Since embarking on economic reforms in 1978, the People’s Republic of China has also undergone a sweeping cultural reorganization, from proletarian culture under Mao to middle-class consumer culture today. Under these circumstances, how has a Chinese middle class come into being, and how has consumerism become the dominant ideology of an avowedly socialist country? The Art of Useless offers an innovative way to understand China’s unprecedented political-economic, social, and cultural transformations, showing how consumer culture helps anticipate, produce, and shape a new middle-class subjectivity. Examining changing representations of the production and consumption of fashion in documentaries and films, Calvin Hui traces how culture contributes to China’s changing social relations through the cultivation of new identities and sensibilities. He explores the commodity chain of fashion on a transnational scale, from production to consumption to disposal, as well as media portrayals of the intersections of clothing with class, gender, and ethnicity. Hui illuminates key cinematic narratives, such as a factory worker’s desire for a high-quality suit in the 1960s, an intellectual’s longing for fashionable clothes in the 1980s, and a white-collar woman’s craving for brand-name commodities in the 2000s. He considers how documentary films depict the undersides of consumption—exploited laborers who fantasize about the products they manufacture as well as the accumulation of waste and its disposal—revealing how global capitalism renders migrant factory workers, scavengers, and garbage invisible. A highly interdisciplinary work that combines theoretical nuance with masterful close analyses, The Art of Useless is an innovative rethinking of the emergence of China’s middle-class consumer culture.
This Chinese art history book is a study of a single poet-artist--Wang Wei--perhaps the most influential of antiquity. This eighth-century genius, whose versatility is comparable to that of the great Italian Leonardo da Vinci, lived during the Tang Dynasty when the most brilliant cultural period in Chinese history was at its height. Whatever he attempted--as artist, poet, musician, doctor and official--he performed with a master's touch. As a poet he earned the title of "Great." He is acknowledged as the father of pure Chinese landscape painting., destined to become classic throughout the world. Wang's initiative in monochromes and his advanced skills in techniques were harbingers of different types of paintings. Greatest of all his innovations is the long horizontal Chinese scroll, reaching a length, in some instances, of over twenty feet.
Since embarking on economic reforms in 1978, the People’s Republic of China has also undergone a sweeping cultural reorganization, from proletarian culture under Mao to middle-class consumer culture today. Under these circumstances, how has a Chinese middle class come into being, and how has consumerism become the dominant ideology of an avowedly socialist country? The Art of Useless offers an innovative way to understand China’s unprecedented political-economic, social, and cultural transformations, showing how consumer culture helps anticipate, produce, and shape a new middle-class subjectivity. Examining changing representations of the production and consumption of fashion in documentaries and films, Calvin Hui traces how culture contributes to China’s changing social relations through the cultivation of new identities and sensibilities. He explores the commodity chain of fashion on a transnational scale, from production to consumption to disposal, as well as media portrayals of the intersections of clothing with class, gender, and ethnicity. Hui illuminates key cinematic narratives, such as a factory worker’s desire for a high-quality suit in the 1960s, an intellectual’s longing for fashionable clothes in the 1980s, and a white-collar woman’s craving for brand-name commodities in the 2000s. He considers how documentary films depict the undersides of consumption—exploited laborers who fantasize about the products they manufacture as well as the accumulation of waste and its disposal—revealing how global capitalism renders migrant factory workers, scavengers, and garbage invisible. A highly interdisciplinary work that combines theoretical nuance with masterful close analyses, The Art of Useless is an innovative rethinking of the emergence of China’s middle-class consumer culture.
This Chinese art history book is a study of a single poet-artist--Wang Wei--perhaps the most influential of antiquity. This eighth-century genius, whose versatility is comparable to that of the great Italian Leonardo da Vinci, lived during the Tang Dynasty when the most brilliant cultural period in Chinese history was at its height. Whatever he attempted--as artist, poet, musician, doctor and official--he performed with a master's touch. As a poet he earned the title of "Great." He is acknowledged as the father of pure Chinese landscape painting., destined to become classic throughout the world. Wang's initiative in monochromes and his advanced skills in techniques were harbingers of different types of paintings. Greatest of all his innovations is the long horizontal Chinese scroll, reaching a length, in some instances, of over twenty feet.
Dances with Dependency offers effective strategies to eliminate welfare dependency and help eradicate poverty among indigenous populations. Beginning with an impassioned and insightful portrait of today’s native communities, it connects the prevailing impoverishment and despair directly to a “dependency mindset” forged by welfare economics. To reframe this debilitating mindset, it advocates policy reform in conjunction with a return to native peoples’ ten-thousand-year tradition of self-reliance based on personal responsibility and cultural awareness. Author Calvin Helin, un-tethered to agendas of political correctness or partisan politics, describes the mounting crisis as an impending demographic tsunami threatening both the United States and Canada. In the United States, where government entitlement programs for diverse ethnic minorities coexist with an already huge national debt, he shows how prosperity is obviously at stake. This looming demographic tidal wave viewed constructively, however, can become an opportunity for reform—among not only indigenous peoples of North America but any impoverished population struggling with dependency in inner cities, developing nations, and post-totalitarian countries.
Apoptosis is the regulated form of cell death. It is a complex process defined by a set of characteristic morphological and biochemical features that involves the active participation of affected cells in a self-destruction cascade. This title looks at research into this programmed cell death.
This book provides an analysis of the ways in which the BAC has established an ethical framework for biomedical research in Singapore, following the launch of the Biomedical Sciences Initiative by the Singapore Government. The editors and authors have an intimate knowledge of the working of the BAC, and the focus of the book includes the ways in which international forces have influenced the form and substance of bioethics in Singapore. Together, the authors offer a comparative account of the institutionalisation of biomedical research ethics in Singapore, considered in the wider context of international regulatory efforts. The book reviews the work of the BAC by placing it within the broader cultural, social and political discourses that have emerged in relation to the life sciences since the turn of the 21st century. This book is not primarily intended to be a retrospect or an appraisal of the contribution of the BAC, though this is one aspect of it. Rather, the main intention is to make a substantive contribution to the rapidly emerging field of bioethics. Ethical discussions in the book include consideration of stem cell research and cloning, genetics and research with human participants, and focus on likely future developments as well as the past.Many of the contributors of the book have been personally involved in this work, and hence they write with an authoritative first-hand knowledge that scholars in bioethics and public policy may appreciate. As indicated above, the book also explains the way in which ethics and science ? international and local ? have interacted in a policy setting. Scholars and policy makers may find the Singaporean experience to be a valuable resource, as the approach has been to make the ethical governance of research in Singapore consistent with international best practice while observing the requirements of a properly localised application of universally accepted principles. In addition, at least three chapters (the first three chapters in particular) are accessible to the lay reader interested in the development of bioethics and biomedical sciences, both inside and outside Singapore, from 2000 (the year in which the BAC was established). Both scholars and interested lay readers are therefore likely to find this publication a valuable reference.
This volume focuses on the linkages between ethnicity and population processes in the context of nation-building. Using historical and contemporary illustrations in a variety of countries, parts of this complex puzzle are scrutinized through the prisms of sociology, history, political science, anthropology, and demography Themes of ethnic group formation and transformation, persistence and assimilation, demographic transitions and convergences, and the processes of political mobilization and economic development are described and compared. Case studies from Southeast Asia, China, Africa, Brazil, Israel, the former Soviet Union, Canada, Europe, and the United States are presented by leading scholars. The examples illustrate the diversity of contexts that connect population, ethnicity, and nation-building, raising new questions and comparative problems. The importance of ethnic conflict for issues of inequality and group disadvantage in the emerging societies of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East; in the politics of race and immigration in western societies; and in European and American history emerges from the research. The multidisciplinary emphasis addresses core themes of ethnicity and nation-building in comparative perspectives.
One linchpin of China’s expansion has been township and village enterprises (TVEs), a vast group of firms with diverse modes of ownership and structure. Based on the author’s fieldwork in Zhejiang, this book explores the emergence and success of rural enterprises. This study also examines how ordinary rural residents have made sense of and participated in the industrialization engulfing them in recent decades. How much does TVE success depend on the ruthless exploitation of workers? How did peasants-turned-workers develop such impressive skills so quickly? To what extent do employees’ values affect the cohesion and operations of companies? And how long can peasant workers sustain these efforts in the face of increasing market competition? The author argues that the resilience of these factories has as much to do with how authority is defined and how people interact as it does with the ability to generate profits. How social capital was deployed and replenished at critical moments was central to the eventual rise and consolidation of these enterprises as effective, robust institutions. Without mutual respect, company leaders would have found it impossible to improve their firms’ productivity, workplace stability, and long-term viability.
My journey in learning Zi Wei Dou Shu started as an accident. Zi Wei Dou Shu has been under my radar for longest time but I did not manage to learn it for various reasons until my friend and celebrity chef, Daniel Tay suggested that I go over to Malaysia to learn from Master Jessmond Ong and Master Ng. It was an eye opening experience for me. From there I bought an English book by Master Ng titled Flying Star Zi Wei Dou Shu. In that book, there is a foreword written by Si Hua Grandmaster, Kang Hui Huat. After some searching, I realised that Grandmaster Kang is from Singapore, and I managed to contact him. After meeting Grandmaster Kang, I decided to take private classes with him and subsequently completed his version of Si Hua Zi Wei Dou Shu.Zi Wei Dou Shu is a very complex system for destiny analysis but it has a high level of accuracy. It gives you multiple dimensions of analysis. I hope this book will give you some insights into Zi Wei Dou Shu. However, to actually learn and understand how to analyse Zi Wei Dou Shu, I would suggest that you attend a proper course. Lastly, the Zi Wei Dou Shu stars in this book are arranged by Palaces for easy reference.
The Institutes of the Christian Religion, in Latin “Institutio Christianae religionis”, is Calvin's most known work on Protestant theology. It was first published in 1536. The book was written as an introductory textbook on the Protestant faith for those with some previous knowledge of theology and covered a broad range of theological topics from the doctrines of church and sacraments to justification by faith alone and Christian liberty. The whole text consists of four books, this volume including the third and fourth.
A Very Personal Relationship takes the approach of a “moving finger” that returns not to rewrite, but to reread and interpret biblical writings in the context of modern knowledge and science. It also considers science to be the tool given mankind by which things unknown will be made known, and things hidden will be revealed. Our Sun is 26000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and the relative sizes of the planets of our solar system puts earth into perspective and magnifies the power of the Originator, God! This controversial work discusses God as a “duality,” responsible for all things on Earth, in accordance with “permissive will” and “persuasive will” justified by the writings in Genesis. There are other works that discuss God as a “duality” and/or “non-duality,” but this book justifies the claim of God as a duality from writings in the Biblical record (King James Official Version) in the books of Genesis and in Isaiah 45:5-9. “My own conclusion is that it had to be God who planted the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden,” said the author.
“Brilliant . . . The dean of American comic writers showcases his varied talents mocking the public and private lives of politicians, average citizens and himself.”—The Star-Ledger Calvin Trillin has committed blatant acts of funniness all over the place—in The New Yorker, in one-man off-Broadway shows, in his “deadline poetry” for The Nation, in comic novels, and in what USA Today called “simply the funniest regular column in journalism.” Now Trillin selects the best of his funny stuff and organizes it into topics like high finance (“My long-term investment strategy has been criticized as being entirely too dependent on Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes”) and the literary life (“The average shelf life of a book is somewhere between milk and yogurt”). He addresses the horrors of witnessing a voodoo economics ceremony and the mystery of how his mother managed for thirty years to feed her family nothing but leftovers (“We have a team of anthropologists in there now looking for the original meal”). He even skewers deserving political figures in poetry. In this, the definitive collection of his humor, Calvin Trillin is prescient, insightful, and invariably hilarious. “A literary treasure . . . There is only one Calvin Trillin, and if he didn’t exist we would have to invent him.”—The Washington Times “Funny is to Trillin what drinking is to Uncle Jed in Annie Get Your Gun—it’s what he does ‘natur’lly.’ He’s also a lot more than funny. Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin is the twenty-eighth book he’s published over not far short of a half-century, and their range of subjects is remarkable.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post “Trillin made his reputation over four decades as the author of ‘U.S. Journal’ in the New Yorker [but he] is incapable of resisting the temptation of comedy. The jokes kept on welling up and Mr. Trillin made a parallel reputation as a writer of funny stuff.”—The Economist “Wry, whip-smart, understated, and entertaining.”—The Miami Herald
Voici donné, en avant-première de l'édition critique complète des quatre-vingt-sept sermons de Calvin retrouvés à Londres en 1995, un sermon de juillet 1558 sur le début du chapitre 55 d'Esaïe. Le thème de la famine spirituelle rappelle aux hommes la primauté des biens spirituels sur les nourritures terrestres et les invite à écouter une fois encore le message salutaire du Prophète. C'est pour célébrer le 450e anniversaire de l'octroi d'une charte du roi Edouard VI en faveur de la fondation d'une Eglise des réfugiés étrangers, que l'Eglise protestante française de Londres a souhaité publier ce sermon. Le texte de Calvin rassemble des thèmes centraux de la Réforme et pose un certain nombre de questions qui n'ont guère vieilli. Une traduction anglaise, des notes et un glossaire permettront à un grand nombre de lecteurs de goûter la langue désuète mais vigoureuse du Réformateur. .
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