<p> The Chinese presence in Africa is an increasingly notable phenomenon in the past two decades. Based on the ethnographic data from a fieldwork conducted in Zambia, this dissertation documented the migratory experience of new Chinese migrants to Zambia, which is a non-traditional destination country for this group. The new Chinese migrants include the SME (small and medium sized enterprises) migrants who are self-employed businessmen and the SOE (state-owned enterprises) migrants who are affiliated with large-scale state-owned Chinese companies. This study explores Chinese migrants&rsquo; migratory motivation, settlement, life satisfaction, and inter-ethnic social encounter with the local Zambians. </p><p> Moreover, this dissertation discusses health and health management strategies among ethnic Chinese migrants in Zambia. By examining the influence of migration processes on Chinese migrants&rsquo; health and health management in Zambia, this study further investigates how health inequality amongst Chinese migrants is shaped by structural factors as well as individual agency. My research reveals that despite the existence of various healthcare options, Chinese migrants&rsquo; healthcare seeking is restricted by multiple factors including their employment patterns, the availability of their social capital, and even the legality of their immigration status. </p><p> This research seeks to expand the existing empirical knowledge of contemporary Chinese migrants in sub-Saharan Africa, a relatively understudied and undertheorized topic in the broader migration literature. It also endeavors to broaden our knowledge of the intersection between migration and health, a subject that is beginning to draw attention within medical anthropology. </p>

<p> As internal migration started to increase in the late 1970s in China, ethnic minorities have also participated in this demographic event to improve their livelihood. However, minority migration has been much neglected in the current literature. To fill the gap in the literature, the dissertation aims to: (1) examine migration selectivity and destination selection process of ethnic minorities in China; (2) investigate whether migration can lead to upward socioeconomic mobility for ethnic minorities; (3) assess the extent of socioeconomic integration of minority migrants at destination places; (4) reveal and explain differences in patterns of migration and destination adaption across ethnic groups; and (5) uncover temporal patterns of minority migration, migration outcomes, minority integration at destinations. To achieve these goals, this dissertation makes use of the micro-data of the 1990 China population census, the 1995 mini-census, the 2000 census and the 2005 mini-census. </p><p> Regarding minority migration process, model results suggest that education selectivity of minority migrants is mostly positive, but it is only consistently observed for the Zhuang. While migrant networks and co-ethnic networks does not matter much for the out-migration decision for minorities, they do weigh more on minority migrants&rsquo; decision as to where to go. Minority migrants tend to go to places with larger migrant networks. In general, they also go to places with more co-ethnics, but the effect of co-ethnic networks reveals important group-specific differences. </p><p> Minorities can mostly benefit from engaging in migration. However, what is interesting is the finding that the Uyghurs stand out as the only minority group that shows a trend of deteriorating migration outcomes. Moreover, evidence also reveals that for the Uyghurs and the Zhuang, long-distance migration is not more beneficial than short-distance migration. <?Pub _newline></p><p> Finally, very different patterns of incorporation at destination communities emerge from the analyses. The relative position of the Uyghur migrants to the Han is declining over time and in the most recent time period, they are doing significantly worse than their Han counterparts. The Hui and the Koreans are doing more successfully. Surprisingly, the Zhuang migrants are disadvantaged to the Han and this disadvantage is consistent across time.</p>

<p> This dissertation focuses on the religious commitments of the Peng clan of Suzhou. From the early to mid-Qing dynasty (1644-1911) the Pengs were arguably the most successful corporate lineage in the entire empire in terms of civil examination performance. They were also pioneers of a charitable style of status justification in which the Pengs explained their worldly success as divine reward for their good works. By the early eighteenth century, many of the Pengs&rsquo; peers and social inferiors promulgated their claims as well. In the thriving genre of morality books <i>(shanshu)</i> particularly successful Peng patriarchs served as iconic shorthand for the terrestrial reward of civil examination success for philanthropic acts. Examination hopefuls and morality book consumers throughout the empire sought to obtain a portion of the prosperity of the Pengs by emulating their charitable commitments. </p><p> Drawing on source materials ranging from autobiographies and genealogies to the transcripts of spirit-writing sessions, I focus my study on the pivotal figure of Peng Dingqiu (1645-1719). Dingqiu&rsquo;s 1676 <i>optimus</i> distinction and self-presentational strategy were critical in the consolidation of the concrete and symbolic power of the Peng lineage. Exploring the role of spirit-writing altars in intra-elite relations, I argue that Dingqiu&rsquo;s claim of a prophecy of his civil examination success had wide ranging consequences for his descendants and his own posthumous persona. In documenting the collective devotional commitments of the Peng lineage in realms such as a tower complex devoted to the deity Wenchang and local Daoist institutions, I provide a nuanced portrait of elite religiosity and its impact on the late imperial cityscape. Simultaneously, I use attention to the familial lineage in order to explain the centrality of religious modes of discourse in elite self-organization.</p><p> A descriptive catalog of works by Peng lineage members from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries illustrates the scope of members&rsquo; cultural impact and provides a basis for understanding how successive generations represented their ancestors through editorial and publishing endeavors.</p>

Few countries have presented a policy problem for the United States with the consistency and longevity that North Korea has. The opacity of the regime that runs the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has served as a barrier to deciphering the policy perspective that Kim Jong-un, and his father before him, have pursued. This thesis analyzes the policy decisions of the US towards North Korea in an attempt to decipher which policies were pursued and what there effects have been. Modern US policy in regards to North Korea started with the signing of the Agreed Framework in 1994. US policy was largely consistent under the Clinton administration, which is the reason this paper will begin with the George W. Bush administration and will continue all the way up until the current Obama administration (2001-2013). Using the fundamental policy theories of “hawk engagement” and “strategic patience” this paper assesses the policy responses by examining a number of key events, personnel, and contextual issues. There have been a number policy responses toward North Korea but there has yet to be a permanent solution to the central concerns.

<p> This thesis uses articles from Chinese and Indian defense publications to analyze how the Chinese People&rsquo;s Liberation Army-Navy and the Indian Navy view each other&rsquo;s modernization. This thesis argues that the Chinese and Indian Navies view each other&rsquo;s development through defensive realism and will take steps in accordance to their view of development. This thesis predicts that the Indians will focus on developing a navy that can defeat the PLA-N in Indian dominated waters, while the PLA-N will develop anti-submarine assets and refueling assets to counter the Indian nuclear triad, which according my analysis of the Chinese defense press, is the part of the Indian Navy that the Chinese Navy views as the biggest menace of the Indian Navy to Chinese survival.</p>

<p>This study explores the relationship between the People?s Republic of China (PRC) and the international legal system, with empirical focus on the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) regime as codified in the 1982 Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The main pattern explained is China?s practice of international law in its maritime disputes, moving beyond a question of ?compliance? with the relevant rules to instead address how China shapes the underlying legal norms, and vice versa. The analysis demonstrates that the EEZ regime transforms Chinese interests in maritime space, enabling systematic use of legal means of excluding others from disputed space along China?s maritime periphery. Backed up by growing capacity (i.e., ?rising power?) to enforce its claims, China?s purposive interpretation and flexible application of the norms of the EEZ regime manifest as ?creeping? claims to jurisdiction and rights beyond those contemplated in UNCLOS III. These nominally jurisdictional claims enable the PRC?s push toward closure, a broader strategic aim to control vital maritime space that includes political, military and economic components. Using a framework adapted from the transnational legal process theory of international law, the study proceeds to analyze Chinese practice in terms of four linked processes: interaction, interpretation, internalization, and implementation. Tracing these processes from China?s early encounters with Western international law, through its participation in the conference to draft the law of the sea convention, and the subsequent efforts to incorporate EEZ rules into PRC law and policy, the empirical analysis reveals that China?s engagement in transnational legal processes does not result in its obedience to liberal rules and norms. Rather, China?s practice in the EEZ transforms the scope and content of those underlying norms, contributing to wider dysfunction in the law of the sea.

<p> Adventure is a relic of imperialism and the European romanticization of place. It has evolved from quests for domination of place and people (colonialism), to spiritual or consumeristic escape from the modern world, to an attempt to return or reconnect to nature. This paradigm implies that if humans must reconnect to nature, there is an inherent disconnect or a separation. This reconnection is rooted in romantic notions and Cartesian duality of man and nature. However, approaches towards adventure and tourism apart from such dominant Western mountain traditions focus on the critical and contextually based aspects of adventure experiences. These approaches, informed by indigenous meanings of place, traditional ecological knowledge, and ecofeminism, decenter human experience. Likewise, a feminist new materialist approach towards understanding place and materiality also allows for an awareness of entanglements and intra-active relationships of human and more-than-human to emerge, as did this research. </p><p> This dissertation examined place in the context of adventure trekking tourism in the upper Solukhumbu District, Nepal through a walking ethnography of the trails in and around Mount Everest base camp. This research was based on the following questions: 1. How can the future of development of Nepali Himalayan adventure tourism industry move forward ethically and with reciprocity towards the interconnectivity of mountains and people; 2. How can the adventure tourism industry consider the complexities of influence on a place&mdash;from both a direct impact and that of greater anthropogenic impacts? This research was grounded in the background and orientations of Everest tourism, which developed within discourse and materiality of Khumbu, shifting with local identities and meanings of place. Tourism in this context mangles in the edges of local and global cultures looming within immanent threats of the Anthropocene. Discourse composed and idealized from outside the mountain boundaries contributes to motivations for traveling to the Khumbu and perceptions of this place, in turn shaping the expectations of the tourist. In these contact zones mountains are sacred, a business venture, a personal challenge, place of revelation and spirituality, imperial conquest, neocolonial stomping ground, to scientific object of study. Within these complexities, this dissertation examined the concept of place and how meaning and agency develop in relation to adventure tourism experiences in Khumbu and the Anthropocene. A reciprocity develops in which human amongst more-than-human becomes embedded and inseparable. Shifting an anthropocentric gaze that privileges and sets matter apart as isolated and constrained by boundaries determined by humans, demonstrated the vibrant agential reality of more-than-human intimacies such as forgotten landscapes, rocks, dirt, glaciers, and altitude. Nature is not a passive object upon which humans descend, but rather an entangled subjectivity. This awareness allows for a rethinking of human enactments of Anthropocene and complicit behaviors of this epoch, reframing approaches to adventure. The conclusions of this research found that mountains&mdash;more-than-human&mdash;have agency and meaning and are not passive or in the background of human experience. This applies to a practical application of the research through a praxis tool for new materialist research and the adventure industry, in turn decentering the human/anthropocentrism and identified practices of tourism that are both sustainable and more inclusive of the entanglements of people and place.</p>

<p> This is a study of the rise of science fiction as a subculture in the 1960s through an analysis of the first and longest-running commercial science fiction magazine in Japan: <i>SF Magazine.</i> Much of the research on science fiction in Japan focuses on the boom in the 1980s or on the very first science fictional texts created in the early years of the twentieth century, glossing over this pivotal decade. From 1959-1969, <i>SF Magazine </i>&rsquo;s covers created a visual legacy of the relationship of the human body to space that reveals larger concerns about technology, science, and humanity. This legacy centers around the mediation of human existence through technology (called the posthuman), which also transforms our understanding of gender and space in contemporary works. I examine the constellation of Japanese conceptions of the body in science fiction, its manifestations and limits, exploring how the representation of this Japanese, posthuman, and often cyborgian body is figured as an absence in the space of science fiction landscapes. <i>SF Magazine</i> was used by consumers to construct meanings of self, social identity, and social relations. Science fiction illustration complemented and supported the centrality of <i>SF Magazine,</i> making these illustrations integral to the production the of science fiction subculture and to the place of the body within Japanese science fiction. Their representation of space, and then in the later part of the 1960s the return of the body to these covers, mirrors the theoretical and emotional concerns of not just science fiction writers and readers in the 1960s, but the larger social and historical concerns present in the country at large.</p><p> The horrifying and painful mutability of bodies that came to light after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki manifests, in the latter years of the 1960s in science fiction, as the fantastically powerful mutating bodies of super heroes and cyborgs within the science fictional world. The bombed spaces of the postwar (largely ignored in mainstream 1960s media) were reimagined in productive ways on the covers of <i>SF Magazine,</i> mirroring the fiction and nonfictional contents. It is through this publication that a recognizable community emerges, a particular type of identity becomes associated with the science fiction fan that coalesced when the magazine began to offer different points of articulation, both through the covers and through the magazine&rsquo;s contents. That notion of the science fiction fan as a particular subjectivity, as a particular way to navigate the world, created a space to articulate trauma and to investigate ways out of that trauma not available in mainstream works.</p><p> My work seeks to build on literary scholarship that considers the role commercial and pulp genres fiction play in negotiating and constructing community. I contribute to recent scholarship in art history that investigates the close relationship of Surrealism to mass culture movements in postwar Japan, although these art historians largely center their work on advertising in the pre-war context. Furthermore, my project reconsiders the importance of the visual to a definition of science fiction: it is only when the visual and textual are blended that a recognizable version of science fiction emerges &ndash; in the same way the magazine featuring the work of fans blurred the boundary between professional and fan. Hence, although the context of my study is 1960s Japan, my research is inseparable from larger investigations of the visual and the textual, the global understanding of science fiction, the relationship between high art and commercial culture, and contemporary media studies. This work is therefore of interest not only to literary science fiction scholars, but also to researchers in critical theory, visual studies, fan studies, and contemporary Japanese culture.</p>

<p> This dissertation presents an analysis of the reconstruction of urban folk arts as cultural heritage in China. Focusing on material culture and folk performances revived in two Beijing folklore markets, the dissertation discusses the neoliberal marketization that coincides with urban commercial zoning in China since the 1980s. The dissertation examines the intertwined cultural and economic dimensions of collective nostalgia, urban marketization and heritage developmentalism. Based on ethnographic and archival research in Beijing from 2010 to 2015, the dissertation addresses China&rsquo;s collaboration with UNESCO in world cultural heritage program. It looks closely at the process of cultural heritage marketization, which is geared toward a developmental agenda. Such a heritage construction appears in conjuncture with the rise of the new Chinese cultural industry and cultural entrepreneurship, reconfiguring the sociopolitical role of folk arts and folk artists in China. </p><p> Through the ethnographic lens, the dissertation focuses on depicting the everyday life in contemporary Beijing surrounding folklore marketplaces. In particular, it describes material engagements established by connoisseurs and collectors in two major folklore markets, the Shilihe and the Panjiayuan market, demonstrating a new Chinese folklore connoisseurship that ascends and reconfigured in contemporary Beijing. This dissertation argues that the desire, and the collective effort, to overcome the post-Mao social and cultural transformation have materialized in the revival of folk traditions as marketized cultural heritage. It contends that the ascending cultural market propels the hope of national rejuvenation while bringing about a new form of possessive individualism alongside the process of privatization.</p>

<p>The work of Japanese contemporary artist Aida Makoto (1965-) has been shown internationally in major art institutions, yet there is little English-language art historical scholarship on him. While a contemporary of internationally-acclaimed Japanese artists Murakami Takashi and Nara Yoshitomo, Aida has neither gained their level of international recognition or respect. To date, Aida?s work has been consistently labeled as otaku or subcultural art, and this label fosters exotic and juvenile notions about the artist?s heavy engagement with Japanese animation, film and manga (Japanese comic book) culture. In addition to this critical devaluation, Aida?s explicit and deliberately shocking compositions seemingly serve to further disqualify him from scholarly consideration. This thesis will argue that Aida Makoto is instead a serious and socially responsible artist. Aida graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts from Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music in 1991 and came of age as an artist in the late 1980s during the start of Japan?s economic recession. Since then Aida has tirelessly created artwork embodying an ever-changing contemporary Japanese identity. Much of his twenty-three-year oeuvre explores the culturally significant social sign of the shojo or pre-pubescent Japanese schoolgirl. This thesis will discuss these compositions as Aida?s deliberate and exacting social critiques of Japan?s first and second ?lost decades,? which began in 1991 and continue into the present.