NPOs in China: Some Issues Concerning Internet Communication

The characteristics of Internet communication enable political, social, and cultural participation from the grassroots not only because the platforms provided by the Internet are open to all and inherently interactive but also because users are able to maintain their anonymity. Although, in theory, Internet communication is well-suited to the purposes of non-profit organization(s) (NPO(s)), in practice, Chinese NPOs do not to take full advantages of the Internet because of their bureaucratic and elitist approach. However, many Chinese who were once passive observers have been transformed into active participants as a result of Internet communication. This is significant because a civil society in China can only be achieved by the efforts of agents, not observers. Internet users have been actively learning the goals of civil society and participating in civil and political activities on the Internet, while Chinese NPOs rarely use the medium for advocacy.

ICTs for Achieving Millennium Development Goals: Experiences of Connecting Rural China to the Internet

By focusing on Internet application initiatives in four places in rural China, this study examines how the Internet is diffused and used in rural settings and what potential it has in helping rural people improve economic conditions and education. The results of this study show that the diffusion and usage of the Internet in rural areas are conditioned by the interplay of structural factors and individual differences. The change agencies have played a dominant role in introducing the Internet to the rural people. One of the major findings of this study is that Internet adoption and usage tend to be closely associated with local farming and business activities. The information needs, conditioned by the modes of production, influence farmers’ information seeking behaviours, which in turn affect adoption inclination and intensive usage.

New Media and Event: A Case Study on the Power of the Internet

With the rapid growth of the number of netizens in China, the Internet has become one of the most important parts in the lives of people who not only can get more information on the Internet, but can also express their own views. In other words, the Internet has also become a part of real-world events. Drawing on a case study about ‘The Boycott of Carrefour’ in China during the spring of 2008, the paper first discusses the role and functions of new media during the incident. Through analyses of a story about the culture of labeling others and a conflict between burning a wrong flag in this case, the paper then explores the capriciousness of Chinese cyberspace. The author proposes an explanation on how the illusion of truth is generated on the Internet and then influences the events in the real world. The paper concludes that the Internet is not just a simple technological tool, but it is intertwined with the sociocultural contexts in which it is rooted.

Holism,Communication, and the Emergence of Public Meaning: Lessons from an Economic Analogy

Holistic accounts of meaning normally incorporate a subjective dimension that invites the criticism that they make communication impossible, for speakers are bound to differ in ways the accounts take to be relevant to meaning, and holism generalises any difference over some words to a difference about all, and this seems incompatible with the idea that successful communication requires mutual understanding. I defend holism about meaning from this criticism. I argue that the same combination of properties (subjective origins of value, holism among values, and ultimate publicity of value) is exhibited by monetary value and take the emergence of equilibrium prices as a model for the emergence of public meanings.

The Internet as Cultural Form: Technology and the Human Condition in China

Raymond Williams’ work on television as a cultural form offers a theoretical basis for overcoming technological determinism in the study of the Internet. The Internet in China exerts social and political influences through the cultural forms it enables and then only when these forms respond to the human condition. Chinese Internet culture consists of new cultural forms that emerge out of the interactions between Internet and society and that are the products of both cultural tradition and innovation.

Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics

In this introduction we discuss the motivation behind the workshop “Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics” of which this special issue constitutes the proceedings. We elaborate on historical and empirical aspects of the desired new epistemology, connect it to the public image of mathematics, and give a summary and an introduction to the contributions to this issue.

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ICT4D: Internet Adoption and Usage among Rural Users in China

Despite its low penetration in the vast rural areas of China, the Internet is generally perceived as a new engine for rural empowerment and quite a number of experimental projects have been initiated in recent years to test this view. This study explores the effects of Internet use on various aspects of rural development, including economic conditions and education. A qualitative approach was adopted in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the diffusion process of the Internet and its implications for rural development. The data-collection methods included in-depth interviews, participant observations, and documentation reviews. The findings suggest that the rural areas included in the study have not witnessed dramatic social and economic changes resulting from the introduction of the Internet. Though the scope and depth of the changes are not significant enough to lend support to the romanticized arguments about information and communication technologies for development, the empirical findings show that the Internet has had some positive effects on the livelihood and education of the rural people. This study examines how social structures exert their influence on Internet diffusion, adoption, and use. The findings provide strong empirical evidence in support of the view that society shapes the adoption of technology. The Internet serves as an agent of change, but the extent, duration, and intensity of its impact are primarily determined by the existing socio-economic contexts of the rural settings.

A Review of Faith-Based HIV Prevention Programs

HIV disproportionately affects people of color, suggesting a need for innovative prevention programs and collaborations as part of prevention efforts. African Americans have close ties to the church and faith-based organizations. African American faith communities were slow to address HIV prevention, but in recent years, they have become more involved in such activities. This study reviews the empirical literature on faith-based HIV prevention programs among African American populations. Several successful faith-based/public health collaborations are identified, and the limitations and strengths of faith-based prevention programs are discussed. Recommendations are provided for developing effective faith-based/public health collaborations.

Psychotherapie und Internet

Zusammenfassung  Die Außendarstellung im Internet ist wichtig und in der Zukunft unverzichtbar. Jedoch hat die Liberalisierung des Werberechts der freien Berufe keineswegs zur absoluten Schrankenlosigkeit geführt. Vielmehr sind die zu beachtenden Regeln auf verschiedene Gesetze und Rechtsgebiete verstreut, so dass ohne fachkundige Hilfe—etwa durch die Kammern oder durch juristische Beratung—die Selbstdarstellung im Internet schnell zu einem bösen Erwachen führen kann.

A survival guide to fission

The fission of a person involves what common sense describes as a single person surviving as two distinct people. Thus, say most metaphysicians, this paradox shows us that common sense is inconsistent with the transitivity of identity. Lewis’s theory of overlapping persons, buttressed with tensed identity, gives us one way to reconcile the common sense claims. Lewis’s account, however, implausibly says that reference to a person about to undergo fission is ambiguous. A better way to reconcile the claims of common sense, one that avoids this ambiguity, is to recognize branching persons, persons who have multiple pasts or futures.

Natural capacities and democracy as a good-in-itself

Democracy is shown to be a non-instrumental good-in-itself (as well as an instrument in securing other goods) by extrapolation from the Aristotelian premise that humans are political animals. Because humans are by nature language-using, as well as sociable and common-end-seeking beings, the capacity to associate in public decisions is constitutive of the human being-kind. Association in decision is necessary (although insufficient) for happiness in the sense of eudaimonia. A benevolent dictator who satisfied all other conditions of justice, harms her subjects by denying them opportunity to associate in the decisions by which their community is governed.

What is Debate for? The Rationality of Tibetan Debates and the Role of Humor

In this essay, I examine the mode of operation and aim of debates in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions. I contrast the probative form of argument that was privileged by the Indian tradition to the more agonic practice favored by Tibetan scholastics. I also examine the rules that preside over this dialectical practice, which is seen by the Tibetan tradition as essential to a proper scholastic education. I argue, however, that the practice of debates cannot be reduced to this dialectical model, for it has an important performative aspect not easily encompassed by the rules. I examine this aspect of Tibetan debates, focusing particularly on the role of humor. I conclude with a few remarks on the type of rationality entailed by the importance of humor and of other rhetorical elements involved in Tibetan debates.

The phenomenology of negation

Negation is a fundamental component of communication (no-answers), cognition (logical negation), perception (different color), attitude (dislike), emotion (hatred), and volition (disagreement). Its many uses make it difficult to provide an integrated definition of the concept. The aim of this paper is to show that an integrated definition of the concept can be arrived at by means of a phenomenological method structuring it into three general essences labelled lack, otherness and obstruction.

Human embryonic stem cell research and the discarded embryo argument

Many who believe that human embryos have moral status are convinced that their use in human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research can be morally justified as long as they are discarded embryos left over from fertility treatments. This is one reason why this view about discarded embryos has played such a prominent role in the debate over publicly funding hESC research in the United States and other countries. Many believe that this view offers the best chance of a compromise between the different sides in this debate. This paper focuses on what seems to be the most plausible argument for this view about discarded embryos. It shows that this argument is unsound regardless of how one understands the claim that embryos have moral status. It also discusses the implications of this conclusion for attempts to use this argument as a basis for public policy.

The Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis and the Mourning of American Catholic Innocence

The passionate response of many American Catholics to the clergy sex abuse crisis is an expression not only of legitimate anger over the sexual abuse of children and young people by Roman Catholic priests but also of resistance to mourning the significant losses post-immigrant American Catholics sustained in the last third of the twentieth century.

Public and Private Meaning in Hume: Comments on Ted Morris’ “Meaningfulness without Metaphysics: Another Look at Hume’s Meaning-Empiricism”

This paper raises questions concerning Ted Morris’ interpretation of Hume’s notion of meaning and investigates the private and public aspects of Hume’s notion of meaning.

Witnessing to Hope in the Christian Community Through Irony

The concept of witnessing to hope reminds us that nurturing hope is fundamentally a communal endeavor. In the Christian tradition, this witnessing takes a particular form. It involves the use of the ironic imagination: Death leads to new life, the poor are considered blessed, and the faithful boast in their suffering. It is argued that a central pastoral task is stimulating the ironic imagination. While this can take place in a number of settings, the focus here is on public worship. Practical examples of how this task might be executed are offered.

Translucent experiences

This paper considers the claim that perceptual experience is “transparent”, in the sense that nothing other than the apparent public objects of perception are available to introspection by the subject of such experience. I revive and strengthen the objection that blurred vision constitutes an insuperable objection to the claim, and counter recent responses to the general objection. Finally the bearing of this issue on representationalist accounts of the mind is considered.

Internet Use of Migrant Workers in the Pearl River Delta

The paper is a report on the study of Internet use and migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). First, the paper illustrates that educational attainment is a significant factor in determining the type of Internet use that appeals to migrant workers. Second, it points out that both work-oriented and entertainment-oriented uses of the Internet have a positive influence on migrant workers’ jobs and social lives in the PRD. Access to work-related information improves their employment opportunities, while the various means of entertainment provide relaxation. The online chat and the virtual community provide migrant workers with emotional support and a strong sense of their local identity. The Internet café and online games allow migrant workers to relieve the pressures of work and passively challenge the power hierarchy in the modern factory regime. The paper concludes that the Internet use has become the integral part of the city lives of migrant workers in the PRD.

An Antiseptic Religion: Discovering A Hybridity on the Flux of Hygiene and Christianity

An antiseptic religion is a form of Protestant Christianity that was shaped in the context of colonization in Korea. This term was coined to explain a religious hybrid that was produced by the intermingling of American Evangelical Protestant Christianity, the concept of hygiene (germ theory) and indigenous Korean religiosity. This research deals with a historical process of making ‘a medicalized religion’ in Asia from a perspective of postcolonialism. Most of the early American Protestant missionaries in Korea were medical doctors who were influenced by the Germ theory of illness and considered Western medicine as an efficient tool to evangelize the country. As a result of their mission, a religious culture which emphasized washing away sins from the soul as analogous to washing away germs from the body was born. In addition, the Korean people developed a very unique form of public bathing ritual centered in the development of public baths to alleviate anxiety and to destabilize the solid strategies of the Japanese and the Americans, the two major colonial powers in Korea’s history in the late 19th century.