Folk arts are dynamic cultural assets conveying messages of people's life styles as well as recording their daily activities. With the passing of times, they murmur the stories of common people's lives with cultural connotation. Undeniably, folk arts are precious treasures for a nation. Therefore, we'll dig out the treasures and promote them. On the other hand, with the mission of exalting folk culture, fork art groups should function as conservatories to preserve the local culture. Actually, for the purpose of showing the value of its survival in the history, an outstanding folk art group would retrospect and inspect itself continuously, improving the quality at every stage as it grows up with times. The authorities and people are expected to give their hands to such excellent folk art groups and encourage them to run persistently. For ages, how to preserve, convey and exalt the folk arts through cultural policy making and executing are great challenge for the authorities. In recent years, in response to the sense of ¡§glocalization¡¨, the authorities manage to unite the features of local industries with the international or district festival celebration activities held in very place to evoke the community awareness, develop sightseeing industry, promote the economic prosperity, build up good reputation as well as increase the opportunities for international cultural exchange. Among the folk arts in Taiwan, the performance of ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art¡¨ is highly praised. Converging special features of physical education, military art, religion and art, ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art¡¨ catches all the audience's eyes and becomes the spotlight on the stage. In recent years, the launching of Sung-Chiang Martial Art Clubs among schools at all levels has brought forth the development of this folk art. Speaking of ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art¡¨, it originated from the Mainland China. Unfortunately, during the ¡§Cultural Revolution¡¨ period, the weapons used by ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art¡¨ had been banned and the groups were forced to dismiss. From then on, Taiwan has become the only place where the whole ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art¡¨ skills were preserved intact. In the past, ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art Groups¡¨ guarded against the invading enemies; however, as time goes by, it turns into an important religious activity in the country, acting as an escort of gods on religious festivals as well as a celebrating performance to amuse people. For this reason, the portion of performing art is always associated with the religion and hasn't been emphasized. Instead of training at regular time, the Sung-Chiang Martial Art performers just follow the tradition to practice intensively before a religious celebration. When the activity is over, the performers would go back to their regular lives and there¡¦s nothing changed. Generally speaking, this way of preserving folk art won't be encouraged, letting go of nurturing high-standard performers. It would even be harmful to the development of ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art¡¨. Fortunately, there are still some enthusiastic people doing their best to keep ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art¡¨ sustainable as the folk art declines with times. The members of ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art Group of Shun-Hsien Temple¡¨ are among them. The founder of this group noticed the problems of traditional Sung-Chiang Martial Art performance, which was just held with the need of celebrating activities. When the activities were over, the folk art groups were dismissed again. Therefore, the founder of ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art Group of Shun-Hsien Temple¡¨ built up a team with cultural mission and tried to improve the disadvantages of traditional ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art Groups¡¨. This team executes their training weekly. Furthermore, this folk art group welcomes visitors to watch their training all year around. In this research, the folk art group ¡§Sung-Chiang Martial Art Group of Shun-Hsien Temple¡¨ is served as the target for case studying, in which we explore into the internal managerial condition of this group and test the possibility of its persistent management. At last, the strategic managerial model is offered as a reference to improve its operational condition. As for the synthetic indicators for persistent managerial appraisals, they can also be applied to other nonprofit performing groups, served as an assistant tool to improve their internal managerial conditions.

This thesis is made of two main parts. First main part of the thesis is based on the qualitative enquiry of twenty-three Aikido participants from different levels - beginner, intermediate, advanced- from three different dojos. Open ended questions regarding the difference of Aikido from other sports is asked to the participants. Their written responses were coded using qualitative methods. Based on coding of documents: labels, categories and themes have been generated. Second main part of this thesis is based on the discussion of those findings. The discussion between different levels, the comparison with other findings in Aikido Literature was done. Lastly and largely the position of findings and possible arguments it can generate in the Philosophy of Sports Literature are discussed.

Beginning in March of 1920, the Galveston coastwise longshoremen’s strike against the Morgan-Southern Pacific and Mallory steamship lines was a pivotal moment in the history of organized labor in Texas. Local and statewide business interests proved their willingness to use the state apparatus by calling on Governor William P. Hobby and the Texas National Guard to open the Port of Galveston. Despite this, the striking dockworkers maintained the moral support of many local citizens from a variety of social classes, including small merchants and officials of the Galveston municipal government. By February of 1921, however, the segregated locals representing the striking longshoremen had fallen victim to the divisive racial tactics of the shipping companies, who implemented the open-shop policy of non-discrimination in hiring on their docks. Further demonstrating the capital-state alliance, the Texas legislature passed Governor Hobby’s notorious Open Port Law in October 1920, making it virtually illegal for dockworkers and others to engage in strikes deemed harmful to commerce. This legislation and the nearly yearlong strike not only destroyed the coastwise longshore unions in Galveston, but ushered in a decade of repression from which Texas’s organized labor movement did not recover for many years.

Diss., 2002. / Transcr. p. 213-390. Bibliogr. p. 207-212. Index.

Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Europe, Eurasia))--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2009. / Thesis Advisor(s): Abenheim, Donald ; Tsypkin, Mikhail. "December 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 28, 2010. Author(s) subject terms: Poland, martial law, solidarity, strikes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-69). Also available in print.

The participatory cyberspace, epitomized by the concept of Web 2.0, has become a key venue of Chinese stardom in the post-cinema era.Web 2.0 invites its users to contribute to the content through an architecture of participation. Fans can search, poach, edit, and post filmic and publicity materials about stars, formulating seamless, collaborative reworkings of the star image and generating a new star-fan dynamic. At the crossroads of participatory cyberspace and cinema, transnational Chinese movie stars call our attention to the critical concern of Chineseness. In recent years, a number of Chinese movie stars have attained prominent presence in the global cinematic arena. These acting talents, who are either identified as martial arts performers or known for their performances in martial arts films, won global acclaim as a result of the worldwide reception and esteem for Hong Kong action films and Fifth Generation directors’ films from mainland China. As these stars begin to engineer personae stretching beyond their ethnic identities for the global setting, their stardom engenders discourses of ethnicity and cosmopolitanism.What does it mean to call these stars “Chinese” in the global cyber setting? How do their fans interact to reshape their star personae on the Web? How can one approach and understand “Chineseness” within cyber fan discourse? All these questions point to a central problem of how to conceptualize Chineseness in participatory cyberspace. My agenda in this study is to investigate Chinese movie stardom as a web-based phenomenon by establishing a new theoretical framework for considering Chineseness in participatory cyberspace. I have created a set of four analytical matrixes, each examining a particular Chinese star through a specific fan-based practice on a specific participatory site: vidding Donnie Yen and critiquing Zhang Ziyi on YouTube; photo-sharing about Jackie Chan on Flickr; “friending” Jet Li on Facebook; and discussing Takeshi Kaneshiro on fan forums. Through close investigation of these five Chinese stars, I demonstrate that the cyber setting enables collaborative fan reworkings of star texts and multiple directionality of approaching Chineseness. Cyber fans produce intertextual, multi-faceted star personae, different from traditional film personae whose meanings are anchored in a rigid established representational framework. Through the relentless scrutiny, quotation, manipulation self-affiliation by fans enabled by cyber technology, Chineseness becomes an utterly illusive and indefinable entity, a new form of signification whose meaning is always changing. This unstable, hybrid Chineseness challenges the notion of a star’s given ethnicity, redefining the archetypal martial arts body in unpredictable, manifold and provocative terms for the cyber era. With the aim of advancing the critical theorization of Chineseness, this study unfolds and analyzes the dynamics of the vital relationship between Chinese stardom, web technologies, and fan discourse. It also serves as a timely response to the challenges posed by cyber culture for the disciplines of cinema and cultural studies, in light of the proliferating yet inadequate current efforts in this field. / published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Denna uppsats fokuserar på King Hus actionestetik och den montagekonstruerade rörelsen, enligt en konkret syftesformulering som lyder: Att öka förståelsen för King Hus estetiska val genom att belysa vissa rytmiska rörelsetendenser, såsom en konstruktion av filmens montage, och dess relation till två vitt skilda konstyttringar, med dessa avses Pekingoperan och cinéma pur. Ledande tes genom uppsatsen är att Hus visuella stil visserligen är starkt präglad av ett personligt intresse och en djup förståelse för estetiska normer i Pekingoperan, men att han samtidigt genom ett skickligt utnyttjande av cinematiska tekniker skapar en alldeles unik version av kinesisk estetik, som måste förstås som specifik för filmmediet. Sammantaget är förhoppningen att resultatet skall bidra till avmarginaliseringen av Hu som förvaltare till en förment essens av traditionell kinesisk kultur. Metoden består i en jämförande analys av rörligt bildmaterial i två steg, som illustrativ modell och teoretisk ingång till rörelsebegreppet tillämpas Heinrich von Kleists marionett och i dess förlängning även Sergei Eisensteins biomekaniska rakurs. Min analys leder mig till slutsatsen att den rytmiska rörelsen i Hus actionscener har starka likheter med såväl Pekingoperan som cinéma pur, och jag vill på grundval av detta föreslå att Hu snarare bör förstås som en nyskapare av kinesisk estetik, då han positionerar sig någonstans mellan traditionalism och modernism genom att skapa en estetisk jämvikt mellan teater och film där ingenderas legat går förlorad.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka om visualiseringsträning kan minska nivån av upplevd stress hos kampsportare. I studien deltog 27 atleter (16-41 år) som var medlemmar i en utvald kampsportsförening lokaliserad i sydvästra Sverige. Deltagarna randomiserades in i en experimentgrupp och en kontrollgrupp där experimentgruppen erbjöds att vid tre tillfällen delta i visualiseringsträning. Det instrument som tillämpades i denna studie var K10 testet av Kessler et al. (2002) som mäter stressupplevelsen hos individer sett ur ett generellt hälsoperspektiv. Resultatet från studien visade ingen statistiskt signifikant skillnad mellan grupperna (p = 0.053). Dock påvisades en moderat effektstorlek (Cohen´s d = 0.78) vilket gör att en praktisk signifikans mellan grupperna kan diskuteras (där experimentgruppen uppvisar en lägre nivå av upplevd stress i jämförelse med kontrollgruppen). Rekommendationer från studien är att atleter uppmuntras att involvera visualisering i sitt träningsupplägg för att på så sätt potentiellt minska de upplevda stressnivåerna och på så sätt minska risken för de negativa effekterna som höga stressnivåer visats kunna generera. / The purpose of this study was to investigate if imagery exercise can reduce the level of perceived stress among martial artist athletes. The study enrolled 27 athletes (age 16-41) who were members in a martial arts association located in southwestern Sweden. The participants were randomly divided into an experimental group and a control group in which the experimental group were offered to take part in three imagery-training classes. The instruments used were K10 test of Kessler et al. (2002), which measures self-perceived levels of stress seen from a general health perspective. The result showed no statistically significant difference between groups (p = 0.053). However, results showed a moderate effect size (Cohen's d = 0.78), which suggest that there is a practical significant between (where the experimental group showed a lower level of perceived stress in comparison with the control group). Recommendation with this study was to urge athletes to involve imagery in their training programs to thereby potentially reducing the self-perceived levels of stress and to counteract the subsequent/following negative effects that high stress levels can contribute to.

As the twentieth century ended with globalization and commercialization, popular culture begins to challenge the dominance of national culture. The Chinese intellectual community tries to defend national culture against the incoming global culture and local cultures. The conflicts between localism and nationalism, and also between globalism and nationalism, are clearly demonstrated in the Hero phenomenon, which basically concerns the unanimous disparagement on director Zhang Yimou's debut martial arts film Hero within the Chinese critics' circle. Through a discursive analysis of the phenomenon, we can see how the conflicts between modernism and postmodernism, between elitism and commercialism shape the landscape of contemporary Chinese culture. In this article, I first seek to understand how modernism evolved into nationalism in China during the last century and what role the intelligentsia played in the process of such evolvement. I further seek to understand why the intellectual community has distaste for popular culture and commercialism. Other research on this topic has linked nationalism to national culture, and localism and globalism to popular culture.

The thesis examines the learning experience of Muay Thai training and competition through an interpretation of Whiteheads’ theory of learning. This examination is undertaken through a reflection on training and competing in Canada and Thailand during the 2009-2011 period. I will offer an analysis of learning Muay Thai through an interpretation of Whiteheads learning theory and educational philosophy. This thesis rejects learning as a product of hoarding information and recommends education must facilitate concrete and abstract experiences of the principles of freedom and discipline to allow for the development of wisdom and courage in learners. This paper argues that expressing oneself through Muay Thai facilitates non-violent dispositions by allowing for ‘rhythmic’ experiences which enable the growth of active wisdom and courage through periodic tests of training and competition. By providing an autoethnographic account of learning Muay Thai and a theoretical discussion on learning the author will provide a subsequent interpretation of Whiteheads’ theories applied to Muay Thai training and competition. This paper will also consider the educational merit of Muay Thai for marginalized identities as a consequence of developing active wisdom and courage.