Suchergebnisse

Amidst the rampancy of COVID-19, the news media and academics have emphasized men's gendered vulnerability. Many examine the risks individuals or communities are exposed to, implying the need to reconsider gendered stereotypes that victimize people at work and at home. In this short commentary, rather than interrogating the risk-related agenda, I reflect on genders as imagined sources of disease by studying strategies adopted by administrators in health communication for the purpose of disease control. Using AIDS and syphilis as examples, Sander Gilman (Gilman 1988) notes that the construction of various boundaries of disease, of images of the patient as the vessel and transmitter, depends on our moral sense and consequent desire to insulate those we define as ill. COVID-19 exposed people's speculations about the reservoirs of pathogens. In a post-conflict society, Hong Kong is an ideal looking glass, magnifying the process through which symbols of disease are portrayed. On the one hand, this short essay aims to examine how gendered sources of COVID-19 manifest in a society within a specific geopolitical context. On the other hand, through the new iconography of disease, I identify the challenges of modernity "Asia's world city" has been experiencing. I explore these questions through an examination of specific aspects of Hong Kong's response to COVID-19: gendered Sinophobia toward police officers' wives; reactions to retired women who sought out younger men as dance partners during COVID-19; failure to recognize and protect foreign domestic workers as a vulnerable group during the pandemic; government actions that draw on "toxic masculine" traits and values; the city's response to queer communities' involvement in COVID-19 outbreaks; and the government's deliberate de-emphasis on gender issues as compared with China. Each of these examples encapsulates how both gendered and cross-border conceptions of disease iconography were geopolitically formed regarding the recent tension between Hong Kong and China.

Abstract
The covid-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted research communities and agendas worldwide, including Taiwan studies. Consequently, the largest conferences for Taiwan studies in both North America and Europe were cancelled in 2020. In response, the North American Taiwan Studies Association, the European Association of Taiwan Studies, the Japan Association for Taiwan Studies, and the International Journal of Taiwan Studies jointly organised a series of online forums that aimed to encompass transnational and interdisciplinary approaches to Taiwan studies in the context of envisioning a post-covid world. This report summarises the first event, on 'covid and Governance: Global and Social Solidarity', which speaks directly to a moment of chaos, frustration, and yet hopefulness for Taiwan. It presents the papers of three discussants—Drs Ya-Wen Yang, Harry Yi-Jui Wu, and Wen Liu—who identified and explored the theoretical potential and limits of different 'keywords' popularised during the pandemic period.