Asian Social Science, Issue: Vol.22, No.5

Creating Cultural Visibility: Ritual and Performance During the Hungry Ghost Festival in Malaysia

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 13:49:09 +0000

In multicultural Malaysia, public festivals provide opportunities through which cultural traditions become visible in shared public spaces. This article examines how cultural visibility is produced through the rituals, performances, and community practices of the Hungry Ghost Festival among Malaysian Chinese communities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2025 at the Joint Hungry Ghost Festival of the Eight Streets in George Town, Penang, the study combines participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and audiovisual documentation. The findings show that cultural visibility is created through the combined effects of spatial transformation, ritual practices, visual symbols, soundscapes, and collective participation. Through the temporary transformation of urban streets into ritual spaces and the performance of rituals and cultural activities, the festival makes Chinese cultural traditions publicly perceptible within a shared urban environment. These practices also create opportunities for public recognition, intercultural encounter, community participation, cultural continuity, and a sense of collective belonging. The article argues that the Hungry Ghost Festival in Malaysia is not only a religious observance but also a public cultural practice through which cultural visibility is actively produced and negotiated. Rather than treating visibility as a natural condition of multicultural society, the study demonstrates that visibility depends upon sustained collective participation and the continuing reproduction of cultural practices. More broadly, cultural visibility is not simply an outcome of cultural continuity, but one of the conditions through which continuity is maintained in multicultural societies.

Gendered Dimensions of Professional Visibility and Personal Branding in Conservative Societies: A Narrative Literature Review

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 13:52:49 +0000

Personal branding is a key strategy for all professionals who seek to improve their professional visibility, career opportunities and advancement. Existing research has mainly examined personal branding as a theoretical concept focusing on its definitions, processes, and outcomes but not from gendered and contextual perspectives. The purpose of this paper was to review and synthesize the literature on the role of gender and sociocultural context on personal branding among professional women in conservative societies. A literature search was conducted on Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science databases. The inclusion criteria were all types of articles, including peer-reviewed papers and grey literature focusing on professional personal branding by women on social media. Seven relevant articles were identified and included in the review. They explored personal branding practices among women only or men and women from different contexts, the digital platforms employed, and influencing factors of personal branding. The review revealed a knowledge gap regarding personal branding in relation to gender and sociocultural contexts due to limited research in this area.

Yang Jian’s Philosophy of the Mind and His Academy Practice: Philosophy, Pedagogy and Historical Significance

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 13:56:34 +0000

The Southern Song Dynasty represented a pivotal period in which the Chinese academy system reached maturity and diverse intellectual schools flourished. Yang Jian (1141-1226), a direct disciple of Lu Jiuyuan (1139-1193) and founder of the Cihu School, was a prominent thinker and educator of this period. He developed the School of Mind through the doctrines of “Xin ji Dao (the Mind is Dao)” and “Buqi Yi (No Arbitrary Mental Stirring)”. Guided by “Xin shi, Shi xiu, Shi zheng (Sincere Mind, Practical Self-cultivation, and Tangible Benevolent Governance)”, he engaged in educational practices including renovating local state-run schools, establishing academies, lecturing, and transmitting his intellectual tradition. This study examines the reciprocal relationship between Yang Jian’s philosophical thought and his academy-based educational practices in Leping (Jiangxi Province) and Cixi (Zhejiang Province). It finds that School of Mind thought shaped academy teaching and moral self-cultivation, while academies provided institutional settings through which these ideas were practised and transmitted. These activities contributed to the development and dissemination of the Cihu intellectual tradition in eastern Zhejiang. By integrating Yang Jian’s philosophical thought with his educational and institutional practices, this study highlights an underexplored relationship between the School of Mind and academy education in the Southern Song Dynasty and its significance in the histories of Chinese thought and education.

From Cultural Distance to Participatory Meaning Making: Recontextualizing Shanxi Folk Songs in a Chinese High School Music Classroom

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 03:34:11 +0000

Integrating local folk songs into school curricula aims to safeguard cultural heritage and build student identity, yet curricular inclusion alone often fails to secure deep engagement. This qualitative practitioner inquiry examined how pedagogical adjustment could address this gap. Conducted in a Chinese high school, the study examined the obstacles students faced when learning Shanxi folk songs, the design of targeted teaching strategies, and how these strategies relate to student participation and understanding. Data from interviews, observations, and student work identified three dimensions of cultural distance: linguistic distance, experiential distance, and performance distance, which initially contributed to students remaining passive observers. In response, the teacher introduced dialect interpretation, guided experiential connection, and melodic adjustment. Following these strategies, participation increased, students showed initiative in creative adaptation, and a smaller number reported intentions to continue engaging with the songs after class. These findings inform the Cultural Recontextualization Framework, which integrates Bernstein’s concept of recontextualization, Elliott’s praxial philosophy, and constructivist learning theory into an analytical structure for understanding how teaching can address cultural distance in the classroom. The study offers a diagnostic approach and illustrates practical strategies for teachers seeking to integrate local traditional music in ways that support student engagement.

Simulacra, Nostalgia, and Embodied Performance: Vaporwave and Japanese Schoolgirl Uniforms in Chinese Youth Party Culture

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 03:44:16 +0000

This article examines how Japanese schoolgirl-uniform fashion, commonly termed JK dress, moves from digital visual symbolism into embodied practice in Chinese vaporwave party culture. Drawing on an exploratory qualitative reading of online visual materials and publicity from related music parties, it investigates the relationship between vaporwave’s audiovisual aesthetics and their embodiment through clothing. The analysis suggests that vaporwave constructs nostalgic simulacra by decontextualizing and recombining fragments of late twentieth-century sound and imagery. In the examples discussed, Japanese anime girls function as visual anchors by combining historical recognizability with opportunities for emotional projection. JK dress then translates these two-dimensional signs into bodily experience, producing a recursive sequence of cultural simulacra, visual signs, and embodied practices. In offline parties, this process gives rise to “delayed youth”: a temporarily inhabitable, imagined youthfulness mediated by music, dress, and collective movement. Read through heterotopia and Bakhtinian carnival, these practices suggest how media nostalgia can become a shared means of emotional adjustment. The article extends the analysis of vaporwave nostalgia from sound and images to clothing and bodies, while recognizing the limited scope of its visual materials and the absence of systematic participant interviews.