This article is a case study of the People’s Archive of Rural India, a multimedia digital archive founded by journalist P. Sainath, which debuted online in December 2014. PARI features photographs, videos, interviews, audio files and articles that seek to illuminate the lives of the over 833 million people who live in rural India. Focusing on the narrative form of the ‘story’ and the universalizing temporality of the ‘everyday’, the article asks, ‘What is the relationship between PARI’s rural India and the “New” India to which it ostensibly belongs? How do PARI’s textual and visual mediations work together to produce the rural as a region?’. The article explores the relevance of postcolonial theory for the study of cultural production in the time of ‘New’ India, while arguing that PARI offers a Janus-faced depiction of the rural as urban India’s historically entrenched Other, on the one hand, and as a critical outside to the neo-liberal imagination, on the other.

The recent Umbrella Revolution has drawn the world's attention to Hong Kong's neo-colonial situation, where it is sandwiched in a number of interregna, such as between the postcolonial and the neo-colonial, or between ex-coloniser Britain and current coloniser China. This unique postcoloaniality of Hong Kong - that it has money but no independence - is seldom addressed in postcolonial (literary) studies. The situation is further complicated when one considers the state English writing, given the invisibility and neglect it receives worldwide and among the Hong Kong population, who only recognises the pragmatic value of English. Nevertheless, the Umbrella Revolution has also provided a crucial opportunity to reconsider how Hong Kong culture can contemplate the past and articulate the future of the city, a project undertaken in this dissertation. Believing that it is high time Hong Kong English writing emerged as a distinct literary voice, this dissertation asks how English writing should be positioned amidst, and help to move forward, Hong Kong's various interregna. It evaluates the opportunities and the challenges facing the formation of an English writing community in Hong Kong, drawing inspirations from Pascale Cassanova's vision of a world literary space that is fraught with struggles and competition, and Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of cultural, symbolic and other forms of capital. The recommendations made in this dissertation to develop English writing further share the common idea that Hong Kong English writing should "turn and look inwards" as much as it should present itself as international and cosmopolitan. The main recommendations are: the need to develop committed and dedicated publication avenues for emerging English-language writers and students from Hong Kong, and the need to develop new analytical paradigms that represent the rich layers of social reality and lived experiences across fault lines and geographical segregation in Hong Kong.

This thesis compares the political culture of university students in South Korea before and after the democratic transition in 1987. It identifies the changes in the following: the attitudes to politics, government and media; the political socialization process; the experience of political participation; and the reasons for political participation and non-participation. Qualitative analysis was used to analyse the data collected from interviews and surveys conducted on respondents who were university students in the 1980s and current university students. It was found that compared to university students in the 1980s, current university students held less intensely negative attitudes towards the government. However, although current university students were interested in politics, they were still distrustful of politicians, did not have a political party they supported and had low levels of perceived political efficacy and political participation. Based on these findings, this thesis examined three different types of theories to explain the changes in the political culture of university students. First, demand-side theories that focus on underlying socioeconomic changes to explain changes in the political culture were used to analyse the changes in the reasons for political participation and the changes in the political socialization process. Second, intermediary-side theories that emphasise the role of media were used to examine the changes in the attitudes towards the media and the experience of latent political participation. Finally, supply-side theories that focus on the supply of politics and governance were used to explain the changes in the other elements of political culture. Close examination into the workings of democracy in South Korea since the democratic transition in 1987 revealed that there were indications of cartelisation of the political party system, which explains the low levels of political trust and perceived political efficacy reported by current university students.

The thesis aims to develop an understanding of the nature and evolution of brick temple architecture in the subcontinent, focusing in particular on terraced Hindu structures of the fourth to sixth centuries CE. It also seeks to advance understanding of the iconography and artistry of the terracotta relief panels that once graced the outer walls or platforms of Gupta period brick temples. To date, scholarship on Hindu temple architecture of the Gupta period has primarily focused on cave and structural stone temples, while brick temple architecture of the epoch, along with terracotta reliefs and sculptures, have largely been confined to the margins of historical studies. This approach has led to the formation of a somewhat distorted picture of the architectural landscape of the Gupta period. To address this shortcoming, all of the known terraced structures in the subcontinent have been mapped in order to establish an understanding of the development and dissemination of this mode of architecture. The architectural form and relief sculpture of the vast terraced brick Śaiva monument known as ACI or Bhimgaja, situated at the heart of the ancient fortress city of Ahichhatrā in Uttar Pradesh, forms the main case study for the thesis - with architecture being the subject of the first half of the thesis. ACI is compared with a terraced brick Vaiṣṇava structure at Pawāyā in Madhya Pradesh, formerly the Nāga centre of Padmāvatī, and with the only standing brick temple of the Gupta period, at Bhītargāon in Uttar Pradesh. Despite the scale and complexity of the former two monuments, neither has received adequate scholarship. A series of fifth- and early sixth-century CE ornamental terracotta pilaster and frieze fragments from Ahichhatrā, held in the reserve collections of the British Museum, are examined within the context of Gupta period temple architecture; the objective being to determine where each of the fragments would have been positioned on a temple. On the basis of these artefacts and related pieces from the site, it is possible to build up a picture of the type of décor that would have adorned the exterior of ACI. The many intriguing sculptures and relief fragments from Pawāyā and Ahichhatrā are the subject of the second half of the thesis. Some of the reliefs - especially those hailing from ACI - are of great importance since they represent some of the earliest visual depictions of myths contained in the Mahābhārata and other religious texts. These reliefs and sculptures are explored within the broader context of Gupta iconography, with particular attention paid to the numerous and fascinating terracotta reliefs of the era, most of which are divorced from their original settings. Moreover, based on style and scale, some of panels evidently share the same origin and these are collated here. In addition, new interpretations are proposed for several of the plaques.

This thesis explores the possibilities of introducing modernist literature to Chinese university students by means of participatory drama. The target students are not principally those studying in literature departments but those from other disciplines. The potential space for this teaching is in the courses of general education that many universities have introduced in China in recent years. The research is premised on evidence that intelligent readers in China nonetheless find it very difficult to engage with modernist texts. The thesis begins with a literature review that explores why this is the case and proposes that the problem lies in the restricted nature of their literary education, dominated as it is by Marxist criticism and reflectionist theory. It argues for other, broader theories of literary understanding to be applied, specifically drawing from reception theory and the approach to literary study known as poetics. It also argues for the potential of participatory drama as an innovative pedagogy that could help students connect with the texts, which are far removed from the realistic texts that their high school education introduces them to. The fieldwork itself was undertaken between 2012 and 2015 with five groups of Chinese university students, three of these in Beijing and two from students following Masters courses in the University of Warwick, UK. The fieldwork was conducted in two parts. Part 1 consisted of a questionnaire and interviews to students from the teaching groups to gather information relevant to this project, chiefly concerning their reading habits and literary tastes; and Part 2 consisted of two case studies, each of which principally consisted of a three-hour long workshop on a specific modernist short story: these were How Wang-Fo was Saved by Marguerite Yourcenar and Theme of the Traitor and the Hero by Jorge Luis Borges. Each workshop was taught to all five groups. Theoretical explanations and practical descriptions are provided as to how the stories were adapted into dramatic form, along with detailed analyses of the texts themselves. This is followed, in each case, by a detailed analysis and discussion of data gathered from observation and recordings of the workshops and from subsequent interviews with students. My concluding chapter reflects upon the strengths and limitations of the research and examines the possibilities of how its positive findings could be acted upon in the future.

The use of information and communications technology (ICT) in schools has become widespread in many countries throughout the world. The extent to which it has been incorporated into the work of schools varies widely from simply as a tool to help produce documents to one that is fully integrated into the whole school curriculum. Initiatives taken to encourage teaches to use ICT in their teaching and learning methodologies inevitably raise awareness of pedagogical issues and how these should be reappraised in the light of the demands of encompassing the new technology. China started the process of introducing ICT into its schools later than many other countries. This study examines the use of ICT in middle schools in cities in north east China to discover the attitudes of teachers and students to how effective the use of ICT is from their viewpoints. In addition the study ascertains the possibilities for further development of the use of ICT to enrich the students’ education. Where possible the interpretation of the analyses of the findings are generalised further from the two cities in which the survey took place.

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South-East Asian region is the most dynamic region in the world. It is also known for having enormous number of RTAs, which became the main drive force for trade integration. Moreover, China is the leader in this region, changing fast and becoming either a pioneer or a threat for the neighbor countries. This paper uses a gravity model to estimate the influence of RTAs on the countries in the region and attempts to find out whether new agreements will deeper the trade cooperation or make the 'spaghetti bowl' effect even worse.