美国新社会史述评

美国新社会史学是 2 0世纪 60年代出现于美国的新史学潮流 ,它改变了美国学术主流的路线 ,是在美国 60年代的社会动荡的背景下产生并发展起来的 ;美国 60年代思想潮流和思维方式的变化是美国新社会史学产生的思想渊源 ;新的历史观的确立标志着美国新社会史学的最终形成 ;新社会史在它的发展过程中遇到了许多无法解决的问题 ,出现了许多弊病 ,80年代美国史学界针对这一切提出了改进方案 ,重新确立了自己独到的史学理论。     

The Politics of HDTV in the United States

Policies adopted by the United States government between 1987 and 1993 regarding high definition television (HDTV) were made primarily by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). A brief effort by members of Congress and their bureaucratic and industrial allies to link HDTV to broader industrial policies was thwarted by the George Bush Administration between 1988 and 1990. The FCC's policies with respect to simulcasting and digital signals reflected the concern of that agency to protect the interests of consumers, broadcasters, and electronics manufacturers. The first two interests traditionally were protected by the FCC, whereas the protection of electronics was somewhat unusual and was influenced by perceptions of declining United States competitiveness. In addition, United States policymaking in this area depended strongly on the framing effect of policies adopted in Japan and Western Europe.     

美国华人教会的社会功能初探

近年来,美国华人基督教教会组织发展迅速,其在帮助华人新移民群体,整合华人社会资源等方面的作用已经超越了传统华人社团。本文依据实地考察并结合文献研究,探索美国华人教会组织的多方面社会功能。作者认为,华人教会在华人社会中的作用及其影响值得关注。     

浅析地震毁损房屋的按揭贷款

通过分析房屋按揭贷款中的法律关系,明确了地震毁损房屋的按揭贷款的法律责任应由受灾人承担。但现实中受灾人不具有承担能力,执行的合法性与合理性发生冲突,汶川地震后我国政府采取的一系列解决措施不具有可重复使用性。有必要通过完善配套保险法律制度、建立国家巨灾风险专项基金、建立灾难法律援助制度、引进个人破产制度等来有效解决。     

Estimates of Income and Income Inequality in the United States and in Each of the Fifty States: 1988–1999

Abstract Estimates of income levels and income inequality in the United States in 1988, 1995, and 1999 are presented based on a dataset created by a statistical match of Internal Revenue Service and decennial Census data. In addition, estimates are presented of income levels and income distribution in each of the fifty states of the United States during those same years. Trends in national and regional income inequality and income levels over the period are analyzed also.     

Local Markets and the Polarization of Public-Sector Schools in England and Wales

Notwithstanding the recent change of government, UK educational policy continues to stress school performance tables, parental choice and competition – reflecting an acceptance by New Labour of Tory notions concerning the role that market mechanisms play in improving school performance. In view of the 1997 Education White Paper's insistence that the new government's goal was to 'overcome the spiral of disadvantage … passed from one generation to the next', this implies that the DfEE remains unimpressed by long-standing arguments concerning the socially-divisive consequences of market forces in education.
This paper seeks to add empirical weight to this debate. Arguing that recent analyses of aggregate levels of social stratification have masked polarization occurring at the local level, our analysis places schools in the context of the local markets within which they operate. This yields clear evidence that educational markets tend to exacerbate existing differences between schools in terms of both their performance and social status.     

American home: Predatory mortgage capital and neighbourhood spaces of race and class exploitation in the United States

Predatory home mortgage lending has become a central concern for housing research, public policy and community activism in US cities. Regulatory attempts to stop abuses, however, are undermined by claims that ‘predatory’ cannot be defined or distinguished from legitimate subprime lending, and claims that the industry performs a public service by meeting the needs of low‐income, high‐risk consumers (many of them racially marginalized) who would have been denied credit in previous years. We evaluate these claims in historical‐geographical context, drawing on David Harvey's theory of class‐monopoly rent to analyse what is new (and what is not) in contemporary financial exploitation. We use a mixed‐methods approach to (1) provide econometric measures of subprime racial targeting and disparate impact that cannot be blamed on the supposed deficiencies of borrowers, (2) qualitatively assess the rationale for judging particular subprime practices and lenders as predatory, and (3) trace the connections between local practices and transnational investment networks. The fight against predatory lending cannot succeed, we argue, without a renewed analytical and strategic emphasis on the class dimensions of financial exploitation and racial‐geographical discrimination.     

Immigrants and savers: A rich new database on the Irish in 1850s New York

A new dataset created from the first 18,000 savings accounts opened (from 1850 to 1858) at the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in New York City is described. The bank was founded by Irish Americans, and most of its depositors in its first decade of operations were recent Irish immigrants. The data offer a unique window on both savings behavior by the poor and not-so-poor in antebellum New York and on how emigrants who came primarily from rural parts of Ireland adapted to urban life. They also contain much that is new on the regional origins of mid-nineteenth century Irish immigrants and on their settlement patterns in New York.     

Cross-Border Interest Group Learning in Canada and the United States

Many of the most prominent US interest groups have formal or informal relationships with Canadian groups. Yet groups in the two countries often have little incentive to share political strategies – to learn from each other. This article proposes that such learning can take place only when four factors are present: a stable relationship with governmental institutions; the resources to acquire useful political information; shared issues of concern; and a sense of being part of a well-defined cross-border region. The presence of these factors can promote the creation of enduring group networks, which in turn make cross-border political learning possible. The article presents case studies of environmental and business organizations in the New England/Atlantic Canada region to show the relationship between these determinants.     

The global city thesis — social polarization and changes in the distribution of wages

The global city thesis by which Sassen (1991) has linked globalization with increased social polarization has attracted much attention and caused considerable discussion over the past decade. This article illustrates divergent approaches that have been taken to the study of social polarization and provides an overview of the issues that have been discussed in relation to the polarization debate. I argue that the global city thesis has been misleading and that the empirical work underlying it has been too limited. Thereafter I test the empirical basis for Sassen's thesis in an analysis of the distribution of wages in the New York Metropolitan Area during the period 1970 to 1990.     

Electricity Transformed: Neoliberalism and Local Energy in the United States

Abstract: The concept of neoliberalism is explored with respect to the history of the electricity industry and policy in the USA. Rather than view “neoliberalism” as an all‐encompassing form of governmentality or a hegemonic regime, it is instead situated in a political field of competing ideologies, policies, practices, and agents that includes social liberalism, socialism, and cooperativism, with hegemonic and redistributive forms of both social liberalism and neoliberalism distinguished. The field approach enables a dynamic interpretation of the history of the electricity industry in the USA that tracks the relative role of government intervention in the economy, scale shifts in the level of government intervention, and the extent to which the policies favor elite accumulation or redistribution to less favored economic categories. The field approach also enables an analysis of local responses to market restructuring that suggest some examples of redistributive politics, even local socialism, that have emerged as a consequence of marketplace restructuring.     

社会经济需求与美国教育的发展

教育是使美国保持强国地位的关键因素之一。美国教育是建立在对欧洲教育本土化基础之上的,起点比较高。在社会和工业发展的不同阶段,美国根据社会经济发展的需要办教育,扩大教育对象,合理利用人力资源,强调研究和开发,注意培养人的应变能力,用教育推动现代化的持续发展。     

The Politics of Motor Fuel Taxes and Infrastructure Funds in France and the United States

The US. and France have adopted contrasting models of motor fuel tax and highway finance policy. Fuel tax revenues are dedicated to state and federal highway funds in America, keeping taxes quite low, but preventing them from contributing to the general treasury. French motor fuel taxes are higher and make up nearly 11 percent of the central government's general revenues, excluding social security contributions. French highway finance relies heavily on tolls. Pressure from the US. federal deficit has reduced the highway trust fund's ability to protect highway spending from budgetary competition. Political and procedural changes in Congress make it likely that the U.S.will move away from exclusive dedication of motor fuel taxes.     

Theorizing the Submerged State: The Politics of Private Schools in the United States

In this paper, I apply Mettler's concept of the “submerged state” to aid for children at private schools in the United States, including education vouchers, in‐kind aid, and property tax exemptions. All aid policies are “submerged” in that they help private organizations take on state functions but some are more submerged than others. Theoretically, this paper distinguishes between subcategories of submergence. Using policy data from 50 states and an original database of court challenges between 1912 and 2015, I employ probit regression with sample selection to evaluate the effect of submergence on successful court challenge. I find that more submerged policies are less likely to be successfully challenged than less submerged policies. Submerged policy design enables supporters to avoid legal as well as political challenge.     

The Politics and Administration of Privatization: Contracting Out for Corrections Management in the United States

Shrinking budgets and the emergence of "new public management" and other market-based reforms have put increasing pressure on many governments and government agencies to use contracting as a means of service delivery. This essay suggests that contracting should be viewed as a multistage affair, in which both political and administrative actors make key decisions at different stages of the process. It also hypothesizes that these actors weigh the political and instrumental motivations for contracting differently and, therefore, that the relative importance of these factors varies depending on the stage of the contracting process. An empirical analysis of corrections management contracts in the American states provides significant evidence for these assertions.     

The Mobile Politics of Emotions and Social Movement in Oaxaca,Mexico

In light of recent debates between affect and emotions in geography, this article focuses on how the emotional landscape of spatial struggles in Oaxaca articulated people together, thereby generating solidarities and a collective sociality offering the potentiality of interconnection that geographers of affect emphasize. Through an analysis of a women's march, I demonstrate how social movements move people, mobilizing them both physically and emotionally, with effects that go beyond a movement's political demands. Engaging with how emotions do movement‐building work means going beyond a focus on the relational construction of emotions and arguing instead for their collective agency, including their power to transform participants into activists. Highlighting the centrality of spatial struggles and emotions to the shifting, mobile politics of social movements brings into sharp relief the importance of a situated, historical analysis for theorists romanticizing the emancipatory possibilities of a revolutionary transnational articulation between social movements.