Symbols and Rituals on the Grounds of Queer Culture Festivals

The Queer Culture Festivals (QCF) in South Korea have been rapidly growing as a social movement that promotes visibility and pride of the LGBTQ population. This study explores rituals and symbols at QCFs: territorialization of the festivals grounds; booth activities; staged speeches and slogans; queerthemed artefacts; and participants bodily expressions. These various activities question and mock the hegemonic notions of heteronormativity and gender binaries, the ideology of the normal family, Confucian puritanism, and the antiqueer rhetoric of Evangelical Christians. QCFs also deploy playful symbols to subvert the stereotypes of LGBTQ people as abnormal, amoral, and sinful; instead they depict LGBTQ as proud and worthy. The article argues that, in comparison with secularized, individualized, and commercialized festivals of contemporary South Korea, QCFs have retained the ritualism, communality, and subversiveness of traditional festivals—and this difference is due to queer participants realizing their yearning for a utopian world via their participation in QCF

The Politics of Difference and Authenticity in the Practice of Okinawan Dance and Music in Osaka, Japan.

This dissertation examines the ways in which Okinawan music and dance, especially eisa and minyo, are practiced and interpreted by diasporic Okinawans and Japanese enthusiasts in Osaka, Japan. By following changes in Okinawan dance and music practice in Osaka, I explore how the apparent recognition and celebration of Okinawan difference, in comparison to the negation of ethnic and cultural diversity, can either enhance equity between groups or reinforce the existing cultural hierarchy. Also, I examine how different actors attempt to establish or recover authenticity in their practice, their identity, and/or their personhood through their practice and interpretations, thereby illustrating that authenticity is constructed through practice by the collective participation, interaction, contestation, and reflection of actors. Cultural activism and cultural appropriation are the two most prominent aspects of Okinawan music and dance practice in Osaka. Cultural activism started occurring in the mid-1970s by diasporic Okinawans as a means to contest the hegemonic ideology of ethnic, cultural and social homogeneity of Japan, assert Okinawan difference, and build communality through collective participation in music and dance. Cultural appropriation by Japanese enthusiasts, on the other hand, has occurred on a large scale since the 1990s, when Okinawan music and dance became popular nationwide in media and popular culture. While such Japanese fascination with Okinawan music and dance has had positive effects on the reception of Okinawan difference and provides many diasporic Okinawans with opportunities to boost their self-esteem and increase their means of livelihood, it also distracts mainstream Japanese from realizing the political and social marginalization of Okinawa in the past and present, undermines Okinawan cultural activism, and results in the Japanization of Okinawan music and dance. This continuing gap between Okinawans and Japanese illuminates the fact that the apparent recognition and celebration of Okinawan difference does not necessarily lead to overcoming the continuing socio-cultural asymmetry, but often disguises it. However, the case of the appropriation of Okinawan dance by Japanese gay males in LGBTQ activism illustrates that the effects of cultural practice on politics of difference are ambivalent, and not always predictable.PHDAnthropologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108899/1/sumic_1.pd

Endogenous Private Leadership under Subsidy Policy on the Social Enterprises

We investigate a mixed oligopoly model in which private enterprises compete with social enterprises under government subsidy policy, and examine the endogenous choice of private leadership. We show that private leadership is socially desirable, but the numbers of private and social enterprises affect endogenous choices and welfare consequences. We also show that the role of government in choosing the optimal subsidy will be significant when there are more than one private enterprises but its number is smaller than that of the social enterprises

Endogenous Private Leadership under Subsidy Policy on the Social Enterprises

We investigate a mixed oligopoly model in which private enterprises compete with social enterprises under government subsidy policy, and examine the endogenous choice of private leadership. We show that private leadership is socially desirable, but the numbers of private and social enterprises affect endogenous choices and welfare consequences. We also show that the role of government in choosing the optimal subsidy will be significant when there are more than one private enterprises but its number is smaller than that of the social enterprises

Subsidization Policy on the Social Enterprise for the Underprivileged

We formulate an oligopoly model in which social enterprise for the underprivileged competes with private enterprises under government subsidization, and examine the market role of private leadership. We show that Stackelberg private leadership is better from the viewpoint of total social welfare, while Cournot followership is better when the social provisions for the underprivileged are emphasized. We also find that both cost inefficiency and the number of private enterprises affect the profitability and welfare consequences. We then investigate the rationing policy on the production of social enterprise and show that output rationing is superior to market share rationing not only for the social concerns of the underprivileged but also for total social welfare, even though it is less attractive than subsidy policy. Finally, we find that there is a strategic over-incentive to pursue social activities under government subsidization

Nonequilibrium generalization of F\"{o}rster-Dexter theory for excitation energy transfer

F\"{o}rster-Dexter theory for excitation energy transfer is generalized for the account of short time nonequilibrium kinetics due to the nonstationary bath relaxation. The final rate expression is presented as a spectral overlap between the time dependent stimulated emission and the stationary absorption profiles, which allows experimental determination of the time dependent rate. For a harmonic oscillator bath model, an explicit rate expression is derived and model calculations are performed in order to examine the dependence of the nonequilibrium kinetics on the excitation-bath coupling strength and the temperature. Relevance of the present theory with recent experimental findings and possible future theoretical directions are discussed.Comment: published in {\it Chemical Physics} (special issue on Photoprocesses in Multichromophoric Molecular Assemblies

Free licensing strategy and ex post privatization in a mixed oligopoly

This paper investigates free licensing strategy with a flexible privatization policy in a mixed oligopoly in which licensing contracts are observable before the government chooses its optimal degree of ex post privatisation. We examine and compare foreign and public licensors and explore the strategic relationship between the foreign share of passive ownership in domestic firms and the cost efficiency gap between licensor and licensee. We show that licensing strategies always yield more privatization and higher welfare, but the incentive for free licensing between the foreign licensor and public licensor differ. We also consider open technology, where all firms have the same technology and find a contrasting result. The optimal degree of privatization under open technology is the lowest (highest) under foreign (public) licensing contracts