Cheris Shun-Ching Chan
Biographic Data
| ID | 3685363 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Cheris Shun-Ching Chan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Cheris Shun-Ching |
| FAMILY NAME | Chan |
| SIGNATURE | CHAN C S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hong Kong |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 79 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Anti-Activism and Its Impact on Civil Society in Hong Kong
In this article, we introduce the concept of “anti-activism” and explore the possible impact of anti-activist action in Hong Kong. We define anti-activism as a form of countermovement intended to discredit, distract, and even harass activists in voluntary social movements. Our data and analyses are based on field observations, interviews, and primary documents collected in Hong Kong during 2012–2018. We focus on the case of the protest campaign a…
A market of distrust
Paid to Party
Doing Ideology Amid a Crisis
Based on an interactionist framework, this article examines how followers of a contemporary Chinese religious movement, Falun Gong, deal with a crisis situation and sustain their conviction in the absence of their charismatic leader. Data were collected during a yearlong ethnography of the Falun Gong in Chicago and Hong Kong. The findings reveal that followers experienced cognitive dissonance as a result of the Chinese authorities’ suppression an…
Marketing DeathCulture and the Making of a Life Insurance Market in China
Based on an extensive ethnography of the emergence of commercial life insurance in China, this book examines how culture impacts economic practice. It details how a Chinese life insurance market is created in the presence of an ingrained Chinese cultural taboo on the topic of death. It documents how transnational insurance firms, led by AIG’s subsidiary AIA, introduced commercial life insurance to Chinese urbanites, and how they were confronted w…
Defining Life Insurance and Product DevelopmentDivergent Institutional Logics
Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the organizational strategies of insurance firms. Chapter 2 analyzes the disparity between transnational and domestic life insurance firms’ strategies. Insurance firms from both camps faced a conflict between local preferences and profits when designing their products. However, they handled this conflict very differently. While transnational firms defined life insurance as modern risk management, and offered products for…
Marketing death
"Marketing Death is the first book to offer a penetrating sociological analysis of the emergence of a life insurance market outside of the Euro-American context. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, it documents the processes and micro-politics through which local cultures shape the way a market is formed and, hence, sheds light on the dynamics through which modern capitalist enterprises are diffused to regions with different cultural traditions."-…
Divorcing localization from the divergence paradigm
This article challenges conventional assumptions associating localization with cultural divergence. Based on ethnographic research of the life insurance business in China, it explores how localization may intertwine with homogenization, and why it may not subvert cultural hegemony. The data illustrate how transnational life insurers disseminated new practices and new ideas to the Chinese population; how they localized their practices according to…
Invigorating the Content in Social Embeddedness
Based on more than 14 months' ethnographic research in China, this article brings in culture and symbolic interactionism to understand the social embeddedness of economic transactions. First, an analytic frame linking tie strengths to defining principles, relational properties, and interactions is constructed and applied to changes in life insurance transactions in China. The data suggest that strong tie transactions were common until the economi…
Creating a market in the presence of cultural resistance
Research in Urban Policy, Vol. 9
The Falun Gong in China
This article offers a sociological perspective on the rise of and crackdown on the falun gong in relation to the social, cultural and political context of China. I specify from a sociological perspective that the falun gong is categorically not a sect but a cult-like new religious movement. Its popularity, I suggest, is related to the unresolved secular problems, normative breakdown and ideological vacuum in China in the 1980s and 1990s. Before t…
The Sacred-Secular Dialectics of the Reenchanted Religious Order - The Lingsu Exo-Esoterics in Hong Kong
This paper aims to locate the essence of new religions which manifest themselves as part and parcel of the elusive reenchanted phenomena. It is based on an ethnographic case study of a new religious group, the Lingsu Exo-Esoterics, in Hong Kong. The study unravels how this new religious group reconciles the fundamental disparity between sacred and secular cosmologies. Instead of being pulled apart by the polar opposites between the sacred and the…
Creating a market in the presence of cultural resistance
Invigorating the Content in Social Embeddedness
Based on more than 14 months' ethnographic research in China, this article brings in culture and symbolic interactionism to understand the social embeddedness of economic transactions. First, an analytic frame linking tie strengths to defining principles, relational properties, and interactions is constructed and applied to changes in life insurance transactions in China. The data suggest that strong tie transactions were common until the economi…
A market of distrust
Doing Ideology Amid a Crisis
Based on an interactionist framework, this article examines how followers of a contemporary Chinese religious movement, Falun Gong, deal with a crisis situation and sustain their conviction in the absence of their charismatic leader. Data were collected during a yearlong ethnography of the Falun Gong in Chicago and Hong Kong. The findings reveal that followers experienced cognitive dissonance as a result of the Chinese authorities’ suppression an…
The Sacred-Secular Dialectics of the Reenchanted Religious Order - The Lingsu Exo-Esoterics in Hong Kong
This paper aims to locate the essence of new religions which manifest themselves as part and parcel of the elusive reenchanted phenomena. It is based on an ethnographic case study of a new religious group, the Lingsu Exo-Esoterics, in Hong Kong. The study unravels how this new religious group reconciles the fundamental disparity between sacred and secular cosmologies. Instead of being pulled apart by the polar opposites between the sacred and the…
Anti-Activism and Its Impact on Civil Society in Hong Kong
In this article, we introduce the concept of “anti-activism” and explore the possible impact of anti-activist action in Hong Kong. We define anti-activism as a form of countermovement intended to discredit, distract, and even harass activists in voluntary social movements. Our data and analyses are based on field observations, interviews, and primary documents collected in Hong Kong during 2012–2018. We focus on the case of the protest campaign a…
The Sacred-Secular Dialectics of the Reenchanted Religious Order - The Lingsu Exo-Esoterics in Hong Kong
This paper aims to locate the essence of new religions which manifest themselves as part and parcel of the elusive reenchanted phenomena. It is based on an ethnographic case study of a new religious group, the Lingsu Exo-Esoterics, in Hong Kong. The study unravels how this new religious group reconciles the fundamental disparity between sacred and secular cosmologies. Instead of being pulled apart by the polar opposites between the sacred and the…
The Falun Gong in China
This article offers a sociological perspective on the rise of and crackdown on the falun gong in relation to the social, cultural and political context of China. I specify from a sociological perspective that the falun gong is categorically not a sect but a cult-like new religious movement. Its popularity, I suggest, is related to the unresolved secular problems, normative breakdown and ideological vacuum in China in the 1980s and 1990s. Before t…
Research in Urban Policy, Vol. 9
Invigorating the Content in Social Embeddedness
Based on more than 14 months' ethnographic research in China, this article brings in culture and symbolic interactionism to understand the social embeddedness of economic transactions. First, an analytic frame linking tie strengths to defining principles, relational properties, and interactions is constructed and applied to changes in life insurance transactions in China. The data suggest that strong tie transactions were common until the economi…
Creating a market in the presence of cultural resistance
Marketing death
"Marketing Death is the first book to offer a penetrating sociological analysis of the emergence of a life insurance market outside of the Euro-American context. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, it documents the processes and micro-politics through which local cultures shape the way a market is formed and, hence, sheds light on the dynamics through which modern capitalist enterprises are diffused to regions with different cultural traditions."-…
Divorcing localization from the divergence paradigm
This article challenges conventional assumptions associating localization with cultural divergence. Based on ethnographic research of the life insurance business in China, it explores how localization may intertwine with homogenization, and why it may not subvert cultural hegemony. The data illustrate how transnational life insurers disseminated new practices and new ideas to the Chinese population; how they localized their practices according to…
Marketing DeathCulture and the Making of a Life Insurance Market in China
Based on an extensive ethnography of the emergence of commercial life insurance in China, this book examines how culture impacts economic practice. It details how a Chinese life insurance market is created in the presence of an ingrained Chinese cultural taboo on the topic of death. It documents how transnational insurance firms, led by AIG’s subsidiary AIA, introduced commercial life insurance to Chinese urbanites, and how they were confronted w…
Defining Life Insurance and Product DevelopmentDivergent Institutional Logics
Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the organizational strategies of insurance firms. Chapter 2 analyzes the disparity between transnational and domestic life insurance firms’ strategies. Insurance firms from both camps faced a conflict between local preferences and profits when designing their products. However, they handled this conflict very differently. While transnational firms defined life insurance as modern risk management, and offered products for…
Doing Ideology Amid a Crisis
Based on an interactionist framework, this article examines how followers of a contemporary Chinese religious movement, Falun Gong, deal with a crisis situation and sustain their conviction in the absence of their charismatic leader. Data were collected during a yearlong ethnography of the Falun Gong in Chicago and Hong Kong. The findings reveal that followers experienced cognitive dissonance as a result of the Chinese authorities’ suppression an…
Paid to Party
A market of distrust
Anti-Activism and Its Impact on Civil Society in Hong Kong
In this article, we introduce the concept of “anti-activism” and explore the possible impact of anti-activist action in Hong Kong. We define anti-activism as a form of countermovement intended to discredit, distract, and even harass activists in voluntary social movements. Our data and analyses are based on field observations, interviews, and primary documents collected in Hong Kong during 2012–2018. We focus on the case of the protest campaign a…
Political science (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · China (6 works) · Business (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Actuarial science (4 works) · Ethnography (4 works) · Life insurance (4 works) · Anthropology (3 works)