Heritage speakers of Chinese languages in Asia: Sociocultural factors that affect their proficiency in Mandarin Chinese discusses several of the reasons that some Asian ethnic Chinese are more proficient at Mandarin Chinese than others. This research was conducted in Taiwan between 2009 and 2011. Research subjects were of Chinese ethnicity, citizens of Asian nations and regions other than the People’s Republic of China or the Republic of China ( Taiwan ), and present in Taiwan as students of Mandarin Chinese and/or various academic subjects. The research question consisted of an overarching question and three sub-questions; the overarching question was: What is the experience of heritage speakers of Chinese languages in Asian countries where Mandarin is not the dominant language?, and the three sub-questions were: 1.) What sociocultural factors result in heritage speakers’ Mandarin learning/development being enhanced?; 2.) What sociocultural factors result in heritage speakers’ Mandarin learning/development being suppressed/not enhanced?; and 3.) Why are ethnic Chinese from non-Chinese nations studying Mandarin in Taiwan ? The researcher also unearthed what is possibly a new paradigm for a “heritage speaker of Mandarin Chinese” in an Asian context. Heritage Mandarin speakers in an Asian context may be a hybrid construct: speakers of a Chinese language with solid skills in the home language, a high degree of contact with Mandarin Chinese in the environment, and the capacity to rapidly acquire Mandarin and enhance one’s skills readily via the advantage of scaffolding at a higher starting point due to already being versed in one or more Chinese language. Some of the salient sociocultural factors which were shown to enhance the Mandarin skills of this population were: similarity of home’s or region’s Chinese language to Mandarin, exposure to Mandarin in the environment, policies favorable to or accepting of this language group and culture, and Mandarin as a medium of classroom instruction. Reasons for studying in Taiwan included its low costs and authentic Chinese environment. It is hoped that this study will inform efforts in the teaching of Mandarin to heritage speakers. It is further hoped that stakeholders who deal with heritage speaker issues consider not only the sociocultural factors explored in this research, but also the importance of considering the effects of language contact between heritage languages and similar languages and dialects. / text

In this dissertation, I examine the particular diaspora construction of the overseas Chinese in South Korea focusing on their educational practice, and looking at how it relates to and reflects their identities and subjectivities. The Chinese in Korea, or Korean huaqiaos, have no parallel in that they still retain Chinese (Taiwanese) nationality despite their over one hundred years of settlement in Korea, and in that most opt for full-time Chinese ethnic schooling with exclusively Taiwanese-administered curriculum and support. Different from the previous discussions arguing the nation-making role of the state-sponsored mass education through transmitting national culture and language, in a Chinese high school in Seoul, Korea, I observed that ethnic schooling worked to connect the scattering Chinese in Korea as a community by letting them share similar social, legal, and cultural conditions. Drawing on school documents, student writings, and interviews and discussions with ethnic Chinese students, teachers, parents, and related organization leaders, I elucidate the role of their ethnic education which is transforming as a strategy to deal with one of the most brutal social qualification-college entrance- in Korean society, and as a symbol through which they can remain Chinese diasporans. Students’ indifference to their schoolwork seems to defeat expectations of Chinese heritage transmission, or the making of allies for the ROC. This situation results from changes derived from the Taiwanese political changes against them, and also from the conviction passed down over generations about the futility of hard work due to their minority situation in Korea. Even being aware of their ethnic schools’ failure to properly educate their children in Chinese language and culture, almost all Korean huaqiaos keep sending their children there, unable to resist the immediate admissions advantage foreign high school graduates gain in entering Korean universities, and not wishing to be excluded from their own ethnic community by not attending the same ethnic schools. The way Korean huaqiaos deal with their ethnic education is a typical example revealing their collective characteristics they themselves talked about – “opportunistic”, “gossip-bound”, or “not stepping forward to act” - and I analyzed these self-defined particular Chineseness has been formed while they have gone through continuous unsteady socio-political processes. Through chapters that provide analyses of the historical Korea-China relationship, the context in which Chinese came to settle in Korea, and the ever-changing three-way relationship among Korea, Taiwan and mainland China, I discuss how Korean huaqiaos have formed and transformed their nationality, emotional and cultural belonging, and their unstable legal and social statuses as non-local nationals. This study on the atypical results of Chinese border-crossing and of ethnic education is based on three years of ethnographic field research in the Seoul Chinese High School and in other various social and cultural arenas of the Chinese community in Korea. And it offers a contextualized study of Chinese diaspora which contributes to debunking a generalized and reified imaginary of Chinese, and an ethnographic account of diaspora educational practice which also calls for a new concept of citizenship in this ever-globalizing era. / Anthropology

This dissertation is a critical ethnography of teachers working abroad in an American/International school (ASC/pseudonym) located in the People’s Republic of China. The study focuses on the teacher abroad identity process of EC-12 teachers who moved from their country of origin to work in the PRC from 2008 to 2011. The three-year study serves as a snapshot of the formation of the teacher abroad identity. The theoretical framework include theories of identity in figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998), symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1991), and language as mediator that served to answer three questions: 1) How does a teacher’s biography relate to the experience of working in an American/International school in China? 2) How does a first-time teacher at ASC recreate and negotiate her/his personal and professional self understandings? 3) What role does language play in the making of the teacher abroad identity at ASC? The study follows an interpretivist approach to explain, understand, and unveil the figured world of teaching abroad from the perspective of the participants’ and data analysis by the researcher. Data includes participant observation, interviews, observations, and field notes collected while closely following four teachers who portrayed the making of the teacher abroad identity. The researcher became a teacher abroad at the same school to fully immerse herself in participant observation. The inclusion of document analysis, interviews, and field notes, serve as validation and triangulation of the process. A reflexive approach to data analysis was followed at all times for trustworthiness of the study. Findings suggest that teaching abroad is a complex figurative world. Teacher abroad identity is created at the intersection of the social, personal, emotional, professional, and linguistic spaces. A major finding reveals that individuals who are hired overseas and teach abroad for the first time have to learn new ways to cope with unexpected landscapes brought by living in new country, and by teaching students from a plurality of nationalities, languages, and races. Teachers experience mostly a transformation at the personal level, but the transcendence at the professional level in the classroom is limited. / text

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By employing the theory of Imagology, this work examines four literature workswritten in overseas study movements in modern Chinese history: Wang Tao's shortstories in Songyin Manlu, Lao She's The Two Mas, Bai Xianyong's A Death in Chicagoand Zhou Li's Manhattan's Chinese Lady. While tracing how Chinese intellectuals workthrough the dichotomy of China/West and Tradition /Modernity, this study alsoendeavors to reveal theoretical issues arising from inter-cultural communication andrepresentation. It argues that the literary projection of the west manifests a complex senseof the Chinese self primarily due to the portrayals of western cities and westerners as anembodiment of Chinese understandings of western modernity at different periods. In theLate Qing, the depiction of London in Songyin Manlu only focuses on gunboats, cannons,museums, and factories, because western modernity for the Chinese at the time wassignified by the mighty weaponry of British navy and advanced technology. In the 1920s,however, the portrayal of London in The Two Mas shifts to reveal how Londoners'lifestyle and culture make Britain the most powerful nation in the world, as the Chineseintellectuals advocated the westernization of Chinese culture in order to strengthen China.In the 1960s, the Chinese protagonist Wu Hanhun in A Death of Chicago feels estrangedand sexually seduced in Chicago, subsequently loses his sense of purpose in life andeventually commits suicide, the depiction of which is consistent with similar themes inwestern modernist literature. This is due to the fact that the modernist movement thrivedin Taiwan in the 1960s, and as such, had a large impact on Taiwanese writers. The 1990seraManhattan's Chinese Lady displays spectacles of America's wealth on the FifthAvenue in Manhattan, as common Chinese strive for becoming rich in contemporaryChina owing to the Chinese government's promotion of market reform after 40 years ofpoverty in socialist China. The study concludes that regardless of whether or not theimages of the west presented in Chinese discourse are idealizations, demonizations, orother related cultural determinations, they all manifest a type of anxiety in regard to theChinese Self.

My dissertation explores how the movement of missionaries across Asia responded to the currents of nationalism, decolonization, and the Cold War producing ideas about sovereignty, race, and religious rights. More specifically, it looks at how U.S. evangelicals in the China Inland Mission, an international and interdenominational mission society, collaborated with Christians in the Atlantic and Pacific worlds. While doing so it also details the oft-neglected study of the post-China careers of former China missionaries by extensive use of oral histories. Forced to abandon its only field by the Chinese Communist Party, the mission redeployed as the Overseas Missionary Fellowship sending agents to new nations such as Japan, Indonesia, and Thailand and amongst the overseas Chinese populations scattered across Southeast Asia. The last chapter looks at the OMF’s return to the People’s Republic of China as tourists and expatriates as the means by which “rapprochement” took on religious meanings. Ultimately, I argue missionary mobility produced ideas about religious freedom as a human right across the international community rooted in ambivalent, racialized attitudes toward Asians.

This thesis analyzes the penetration process of Turkish construction firms into the Russian market, in the frame of developing relations between Turkey and Russian Federation. Starting from the demise of Soviet Union, Turkish construction firms have played an important role on the convergence of these two countries both in economical and political relations. The dominance of the politics on the bilateral relations between Turkey and Soviet Union has started to weaken since from the liberalization attempts in both of the countries starting from the first half of 1980s. By the demise of Soviet Union, including Turkish construction activities in the Russian Federation, commercial relations have become the dominant factor that determines direction of the bilateral relations between these two countries. Within this context, this thesis seeks to explore the nature of overseas construction works in a particular geographical area, namely in the Russian Federation. In this study, I applied the semi-structured in-depth interview technique. The target group was selected from the administrative personnel and the field workers of Turkish overseas construction companies that have worked in the Russian construction market. In this frame, I carried out interviews with 10 top level managers of the Turkish overseas construction firms and 10 construction workers who have been worked in the Russian Federation.

本研究的目的在於探討駐外僑務人員角色衝突的性質、實際情形以及不同背景之駐外僑務人員角色衝突程度上的差異，最後根據研究結果提出建議，以作為相關單位及未來研究之參考。 本研究發現駐外僑務人員扮演多重角色，因不同的角色期待造成角色衝突。而駐外僑務人員每天花在工作的時間太多，亦是導致角色間衝突的主因之一，另外駐外僑務人員服務不同立場、理念的僑團，也是產生衝突的來源。 依據本研究的結果，提出下列建議： 一、對僑務委員會方面 （一）釐清僑務組織之任務定位，賦予僑務人員專業形象及使命感。 （二）明確政策方向，加強駐外僑務人員的角色認知與期望。 （三）合理調整各館處僑務人員額編制，以減輕工作負荷。 （四）宜多關注已婚而子女尚年幼之駐外僑務人員，以舒緩其角色衝突 二、對駐外僑務人員方面 （一）駐外僑務人員宜確認核心任務，集中推動。 （二）駐外僑務人員應主動尋求互動機會，增進溝通協調能力，以拓展人際關係。 （三）駐外僑務人員宜藉教育途徑，自我充實學識與知能，以提升駐外人員素質。 （四）有家庭之駐外人員應重視家庭功能，並尋求各種人際資源協助，形成支援網絡。 / The purpose of this study is to explore the nature and the actual situation of the overseas officials’ role conflicts. Besides, the differences in the degree of role conflict of different backgrounds overseas officials are investigated. According to the research results, conclusions and suggestions are given to relevant authorities and future researches as a reference. It was found that overseas officials need to play multiple roles, the role conflicts result from the different expectations for their roles. Spending too much time working is the main cause of the role conflicts for overseas officials. Besides, helping overseas compatriots with different positions and viewpoints is one of the sources of the role conflicts. According to the results of this study, the following recommendations: First, for Overseas Chinese Affairs Council a)Clarify the tasks of Overseas Organization, and give professional image and sense of mission to overseas officials. b)Offer definite policy to enhance the awareness and expectations of the role of overseas officials. c)Reasonably adjust the amount of staff to reduce the work load of overseas officials. d)Pay more attention to married overseas officials with young children to alleviate the role conflicts. Second, for the overseas officials a)Overseas officials should confirm the core tasks and promote them. b)Overseas officials should actively seek the opportunities for interaction; enhance communication and coordination skills to develop interpersonal relationships. c)Overseas officials should receive more educational training to enrich their own knowledge and skills in order to improve the quality of the overseas officials. d)Married overseas officials should be more concerned about their family, and seek a variety of human resources to construct the networks of support.

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

From their nascent beginnings during World War II to their good governance and capacity building focus under the Post-Washington Consensus of the early 21st century, international development activities have encompassed a particular world view. This world view, founded on Western historical materialism and a normative perspective, rationalizes “the project” as the predominate form of development assistance and the “expert” or “volunteer” as its agent. Yet this approach to development, although at times successful, has often proved to be unsustainable in the absence of international financing and expertise. Still, there is an alternative approach available when one recognizes that what the vast majority of people want is security for themselves, their families, and their lifestyles.1 From this approach, the focus of development is shifted away from what people do not have (be it material comforts, infrastructure, or good governance) and sets it on the critical roles culture, individual growth, and informal association have in community development. In this approach, human agency at the interpersonal level becomes critical in the diffusion of social, political, economic, and technological innovation and, accordingly, the decisive factor in poverty reduction. That is to say, development that can address poverty must come from within the social classes that experience it. To explore how the international development community can act on this alternative approach, this thesis provides a review of the theory, practice, and consequences of international development to the present day and, from that lead, builds a theoretical argument for the individual creative sojourner as a primary messenger of development. In addition, it presents an exploratory case study of creative sojourners in Timor-Leste and, from their ideas and insights, proposes policy considerations for an overseas apprenticeship program that would support the efforts of trades people, agriculturalists, and small entrepreneurs in improving their lives and, in the process, renewing their societies.