The Chinese Value Survey : an interpretation of value scales and consideration of some preliminary results.

The Chinese Value Survey (CVS) was developed by Bond and his colleagues as a complement to survey instruments constructed by research workers such as Rokeach (1973) and Schwartz (1992). It was designed to be used with people living in geographical regions where Eastern life values are pre-eminent. Preliminary studies have been carried out using this instrument with university students from ethnically Chinese backgrounds studying in three Australian universities. Data were examined using principal components analysis rotated to orthogonal structure. Initial results indicate that of the 40 values measured, 39 neatly form four factors, which are renamed to suit their content. This analysis makes interpretation of the values held by students from an ethnically Chinese background more accessible. [Author abstract

The relationship between values and learning

Values are seen as antecedents of behaviour. The study reported has assumed that values have a direct influence on learning behaviour. Values that guide students' lives in their home countries are argued to influence the ways in which learning takes place in other countries. Ethnically Chinese students in Australia are the subjects of the study. Values have been measured on five occasions using the Chinese Value Survey (CVS). Approaches to study have also been measured on five occasions using the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ). This paper considers the results of canonical correlation analysis using the four value scales of the CVS and the six SPQ scales. A strong first canonical factor is found in which a weighted combination of values is related to a weighted combination of learning motivations and strategies. The second pair of canonical factors relates low integrity values with a surface learning strategy. The third pair of canonical factors involves low Confucian values and a high deep learning strategy. The second and third canonical factors suggest that for some students their values and approaches to learning are changing during their period of study in Australia. This possible change in values and learning approaches warrants further investigation. [Author abstract, ed

Functionality: A Challenge for Cultural Gerontology

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The Idea of Europe in World Literature from the Eastern and Western Peripheries

While a vast range of works have been written on European identity from historical, cultural, political, sociological, and economic points of view, I am attempting to turn the discourse around and investigate the complex notion of European identity that forms the basis of personal, collective and societal identities represented in literature and a European space imagined and depicted differently by various writers. My thesis explores the diverse interpretations of Europe by creating and investigating a literary dialogue between some works in Hungarian and British contemporary literature and so, in a generalized sense, in some aspects between the Eastern and Western peripheries of Europe. The literary interpretation of Europe and European identity is a neglected research area, just as is the literary dialogue between the Western and the Eastern parts of the European Union. Due to this lack of exemplary methodological routes, the thesis’s comparative nature and the fact that it deals with the cultural positions and literary capitals of two very unequal countries, the methodological background is provided by world literary approaches. Widening the time-scale from the most recent works to ones published in the 1990’s and some even before the fall of the Iron Curtain presented the opportunity for analysing the dynamic character of British and Hungarian perceptions and the changing focus on prevalent themes. Imre Kertész (1929-2016) was primarily concerned by the formulation and articulation of new ethical and philosophical values for Europe emerging on the ethical zero ground of the Holocaust and focused on a detached, theoretical observation of the individual. Brian Aldiss (1925-2017) was more interested in the active and often contradictory aspects of identity and the practical moral dilemmas after the Wars in twentieth-century Europe. Marina Lewycka’s (1946-) novels deal with the European aspects of migration concerning the different generations and the gender dimensions of the Europe concept. László Végel (1941-) writes about the utopia of Europe as a multi-ethnic unity and explores the minority identity in relation to the migrant existence. Tim Parks (1954-) approaches the issues of fate and destiny, and their relevance to European politics and personal choices, while also investigating the possibility of linguistic schizophrenia. Gábor Németh’s (1956-) novels investigate the symbolism inherent in European Jewish identity and cosmopolitanism and the current attitudes on populism and anti-immigration. The perspective and the focus from which the novels are analysed have been influenced by present events, and the political, social and cultural atmosphere of both countries and the EU. I have been trying to spot signs which might have forecast the disillusionment and hostility felt towards the European dream by the majority of both populations. The disappointment over the dissolving vision of a united Europe has emerged as an overall theme connecting the writers’ works; however, the pressing want of free-spirits, the Nietzschean Good Europeans, has also been persistent

Review of \u3ci\u3e Rethinking Restructuring: Gender and Change in Canada\u3c/i\u3e edited by Isabella Bakker

Any observer of the recent politics and economics of Western democratic states will be familiar with the starting point of this collection: that there has been a significant shift in governing practices related to global economic restructuring, informed by a neo-liberal consensus that favors shrinking government and deregulating economies. This book tackles the implications of this trend in Canada, but with the specific aim of demonstrating the simultaneous gender erosion and intensification integral to restructuring. Isabella Bakker has assembled some of Canada\u27s finest feminist scholars to explore the often contradictory effects of current political-economic strategies on the Canadian (and global) gender order and, as a result, provides a significant challenge to the assumptions underlying the neoliberal consensus. Bakker\u27s excellent introduction sets out the epistemological presuppositions of a focus on gender as a category of analysis, offers an overview of key shifts in Canada\u27s policy environment, and effectively contextualizes and previews the specific issues to be explored by the contributors to the collection