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This paper explores how a novel university governance model at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), largely learned from the West, has been implemented in the highly institutionalised and centralised Chinese higher education system. For this purpose, we first constructed an analytical framework, integrating the conceptualisation of an innovation process in higher education and the concept of embedded agency. This framework was then applied to analyse eight interviews, seven policy documents and six news media reports in our empirical investigation of the case university. Our major research findings are: the governance model adopted by SUSTech was a disruptive innovation and it was mostly challenged by the incompatibility between the norms around the governance model and the institutional context of Chinese higher education; this challenge was mitigated through three agency strategies, labelled by the metaphors of new wine in a new bottle, new wine in an old bottle and old wine in a new bottle. Successfully implementing these strategies calls on the visions, skills of playing power games and social capital of those initiating the innovation. Finally, we discuss the theoretical contribution and practical implications of the study in the conclusion., Author(s): Jinyuan Ma [sup.1] , Yuzhuo Cai [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.263817.9, 0000 0004 1773 1790, Center for Higher Education Research, Southern University of Science and Technology, , 518055, Shenzhen, [...]

This article argues for epistemic decolonization by developing a relational model of knowledge, which we locate within indigenous knowledges. We live in a time of ongoing global, epistemic coloniality, embedded in and shaped by colonial ideas and practices. Epistemological decolonization requires taking nondominant knowledges and their epistemes seriously to open up the possibility of interrogating and dismantling the hegemony of the Western knowledge tradition. We here ask two related questions: What are the decolonial affordances of indigenous knowledges? And how do these compare to other contemporary critiques of epistemic coloniality, specifically those mounted by posthumanism? In answer, we develop three definitional senses of relational with reference to indigenous knowledges. First, we define indigenous knowledges in relation to Western knowledge, with which they share a dialectical origin at the moment of colonial contact. Second, indigenous knowledges are relational in their ontological and axiological orientations. Third, relationality in indigenous knowledge suggests a trialectic space, rather than a dialectic space. We argue for the necessity of an anticolonial framework, which assigns priority to indigenous people's perceptions and ways of knowing for theorizing recurring colonial relations and their (imperialistic) manifestations in producing and reproducing knowledge., Introduction We argue here for epistemic decolonization by developing a relational model of knowledge, which we locate within indigenous knowledges. Our underlying assumption rests on Ramon Grosfoguel's claim about colonization, [...]

Prior research indicates that East Asians are more sensitive to contextual information than Westerners. This article explored aesthetics to examine whether cultural variations were observable in art and photography. Study I analyzed traditional artistic styles using archival data in representative museums. Study 2 investigated how contemporary East Asians and Westerners draw landscape pictures and take portrait photographs. Study 3 further investigated aesthetic preferences for portrait photographs. The results suggest that (a) traditional East Asian art has predominantly context-inclusive styles, whereas Western art has predominantly object-focused styles, and (b) contemporary members of East Asian and Western cultures maintain these culturally shaped aesthetic orientations. The findings can be explained by the relation among attention, cultural resources, and aesthetic preference. Keywords: culture; attention; East Asians; Westerners; aesthetics; visual images

This article argues for constructive responses to the dominance, in the analysis of African economic history, of concepts derived from Western experience. It reviews the existing responses of this kind, highlighting the fact that some of the most influential ideas applied to African economies, past and present, have been coined in the context not of Europe or North America but rather of other relatively poor regions formerly under European colonial rule. These 'Third World' contributions have been enriching for African studies, though they have been duly criticized in African contexts, in accordance with the usual scholarly pattern. It is argued here that the main requirement for overcoming conceptual Eurocentrism in African history, in the interests of a more genuinely 'general' social science and 'global' history, is reciprocal comparison of Africa and other continents--or, more precisely, of specific areas within Africa with counterparts elsewhere. Pioneering examples of such comparisons are reviewed and, to illustrate the possibilities, a set of propositions is put forward from African history that may be useful for specialists on other parts of the world. The article concludes with suggestions for ways in which Africanists can best pursue the project of reciprocal comparison, and with a plea for us to be more intellectually ambitious.

With its complex links to the division of labor and culture, age is also related to social integration. It can form a basis for social integration and form contrasts, chasms, and conflicts in society. After providing a brief history of how social scientists have viewed age as an integrative and a segregative force in society, the authors consider dimensions of age segregation in contemporary Western societies, which are marked by widespread institutional, spatial, and cultural age segregation, with only the family surviving as an age-integrated institution. For older adults, ties to children and grandchildren represent possibilities for learning and the development of generativity: investment in the lives of others and in the future of human communities. The link between cross-generational ties and generativity appears to be particularly clear for men. Can we rely on families to counter the potentially negative consequences of societal age segregation, or should we be concerned about family change, such as rising rates of childlessness? Keywords: integration: age segregation: generativity; gender: social networks; learning

Women in the West have come a long way since the subjugation and disenfranchisement the Suffragettes encountered a century ago. They have equal rights to men in the modern age […]

A to Quayson's Calibrations adds a crucial volume to the expanding library of Africa-inflected theoretical apprehensions of the present. Achille Mbembe's provocative ruminations on the macabre state of the African […]

Description about a small book and a grand title, Richard's Twelve Greeks and Romans who changed the world devoting a short chapter to Homer, Thales, Themistocles, Pericles, Plato, Alexander, Scipo Africanus, Julius Caesar, Cicero, Augustus, Paul, and Augustine is presented. It is stated that lack of familiarity of recherche vocabulary will be compensated by the close acquaintance.

The impact of ancient Sparta, a Greek city on the western civilization is outlined. The Sparta perpetual is studied by historians and also by comparative cultural anthropologists and sociologists.

From early antiquity through the end of the nineteenth century, the primary missions of Chinese imperial and private libraries were to collect and preserve books and documents. Except for a [...]

In this article the author relates the crisis of African universities to their idiosyncratic birth during the colonial period. The African universities were, to a large extent, conceptualized according to the Western template and its inherent epistemology This Western university originates from a local knowledge system that gained a hegemonic position culminating in the colonial period. The author argues for another conceptualization of African universities, based on a diversity of knowledge systems, and refers to processes of (re-)appropriation as seen in the domain of African Independent Churches.

This article discusses the social and political aspects of Japan's attempted colonization of Taiwan. Topics include savagery, modern identity, exaggeration, cultural difference, and political status.

This article examines shopping tourism in Eastern Europe which arose from the socialist shortage economy. The author argues Eastern Europeans developed a virtual shopping culture in which they sought information in an effort to keep up with Western trends, maintaining the Budapest International Fairs offered the most popular form of virtual shopping in which the goods were shown but not accessible.

The author discusses the yearning for home present in the literary work of Colored South African writer Peter Abrahams. Topics include Abrahams' s concept of Western culture and his vision of a transnational pan-African counter history of Black people.

The influence of Western culture on Israeli family life threatens the stability of newly-married Israeli couples. Five factors or 'intersections' such as the conflicts between Western and Eastern civilizations and immigrants and host population and the influence of the Western media affect young Israelis. Social education can solve social problems occurring due to Western culture's influence on Israel's society.

The growth of satellite television in China and other parts of Asia has exposed the people to Western culture and this has led to widespread concern among the public. However, governments find it difficult to control the variety of information that is easily available to the masses. Exposure to an increasing number of foreign satellite television services makes it essential to educate the public on differentiating between good and bad and accepting the best of both cultures.

The tradition of pottery making in Pueblo Indian communities has undergone a change with the interference of the Western world and the impact of Western values. Several organizations formed during the 1920s to reform Pueblo pottery craft created three ideological changes in the art of pottery making. They introduced individualism by increasing the focus on one's own product which subsequently led to competition. Competition led to pursuit of perfection and all these three changes affected the economy of pottery making.

An attempt made to examine how directors bring out the tested Bollywood formula in order to generate a broader appeal not only within India but increasingly across the world is presented by focusing on the Bollywood hit film 'Lagaan'. The film raises concerns about the nature of a globalized world as it has been regarded as a euphemism for Western cultural domination.

A broader, milder, even cordial, discontent with capitalism saturates Western Culture and has created the climate in which public policy is framed. Capitalism has delivered hitherto-unimaginable Dadvances in living standards across the developed world where broader social progress is made too, at historically unprecedented rates.

A critical discussion of scholar Peter Brown's book The Rise of Western Christendom in a revised and expanded edition is presented.