Kathy Acker was a punk-rock counter-cultural icon, and innovator of the literary underground. The interviews collected here span her amazing, uncompromising, and often misunderstood 30-year career.From Acker's earliest interviews--filled with playful, evasive, and counter-intuitive responses--to the last interview before her death where she reflects on the state of American literature, these interviews capture the writer at her funny and surprising best. Another hi...

The effects of the de-regulation of the Chinese university system have been nothing short of spectacular. For the first time since 1949, students possessing neither gifted intellect nor political connections have been able to share in the benefits of higher education, while a flood of international educators have opened up a previously cloistered and politically sensitized academic world. This fascinating book examines China’s higher education system, and how it’s new and unique blend of f...

Contemporary Chinese Politics: Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies considers how new and diverse sources and methods are changing the study of Chinese politics. Contributors spanning three generations in China studies place their distinct qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches in the framework of the discipline and point to challenges or opportunities (or both) of adapting new sources and methods to the study of contemporary China. How can we more effectively use new sou...

Fengshu Liu situates the lives of Chinese youth and the growth of the Internet against the backdrop of rapid and profound social transformation in China. In 2008, the total of Internet users in China had reached 253 million (in comparison with 22.5 million in 2001). Yet, despite rapid growth, the Internet in China is so far a predominantly urban-youth phenomenon, with young people under thirty (especially those under twenty-four), mostly members of the only-child generation, as the main gr...

Despite radical and fundamental reform of the Chinese higher education system, very little is known about this outside China. The past decade has seen radical reform of all levels of China’s education system as it attempts to meet changing economic and social needs and aspirations: this has included transformation of university curricula, pedagogy and evaluation measures, rapidly increasing joint research and degree programmes between Chinese universities and universities abroad, and very ...

Outlining sociology’s distinctive contribution to childhood studies and our understanding of contemporary children and childhood, The Sociology of Children, Childhood and Generation provides a thought provoking and comprehensive account of the connections between the macro worlds of childhood and the micro worlds of children’s everyday lives.Examining children’s involvement in areas such as the labour market, family life, education, play and leisure, the book provi...

Over the past decade there has been radical reform at all levels of China’s education system as it attempts to meet changing economic and social needs and aspirations. Changes have been made to pedagogy and teacher professional learning and also to the curriculum - both at the basic education level, from kindergarten to year 12, and at the higher education level. This book focuses on reform at the early childhood, primary and secondary levels, and is the companion book to China’s Highe...

In the current economic climate, more than ever, international students provide an important income to universities. They represent much-needed funds for many institutions, but they also come with their own diverse variety of characteristics and requirements.This insightful book offers a critical stance on contemporary views of international students and challenges the way those involved address the important issues at hand. To do this, the authors focus specifically on giving voic...

What does it mean to practice youth work ethically? How does ethical theory relate to the youth work profession? What are the moral dilemmas confronting youth workers today, and how should practitioners respond?This definitive text on youth work ethics examines these questions and more and should be on the reading lists of all youth work trainees and practitioners. A wide range of topics are covered, including: confidentiality; sexual propriety; dependence and empowerment; equity o...

This volume is the first to offer a comprehensive and, at the same time, in-depth examination of the spread of English and English language education across Greater China. It consists of two parts. Part 1 presents rich sociolinguistic data for easy comparisons between mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, while Part 2 explores in depth the phenomena inside mainland China to provide contrastive analysis of English language use and education in economically booming areas s...

Research into teacher education is dominated by Anglophone literature, with the inevitable result that teacher education in non-English speaking regions of the world largely remains unexamined. This book fills the gap in the existing literature and comprises twelve invited contributions from an international panel of educationists. To provide the reader with a clear structure, the book offers a detailed introduction and afterword which brings together the various themes examined in each ch...

This volume provides a collection of critical new perspectives on social capital theory by examining how social values, power relationships, and social identity interact with social capital. This book seeks to extend this theory into what have been largely under-investigated domains, and, at the same time, address long-standing, classic questions in the literature concerning the forms, determinants, and consequences of social capital.Social capital can be understood in ter...