title: Laowai: Contested Identity and Imagined Community among Shanghai's Expatriates

authors: Foote, David

subjects: Expatriate

abstract: Considering their significance to the globalised economy, expatriate communities have attracted relatively little scholarly scrutiny.  Much has been written about non-Western migration to the West, but there has been little attention paid to population transfers in the opposite direction.  Shanghai has a long historical and cultural association with the West and, thanks to China’s continued economic growth, the city's Western expatriate population has more than tripled since 2001. This research utilises ethnographic methods to examine identity and community within Shanghai's expatriate population. Using data from participant-observation, as well as text gleaned from interviews and personal narrative, I document the construction, by expatriates, of small, tightly bounded networks of support as well as the broader imagined community of "Westernness" from which these fictive kinship groups were typically drawn.  Analysing transmigrancy through a ritual lens, I argue that this imagined Western community is best understood as an expression of communitas and that expatriates are liminal figures themselves, stalled in the middle phase of the migration ritual.  Indeed, expatriates frequently located themselves between China and the West, unable to become Chinese but also unwilling to be seen as just another tourist. Local Chinese constructions of self also position the Western Other on the periphery - entangling "whiteness" and Westernness with assumptions of class, cosmopolitanism and personal freedom.  Walled compounds and private drivers allowed some expatriates to move easily from one comfortable enclave of Westernness to another, only engaging with the local Chinese Other touristically.  However, many expatriates made deeper claims of local emplacement, stitching together patchwork cosmopolitan neighbourhoods out of scattered, often discontiguous local and expatriate spaces.  These blended neighbourhood bubbles provided expatriates with a space for the performance of new, liminal, transnational identities - rooted in Shanghai but still comfortably Western.

text: Laowai: Contested Identity and Imagined Community among Shanghai's Expatriates Considering their significance to the globalised economy, expatriate communities have attracted relatively little scholarly scrutiny.  Much has been written about non-Western migration to the West, but there has been little attention paid to population transfers in the opposite direction.  Shanghai has a long historical and cultural association with the West and, thanks to China’s continued economic growth, the city's Western expatriate population has more than tripled since 2001. This research utilises ethnographic methods to examine identity and community within Shanghai's expatriate population. Using data from participant-observation, as well as text gleaned from interviews and personal narrative, I document the construction, by expatriates, of small, tightly bounded networks of support as well as the broader imagined community of "Westernness" from which these fictive kinship groups were typically drawn.  Analysing transmigrancy through a ritual lens, I argue that this imagined Western community is best understood as an expression of communitas and that expatriates are liminal figures themselves, stalled in the middle phase of the migration ritual.  Indeed, expatriates frequently located themselves between China and the West, unable to become Chinese but also unwilling to be seen as just another tourist. Local Chinese constructions of self also position the Western Other on the periphery - entangling "whiteness" and Westernness with assumptions of class, cosmopolitanism and personal freedom.  Walled compounds and private drivers allowed some expatriates to move easily from one comfortable enclave of Westernness to another, only engaging with the local Chinese Other touristically.  However, many expatriates made deeper claims of local emplacement, stitching together patchwork cosmopolitan neighbourhoods out of scattered, often discontiguous local and expatriate spaces.  These blended neighbourhood bubbles provided expatriates with a space for the performance of new, liminal, transnational identities - rooted in Shanghai but still comfortably Western.

year: 2017

title: Using narrative as a tool to locate and challenge pre service teacher bodies in health and physical education

authors: McMahon, Jennifer Ann

abstract: This paper reports on research that has explored the use of narrative as a pedagogical tool in pre service teacher education. Specifically, we pursue the use of narrative to engage with pre service teachers’ embodied experiences [their lived body] and the ways in which these experiences are in turn currently influencing their ‘living bodies’ in regard to what Health and Physical Education (HPE) is and how it should be taught. Data in the form of an assemblage of pre service teachers’ narratives are presented to show how both the lived and living body contributes to thoughts and ideas about HPE. Discussion also reflects on the pedagogical merits of using narrative in pre service teacher education. We contend that narrative has a potentially important role to play in pre service teachers coming to better understand their bodies and can assist in moving them beyond what they experienced as HPE as school students.

text: Using narrative as a tool to locate and challenge pre service teacher bodies in health and physical education This paper reports on research that has explored the use of narrative as a pedagogical tool in pre service teacher education. Specifically, we pursue the use of narrative to engage with pre service teachers’ embodied experiences [their lived body] and the ways in which these experiences are in turn currently influencing their ‘living bodies’ in regard to what Health and Physical Education (HPE) is and how it should be taught. Data in the form of an assemblage of pre service teachers’ narratives are presented to show how both the lived and living body contributes to thoughts and ideas about HPE. Discussion also reflects on the pedagogical merits of using narrative in pre service teacher education. We contend that narrative has a potentially important role to play in pre service teachers coming to better understand their bodies and can assist in moving them beyond what they experienced as HPE as school students.

year: 2013

title: The timing of the human discovery and colonization of New Zealand

authors: Sutton, Douglas G.

abstract: In discriminating between the proposed Long, Short and Intermediate Chronologies for New Zealand prehistory, archaeologists have recently voted by a narrow majority that the human commensal, Rattus exulans, was present in New Zealand up to 2000 years BP, although the preferred date of ‘first settlement’ by people was ca 800 years BP. A recalibration of New Zealand chronometric data has resulted in reinterpretations of the date and duration of occupation on critical archaeological sites. A remodelling of the ages of the putatively earliest sites in New Zealand has shown these to indicate only a broadly defined period when settlement occurred rather than the date when New Zealand was discovered (as the Short Chronology advocates have insisted). Finally, comparisons with archaeological research on islands elsewhere in the world have brought with them recognition that the discovery, exploration, initial settlement and colonization of New Zealand by Polynesian voyagers were broadly consecutive processes. This paper reviews a range of current evidence in the context of its current theorization and affirms the Long Chronology, recognizing it as the most plausible hypothesis.

text: The timing of the human discovery and colonization of New Zealand In discriminating between the proposed Long, Short and Intermediate Chronologies for New Zealand prehistory, archaeologists have recently voted by a narrow majority that the human commensal, Rattus exulans, was present in New Zealand up to 2000 years BP, although the preferred date of ‘first settlement’ by people was ca 800 years BP. A recalibration of New Zealand chronometric data has resulted in reinterpretations of the date and duration of occupation on critical archaeological sites. A remodelling of the ages of the putatively earliest sites in New Zealand has shown these to indicate only a broadly defined period when settlement occurred rather than the date when New Zealand was discovered (as the Short Chronology advocates have insisted). Finally, comparisons with archaeological research on islands elsewhere in the world have brought with them recognition that the discovery, exploration, initial settlement and colonization of New Zealand by Polynesian voyagers were broadly consecutive processes. This paper reviews a range of current evidence in the context of its current theorization and affirms the Long Chronology, recognizing it as the most plausible hypothesis.

year: 2008