Search

This paper contends that the inclusion of meso- and micro-level perspectives has been under exploration in the study of the internationalization of humanities and social sciences, in particular, in a state-mandated system where policy interventions in higher education and knowledge production have typically been aligned with state construction and national development. It argues that institutional and individual responses to state policies on the internationalization of humanities and social sciences should be investigated due to their respective roles in policymaking and implementation. It has, therefore, retrieved recent and historical policy documents during the post-WTO period and collected empirical data from two Chinese universities. A constructivist-interpretivist qualitative approach and a qualitative case study strategy were adopted for this investigation. Based on an in-depth analysis of the empirical data, this paper reveals the gap between the macro-level ambition of achieving outward-oriented diffusion of innovations and the local-level realities, as well as institutional dilemmas and conflicts in facilitating the internationalization.

Although the potential of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) for intercultural learning and teaching is acknowledged, few studies have explored the teaching of culture in EMI programmes in higher education contexts. Thus, this study examined the perceptions and practices that six EMI teachers from a variety of disciplines have of culture and cultural instruction at a Chinese university. Data were obtained from 24 classroom observations and six post-observation interviews. Drawing on Larzen-Ostermark's tripartite culture-teaching orientations and Rasouli and Moradkhani's culture-teaching taxonomy, the findings revealed that teachers with a humanities and social sciences background had a fluid and dynamic view regarding the understanding of culture, while teachers with a science, technology, engineering and mathematics background did not recognise the need to incorporate cultural instruction into their EMI classes. In analysing classroom data, five categories of cultural instruction were identified: contrast, authentic material, groupwork, codeswitching and guided discussion of culture. The five categories are mainly in line with the affective and action orientations in Larzen-Ostermark's three-orientation framework. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of the study's findings for EMI policymakers and EMI teacher training programmes.

This article aims to reveal the factors that affecting the impact of international collaboration papers in the field of social sciences and humanities. Based on resource-based theory and transaction cost theory, we analyzed the articles from a sample of 13,331 listed research papers come from the 42 world class universities in China using descriptive statistics, ordinary least square (OLS) regression, and came to the following conclusions: First, it is the quality rather than the quantity of international collaborator that affect the academic influence of the research outputs. Second, researchers from different backgrounds are conducive to improve the impact of research papers and the collaboration leading by Chinese university perform better. Yet, too much collaborators coming from different institutions would have an adverse impact, which may due to the increase cost of cooperation. Finally, collaborating researchers from developed countries or top universities will significantly improve the research performance because of the abundant resources behind them. Findings from this research suggest that setting up international collaboration should pay more attention to the level of the collaborator and consider the cost behind the whole process.

Incentives for improving research productivity at universities prevail in global academia. However, the rationale, methodology, and impact of such incentives and consequent evaluation regimes are in need of scrutinization. This paper explores the influences of financial and career-related publishing incentive schemes on research cultures. It draws on an analysis of 75 interviews with academics, senior university administrators, and journal editors from China, a country that has seen widespread reliance on international publication counts in research evaluation and reward systems. The study focuses on humanities and social sciences (HSS) as disciplinary sites, which embody distinct characteristics and have experienced the introduction of incentive schemes in China since the early 2000s. Findings reveal tensions between internationalization and indigenization, quality and quantity, integrity and instrumentalism, equity and inequity in Chinese academia. In particular, we argue that a blanket incentive scheme could reinforce a managerial culture in higher education, encourage performative objectification of academics, and jeopardize their agency. We thereby challenge 'one-size-fits-all' policymaking, and suggest instead that institutions should have the opportunity to adopt an ethical and 'human-oriented' approach when developing their research incentives and evaluation mechanisms.

This paper presents the results of a formative evaluation of a young faculty development scholarship program conducted in teachers colleges in impoverished areas of China. In the paper we describe the implementation of the program, the utilization of scholarship by recipients, recipients' satisfaction, and outcome data. Based on these data we discuss the successes and barriers of the program thus far. Several data collection methods were used in the evaluation: a longitudinal random survey of recipients, group interviews with their students, directors and colleagues, in-person interviews with individual recipient, interviews with representatives of provider agencies, and the data base in provider agency. The findings reported in this paper are primarily from the recipients' survey. Key findings from the group interviews and representatives' interviews are also included. As a whole, the findings suggest success in terms of recipients' knowledge and use of advanced training, and high levels of satisfaction with individual development and the organization level. Continuing challenges to the faculty training and development program include long-standing barrier to recipients' involvement (e.g. low levels of networking) and sustainability at the college-level to retain the services and social activism of program recipients. (Contains 1 footnote and 5 charts.)

The current expansion of English language publishing by scholars from China is supported by national and university policies, including monetary and career incentives to publish in English. These incentives, which extend to work in the humanities and social sciences (HSS, the focus of this paper) as well as the sciences and technologies, are situated in evolving strategies of internationalization. China has moved from an internationalization strategy simply based on learning from the West, to a 'going out' strategy designed to both lift domestic research capacity and advance China's influence in the world. However, the 'going out' strategy nonetheless embodies ambiguities and dilemmas. The world of academic knowledge is not a level playing field but more closely approximates the centre-periphery dynamic described in world systems theory. This study explores the influence of publication incentives in the context of a centre-periphery world. It draws on analysis of 172 institutional incentive documents and interviews with 75 HSS academics, university senior administrators, and journal editors. The study identifies practices within China's HSS that reproduce centre-periphery relationships. By focusing on international publications, Chinese universities run the risk of downplaying Chinese-language publications and adopting standards and norms from global centres to assess domestic knowledge production. These could result in creating knowledge from and about China primarily in Western terms without adding a distinctive Chinese strand to the global conversation. Nonetheless, the study also identifies alternative dynamics that challenge the existing power hierarchies in global HSS, highlighting indigenous knowledge and the need to pluralize global knowledge production.

This article examines the evolution of national research policy in China over the past three decades and its recent shift in emphasis from "import" to "import-export" oriented internationalization. Based on a policy review and interviews with three groups of academics--six journal editors in the humanities and social sciences, two directors from top-tier Chinese university Departments of Scientific Research Administration, and six scholars from different disciplines--the article investigates the impact of national research policy and its recent shift towards 'going out' on scholarly publishing in China. The paper reveals Chinese academia's quandary with regard to internationalization and discusses the link with larger debates about uni- and bi-directionality in academic knowledge exchange.

Within a global trend of the anglicization of academic publishing, in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) publication in indigenous languages, nevertheless, in many contexts, continues to thrive. Given that the overall anglicization of academic publishing tends to be negotiated at the local level, this study seeks to discover how a potentially competing relationship between English and Chinese might be manifested in the context of China. Focused on the praxis of Chinese HSS academics writing for scholarly publication, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 academics across a range of HSS disciplines at an elite research-based university in China. The study sought to find out, firstly, how and to what extent English is used among these participants, and, secondly, what their attitudes are towards the official policy of encouraging more international publication (in English). The findings, based on this limited sample, suggest that Chinese will most likely retain its dominant position as the language of research and publication for Chinese HSS scholars, but that international publication in English will nevertheless increase. The paper concludes by suggesting that, to facilitate visibility of peripheral scholarship on the part of scholars such as the participants in this study, efforts can be made from both the periphery and the center. (Contains 1 table.)

International collaboration is one of the effective ways to enhance the impact of scientific research papers. In this research, international research collaboration papers published by world-class universities in the field of humanities and social sciences from 2015 to 2019 were selected as the research object, and the effective enhancement of the impact of international research collaboration papers was found to not be dependent on expanding the scale of international research collaboration, but rather on selecting researchers with different international backgrounds and from high-level institutions for collaboration. It was also discovered that, in the field of humanities and social sciences, despite a relatively low proportion of international research collaboration papers being led by Chinese scholars, the Chinese research is characterized by a higher impact compared with the research led by non-Chinese scholars. In light of this, a series of proactive measures should be taken by China's world-class universities, such as actively participating in and initiating international collaboration, selecting high-level research collaborators, and attracting scholars from different countries to engage in research collaboration in the field of humanities and social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incentivizing academic publications in internationally-indexed journals is a current topic of national debate especially in non-anglophone countries. To boost the dissemination of Chinese research results, the central government and higher education institutions had introduced various schemes to encourage international publications. However, a significant policy change took place when the Chinese government recently announced a break with SSCI supremacy conventions in research evaluation systems. Based on semi-structured interviews with five university managers and 30 academics in humanities and social sciences in five universities in China, this study examines the responses of both institution managers and individual scholars to the latest national guidelines. A qualitative analysis shows mixed attitudes among both HSS managers and individual academics towards the policy change: supportive but with doubts about the policy practicality as well as concerns about ensuing pressures to be generated by new evaluation systems. The findings suggest the policy change will not significantly affect HSS academics' pursuit of international publishing in a short term. It will, however, lead to some adjustments in the existing institutional evaluation regulations. The findings can contribute to the understanding of HE policy influence on academics as well as its potential implications for the global trend of anglicized academic publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research and the dissemination of scholarship are increasingly global enterprises, engaging scholars throughout the world. In what will be a story familiar to many academics in the West, as well as their inherent desire to disseminate and receive recognition for their research, Chinese scholars face pressures from their institutions to publish in highly cited journals. Journals indexed by the Web of Science are by and large published in English. As a result, young Chinese scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities face significant hurdles, beginning with, but not limited to the need to disseminate their research in a language other than their own. This interview-based study, undertaken at a research-intensive university in China, investigates the experiences of these scholars, looking at both their challenges and the strategies they use to overcome these difficulties. This investigation of the experiences of young scholars in China contributes to our knowledge of the internationalization of scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the impacts of research excellence evaluation entailed in global ranking exercises, a control strategy characteristic of new managerialism, on Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) academics. The enquiry combines the Critical Incidents Technique (CIT) and internet-based discourse analysis, drawing on mass media texts and social media discussions. Our analysis identified three major dilemmas that may be created for Chinese HSS academics by their country's aspirations for world-class universities embedded in its complicated socio-political context. First, a highly centralised system restrains academics' autonomy to decide what to research and where to publish. Second, they are conflicted by the need to simultaneously attend to nationalistic interests and publish internationally. Third, ideological correctness is highly important. These findings invite us to reflect on the profound impact of university ranking exercises as a mode of university governance on HSS academics in many contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health policies have played significant roles in attaining good achievements in population health improvement. This paper chronologically reviews and analyzes health-related parliamentary actions and law enactments in Canada. It indicates that the salient feature of the Canadian health system is that it is publicly financed with a single-payer, but privately run. The Canadian health system is based upon five founding principles: care must be universal (covering everyone), portable (among all provinces) , comprehensive (covering all medically necessary services), accessible (without barriers to access like user fees), and publicly administered (by the government). This paper pays special attention to what and how China can learn from Canada and what should be avoided against failures of Canadian healdi system, and how it might provide a new. health policy base for China's current health reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we shall explore academic writing in the framework of academic literacy development among Hong Kong university ESL learners of language and education programs. We shall also discuss discipline-specific academic writing in terms of the continuum comprising academic writing in science, social science and humanities and the implications for developing academic writing skills of Hong Kong ESL learners. In particular, we shall discuss in detail a number of issues regarding academic writing in the disciplines of language and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Phil Benson's study on the relations between ethnocentrism and the China-related entries in the OED2, this paper attempts to further examine how the image of China, a so-called "peripheral object of Western knowledge," has been (mis-) constructed in 'the dictionary, particularly its latest 2009 CD-ROM version, into which many laudable updates, including corrections and supplements, have been meticulously incorporated. It argues that (1) although British imperialism was a closed chapter, its vestiges can still be spotted in the dictionary text, not only in the quotations, which preserve historical information rather than reflect the editors' opinions, but also in the definitions and notes, which betray primarily the thoughts of these editors, (2) to an average user, the OED, with its legendary philological authority, is very likely to project "historical objectivity" into some problematic contents and thus misleads an innocent and uninformed mind, and (3) if ethnocentrism is an unavoidable component in the OED1 and OED2, then the editorial team of the OEDS in the making would do well to introduce into their work an element of "entholocalism," by which is meant the ideological neutrality as well as the. technical accuracy of encyclopedic information about such important peripheral objects as China, the most populous country and a fast growing economy, in the world in which the English language against the backdrop of globalization has firmly established itself as the international lingua franca without rival. So long as it is intended to remain a historical dictionary true to its name, the OED ought to push forward, in the form of hew editions, with the times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with an appreciation and critique of the remarkable work of Peter Sloterdijk which makes it possible to open up a number of issues concerning philosophy and its relation to the social sciences and humanities, most particularly concerning the role of evidence and the pervasiveness of Eurocentrism. In particular, the paper argues that it is possible to think of different ways of raising the spectre of space which are as plausible as the account provided by Sloterdijk's spatial philosophy/philosophy of space. Navigating by the compass of classical Chinese civilisation, I proceed to sketch out a different diagnosis from that of Sloterdijk of how space is being materialised in contemporary Euro-American cultures. Drawing on logographic traditions of writing the world, I argue that, rather than describing what is now being produced by capitalism and other actors as a warehoused world full of lost souls, it is possible to think of different means of describing how the future is being scripted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the socioeconomic development of China in the next 10 years which will depend on the capabilities of futurist school of scholars. It notes that the function and importance of academic assistanship will be realized by the goal of advancing in a total social science and humanities campaign. It states that the discovery of academic opportunities for collaboration will be enhanced by research capacities and the development of the ability to organize. It mentions that an administrative system based on behavioral pattern of command-obedience will improve the role of academic assistants for research team progress.

We identified and analysed the 147 journals offering open access (OA) among the 2960 scholarly journals indexed by the Chinese National Knowledge Information (CNKI) database in the humanities and social sciences. Data were analysed concerning each journal’s organizer, discipline, publishing cycle, areas, regions or provinces covered, and first date that content was offered free of charge, together with the journal’s website construction, the way full text was accessed, and the time delay in publication. On the basis of the survey results, we identify key challenges and problems associated with OA journals in the humanities and social sciences in China, and we outline development strategies to address these issues, including actively promoting the transition of scholarly journals from print form to OA, speeding up network construction of OA journals, and enhancing the functionality of the OA journals’ websites. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1980s, discussions on philosophy of information were heated in the Chinese academics circles, which brought a large number of papers and monographs associated with this issue into being. The publication of article "Outline of philosophy Information Theory" (1985) and the book "Introduction of Philosophy Information Theory" (1987) by Mr. Wu Kun marked the establishment for philosophy of information in China. Mr. Wu Kun stressed in particular that as the philosophy of information built a whole new existence area split mode, which essentially changed the concrete way to express basic philosophical issues, therefore, philosophy of Information was a type of meta--philosophy or a ultimate philosophy. Philosophy of Information achieved the first fundamental turn in human philosophy, and leaded fundamental changes for human philosophy in all directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2000s, China has been fast establishing English-language academic journals to further internationalize research. This article delineates a national scenario of such journals in the humanities and social sciences (HSS) and explores their efforts and predicaments in bringing China's HSS research to the world. Based on first-hand data collected empirically through interviews and documents, it shows that HSS English-language journals in China attempt to challenge yet are conditioned at the same time by the imbalanced international knowledge structure. While still at a preliminary stage of development in terms of quantity and quality, the journals have already been confronted with major challenges including English language hurdles, unfavorable position in research evaluation systems, unfamiliarity with standards of international academic writing and publishing, and tensions between international ambition and local commitment. This article argues that HSS journals in non-Western societies including China need to strike a balance between their contemporary bid for international visibility and long-term contribution to multiple perspectives in global HSS research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The East Asian development model ascribes an interventionist role to a state which uses regulations to govern the market in the early stages of development. Many scholars have ascribed this role to the Chinese state in the post-planning era. However, a major difference between China and other East Asian economies is the massive size of China's population. In Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, the role of the state governing labor markets and labor transfers from rural to urban areas has not been considered central to their development model. In China, the size of its rural population has led the Chinese state to take a more proactive approach to governing the labor market and the urbanization process by using the hukou system to institutionalize a temporary laboring class, to guide urbanization to low population density areas and to create competitive residency schemes in desirable urban areas. Such a developmental function differs considerably to the role of the state during the early development of East Asian economies and presents an additional barrier to the realization of a mature market economy and modern polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of inheritance and enthusiasm of young scholars to rebuild the philosophy of literature in China. It notes that the decline of a questioning mind can result from the contemporary crisis of losing pragmatic quality in the multiplication of theories in social sciences. It states that a proper theoretical paradigm for cultural poetics can be provided by neo-rationalism in humanities and the synthesis of classical theory. It mentions that a prediction in the post-theory era might be inappropriate for scholarly criticism.

This article contextualises the debate in Chinese legal scholarship on qingti and fall in their historical backgrounds by tracing die roots, themes, and variations in die dialogue. The earliest record of the debate between Legalism and Confucianism serves as the ground for us to examine the necessity of morality in the practice of law, while the introduction of Confucian ideals into law since die Han dynasty opened up die process of coalescing morality widi law in imperial China. Through the case study of xiao (filial piety), the article argues mat die Confucianisation of law took a long time to complete [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“斯诺命题”提出了“科学文化”和“文学文化”的矛盾和冲突, 以及“两种文 化”发展中的困境问题。“斯诺命题”在积极意义上涉及提出了人文科学、社会科学 和自然科学之间存在的对象的整体性与既定学科的局部性的矛盾问题, 提出了人文社 会科学“次文化”分裂和分离化倾向的问题。走跨学科之路是破解“斯诺命题”关键 所在, 其中特别要注重解决好学科研究和问题研究的结合、个体研究和团队研究的结 合、学者的个人禀赋发挥、研究的社会导向和环境导向、研究的评价体制和机制优化 等问题。 关键词: 斯诺命题 科学文化 文学文化 人文社会科学 跨学科研究 “Snow’s proposition” points out the contradictions and conflicts between “scientific culture” and “literary culture” and the dilemma of the development of the “two cultures.” In the positive sense, Snow’s proposition concerns the contradictions between the integrity of the research subject and the particularity of established disciplines, as well as the trend toward division and isolation in subdivisions of the humanities and social sciences. The key to solving Snow’s proposition is to take an inter-disciplinary path that pays particular attention to combining discipline-centered with issue-centered research and individual work with teamwork, giving full play to individual endowment, social orientation and environmental orientation and to the optimization of evaluation systems and mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the beginning of the Reform Era in 1979, there has been a rapid growth and development of religious belief and practice in China. A substantial new scholarly literature has been generated in the attempt to document and understand this. This essay identifies the most important contributions to that literature and discusses areas of agreement and controversy across the literature. Along with new data, new paradigms have developed to frame research on Chinese religions. The paradigm derived from C. K. Yang’s classic work in the 1960s came from structural functionalism, which served to unite research in the humanities and social sciences. However, structural functionalism has been abandoned by the new generation of scholars. In the humanities, the most popular paradigm derives from Michel Foucault, but there are also scholars who use neo-Durkheimian and neo-Weberian paradigms. In the social sciences, the dominant paradigms tend to focus on state-society relations. None of these paradigms fully captures the complexity of the transformations happening in China. We recommend greater dialogue between the humanities and social sciences in search of more adequate theoretical frameworks for understanding Chinese religions today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]