1,026 research outputs found
‘CROSSING BORDERS': CULTURAL-GEO-POLITICS OF RAPPROCHEMENT TOURISM BETWEEN CHINA AND TAIWAN
This thesis is concerned with the cultural-geo-politics of rapprochement tourism between China and Taiwan in the era of warming cross-strait relations. By moving away from state-centric approaches to the study of cross-strait tourism, it interrogates themes surrounding the concepts of ‘border’, ‘identity’ and ‘materiality’, in an attempt to offer a more nuanced understanding of the everyday micro-politics at play. More specifically, the thesis considers different taming strategies engaged by the authorities on both sides in dealing with sensitive histories and difficult heritages, and how their practices are materialised in the tourism landscape. In doing so, this study probes the often assumed processes of rapprochement that result from and animate the cross-border exchanges by providing powerful examples of how tourists respond to attempts to manipulate their opinions, how they interpret ideologically loaded materials on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, but also of the genuine curiosity and good will that can result. This showcases the everyday experiences of tourists and the various bordering practices they enact and encounter during their travel. Discussions on tourists’ subjectivities show that far from being passive ‘numbers’ or ‘flows’ as often assumed by economic-centric studies, cross-strait tourists are actively shaping the rapprochement landscape. Furthermore, inquiries into the material cultures of memory and identity provide novel insights that go well beyond the state-led ‘peace through tourism’ initiatives to look at how commercial culture is shaping and responding to memories and cross-strait movements. Empirical findings are able to unpack how the border is experienced through a range of artefacts – from border controls to travel documents and cross-border purchases that extend beyond the literal border. Additionally, this research also broadens the sensorium by looking beyond ‘sight’ seeing to incorporate the olfactory, tactile, auditory and gustatory senses in discussing knives made from artillery shells, music events in a defunct military tunnel, and foods offered by local entrepreneurs. Finally, in acknowledging that tourists are not the only subjects of tourism, the thesis examines the roles played by ghosts and deities in their participation of cross-strait rapprochement tourism. In doing this, it demonstrates that rapprochement tourism is more about ‘interactions along the side’ rather than state-level diplomatic exchanges. Forays into consumption practices, identity construction (both national and self), and border (un)making could prove to be significant in the advent of unprecedented tourist exchanges between China and Taiwan
Recommended from our members
Multi-Level Analysis of Memory Dissociations
Dissociations between explicit and implicit memory tests, between recollective and automatic retrieval processes, and between memorial states of awareness of past events all suggest that human memory is not a unitary faculty. Memory dissociations reflect the complex relationship between consciousness and memory. To understand such a complex relationship, any single level of analysis is not enough and may be misleading. A multi-level analysis was proposed. One of the most serious problems with the process-dissociation procedure is its failure to separate process level of analysis and memorial awareness level of analysis. One experiment was reported to support the above arguments
Recommended from our members
The Integration of internal and External Information in Numerical Tasks
Numerical tasks with Arabic numerals involve the integration of internal and external information and the interaction between perception and cognition. 2-digit number comparison task was selected to study these integration and interaction processes. To compare the magnitudes of two 2digit Arabic numerals, we can (1) compare them digitbydigit sequentially, (2) compare corresponding digits in parallel, or (3) encode them as an integrated representation and compare the whole numerical values. Previous studies showed that 2- digit comparison was holistic when target numerals were compared with a standard held in memory. In our experiment target numerals and standards were presented on the same external display at the same time. Instead of a holistic comparison, we found that 2-digit comparison was a combination of sequential and parallel comparisons. The implications of this discrepancy were discussed in terms of the interplay between perception and cognition
Recommended from our members
The Representation of Relational Information
Most graphic and tabular displays are relational information displays—displays that represent relational information, which is a relation on a set of dimensions. In this paper, we argue that relational information displays are distributed representations—representations that are distributed cross the internal mind and the external environment, and display-based tasks are distributed cognitive tasks—tasks that require the interwoven processing of internal and external information. The basic components of relational information displays are dimensions. Through a theoretical analysis of dimensional representations, we identified four major factors that affect the representational efficiencies of relational information displays: the distributed representation of scale information, the relation between psychological and physical measurements, the interaction between dimensions, and the visual and spatial properties of dimensions. Based on the representational analysis of relational information displays, we proposed a representational taxonomy of relational information displays. This taxonomy can classify most types of relational information displays. In addition, it can be used as a theoretical framework to study the empirical issues of relational information displays in a systematic way
Recommended from our members
A Cognitive Taxonomy of Numeration Systems
In this paper, we study the representational
properties of numeration systems. W e argue that
numeration systems are distributed representa-
tions—representations that are distributed
across the internal mind and the external envi-
ronment. W e analyze number representations at
four levels: dimensionality, dimensional repre-
sentations, bases, and symbol representations.
The representational properties at these four
levels determine the representational efficien-
cies of numeration systems and the performance
of numeric tasks. From this hierarchical struc-
ture, we derive a cognitive taxonomy that can
classify most numeration systems
- …