Toward a Psychology of Converting in the People’s Republic of China

Pastoral Psychology - The focus of this paper is the nature of converting processes in the People’s Republic of China. This paper seeks to provide an overview of the issues to be considered...     

Transnational grandparenting: Child care arrangements among migrants from the People’s Republic of China to Australia

This article examines child care arrangements in a group of 40 recent Chinese migrants to Australia. A pattern of child care has emerged that is summarized as “transnational grandparenting.” This pattern is related to gender ideology and gender role performances that migrants brought with them from the People’s Republic of China. It also relates to barriers migrants face in a new country as well as cultural differences in family values and kinship relations. The significance of transnational grandparenting is multifaceted. It is neither traditional nor modern, but a practice that migrants adopt to meet the needs of families. It has social and cultural implications beyond its immediate aid.     

Multiple Variations: Perspectives on the Religious Psychology of Buddhist and Christian Converts in the People’s Republic of China

Based on questionnaires and in-depth interviews, this article describes and systematically analyzes the psychology of the religiosity of contemporary Chinese Buddhist and Christian converts. People convert to a religious faith for a variety of reasons that range from seeking a means of escape to a practical way of coping with life. Religious belief contains subtle and complex factors, such as the interactions between believers and their beliefs, a sense of community among religious believers, conversion of mind and personality, and influence of the religious beliefs on religious believers’ mental health and behavior. This paper seeks to provide an overview of research conducted in the People’s Republic of China about the various motivations and paths to conversion.     

Canada’s Same-Sex Marriage Law: Exception to or Exemplar of Canada’s Family Policy?

Family policy in Canada is primarily concerned with assisting parents raise their children. This fairly singular approach to family policy is ironic given that Canada does not have a nationally-coordinated family policy. The development of a national family policy has been hampered by Canada’s decentralized governmental structure (i.e., federal and provincial, as well as territorial, governments) and other factors such as diverse geography and different traditions (e.g., a tradition of common law in English Canada, and civil law in Quebec). A recent addition to Canada’s family policy is Bill C-38, The Civil Marriage Act (2005), the law legalizing same-sex marriage. To put Canada’s same-sex marriage law into context, this article presents some preliminary statistics about same-sex marriage in Canada, and considers whether same-sex marriage legislation is a good example of Canadian family policy, or an exception to the rule that Canadian family policy focuses primarily on helping parents socialize their children.     

Told in Memory of God’s People: Beloved

The purpose of this article is to show how Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, can be used in pastoral care and counseling courses to encourage the development of empathy and to illustrate themes in the communal contextual and intercultural paradigms emerging in the field of pastoral theology.     

The Study of College Students’ Beliefs in China

Pastoral Psychology - The beliefs of college students is an important issue that is followed closely by the Government of China (GOC). In recent years, the GOC increasingly has encouraged the...     

The Effects of Parental Labor Migration on Children’s Mental Health in Rural China

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Utilizing data from the China Education Panel Survey, we investigated the effects of parental migration and its duration on children’s mental health in...     

Foreign-educated returnees in the people’s Republic of China: Increasing political influence with limited official power

At a time when China faces daunting challenges both at home and abroad, Chinese leadership is in great need of the expertise, skills, and knowledge of foreign-educated Chinese nationals. Based on an empirical study of senior officials in three important leadership bodies in China, this article shows that the percentage of returnees appointed to high-level leadership positions is small. Meanwhile, the top leadership has frequently solicited advice from returnee-led think tanks affiliated with China’s major universities. This dynamic interaction between political power and academic prowess, between national interest and transnational perspective, is a fascinating development in China today. À une époque où la Chine affronte des défis de taille, tant sur le plan domestique qu’à l’échelle internationale, le leadership du pays a un besoin pressant pour l’expertise, les habiletés et les connaissances des ressortissants chinois éduqués à l’étranger. Puisant dans une étude empirique auprès de fonctionnaires de rang élevé dans trois organismes dirigeantes importantes en Chine, cet article démontre que le taux de rapatriés nommés à des postes de leadership de rang élevé est bas. Toutefois, les dirigeants de haut niveau ont souvent fait appel aux groupes de réflexion dirigés par des rapatriés et associés aux grandes universités chinoises. Cette interaction dynamique entre le pouvoir politique et l’expertise académique, l’intérêt national et la perspective transnationale, représente un développement intriguant dans la Chine d’aujourd’hui.     

Women’s Use of and Access to Illicit Cannabis: An Investigation of Gendered Norms among College Students in Canada

Sex Roles - In the present study, I investigate how often unacknowledged gendered norms shape young women’s use of and access to illicit cannabis. I apply a “doing gender”...     

Greek-Cypriot Students’ Stances and Repertoires Towards Migrants and Migrant Students in the Republic of Cyprus

The present paper focuses on the stances and repertoires of 30 Greek-Cypriot students with whom semi-structured, in-depth interviews were carried out about their feelings and perceptions of migrants and migrant children in Cyprus. As it is shown, stances are not the only key factor in the creation and reproduction of racial and ethnic categories; repertoires are also entangled with stances and can be broadly differentiated, highlighting the complex ways in which children and adolescents portray migrants and contribute to formulating the context of migrants’ reception in society. In addition, the diverse experiences of direct or no contact with migrants are entangled with perceptions of migrants as a whole and contribute to the reproduction of certain behavioural stances. Based on the analysis of students’ stances and repertoires, we discuss educational policies and practices that facilitate a better integration of migrant children in schools.     

To Die or Not to Die: Zhuangzi’s Three Immortalities

While it is known that the problem of death is a central topic animating the author/s of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, leading Chinese and Western interpretations of this Chinese classic have usually focused much more on other themes and aspects. Even more problematic in the author’s view is the fact that the Zhuangzi has been closely associated with one death philosophy, the set of concepts, arguments and figures present in chapter 6. This study puts death back at the very center of the Zhuangzian philosophical project yet insisting at the same time on the difficulties of defending one philosophy of death since different passages introduce new concepts, imagery, nuances and perspectives. The Zhuangzi’s focus on death is being situated within a discussion of the “immortality” ideal––accepting a total death (“to die”) or find refuge in immortality ideals (“not to die”). Different passages from the Inner Chapters are being presented as proposing three distinct immortality projects or strategies––personal, social and cosmic––to address the problem of death. E. Becker’s reflections on the challenge of mortality and the psychological need of a “beyond” in order to cope with the consciousness of death provide the basic theoretical framework underlying the discussion of the Zhuangzi in this essay.     

Europe’s “New Jews”: France,Islamophobia, and Antisemitism in the Era of Mass Migration

Are Muslims the “new Jews” of Europe? The spectacle of Middle Eastern and African refugees shuttled by train from camp to squalid camp has understandably drawn parallels to the darkest pages in twentieth-century continental history. Such a historical comparison between Islamophobia and antisemitism, however, risks missing their ongoing interrelation. This article examines that interrelation, arguing that Islamophobia and antisemitism now most resemble each other as complementary mechanisms for diverting the anxieties bred by the global economic order. Antisemitism has long scapegoated the Jews for capitalism’s tendency to produce outsized winners. But there has been no comparably global shorthand for the anxiety prompted by capitalism’s losers—until now. Muslim refugees help give a name, Islam, to the masses seemingly encroaching from the margins of the world system. The result, I argue, is the hardening of Islamophobia and antisemitism into the inextricable poles of a reactionary worldview. Taking France as a case study, the article reads the burkini bans prompted by the July 2016 terror attack in Nice as an expression of middle-class fear about downward mobility. Targeted at both internal Muslim leisure and external Muslim encroachment, the bans evoke how European unease about globalization increasingly takes Islamophobic form. Such intolerance threatens not only to lodge Islamophobia at the heart of a reconstituted Europe but also to erode the vigilance against antisemitism once characteristic of the postwar European project.     

The Influence of Parental Migration on Left-behind Children’s Mental Health in China: the Mediating Roles of Daily Stress and Sense-Making

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Despite growing attention to health impacts of parental migration on children left behind, little is known about the mechanism through which parental migration...     

Blending,Bargaining, and Burden-Sharing: Canada’s Resettlement Programs

In this piece, we offer a comment on the most recent addition to the Canadian resettlement scheme, the Blended Visa Office-Referred (BVOR) program. The BVOR program was introduced in 2013 as a modified version of private sponsorship and middle ground between sponsorship and government-assisted resettlement. While the program was met with criticism and skepticism that the government was off-loading more resettlement responsibility to private sponsors, the Syrian crisis significantly impacted and changed the Canadian resettlement landscape. This comment outlines the program and surveys the benefits and concerns with such a model. BVOR is examined in relation to both private and government resettlement, in the current moment of Syrian resettlement, and in comparison to the historical use of private sponsorship for Indochinese refugees. Through an examination of the challenges BVOR is intended to address and the division of public and private responsibility, the comment serves to assess the direction of Canada’s future resettlement.     

Issues in Museum Management Policies: Evidence from Xi’an,China

ABSTRACT

This article is based on a survey of 493 visitors to Shaanxi History Museum, Xi’an, China. The purpose of the research was to assess attitudes toward the exhibitions and the sources of visitor satisfaction, and the consequences of a free entry policy adopted by the Museum in response to the directive of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and State Administration of Cultural Heritage of January 23, 2008. Three dimensions for visitor satisfaction were found—an affective reaction to the modes of presentation, a cognitive reaction to learning about Chinese history, and an affective reaction of a sense of awe and pride in that history. As part of the pricing policy, additional charges are made for special exhibitions, and evidence exists of a consumer surplus for significant groups of visitors at current entry prices that are normally 20 RMB. In this article the authors discussed issues related to a need to adopt merchandising, the provision of better ancillary services, and the role that such services can play in enhancing visitor satisfaction.     

To the Nothingnesses Themselves: Husserl’s Influence on Sartre’s Notion of Nothingness

In this article I argue that Sartre’s notions of nothingness and “negatity” are not, as he presents it, primarily reactions to Hegel and Heidegger. Instead, they are a reaction to an ongoing struggle with Husserl’s notion of intentionality and related notions. I do this by comparing the criticism aimed at Husserl in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness to that presented in his earlier work, The Imagination, where he discusses Husserl more elaborately. Furthermore, I compare his criticism to Husserl’s own criticism of the “doctrine of immanent objects”, in order to show that Sartre’s notion of nothingness is a continuation of Husserl’s criticism, and that he turns Husserl’s own arguments against himself.     

Youth’s Help-Seeking Intentions for ADHD and Depression: Findings from a National Survey

This study investigates the role that youth-level factors play in predicting help-seeking intentions in a nationally representative sample. Eleven help-seeking intentions were examined separately by target conditions (ADHD and depression), gender, race/ethnicity, and self-reported diagnosed/non-diagnosed in respect to the target conditions, and interaction effects were tested. Using factor analysis, a traditional help-seeking scale was created, which captured four help-seeking items, and predictive power of youth-level factors in accounting for traditional help-seeking was tested. Study findings provide practitioners and researchers with fresh evidence on what youth-level factors are associated with which help-seeking intentions, and illustrate the challenges involved in better understanding the complexity of the help-seeking process among youth in the context of ADHD/Depression. With increased understanding of youth’s perceptions and the complexity of their help-seeking behavior, community-based efforts to develop effective strategies that support active help-seeking behavior and eliminate barriers to appropriate care can have a greater likelihood of success.