{"title":"“You are the prettiest man I have ever met”: Subverting femininity through jocular teasing of Chinese females","authors":"Ying Cao","doi":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100192","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100192","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores how teasing behaviours assist women in expressing intimacy in daily interactions and therefore create different expectations for gender roles under the Chinese context by analysing 379 instances of jocular teasing taken from a Chinese reality TV show. This study identified five strategies, namely jocular deprecation/self-deprecation, jocular criticism, jocular directives, jocular praise/self-praise, and jocular irony. The results indicate that the women incline to using teasing strategies to discursively index power and masculinity via correcting other's behaviours and maintaining a superior position within the group. Additionally, these women use teasing strategies in various combinations to achieve multi-layered communicative goals, including downgrading others and elevating oneself, and defending oneself while attacking others. The women's choices of jocular teasing strategies largely deviate from the traditional views of femininity in the Chinese context.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45675,"journal":{"name":"Asian Journal of Social Science","volume":"53 2","pages":"Article 100192"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143815437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“If doctors ask me to talk, I will talk”: What influences Hong Kong foreign domestic workers’ perceived involvement in healthcare?","authors":"Xixi Wang, Bernadette Maria Watson","doi":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100196","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100196","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong are typically afflicted with various health issues. Research on foreign domestic workers’ experiences utilizing healthcare services remains scarce, especially on their communication with ethnic-discordant healthcare providers. By invoking Street’s ecological model (2003), this research elicits foreign domestic workers’ perspectives and seeks to identify how organizational and cultural factors shape their perceptions of communication with healthcare providers. Thirty female foreign domestic workers participated in semi-structured interviews. They reported that their communication with healthcare providers was susceptible to language-related issues and perceived power distance, which were embedded within the cultural context. Additionally, foreign domestic workers’ narratives confirmed that time constraints and types of healthcare settings, within the organizational context, affected their engagement in medical consultations. These findings support that culturally- and organizationally-pertinent factors affect foreign domestic workers’ perceptions of medical consultations. Intervention strategies to improve communication between foreign domestic worker patients and healthcare providers are recommended.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45675,"journal":{"name":"Asian Journal of Social Science","volume":"53 2","pages":"Article 100196"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143950453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Entrepreneurial urbanization and masculine identities: an exploratory study of Khon Kaen, Thailand","authors":"Charrlotte Adelina , Jenny Yi-Chen Han","doi":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100197","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100197","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Our study identifies the relationships between entrepreneurial urbanization and masculine identities through the case study of smart city development in Khon Kaen, a secondary city in Thailand. We studied the planning and governance structure of the smart city plan, vis-à-vis the motivations, experiences, and responses to urban development in poor communities. We interviewed men and women from different livelihood, age, and class groups to answer the following questions: (a) How do masculine identities and roles shape entrepreneurial modes and processes of urbanization? Specifically, how is urban governance gendered? (b) How does urban development reinforce, reconfigure, or alienate masculine identities? We argue that while technocratic business masculinities are reinforced in an age of neoliberal urbanization, the spurring of privatized smart enclaves and knowledge economies threaten the identities of working-class men and their gendered experience of belonging in the city. The masculinization of urban elite networks accompanied by the feminization of the civil society further enables exclusionary modes of city governance to operate. This is brought about through the tokenizing of poor communities’ participation in planning processes and a manufacturing of cohesion through the appropriation of technocratic and evidence-based approaches by elite networks that typify technocratic masculine ideals, as opposed to the ‘feminine’ affective and consultative strategies employed by civil society groups.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45675,"journal":{"name":"Asian Journal of Social Science","volume":"53 2","pages":"Article 100197"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143894913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The dual perspectives on the nature of supervisory power in China: The appearance of power and its generative logic","authors":"Zhuo Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100194","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100194","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The issue of defining the nature of supervisory power is a core problem in studying the modern Chinese supervisory system. The characterization of this power will profoundly influence the nature of modern Chinese supervisory agencies, the operational logic of supervisory power, and the understanding and judgment of its relationship with other forms of power. Existing analyses of the ownership of supervisory power tend to focus on the external appearance of power. rather than deeply revealing the inherent logic of its generation. Therefore, it is essential to adopt the latter as a perspective for analyzing the ownership of supervisory power. Thus, introducing the perspective of the generation logic of supervisory power can not only reveal the general characteristics of supervisory power but also highlight the distinctive features of the current supervisory system in China.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45675,"journal":{"name":"Asian Journal of Social Science","volume":"53 2","pages":"Article 100194"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143748068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Media-crafted social inequality: Analyzing the disconnect between Gap Society discourse and social inequality in post-bubble Japan","authors":"Jiangcheng Wu , Keqing Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100193","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100193","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the evolution of Gap Society discourse in Japan from 1988 to 2023, analyzing the disconnect between media portrayals and actual social conditions. Through a combination of critical discourse analysis (CDA) and text mining, the study identifies key discourse types—political, economic, academic, educational, social, and literary—across four periods of growth and decline. It finds that political discourse predominated during periods of growth, while literary discourse gained importance during declines. The study highlights the role of media in constructing symbolic realities, revealing how different newspapers employ similar frameworks to report on the Gap Society, thereby shaping a collective narrative that diverges from objective social conditions. Additionally, this paper also shows how shifting power dynamics among scholars, newspaper editors, writers, and the general public have influenced the evolution of the discourse. This mechanism, rooted in state-led modernization, may be a unique phenomenon in East Asia.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45675,"journal":{"name":"Asian Journal of Social Science","volume":"53 2","pages":"Article 100193"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143748061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond resistance and resignation: A narrative inquiry into the \"lying flat\" movement and the reimagining of work, success, and autonomy among Chinese urban youth (AJSS-100198)","authors":"Lina Sun","doi":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100198","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100198","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper critically examines the \"lying flat\" movement as a sociocultural phenomenon of the Chinese youth within their form of passive resistance against the dominant work ethic and societal expectations. Drawing on narrative inquiry, this study foregrounds the personal stories and reflections of the involved with the movement, understanding their motivations, experiences, as well as the larger implications that accompany the decision to \"lie flat.\" The study uses qualitative interviews in various urban centers in China to bring to light the sensitivity with which young people are re-envisaging work, success, and independence in the wake of contemporary pressures of life. The findings reveal an intricate landscape of resistance, resignation, and creative adaptation in which \"lying flat\" is not just a story of withdrawal but becomes a statement about personal agency and social critique. This tendency is signaling a huge problem in discourse related to labor, leisure, and the meaning of a fulfilled life, contesting the unsustainable demands towards the younger generation. Implications of this study extend to policy makers, educators, and societal stakeholders that ask us to reflect on the values which define success and achievement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45675,"journal":{"name":"Asian Journal of Social Science","volume":"53 2","pages":"Article 100198"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143892144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Chee, Lilian 2023 Architecture and Affect: Precarious Spaces. Oxford and New York: Routledge","authors":"Jane M Jacobs","doi":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100195","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100195","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45675,"journal":{"name":"Asian Journal of Social Science","volume":"53 2","pages":"Article 100195"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143843070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Feminism is like a light to me”: The collective process of feminist awakening among young female college students in South Korea","authors":"Gowoon Jung , Minyoung Moon","doi":"10.1016/j.ajss.2024.10.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ajss.2024.10.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Amidst the global resurgence and popularization of feminism and the increasing prominence of digital and neoliberal feminism, feminism in Korea has also experienced a notable resurgence in popularity and a majority of Korean women in their twenties actively embrace feminist beliefs and ideas. Scholarly discussions on digital and neoliberal feminism among young women have reached a broader consensus on an individualized approach in the formation and practice of feminism. Examining this conceptual matter within a distinctive local Korean setting, the study delves into the collective journey of young female college students who actively participate in feminist practices and experience a transformative transition to feminists. The analysis demonstrates that female college students feel awakened as feminists by engaging in small practices in their daily lives and actively learning about feminism within the collective campus environment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45675,"journal":{"name":"Asian Journal of Social Science","volume":"53 1","pages":"Article 100177"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142700677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Young Jun Choi , Hyung-min Joo , Taehee Whang , Wooseon Choi
{"title":"Shifting determinants of socioeconomic status in North Korea: The impact of marketisation","authors":"Young Jun Choi , Hyung-min Joo , Taehee Whang , Wooseon Choi","doi":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100183","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100183","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Since the collapse of its socialist command economy in the mid-1990s, North Korea has experienced marketization from below. Has bottom-up marketization also affected the factors that determine subjective perceptions of socioeconomic status in North Korea? Although many studies have investigated various recent changes in North Korea, they often suffer from a lack of solid empirical research based on reliable data. In this paper, we theorize that political factors, which are typically most important in a socialist society, were critical in determining socioeconomic status during the early years of marketization, but economic factors have played an increasingly important role in the more mature stages of marketization. To test our theory, we use a survey of 1,309 North Korean defectors and in-depth interviews with 73 defectors. The results confirm that the key determinants of subjective socioeconomic status have shifted from political factors to market-related elements in contemporary North Korean society.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":45675,"journal":{"name":"Asian Journal of Social Science","volume":"53 1","pages":"Article 100183"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143464415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"","authors":"C.R. Yadu","doi":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100185","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ajss.2025.100185","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45675,"journal":{"name":"Asian Journal of Social Science","volume":"53 1","pages":"Article 100185"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143512300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}