Villain Stardom in Socialist China: Chen Qiang and the Cultural Politics of Affect

Despite playing various kinds of roles across genres from 1949 to 1965, Chen Qiang acquired stardom mainly due to his remarkable screen performance as villainous landlords in socialist China. His villain stardom is an aberrant case, compared to the majority of film stars in Chinese socialist cinema who encouraged identification and emulation and helped propagate socialist ideology to reform Chinese citizens. Paying special attention to socio-historically specific film exhibition practices and the actor's own reflections on his villain performance, this article argues that Chen's stardom functioned as an important affective technology within a wider and complex Communist propaganda enterprise in that it helped cultivate class hatred necessary for the Communist revolution and socialist land reform campaigns. Through this case study, the article suggests that close engagement with both cultural–historical specificities of cinema and recent critical theories of affect open up a space for researching the diversified star phenomena in contemporary China

American Radical Economists in Mao’s China: From Hopes to Disillusionment

American radical economists in the 1960s perceived China under Maoism as an important experiment in creating a new society, aspects of which they hoped could serve as a model for the developing world. But the knowledge of ‘actually existing Maoism’ was very limited due to the mutual isolation between China and the US. This paper analyses the First Friendship Delegation of American Radical Political Economists (FFDARPE) to the People’s Republic of China in 1972, consisting mainly of Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) members, which was the first visit of a group of American economists to China since 1949. Based on interviews with trip participants as well as archival and published material, this paper studies what we can learn about the engagement with Maoism by American radical economists from their dialogues with Chinese hosts, from their on-the-ground observations, and their reflection upon return. We show how the visitors’ own ideas conflicted and intersected with their perception of the Maoist practice on gender relations; workers’ management and life in the communes. We also shed light on the diverging conceptions of the role for economic expertise between URPE and late Maoism. As the first in-depth study on the FFDARPE we provide rich empirical insights into an ice-breaking event in the larger process of normalization in the Sino-U.S relations, that ultimately led to the disillusionment of the Left with China

Fairness in performance evaluation and its behavioural consequences

A recent paper in Accounting and Business Research by Lau et al. (2008) offers systematic evidence to explain whether managers’ perceptions on fairness of performance evaluation procedures affect attitudes such as job satisfaction; and if it does, the different behavioural processes involved. Our paper re‐examines Lau et al.’s model and hypotheses to assess the external validity of their findings, based on a very different sample of managers. Drawing on recent organisational justice literature, it further develops the model and examines the potential interaction effects of fairness of performance evaluation procedures and other variables on job satisfaction. Finally, it extends the outcome variable to include manager performance. Using survey responses from 165 managers, supported by 24 interviews, drawn from three major organisations in the manufacturing and financial services sectors, we find that Lau et al.’s results on the indirect effects of fairness of performance evaluation procedures on job satisfaction are generalisable to other organisational settings and managerial levels. However, using their model we do not find support for the outcome‐based effects through distributive fairness. Developing a revised model we observe that the effects of distributive fairness on job satisfaction are indirect via organisational commitment. When the model is further developed to incorporate performance as the outcome variable, we observe similar findings

The Impact of Tenancy Reform in West Bengal: Evidence from the National Sample Survey

In this paper, we analyse the impact of tenancy reform in the Indian state of West Bengal on consumption expenditure of tenants. We use a difference-in-difference methodology with data from a household survey (the National Sample Survey) to compare the growth of consumption expenditure of tenants with that of non-tenants. Contrary to the conclusions of other authors, we do not find indications of substantial improvements in the living standards of the reform's beneficiaries. Finally, we analyse possible reasons for the discrepancy between our results and the rest of the literature.Cet article analyse l’impact de la réforme des conditions de bail dans l’Etat Indien du Bengale occidental sur la consommation des locataires. Nous employons une méthode des écarts dans les différences avec les données d’une enquête de ménage officielle – la «National Sample Survey» – afin de comparer l’augmentation des dépenses des locataires à celle des non-locataires. Contrairement aux conclusions d’autres chercheurs, nous ne trouvons aucune indication d’améliorations substantielles du niveau de vie des bénéficiaires de la réforme. Nous concluons par une discussion des raisons possibles expliquant cette divergence entre nos résultats et ceux du reste de la littérature.European Journal of Development Research (2009) 21, 231–249. doi:10.1057/ejdr.2008.18