The recent emergence of generative AI software as viable tools for use in the cultural and creative industries has sparked debates about the potential for “creativity” to be automated and “augmented” by algorithmic machines. Such discussions, however, begin from an ontological position, attempting to define creativity by either falling prey to universalism (i.e. “creativity is X”) or reductionism (i.e. “only humans can be truly creative” or “human creativity will be fully replaced by creative machines”). Furthermore, such an approach evades addressing (...) the real and material impacts of AI on creative labour in these industries. This article thus offers more expansive methodological and conceptual approaches to the recent hype on generative AI. By combining (Csikszentmihalyi, The systems model of creativity, Springer, Dordrecht, 2014) systems view of creativity, in which we emphasise the shift from “what” to “where” is creativity, with (Lievrouw, Media technologies, The MIT Press, 2014) relational-materialist theory of “mediation”, we argue that the study of “creativity” in the context of generative AI must be attentive to the interactions between technologies, practices, and social arrangements. When exploring the relational space between these elements, three core concepts become pertinent: creative labour, automation, and distributed agency. Critiquing “creativity” through these conceptual lenses allows us to re-situate the use of generative AI within discourses of labour in post-industrial capitalism and brings us to a conceptualisation of creativity that privileges neither the human user nor machine algorithm but instead emphasises a relational and distributed form of agency. (shrink)

Christianity has become the religion of choice for a growing number of diasporic Chinese. This qualitative study examines the conversion narratives of first-generation Chinese converts to evangelical Protestant Christianity, exploring in particular the spiritual experiences that encouraged or confirmed their resolve to become Christians. Utilizing the method of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, twenty English-speaking participants were interviewed, mostly immigrants to the United States or the United Kingdom from China, including Hong Kong, or from Taiwan. The converts to Christianity in this study (...) were in search of an intellectually plausible faith, and an overarching framework of meaning, purpose, and fullness for their lives, and were motivated as well by longings for community and belonging. Participants reported being profoundly “touched”—inexplicably moved—by the love extended to them by other Chinese Christians, and being transformed in wide-ranging and durable ways as a result. In their view, such love was qualitatively different from, and superior to, the more transactional relational dynamics with which they had been familiar. They inferred that it was “otherworldly,” and necessarily emanated from a real and unconditionally benevolent divine source. The study thus illuminates the spiritual dynamics that persist in Chinese Christian conversions, even in a secular age. (shrink)

We live in an increasingly globalizing world, in which countries are closely linked by international trade and investment ties. Cross-cultural comparative studies of national values and ethics have attracted growing research interest in recent years, because shared practices, values and ethical standards depend on shared beliefs. However, the findings of such studies have been unable to reach a consensus on the impact of culture on ethics-related attitudes and behavior. Empirically, many "cross–cultural" differences reported by previous studies might actually stem from (...) cross-national differences. In order to partially fill this gap, this study advocates an analytical framework that isolates the role of cultural and national differences in order to test their relationship to individual level variables. Within this framework, we test competing hypotheses based on both cultural and national contexts by comparing groups of Chinese and American respondents together with a "bridging group" of Chinese Chinese-Americans. Theoretically, this contextual approach helps resolve the debate on the role of culture, by showing that culture plays a far more important role in shaping value orientations than the national background. Specifically, the two ethnic Chinese groups had many cultural values in common, and differed significantly from the Caucasian group. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Enquiry teaching approaches are widely considered as more useful than didactic approaches for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour. This paper is a report of an empirical study on the validity of this belief with reference to higher-ability and lower- to medium-ability groups drawn from geography classes at the Advanced Level in Hong Kong. The hypotheses were that, taken together, enquiry approaches are more effective than didactic approaches for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour in both the short and long (...) terms for students as a whole, and for students within the same range of academic ability. A quasi-experimental control group design was used for selecting students and classes from schools in the territory. A questionnaire survey and a series of interviews were conducted to collect data about students' behaviour before and after they were taught a people-environment topic with a didactic approach or an enquiry approach. The results suggest that the students on the whole were not behaving as positively for the environment as their peers in other countries. For both the higher- and the lower- to medium-ability classes, those who were taught with an enquiry approach were behaving positively in more areas than those who were taught with a didactic approach in both the short and long terms. This trend could be attributed to their greater attention to critical thinking, positive behavioural changes, and the development of internal locus of control, while society as a whole was still largely apathetic to personal efforts for improving environmental quality. To further enhance the effectiveness of enquiry for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour, it is suggested that teachers should give more attention to the elements of concern and empathy in the classroom. Improvements in teacher education and training and in the guidelines for teachers, restructuring and revision of environmental education in schools, providing adequate funding and resources, and revision of the style and content of questions in public examinations are also recommended. (shrink)

Trust is indispensable not only for interpersonal relationships and social life, but for good quality healthcare. As manifested in the increasing violence and tension in patient-physician relationships, China has been experiencing a widespread and profound crisis of patient–physician trust. And globally, the crisis of trust is an issue that every society, either developing or developed, has to face in one way or another. Yet, in spite of some pioneering works, the subject of patient-physician trust and mistrust – a crucial matter (...) in healthcare especially because there are numerous ethical implications – has largely been marginalized in bioethics as a global discourse. Drawing lessons as well as inspirations from China, this paper demonstrates the necessity of a trust-oriented bioethics and presents some key theoretical, methodological and philosophical elements of such a bioethics. A trust-oriented bioethics moves beyond the current dominant bioethical paradigms through putting the subject of trust and mistrust in the central agenda of the field, learning from the social sciences, and reviving indigenous moral resources. In order for global bioethics to claim its relevance to the things that truly matter in social life and healthcare, trust should be as vital as such central norms like autonomy and justice and can serve as a potent theoretical framework. (shrink)

By bringing queer ecologies to bear on the blue humanities, this essay promotes a queer hydropoetic investigation that attends to the forms, aesthetics, and politics of pools. Pools are sites of aquatic enjoyment, sport, and revelation that have long been understudied within the blue humanities. We ask whether the promises and failures of swimming in these geographies can provide a queer heuristic in which submersion, immersion, and staying afloat subtend coming out, queer eroticism, and queer of color coalitional politics. Our (...) tripartite examination engages the independent film Saved! (2004), the ecosexual documentary Water Makes Us Wet (2019), and the young adult novel and graphic novel adaptation of Gabby Rivera’s Juliet Takes a Breath (2016/2019 and 2020, respectively). Our analysis of pools, as intimate bodies of water that capture media and literature alike, reorients the blue humanities to consider closer proximities and smaller scales of water’s queer potentiality. (shrink)

A steady demand for green products from concerned consumers has led companies to introduce new product lines that match or exceed consumer environmental concerns. Nonetheless, not all the organizations were able to achieve significant returns on their investments in green products. These failures are generally attributed towards companies’ inability to overcome consumer scepticism towards the performance of functional and green attributes of their brands to generate a positive green image and green value in consumers mind. Therefore, the question arises that (...) does the success in promoting green brand image and value depend on consumer existing perceptions about the brand quality and credibility? This study analyzes the influence of brand perceive quality and credibility on consumer perceptions towards a brand green image, green value and green equity. A theoretical model with hypothesized relationships is developed and tested to answer these research questions. Data have been collected from the consumers of electrical and electronic goods. The hypothesized relationships were tested with the help of structural equation modeling procedure. The results suggest that brand perceived quality and its overall credibility does have a significant influence on generating a greener image, green perceive value and green brand equity. (shrink)

This article is a review of the rise and development of women’s studies and the sociology of women/gender, two interrelated academic fields in China. Informed by the sociology of knowledge, the authors analyze how historical and sociopolitical factors such as the legacy of Marxism, state/party control, economic reform, political upheavals, local conditions, and global influences have greatly shaped what and how women’s and gender issues are studied and the resultant characteristics and knowledge production of the two fields in China. Specifically, (...) the authors examine the dynamic process of knowledge development in sociology of women/gender in terms of its academic positioning, standpoint, content, research methodology, curriculum transformation, and teaching in China. Finally, the authors demonstrate how the characteristics and issues shared by the two fields have evolved in a dynamic interplay between Chinese Marxism and feminism. (shrink)

This study uses three audit-specific ethical dilemmas to assess the level of ethical reasoning between Chinese accounting students (as proxies for new entrants to the auditing profession) and experienced auditors. A sample of U.S. accounting students is used as a base for comparison. Consistent with expectations based on particularly salient aspects of Chinese national culture, we find the Chinese students’ levels of ethical reasoning to be significantly lower than those of their U.S. counterparts in the two cases that invoked these (...) cultural attributes. In contrast, the Chinese students’ level of ethical reasoning is slightly higher than that of the U.S. students in the third, control case. We further find that the Chinese auditors’ levels of ethical reasoning are even lower than those of the Chinese students in two cases, while not being significantly different in the third. Together, these findings suggest that cross-national differences in auditors’ ethical reasoning depend on the nature of the ethical dilemma and caution against wholesale inferences about ethical reasoning levels in China. (shrink)

A survey of contemporary philosophical and scientific literatures reveals that different authors employ the term ‘heuristic’ in ways that deviate from, and are sometimes inconsistent with, one another. Given its widespread use in philosophy and cognitive science generally, it is striking that there appears to be little concern for a clear account of what phenomena heuristics pick out or refer to. In response, I consider several accounts of ‘heuristic’, and I draw a number of distinctions between different sorts of heuristics (...) in order to make sense of various research programmes. I then develop a working characterization of ‘heuristic’ which is shown to be coherent and robust enough to serve as a kind within philosophy and cognitive science broadly. My intent is not to pursue a unified account of ‘heuristic’, but to highlight some features of certain kinds of heuristics that are important for theorizing about cognition in order to proceed with a science of the mind/brain. 1 Why We Need an Appropriate Characterization of ‘Heuristic’2 Inadequate Definitions2.1 A positive attempt2.2 Heuristics versus guaranteed correct outcomes3 A Taxonomy of Heuristics3.1 Stimulus-driven versus heuristic3.2 Perceptual versus cognitive heuristics3.3 Computational versus cognitive heuristics3.4 Methodological versus inferential heuristics3.5 Summary of distinctions4 Characterizing Cognitive Heuristics4.1 Heuristics as rules of thumb4.2 Beyond rules of thumb: exploiting information5 Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger once wrote that the world had, in the age of modern science, become a world picture. For Rey Chow, the world has, in the age of atomic bombs, become a world target, to be attacked once it is identified, or so global geopolitics, dominated by the United States since the end of the Second World War, seems repeatedly to confirm. How to articulate the problematics of knowledge production with this aggressive targeting of the world? Chow attempts (...) such an articulation by probing the significance of the chronological proximity of area studies, poststructuralist theory, and comparative literature—fields of inquiry that have each exerted considerable influence but whose mutual implicatedness as postwar U.S. academic phenomena has seldom been theorized. Central to Chow’s discussions is a critique of the predicament of self-referentiality—the compulsive move to interiorize that, in her view, constitutes the collective frenzy of our age—in different contemporary epistemic registers, including the self-consciously avant-garde as well as the militaristic and culturally supremacist. Urging her readers to think beyond the inward-turning focus on EuroAmerica that tends to characterize even the most radical gestures of Western self-deconstruction, Chow envisions much broader intellectual premises for future transcultural work, with reading practices aimed at restoring words and things to their constitutive exteriority. (shrink)

Mental or computer simulation of cause and effect of certain behaviors is a recognized approach to changing one’s attitude or triggering an action. Meanwhile, psychology research results suggest that frequency of simulation may affect the corresponding persuasiveness. This paper argues that with always-on sensing and data-driven visualization technologies, interactive tangible systems can be designed to simulate hypothetical outcomes of real-life behaviors in everyday contexts, which repeatedly stimulate users’ imagination of behavioral consequences and thereby behavioral intentions. To investigate the effect, a (...) working prototype of Incingarette, including a smart ashtray in connection with a digital picture frame, was built. When the ashtray is used for smoking, the digital picture is incrementally covered by virtual dust. Field trials involved participants in five daily smoking sessions. Post-session surveys show increasingly stronger perceived causality between smoking and the simulated outcomes, increasingly more vivid mental imagery of consequences, and increasingly intense intention to reduce smoking. Results suggest that repeatedly presenting simulated outcomes cognitively linked to real-life behaviors can increase behavioral intentions. (shrink)

Enquiry teaching approaches are widely considered as more useful than didactic approaches for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour. This paper is a report of an empirical study on the validity of this belief with reference to higher-ability and lower- to medium-ability groups drawn from geography classes at the Advanced Level in Hong Kong. The hypotheses were that, taken together, enquiry approaches are more effective than didactic approaches for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour in both the short and long (...) terms for students as a whole, and for students within the same range of academic ability. A quasi-experimental control group design was used for selecting students and classes from schools in the territory. A questionnaire survey and a series of interviews were conducted to collect data about students' behaviour before and after they were taught a people-environment topic with a didactic approach or an enquiry approach. The results suggest that the students on the whole were not behaving as positively for the environment as their peers in other countries. For both the higher- and the lower- to medium-ability classes, those who were taught with an enquiry approach were behaving positively in more areas than those who were taught with a didactic approach in both the short and long terms. This trend could be attributed to their greater attention to critical thinking, positive behavioural changes, and the development of internal locus of control, while society as a whole was still largely apathetic to personal efforts for improving environmental quality. To further enhance the effectiveness of enquiry for the development of environmentally responsible behaviour, it is suggested that teachers should give more attention to the elements of concern and empathy in the classroom. Improvements in teacher education and training and in the guidelines for teachers, restructuring and revision of environmental education in schools, providing adequate funding and resources, and revision of the style and content of questions in public examinations are also recommended. (shrink)

In this article, we contribute to sociological literatures on morality, professional and institutional contexts, and morally stigmatized ‘dirty work’ by emphasizing and exploring how they mutually inform one another in lawyers’ work activities. Drawing on interview data with 58 practitioners in the commercial legal industry in Singapore, we analyze how they experience professional and institutional constraints on the expressions of morality in their work. Our findings illustrate how a dominant managerial and economic focus maintains and reproduces a constrained form of (...) morality, limited to instrumental, utilitarian and commercial ends, and subordinated to lucrative client and firm interests. We discuss our findings in terms of the need to research and reform professions in ways that support more rounded and unconstrained moral reflexivity and autonomy in how work is undertaken and valued. This in turn has implications for how organizations and professions might achieve alternative moral institutional orders, and for legal work to avoid the moral and social taints of dirty work. (shrink)

The article discusses the challenge of Indecent Theology to Latin American liberation theology and feminist theology in unmasking their implicit support for the binary, heterosexual norms of society. Althaus-Reid argues that theology is a sexual act, and provides rich metaphors and language for a vibrant sexual political theology. Her work undresses conventional Christian symbols by queering the intersection of theology, sexuality, and politics.

This edited volume showcases theological reflections on the Hong Kong protests by scholars and activists from different national and cultural background. It discusses the meaning of crucifixion, atonement, the suffering Messiah, justice, the demonic, and the roles of the Church in a time of global unrest and social ferment and protest.

In this article, the author shares her reflection on the evolution of Ada María Isasi-Díaz’s work, and Mujerista Theology, through the story of Isasi-Díaz own life story. Her complex story, filled with struggle, illustrates the embeddedness of Mujerista Theology in the social fabric and lives of Hispanas and Latinas. The article explores the difficulty of an intellectual seeking to release the voices of grassroots women, even in her own community, and also the cross-cultural possibilities of understanding the language and theology (...) of one cultural group from within another, specifically, the author’s own Chinese context. (shrink)

This article proposes a new bi-directional way of understanding the convergence of biology and computing. It argues for a reciprocal interaction in which biology and computing have shaped and are currently reshaping each other. In so doing, we qualify both the view of a natural marriage and of a digital shaping of biology, which are common in the literature written by scientists, STS, and communication scholars. The DNA database is at the center of this interaction. We argue that DNA databases (...) are spaces of convergence for computing and biology that change in form, meaning, and function from the 1960s to the 2000s. The first part of the article shows how, in the 1980s, DNA sequencing shifted from passively incorporating computers to be increasingly modeled in digital coding and decoding. Information retrieval algorithms, reciprocally, were altered according to the peculiarities of DNA in the first sequence-storage databases. The second part of the article investigates the impact of these reciprocal interactions and globalization on the organization of research centers, ways of conducting big science, and scientific values. Through convergence and new technologies such as data mining, biology and computing were transformed technologically, institutionally, and culturally into a new bio-data enterprise called genomics. (shrink)

This article examines the social circumstances, both current and past, that have affected the development and transformation of feminist consciousness among Asian American women. Gender, race, class, and culture all influenced the relative lack of participation of Asian American women in the mainstream feminist movement in the United States. It concludes that Asian American women have to come to terms with their multiple identities and define feminist issues from multiple dimensions. By incorporating race, class, and cultural issues along with gender (...) concerns, a transcendent feminist consciousness that goes beyond these boundaries may develop. (shrink)

The null-hypothesis significance-test procedure (NHSTP) is defended in the context of the theory-corroboration experiment, as well as the following contrasts: (a) substantive hypotheses versus statistical hypotheses, (b) theory corroboration versus statistical hypothesis testing, (c) theoretical inference versus statistical decision, (d) experiments versus nonexperimental studies, and (e) theory corroboration versus treatment assessment. The null hypothesis can be true because it is the hypothesis that errors are randomly distributed in data. Moreover, the null hypothesis is never used as a categorical proposition. Statistical (...) significance means only that chance influences can be excluded as an explanation of data; it does not identify the nonchance factor responsible. The experimental conclusion is drawn with the inductive principle underlying the experimental design. A chain of deductive arguments gives rise to the theoretical conclusion via the experimental conclusion. The anomalous relationship between statistical significance and the effect size often used to criticize NHSTP is more apparent than real. The absolute size of the effect is not an index of evidential support for the substantive hypothesis. Nor is the effect size, by itself, informative as to the practical importance of the research result. Being a conditional probability, statistical power cannot be the apriori probability of statistical significance. The validity of statistical power is debatable because statistical significance is determined with a single sampling distribution of the test statistic based on H0, whereas it takes two distributions to represent statistical power or effect size. Sample size should not be determined in the mechanical manner envisaged in power analysis. It is inappropriate to criticize NHSTP for nonstatistical reasons. At the same time, neither effect size, nor confidence interval estimate, nor posterior probability can be used to exclude chance as an explanation of data. Neither can any of them fulfill the nonstatistical functions expected of them by critics. (shrink)

The frame problem was originally a problem for Artificial Intelligence, but philosophers have interpreted it as an epistemological problem for human cognition. As a result of this reinterpretation, however, specifying the frame problem has become a difficult task. To get a better idea of what the frame problem is, how it gives rise to more general problems of relevance, and how deep these problems run, I expound six guises of the frame problem. I then assess some proposed heuristic solutions to (...) the frame problem; I show that these proposals misunderstand, and fail to address, an important aspect of the frame problem. Finally, I argue that though human cognition does not solve the frame problem in its epistemological guise, human cognition avoids some of the epistemological worries. (shrink)

This pathbreaking work argues that the major intellectual trend in China from the seventeenth through to the early nineteenth century was Confucian ritualism, as expressed in ethics and classical learning. Through the performance of rites, the early Qing scholars believed they could cultivate Confucian virtues and achieve social order. The author shows how Confucian ritualism, with its emphasis on lineage, became a broad movement of social reform that stressed conformity and clearly prescribed rules of behavior, expressed notably in the growing (...) cult of female chastity. (shrink)