The extensive literature on intimate partner violence (IPV) against women has focused on the sing... more The extensive literature on intimate partner violence (IPV) against women has focused on the single actors of forces imposed on women. Little is known about the intertwined relationships among the roles of multiple participants in the context of IPV. This study used Michel de Certeau’s concepts of strategies, tactics, and space to explore the power struggle between female survivors and IPV perpetrators, family members, and institutions. This study used data collected in semi-structured interviews between 2016 and 2018 with 24 women (30 to 54 years of age) in Taiwan who experienced IPV from their male partners. Thematic analysis was used to identify and organize themes based on the concepts of strategies, tactics, and spatial actions. Three coders analyzed the data based on the conceptual framework, and inter-rater reliability was evaluated to ensure the quality of the results. Six themes were identified and grouped into two dimensions. Female Taiwanese survivors of IPV confronted not only the strategies of their male partners and families but also strategic mechanisms from the police and nongovernmental organizations. Female survivors found tactical opportunities to evade or resist everyday forms of strategic power. Understanding the quotidian experiences of female survivors has important implications for their protection and support to help them increase their safety and well-being when they are involved in an IPV relationship in particular, and spatial power structures in general.
influenced the city’s café scene comprised of Portuguese coffee shops and southern Chinese cafés ... more influenced the city’s café scene comprised of Portuguese coffee shops and southern Chinese cafés (locally referred to as tsa tsan teing). These cafés are an important element of everyday social life in Macau. However, Portugal’s handover of Macau to the People’s Republic of China in 1999 prompted significant changes in the composition of the population and in the spaces of everyday urban life and leisure. The concomitant dismantling of the 40-year gambling monopoly and opening to foreign investment has brought new casinos and other themed leisure spaces to Macau, attracting 20 million tourists to the tiny city in 1997. One increasingly observable material dimension of these changes is the introduction of western franchises and chain outlets like Starbucks, Haagen Dazs, 7–11, and McDonald’s – as well as their local imitators – leading to the increasing homogenization of facades and urban spaces and standardization of service work and related cultural practices. Starbucks and other co...
square-foot, three-level retail structure that is almost completely devoid of shops, merchandise,... more square-foot, three-level retail structure that is almost completely devoid of shops, merchandise, and people. The complex causes for the mall's demise can be traced to labor, financial, demographic, and market-related factors-the displacement of Ohio's industrial jobs overseas; the arbitrage economy that financed the homogenizing series of mergers and buyouts of North America's department store conglomerates (Hallsworth, 1990); the decon-centration of the city's population and settlement sPace; and, not least, the fact that the 2}-year-old mall's ambiance comPares poody when set against century consumer landscape and American middle-class lifesryle'
The French cognac producer Hennessy recently staged a pop-up promotional event called Hennessy De... more The French cognac producer Hennessy recently staged a pop-up promotional event called Hennessy Declassified at the Galaxy Resort in Macau. The event coincided with the annual Golden Week holiday that in October 2019 commemorated the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, and aimed to educate Chinese tourists in Macau about the formative role of geography in the process of creating fine cognac. In this article, I provide a first-hand account of the immersive event and its efforts to cultivate consumer taste among a select group of post-Mao Chinese tourists. I demonstrate the ways in which China’s central government and the producers of Hennessy cognac both share a concern with the generative function of terroir and the relationship among topography and taste, and cooperate in a pedagogical program to produce discerning Chinese consumer-citizens.
In 1999, after nearly half a millennia of administration, Portugal returned the citystate of Maca... more In 1999, after nearly half a millennia of administration, Portugal returned the citystate of Macau to the People’s Republic of China, and it was designated a Special Administrative Region under the PRC’s “one country, two systems” regime. Less than a decade after the handover Macau was transformed into the world’s most lucrative site of casino gaming, and today the city is visited by more than 35 million annual tourists, the majority of whom are from mainland China. Macau’s remarkable economic expansion may be in part attributed to the city’s ambiguous sovereignty, an endemic characteristic which dates to the city’s founding in 1557, and which has long been its most advantageous asset. In this paper I analyze a three-year wave of violent crime, known colloquially as the Casino Wars, which was attributed to Chinese organized crime groups and which plagued Macau’s casino gaming industry in the period just prior to the handover. I seek to understand the relevance of the Casino Wars for...
ABSTRACT Following Portugal’s return of Macau to the People’s Republic of China in 1999, and the ... more ABSTRACT Following Portugal’s return of Macau to the People’s Republic of China in 1999, and the subsequent liberalization of the city’s 150-year-old casino monopoly, Macau was transformed into the world’s most lucrative site of casino gaming. Today Macau attracts more than 30 million annual tourists, the majority of whom are from mainland China. This article analyzes an electronic casino game called LIVE Baccarat, which was created by a Hong Kong biopharmaceutical company, and designed to appeal to Chinese gamblers in Macau. Drawing on the work of Michel Callon and Michel Foucault, I explore the ways in which the LIVE Baccarat gaming machine ‘economizes’ the game of baccarat by introducing novel betting functions which require gamblers to engage in various forms of financial calculation, including calqulation, hedging, arbitrage, and portfolio management. LIVE Baccarat is a biopolitical apparatus of subjection of a post-socialist Chinese homo economicus, a form of ‘human capital’ which Foucault might call an ‘entrepreneur of the self.’ This subject not only plays a remunerative role in Macau’s gaming industry, but conforms to China’s macroeconomic goals to engender ‘quality’ citizens equipped to support a domestic consumer market which may supplant the unsustainable production-for-export regime that drove the country’s initial post-reform development.
ABSTRACTAfter nearly a half millennia of administration, in 1999 Portugal returned the city-state... more ABSTRACTAfter nearly a half millennia of administration, in 1999 Portugal returned the city-state of Macau to the People's Republic of China, and the territory was designated a Special Administrati...
Following Portugal’s return of Macau to the People’s Republic of China in 1999, the local governm... more Following Portugal’s return of Macau to the People’s Republic of China in 1999, the local government liberalized the city’s casino gaming monopoly and opened the industry to foreign investment. As a result, Macau has become the world’s most lucrative site of casino gaming revenue, and a model for other regional states which are pursuing casino gaming-driven development. This article entails a post-structural analysis of neoliberal governance in Macau and a genealogy of the resulting post-socialist consumer subject. Framed by a critical engagement with Aihwa Ong’s theory of “neoliberalism as exception,” analysis reveals that Macau’s economic growth was enhanced, not by optimizing technocratic rationalities, but by reactive measures taken up by different actors, at several different scales, to address three governance crises of public order, public finance, and public health. What appear to be neoliberal interventions in the Macau economy are often exposed as contemporary iterations o...
The extensive literature on intimate partner violence (IPV) against women has focused on the sing... more The extensive literature on intimate partner violence (IPV) against women has focused on the single actors of forces imposed on women. Little is known about the intertwined relationships among the roles of multiple participants in the context of IPV. This study used Michel de Certeau’s concepts of strategies, tactics, and space to explore the power struggle between female survivors and IPV perpetrators, family members, and institutions. This study used data collected in semi-structured interviews between 2016 and 2018 with 24 women (30 to 54 years of age) in Taiwan who experienced IPV from their male partners. Thematic analysis was used to identify and organize themes based on the concepts of strategies, tactics, and spatial actions. Three coders analyzed the data based on the conceptual framework, and inter-rater reliability was evaluated to ensure the quality of the results. Six themes were identified and grouped into two dimensions. Female Taiwanese survivors of IPV confronted not only the strategies of their male partners and families but also strategic mechanisms from the police and nongovernmental organizations. Female survivors found tactical opportunities to evade or resist everyday forms of strategic power. Understanding the quotidian experiences of female survivors has important implications for their protection and support to help them increase their safety and well-being when they are involved in an IPV relationship in particular, and spatial power structures in general.
influenced the city’s café scene comprised of Portuguese coffee shops and southern Chinese cafés ... more influenced the city’s café scene comprised of Portuguese coffee shops and southern Chinese cafés (locally referred to as tsa tsan teing). These cafés are an important element of everyday social life in Macau. However, Portugal’s handover of Macau to the People’s Republic of China in 1999 prompted significant changes in the composition of the population and in the spaces of everyday urban life and leisure. The concomitant dismantling of the 40-year gambling monopoly and opening to foreign investment has brought new casinos and other themed leisure spaces to Macau, attracting 20 million tourists to the tiny city in 1997. One increasingly observable material dimension of these changes is the introduction of western franchises and chain outlets like Starbucks, Haagen Dazs, 7–11, and McDonald’s – as well as their local imitators – leading to the increasing homogenization of facades and urban spaces and standardization of service work and related cultural practices. Starbucks and other co...
square-foot, three-level retail structure that is almost completely devoid of shops, merchandise,... more square-foot, three-level retail structure that is almost completely devoid of shops, merchandise, and people. The complex causes for the mall's demise can be traced to labor, financial, demographic, and market-related factors-the displacement of Ohio's industrial jobs overseas; the arbitrage economy that financed the homogenizing series of mergers and buyouts of North America's department store conglomerates (Hallsworth, 1990); the decon-centration of the city's population and settlement sPace; and, not least, the fact that the 2}-year-old mall's ambiance comPares poody when set against century consumer landscape and American middle-class lifesryle'
The French cognac producer Hennessy recently staged a pop-up promotional event called Hennessy De... more The French cognac producer Hennessy recently staged a pop-up promotional event called Hennessy Declassified at the Galaxy Resort in Macau. The event coincided with the annual Golden Week holiday that in October 2019 commemorated the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, and aimed to educate Chinese tourists in Macau about the formative role of geography in the process of creating fine cognac. In this article, I provide a first-hand account of the immersive event and its efforts to cultivate consumer taste among a select group of post-Mao Chinese tourists. I demonstrate the ways in which China’s central government and the producers of Hennessy cognac both share a concern with the generative function of terroir and the relationship among topography and taste, and cooperate in a pedagogical program to produce discerning Chinese consumer-citizens.
In 1999, after nearly half a millennia of administration, Portugal returned the citystate of Maca... more In 1999, after nearly half a millennia of administration, Portugal returned the citystate of Macau to the People’s Republic of China, and it was designated a Special Administrative Region under the PRC’s “one country, two systems” regime. Less than a decade after the handover Macau was transformed into the world’s most lucrative site of casino gaming, and today the city is visited by more than 35 million annual tourists, the majority of whom are from mainland China. Macau’s remarkable economic expansion may be in part attributed to the city’s ambiguous sovereignty, an endemic characteristic which dates to the city’s founding in 1557, and which has long been its most advantageous asset. In this paper I analyze a three-year wave of violent crime, known colloquially as the Casino Wars, which was attributed to Chinese organized crime groups and which plagued Macau’s casino gaming industry in the period just prior to the handover. I seek to understand the relevance of the Casino Wars for...
ABSTRACT Following Portugal’s return of Macau to the People’s Republic of China in 1999, and the ... more ABSTRACT Following Portugal’s return of Macau to the People’s Republic of China in 1999, and the subsequent liberalization of the city’s 150-year-old casino monopoly, Macau was transformed into the world’s most lucrative site of casino gaming. Today Macau attracts more than 30 million annual tourists, the majority of whom are from mainland China. This article analyzes an electronic casino game called LIVE Baccarat, which was created by a Hong Kong biopharmaceutical company, and designed to appeal to Chinese gamblers in Macau. Drawing on the work of Michel Callon and Michel Foucault, I explore the ways in which the LIVE Baccarat gaming machine ‘economizes’ the game of baccarat by introducing novel betting functions which require gamblers to engage in various forms of financial calculation, including calqulation, hedging, arbitrage, and portfolio management. LIVE Baccarat is a biopolitical apparatus of subjection of a post-socialist Chinese homo economicus, a form of ‘human capital’ which Foucault might call an ‘entrepreneur of the self.’ This subject not only plays a remunerative role in Macau’s gaming industry, but conforms to China’s macroeconomic goals to engender ‘quality’ citizens equipped to support a domestic consumer market which may supplant the unsustainable production-for-export regime that drove the country’s initial post-reform development.
ABSTRACTAfter nearly a half millennia of administration, in 1999 Portugal returned the city-state... more ABSTRACTAfter nearly a half millennia of administration, in 1999 Portugal returned the city-state of Macau to the People's Republic of China, and the territory was designated a Special Administrati...
Following Portugal’s return of Macau to the People’s Republic of China in 1999, the local governm... more Following Portugal’s return of Macau to the People’s Republic of China in 1999, the local government liberalized the city’s casino gaming monopoly and opened the industry to foreign investment. As a result, Macau has become the world’s most lucrative site of casino gaming revenue, and a model for other regional states which are pursuing casino gaming-driven development. This article entails a post-structural analysis of neoliberal governance in Macau and a genealogy of the resulting post-socialist consumer subject. Framed by a critical engagement with Aihwa Ong’s theory of “neoliberalism as exception,” analysis reveals that Macau’s economic growth was enhanced, not by optimizing technocratic rationalities, but by reactive measures taken up by different actors, at several different scales, to address three governance crises of public order, public finance, and public health. What appear to be neoliberal interventions in the Macau economy are often exposed as contemporary iterations o...
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