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Abstract In response to difficulties faced by families in caring for the aged, the government of Taiwan launched a foreign live-in caregiver programme in 1992. This paper draws upon literature on family, domestic work and motives for caregiving to examine how the long-term co-residence of migrant live-in elder care-workers reconfigures Taiwanese families. Our analysis, based on in-depth interviews conducted in the summer of 2009 with 20 Vietnamese migrant live-in care-workers, uses the concept of 'social family' to document the close emotional and quasi-familial relationships between foreign care-workers and members of Taiwanese families. Narratives shed light on the dynamics of these relationships and show the limitations of the concept. The inherent asymmetrical employer-employee power relationship remains, while workers constantly negotiate contradictory feelings and positions in the intimate sphere of the employers' private homes. This paper emphasizes the mutual dependency that migrants experience as both workers and members of a new family. Rather than being seen as cheap, disposable labour, migrants become indispensable to the families. It is this dependency and intimacy that make them part of the family, but also continues to make them vulnerable to abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I develop a detailed consideration of ways in which Chinese religious practitioners, including Daoists, Christians, and spirit mediums, deploy syncretism in complex fields of practice. Rather than focusing on doctrinal blending, this study emphasises the ways in which these practitioners combine elements from diverse religious traditions through the media of ritual performance, visual representation, story, and landscape. After considering the diverse ways in which syncretic processes may be deployed in a field of practice, the paper investigates three ethnographic cases, exploring ritual co-celebration at Wudang Mountain in South-central China, charismatic Christian practices in Singapore, and the recent development of Holy Mount Zion as a Christian pilgrimage site in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In East Asia, until recently, pension demands emerging from the rural sector have been neglected by many governments. In order to further the nascent scholarship in this field, this paper selects Taiwan's case for analysis. More specifically, after conducting an historical institutional study of policy evolution over the last two decades it is found that in spite of depeasantization the interplay between rural income deficiencies, electoral interests and the feedback impacts of introduced programs has led to rural pension expansion. However, clientelistic pension politics is now being challenged by the government chiefly because it is uneconomical and has constituted the major obstruction to more programmatic reform acts being contemplated by state pension bureaucrats. Finally, regarding further policy debates on this sector-specific welfare provision Taiwan's case raises a series of theoretical implications concerning East Asian agricultural wel- fare during the post-agricultural era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In the post disaster situation, relief organizations are expected to learn and adjust their capacity to collaborate with other major players such as nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and local workers. In other words, effective responses to disasters require capacity for collaboration on the part of emergency response agencies; however in disaster affected area, not every relief organization is equally capable of doing so. The capacity for organizations to collaborate with others in and after a disaster does not occur spontaneously or in a vacuum. Since organizational collaborative capacity is essential in disaster relief, it is imperative to present empirical evidence regarding organizational collaborative capacity. The purpose of this paper is to develop a working theory of what characteristics an emergency response organization needs in order to develop collaborative capacity. We analyze collaborative capacities by examining two events: the 2004 Asian Tsunami and the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. This piece argues that collaborative capacity, defined by purpose, structure communication and resources, is a requisite for collaboration in a post disaster situation. The implications for practitioners and scholars in post disaster society are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]