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- All Subjects: Clarinet and piano music
Description
This dissertation integrates humanities with social science methodologies within a critical framework, seeking to explore the relationship between the neoliberal restructuring and the intersection of gender, class and heteronormativity in contemporary China. In this project, neoliberalism is conceptualized as an art of governance centering on the intersection of race, gender, class and sexuality to create market subjects and sustain market competition. Focusing on China's recent socio-economic and cultural upheavals, this dissertation tries to address these questions: 1. How have class inequalities, binaristic gender and heteronormative discourses been employed intersectionally by the Chinese state to facilitate China's social transformation? 2. How has this process been justified and consolidated through the intersection of gender, class, sexuality and race? 3. How do the marginalized groups respond to these material and cultural practices? Building on the discursive analysis of China's televised 60th anniversary ceremony and If You Are the One, a popular Chinese reality show, as well as the data from the interview, focus group and participant observation of more than 100 informants, it is found that the intersection of gender, class and heteronormativity is central to China's neoliberal transition. A group of flexible and cheap laborers have been disarticulated and rearticulated from the population as the voluntary servitude to China's marketization and re-integration with the global economy. New controlling images, such as the bourgeois nucleus family, are created to legitimize this process. However, these disparate material and discursive practices have entailed contradictions and conflicts within the intersectional biopolitical system, and created contingent spaces of ungovernability for the marginalized groups. Building on these discursive analyses and empirical data, I reconceptualize intersectionality as a multi-dimensional-and-directional network to regulate and manage power for social organization and regulation, which grounds the biopolitical basics for the neoliberal economy. Thus I argue that we need to engage with the dynamics between the intersectional biopolitical structure and people's emerging experiences to construct a grounded utopia alternative to the neoliberal dominance for substantive social changes.
ContributorsZhang, Charlie Yi (Author) / Quan, H. L. T. (Thesis advisor) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Thesis advisor) / Martinez, Jacqueline M. (Committee member) / Lee, Charles T. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Since the departure of the UN Transitional Authority (UNTAC) in 1993, the Cambodian Muslim community has undergone a rapid transformation from being an Islamic minority on the periphery of the Muslim world to being the object of intense proselytization by foreign Islamic organizations, charities and development organizations. This has led to a period of religious as well as political ferment in which Cambodian Muslims are reassessing their relationships to other Muslim communities in the country, fellow Muslims outside of the country, and an officially Buddhist state. This dissertation explores the ways in which the Cham Muslims of Cambodia have deployed notions of nationality, citizenship, history, ethnicity and religion in Cambodia's new political and economic climate. It is the product of a multi-sited ethnographic study conducted in Phnom Penh and Kampong Chhnang as well as Kampong Cham and Ratanakiri. While all Cham have some ethnic and linguistic connection to each other, there have been a number of reactions to the exposure of the community to outside influences. This dissertation examines how ideas and ideologies of history are formed among the Cham and how these notions then inform their acceptance or rejection of foreign Muslims as well as of each other. This understanding of the Cham principally rests on an appreciation of the way in which geographic space and historical events are transformed into moral symbols that bind groups of people or divide them. Ultimately, this dissertation examines the Cham not only as an Islamic minority, but as an Islamic diaspora - a particular form of identity construction which has implications for their future development and relations with non-Muslim peoples. It reconsiders the classifications of diasporas proposed by Robin Cohen and William Safran, by incorporating Arjun Appadurai's conception of locality as a construct that must be continuously rendered in praxis to generate the socially shared understanding of space, geography and its meaning for communitarian identity. This treatment of Islamic transnationalism within the context of diaspora studies can contribute to the broader conversation on the changing face of Islamic identity in an increasingly globalized world.
ContributorsPérez Pereiro, Alberto (Author) / Jonsson, Hjorleifur R (Thesis advisor) / Eder, James F. (Thesis advisor) / Woodward, Mark (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Despite the wealth of folk music traditions in Portugal and the importance of the clarinet in the music of bandas filarmonicas, it is uncommon to find works featuring the clarinet using Portuguese folk music elements. In the interest of expanding this type of repertoire, three new works were commissioned from three different composers. The resulting works are Seres Imaginarios 3 by Luis Cardoso; Delirio Barroco by Tiago Derrica; and Memória by Pedro Faria Gomes. In an effort to submit these new works for inclusion into mainstream performance literature, the author has recorded these works on compact disc. This document includes interview transcripts with each composer, providing first-person discussion of each composition, as well as detailed biographical information on each composer. To provide context, the author has included a brief discussion on Portuguese folk music, and in particular, the role that the clarinet plays in Portuguese folk music culture.
ContributorsFerreira, Wesley (Contributor) / Spring, Robert S (Thesis advisor) / Bailey, Wayne (Committee member) / Gardner, Joshua (Committee member) / Hill, Gary (Committee member) / Schuring, Martin (Committee member) / Solis, Theodore (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Biophysics, rockets, and the state: the making of a scientific discipline in twentieth-century China
Description
This study takes biophysics--a relatively new field with complex origins and contested definitions--as the research focus and investigates the history of disciplinary formation in twentieth-century China. The story of building a scientific discipline in modern China illustrates how a science specialty evolved from an ambiguous and amorphous field into a full-fledged academic discipline in specific socio-institutional contexts. It focuses on archival sources and historical writings concerning the constitution and definition of biophysics in order to examine the relationship between particular scientific styles, national priorities, and institutional opportunities in the People's Republic of China. It argues that Chinese biophysicists exhibited a different style of conceiving and organizing their discipline by adapting to the institutional structure and political economy that had been created since 1949. The eight chapters demonstrate that biophysics as a scientific discipline flourished in China only where priorities of science were congruent with political and institutional imperatives. Initially consisting of cell biologists, the Chinese biophysics community redirected their disciplinary priorities toward rocket science in the late 1950s to accommodate the national need of the time. Biophysicists who had worked on biological sounding rockets were drawn to the military sector and continued to contribute to human spaceflight in post-Mao China. Besides the rocket-and-space missions which provided the material context for biophysics to expand in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chinese biophysicists also created research and educational programs surrounding biophysics by exploiting the institutional opportunities afforded by the policy emphasis on science's role to drive modernization. Biophysics' tie to nationalistic and utilitarian goals highlights the merits of approaching modern Chinese history from disciplinary, material, and institutional perspectives.
ContributorsLuk, Yi Lai Christine (Author) / Koblitz, Ann Hibner (Thesis advisor) / Maienschein, Jane A (Committee member) / Tillman, Hoyt C (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The rate of obesity has increased noticeably in China since the 1980s, brought about by the "After Mao" revolution. This dissertation examines the social determinants of obesity and weight gain among men and women, using 1991-2009 waves of the longitudinal China Health and Nutrition Survey. The first study emphasizes that rapid technological adoption at home may also have the potential to lead to obesity epidemics. I hypothesize that adopting household technology is a factor in weight gain, independent from daily calorie consumption and energy expenditure in exercise. The results show household technology ownership and weight gain are linked, while changes in overall energy intake and exercise may not function as mediators for this relationship. Future public health policy may evaluate interventions that are focused on increasing low-intensity activities impacted by household technologies. My second study discusses whether obesity wage penalties seen in Western societies, such as wage reductions for obese individuals, are observed in modern China. The results indicate that obese women are not subject to wage penalties, while current male obesity rates may be worsened by heightened economic outcomes and greater social acceptance by customers and colleagues. With increasing interpersonal interactions in the workplace in Chinese industries, and the lack of public awareness of the risks of obesity, Chinese public health strategies for preventing and controlling obesity should target male non-manual laborers, the most vulnerable population in the future. The third study analyzes the impact of parental and own socioeconomic status on adult body weight and extends the research by estimating the influence of intergenerational social mobility on current body mass index. In the context of increasing social inequality in China, the study shows parental SES, own SES, and social mobility to be negatively associated with body mass index among women; while respondent's SES is positively associated with body mass index among men. The study results support the theory that parental SES has a more significant impact on current body weight for men and women after controlling social mobility; indicating that social mobility may function as a mediator for the relationship between parental SES and current body mass index.
ContributorsHuang, Chih-Chien (Author) / Kronenfeld, Jennie (Thesis advisor) / Yabiku, Scott (Committee member) / Damgaard, Anni (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Academic achievement among Asians has been widely recognized in the literature, but the costs of this success may be tied to significant mental health consequences. Three samples of undergraduate students in India were recruited from cities such as Chennai, Kerala, and Delhi totaling 608 (303 male, 301 females). Both online and in class recruitment occurred.
There were three main purposes of this study: 1) to construct a quantitative measure of parental pressure, 2) to evaluate whether self-esteem was a potential buffer of the negative impacts of parental pressure and academic stress, and 3) to understand better the factors impacting suicidality among adolescents in India by testing a path model of possible predictors suggested by the literature. Prevalence data of suicidal ideation and attempt history were also collected. Reporting on their experience over the past six months, 14.5% (n = 82) of the participants endorsed suicidal ideation and 12.3% (n = 69) of the participants admitted to having deliberately attempted to hurt or kill themselves.
Five constructs were explored in this study: parental pressure, academic stress, depression, suicidality, and self-esteem. The Parental Pressure for Success Scale, designed for this study, was used to measure parental pressure. The Educational Stress Scale-Adolescents was used to measure academic stress. The Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale was used to measure depressive symptomology. Two items from the Youth Self-Report Checklist were used as a measure of suicidality in the past six months. The Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale was used to measure global self-esteem.
Preliminary support for the reliability and validity of the Parental Pressure for Success Scale was found. While self-esteem was not a significant moderator in this study, it was a predictor of both stress and depression. Results of the path analysis indicated that parental pressure predicted academic stress, stress predicted depression, and depression predicted suicidality. Parental pressure indirectly predicted suicidality through academic stress and depression. Results were discussed in the context of cultural influences on study findings such as the central role of parents in the family unit, the impact of cultural valuing of education, collectivistic society, and the Hindu concept of dharma, or duty.
There were three main purposes of this study: 1) to construct a quantitative measure of parental pressure, 2) to evaluate whether self-esteem was a potential buffer of the negative impacts of parental pressure and academic stress, and 3) to understand better the factors impacting suicidality among adolescents in India by testing a path model of possible predictors suggested by the literature. Prevalence data of suicidal ideation and attempt history were also collected. Reporting on their experience over the past six months, 14.5% (n = 82) of the participants endorsed suicidal ideation and 12.3% (n = 69) of the participants admitted to having deliberately attempted to hurt or kill themselves.
Five constructs were explored in this study: parental pressure, academic stress, depression, suicidality, and self-esteem. The Parental Pressure for Success Scale, designed for this study, was used to measure parental pressure. The Educational Stress Scale-Adolescents was used to measure academic stress. The Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale was used to measure depressive symptomology. Two items from the Youth Self-Report Checklist were used as a measure of suicidality in the past six months. The Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale was used to measure global self-esteem.
Preliminary support for the reliability and validity of the Parental Pressure for Success Scale was found. While self-esteem was not a significant moderator in this study, it was a predictor of both stress and depression. Results of the path analysis indicated that parental pressure predicted academic stress, stress predicted depression, and depression predicted suicidality. Parental pressure indirectly predicted suicidality through academic stress and depression. Results were discussed in the context of cultural influences on study findings such as the central role of parents in the family unit, the impact of cultural valuing of education, collectivistic society, and the Hindu concept of dharma, or duty.
ContributorsSarma, Arti (Author) / Robinson-Kurpius, Sharon (Thesis advisor) / Kinnier, Richard (Committee member) / Homer, Judith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Museums are gaining increasing attention throughout the world for their ability to foster social inclusion, intercultural dialogue, and collaboration in practices of heritage management, exhibition, and interpretation. This dissertation aims to contribute a critical perspective on museums as agents of social change through an exploration of new museological practices in contemporary China. Through an ethnography of the ecomuseum, I unravel the assumptions and expectations of implementing a Western concept based on notions of community participation, empowerment, and the democratization of heritage in the context of a transforming China.
In my ethnographic account of the multifaceted politics faced by ecomuseums, I question how power and authority are mediated through these civic institutions and how central aspects of museum and heritage practices are being redressed in Chinese society. This study exposes how ecomuseums in China are a result of global processes and positioned as part of a heritage protection movement and museum development boom to promote cultural nationalism, a "civilized" China, and state edicts of rural development in impoverished ethnic minority regions. Detailing the implications of government-led ecomuseum development in ethnic villages in southwest China, and the specific case of Huaili ecomuseum, in Guangxi, I interrogate the institutionalization of heritage and cultural landscapes through processes of exhibition, museumification, and the revaluing of culture. I explore the ecomuseum as a social space of cross-cultural encounter and friction through which local actors grapple with conditions of cultural governance and the entanglements cultural difference and a national heritage discourse. In my critical analysis of collected ethnographic narratives over 15 months of fieldwork from state-directed interest groups, Chinese technocrats, and villager informants involved in the institutionalization of heritage, I present the complex arrangements and interactions that take place through the ecomuseum context and how subject positionalities shift and claims to heritage, identity, and voice are negotiated, regulated, and contested. This study contributes to the anthropology of China and museum and heritage studies, and aims to push new directions in the study of community heritage and museums, in offering a critical perspective of the political nature of ecomuseums in non-Western contexts, such as China.
In my ethnographic account of the multifaceted politics faced by ecomuseums, I question how power and authority are mediated through these civic institutions and how central aspects of museum and heritage practices are being redressed in Chinese society. This study exposes how ecomuseums in China are a result of global processes and positioned as part of a heritage protection movement and museum development boom to promote cultural nationalism, a "civilized" China, and state edicts of rural development in impoverished ethnic minority regions. Detailing the implications of government-led ecomuseum development in ethnic villages in southwest China, and the specific case of Huaili ecomuseum, in Guangxi, I interrogate the institutionalization of heritage and cultural landscapes through processes of exhibition, museumification, and the revaluing of culture. I explore the ecomuseum as a social space of cross-cultural encounter and friction through which local actors grapple with conditions of cultural governance and the entanglements cultural difference and a national heritage discourse. In my critical analysis of collected ethnographic narratives over 15 months of fieldwork from state-directed interest groups, Chinese technocrats, and villager informants involved in the institutionalization of heritage, I present the complex arrangements and interactions that take place through the ecomuseum context and how subject positionalities shift and claims to heritage, identity, and voice are negotiated, regulated, and contested. This study contributes to the anthropology of China and museum and heritage studies, and aims to push new directions in the study of community heritage and museums, in offering a critical perspective of the political nature of ecomuseums in non-Western contexts, such as China.
ContributorsNitzky, William (Author) / Hjorleifur Jonsson (Thesis advisor) / Isaac, Gwyneira (Thesis advisor) / Tsuda, Takeyuki (Committee member) / Eder, James (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This dissertation project addresses one of the most critical problems in the study of religion: how do scriptures acquire significance in religious communities in ways that go beyond the meaning of their words? Based on data collected during ethnographic work in Maharashtra, India, in 2011 and 2012, I analyze the complex relationship between a religious text and its readers with reference to ritual reading of the Gurucaritra, a Marathi scripture written in the sixteenth century. I argue that readers of the Gurucaritra create a self-actualized modern religiosity both by interpreting the content of the text and by negotiating the rules of praxis surrounding their reading activity.
In particular, this dissertation analyzes the ways in which members of the Dattatreya tradition in urban Maharashatra ritualize their tradition's central text-- the Gurucaritra--in terms of everyday issues and concerns of the present. Taking inspiration from reader-response criticism, I focus on the pArAyaN; (reading the entire text) of the Gurucaritra, the central scripture of the Dattatreya tradition, in the context of its contemporary readings in Maharashtra. In the process of reading the Gurucaritra, readers become modern by making a conscious selection from their tradition. In the process of approaching their tradition through the text, what they achieve is a sense of continuity and a faith that, if they have the support of the guru, nothing can go wrong. In the process of choosing elements from their tradition, they ultimately achieve a sense of being modern individuals who work out rules of religiosity for themselves.
This dissertation contributes to the study of scriptures in two major ways: first, by bringing forth how religious communities engage with scriptures for reasons other than their comprehension; second, by showing how scriptures can play a crucial role in religious communities in the context of addressing concerns of their present. Thus, this research contributes to the fields of scripture studies, Hinduism, and literary criticism.
In particular, this dissertation analyzes the ways in which members of the Dattatreya tradition in urban Maharashatra ritualize their tradition's central text-- the Gurucaritra--in terms of everyday issues and concerns of the present. Taking inspiration from reader-response criticism, I focus on the pArAyaN; (reading the entire text) of the Gurucaritra, the central scripture of the Dattatreya tradition, in the context of its contemporary readings in Maharashtra. In the process of reading the Gurucaritra, readers become modern by making a conscious selection from their tradition. In the process of approaching their tradition through the text, what they achieve is a sense of continuity and a faith that, if they have the support of the guru, nothing can go wrong. In the process of choosing elements from their tradition, they ultimately achieve a sense of being modern individuals who work out rules of religiosity for themselves.
This dissertation contributes to the study of scriptures in two major ways: first, by bringing forth how religious communities engage with scriptures for reasons other than their comprehension; second, by showing how scriptures can play a crucial role in religious communities in the context of addressing concerns of their present. Thus, this research contributes to the fields of scripture studies, Hinduism, and literary criticism.
ContributorsYeolekar, Mugdha (Author) / Feldhaus, Anne (Thesis advisor) / Henn, Alexander (Committee member) / Codell, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
East Asia in the aftermath of the Cold War might provide the most favorable case for realist theory due to historical rivalries, territorial disputes, economic competition, great power politics and deep-rooted realist beliefs among politicians in the region. Yet the fundamental realist prediction of balance of power in the region has not materialized. Neither internal nor external balancing in their original senses is explicitly present. This poses a serious challenge to realism and more broadly, western international relations theories for understanding regional dynamics. Several explanations have been put forward in previous research, such as a total rejection of the applicability of realism for explaining East Asian politics, modifying realism by adding new variables, and focusing on domestic variables. Using a neoclassical realist term, underbalancing, this dissertation goes beyond neoclassical realist theory of underbalancing by reintroducing the distinction between external and internal balancing, which has direct implications for the resources needed for a balancing policy and external reactions to balancing policy. In particular, this approach emphasizes the effect of interaction between states on underbalancing. By doing so, it also highlights what is omitted by realism, namely, the agency of the targeted state at risk of being balanced. In other words, the policy of the state that is aware of its risk of being balanced could draw upon foreign policy tools it possesses to neutralize the balancing efforts from others. This notion of state policies influencing the outcome of balance of power is tested with post-Cold War East Asian politics. The cases included China-Japan and China-ASEAN strategic interactions after the Cold War. Based on materials from public media outlets, official documents and recently leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, this dissertation argues that China's policies towards neighboring states- policies expressed variously through cultural, diplomatic, economic and security initiatives- are indispensable to explain the fact of underbalancing in the region.
ContributorsChi, Zhipei (Author) / Simon, Sheldon (Thesis advisor) / Rush, James (Committee member) / Shair-Rosenfield, Sarah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This project examines the decision of American policymakers to deny the Amerasians of Vietnam--the offspring of American fathers and Vietnamese mothers born as a result of the Vietnam War--American citizenship in the 1982 Amerasian Immigration Act and the 1987 Amerasian Homecoming Act. It investigates why policymakers deemed a population unfit for the responsibilities of American society, despite the fact that they had American fathers.
The examination draws upon numerous archival collections of the key policymakers, humanitarians and non-governmental organizations involved in each piece of legislation. Additionally, archival and published documents from the U.S. government and military, popular media, and veteran's organizations, are important. Since many of those involved in the legislation are still living, oral history interviews are also a critical piece of the methodology.
The dissertation argues that the exclusion of citizenship was a component of bigger issues: international relationships in a Cold War era, America's defeat in the Vietnam War, and a history in the United States of racialized exclusionary immigration and citizenship policies against people of Asian descent. It exposes the contradictory approach of policymakers unable to reconcile the Amerasian mixture of race and nation with US law. Consequently, policymakers simultaneously employed an inclusionary discourse that deemed the Amerasians worthy of American attention, guidance and humanitarian aid, and implemented exclusionary policies that designated them unfit for the responsibilities of American citizenship.
The examination draws upon numerous archival collections of the key policymakers, humanitarians and non-governmental organizations involved in each piece of legislation. Additionally, archival and published documents from the U.S. government and military, popular media, and veteran's organizations, are important. Since many of those involved in the legislation are still living, oral history interviews are also a critical piece of the methodology.
The dissertation argues that the exclusion of citizenship was a component of bigger issues: international relationships in a Cold War era, America's defeat in the Vietnam War, and a history in the United States of racialized exclusionary immigration and citizenship policies against people of Asian descent. It exposes the contradictory approach of policymakers unable to reconcile the Amerasian mixture of race and nation with US law. Consequently, policymakers simultaneously employed an inclusionary discourse that deemed the Amerasians worthy of American attention, guidance and humanitarian aid, and implemented exclusionary policies that designated them unfit for the responsibilities of American citizenship.
ContributorsThomas, Sabrina (Author) / Longley, Rodney (Thesis advisor) / Fixico, Donald (Committee member) / Anderson, Carol (Committee member) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015