Humanities and Social Science Research

Gendered Class Struggles and Marxist Feminist Interventions: An Analytical Discussion

2025-08-04T13:12:44+08:00

In African societies, the class struggle cannot be separated from the gendered realities of colonial legacies, patriarchal societies, and capitalist systems. Women are the essential carriers of unpaid reproductive labour, including taking care of families and administering homes, whereas men experience enormous psychological and economic pressures to be the providers. This paper examines how class and gender intersect to perpetuate inequalities among both men and women, utilising Marxist feminism as the analytical framework. Drawing on African literary texts such as Lauretta Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die, Ukamaka Olisakwe’s Ogadinma, and Femi Osofisan’s Morountodun, the study examines how the lived experiences of exploitation and resilience are portrayed in literature and reflect real social conditions. The analysis also combines statistics and policy-related knowledge to strengthen the argument for radical interventions. The recommendations include acknowledging and compensating unpaid work, revising gender-based workplace rules, and addressing the culture of toxic masculinity through education and community initiatives. Drawing on theoretical reflection, literary analysis, and substantive suggestions, this paper proposes an intersectional reconsideration of justice: changing the conception so that class and gender are not viewed in isolation from one another but are instead viewed as interacting forces that have to be addressed simultaneously in order to see any genuine chance of success.

On the Margins of TCM and Modern Medicine: Ethnomedical Healers Seeking Official Qualification Certification

2025-09-08T15:59:28+08:00

This study focuses on ethnomedical healers in Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China, and adopts the perspective of medical anthropology to examine, through field work, in-depth interview, and case study, institutional shortcomings and individual predicaments ethnomedical healers face in seeking the legal status for medical practice under the modern medicine and the “Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Specialist” systems. The current assessment system and ethnomedical practice are not aligned in terms of theoretical frameworks, diagnostic and treatment methods, and linguistic logic. Particularly, the systematic discrepancy between the knowledge system required by standardized examinations and ethnomedical healers’ experiential knowledge system has resulted in a large number of “skilled but uncertified” ethnomedical healers struggling to gain official recognition. This study aims to explore the possibility of institutional reform and the coexistence of diverse medical systems by probing into the institutional challenges facing ethnomedicine from the perspective of modern medicine.

Study on the Empowerment of Women's Participation in Rural Tourism Under the Background of Rural Revitalization —— Take the Rural Revitalization Demonstration Area of Mount Tai Jiunu Peak as an Example

2025-09-12T09:51:17+08:00

With continuous socioeconomic development, rural tourism has not only become a vital component of China's tourism industry system but also serves as a key mechanism to implement national development strategies and empower rural revitalization. As talent development forms the foundation of rural revitalization, women—benefiting from their unique advantages—are increasingly becoming driving forces and contributors to rural tourism development, currently constituting a significant proportion of rural surplus labor. Taking the Tai Shan Jiunu Peak Rural Revitalization Demonstration Zone as a case study, this paper focuses on women within its jurisdiction. Through literature review, questionnaire surveys, and semi-structured interviews, it explores their empowerment manifestations in rural tourism under the context of rural revitalization. The findings reveal: (1) Women's rights in Jiunu Peak have improved across four dimensions—economic, political, psychological, and social—with greater enhancements observed in economic and psychological empowerment, while social empowerment shows limited development and weaker political awareness; (2) Specific manifestations include: economic empowerment exhibiting "skill stratification," political empowerment showing "formalized institutional empowerment," psychological empowerment demonstrating "intergenerational differentiation" and "role conflict," while social empowerment faces challenges in achieving "symbolic recognition"; (3) Building on this foundation, the author deeply integrates women's empowerment into the five pillars of rural revitalization: industry, talent, culture, ecology, and organization. By restructuring systems, reallocating resources, and reshaping capabilities, the study demonstrates how "women's development" and "rural revitalization" can mutually reinforce each other. This approach transforms women from "participants in development" to "leaders in revitalization," enabling them to gain tangible empowerment through rural tourism. Such efforts carry significant theoretical and practical implications for sustainable rural tourism development, poverty alleviation through tourism, and the promotion of social equity and justice in the new era.

The Root Causes of Political Polarization: Role of the Youth

2025-09-13T11:37:46+08:00

This study aims to determine the main factor causing polarization within the United States by interviewing the youth population—hearing their perspective and their experience on politics. Through comprehensive literature analysis and evaluation of current scholarly arguments on the main cause of political polarization, I found that there is no single factor that causes polarization, but through a combination of all factors. Additionally, this paper shares the ideas and viewpoints of adolescents (ages 16-19) on current politics, which offers a glimpse of potential problems that the government should consider fixing. Polarization is currently on the rise and has broached major debates among researchers and also concerns among adolescents.

Relative Salience of Ethnicity and Party as Drivers of Asian American Vote Choice

2025-09-15T15:45:37+08:00

In comparison to Black and Latino communities, the role of race and ethnicity in the political behavior of Asian Americans, particularly vote choice, has remained less examined. As a racial group with a wide range of ethnic diversity and weaker history of partisan alignment, the dependency of Asian Americans on ethnic and partisan cues may vary compared to other groups and in different electoral contexts. In particular, it is not clear whether Asian Americans do align with the theory of partisanship as the primary determinant of vote choice, as ethnic cues could be more salient for them. This paper examines the candidate choices of Asian American voters in California in the 2024 election. I look only at cases of voters who share the same specific ethnicity, also defined as their national-origin, with one candidate in the House of Representatives race. I find little evidence that Asian Americans defect from their party to vote for a candidate with a shared ethnicity, suggesting that partisan cues remain more important to Asian Americans than ethnic cues. However, in electoral contexts where partisan cues are absent, such as both candidates being from the same party, there is some preliminary evidence to suggest that the ethnic cue becomes a more primary predictor of vote choice. These findings help support the theory of partisanship as the primary determinant of vote choice for previously understudied minority demographic and can help inform candidate vote predictions.