Folk beliefs of cultural changes in China

For the last several decades, Chinese society has experienced transformative changes. How are these changes understood among Chinese people? To examine this question, Part 1 in this research solicited folk beliefs of cultural change from a group of Chinese participants in an open-ended format, and t...

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Main Authors: Xu, Y., Hamamura, Takeshi
Format: Journal Article
Published: Frontiers Research Foundation 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/9728
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author Xu, Y.
Hamamura, Takeshi
author_facet Xu, Y.
Hamamura, Takeshi
author_sort Xu, Y.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description For the last several decades, Chinese society has experienced transformative changes. How are these changes understood among Chinese people? To examine this question, Part 1 in this research solicited folk beliefs of cultural change from a group of Chinese participants in an open-ended format, and the generated folk beliefs were rated by another group of participants in Part 2 to gage each belief's level of agreement. Part 3 plotted the folk beliefs retained in Part 2 using the Google Ngram Viewer in order to infer the amount of intellectual interests that each belief has received cross-temporarily. These analyses suggested a few themes in Chinese folk beliefs of cultural change (1) rising perceived importance of materialism and individualism in understanding contemporary Chinese culture and Chinese psychology relative to those of the past (2) rising perceived importance of freedom, democracy and human rights and (3) enduring perceived importance of family relations and friendship as well as patriotism. Interestingly, findings from Parts 2 and 3 diverged somewhat, illuminating possible divergence between folk beliefs and intellectual interests especially for issues related to heritage of Confucianism.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-97282017-09-13T14:49:27Z Folk beliefs of cultural changes in China Xu, Y. Hamamura, Takeshi cross-temporal analysis folk beliefs Ngram modernization cultural change For the last several decades, Chinese society has experienced transformative changes. How are these changes understood among Chinese people? To examine this question, Part 1 in this research solicited folk beliefs of cultural change from a group of Chinese participants in an open-ended format, and the generated folk beliefs were rated by another group of participants in Part 2 to gage each belief's level of agreement. Part 3 plotted the folk beliefs retained in Part 2 using the Google Ngram Viewer in order to infer the amount of intellectual interests that each belief has received cross-temporarily. These analyses suggested a few themes in Chinese folk beliefs of cultural change (1) rising perceived importance of materialism and individualism in understanding contemporary Chinese culture and Chinese psychology relative to those of the past (2) rising perceived importance of freedom, democracy and human rights and (3) enduring perceived importance of family relations and friendship as well as patriotism. Interestingly, findings from Parts 2 and 3 diverged somewhat, illuminating possible divergence between folk beliefs and intellectual interests especially for issues related to heritage of Confucianism. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/9728 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01066 Frontiers Research Foundation fulltext
spellingShingle cross-temporal analysis
folk beliefs
Ngram
modernization
cultural change
Xu, Y.
Hamamura, Takeshi
Folk beliefs of cultural changes in China
title Folk beliefs of cultural changes in China
title_full Folk beliefs of cultural changes in China
title_fullStr Folk beliefs of cultural changes in China
title_full_unstemmed Folk beliefs of cultural changes in China
title_short Folk beliefs of cultural changes in China
title_sort folk beliefs of cultural changes in china
topic cross-temporal analysis
folk beliefs
Ngram
modernization
cultural change
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/9728