Hollie Gowan; Junpeng Shi; Jing Yang
Hollie Gowan
University of Leeds, Year 3 DPhil Candidate in Philosophy
‘Smile Like You Mean It’:
women working in ‘Religiously-Inspired Charitable Organisations’ (RICOs) and their search for meaning in contemporary China.
In October 2017, the ‘Chinese Dream’ was reiterated at the 19th People’s Congress, as a vision of national rejuvenation and prosperity, with a continued focus on the ‘the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life’ (Xinhua, 2017; Feng, M. 2015). The Core Socialist Values of the Chinese Dream present a certain vision of China at national, societal and citizenship levels (Gow, M., 2017), and this paper seeks to explore how key values within this rhetoric – harmony, happiness, freedom and dedication – are being negotiated by contemporary Chinese women. This will be done through an examination of Religiously-Inspired Charitable Organisations (RICOs) and the unique spaces they are creating for their workforce, who are predominantly female. This paper will reflect on doctoral fieldwork undertaken in 2017, exploring how women view their lives in relation to 1) self; (2) environment; (3) beliefs/practices; and (4) others, and the possible implications these may have on wider discourses on religion, development and gender. This paper hopes to present insights into the unique role RICOs will play in the future of the ‘Chinese Dream’; as well as in the dreams of the women working for them as they search for meaning in contemporary China.
Key Words: Meaning-making; Gender; Religiously-Inspired Charitable Organisations; Chinese Dream; Development; Self
Junpeng Shi
University of Essex, Year 2 PhD candidate in Sociology
Integration between Identity Politics and Family Harmony: the Practice of PFLAG China.
This research focuses on the parents of homosexual children ’s participation in homosexual activism in mainland China and the practice of PFALG China. As has been discussed, the pressure to enter (opposite-sex)marriage from families of origin is seen as the biggest barrier for homosexual people in Chinese context. However, with the construction of tongzhi(gay and lesbian) identity, progress of urbanization, the development of higher education, and popularization of Internet, for the generations born in 1980s and 1990s, more and more homosexual people have decided to come out to their parents. Called by the idea of New Familialism, seeing the happiness of individual as the responsibility of the whole family, instead of Familialism, acquiring that the individual should sacrifice for the family, many parents, especially mothers, participate in the life arrangement of gay and lesbian children, and the homosexual activism through joining PFLAG China. As family is seen as the biggest common issue for gay and lesbian people in the context of mainland China, the PFLAG China has the potentiality to unite the LG community. In these years, the PFLAG China has been making great effort to developing branches in different cities in China, and has become the biggest nationwide LGBT organization in mainland China.
Jing Yang
University of Heidelberg, Year 1 PhD candidate in Global Art History
Game Space, Alternative History and Hong Kong
Politically engaged game (PEG) is a newly emerged genre of serious gaming. Unlike standard history games, PEG is not interested in simulating historical development as "it is". Game space is utilized as political arena to foster alternative history serving for specific political agenda. This study aims to focus on games designed by Hong Kong localist activists, and analyzes the message produced in the game space to explore the dynamics between serious gaming and political activism.