Search

Adopting a Civil Sphere Theory framework, we argue that Taiwan's efforts at containing COVID-19 resulted from its "societalization" of pandemic unpreparedness, which was triggered by the 2003 SARS outbreak and resumed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Societalization refers to the process through which institutional failures are transformed into societal crises, with the civil sphere mobilized to discuss institutional dysfunctions, push for reforms, and attempt to democratize or otherwise transform institutional cultures. The societalization of pandemic unpreparedness in Taiwan led to reforms of the public health administration and the medical profession, thereby establishing state mechanisms for encouraging early responses and coordinating centralized command during outbreaks, and healthcare infrastructures for coordinating patient transfer and ensuring supplies of personal protective equipment. Reflections upon past uncivil acts among citizens motivated the civil sphere to foster a discourse of interdependence, redefining the boundaries between individual choices and civic virtues. Meanwhile, unaddressed challenges remained, including threats related to Taiwan's political polarization. Our paper challenges the thesis of "authoritarian advantage," highlighting how democratic societies can foster social preparedness to respond to crises. By illustrating how societalization can reach temporary closures but become reactivated subsequently, our study extends the theory of societalization by explicating its historical dimension.

This article studies how post-colonial public spheres struggle to take hold in the context of serious national identity controversies. Through an analysis of 376 political cartoons published in Hong Kong and Taiwan during the 1990s, we probe the extent to which different political camps manage to engage in civic communication. We find that within each of the two societies, multiple publics are divided by nationalistic stances without much interest for compromise. Nevertheless, in both cases, civic engagement is robust enough to sustain a shared cultural vocabulary across internal nationalistic tensions. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the unresolved national consolidation does limit the publics’ political imaginations. Hong Kong publics are conspicuously incapable of commenting on formal mechanisms between themselves and the state. Publics in Taiwan are severely limited in articulating their civic identities beyond narrowly equating themselves with the electorate. We also discuss how these limitations may be related to the contrasting strategies adopted by the Taiwanese and Hong Kong publics toward the national identity question. The paper dialogues theoretically with studies on the interactions of civil society and nationalism.

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9566.2008.01091.x Byline: Ming-cheng M. Lo (1), Clare L. Stacey (2) Keywords: cultural competency; health disparities; Bourdieu Abstract: Abstract In response to widely documented racial and ethnic disparities in health, clinicians and public health advocates have taken great strides to implement 'culturally competent' care. While laudable, this important policy and intellectual endeavour has suffered from a lack of conceptual clarity and rigour. This paper develops a more careful conceptual model for understanding the role of culture in the clinical encounter, paying particular attention to the relationship between culture, contexts and social structures. Linking Bourdieu's (1977) notion of 'habitus' and William Sewell's (1992) axioms of multiple and intersecting structures, we theorise patient culture in terms of 'hybrid habitus'. This conceptualisation of patient culture highlights three analytical dimensions: the multiplicity of schemas and resources available to patients, their specific patterns of integration and application in specific contexts, and the constitutive role of clinical encounters. The paper concludes with a discussion of directions for future research as well as reforms of cultural competency training courses. Author Affiliation: (1)Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis, USA (2)Department of Sociology, Kent State University, USA Article note: Address for correspondence: Ming-cheng M. Lo, Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA e-mail: mmlo@ucdavis.edu

This article examines how the Chinese market is changing social relations and networks. The authors, focusing on the culture of civility ('guanxi'), argue the market is tranforming the social sphere into an increasingly pluralistic civic realm that is rarely oppositional.

Lisa Rofel. 1999. Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 346. Paperback: $16.95. ISBN 0520210786. Other Modernities is a timely book that documents [...]