A socio-technical approach to improving retail energy efficiency behaviours

In recent years, the UK retail sector has made a significant contribution to societal responses on carbon reduction. We provide a novel and timely examination of environmental sustainability from a systems perspective, exploring how energy-related technologies and strategies are incorporated into organisational life. We use a longitudinal case study approach, looking at behavioural energy efficiency from within one of the UK's leading retailers. Our data covers a two-year period, with qualitative data from a total of 131 participants gathered using phased interviews and focus groups. We introduce an adapted socio-technical framework approach in order to describe an existing organisational behavioural strategy to support retail energy efficiency. Our findings point to crucial socio-technical and goal-setting factors which both impede and/or enable energy efficient behaviours, these include: tensions linked to store level perception of energy management goals; an emphasis on the importance of technology for underpinning change processes; and, the need for feedback and incentives to support the completion of energy-related tasks. We also describe the evolution of a practical operational intervention designed to address issues raised in our findings. Our study provides fresh insights into how sustainable workplace behaviours can be achieved and sustained over time. Secondly, we discuss in detail a set of issues arising from goal conflict in the workplace; these include the development of a practical energy management strategy to facilitate secondary organisational goals through job redesign

Tibetan Buddhist self-immolation

Since 2009, 141 Tibetans have engaged in self-immolation, setting their bodies alight, in protest against China's rule of their homeland. This article asks why. How has this previously unknown form of protest become the primary symbol of political opposition in Tibet today? Noting the lack of a tradition of self-immolation in Tibetan Buddhist culture, this article finds the origins of this seemingly incomprehensible act within the current sociopolitical context, wherein this fundamentally new phenomenon has taken on significant symbolic meaning in just a few years. This article further analyzes political, somatic, and religious meanings employed in Tibetan communities in interpreting this act, demonstrating how communities make sense of this phenomenon's intertwined power and horror. Finally, beyond the Tibetan community, this article reviews various parties' responses to these acts of sacrifice to begin envisioning new directions on the Tibetan plateau: a challenge demanded by the act of self-immolation.31 page(s

Producing purity : an ethnographic study of a neotraditionalist Ladies' Academy in contemporary urban China

16 page(s

Reimagining the Real China: Dilemmas (and Solutions) of Han-ness and Tradition in China Today

Video of full lecture with presentation slides edited into the video.Kevin Carrico, Lecturer of Chinese Studies, Macquarie University - What, when, and where is the “real China”? According to a growing group of young people in cities across the country, the real China is not to be found in the reality of the present. Instead of the now familiar images of skyscrapers, high-speed trains, new fashion, and globalization, the groups discussed in this talk envision courtyard homes, sacred rituals, traditional robes, and a homogenizing ethnic purity as embodying the proper essence of China, an eternal “land of rites and etiquette.” Drawing upon ethnographic research conducted with members of the Han Clothing Movement and traditionalist educational associations in the Pearl River Delta and beyond published in the recent book The Great Han: Race, Nationalism, and Tradition in China Today, this talk examines the rise of social movements dedicated to a fundamentally conservative and homogenizing vision of Chineseness within an increasingly complex society. What are these ethno-traditionalist movements’ main ideals, objectives, and practices? Why have they emerged at this historical moment? Who joins these movements, and what do they derive from their involvement? Yet most importantly, is their essentialist “real China” of the past any more real than the present? And what are the repercussions of these tensions between reality and imagining, or between actuality and ideals, in the experience of national identity in general?Cornell East Asia Program1_ea8y94l

The Pedagogy of controversy in the field of China Studies : teaching the Cultural Revolution

How can we as educators address complex and controversial topics in the social sciences without encouraging simplistic responses and self-reproducing binary oppositions? Drawing upon an ethnographic analysis of a first-year writing seminar on the history of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this article proposes novel approaches to overcome instinctive reactions to contentious topics. Arguing that the experience of controversy produces self-reinforcing binary oppositions that become autopoetically abstracted from the actual topic of discussion, I build upon specific seminar experiences to propose two novel and practical concepts for the pedagogy of controversy: (1) deidentification, which refers to a process of disengagement from the binaries and thus identities that structure and reproduce controversy, and (2) humanisation, which refers to a process of moving beyond abstractions to reidentify with the fundamentally human experience of contentious historical moments. The pedagogy of controversy, I argue, must teach against our conventional identificatory responses to controversy to promote a more nuanced understanding of inherently complex issues.30 page(s

The crisis of China research in an age of genocide

Since 2017, it has become increasingly undeniable that crimes against humanity are occurring in the area now known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This article examines the particular ethical dilemmas posed to China-focused academics by these events. A generation of researchers who began their careers engaging with a “rising power” now face a state openly engaged in genocide. Academics who have come to see their jobs as “understanding” China now face realities beyond comprehension. Speaking honestly is the only dignified option, but it is at the same time also the most difficult path, on account of the Chinese state’s aggressive monitoring of public commentary, control over research access, and extraterritorial harassment of critics. How are research and academic discourse on China impacted by these developments? And what can academics do, or not, to live up to the urgent challenges of this historical moment