Elite Community Research Articles

In between the neoliberal reality and the humanities imagination: a narrative inquiry of an English major’s identity construction in China

ABSTRACT This study reports an ethnographic case study of a Chinese female English major of a working-class background – Faye (pseudonym) and her English learning and use experience in an elite community in the Chinese context. Drawing on the data collected from a 13-month longitudinal inquiry, the study employs Darvin and Norton’s [2015. ‘Identity and a Model of Investment in Applied Linguistics.’ Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 35:36–56. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190514000191] model of investment to explore her identity transformation through English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) practices. Findings suggest that Faye’s investment in EFL practices appeared to transform with her evolving perceptions of EFL learning and imagined identities, which were shaped largely under the influence of neoliberal and humanities discourses. The study argues for a critical interrogation of the impact of neoliberalism on EFL learning and humanities education, cautioning against its tendency to constrain identity potentials and sustain structural inequalities. Pedagogical implications are suggested at the end of the article.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Third Heaven: Reading the Secret Book of James (NHC I,2) with a Parodic Imagination

Abstract: From its appearance of the risen Lord to its heavenly ascent the Secret Book of James (NHC I,2; Ap. Jas .) is imitative of other early Christian revelatory literature. Scholarship has attended to these points of similarity to situate this text in relation to others and has found it to be the product of an educationally elite community. Its imitation, however, is marked with critical twists that point to essential difference as well as similarity. Parody, an intertextual mode marked by this type of imitation with critical difference, was well known in literary circles of the first several centuries. The works of Lucian in particular demonstrate how parody could be used as a vehicle for displays of educational bravado as well as social commentary, both of which might also characterize Ap. Jas . Reading through a lens of parody, or with a parodic imagination, brings into focus new interpretive possibilities for Ap. Jas ., along with its elite author and audience, and their posture toward the diverse landscape of early Christianity around them. Correspondingly, it stands to expand our historical imagination concerning the means and modes of discourse accessible to early Christian groups carving out identities for themselves within that landscape.

The tradition of the formation of religious communities among the Tatars of the Volga and Ural regions

The article discusses the foundations of the formation of the Tatar community of the mahalla. According to the author, the Tatar mahalla has two foundations: they are 1. The tribal, 2. The Religious. The community of Tatars was formed during the formation of tribal relations. Over time, tribal ties were consolidated by the religious choice of community members. The article gives an attempt to find out the reasons for the transition of the tribal system of community organization to the religious system. According to the author, religion has become a cementing element for a deeper strengthening of religious ties. The religion of Islam has become the basis of educational work in the community. The election of a religious-legal school was also strongly influenced by neighboring kindred peoples who could be related. Religion plays the role of institutionalizing the community elite and legalizing the powers of the elders and the community imam. It also played a role in the religious practice and rituals of the community.

The bilingual styles of young Puerto Rican adolescents online

Abstract This article examines the language mixing practices of Puerto Rican adolescents in various social media platforms through a framework of code-mixing and socioindexicality. Over a twelve-week period, I collected samples of online text messages from six island bilinguals of an elite community of practice (CofP) and studied the way their unique socializations in private schools and bilingual universities contributed to the ways they made sense of languages, their social meaning potentials, and uses across online interactions. Against the meaningful backdrop of colonial-dynamics of Spanish and English in Puerto Rico, the paper examines how ideologies of “nationalism” and “race” get reproduced or challenged through bilingual practice, and English takes up an equally important role for the construction of social identities in the interactions of youth. Additionally, the study discusses bilingual styles that have been enregistered as social styles specific to technological mediums of communication and youth registers, Puerto Rican netspeak, as well as emerging social styles that indicate queer gender identity, or non-binary practices. In this sense, I offer a description of the island bilingual that is dynamic, strategic, and metapragmatically conscious of the purist ideologies of Spanish in Puerto Rico, as well as the indexical potentials of appropriating variable gender forms in Spanish, bilingual language practices, and netspeak registers towards the negotiation of identities in technological interaction. The way bilinguals relate to the languages at their disposal can provide a window to impending questions on the perceived coloniality of English, potential changes in language ideologies and uses, and whether and how language policies may shift to meet current demographic attitudes and language uses of contemporary Puerto Ricans.

Beyond Boundaries: Painting Re-inscriptions in the Fifteenth to Seventeenth Century China

This paper explores the widespread practice of adding multiple inscriptions to a single artwork at different times in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries China. Such practices became prominent when literati painters revisited artworks they had previously created or owned, or when paintings had accumulated a multitude of inscriptions over time. Within the realm of Chinese art discourse, this phenomenon is denoted as “re-inscriptions.” By examining re-inscriptions written on extant paintings and embodied in individual anthologies, this paper demonstrates that these texts transcended the boundaries of art and touched upon the painters’ own lives and the society in which they lived. On the one hand, literati painters engaged in a dialogue with their past selves through re-inscriptions, exploring themes of mortality, aging, and the passage of time – topics seldom addressed in traditional Chinese painting. On the other hand, they utilized re-inscriptions as a means of social interaction, with some re-inscriptions becoming formulaic, adaptable to various artworks to meet different social needs. Furthermore, when faced with preexisting inscriptions on an artwork, artists added new ones for a conversation with their predecessors. Throughout this process, the accumulation of inscriptions transformed the artwork into a layered cultural narrative, and enabled the literati painters in shaping a elite community transcending time and space.

An Evaluation of Factors that Influence the Adoption of Mobile Money Services by Zambain Univsersity Students. A Case of ZCAS University

Mobile money services in Zambia, like in many other African countries, have been experiencing a significant growth in their user base. According to Bank of Zambia records, the value of mobile money transactions in 2023 skyrocketed by an astonishing 52.8%, reaching a staggering K452.0 billion. This remarkable statistic serves as evidence of acceptability and adoption of digital financial services among Zambian consumers. The mobile money services were deemed to be financial services for the poor and unformalized business communities, surprisingly, with the passage of time mobile services have gained so much popularity even among the elite communities. This study evaluates the factors that influence the adoption of mobile money by Zambian university students using ZCAS-University as a case study. The research adopted a mixed method approach and used questionnaires and semi-structure interviews to collect data from a sample size of 150 students. The quantitative data was then analyzed using statistical package for social sciences while the qualitative data was analyzed using thematic technique. The findings were that students adopted mobile money mainly due to accessibility and ease of use. The study showed that they were areas where banks were better than mobile money in terms of security and professionalism, therefore, students did not adopt mobile money because it was highly better than banks but because it was more accessible. Other factors such as ease of use, perceived usefulness and affordability played a role in the adoption of mobile money in varying degrees.

Manufacturing Society: How Party Building Reinforces Stability Maintenance in Grassroots China

Abstract While China's efforts to maintain social stability by recruiting social elites and establishing Party branches in pre-existing social and market organizations have been thoroughly explored, much less attention has been devoted to how grassroots Party organizations (GRPOs) have proactively incubated society and constructed coherent, interrelated and systematic stability maintenance strategies to identify and eliminate social instability in its early stages and prevent its escalation. Using qualitative data gathered from local areas in China, we uncovered three major strategies used by GRPOs to manufacture society: incubating quasi-bureaucratic organizations, co-opting community elites and embedding Party organizations in market and social organizations. In general, GRPOs manufacture society for three reasons: to revitalize the mobilization capacity of the party-state; to increase the available social resources for grassroots authorities; and to establish an input mechanism for citizens. This study not only provides empirical data on how China's stability maintenance regime works in practice but also calls for a rethinking of the capacity of authoritarian resilience.

Vampires, Revenant Souls, and Objects of Healing

This study searches for the characteristic features of religious healing in three phenomena of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: veneration of miraculous images, apparitions from Purgatory, and vampire incidences. All the examples originate from the Czech lands, and all were in some way related to the Catholic renewal or strengthening the Catholic faith in this region. Individual cases have been analyzed with regard to the social relevance of religious remedies, their connection to social problems, and the interaction between the actors involved. The authors draw attention to the link between physical and mental healing and show the key role of local spiritual authorities, especially members of religious orders and parish priests, in spreading practices of spiritual healing. The study reveals that, however theologically sensitive they might have been, the practices analyzed were apparently encouraged by the clergy and the social elites in the local communities, therefore they can hardly be associated only with the so-called popular piety of the rural folk.

On Our Last Leges

Common law is predicated historically upon a sense of the common, of custom and use time out of mind. The legal tradition has its roots in a guild, an elite community whose common opinion and conversations provided the substance and sensibility of the normative. Remediation of law, meaning here the changing media of legal transmission, the imaginal turn in the streamed and viral relays of law and its enforcement, confront a monochrome and linear textual tradition, the regimentations of the page, with the fragmentary and anarchic optics of online platforms and social media bytes and nibbles. Increased online visibility, this essay argues, forces the guild to face up to an expanded commons, the diversity of colors, the heuristics of the eye, and the nuances of viewing.

Opportunistic Behavior of Village Economic Development Strategy Plan Program in Manokwari District

Respect as an empowerment program to increase the economic capacity of village communities in Papua and West Papua, its implementation has been going on since 2007 until now. Based on the results of surveys and quantitative research, the pros and cons of its existence state that this program has not been successful without explaining the causes of this failure by exploring community knowledge, especially the problem of the participation of the actors. Based on this, this study attempts to answer the following questions: 1. how is the participation of the regional elite, community elite in the planning and implementation of respect, and 2. how is the participation of the community elite, and the community in utilizing the results of respect.The research objectives were: 1. to analyze the participation of local elites and community elites in the planning and implementation of respect, and 2. to analyze the participation of community elites and the community in utilizing the results of respect, in order to obtain an overview of the implementation of respect and empowerment carried out in the program, then to obtain an overview implementation of empowerment in accordance with the uniqueness or specificity of the community. The research was conducted in four districts namely North Manokwari District, Ransiki District, Sidey District, and Minyambouw District. The research method used is qualitative using a phenomenological perspective with an emic approach.The results of the study show that: 1. provincial elites have not fully participated in improving the welfare of the village community, 2. district elites are not involved in the respect program so they are not fully responsible for improving community welfare, 3. village elites and community elites have not played a role as community motivators in village economic empowerment, and 4. community participation in villages responding to respect is still oriented as a project and not a program.

Digital Humanities and Game Ethics: Investigating the Impact of Representation in Gaming

“Digital humanities” is about the usage of computer-assisted tools to preserve knowledge and disseminate them through technological resources. An extension of these techniques can be seen in today’s hyper realistic games with high-concept storytelling. These games immerse the players in a world that enables them to experience a different reality and often ask them to make choices that have real-life social impact. They have empowered artists to create worlds that could become a testing ground for philosophical theories. This paper concentrates on the impact of gaming on real-world ethical and political questions. This paper primarily focuses on the impact of The Last of Us Part II- an action-adventure game developed by Naughty dog- on the discussion of the inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters on already existing IP (Intellectual Property). The response that the game received among the players can be used to understand the general perspective of these elite communities on LGBTQ+ issues. This paper also includes the positive impact of such inclusion and argues that the diversification of characters in already existing IP substantially contributes to inclusivity and equality.

Literature and mass communication: signs of interaction (based on the Myroslav Dochinets’ creative work)

The article examines the creative work of the contemporary Ukrainian writer M. Dochynets in the context of literary trends and the mass communication space of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The goal of the study was to determine the signs of mass communication in the most expressive works of the author. The analysis was carried out using general scientific (analysis, synthesis, description) and special literary methods (socio-historical, biographical, genetic, imagological, interdisciplinary). It was found that the writer’s texts have “two artistic dimensions”, the interpretation of which depends on the education, intellectual level and artistic and aesthetic tastes of the recipient. The first, “elitist”, forms a kind of selected elite community, capable of decoding the historical, cultural, and artistic subtext. The second is that it is “intended for a wide audience” that is not immersed in the cultural, artistic and literary context. M. Dochynets, actively using the signs of mass communication (dissemination by means of mass communication, orientation towards a mass audience, performance of social functions) at the genre, imaginative, stylistic and problem-thematic level, seeks to involve them in understanding with the help of models typical for the masses important philosophical and social problems, raise the level of education and develop artistic taste, aesthetic worldview.

Bringing the Party Back into the Community: Restructuring Grassroots Governance in Shenzhen

AbstractWhile burgeoning research on China's state–society relations has paid attention to the Party, little is known about how the Party interacts with diverse actors and involves itself at the grassroots level in a specific region. This article delineates Party-advancement strategies at the community level in Shenzhen since 2013. To reclaim its leading role at the grassroots level, the Party opted for “Party–government disaggregation” by framing community governance as a Party-building affair, separating the government's affairs from those of the Party and “kicking” the government out of the community. Under the rubric of “reshaping Party–mass relations,” the Party penetrated deep into the community by innovating a “centre-periphery” organizational system, absorbing community elites in a top-down way and using a “service delivery taking the lead” method in a reciprocal exchange. In the end, the Party-governance structure, in which Party–mass relations are at the core, was reframed in the communities.

Negation of Fauna Sustainability and the Extinction of the Rampogan Macan Tradition in Java, 1880s to 1900s

From the 1880s to the early 1900s on the island of Java, there was a unique tradition, namely the Rampogan Macan/Rampok Macan tradition. Javanese people community elite carried out this tradition until the early nineteenth century, but for reasons of animal preservation, the Dutch then banned the event. Questions in this research: How was the Rampogan Macan Tradition event until it was declared prohibited by the colonial government? This study uses historical methods. The study results show that the Rampogan Macan tradition as a conflict tradition in Java is a development of the Rampogan Macan tradition in Surakarta. Along with the decreasing population of the Javanese tiger, this tradition was later discontinued for reasons of preserving the fauna, but the big event was held in Java. The main reason the elites held tiger rampok was none other than the prestige they had won.

Importance of Islamic and Christian parties in Indonesia

This paper deals with the role of religious parties in the Indonesian political system. It demonstrates the importance of Islamic parties and explains the declining significance of Christian parties in the last dozen or so years. In the conditions of deep religiosity in Indonesian society, religious parties are understood as political parties that meet the following criteria: 1) are created by and for the followers of Islam or Christianity, respectively, 2) serve to pursue their interests (specifically the interests articulated by the political and religious elites of religious communities) and 3) build their programs based on the principles and values of faith, and also promote and protect them.

Imperial Rhetoric in the Publicism of the Palatinate before the Bohemian Coronation of Elector Frederick V

At the turn of the 16th — 17th centuries, the imperial discourse was changing, the new German princes were determined to protect the “true faith”, and they were not against revising the agreements reached by their predecessors. Confessional and imperial propaganda was on the increase in Germany. Did the publicism of the beginning of the 17th century reflect the religious social and political demarcation between the Catholic and Evangelical estate? In the Palatinate funeral sermons and speeches of professors of the University of Heidelberg, which were distributed among the subjects of the Palatinate and fellow Calvinists, the apology of the “true faith” came to the fore, and the place of the “imperial estate” was occupied by the Evangelical and Catholic estates, which were opposed to each other. However, in the writings that had spread throughout Germany, imperial rhetoric did not recede into the background, but was transformed along with the image of the Empire itself. This was evidenced by an anonymous text of 1618 of Palatinate origin on the reasons for the destruction by the troops of the Evangelical Union of the fortress of Udenheim, erected by the bishop of Speyer, a member of the Catholic League. In the 1570s — 1580s the Empire was presented as a common home for Protestants and Catholics, an assembly of estates headed by the emperor, and before the Thirty Years’ War the rhetoric of the texts of the Palatinate was increasingly moving towards understanding the Empire only as an elite community without a clear leader. This source allows us to speak about two motives of the Elector of the Palatinate Frederick V’s decision to demolish the Udenheim fortifications: the protection of the Empire and the protection of hereditary possessions, and both of these motives are indissoluble linked — the security of hereditary lands and subjects could only be ensured in the absence of threats to the Empire. Frederick V is shown in the text as one of the main persons responsible for the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation on the banks of the Rhine. The defense of the Empire for him meant the defense of his own corner of the imperial home — territories that had traditionally, since the 14th century, been under the influence of the Rhine palatine counts.

Comparative Analysis of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Programs in United Kingdom, United States of America. Japan and Australia

STEM education is an important component for global development, many countries have invested a substantial amount of funds in the Program. Many initiatives, Programs, policies, law are formulated to increases the number of students’ enrolment and arose their interest to study STEM. In this paper, we present the comparative analysis of successful STEM education Programs in United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), Japan and Australia. We explored different Programs, target groups, objectives and achievement of STEM in UK, USA, Japan and Australia. For USA, the study found that the STEM education Programs are successful but require the involvement of community elites. In UK, the STEM Education Programs are successful and it assisted the country in adding more curriculum materials and trained several personnel. In Australia, experienced a shortage of scientists and engineers and formulated policies and Programs of which some of these Programs were successful and boost the Australian STEM Education. In Japan STEM education Programs has succeeded in increasing the number of enrolment and interest in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The stake holders, educators and government of UK, USA, Japan and Australia can use our study to easily identify areas that require improvement. As such, adapt their STEM education Programs in such a way that the STEM education Program can further be boosted. 

Cancelling as a social phenomenon: theoretical aspect

Cancelling is considered as a totality of social practices used by the society or its part to force social pressure on an individual, group, community or organisation. The main forms and goals of cancelling in various spheres of society are identified, the need for its interdisciplinary research on the methodological basis is given grounds for. The phenomenon of cancelling is considered in different theoretical frameworks. The conflictological interpretation of cancelling focuses on the actors’ struggle for material and non-material resources that unfolds mainly in illegal forms. Due to its great destructive potential cancelling is highlighted as a potential danger to economic and labour relations. The political-discursive interpretation considers the phenomenon from the viewpoint of cultural resistance to structural violence undertaken by the marginal groups when it is difficult to call the representatives of elite groups to account due to their privileged position. Designated are some features of development of the phenomenon of cancelling in a modern society: normative blurring of cancelling practices, lack of innovative potential and ability to radically change social relations in a modern society, low efficiency and imitative nature of cancelling practices, transfer of the normative foundations of the minorities’ social practices into a universalist context and establishment of privileges for representatives of certain communities, social selectivity and economic motivation of cancelling with the representatives of elite communities. It is recognised that cancelling expansion into the economic, political and cultural spheres of a modern society results in initiating the processes which can be dangerous for its development. Сancelling practices do not only create opportunities and socio-cultural innovations for an individual, but also cause significant problems and obstacles for his professional and other activities. For the society as a whole, cancelling is becoming a source of conflict processes that, instead of fighting the real causes and factors of social oppression, creates new ideological grounds and mechanisms for discrimination.

Waltheof: The Journey from Warrior to Saint

The elevation to sainthood of the English earl, Waltheof, who was beheaded, ostensibly for rebellion against William the Conqueror, exemplifies the process by which non-elite and elite communities coalesced to construct a saintly cult in late eleventh- and twelfth-century England. This paper traces the development of Waltheof’s cult from the time of his execution and burial through the mid-twelfth century and seeks to place his path to sainthood within the context of the use of hagiographical material as exemplars for the lives of the laity.
 We have drawn heavily on the Passio Waldevi, a hagiographical account of Waltheof’s life and martyrdom, written at Crowland Abbey in the early twelfth century, along with other materials, most notably early miracles of Waltheof, contained in the same manuscript (Douai BM MS 852). This account, though written to promote the official cult of Waltheof, nevertheless gives hints of earlier, spontaneous veneration of Waltheof. As a point of comparison, we look at earlier hagiographical materials, most notably English and Latin accounts of the life of St. Guthlac and several saints that figure prominently in Bede. To put Waltheof’s death and cult in historical context we consider historical materials in Old English (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Easter Table Chronicle), Latin (Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmsbury, among others), and Norman French (Geoffrei de Gaimar), and we briefly consider the Norse evidence (Snorri Sturluson) for Waltheof’s wider reputation. While most of our evidence is textual, we have also considered archaeological evidence, particularly as it relates to burials, both saintly and deviant. We argue that this evidence, takentogether, indicates that Waltheof’s cult draws on long-standing practices and attitudes towards sanctity and the Christian life in the centuries before the Norman Conquest of England.

The specialization of informal social control in a selective community: Fighting in the National Hockey League from 1947 to 2019

Decentralized sanctioning arises from a demand for governance that is not adequately provided by the state or another strong and centralized institution. While the dynamics of collective action and sanctioning have been well-examined theoretically, experimentally, and empirically, this work typically assumes community membership is a given. In selective or elite communities, pro-social behavior of one kind or another may be a prerequisite of community membership, which may create perverse incentives for the implementation of peer-sanctions. This article quantitatively examines this phenomenon in the case of professional ice hockey, a highly selective community where fist-fighting between players has long existed as a form of self-help for players to address rule infractions or violent play otherwise unaddressed by officials. An empirical examination of over 70 years of player statistics and play-by-play data from the National Hockey League shows not only the evolution of this system from one of peer-sanctioning to one of specialized-sanctioning, as might be predicted from experimental results showing the favorability and efficacy of more centralized punishment regimes, but also reveals how specialization has led to self-serving sanctions. Less-skilled players who are presumably hired to fight are disproportionately likely to participate in fights that appear to occur for non-retaliatory reasons, and more likely to fight one another in a bid to maintain their status and reputation as sanctioners, and consequently their membership in an elite community.