‘Headmasters Become Noblemen’: Mainland Chinese Teachers’ Perspectives on Changes in Education in the Post-Mao Era

In this article I report findings of research into the lives and work of Mainland Chinese teachers of English in a broader context characterized by market economic reform. I draw on transcriptions of group interviews to describe and discuss teachers’ lives and work, and forward a critical analysis that posits a connection between teachers’ accounts and the re-structuring of social relations in post-Mao China. The article details one of several themes treated in the study, specifically the broad category of ‘effects of educational reform.’ I suggest that the compliance and resistance apparent in these accounts reveals Chinese teachers to be neither cultural dopes nor harbingers of some newly emerging democratic society

Skate Life: Re-Imagining White Masculinity

Skate Life examines how young male skateboarders use skate culture media in the production of their identities. Emily Chivers Yochim offers a comprehensive ethnographic analysis of an Ann Arbor, Michigan, skateboarding community, situating it within a larger historical examination of skateboarding's portrayal in mainstream media and a critique of mainstream, niche, and locally produced media texts (such as, for example, Jackass, Viva La Bam, and Dogtown and Z-Boys). The book uses these elements to argue that adolescent boys can both critique dominant norms of masculinity and maintain the power that white heterosexual masculinity offers. Additionally, Yochim uses these analyses to introduce the notion of ""corresponding cultures,"" conceptualizing the ways in which media audiences both argue with and incorporate mediated images into their own ideas about identity. In a strong combination of anthropological and media studies approaches, Skate Life asks important questions of the literature on youth and provides new ways of assessing how young people create their identities

Evaluation of achieve for control of grassy weeds in wheat

Non-Peer ReviewedField studies were conducted in 1989 and 1990 at Aberdeen, Outlook, and Saskatoon to evaluate the efficacy of Achieve, Hoe-Grass, Assert, and Puma Super for green foxtail (Setaria viridis) and wild oat (Avena sativa) control in wheat. Treatments were applied under both dryland and irrigated conditions and included a range of herbicide rates to determine the dose required for control under each set of environmental conditions. Different weed leaf stages at the time of herbicide application were used to determine the effect of growth stage on herbicide efficacy. Under irrigation, Achieve provided good control of both green foxtail and wild oat at rates as low as 100 g/ha. Achieve activity was greater under irrigated than dryland conditions, suggesting that reduced rates may be used under conditions where moisture is not limiting. The efficacy of Achieve was greatly reduced by a delay in application from the 4-leaf stage to the 6-leaf stage of tame oat. At the 4-leaf stage. rates as low as 25 g/ha were effective; however. at the 6-leaf stage only the full rate (250 g/ha) provided acceptable control. Puma Super provided excellent control of green foxtail under both dryland and irrigated conditions. Overall, Achieve and Puma Super both provided a high degree of control of all weed species in the study. Assert and Hoe-Grass were less effective than the former herbicides

"This is How I Think": Skate Life, Corresponding Cultures and Alternative White Masculinities.

This Is How I Think contributes to our understanding of the politics of youth consumer culture by discussing the ways in which white masculinity is presented in youth media and elaborating young men’s reactions to these portrayals. Contemporary media representations of white male youth present alternative masculinities that rely on both dominant American values and the mockery of non-whites, homosexuals, and women to maintain men’s power. Utilizing theories of the media audience, youth culture, race, and gender to discuss ethnographic data collected in a community of skateboarders, I contend that skate culture produces alternative modes of masculinity that are not anti-patriarchal, and thus do not disrupt normative power relations. Further, I suggest, skate culture creates a space in which young men can experience the mental and emotional pleasure of escape and self-expression – an experience often denied young men in a dominant culture that expects them to be emotionally reticent and in control. Considering the interplay of mass-, niche-, and independently-produced media and introducing the notion of “corresponding cultures,” This is How I Think bridges a false dichotomy between “subculture” and “mainstream” that perpetuates the notion that subcultures completely and continuously resist a dominant culture from which they are wholly separated. A “corresponding culture” is a culture that is both in constant conversation (or correspondence) with a wide array of mainstream, niche, and local media forms and finds various affinities (or corresponds) with these forms’ ideologies. Constantly in motion, a corresponding culture is a group organized around a particular lifestyle or activity that interacts with various levels of media and variously agrees or disagrees with those media’s espoused ideas. Skateboarding media and skateboarders frequently center these correspondences on nascent critiques of dominant masculinities that manage, at the same time, to maintain the power of white middle-class heterosexual American men via continued expressions of heterosexuality, dominance over non-white “Others” and women, and traditional American norms of freedom and independence.Ph.D.CommunicationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57697/2/echivers_1.pd

The Symbolic Annihilation of Race: A Review of the "Blackness" Literature

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60140/1/Symbolic Annihilation.pd

Next step en Français teacher lesson guide

Next Step en Français is an introductory course for young students in French. This lesson guide is written for teachers who have little or no knowledge of the language and are not trained to teach a foreign language. Suggestions are given as to how a regular classroom teacher can provide this valuable second language instruction to his/her students

Questioning policy, youth participation and lifestyle sports

Young people have been identified as a key target group for whom participation in sport and physical activity could have important benefits to health and wellbeing and consequently have been the focus of several government policies to increase participation in the UK. Lifestyle sports represent one such strategy for encouraging and sustaining new engagements in sport and physical activity in youth groups, however, there is at present a lack of understanding of the use of these activities within policy contexts. This paper presents findings from a government initiative which sought to increase participation in sport for young people through provision of facilities for mountain biking in a forest in south-east England. Findings from qualitative research with 40 young people who participated in mountain biking at the case study location highlight the importance of non-traditional sports as a means to experience the natural environments through forms of consumption which are healthy, active and appeal to their identities. In addition, however, the paper raises questions over the accessibility of schemes for some individuals and social groups, and the ability to incorporate sports which are inherently participant-led into state-managed schemes. Lifestyle sports such as mountain biking involve distinct forms of participation which present a challenge for policy-makers who seek to create and maintain sustainable communities of youth participants