Culture and the 2012 games: creating a tourism legacy?

The role of tourism in delivering wider economic legacies is strongly stated in recent national tourism policy documents. The Olympic Games are envisaged to have the legacy impact of ‘4 million extra visitors’ and ‘50,000 extra jobs’ over 4 years (DCMS (2011). Government Tourism Policy, p. 15). This paper considers the nature of Olympic tourism and the possible contribution of the Cultural Olympiad to developing a cultural tourism legacy. It does this by investigating local perceptions of culture and local cultural enactments in the London Borough of Hackney, one of the five boroughs surrounding the Olympic Park. This research shows that local cultural enactments and programming connected to the Olympics are largely motivated by a wider social agenda. They are funded by a wide variety of arts, social and youth programmes and largely reflect initiatives and projects that were already in place in the Borough. While there is an acceptance that cultural events might stimulate the visitor economy, specific discourses around ‘tourism’ and ‘tourists’ are not expressed by the people engaged in the local process.

A Social Institutionalist Perspective on HR Diffusion: Histrorical and Cultural Receptivity to HRM in a Post-Comminist Context

This research considers cross-national diffusion of international human resource management (IHRM) ideas and practices by applying an emergent frame of sociological conceptualisation – ‘social institutionalism’ (SI). We look at cultural filters to patterns of diffusion, assimilation and adoption of IHRM, using Romania as a case study. The paper considers the former Communist system of employment relations, suggesting that through institutionalisation former ways of thinking continued to influence definitions and practice of people management in post-Communist Eastern Europe. The paper provides a new perspective on HRM by discussing the value of SI as a general model for understanding cross-cultural receptivity to HR ideas, sensitising the HR practitioner and academic to institutionalised culture as a historical legacy influencing receptivity to international management ideas.

Transmitting Chinese Medicine: Changing Perceptions of Body, Pathology, and Treatment in Late Imperial China

Historians of Chinese medicine acknowledge the plurality of Chinese medicine along both synchronic and diachronic dimensions. Yet, there remains a tendency to think of tradition as being defined by some unchanging features. The Chinese medical body is a case in point. This is assumed to have been formalised by the late Han dynasty around a system of internal organs, conduits, collaterals, and associated body structures. Although criticism was voiced from time to time, this body and the micro/ macrocosmic cosmological resonances that underpin it are seen to persist until the present day. I challenge this view by attending to attempts by physicians in China and Japan in the period from the mid 16th to the late 18th century to reimagine this body. Working within the domain of cold damage therapeutics and combining philological scholarship, empirical observations, and new hermeneutic strategies these physicians worked their way towards a new territorial understanding of the body and of medicine as warfare that required an intimate familiarity with the body’s topography. In late imperial China this new view of the body and medicine was gradually re-absorbed into the mainstream. In Japan, however, it led to a break with this orthodoxy that in the Republican era became influential in China once more. I argue that attending further to the innovations of this period—commonly portrayed as one of decline—from a transnational perspective may help to go beyond the modern insistence to frame East Asian medicines as traditional.

Engendering a culture of quality enhancement in teaching and learning: lessons learned

Enhancing the quality of learning and teaching in higher education has been on the English national agenda for more than a decade. The Government and funding organisations have enabled universities to focus on creating a culture of excellence in learning and teaching and continuing academic and professional development. This paper describes some of the strategies that have promoted a culture of quality teaching in higher education in England and how one organisation, the University of Westminster has implemented those strategies to engender a culture of quality enhancement and continuing professional development.

Rise, fragmentation, infringement and fear: emerging urban issues in Chinese clustering in Italy

China is today facing rapid economic development and the long-term implications of China’s rise for European economy, society and culture, are constantly debated but still almost unknown. Moreover, only recently a new volume edited by Kunzmann has clearly pointed out a particular field of research like the EU spatial impact of China’s convergence in the global market. The aim of the present paper is to deal with the spatial issues related to the growing Chinese communities, especially in Italy, that are part of a more general and considerable transformation process of the traditional Chinese enclaves in EU cities: from recognizable “Chinatowns” to new hybrid urban formations where housing, retail, wholesale and even commodity production often tend to match. Key-Concepts like rise, fragmentation, infringement and fear are useful in analysing some of the more controversial socio-economic dynamics of Chinese clusters especially in a traditionally manufactured-based country like Italy, where it’s recognizable a unique paradox of a “double competition” from outside and from inside. This statement poses a serious threat to local economic systems in terms of sustainability and social cohesion, making it necessary to rethink the role and the nature of public action in facing new forms of marginality at urban and regional level.