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Doctoral education is often lauded as a site of academic socialization and research training for nascent scholars. However, discussions of socialization seldom problematize the dangers of intellectual imperialism and methodological nationalism inherent in doctoral researcher socialization. As such, the traditional socialization practices for doctoral students in the United States (U.S.) must be interrogated and expanded to move towards equitable practices for research, especially for students conducting international research. Using social and spatial positioning as our conceptual framing, we problematize and question current approaches and practices to doctoral researcher training in the U.S. We use the academic hood, which is granted upon successful completion of doctoral studies, as a metaphor to reconsider how to reflect upon and navigate power dynamics and knowledge production within the U.S. academy.

Following the successful cloning of genes for mostly rare genetic diseases in the early 1990s, there was a nearly universal enthusiasm that similar approaches could be employed to hunt down genes predisposing people to complex diseases. Around 1996, several well-funded international gene-hunting teams, enticed by the low cost of collecting biological samples and China’s enormous population, and ushered in by some well-connected Chinese intermediaries, came to China to hunt down disease susceptibility genes. This alarmed and, in some cases, enraged many poorly funded Chinese scientists, who perceived them as formidable competitors. Some depicted foreign gene-hunters as greedy pilferers of the vast Chinese genetic gold mine, comparing it to the plundering of national treasures from China by invaders in the past, and called upon the government and their fellow countrymen to rise up and protect China’s genetic gold mine. Media uproar ensued, proclaiming the imminent “gene war of the century.” This article chronicles the key events surrounding this “war” and its aftermath, exposes some inherent complexities in identifying susceptibility genes for complex diseases, highlights some issues obscured or completely overlooked in the passionate and patriotic rhetoric, and debunks some misconceptions embedded in this conflict. In addition, it argues that during the entire course of this “war,” the public’s interest went conspicuously unmentioned. Finally, it articulates several lessons that can be learned from this conflict, and outlines challenges facing human genetics researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on social history about socio-political ideology in relation to musical communication and national identity in the twentieth-century China. It investigates the mass protest and popular songs used in maintaining the social stability and virtuous living and being a nationalist in their country. It highlights the function of music within the nationalist response to foreign aggression, the used of protest songs to continue to mobilize the people in terms of their ethnic attachments and national identity.

For ethnographers interested in subjectivity and the individual dimensions of collective identities, psychoanalysis can be a resource for theorizing difference and exploring informants' narratives. In this essay I discuss a Chinese Muslim woman's response to my question about a wall. I argue that her remarks reveal aspects of her feelings about her relationship with the government of the People's Republic of China. Nationalism is an emotional bond between citizen and the state that is shaped by the individual's psychic processes. By integrating psychoanalytic techniques and theories with more traditional ethnographic methods, I show how personal meanings profoundly shaped this woman's vision of state-society relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]