Aging population is a worldwide phenomenon and Hong Kong is of no exception. Around 13% of the total population was aged over 65 in mid-2011 and it is projected to follow a remarkable rising trend in the future. In view of this and the increasing housing demand of the elderly people, the Hong Kong Government has adopted the concept of "Aging in Place" and "Community Care" to initiate a serious of housing policies and provisions to cater for the various special needs of the low-income elderly. For those middle-income elderly who are outside the "welfare net" of the government, the Hong Kong Housing Society has implemented the "Senior Citizen Residences Scheme" a decade ago which offers a choice of residence for them to live a safe, comfortable and independent lifestyle with provision of integrated elderly care services. In this paper, the eligibility, scheme features, housing facilities, provision of services, operation arrangements and community supports of Housing for Senior Citizens (HSC) provided by the HKHA and Senior Citizen Residences Scheme (SEN) provided by the HKHS will be studied to evaluate the effectiveness of the housing schemes provided by both organizations. Factors that contribute to life satisfaction and successful aging of the elderly will be further looked into. Based on the comments collected from the questionnaires distributed to the elderly residents of the HKHA and HKHS housing estates under study, recommendations will then be given for future improvement of the housing policies. ; published_or_final_version ; Housing Management ; Master ; Master of Housing Management
From a figure of controversy to an illustrious auteur with international renown and widespread critical acclaim, Wong Kar-wai remains unique in the history of Hong Kong cinema. While his films are often box-office failures and criticised for their artistic ostentations at home, Wong enjoys a celebrity status at international film festivals and his films remain a focus in academic studies worldwide. It is this disparity in the reception and value judgment of Wong as a filmmaker that this dissertation is interested in addressing. Thus the central thesis is to explore how critical discourse and institutions confer cultural prestige to his films that positively impact upon their reception and circulation. Existing literature on Wong's oeuvre focuses eclectically on his artistic merits while side-stepping the material politics behind the reception and circulation of his films, and this dissertation aims to rectify this tendency by foregrounding the site of cultural production where all these cultural debates occur. If aesthetic and critical values are socially constructed, they are also predicated on a complex and changing nexus of multiple social, cultural and institutional factors. Art and their producers do not exist independently of a complex institutional framework which authorises, enables and legitimises them. Thus this dissertation is concerned with exploring how these discursive and institutional frameworks influence what is said and can be said about his films. Chapter 1 looks into how film festival emblematisesa dynamic system where a film accrues values as it circulates among mediators in their struggle for cultural legitimacy, thus exploring issues such as taste-construction and power relations among mediators. Through adopting a Bourdieuian paradigm, this chapter explores the significance of mediators in legitimising cultural values concerning the cinema of Wong Kar-wai in hope of broadening the analysis of festival films into the socio-economic and institutional conditions of their reception and circulation. Chapter 2 explores how the image of the auteur impacts upon the reception and circulation of the cinema of Wong Kar-wai vis-à-vis Corrigan's idea of the commerce of auteurism which recontextualises auteurism within an industrial and commercial framework and foregrounds the branding of the auteur-star as a commercial strategy. In particular, I examine how the interviews of Wong Kar-wai can be read as a paratextual site where different mediators contribute to the cultural 'investment' in the construction of the celebrity sign. Chapter 3 marks a self-reflexive turn into exploring the nature of knowledge production in the formative process of canonisation. Through adopting Greg Urban's notion of 'metaculture', I examine how knowledge production can function as a metacultural sphere that influences the circulation of cultural products such as films. An examination of canon formation not only reveals the values inherent in such assessments, but also foregrounds the cultural and institutional assumptions surrounding cinema's shifting social and cultural significance. This dissertation therefore aims to broaden the scope of filmic analysis from textual-oriented criticism to exploring the institutional and discursive frameworks that construct cinematic values, also illuminating how these value judgements inform the continuing and evolving canonisation of films. ; published_or_final_version ; Comparative Literature ; Master ; Master of Philosophy
Opportunity cost is not only the first threshold Economics concept learnt by students, but also a common concept applied in decision making such as cost-benefit analysis. Most decision makings made by government or private firms involved in-depth cost-benefit analysis. However, researches in economic education revealed that the teaching and learning of opportunity cost might not be effective so that students, or even adults apply this concept wrongly in decision making. The objectives of this study are to investigate the effectiveness of the theory of variation when it is adopted in the teaching of the concept of opportunity cost and to evaluate the learning outcomes of students by investigating the change of the qualitatively different ways of seeing or experiencing the concept of opportunity cost. The object of learning was the capability of understanding the concept of opportunity cost. Critical aspects of the object of learning were identified from the pre-test and two patterns of variation were designed respectively in two different groups of secondary four students. The results of this study showed that the learning outcomes of both groups were improved by the rise in the levels of the conceptions on opportunity cost and full cost, and it was even more powerful in group 2. It concluded that appropriate pattern of variation could raise the effectiveness of learning. ; published_or_final_version ; Education ; Master ; Master of Education
I take humans to basically strive toward a condition of peace enabling human flourishing. Yet human groups and individuals alike have an extraordinary wide range of understandings of such a condition. If hope for lasting peace and joint cooperation is to emerge from rule of law or otherwise underpin global harmony, first these very concepts need to be unpacked in proper detail. Given the remarkable diversity of legal practices across societies, simply looking at our own will prove insufficient. I suggest building on both Eastern and Western traditions of thought, as well as looking at contemporary practices across the globe in an attempt to enquire into the nature and historical background of the two key notions: rule of law (section 1) and harmony (section 2). Some concluding remarks are then drawn (section 3).First, we focus on "rule of law" (ROL): Is it a likely candidate to set the foundations of global harmony? Looking at the meaning that "rule of law" has acquired within a broad range of fields (legal theory, law and jurisprudence, political philosophy, political science, international relations, sociology and social theory), the first striking aspect is that it does not seem to be the monopoly of technical definitions (principles of legality and impartiality). Historically, the appeal of ROL derived from the distinction between "empire of laws" (rule by law) and "empire of men" (rule under men). Today, both practitioners and scholars refer to ROL as an aggregate of legal rules and institutions, but also as a variety of informal discursive practices aimed at legitimising those rules and institutions.One-size-fits-all definitions can obviously be found, but they suffer from tremendously high levels of generality. Once we acknowledge the need for distinctions, however, we find too many. The long-standing distinction between thin (or procedural) and thick (or substantive) conceptions of ROL has been debated at great length, as has the difference between rule of law, rule by law etc. At this point there is little to be gained by further restatements of these basic distinctions. However, abandoning this debate will not reduce the number of competing conceptions: Rechtsstaat, État de droit, Estado de derecho. Moreover, the continental civil law tradition also developed other concepts that are smeared into the Anglo-Saxon formula, including certezza del diritto, sécurité juridique, etc. We should also ask whether Chinese fazhi is or might be a Far Eastern equivalent to rule of law.A promising start is then to go beyond the consensus omnia of international declarations and shed light on the arguments of those who do not estimate that rule of law enhances concord. ROL appears to be equivocal and often (covertly) value-laden both in ordinary language and scholarly literature. Three criticisms of rule of law are taken into consideration. One criticism holds it to be a case of law-fare: Not a mere technical device, ROL is rather an instrument for hegemony. Another criticism holds ROL to be a Western invention (legal Occidentalism): What is being questioned is not a specific set of institutions that may, rightly or wrongly, be identified as "Western (rule of) law." The challenge goes deeper and concerns the epistemological status of law itself. A third criticism comes from "global constitutionalism." The ideal of ROL is not questioned as much as the way it is currently practiced: Since it lacks effectiveness, it is unsatisfactory. Given that constitutionalism, at state level, implied that constitutions made legislative power respect the constitution, advocates of international constitutionalism calls for such a paradigmatic change in the international arena.These arguments show that ROL is no "magic bullet" : Its banner was used as a synonym for an independent judiciary, but came to include democracy, rights, civil society and many more. This conceptual overstretch explains why rule of law is not likely to promote global concord.In section two, it seems prima facie that "harmony" has much higher odds for being a stepping stone for lasting peace: The concept has figured prominently in both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions where it indicates concord, equilibrium between forces resulting in peace, in opposition to disorder (chaos in the Greek tradition and luan in the Chinese tradition). The order emerging from harmony is a composition of differences and not merely a sum of unities. On a social level, harmony is a relational concept and hints to concert or absence of contradiction in relationships between individuals and/or groups. Contrarily to rule of law, we do not deal with an essentially contested concept: its structure is not seriously questioned. Moreover, contrarily to ROL, we have a clear referent: The CCP's commitment to "building a harmonious society" was officially announced in 2002 and has since been added to the basic line in its constitution.Here, the arguments of those who disbelieve the emancipating strength of harmony have to be addressed. First, there is the legal positivist's objection: Harmony amounts to natural law-talk that suffers, ultimately, from abusing Hume's principle. Secondly, there is the criticism of the liberal democrat: Let aside the epistemological and theoretical nature of the concept, in the realm of practical reason harmony implies an essential (and fix) hierarchy of people that will inevitably lead to autocratic political regimes. The overall idea is that the harmonious order does not take controversy seriously: contradictions have to be eradicated or hidden in order to promote (apparent) stability. Harmony would then only amount to a cover-up status quo, based on manufactured consensus.In conclusion, I suggest that there are two lessons to be learnt if we want to overcome the cultural divides of the West-östlicher Diwan: From the rule of law, we must hence learn again the fundamental lesson of impartiality as an indispensable element in applying the principle of justice. From harmony, we must refine our understanding of the complex ways in which social cohesion is enhanced and without which no order is sustainable.
This research examines the dynamics of consensus building in intracultural and intercultural negotiations achieved through the convergence of mental models between negotiators. Working from a dynamic constructivist view, according to which the effects of culture are socially and contextually contingent, we theorize and show in two studies of U.S. and Chinese negotiators that while consensus might be generally easier to achieve in intracultural negotiation settings than intercultural settings, the effects of culture depend on the epistemic and social motives of the parties. As hypothesized, we find that movement toward consensus (in the form of mental model convergence) is more likely among intracultural than intercultural negotiating dyads and that negotiators' epistemic and social motives moderated these effects: need for closure inhibited consensus more for intercultural than intracultural dyads, while concern for face fostered consensus more for intercultural than intracultural dyads. Our theory and findings suggest that consensus building is not necessarily more challenging in cross-cultural negotiations but depends on the epistemic and social motivations of the individuals negotiating.
