On the origins and organization of South Italian poverty

John Davis. Land and Family in Pisticci. London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 48. London: The Athlone Press, 1973. ix + 200 pp. Illustrations, tables, appendixes, reference's, and index. $10.50.     

National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, poverty and prices in rural India

The objective of this analysis is mainly to construct an intuitive measure of the performance of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in India. The focus is on divergence between demand and supply at the district level. Some related issues addressed are: (i) whether the gap between demand and supply responds to poverty; and (ii) whether recent hikes in NREGS wages are inflationary. Our analysis confirms responsiveness of the positive gap between demand and supply to poverty. Also, apprehensions expressed about the inflationary potential of recent hikes in NREGS wages have been confirmed. More importantly, higher NREGS wages are likely to undermine self-selection of the poor in it.     

“中国百名女摄影家、女市长聚焦秦皇岛摄影采风活动”作品选登

今年4月16日,中国女摄影家协会组织会员奔赴渤海之滨——秦皇岛摄影采风,秦皇岛海滨旖旎的风光、有600年历史却从未经修葺的明代野长城、长城脚下村庄纯朴的民风,都深深地吸引了她们。在短短的5天时间里,会员们创作了大量的艺术作品。为此,特在本刊中国女摄影家协会主办的专栏"女摄影家"中予以选登。     

Mean consumption, poverty and inequality in rural India in the 60th round of the National Sample Survey

This article reports on mean consumption, poverty (all three FGT measures) and inequality during 2004 for rural India using National Sample Survey (NSS) data for the 60th Round. Mean consumption at the national level is much higher than the poverty line. However, the Gini coefficient is higher than in recent earlier rounds. The headcount ratio is 22.9 per cent. Mean consumption, all three measures of poverty and the Gini coefficient are computed at the level of 20 states and 63 agro-climatic zones in these 20 states. It is surmised that despite impressive growth rates deprivation is pervasive, pockets of severe poverty persist, and inequality is rampant.     

唐卡艺术品产业化发展对策

当今世界,开发独具特色的民族文化资源,打造民族文化品牌,已成为人们的共识。文章通过对唐卡的历史内涵、文化价值、商业前景的研究,提出应采取有效措施,提高唐卡艺术品的社会化、产业化和市场化水平。从而使其成为青海独具魅力的旅游产品。     

Homelessness,poverty, and risks to health: beyond at risk categorizations of street children1

Homeless and street children are commonly portrayed in the academic and welfare literature as a prime category of ‘children at risk’. They have attracted world‐wide attention due to rising numbers in cities of the Western and developing world coupled with a discourse of childhood that ascribes risk to poor urban children unaccompanied by adults on the streets. This paper presents a critique of views about homeless and street children that rest upon an unhelpful blanket generalization of risk and, more specifically, that adopt polemical or categorical statements about homelessness as the most salient risk factor for poor health. Current research is distancing itself from a discourse that sets global characteristics for a ‘street lifestyle’, aiming instead to contextualize research on street children. Many studies have also questioned the stereotypical expectation that homeless children are the most vulnerable in deprived environments, arguing that poverty, not homelessness per se, carries the most significant risks to children's health. A risk discourse is unhelpful where it promotes a stereotype of vulnerability about children, resulting in further discrimination and social exclusion; it is most helpful when it focuses attention on ways to negotiate adverse situations. Some challenging academic and practical questions need to be raised regarding risk assumptions and risk assessment.     

Social Dynamics and Pottery Distribution in the Faro Department, Northern Cameroon

Ethnoarchaeological studies have constantly emphasized the complexity of pottery distribution and its close ties with other aspects of social life. It is argued here that, among the Dowayo of northern Cameroon, pottery exchange is not regulated by preferential economic relationships between producers and consumers but rather by mechanisms such as fashion or the reputation of the artisans.De récentes études ethnoarchéologiques ont constamment mis en avant la complexité des processus de distribution de la poterie et les liens étroits que ceux-ci entretiennent avec les autres aspects de la vie sociale. Il est démontré dans cet article que, chez les Dowayo du Nord-Cameroun, les échanges de poterie sont structurés par une absence de lien privilégié entre producteurs et consommateurs et sont dès lors régulés par des mécanismes tels que la mode ou la réputation des artisans.     

In the front line: women,work and new spaces of labour politics in Poland

Pessimistic accounts of women's lives in post-communist Poland view women as powerless and passive victims of the transformation process. In contrast, this article argues that while political change and the restructuring of the economy have closed down some spaces of articulation and organisation, others have opened up. The article focuses on the way in which women in their spheres of work are shaping and actively resisting change through new organisations and individual and collective actions, which are in some ways a break with the past, but in other ways build on previous forms of activity. The work draws on qualitative research conducted over the last decade across Poland. This has coupled extensive interviews with women workers, national and regional trade union leaders, activists and feminists in a number of major Polish cities with reviews of Polish media and policy. We examine the economic and ideological context in which these new articulations are taking place, against the background of Poland's post-war communism and the rise of opposition movements. We look at the neoliberal restructuring of the economy and the implications for women within the labour market and in their domestic lives. In particular, we examine initiatives from below in workplace organisation, by focusing on new unions and new actions in the public sector, and the beginnings of organisation in the new areas of the economy such as supermarkets. Finally, we look at how women are articulating their interests beyond formal workplaces. We conclude that we should be optimistic about these new spaces of activism. While some are well established, others are embryonic but provide a strong foundation on which women can increase their participation in spaces that promote their varied interests.     

出一套边疆译著丛书

自新时期以来,特别是近10年来,在中国社会科学院的组织、指导下,中国边疆研究取得的成就是真正的辉煌,为学界、政界所一致公认。单就基本建设来说,已出了多种资料,为今后学科发展、深入研究打下了坚实的基础。“面向21世纪的中国边疆研究”——主编给出的主题,我想提一个建议：由中国社会科学院组织、领导出一套边疆译丛书。     

Balancing Politics,Economics and Conservation: The Case of the Cameroon Forestry Law Reform

The formulation of Cameroon’s 1994 Forestry Law was influenced by the World Bank, the Government of Cameroon and French politicians, as well as by logging companies and individual Cameroonian politicians. Their actions were motivated by development objectives, direct material interests and political concerns. However, as the result of a flawed formulation process, conflicting interests and weak government administrative capacity, the law has not been fully implemented and may not be. An analysis of the 1994 Forestry Law suggests that the success of future policies will depend on the willingness of actors to defend their interests, the balance of power at the time, and the ability of the Executive Branch to mediate among the different interests in each case.     

元刻总集提要

迂斋先生标注崇古文诀三十五卷 (宋)楼昉撰元刻本框高15.3厘米,宽9.8厘米.每半叶十一行,行二十一字.     

Lethal differences: a short history of the concepts of wealth and poverty in Danish epidemiological writings, 1858-1914

Through a study of the history of the concepts of wealth and poverty, this paper investigates the onset of a tradition in the conceptual architecture of epidemiological research concerning social differences in mortality rates from 1858 to 1914. It raises the question as to what the concepts of wealth and poverty meant to those who used them and what objects of interventions the conceptual architecture surrounding the concepts enabled the researchers to create. It argues that a transition began in the late 19th century in which an important framework for the understanding of causal relations behind the mortality patterns changed and that this change in turn influenced the scope of what was conceived as relevant objects of intervention.     

《守圉全书》中保存的徐光启、李之藻佚文

对徐光启著作的整理向来为人们所重视,但仍有散佚,本文首先介绍的《钦奉明旨录呈前疏疏(摘)》即是徐光启的一篇佚文。相对而言对李之藻展开的研究却远不及对徐光肩之研究,对其著作的整理也还不够,其所散佚的文章著作可能更多,《恭进收贮大炮疏》就是保存在《守圉全书》中的李之藻的一篇佚文。     

Ancient Maya wood selection and forest exploitation: a view from the Paynes Creek salt works,Belize

Ancient building construction wood preserved in a peat bog below the seafloor in a shallow mangrove lagoon in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize, provides an exceptional record of Classic Maya wood use. Identifications of construction wood at Early Classic Chan B'i, and Late Classic Atz'aam Na, are reported and discussed to assess forest exploitation and species selection over time. Black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) dominates the Early Classic assemblage. The Late Classic assemblage is characterized by greater variability and an absence of mangrove species. When considered in the environmental context, identified species conform to principles of optimal foraging. The change in the wood assemblage over time suggests overexploitation of forest resources, resulting in deforestation of the local landscape and subsequent adaptation of foraging behavior. Deforestation is linked to the wider social context in which growing inland populations created demand for salt, putting greater pressure on the forest resources exploited by the Paynes Creek salt works for fuel and timber.     

Bad blood: poverty, psychopathy and the politics of transgression in Kenya Colony, 1939-59

This article examines the inter-relationship between psychiatry and sex, both fertile fields within the recent historiography of colonialism and empire. Using a series of case files pertaining to European patients admitted to the Mathari Mental Hospital in Nairobi during the 1940s and 1950s, this article shows how sexual transgression among colonial Europeans precipitated, and was combined with, mental distress. Considering psychiatric treatment as a form of social control, the article investigates a number of cases in which a European patient had been perceived to have transgressed the normative sexual behaviour codes of settler society in Kenya. What these files suggest is that transgressive sexuality in Kenya was itself framed by indices, as insistent as they were uncertain, of gender, race and class. While psychiatry as social control has some degree of purchase here, more valuable is an attempt to discern the particular ways in which certain forms of sexual behaviour were understood in diagnostic terms. Men who had sex with Africans, we see, tended to be diagnosed as 'depressed' on arrival at the hospital but were judged to be mentally normal consequently. Women, by contrast, were liable to be diagnosed as psychopathic, a diagnosis, I argue, that helped to explain the uniquely transgressive status of impoverished European women living alone in the margins of white society. Unlike white men, moreover, women did not have to have sex with non-Europeans to transgress sexual codes: this is because female poverty was a sexual problem in a way that male poverty decidedly was not. Poor white women were marked by uncertainty over their sexual behaviour—and dubious racial identity in its turn—and the problem of social contamination was described by reference both to the polluted racial ancestry of an individual and to the prospective contamination of healthy racial stocks. This article aims to address current historical debates around sex and empire, 'white subalternity' and the social history of psychiatry and mental health. All names have been changed to protect patient anonymity.