Patron-client relationship in cross-cultural church planting: a case study of Cambodia Bible College, 1998 - 2015

The primary research question of this study is: ‘How does the patron-client dynamic between Korean missionaries and Cambodian church planters offer an alternative understanding of aid dependency within the discourse of mission studies?’ While the patron-client relationship has been a popular concept in social anthropology studies, its value and effects have not been sufficiently explored within mission studies; specifically the issue of aid dependency particularly between Korean missionaries and Cambodian church planters has not been the subject of focused research. The key effects of patron-client dynamics are explored in this thesis through a case study methodology, examining the Cambodia Bible College (CBC) church-planting projects in Cambodia. Qualitative data was collected primarily through semi-structured interviews and participatory focused group discussions with the CBC founder and CBC church-planting pastors. The macro-function of Microsoft Word-processing was used as the primary data analysis. Once the interview transcriptions, both in English and Korean, were complete, by coding the key terms and key ideas emergent patterns of primary and series of sub-categories were observed. From initial research data, the aid dependency issue – both healthy and unhealthy – was identified as one of the major effects in patron-client dynamics. In the CBC church-planting process, the findings show that the patron takes on three unique diachronic and progressive roles: first, the patron as a father; second, the patron as a sponsor, and third, the patron as a partner. Similarly, a client also takes on three roles: first, the client as a child; second, the client as sponsoree (client), and third, the client as a partner. Although social studies currently express the patron-client dynamics primarily in material and political terms, in the case between the founder and the CBC pastors, intangible relational assets, i.e. ‘the patron as a father', were observed. This thesis argues that ‘the patron father’, plays a significant role in developing CBC pastors as church planters, helps them access the necessary resources to establish their churches at the initial stages, and offers an alternative reading of aid dependency as a relational concept rather than an economic one. Unfortunately, although unintended by both parties, the CBC pastors have become aid-dependent, which is hindering their churches from becoming self-sustaining and which makes an equal partnership in the future difficult, pointing to a conceptual relationship between aid dependency and the patron-client relationship. The future research on aid dependency in the church planting effort, and especially in the context of Gap & Eul, will prove that “partnering” their culturally diverse perspectives can contribute to mission studies for the next generation of transnational workers

De l’arabe standard vers l’arabe dialectal :projection de corpus et ressourceslinguistiques en vue du traitementautomatique de l’oral dans les médiastunisiens

International audienceRÉSUMÉ. Dans ce travail, nous nous intéressons aux problèmes liés au traitement automatique de l'oral parlé dans les médias tunisiens. Cet oral se caractérise par l'emploi de l'alternance codique entre l'arabe standard moderne (MSA) et le dialecte tunisien (DT). L'objectif consiste à construire des ressources utiles pour apprendre des modèles de langage dédiés à des applications de reconnaissance automatique de la parole. Comme il s'agit d'une variante du MSA, nous décrivons dans cet article une démarche d'adaptation des ressources MSA vers le DT. Une première évaluation en termes de couverture lexicale et de perplexité est présentée. ABSTRACT. In this work, we focus on the problems of the automatic treatment of oral spoken in the Tunisian media. This oral is marked by the use of code-switching between the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and the Tunisian dialect (TD). Our goal is to build useful resources to learn language models that can be used in automatic speech recognition applications. As it is a variant of MSA, we describe in this paper an adjustment process of the MSA resources to the TD. A first evaluation in terms of lexical coverage and perplexity is presented

Spartan Daily, April 21, 1993

Volume 100, Issue 51https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/8409/thumbnail.jp

Sinophone Southeast Asia

This volume explores the diverse linguistic landscape of Southeast Asia’s Chinese communities. Based on archival research and previously unpublished linguistic fieldwork, it unearths a wide variety of language histories, linguistic practices, and trajectories of words. The localized and often marginalized voices we bring to the spotlight are quickly disappearing in the wake of standardization and homogenization, yet they tell a story that is uniquely Southeast Asian in its rich hybridity. Our comparative scope and focus on language, analysed in tandem with history and culture, adds a refreshing dimension to the broader field of Sino-Southeast Asian Studies. . Readership: Students, scholars, (academic) libraries, community organizations, heritage organizations; linguistics, Southeast Asia Studies, East Asia Studies, Overseas Chines

Extraterritorial Images: Visual Presence and Absence in the Representation of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla

My thesis examines contemporary manifestations of extraterritoriality and the logic of extraterritorial representation by looking at a concrete study case: the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. On May 31, 2010, a convoy of six vessels carrying humanitarian aid and protesting the Israeli seige of Gaza was attacked in the international waters of the Mediteranean. The Israeli attack began with an attempt to shut down all satellite connections to and from a flotilla, and marked the beginning of a conflict of images. On board the largest vessel, the Mavi Marmara, the confrontation resulted in the death of ten activists. After taking control of the ships, the Israeli military confiscated all memory cards of cameras, mobile phones, and hard discs. The flotilla has been the subject of national and international procedures ever since, including a court case brought before the Criminal Court at Istanbul in 2012 against senior Israeli commanders, which has been taking place since in absentia. My dissertation investigates the complex logic of the event and its aftermath, focusing on the notion of extraterritoriality—geographical, legal and political, but also visual—in order to reflect on the effort to control vital visual documentation. Viewed from this perspective, extraterritoriality applies not only to people and spaces, as the concept has traditionally been understood, but also may be applied to images when the latter are excluded or exempted from one law system and subjected to another. In the flotilla case, important visual documentation has been kept at a legal distance precisely in order to keep it away from investigations in which it may potentially serve as vital evidence. My suggestion is that the concept of extraterritoriality may help us understand the way in which these images have been legally excluded from public scrutiny, especially in cases involving a conflict between competing legal systems

Multilingual audio information management system based on semantic knowledge in complex environments

This paper proposes a multilingual audio information management system based on semantic knowledge in complex environments. The complex environment is defined by the limited resources (financial, material, human, and audio resources); the poor quality of the audio signal taken from an internet radio channel; the multilingual context (Spanish, French, and Basque that is in under-resourced situation in some areas); and the regular appearance of cross-lingual elements between the three languages. In addition to this, the system is also constrained by the requirements of the local multilingual industrial sector. We present the first evolutionary system based on a scalable architecture that is able to fulfill these specifications with automatic adaptation based on automatic semantic speech recognition, folksonomies, automatic configuration selection, machine learning, neural computing methodologies, and collaborative networks. As a result, it can be said that the initial goals have been accomplished and the usability of the final application has been tested successfully, even with non-experienced users.This work is being funded by Grants: TEC201677791-C4 from Plan Nacional de I + D + i, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Competitiveness of Spain and from the DomusVi Foundation Kms para recorder, the Basque Government (ELKARTEK KK-2018/00114, GEJ IT1189-19, the Government of Gipuzkoa (DG18/14 DG17/16), UPV/EHU (GIU19/090), COST ACTION (CA18106, CA15225)