Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Asian Studies

Selected Works

Culture

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Can Asians Be Creative?, Chua, Roy Y. J., Jerry Zremski Jan 2017

Can Asians Be Creative?, Chua, Roy Y. J., Jerry Zremski

Roy CHUA

A crotchety American named Henry Ford invented a modern, fast and efficient way to manufacture automobiles and a Japanese man named Eiji Toyoda refined and perfected it. A series of innovators across the western world developed the television - and the tech specialists at Sony, Toshiba and a host of other Asian companies found ways to make TVs better, cheaper, faster. And an idiosyncratic Californian named Steve Jobs invented a company that made a smart phone for the masses - and then outsourced the manufacturing to China. If you detect a pattern here, you are not alone. Asia may be …


Beyond Exile: The Ramayana As A Living Narrative Among Indo-Fijians In Fiji And New Zealand, Kevin Miller Dec 2014

Beyond Exile: The Ramayana As A Living Narrative Among Indo-Fijians In Fiji And New Zealand, Kevin Miller

Kevin C. Miller

Drawing on the themes of collective memory, cultural ideologies, and narrative constructions, this chapter proposes to examine the narrative of the Ramayana epic, its exegesis through performance, and its continued relevance to identity formation among Indo-Fijian Hindus both within Fiji and its Pacific Rim diaspora. Based on the recasting of the “twice-migrated” Indo-Fijian as the “twice-banished” by certain observers, we might expect the meaning of the Ramayana in the lives of Indo-Fijian Hindus in New Zealand to shift towards the theme of Rama’s exile, just as it did for the indentured laborers who made the original journey to Fiji. Nevertheless, …


The Better-Than-Average Effect In Hong Kong And The United States: The Role Of Personal Trait Importance And Cultural Trait Importance, Kim-Pong Tam, Angela K.-Y. Leung, Young-Hoon Kim, Chi-Yue Chiu, Ivy Yee-Man Lau, Al K. C. Au Apr 2013

The Better-Than-Average Effect In Hong Kong And The United States: The Role Of Personal Trait Importance And Cultural Trait Importance, Kim-Pong Tam, Angela K.-Y. Leung, Young-Hoon Kim, Chi-Yue Chiu, Ivy Yee-Man Lau, Al K. C. Au

Ka Yee Angela LEUNG

People tend to make self-aggrandizing social comparisons on traits that are important to the self. However, existing research on the better-than-average effect (BTAE) and trait importance does not distinguish between personal trait importance (participants’ ratings of the importance of certain traits to themselves) and cultural trait importance (participants’ perceptions of the importance of the traits to the cultural group to which they belong). We demonstrated the utility of this distinction by examining the joint effects of personal importance and cultural importance on the BTAE among Hong Kong Chinese and American participants. Results showed that the BTAE was more pronounced for …