Journal articles on the topic 'Postcolonialism – China'

Abstract This essay seeks to reconsider the current paradigm of Sinophone studies, which is largely based on theories from postcolonialism to empire critique. While Sinophone studies derives its critical thrust from confronting China as a hegemonic force, some approaches have taken a path verging on Sinophobia, the reverse of Sinocentrism. Implied in the argument is a dualistic mapping of geopolitics such as assimilation versus diaspora, resistance versus hegemony, theory versus history, and Sinophone relationality versus China.

AbstractAlthough most all contemporary studies of China and Africa focus on current economic or foreign policy concerns, this article provides a preliminary mapping of Africa-China cultural exchanges during the Cold War. Growing out of the Africa-Asia Conference of Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955, the Afro-Asian Writers Bureau forged third world solidarities via an alternative conception of postcolonialism based on the transnationalism of global South cultural struggle. By analyzing the cultural exchanges of the bureau, and in particular their definition ofworld literature, this article seeks to move beyond postcolonial scholarship that focuses exclusively on a vertical relationship between the colonizer and colonized. In so doing, it both reinterprets the Cold War from outside of an American and Soviet dichotomy and provides a critical cultural historicization to China’s current, and often controversial, presence in Africa.

Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, cities in the Global South have seen extraordinary growth, with China and India as the epicenters of urbanization. This essay critically assesses the state of the field of global urban studies and focuses particularly on the scholarship relating to urban China and India. The essay identifies three dominant paradigms in the scholarship: the global city thesis, neoliberalism, and postcolonialism. In contrast to US urban sociology, which is often preoccupied with the question of how neighborhood effects reproduce inequality, global urban studies account for a much wider array of urban processes, such as global urban networks, social polarization, and the transformation of the built environment. This essay points out the disconnect between US urban sociology and global urban studies and proposes a comparative approach as a way to bridge the divide.

I moved to Hong Kong about fourteen months ago to teach in a liberal arts university located in the new territories, on the border between Hong Kong and mainland China, about half an hour away by bus. Before coming to Hong Kong, I had taught for a few years in several American institutions, ranging from a community college to a research university. The courses I taught were mostly in Asian American literature, postcolonial literature, and Chinese literature in translation. Immersed as a graduate student and a teacher in American multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and ethnic studies, I have found a great deal of difference between the situation in Hong Kong and the social contexts of the United States and former colonial nations in South Asia, in which most ethnic, multicultural, and postcolonial theories are situated.

Released in September, 2020, Mulan, a live-action film starring Liu Yifei, was adapted by Disney from the Ballad of Mulan[1]. The film was produced from its animated version Mulan (1998) which hit global box office amounting to 304 million with marvelous reputation. However, the live-action movie Mulan did not continue the brilliant results of the previous work. Instead, Mulan (2020) disappointed most Chinese audience[2] because historical facts and cultural values about Mulan were excessively appropriated, rewritten and alienated. Applying theories of Postcolonialism, this essay analyzes the live-action movie Mulan revealing the ethnocentric abuse of the target culture as the “other”: arbitrary appropriation, rewriting and distortion of its historical events and traditional values. Also, theories of popular culture will be used to analyze the cultural industry strategies applied in this unsuccessful film.[1]the Ballad of Mulan (Chinese: 木兰辞; pinyin: Mù lán cí), a famous folk song of the Northern Dynasty in China.[2]The investment in the live-action film Mulan is as high as US$200 million (about 1.4 billion RMB). As a result, the global box office is less than US$70 million. Also, the score in Douban is only 5.0 points. (the full mark is 10.)Sources:https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20201102A0J6EO00,https://movie.douban.com/subject/26357307/

Abstract This article focuses on an overlooked connection between the “cultural fever” in China in the 1980s and a comparable cultural fever that emerged in Africa and the Caribbean in the mid-1950s through the writing of Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Jacques Stéphen Alexis, and others. It argues that, in the mid-1950s, these writers politicized their discourse on culture partly under the influence of Mao's “Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art.” In particular, they translated the tension between the state and the local, which is intrinsic to Mao's “Talks,” into the dialectical opposition between nationalism and pan-Africanism. In post-Mao China, Chinese writers released the local from the grip of the state and aligned localism with a nascent cosmopolitanism, which inclined them to identify with Third World cosmopolitan writers. In the process of translating post-Mao Chinese literature into the mechanism of the world literary system, writers and translators transformed localism into an assimilable cult of culture. By looking at the shift of value in Chinese literature in the 1980s in relation to a change of consciousness in Euro-American literary culture in the same period, this article further argues that the context of Third Worldism is largely eliminated in the reception of global South literature in the world literary setting. It contends that recognizing the formation of Third World cosmopolitan novelists in the milieu of an international socialist literary culture oriented to the Third World necessitates the construction of a global history of the novel that will redress the myopia in novel studies, postcolonialism, and contemporary theories of world literature.

During the seventeenth century, the Baroque was exported wholesale to the areas of the world being colonized by Catholic Europe. It is one of the few satisfying ironies of European imperial domination worldwide that the baroque worked poorly as a colonizing instrument. Its visual and verbal forms are ample, dynamic, porous, and permeable, and in all areas colonized by Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the baroque was itself eventually colonized. In the New World, its transplants immediately began to incorporate the cultural perspectives and iconographies of the indigenous and African laborers and artisans who built and decorated Catholic structures. Cultural heresies (and heretics) often entered unnoticed or were ignored for reasons of expediency. Asian influences arrived on the Nao de China (the Manila Galleon) with artifacts from Japan, China, the Moluccas, and the Philippines, destined for Europe but portaged across New Spain, thus joining the diverse cultural streams that over time came to constitute the New World baroque. And, in time, the baroque was also transformed in Europe by New World influences: its materials (silver from Mexico and Peru, ivory from the Philippines), its motifs (fauna and flora from the Caribbean, the Orinoco, the Amazon), and its methods (artistic, doctrinal, indoctrinating).

Abstract The question, ‘can Africa deal with a postcoloniality without reference to the colonising metropole?’ neglects that Africa must deal with many powers that were not colonisers. Dealing with China requires a relationship outside the period of formal colonial rule, and requires a new cosmopolitanism that can be difficult, yet vibrant.

Abstract Centennial commemorations of the May Fourth Movement in Singapore demonstrate how practices of remembrance reinforce but also transcend national and cultural boundaries. Throughout 2019, Singaporeans reflected on the iconoclastic, anti-imperialist, and pro-democracy elements of May Fourth while simultaneously challenging public memories as observed in China. As such, these commemorations shed important light on memory studies, postcoloniality, and Singapore Chinese identity.

Hong Kong exemplifies a geo-cultural path that the literature on hybridity has not seriously considered. Hong Kong’s particular geo-cultural path is different from what the literature refers to as hybridity because Hong Kong’s identity encompasses non-synthetic, lingering Confucian, Christian, liberal, patriotic and other identities that exist parallel to each other, rather than merging into a certain hybrid identity. Because of this unique identity, the already hybrid identity of Hong Kong could disintegrate at any time because of re-imagined or re-enacted traditions. In other words, the coexisting parallel identities support a cyclical historiography rather than the celebrated postcoloniality that moves Hong Kong irrevocably away from any alleged past. Hong Kong demonstrates this constant re-appealing that takes place on the basis of solid traditions in Confucianism, Christianity and patriotism, in addition to the familiar liberalism and anti-Communism. Chineseness has become extremely difficult to define and attempts at doing so generate bitter feelings.

The spectacular rise of China as a superpower perhaps only now compels us to recalibrate existing discourses of empire and postcoloniality, but China has been an empire in the modern sense since the mid–eighteenth century, when it conquered vast lands north and west of “China proper.” This history has been largely hidden from view because of two unacknowledged obsessions: the fetishization of Western empires over other empires and the prevailing discourse of Chinese victimhood at the hands of Western empires. The rise of China would not have caught so many by surprise if our vision had not been persistently clouded by our privileging of the oceanic (i.e., Western) mode of colonial expansion, which paradoxically centered the West as the most deserving object of critical attention and intellectual labor. It also would not have been a surprise if we had looked back at the Manchu conquests of inner Asia, which present-day China largely inherited and consolidated in a continuous colonial project. Postcolonial theory as we know it, particularly its critiques of orientalism, may prove irrelevant or even complicit when we consider how the positions of Chinese intellectuals critical of Western imperialism and orientalism easily slip into an unreflective nationalism, whose flip side may be a new imperialism.

Education in Oceania continues to reflect the embedded implicit and explicit colonial practices and processes from the past. This paper conceptualises a cultural approach to education and leadership appropriate and relevant to the Republic of the Marshall Islands. As elementary school leaders, we highlight Kanne Lobal, a traditional Marshallese navigation practice based on indigenous language, values and practices. We conceptualise and develop Kanne Lobal in this paper as a framework for understanding the usefulness of our indigenous knowledge in leadership and educational practices within formal education. Through bwebwenato, a method of talk story, our key learnings and reflexivities were captured. We argue that realising the value of Marshallese indigenous knowledge and practices for school leaders requires purposeful training of the ways in which our knowledge can be made useful in our professional educational responsibilities. Drawing from our Marshallese knowledge is an intentional effort to inspire, empower and express what education and leadership partnership means for Marshallese people, as articulated by Marshallese themselves. Introduction As noted in the call for papers within the Waikato Journal of Education (WJE) for this special issue, bodies of knowledge and histories in Oceania have long sustained generations across geographic boundaries to ensure cultural survival. For Marshallese people, we cannot really know ourselves “until we know how we came to be where we are today” (Walsh, Heine, Bigler & Stege, 2012). Jitdam Kapeel is a popular Marshallese concept and ideal associated with inquiring into relationships within the family and community. In a similar way, the practice of relating is about connecting the present and future to the past. Education and leadership partnerships are linked and we look back to the past, our history, to make sense and feel inspired to transform practices that will benefit our people. In this paper and in light of our next generation, we reconnect with our navigation stories to inspire and empower education and leadership. Kanne lobal is part of our navigation stories, a conceptual framework centred on cultural practices, values, and concepts that embrace collective partnerships. Our link to this talanoa vā with others in the special issue is to attempt to make sense of connections given the global COVID-19 context by providing a Marshallese approach to address the physical and relational “distance” between education and leadership partnerships in Oceania. Like the majority of developing small island nations in Oceania, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has had its share of educational challenges through colonial legacies of the past which continues to drive education systems in the region (Heine, 2002). The historical administration and education in the RMI is one of colonisation. Successive administrations by the Spanish, German, Japanese, and now the US, has resulted in education and learning that privileges western knowledge and forms of learning. This paper foregrounds understandings of education and learning as told by the voices of elementary school leaders from the RMI. The move to re-think education and leadership from Marshallese perspectives is an act of shifting the focus of bwebwenato or conversations that centres on Marshallese language and worldviews. The concept of jelalokjen was conceptualised as traditional education framed mainly within the community context. In the past, jelalokjen was practiced and transmitted to the younger generation for cultural continuity. During the arrival of colonial administrations into the RMI, jelalokjen was likened to the western notions of education and schooling (Kupferman, 2004). Today, the primary function of jelalokjen, as traditional and formal education, it is for “survival in a hostile [and challenging] environment” (Kupferman, 2004, p. 43). Because western approaches to learning in the RMI have not always resulted in positive outcomes for those engaged within the education system, as school leaders who value our cultural knowledge and practices, and aspire to maintain our language with the next generation, we turn to Kanne Lobal, a practice embedded in our navigation stories, collective aspirations, and leadership. The significance in the development of Kanne Lobal, as an appropriate framework for education and leadership, resulted in us coming together and working together. Not only were we able to share our leadership concerns, however, the engagement strengthened our connections with each other as school leaders, our communities, and the Public Schooling System (PSS). Prior to that, many of us were in competition for resources. Educational Leadership: IQBE and GCSL Leadership is a valued practice in the RMI. Before the IQBE programme started in 2018, the majority of the school leaders on the main island of Majuro had not engaged in collaborative partnerships with each other before. Our main educational purpose was to achieve accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), an accreditation commission for schools in the United States. The WASC accreditation dictated our work and relationships and many school leaders on Majuro felt the pressure of competition against each other. We, the authors in this paper, share our collective bwebwenato, highlighting our school leadership experiences and how we gained strength from our own ancestral knowledge to empower “us”, to collaborate with each other, our teachers, communities, as well as with PSS; a collaborative partnership we had not realised in the past. The paucity of literature that captures Kajin Majol (Marshallese language) and education in general in the RMI is what we intend to fill by sharing our reflections and experiences. To move our educational practices forward we highlight Kanne Lobal, a cultural approach that focuses on our strengths, collective social responsibilities and wellbeing. For a long time, there was no formal training in place for elementary school leaders. School principals and vice principals were appointed primarily on their academic merit through having an undergraduate qualification. As part of the first cohort of fifteen school leaders, we engaged in the professional training programme, the Graduate Certificate in School Leadership (GCSL), refitted to our context after its initial development in the Solomon Islands. GCSL was coordinated by the Institute of Education (IOE) at the University of the South Pacific (USP). GCSL was seen as a relevant and appropriate training programme for school leaders in the RMI as part of an Asia Development Bank (ADB) funded programme which aimed at “Improving Quality Basic Education” (IQBE) in parts of the northern Pacific. GCSL was managed on Majuro, RMI’s main island, by the director at the time Dr Irene Taafaki, coordinator Yolanda McKay, and administrators at the University of the South Pacific’s (USP) RMI campus. Through the provision of GCSL, as school leaders we were encouraged to re-think and draw-from our own cultural repository and connect to our ancestral knowledge that have always provided strength for us. This kind of thinking and practice was encouraged by our educational leaders (Heine, 2002). We argue that a culturally-affirming and culturally-contextual framework that reflects the lived experiences of Marshallese people is much needed and enables the disruption of inherent colonial processes left behind by Western and Eastern administrations which have influenced our education system in the RMI (Heine, 2002). Kanne Lobal, an approach utilising a traditional navigation has warranted its need to provide solutions for today’s educational challenges for us in the RMI. Education in the Pacific Education in the Pacific cannot be understood without contextualising it in its history and culture. It is the same for us in the RMI (Heine, 2002; Walsh et al., 2012). The RMI is located in the Pacific Ocean and is part of Micronesia. It was named after a British captain, John Marshall in the 1700s. The atolls in the RMI were explored by the Spanish in the 16th century. Germany unsuccessfully attempted to colonize the islands in 1885. Japan took control in 1914, but after several battles during World War II, the US seized the RMI from them. In 1947, the United Nations made the island group, along with the Mariana and Caroline archipelagos, a U.S. trust territory (Walsh et al, 2012). Education in the RMI reflects the colonial administrations of Germany, Japan, and now the US. Before the turn of the century, formal education in the Pacific reflected western values, practices, and standards. Prior to that, education was informal and not binded to formal learning institutions (Thaman, 1997) and oral traditions was used as the medium for transmitting learning about customs and practices living with parents, grandparents, great grandparents. As alluded to by Jiba B. Kabua (2004), any “discussion about education is necessarily a discussion of culture, and any policy on education is also a policy of culture” (p. 181). It is impossible to promote one without the other, and it is not logical to understand one without the other. Re-thinking how education should look like, the pedagogical strategies that are relevant in our classrooms, the ways to engage with our parents and communities - such re-thinking sits within our cultural approaches and frameworks. Our collective attempts to provide a cultural framework that is relevant and appropriate for education in our context, sits within the political endeavour to decolonize. This means that what we are providing will not only be useful, but it can be used as a tool to question and identify whether things in place restrict and prevent our culture or whether they promote and foreground cultural ideas and concepts, a significant discussion of culture linked to education (Kabua, 2004). Donor funded development aid programmes were provided to support the challenges within education systems. Concerned with the persistent low educational outcomes of Pacific students, despite the prevalence of aid programmes in the region, in 2000 Pacific educators and leaders with support from New Zealand Aid (NZ Aid) decided to intervene (Heine, 2002; Taufe’ulungaki, 2014). In April 2001, a group of Pacific educators and leaders across the region were invited to a colloquium funded by the New Zealand Overseas Development Agency held in Suva Fiji at the University of the South Pacific. The main purpose of the colloquium was to enable “Pacific educators to re-think the values, assumptions and beliefs underlying [formal] schooling in Oceania” (Benson, 2002). Leadership, in general, is a valued practice in the RMI (Heine, 2002). Despite education leadership being identified as a significant factor in school improvement (Sanga & Chu, 2009), the limited formal training opportunities of school principals in the region was a persistent concern. As part of an Asia Development Bank (ADB) funded project, the Improve Quality Basic Education (IQBE) intervention was developed and implemented in the RMI in 2017. Mentoring is a process associated with the continuity and sustainability of leadership knowledge and practices (Sanga & Chu, 2009). It is a key aspect of building capacity and capabilities within human resources in education (ibid). Indigenous knowledges and education research According to Hilda Heine, the relationship between education and leadership is about understanding Marshallese history and culture (cited in Walsh et al., 2012). It is about sharing indigenous knowledge and histories that “details for future generations a story of survival and resilience and the pride we possess as a people” (Heine, cited in Walsh et al., 2012, p. v). This paper is fuelled by postcolonial aspirations yet is grounded in Pacific indigenous research. This means that our intentions are driven by postcolonial pursuits and discourses linked to challenging the colonial systems and schooling in the Pacific region that privileges western knowledge and learning and marginalises the education practices and processes of local people (Thiong’o, 1986). A point of difference and orientation from postcolonialism is a desire to foreground indigenous Pacific language, specifically Majin Majol, through Marshallese concepts. Our collective bwebwenato and conversation honours and values kautiej (respect), jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity), and jouj (kindness) (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). Pacific leaders developed the Rethinking Pacific Education Initiative for and by Pacific People (RPEIPP) in 2002 to take control of the ways in which education research was conducted by donor funded organisations (Taufe’ulungaki, 2014). Our former president, Dr Hilda Heine was part of the group of leaders who sought to counter the ways in which our educational and leadership stories were controlled and told by non-Marshallese (Heine, 2002). As a former minister of education in the RMI, Hilda Heine continues to inspire and encourage the next generation of educators, school leaders, and researchers to re-think and de-construct the way learning and education is conceptualised for Marshallese people. The conceptualisation of Kanne Lobal acknowledges its origin, grounded in Marshallese navigation knowledge and practice. Our decision to unpack and deconstruct Kanne Lobal within the context of formal education and leadership responds to the need to not only draw from indigenous Marshallese ideas and practice but to consider that the next generation will continue to be educated using western processes and initiatives particularly from the US where we get a lot of our funding from. According to indigenous researchers Dawn Bessarab and Bridget Ng’andu (2010), doing research that considers “culturally appropriate processes to engage with indigenous groups and individuals is particularly pertinent in today’s research environment” (p. 37). Pacific indigenous educators and researchers have turned to their own ancestral knowledge and practices for inspiration and empowerment. Within western research contexts, the often stringent ideals and processes are not always encouraging of indigenous methods and practices. However, many were able to ground and articulate their use of indigenous methods as being relevant and appropriate to capturing the realities of their communities (Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Fulu-Aiolupotea, 2014; Thaman, 1997). At the same time, utilising Pacific indigenous methods and approaches enabled research engagement with their communities that honoured and respected them and their communities. For example, Tongan, Samoan, and Fijian researchers used the talanoa method as a way to capture the stories, lived realities, and worldviews of their communities within education in the diaspora (Fa’avae, Jones, & Manu’atu, 2016; Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Aiolupotea, 2014; Vaioleti, 2005). Tok stori was used by Solomon Islander educators and school leaders to highlight the unique circles of conversational practice and storytelling that leads to more positive engagement with their community members, capturing rich and meaningful narratives as a result (Sanga & Houma, 2004). The Indigenous Aborigine in Australia utilise yarning as a “relaxed discussion through which both the researcher and participant journey together visiting places and topics of interest relevant” (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010, p. 38). Despite the diverse forms of discussions and storytelling by indigenous peoples, of significance are the cultural protocols, ethics, and language for conducting and guiding the engagement (Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010; Nabobo-Baba, 2008; Sualii-Sauni & Aiolupotea, 2014). Through the ethics, values, protocols, and language, these are what makes indigenous methods or frameworks unique compared to western methods like in-depth interviews or semi-structured interviews. This is why it is important for us as Marshallese educators to frame, ground, and articulate how our own methods and frameworks of learning could be realised in western education (Heine, 2002; Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014). In this paper, we utilise bwebwenato as an appropriate method linked to “talk story”, capturing our collective stories and experiences during GCSL and how we sought to build partnerships and collaboration with each other, our communities, and the PSS. Bwebwenato and drawing from Kajin Majel Legends and stories that reflect Marshallese society and its cultural values have survived through our oral traditions. The practice of weaving also holds knowledge about our “valuable and earliest sources of knowledge” (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019, p. 2). The skilful navigation of Marshallese wayfarers on the walap (large canoes) in the ocean is testament of their leadership and the value they place on ensuring the survival and continuity of Marshallese people (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019; Walsh et al., 2012). During her graduate study in 2014, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner conceptualised bwebwenato as being the most “well-known form of Marshallese orality” (p. 38). The Marshallese-English dictionary defined bwebwenato as talk, conversation, story, history, article, episode, lore, myth, or tale (cited in Jetnil Kijiner, 2014). Three years later in 2017, bwebwenato was utilised in a doctoral project by Natalie Nimmer as a research method to gather “talk stories” about the experiences of 10 Marshallese experts in knowledge and skills ranging from sewing to linguistics, canoe-making and business. Our collective bwebwenato in this paper centres on Marshallese ideas and language. The philosophy of Marshallese knowledge is rooted in our “Kajin Majel”, or Marshallese language and is shared and transmitted through our oral traditions. For instance, through our historical stories and myths. Marshallese philosophy, that is, the knowledge systems inherent in our beliefs, values, customs, and practices are shared. They are inherently relational, meaning that knowledge systems and philosophies within our world are connected, in mind, body, and spirit (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014; Nimmer, 2017). Although some Marshallese believe that our knowledge is disappearing as more and more elders pass away, it is therefore important work together, and learn from each other about the knowledges shared not only by the living but through their lamentations and stories of those who are no longer with us (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014). As a Marshallese practice, weaving has been passed-down from generation to generation. Although the art of weaving is no longer as common as it used to be, the artefacts such as the “jaki-ed” (clothing mats) continue to embody significant Marshallese values and traditions. For our weavers, the jouj (check spelling) is the centre of the mat and it is where the weaving starts. When the jouj is correct and weaved well, the remainder and every other part of the mat will be right. The jouj is symbolic of the “heart” and if the heart is prepared well, trained well, then life or all other parts of the body will be well (Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). In that light, we have applied the same to this paper. Conceptualising and drawing from cultural practices that are close and dear to our hearts embodies a significant ontological attempt to prioritize our own knowledge and language, a sense of endearment to who we are and what we believe education to be like for us and the next generation. The application of the phrase “Majolizing '' was used by the Ministry of Education when Hilda Heine was minister, to weave cultural ideas and language into the way that teachers understand the curriculum, develop lesson plans and execute them in the classroom. Despite this, there were still concerns with the embedded colonized practices where teachers defaulted to eurocentric methods of doing things, like the strategies provided in the textbooks given to us. In some ways, our education was slow to adjust to the “Majolizing '' intention by our former minister. In this paper, we provide Kanne Lobal as a way to contribute to the “Majolizing intention” and perhaps speed up yet still be collectively responsible to all involved in education. Kajin Wa and Kanne Lobal “Wa” is the Marshallese concept for canoe. Kajin wa, as in canoe language, has a lot of symbolic meaning linked to deeply-held Marshallese values and practices. The canoe was the foundational practice that supported the livelihood of harsh atoll island living which reflects the Marshallese social world. The experts of Kajin wa often refer to “wa” as being the vessel of life, a means and source of sustaining life (Kelen, 2009, cited in Miller, 2010). “Jouj” means kindness and is the lower part of the main hull of the canoe. It is often referred to by some canoe builders in the RMI as the heart of the canoe and is linked to love. The jouj is one of the first parts of the canoe that is built and is “used to do all other measurements, and then the rest of the canoe is built on top of it” (Miller, 2010, p. 67). The significance of the jouj is that when the canoe is in the water, the jouj is the part of the hull that is underwater and ensures that all the cargo and passengers are safe. For Marshallese, jouj or kindness is what living is about and is associated with selflessly carrying the responsibility of keeping the family and community safe. The parts of the canoe reflect Marshallese culture, legend, family, lineage, and kinship. They embody social responsibilities that guide, direct, and sustain Marshallese families’ wellbeing, from atoll to atoll. For example, the rojak (boom), rojak maan (upper boom), rojak kōrā (lower boom), and they support the edges of the ujelā/ujele (sail) (see figure 1). The literal meaning of rojak maan is male boom and rojak kōrā means female boom which together strengthens the sail and ensures the canoe propels forward in a strong yet safe way. Figuratively, the rojak maan and rojak kōrā symbolise the mother and father relationship which when strong, through the jouj (kindness and love), it can strengthen families and sustain them into the future. Figure 1. Parts of the canoe Source: https://www.canoesmarshallislands.com/2014/09/names-of-canoe-parts/ From a socio-cultural, communal, and leadership view, the canoe (wa) provides understanding of the relationships required to inspire and sustain Marshallese peoples’ education and learning. We draw from Kajin wa because they provide cultural ideas and practices that enable understanding of education and leadership necessary for sustaining Marshallese people and realities in Oceania. When building a canoe, the women are tasked with the weaving of the ujelā/ujele (sail) and to ensure that it is strong enough to withstand long journeys and the fierce winds and waters of the ocean. The Kanne Lobal relates to the front part of the ujelā/ujele (sail) where the rojak maan and rojak kōrā meet and connect (see the red lines in figure 1). Kanne Lobal is linked to the strategic use of the ujelā/ujele by navigators, when there is no wind north wind to propel them forward, to find ways to capture the winds so that their journey can continue. As a proverbial saying, Kanne Lobal is used to ignite thinking and inspire and transform practice particularly when the journey is rough and tough. In this paper we draw from Kanne Lobal to ignite, inspire, and transform our educational and leadership practices, a move to explore what has always been meaningful to Marshallese people when we are faced with challenges. The Kanne Lobal utilises our language, and cultural practices and values by sourcing from the concepts of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity). A key Marshallese proverb, “Enra bwe jen lale rara”, is the cultural practice where families enact compassion through the sharing of food in all occurrences. The term “enra” is a small basket weaved from the coconut leaves, and often used by Marshallese as a plate to share and distribute food amongst each other. Bwe-jen-lale-rara is about noticing and providing for the needs of others, and “enra” the basket will help support and provide for all that are in need. “Enra-bwe-jen-lale-rara” is symbolic of cultural exchange and reciprocity and the cultural values associated with building and maintaining relationships, and constantly honouring each other. As a Marshallese practice, in this article we share our understanding and knowledge about the challenges as well as possible solutions for education concerns in our nation. In addition, we highlight another proverb, “wa kuk wa jimor”, which relates to having one canoe, and despite its capacity to feed and provide for the individual, but within the canoe all people can benefit from what it can provide. In the same way, we provide in this paper a cultural framework that will enable all educators to benefit from. It is a framework that is far-reaching and relevant to the lived realities of Marshallese people today. Kumit relates to people united to build strength, all co-operating and working together, living in peace, harmony, and good health. Kanne Lobal: conceptual framework for education and leadership An education framework is a conceptual structure that can be used to capture ideas and thinking related to aspects of learning. Kanne Lobal is conceptualised and framed in this paper as an educational framework. Kanne Lobal highlights the significance of education as a collective partnership whereby leadership is an important aspect. Kanne Lobal draws-from indigenous Marshallese concepts like kautiej (respect), jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity), and jouj (kindness, heart). The role of a leader, including an education leader, is to prioritise collective learning and partnerships that benefits Marshallese people and the continuity and survival of the next generation (Heine, 2002; Thaman, 1995). As described by Ejnar Aerōk, an expert canoe builder in the RMI, he stated: “jerbal ippān doon bwe en maron maan wa e” (cited in Miller, 2010, p. 69). His description emphasises the significance of partnerships and working together when navigating and journeying together in order to move the canoe forward. The kubaak, the outrigger of the wa (canoe) is about “partnerships”. For us as elementary school leaders on Majuro, kubaak encourages us to value collaborative partnerships with each other as well as our communities, PSS, and other stakeholders. Partnerships is an important part of the Kanne Lobal education and leadership framework. It requires ongoing bwebwenato – the inspiring as well as confronting and challenging conversations that should be mediated and negotiated if we and our education stakeholders are to journey together to ensure that the educational services we provide benefits our next generation of young people in the RMI. Navigating ahead the partnerships, mediation, and negotiation are the core values of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity). As an organic conceptual framework grounded in indigenous values, inspired through our lived experiences, Kanne Lobal provides ideas and concepts for re-thinking education and leadership practices that are conducive to learning and teaching in the schooling context in the RMI. By no means does it provide the solution to the education ills in our nation. However, we argue that Kanne Lobal is a more relevant approach which is much needed for the negatively stigmatised system as a consequence of the various colonial administrations that have and continue to shape and reframe our ideas about what education should be like for us in the RMI. Moreover, Kannel Lobal is our attempt to decolonize the framing of education and leadership, moving our bwebwenato to re-framing conversations of teaching and learning so that our cultural knowledge and values are foregrounded, appreciated, and realised within our education system. Bwebwenato: sharing our stories In this section, we use bwebwenato as a method of gathering and capturing our stories as data. Below we capture our stories and ongoing conversations about the richness in Marshallese cultural knowledge in the outer islands and on Majuro and the potentialities in Kanne Lobal. Danny Jim When I was in third grade (9-10 years of age), during my grandfather’s speech in Arno, an atoll near Majuro, during a time when a wa (canoe) was being blessed and ready to put the canoe into the ocean. My grandfather told me the canoe was a blessing for the family. “Without a canoe, a family cannot provide for them”, he said. The canoe allows for travelling between places to gather food and other sources to provide for the family. My grandfather’s stories about people’s roles within the canoe reminded me that everyone within the family has a responsibility to each other. Our women, mothers and daughters too have a significant responsibility in the journey, in fact, they hold us, care for us, and given strength to their husbands, brothers, and sons. The wise man or elder sits in the middle of the canoe, directing the young man who help to steer. The young man, he does all the work, directed by the older man. They take advice and seek the wisdom of the elder. In front of the canoe, a young boy is placed there and because of his strong and youthful vision, he is able to help the elder as well as the young man on the canoe. The story can be linked to the roles that school leaders, teachers, and students have in schooling. Without each person knowing intricately their role and responsibility, the sight and vision ahead for the collective aspirations of the school and the community is difficult to comprehend. For me, the canoe is symbolic of our educational journey within our education system. As the school leader, a central, trusted, and respected figure in the school, they provide support for teachers who are at the helm, pedagogically striving to provide for their students. For without strong direction from the school leaders and teachers at the helm, the students, like the young boy, cannot foresee their futures, or envisage how education can benefit them. This is why Kanne Lobal is a significant framework for us in the Marshall Islands because within the practice we are able to take heed and empower each other so that all benefit from the process. Kanne Lobal is linked to our culture, an essential part of who we are. We must rely on our own local approaches, rather than relying on others that are not relevant to what we know and how we live in today’s society. One of the things I can tell is that in Majuro, compared to the outer islands, it’s different. In the outer islands, parents bring children together and tell them legends and stories. The elders tell them about the legends and stories – the bwebwenato. Children from outer islands know a lot more about Marshallese legends compared to children from the Majuro atoll. They usually stay close to their parents, observe how to prepare food and all types of Marshallese skills. Loretta Joseph Case There is little Western influence in the outer islands. They grow up learning their own culture with their parents, not having tv. They are closely knit, making their own food, learning to weave. They use fire for cooking food. They are more connected because there are few of them, doing their own culture. For example, if they’re building a house, the ladies will come together and make food to take to the males that are building the house, encouraging them to keep on working - “jemjem maal” (sharpening tools i.e. axe, like encouraging workers to empower them). It’s when they bring food and entertainment. Rubon Rubon Togetherness, work together, sharing of food, these are important practices as a school leader. Jemjem maal – the whole village works together, men working and the women encourage them with food and entertainment. All the young children are involved in all of the cultural practices, cultural transmission is consistently part of their everyday life. These are stronger in the outer islands. Kanne Lobal has the potential to provide solutions using our own knowledge and practices. Connie Joel When new teachers become a teacher, they learn more about their culture in teaching. Teaching raises the question, who are we? A popular saying amongst our people, “Aelon kein ad ej aelon in manit”, means that “Our islands are cultural islands”. Therefore, when we are teaching, and managing the school, we must do this culturally. When we live and breathe, we must do this culturally. There is more socialising with family and extended family. Respect the elderly. When they’re doing things the ladies all get together, in groups and do it. Cut the breadfruit, and preserve the breadfruit and pandanus. They come together and do it. Same as fishing, building houses, building canoes. They use and speak the language often spoken by the older people. There are words that people in the outer islands use and understand language regularly applied by the elderly. Respect elderly and leaders more i.e., chiefs (iroj), commoners (alap), and the workers on the land (ri-jerbal) (social layer under the commoners). All the kids, they gather with their families, and go and visit the chiefs and alap, and take gifts from their land, first produce/food from the plantation (eojōk). Tommy Almet The people are more connected to the culture in the outer islands because they help one another. They don’t have to always buy things by themselves, everyone contributes to the occasion. For instance, for birthdays, boys go fishing, others contribute and all share with everyone. Kanne Lobal is a practice that can bring people together – leaders, teachers, stakeholders. We want our colleagues to keep strong and work together to fix problems like students and teachers’ absenteeism which is a big problem for us in schools. Demetria Malachi The culture in the outer islands are more accessible and exposed to children. In Majuro, there is a mixedness of cultures and knowledges, influenced by Western thinking and practices. Kanne Lobal is an idea that can enhance quality educational purposes for the RMI. We, the school leaders who did GCSL, we want to merge and use this idea because it will help benefit students’ learning and teachers’ teaching. Kanne Lobal will help students to learn and teachers to teach though traditional skills and knowledge. We want to revitalize our ways of life through teaching because it is slowly fading away. Also, we want to have our own Marshallese learning process because it is in our own language making it easier to use and understand. Essentially, we want to proudly use our own ways of teaching from our ancestors showing the appreciation and blessings given to us. Way Forward To think of ways forward is about reflecting on the past and current learnings. Instead of a traditional discussion within a research publication, we have opted to continue our bwebwenato by sharing what we have learnt through the Graduate Certificate in School Leadership (GCSL) programme. Our bwebwenato does not end in this article and this opportunity to collaborate and partner together in this piece of writing has been a meaningful experience to conceptualise and unpack the Kanne Lobal framework. Our collaborative bwebwenato has enabled us to dig deep into our own wise knowledges for guidance through mediating and negotiating the challenges in education and leadership (Sanga & Houma, 2004). For example, bwe-jen-lale-rara reminds us to inquire, pay attention, and focus on supporting the needs of others. Through enra-bwe-jen-lale-rara, it reminds us to value cultural exchange and reciprocity which will strengthen the development and maintaining of relationships based on ways we continue to honour each other (Nimmer, 2017). We not only continue to support each other, but also help mentor the next generation of school leaders within our education system (Heine, 2002). Education and leadership are all about collaborative partnerships (Sanga & Chu, 2009; Thaman, 1997). Developing partnerships through the GCSL was useful learning for us. It encouraged us to work together, share knowledge, respect each other, and be kind. The values of jouj (kindness, love), kautiej (respect), and jouj eo mour eo (reciprocity) are meaningful in being and becoming and educational leader in the RMI (Jetnil-Kijiner, 2014; Miller, 2010; Nimmer, 2017). These values are meaningful for us practice particularly given the drive by PSS for schools to become accredited. The workshops and meetings delivered during the GCSL in the RMI from 2018 to 2019 about Kanne Lobal has given us strength to share our stories and experiences from the meeting with the stakeholders. But before we met with the stakeholders, we were encouraged to share and speak in our language within our courses: EDP05 (Professional Development and Learning), EDP06 (School Leadership), EDP07 (School Management), EDP08 (Teaching and Learning), and EDP09 (Community Partnerships). In groups, we shared our presentations with our peers, the 15 school leaders in the GCSL programme. We also invited USP RMI staff. They liked the way we presented Kannel Lobal. They provided us with feedback, for example: how the use of the sail on the canoe, the parts and their functions can be conceptualised in education and how they are related to the way that we teach our own young people. Engaging stakeholders in the conceptualisation and design stages of Kanne Lobal strengthened our understanding of leadership and collaborative partnerships. Based on various meetings with the RMI Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) team, PSS general assembly, teachers from the outer islands, and the PSS executive committee, we were able to share and receive feedback on the Kanne Lobal framework. The coordinators of the PREL programme in the RMI were excited by the possibilities around using Kanne Lobal, as a way to teach culture in an inspirational way to Marshallese students. Our Marshallese knowledge, particularly through the proverbial meaning of Kanne Lobal provided so much inspiration and insight for the groups during the presentation which gave us hope and confidence to develop the framework. Kanne Lobal is an organic and indigenous approach, grounded in Marshallese ways of doing things (Heine, 2002; Taafaki & Fowler, 2019). Given the persistent presence of colonial processes within the education system and the constant reference to practices and initiatives from the US, Kanne Lobal for us provides a refreshing yet fulfilling experience and makes us feel warm inside because it is something that belongs to all Marshallese people. Conclusion Marshallese indigenous knowledge and practices provide meaningful educational and leadership understanding and learnings. They ignite, inspire, and transform thinking and practice. The Kanne Lobal conceptual framework emphasises key concepts and values necessary for collaborative partnerships within education and leadership practices in the RMI. The bwebwenato or talk stories have been insightful and have highlighted the strengths and benefits that our Marshallese ideas and practices possess when looking for appropriate and relevant ways to understand education and leadership. Acknowledgements We want to acknowledge our GCSL cohort of school leaders who have supported us in the development of Kanne Lobal as a conceptual framework. A huge kommol tata to our friends: Joana, Rosana, Loretta, Jellan, Alvin, Ellice, Rolando, Stephen, and Alan. References Benson, C. (2002). Preface. In F. Pene, A. M. Taufe’ulungaki, & C. Benson (Eds.), Tree of Opportunity: re-thinking Pacific Education (p. iv). Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific, Institute of Education. Bessarab, D., Ng’andu, B. (2010). Yarning about yarning as a legitimate method in indigenous research. International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 3(1), 37-50. Fa’avae, D., Jones, A., & Manu’atu, L. (2016). Talanoa’i ‘a e talanoa - talking about talanoa: Some dilemmas of a novice researcher. AlterNative: An Indigenous Journal of Indigenous Peoples,12(2),138-150. Heine, H. C. (2002). A Marshall Islands perspective. In F. Pene, A. M. Taufe’ulungaki, & C. Benson (Eds.), Tree of Opportunity: re-thinking Pacific Education (pp. 84 – 90). Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific, Institute of Education. Infoplease Staff (2017, February 28). Marshall Islands, retrieved from https://www.infoplease.com/world/countries/marshall-islands Jetnil-Kijiner, K. (2014). Iep Jaltok: A history of Marshallese literature. (Unpublished masters’ thesis). Honolulu, HW: University of Hawaii. Kabua, J. B. (2004). We are the land, the land is us: The moral responsibility of our education and sustainability. In A.L. Loeak, V.C. Kiluwe and L. Crowl (Eds.), Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, pp. 180 – 191. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific. Kupferman, D. (2004). Jelalokjen in flux: Pitfalls and prospects of contextualising teacher training programmes in the Marshall Islands. Directions: Journal of Educational Studies, 26(1), 42 – 54. http://directions.usp.ac.fj/collect/direct/index/assoc/D1175062.dir/doc.pdf Miller, R. L. (2010). 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Decolonising Pacific research, building Pacific research communities, and developing Pacific research tools: The case of the talanoa and the faafaletui in Samoa. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 55(3), 331-344. Taafaki, I., & Fowler, M. K. (2019). Clothing mats of the Marshall Islands: The history, the culture, and the weavers. US: Kindle Direct. Taufe’ulungaki, A. M. (2014). Look back to look forward: A reflective Pacific journey. In M. ‘Otunuku, U. Nabobo-Baba, S. Johansson Fua (Eds.), Of Waves, Winds, and Wonderful Things: A Decade of Rethinking Pacific Education (pp. 1-15). Fiji: USP Press. Thaman, K. H. (1995). Concepts of learning, knowledge and wisdom in Tonga, and their relevance to modern education. Prospects, 25(4), 723-733. Thaman, K. H. (1997). Reclaiming a place: Towards a Pacific concept of education for cultural development. The Journal of the Polynesian Society, 106(2), 119-130. Thiong’o, N. W. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. 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Since the early 2000s, scholars have proposed the notion of “world anthropologies” to expose the pluralistic nature of anthropology, and to counter the colonial legacy embedded in knowledge production. This paper discusses how anthropological knowledge in and of China contributes to, is distant from, and challenges, such intellectual movement at both intellectual and institutional levels. First, unlike Western anthropology which shifts from colonialism to liberalism and then to postcolonialism, anthropology in China began with a progressive agenda of anti-colonialism, and then leaned toward liberalism. In the context of China’s rise, “China” has been further embroiled in a puzzle of imperialism. This reversed ideological tendency contributes to the disorientation of the critical energy in anthropology focused on China. Second, just as China has taken an active role in the competition for education and research in a globalized, yet uneven academia through discipline construction, anthropology in the West, particularly the United States, has become fff in terms of its intellectual agendas. Many of the younger generation of Chinese anthropologists have become stuck in the disjuncture, struggling to channel their critical energy through engaged scholarship, both within and beyond academic institutions. The epistemic politics in and of China, at both the intellectual and institutional levels, reveals that the post-socialist condition deserves to be reference points in world anthropologies. If decolonization posits treating plural standpoints as equal, then being counted in the decolonizing efforts necessitates subscribing to the dominant framework. Thus, more attention to the post-socialist condition, and ultimately the pluralization of the reference points of political potency, should truly pluralize, and ultimately decolonize, anthropology.

Literary culture after 1945 took shape in a context where a handful of colonial empires were replaced by (at present count) nearly two hundred sovereign nation-states whose domestic politics, foreign policy, and cultural life were profoundly shaped by their relationship to the Cold War superpowers. One of the striking features of the historiography of this post-1945 world is that its two most salient themes—the Cold War, and decolonization—have so often been treated in isolation from each other. Postcolonialism and Cold War studies have, as Monica Popescu tells us, followed “separate, largely non-intersecting paths” (6). Yet even a superficial summary of the key geopolitical developments of the postwar period suggests that the Cold War and decolonization are not just interconnected, but mutually determining. When you take into account the decolonizing world, in some places afflicted by devastating proxy wars in this period, it must be said (it has often been said) that the Cold War was cruelly misnamed. This dual history has shaped our political language. A term like the West, as it is used in academic debates as well as in political, journalistic, and policymaking fields, developed its particular set of associations by contrast with the communist Eastern bloc on the one hand and with the (post)colonial global south on the other. Yet these two versions of the non-Western don’t always line up: although anticolonial movements often sought to align themselves with the international communist movement, many proudly independent postcolonial nation-states were explicitly anti-communist (like the neoliberal regimes in Singapore and South Korea). Other postcolonies grappled with the Soviet Union or the People’s Republic of China as a colonial power.

The COVID-19 pandemic that spread to Russia as well as to other states of the world caused additional problems for our scientific life, making it impossible to hold the preplanned scientific events in usual format. The Centre for the Study of the Russian-African Relations and African States’ Foreign Policy of the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences had scheduled on March 31, 2020 an international scientific conference “Africa in the context of the formation of a polycentric world”. The significance of this problem seems considerable enough, since its discussion raises a number of important issues, including the growing role of African countries in the process of creating a polycentric world and the desire of the African countries for greater subjectivity. At the same time, the fact that the modern global processes are taking place in the context of the growing competition among international actors for influence in the world, including Africa, becomes particularly important for Russia. Given the importance and relevance of the raised issues and the interest shown by potential participants (more than 40 applications were submitted), it was decided to hold the conference on March 31, 2020 by correspondence. The scholars, postgraduates and students, representatives of research institutes of Russian Academy of Sciences (Institute for African Studies RAS, Institute of Oriental Studies RAS, IMEMO RAS, Institute for the US and Canada Studies RAS, Institute of Far Eastern Studies RAS, Institute of Control Sciences RAS), as well as higher educational institutions (RUDN, MGIMO, etc.) took part in this conference. A wide range of issues was discussed, including various aspects of the African countries’ foreign policy, issues of African integration, Africa’s role and place in new geopolitical conditions, the policy of the leading economically developed and developing countries and Russia’s current policy on the African continent. The discussion on the first block of themes “Africa: global problems and current trends in the world economy” was opened with RUDN Prof. V. I. Yurtaev’s paper “Afro-Eurasia: challenges of participation in the formation of a polycentric world”. Не raised the following questions: will the rise of the Afro-Asian world as a new alternative to the existing world order occur in the 21st century, and how necessary are the European and/or Eurasian components in this process? A.I. Neklessa made a contribution on the rather controversial topic of “Postcolonialism in the context of civilizational and regional development”. In addition, there were papers on economic trends in North Africa (A.A. Tkachenko), digitalization in Tropical Africa (N. N. Tsvetkova), challenges that Africa faces today in the fight against drug trafficking (N. N. Grishina), money laundering and the financing of terrorism (Ntegge Edward). The second block of issues “Russia and Africa” was opened with E.N. Korendyasov’s substantive research paper dedicated to the new stage in the development of Russian-African relations, the milestone of which was the Russian-African Summit and Economic Forum in Sochi in October 2019. This topic was also discussed by G. M. Sidorova and E.V. Kharitonova. The economic aspect of Russian-African relations was reflected in the reports of E.V. Morozenskaya and S.N. Volkov, and the presentations of Z.S. Novikova and L.N. Kalinichenko contained an analysis of Russia’s cooperation with African countries in the fields of new technologies and energy sector. The increase in the scientific interest for African policy of the leading Western powers was shown by the reports of the third block “Western countries and Africa”. Five presentations (A.Yu. Urnov, V.K. Parkhomenko, G.R. Grigoryan, A.A. Stepanov, A.Ya.Matkovskaya) were devoted to US policy in Africa; the topic of three other reports (O. S. Kulkova, N.V. Ivkina, N. G. Gavrilova) were the relations of African countries with the EU. Two speakers (A. M. Khalitova and M. R. Toure) focused on the problem of French policies in Africa. Finally, this section concluded with the report on Japanese-African relations (A.A. Zabella). In contrast to the above papers, concerning the policies of separate developed countries or their groups in Africa, the report of corresponding member of RAS, doctor of Economics, Professor Leonid L. Fituni focused on the role of the concept of a politically exposed persons in the structure of mechanisms of the West’s sanctions pressure on African elites. The participants in the discussion showed the expected interest in the problem of the “new players” in Africa. This interest was particularly manifest during the discussion on the topics of the fourth block of problems “Emerging and developing countries and Africa”. The BRICS countries policy in Africa was in the focus of attention. Three reports were devoted to China’ s African policy (T.L. Deych, E.M. Serbina and O.L. Fituni), while two other (A.Yu. Borzova and A.L. Sapuntsov) – to Brazil-Africa relations. Such active new players on the continent as Turkey (Mirmehti Agazade) and the United Arab Emirates (S. V. Kostelyanets) were not left without attention, as well. The fifth block contains papers on a fairly broad topic “Foreign policy of African countries and inter-African relations”. Two participants (O. V. Konstantinova and A.Yu. Sharova) addressed the issue of African integration that has become particularly relevant in recent years, while the others devoted their reports to the problems of foreign policy of individual African countries: S.V. Nenashev – Angola, T.S. Denisova and E.N. Zanoskina – Nigeria, N.A.Panin and Yu.D. Vertashov – South Africa, S.M. Shlenskaya – Madagascar. The conference demonstrated a great interest of the scholars, postgraduates and students in the discussed problems and contributed to further researches within these main trends.

Synonymous with globalism, the mobile phone has become an integral part of contemporary everyday life. As a global medium, the mobile phone is a compelling phenomenon that demonstrates the importance of the local in shaping and adapting the technology. The adaptation and usage of the mobile phone can be read on two levels simultaneously – the micro, individual level and the macro, socio-cultural level. Symbolic of the pervasiveness and ubiquity of global ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in the everyday, the mobile phone demonstrates that the experiences of the local are divergent in the face of global convergence. The cultural significance of mobile technologies sees it often as a symbol for discussion around issues of democracy, capitalism, individualism and redefinitions of place. These debates are, like all forms of mediation, riddled with paradoxes. As Michael Arnold observes, mobile media is best encapsulated by the notion of “janus-faced” which sees an ongoing process of pushing and pulling whereby one is set free to be anywhere but is on a leash to whims of others anytime. This paradox, for Arnold, is central to all technologies; the more we try to overcome various forms of distance (geographic, temporal, cultural), the more we avoid closeness and intimacy. For Jack Qui, mobile technologies are indeed the ultimate “wireless leash”. These paradoxes see themselves played in a variety of ways. This is particularly the case in the Asia-Pacific region, which houses divergence and uneven adoption, production and consumption of mobile technologies. The region simultaneously displays distinctive characteristics and a possible future of mobile media worldwide. From the so-called ‘centres’ for mobile innovation such as Tokyo and Seoul that have gained attention in global press to Asian “tigers” such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan that demonstrate high penetration rates (Singapore has a 110% penetration rate), the region often plays out its dynamics through mobile technologies. The Philippines, for example, is known as the ‘texting capital of the world’ with 300 million text messages sent per day. Moreover, the region has taken central focus for debates around the so-called democratic potential of the mobile phone through examples such as the demise of President Joseph Estrada in the Philippines and the election of President Roh in South Korea (Pertierra, Transforming Technologies; Kim). Through the use of mobile technologies and the so-called rise of the “prosumer” (consumer as producer), we can see debates about the rhetoric and reality of democracy and capitalism in the region. In the case of nascent forms of capitalism, the rise of the mobile phone in China has often been seen as China’s embrace, and redefinition, of capitalism away from being once synonymous with westernisation. As Chua Beng Huat observes, after the 1997 financial crisis in the region notions of consumerism and modernity ceased to be equated with westernization. In the case of China, the cell phone has taken on a pivotal role in everyday life with over 220 billion messages – over half the world’s SMS – sent yearly in China. Despite the ubiquity and multi-layered nature of mobile media in the region, this area has received little attention in the growing literature on mobile communication globally. Publications often explore ‘Asia’ in the context of ‘global’ media or Asia in contrast to Europe. Examples include Katz and Aakhus’s (eds.) seminal anthology Perpetual Contact, Pertierra’s (ed.) The Social Construction and Usage of Communication Technologies: European and Asian experiences and, more recently, Castells et al., Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective. When publications do focus specifically on ‘Asia’, they single out particular locations in the region, such as Ito et al.’s compelling study on Japan, Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life and Pertierra’s eloquent discussion of the Philippines in Transforming Technologies: Altered Selves. This issue of M/C Journal attempts to address the dynamic and evolving role of mobile technologies in the Asia-Pacific region. By deploying various approaches to different issues involving mobile media, this issue aims to connect, through a regional imaginary, some of the nuances of local experience within the Asia-Pacific. As a construct, the region of the Asia-Pacific is ever evolving with constantly shifting economic and political power distributions. The rapid economic growth of parts of the region (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, and now China, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia) over the last two to three decades, has led to increasing linkages between these nations in creating transnational networks. The boundaries of the Asia-Pacific are indeterminate and open to contestation and social construction. Initially, the Asia-Pacific was a Euro-American invention, however, its ‘Asian’ content is now playing a greater role in self-constructions, and in influencing the economic, cultural and political entity that is the Asia-Pacific. There have been alternative terms and definitions proffered to describe or delimit the area posited as the Asia-Pacific in an attempt to acknowledge, or subsume, the hierarchies inherent within the region. For example, John Eperjesi has critiqued the ‘American Pacific’ which “names the regional imaginary through which capital looked to expand into Asia and the Pacific at the turn of the [last] century” (195). Arif Dirlik has also suggested two other terms: ‘Asian Pacific’ and ‘Euro-American Pacific.’ He suggests, “the former refers not just to the region’s location, but, more important, to its human constitution; the latter refers to another human component of the region (at least at present) and also to its invention as a regional structure.” (“Asia-Pacific Idea”, 64). Together, Rob Wilson and Arif Dirlik use the configuration ‘Asia/Pacific’ to discuss the region as a space of cultural production, social migration, and transnational innovation, whereby “the slash would signify linkage yet difference” (6). These various terms are useful only insofar as they expose the ideological bases of the definitions, and identify its centre(s). In this emphasis on geography, it is important not to obscure the temporal and spatial characteristics of human activities that constitute regions. As Arif Dirlik notes, “[an] emphasis on human activity shifts attention from physical area to the construction of geography through human interactions; it also underlines the historicity of the region’s formations” (What Is in a Rim?, 4). The three-part structure of this issue seeks to provide various perspectives on the use of mobile technologies and media – from a macro, regional level, to micro, local case studies – in the context of both historical and contemporary formations and definitions of the Asia-Pacific. In an age of mobile technologies we see that rather than erode, notions of place and locality take on increasing significance. The first four papers by Jaz Hee-jeong Choi, Gerard Raiti, Yasmin Ibrahim, and Collette Snowden & Kerry Green highlight some of the key concepts and phenomena associated with mobile media in the region. Choi’s paper provides a wonderful introduction to the culture of mobile technologies in East Asia, focusing largely on South Korea, China and Japan. She problematises the rhetoric surrounding technological fetishism and techno-orientalism in definitions of ‘mobile’ and ‘digital’ East Asia and raises important questions regarding the transformation and future of East Asia’s mobile cultures. Gerard Raiti examines the behemoth of globalization from the point of view of personal intimacy. He asks us to reconsider notions of intimacy in a period marked by co-presence; particularly in light of the problematic conflation between love and technological intimacy. Yasmin Ibrahim considers the way the body is increasingly implicated through the personalisation of mobile technologies and becomes a collaborator in the creation of media events. Ibrahim argues that what she calls the ‘personal gaze’ of the consumer is contributing to the visual narratives of global and local events. What we have is a figure of the mediated mobile body that participates in the political economy of events construction. The paradoxical role of mobile technologies as both pushing and pulling us, helping and hindering us (Arnold) is taken up in Collette Snowden and Kerry Green’s paper on the role of media reporting, mobility and trauma. Extending some of Ibrahim’s comments in the specific case of the reporting of traumatic events, Snowden and Green provide a wonderful companion piece about how media reporting is being transformed by contemporary mobile practices. As an integral component of contemporary visual cultures, camera phone practices are arguably both extending and creating emerging ways of seeing and representing. In the second section, we begin our case studies exploring the socio-cultural particularities of various adaptations of mobile media within specific locations in the Asia-Pacific. Randy Jay C. Solis elaborates on Gerard Raiti’s discussion of intimacy and love by exploring how the practice of ‘texting’ has contributed to the development of romantic relationships in the Philippines in terms of its convenience and affordability. Lee Humphreys and Thomas Barker further extend this discussion by investigating the way Indonesians use the mobile phone for dating and sex. As in Solis’s article, the authors view the mobile phone as a tool of communication, identity management and social networking that mediates new forms of love, sex and romance in Indonesia, particularly through mobile dating software and mobile pornography. Li Li’s paper takes the playful obsession the Chinese and South Koreans have with lucky numbers and locates its socio-cultural roots. Through a series of semi-structured interviews, the author traces this use of lucky mobile numbers to the rise of consumerism in China and views this so-called ‘superstition’ in terms of the entry into modernity for both China and South Korea. Chih-Hui Lai’s paper explores the rise of Web 2.0. in Taiwan, which, in comparison to other locations in the region, is still relatively under-documented in terms of its usage of mobile media. Here Lai addresses this gap by exploring the burgeoning role of mobile media to access and engage with online communities through the case study of EzMoBo. In the final section we problematise Australia’s place in the Asia-Pacific and, in particular, the nation’s politically and culturally uncomfortable relationship with Asia. Described as ‘west in Asia’ by Rao, and as ‘South’ of the West by Gibson, Yue, and Hawkins, Australia’s uneasy relationship with Asia deserves its own location. We begin this section with a paper by Mariann Hardey that presents a case study of Australian university students and their relationship to, and with, the mobile phone, providing original empirical work on the country’s ‘iGeneration’. Next Linda Leung’s critique of mobile telephony in the context of immigration detention centres engages with the political dimensions of technology and difference between connection and contact. Here we reminded of the luxury of mobile technologies that are the so-called necessity of contemporary everyday life. We are also reminded of the ‘cost’ of different forms of mobility and immobility – technological, geographic, physical and socio-cultural. Leung’s discussion of displacement and mobility amongst refugees calls upon us to reconsider some of the conflations occurring around mobile telephony and new media outside the comfort of everyday urbanity. The final paper, by Peter B. White and Naomi Rosh White, addresses the urban and rural divide so pointed in Australia (with 80% of the population living in urban areas) by discussing an older, though still relevant mobile technology, the CB radio. This paper reminds us that despite the technological fetishism of urban Australia, once outside of urban contexts, we are made acutely aware of Australia as a land containing a plethora of black spots (in which mobile phones are out of range). All of the papers in this issue address, in their own way, theoretical and empirical ‘black spots’ in research and speak to the ‘future’ of mobile media in a region that, while diverse, is being increasingly brought together by technologies such as the mobile phone. Lastly, we are pleased to include a photo essay by Andrew Johnson. Entitled Zeitgeist, this series of artworks sees Johnson exploring the symbolic dimensions of the hand phone in South Korea by drawing on the metaphor of the dust mask. According the Johnson, these images refer to ‘the visibility and invisibility of communication’ that characterises the spirit of our time. The cover image is by Larissa Hjorth as part of her Snapshots: Portrait of the Mobile series conducted whilst on an Asialink residency at Ssamzie space (Seoul, South Korea) in 2005. The editors would like to offer a special note of thanks to all of our external reviewers who answered our pleas for help with willingness, enthusiasm, and especially, promptness. This issue could not have been completed without your support. References Arnold, Michael. “On the Phenomenology of Technology: The ‘Janus-Faces’ of Mobile Phones.” Information and Organization 13 (2003): 231-256. Castells, Manuel, et al., Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007. Chua, Beng Huat, ed. Consumption in Asia. London: Routledge, 2000. Dirlik, Arif. “The Asia-Pacific Idea: Reality and Representation in the Invention of a Regional Structure.” Journal of World History 3.1 (1992): 55-79. Dirlik, Arif, ed. What Is in a Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea. Boulder: Westview, 1993. Eperjesi, John. “The American Asiatic Association and the Imperialist Imaginary of the American Pacific.” Boundary 2 28.1 (Spring 2001): 195-219. Gibson, Ross. South of the West: Postcolonialism and the Narrative Construction of Australia. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1996. Ito, Mizuko, Daisuke Okabe, and Misa Matsuda, eds. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005. Katz, James E., and Mark Aakhus, eds. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communications, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002 Kim, Shin Dong. “The Shaping of New Politics in the Era of Mobile and Cyber Communication.” Mobile Democracy: Essays on Society, Self and Politics. Ed. Kristof Nyiri. Vienna: Van Passen Verlag, 2003. Pertierra, Raul, ed. The Social Construction and Usage of Communication Technologies: European and Asian Experiences. Singapore: Singapore UP, 2005. –––. Transforming Technologies: Altered Selves. Philippines: De La Salle UP, 2006. Qui, Jack. “The Wireless Leash: Mobile Messaging Service as a Means of Control.” International Journal of Communication 1 (2007): 74-91. Rao, Madanmohan, ed. News Media and New Media: The Asia-Pacific Internet Handbook. Singapore: Times Academic Press, 2004. Wilson, Robert, and Afir Dirlik, eds. Asia/Pacific as Space of Cultural Production. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. Yue, Audrey. “Asian Australian Cinema, Asian-Australian Modernity.” Diaspora: Negotiating Asian-Australia. Eds. Helen Gilbert et al. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2000. 190–99. Yue, Audrey, and Gay Hawkins. “Going South.” New Formations 40 (Spring 2000): 49-63. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hjorth, Larissa, and Olivia Khoo. "Collect Calls." M/C Journal 10.1 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/00-editorial.php>. APA Style Hjorth, L., and O. Khoo. (Mar. 2007) "Collect Calls," M/C Journal, 10(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/00-editorial.php>.

En anthropologie, la migration, du mot latin migratio, signifie en principe un déplacement physique d’un être humain (migration humaine), bien que des déplacements non-humains soient aussi qualifiés de migrations (migration animale, migration de plantes, migration de planètes etc.). Suite à la généralisation de l’État-nation comme forme d’organisation politique au 19e siècle, on distingue surtout la migration transnationale (qui implique le déplacement d’au moins une frontière nationale) et la migration interne (à l’intérieur de frontières étatiques). Par ailleurs, ces migrations peuvent prendre la forme d’une migration pendulaire (mouvement de va-et-vient), circulaire (mouvement en cercle), saisonnière (migration de travail influencé par les saisons agricoles) ou durable, menant à une installation et une naturalisation. Parmi les causes, on a longtemps souligné les migrations de travail alors que les cas de migrations climatiques et forcées augmentent de façon significative : migrations imposées par le contexte, notamment politique, par exemple pendant une guerre civile ou encore déplacements engendrés par des changements climatiques comme une sècheresse ou l’avancement du désert dans la zone du Sahel. Le tourisme est parfois considéré comme une forme volontaire de migration à courte durée. Jusqu’à présent, peu de travaux lient les réflexions sur les migrations avec celles sur la mobilité (Ortar, Salzbrunn et Stock, à paraître). Certaines recherches sur l’ethnicité (Barth 1999 [1969]) et la transnationalisation ainsi que de nouvelles catégories statistiques développées au niveau gouvernemental témoignent du fait que certaines personnes peuvent être considérées ou perçues comme migrant-e-s sans avoir jamais effectué un déplacement physique au-delà des frontières nationales de leur pays de naissance. Ainsi, aux Pays-Bas et en Belgique, dans le discours politique, on distingue parfois autochtones (grec, littéralement terre d’ici) et allochtones (grec, littéralement terre d’ailleurs). Au Pays-Bas, on entend par allochtone une personne qui y réside et dont au moins un parent est né à l’étranger. Ce terme était destiné à remplacer le terme « immigré », mais il continue à renvoyer des résidents (voire des citoyens) à (une partie de) leur origine. Le terme allemand « Migrationshintergrund » (littéralement background migratoire) pose le même problème. L’anthropologie s’intéresse de facto dès l’émergence de la discipline aux migrations, notamment dans l’étude de sociétés pastorales (en focalisant les déplacements des éleveurs et de leurs troupeaux) ou dans l’analyse des processus d’urbanisation (suite à la migration du monde rural vers les villes). En revanche, l’anthropologie des migrations et de la transnationalisation n’émergent que dans les années 1990 en tant que champ portant explicitement ce nom – d’abord dans le monde anglophone (Glick Schiller N., Basch L. et C. Blanc Szanton 1992, Hannerz U. 1996), et ensuite dans le monde francophone (Raulin A., D. Cuche et L. Kuczynski 2009 Revue Européenne des Migrations internationales, 2009, no. 25, vol. 3), germanophone (Pries L. 1996), italophone (Riccio 2014), hispanophone, lusophone etc.. La traite des esclaves et les déportations de millions de personnes d’Afrique Sub-Saharienne vers l’Europe et les Amériques, qui ont commencé au 17e siècle et duré jusqu’en 1920, ont été étudiées dans le cadre de l’anthropologie marxiste (Meillassoux 1986) puis par des historiens comme Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau (2004) ou encore par Tidiane N’Diaye (2008), ce dernier ayant mis l’accent sur la longue et intense implication de commerçants arabes dans la traite négrière. La violente « mission civilisatrice » ou campagne de conquête coloniale a très souvent été accompagnée d’une mission de conversion au christianisme, ce qui a fait l’objet de publications en anthropologie depuis une trentaine d’années sous l’impulsion de Jean et John Comaroff (1991) aux Etats-Unis, et plus récemment en France (Prudhomme 2005). Selon les contextes régionaux, l’une ou l’autre forme de migration a été étudiée de manière prépondérante. En Chine, les migrations internes, notamment du monde rural vers les villes, concernent presque autant de personnes dans l’absolu (229,8 millions en 2009 selon l’Organisation internationale du Travail) que les migrant-e-s transnationaux dans le monde entier (243,7 millions en 2015 selon les Nations Unies/UN International Migration Report). Le pourcentage de ces derniers par rapport à la population mondiale s’élève à environ trois pour cent, ce qui semble en décalage avec la forte attention médiatique accordée aux migrant-e-s transnationaux en général et aux réfugiés en particulier. En effet, la très grande majorité des déplacé-e-s dans le monde reste à l’intérieur des frontières d’un État-nation (Withol de Wenden C., Benoît-Guyod M. 2016), faute de moyens financiers, logistiques ou juridiques (passeport, visa). La majorité des réfugiés politiques ou climatiques reste à l’intérieur des frontières nationales ou dans un des pays voisins. Ainsi, selon l’UNHCR/ l’Agence des Nations Unies pour les Réfugiés, sur les 65,3 millions de personnes déplacées de force, 40,8 millions étaient des déplacé-e-s internes et seulement 3,2 millions des demandeur-e-s d’asile en 2015. L’urbanisation croissante qui s’opère dans le monde suscite une augmentation de la migration de travail, notamment en Chine. Dans cet État, le système d’enregistrement et d’état-civil (hukou) limite l’accès aux services sociaux (santé, école, etc.) à la commune de naissance : un changement de résidence est soumis à des conditions restrictives, ce qui engendre une perte de droits élémentaires pour des dizaines de millions de migrants ruraux ne possédant pas de permis de résidence (Jijiao 2013). En France, jusqu’au tournant culturel (qui marque une bifurcation de la focale de la recherche vers les appartenances culturelles et religieuses des personnes étudiées) dans les années 1990, les sciences sociales des migrations, notamment la sociologie des migrations, ont surtout étudié les conditions et rapports de travail, les inégalités sociales ou encore la politique du logement et les inégalités spatiales (Salzbrunn 2015), conduisant ainsi à une très forte focalisation sur les rapports de classe et sur les conditions de vie des immigré-e-s des anciennes colonies. La migration des personnes hautement qualifiées n’a en revanche été que peu étudiée. Après la chute du mur de Berlin, les « appartenances multiples » (concept central de l’ouvrage de Yuval-Davis, Viethen et Kannabiran 2006), notamment religieuses (Capone 2010), ont été privilégiées comme objet de recherche. Cette tendance, accompagnée par un climat politique de plus en plus xénophobe dans certains pays européens, a parfois pointé vers une « ethnicisation » de la religion (Tersigni, Vincent et Willems, à paraître). Le glissement de perception d’une population de la catégorie des « travailleurs immigrés » ou « Gastarbeiter » (littéralement « travailleurs invités ») vers celle de « musulmans » s’inscrit dans un processus d’altérisation, sous-entendant dans les deux cas qu’il s’agit d’un groupe homogène marqué par les mêmes caractéristiques, et ignorant de ce fait la « diversité au sein de la diversité » (Vertovec 2010), notamment les différences en termes de niveau de formation, de genre, d’âge, de statut juridique, de préférence sexuelle, du rapport aux discours et pratiques religieux etc. Beaucoup d’études se sont ainsi focalisées sur des groupes fondés sur le critère d’une nationalité ou d’une citoyenneté commune, ce qui a été critiqué comme relevant d’un « nationalisme méthodologique » (Glick Schiller et Caglar 2011). Même le nouveau champ de recherches consacré aux espaces sociaux transnationaux (Basch, Glick Schiller et Szanton Blanc 1992 ; Salzbrunn 2016) a parfois été (auto-)critiqué pour la reproduction des frontières nationales à travers une optique transnationale. Ont alors émergé des réflexions sur une relocalisation de la migration (Glick Schiller et Caglar 2011) et sur l’enracinement spatial de la migration dans des espaces sociaux translocaux (Salzbrunn 2011). Bien que la moitié de la population migratoire soit féminine, les aspects de genre n’ont été étudiés que très tardivement (Morokvasic-Müller 1984), d’abord dans un contexte de regroupement ou de liens familiaux maintenus pendant la migration (Delcroix 2001 ; Kofman 2004 ; Kofman et Raghuram 2014), puis dans celui des approches féministes du développement (Verschuur et Reysoo 2005), de la migration du travail et des frontières genrées (Nouvelles Questions Féministes 26, 2007). En effet, les dynamiques internationales dans la division du travail engendrent une chaîne globale des soins (« global care chain ») qui repose essentiellement sur les femmes, que ce soit dans le domaine médical, de la pédiatrie ou des soins aux personnes âgées. La réflexion sur la division internationale du travail reproductif a été entreprise par Rhacel Parrenas (2000) et développée par Arlie Hochschild (2000). On peut obtenir une vue d’ensemble des projets européens consacrés au genre et à la migration, voir les résultats du projet européen GEMMA. Enhancing Evidence Based Policy-Making in Gender and Migration : http://gemmaproject.seminabit.com/whatis.aspx En anthropologie politique, l’évolution de systèmes politiques sous l’impact d’une migration de retour, a été étudiée dans un contexte postcolonial (von Weichs 2013). De manière générale, les réflexions menées dans un contexte études postcoloniales de ce type n’ont été entreprises que tardivement en France, et ce souvent dans une optique très critique, voire hostile à ces débats (L’Homme 156, 2000). Parmi les autres sujets traités actuellement en anthropologie des migrations se trouvent les inégalités sociales et spatiales, les dynamiques religieuses transnationales (Argyriadis et al. 2012), les réfugiés et leurs moyens d’expressions politiques et artistiques (Salzbrunn 2014) ou musicales (Civilisations 67, 2018 ; Salzbrunn, Souiah et Mastrangelo 2015). Enfin, le développement conceptuel du phénomène de transnationalisation ou des espaces sociaux translocaux, voire le retour à la « localisation de la migration » (titre de l’ouvrage de Glick Schiller et Caglar 2011) sont des réponses constructives à la question : Comment étudier les migrations dans des sociétés super-diverses (Vertovec 2011) sans réifier leurs appartenances ?