Testing the global city-social polarisation thesis: Hong Kong since the 1990s

The literature on the development of global cities suggests that Hong Kong had qualified as a global city by the early 1990s. Using data from the Population Censuses, this paper documents the extent to which the process of social polarisation accompanied Hong Kong's globalisation. As predicted by the global city literature, Hong Kong experienced during the 1990s a process of occupational polarisation and widening income inequality as a result of its transformation from an industrial colony to a producer service-driven global city. The paper outlines the gender dimension in this polarisation process, and how the forces of migration contributed to the reshaping of the social structure so that it now resembles an 'hour-glass'. The findings largely support Sassen's hypotheses regarding the social consequences of global city development, but the paper also highlights the effect of local institutional contexts in mediating the impact of global forces. © 2004 The Editors of Urban Studies.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

The structuring of social movements in contemporary Hong Kong

link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Governance crisis in post-1997 Hong Kong: A political economy perspective

This paper is an attempt to analyse the origins of the present governance crisis in post-1997 Hong Kong. We see the growing social discontent and political contentions emerging in post-colonial Hong Kong as symptoms of more fundamental changes. In our review of the existing literature on the impacts of institutional changes on Hong Kong's political governance, it is pointed out that the present governance crisis cannot be explained simply in terms of growing demands coming from the civil society or leadership failure. Based upon an analysis of the changing configuration of business groups, we argue that the social foundation of an administrative state, which was once perceived as one of the institutional pillars of Hong Kong's success, has been eroded by a tendency towards de-centring in the formation of business interests. The failure to build a new state-business alliance and form a governing coalition with the capitalist class is a structural weakness of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government in developing its governing capacity and political leadership.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

The lost generation - Life course dynamics and Xiagang in China

In this article, we describe and analyze the experiences of the xiagang workers from the perspective of life course analysis. Our primary data come from open-ended interviews we conducted between June and August 1999 with 80 redundant workers in Beijing, 43 of whom were female (53.7%) and 37 male (46.3%). The majority (72%) were in their 40s, followed by those in their 30s (19%) and in their 50s (9%). Although we employed a snowballing method to obtain our respondents, the sex and age composition of our sample roughly corresponds to that of all xiagang workers in Beijing; according to estimates for 1999, 77.2% were older than age 35, and 52% were women. For all of China that year, about 45% of xiagang workers were women, and 64.3% were older than age 35. We argue that xiagang workers in their 40s and early 50s, labeled figuratively here as the "lost generation" (shiluo de yidai), are the most disadvantaged in this labor retrenchment not just because of their age but also because of their cohort-specific experiences. Our analysis of this cohort is guided by a general proposition drawn from cohort analysis: "Social change has differential consequences for persons of unlike age[;]... age variations are related to variations in the meaning of a situation, in adaptive potential or options, and thus in linkages between the event and the life course" An implication of this proposition is that the loss of a job can have very different meanings for individuals, depending on their life cycle position. In particular, the difference in meaning will be great between those at the stage of family building and those in early adulthood or near retirement

Delusions of reference, excessive top-down processing, and default mode network in first-episode schizophrenia

Poster 170BACKGROUND: Delusions of reference (DOR) refer to the detection of spurious self-information in otherwise neutral or ambiguous environmental stimuli. Empirical studies of DOR using an information processing framework are lacking. We hypothesize, at the neurocognitive level, that DOR may be related to an excessive use of an internally generated, top-down processing strategy; whereas at the neurophysiological level, this may be related to the hyperactivity and hyperconnectivity in the default mode network (DMN) of the brain. The DMN has been implicated in self-focused attention and ‘stimulus-independent thoughts’, as well as baseline monitoring and automatic attention to salient environmental stimuli, and a link to psychotic symptoms has been observed. The first part of this study explore whether a relationship exists between DOR and excessive top-down processing; the second part of this study test the hypothesis that patients with DOR as chief compliant specifically present with aberrant DMN function and increased top-down processing. METHODS: In Study 1, a total of 30 schizophrenic patients are assessed for DOR using the Ideas of Reference Interview Schedule (IRIS), and are tested using a visual processing (“contour integration”) and a verbal processing (“babbling”) task. Excessive top-down processing is measured by the score of spurious information perceived in the two tasks. In Study 2, to test the hypothesis that DOR is specifically related to DMN and increased top-down processing, 45 first-episode schizophrenic patients are recruited into one of three groups according to their symptomatology: (A) patient with I/DOR as chief presentation (n = 15); (B) patients with positive symptoms other than I/DOR as chief presentation (n = 15); and (C) patients without clinically significant positive symptoms (n = 15). A group of normal controls (n = 15) is also included. Participants are matched by age, sex and education level. Functional MRI scanning is performed under a resting condition and a block-design 0- and 2-back working memory task condition. ANOVA F test is used for the analysis of between group differences in DMN activity. For functional connectivity analysis, Pearson's correlation is performed in seed regions of interest according to previously defined components of the DMN. RESULTS: In the exploratory study, interim data analysis (n = 9; 5 men, mean age 23.8 years) showed a positive correlation between severity of DOR and spurious information detected in the contour integration test (Spearman's rho = 0.45) and the babble task (Spearman's rho = 0.42), although the results did not reach statistical significance because of the sample size. Spurious information processing in the auditory and visual tasks also showed strong correlation (Spearman's rho = 0.65, p = 0.056). Data collection for both parts of the study is expected to be completed by March 2010. DISCUSSION: This study tests the hypothesis that excessive top-down processing and aberrant DMN function seen in schizophrenia is specifically related to DOR, a group of important symptom central to psychotic disorders. DOR are found in up to 67% of schizophrenic patients, and their roles as prodromal and relapse signal and schizotypal trait highlight their potential as a state and trait marker for schizophrenia. Identification of the neurocognitive and neurophysiological mechanisms of DOR will provide important insight into understanding psychosis. Copyright © 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V