国家工会危机,强化中国工会群众性基础.资本主义国家工会危机与其工会自身存在的问题密切相关,尤其是与其不断弱化的群众基础有直接关系.中国工人阶级呈现“国际重组”的队伍特征、中国工人阶级的“自觉、自为”意识逐渐觉醒、中国工人阶级组织化呈现多条途径,工人阶级出现的这些特征变化都要求中国工会强化群众性基础.扩大工会会员范围、切实履行工会维权职责、创新工会服务职工的活动内容是强化中国工会群众性基础的路径策略.     

日本近世关于伊势外宫地位的论争

江户时代伊势神宫中的内外两宫围绕外宫的性质和地位高低问题发生过激烈的论战。外宫神职主张,外宫的祭神不仅是丰受大神,同时也是国常立尊和天御中主神,这样就赋予了丰受大神以祖先神的性质。外宫神职同时延续了中世的"二宫一光说",即认为两宫关系是阴与阳、水与火的二元关系,天照是二宫之通称。外宫据此谋求提高自身地位,达至与内宫地位对等。内宫方面则逐个反驳以上主张,否定外宫祭神是国常立尊,并彻底反对中国的阴阳思想。外宫在论战中的失败是追求地位对等与封建等级秩序之间的根本矛盾所决定的。     

Trends in Governance in Further Education

Abstract

The governance of further education colleges has two main phases since the passing of the Education Act 1944 – the period when further education colleges were under local authority control and the period from ‘vesting day’ on 1 April 1993 when colleges became incorporated and further education corporations were formed as charities. This review is primarily concerned with the landscape of college governance since 1 April 1993 and draws upon some of the very limited number of research studies into the practice of further education governance. The experience and contribution of the key governance players – chair of the corporation, governors, the principal, the senior staff, the clerk to the corporation – are discussed. Throughout the period since 1993, college governance has operated within a policy framework provided by government and, to a greater or lesser extent, the implementation of those policies by agencies of government. In simple terms, the pattern may seem to be creativity (in the early years), compliance (following some high profile college governance collapses), micro-management (through the Learning and Skills Council years) and now the most open, imaginative phase as the current government encourages the strong colleges to play a bigger part in local education provision. Perhaps now is the time when the experience of college governance to date is able to draw upon its considerable strengths and show what the accumulation of governance capital can achieve.     

‘Not Simple,Not Pure’: Revisioning of Mythical Wicked Women in the Stories of Sara Maitland

The British novelist, feminist and religious thinker Sara Maitland (b.1950) is renowned for her short stories, many of which involve the rewriting of fairy tale and classical and biblical myth. This article situates Maitland's retellings within the contemporary feminist tradition of literary revisioning, but emphasises that her retelling of old tales is distinguished by a deep—and often discomforting—engagement with questions of morality. This is rooted in Maitland's political commitment and Christian faith, and is particularly evident in her treatment of mythical female evil. Her short stories take a morally ambiguous approach, paying attention to the moral and psychological complexities of the wicked stepmothers in fairy tale, gorgons and child-killers of classical myth, and temptresses of the Hebrew Bible. Maitland's feminist revisioning of mythical wicked women does not flinch from their darkness, or impose simple ethical lessons, but at the same time she is (sometimes horribly) aware of their moral significance. This article examines the portrayal of feminist theology's concept of the ‘female sin’ of passivity in Maitland's revisioning of Delilah (in Daughter of Jerusalem, 1978) and ‘Helen of Troy's Aerobics Class’ (in On Becoming A Fairy Godmother, 2003); how the crimes of mythical wicked women are retold as being motivated by revenge against men in ‘Deborah and Jael’ (Daughter of Jerusalem), ‘Siren Song’ and ‘The Swallow and the Nightingale’ (Far North and Other Dark Tales, 2008). The latter of these raises issues of women's conflicting loyalties, which is also considered in ‘The Swans’ (2008). The taboos of incest and child abuse are explored powerfully and sensitively in ‘Jocasta’ (2003) and ‘The Wicked Stepmother's Lament’ (A Book of Spells, 1987), and resistance to simplistic moralising is encapsulated in the story of a menopausal Eve, in ‘Choosing Paradise’ (2003).     

Poetic boundary conditions: Australian poets in the ivory tower

This article explores the experience of women poets in academe and posits that by institutionalising themselves in universities, women poets gain financial stability by working in the wider field of poetry. However, they also face discrimination and a lack of opportunity in these workplaces. The article uses two case studies of poets Maria Takolander and Jill Jones, who work at Deakin University and the University of Adelaide, Australia, respectively. These case studies show the way in which these poets explore the experience of academe in their poetry.     

The trouble with ‘women in computing’: a critical examination of the deployment of research on the gender gap in computer science

The pessimistic scenario for ‘women in information communications technology’ and for ‘women in technology’ generally is even more paradoxical and insidious with respect to ‘women in computing’. Studies within this field not only report insignificant improvement in the proportion of women in Western countries’ computing fields but also alert us of a declining trend. Moreover, that decline has been accompanied – or even preceded – by years of research and programs that have specifically focused on increasing women’s participation in computing; however, they have not had the expected effect. More surprisingly, there has been a significant increase in the representation of women in all other science-related fields and professions. Our aim is to provide some clues to fight the feeling of inexorability that may be entailed by the research on women in computing. We will argue that part of the problem is related to the static nature of the research deployed around the problem of ‘women in computing’, primarily, the research constructed around the ‘leaky pipeline’ metaphor. We provide a synthesis of the critiques this research has received in recent decades and highlight research trends that render other landscapes visible when studying ‘women in computing’. These trends help us question how we are conducting research within this field and urge us to problematise assumptions about computing and gender that we may paradoxically continue to reproduce even while denouncing the paucity of women in computing and studying the reasons for this state of affairs. In short, we present the need for different researchers’ eyes that allow different landscapes of women and computing to be seen and produced.