Determinants of divorce in nineteenth-century Flanders

In 1830, the year Belgium became independent, there were four divorces in Belgium. From about 1870 to 1910, there were about one hundred divorces per year, and since 1910, there have been about 1,000. The aim of this research is to investigate the factors that played a role in the increase in the number of divorces in Belgium in the course of the nineteenth century. The research relates to information from four Flemish municipalities for the period 1800-1913. Results indicate that an explanation of the rising divorce rate can be sought in the psychological and social consequences of the more pronounced shift in marriage, gender and family expectations. Increasing numbers of women threw themselves more and more into their gender-specific expressive gender role, whereas the objective opportunities and attainability of this role did not increase commensurately. The result was role strain: high marriage and family expectations soon come up against intrinsic limitations. As a result of this, both individual and general frustration increased, and this was an ideal social substratum for facilitating divorce.     

Ready, willing, and able to divorce: an economic and cultural history of divorce in twentieth-century Sweden

This study outlines a long history of divorce in Sweden, recognizing the importance of considering both economic and cultural factors in the analysis of marital dissolution. Following Ansley Coale, the authors examine how a framework of multiple theoretical constructs, in interaction, can be applied to the development toward mass divorce. Applying a long historical perspective, the authors argue that an analysis of gendered aspects of the interaction between culture and economics is crucial for the understanding of the rise of mass divorce. The empirical analysis finds support for a marked decrease in legal and cultural obstacles to divorce already during the first decades of the twentieth century. However, economic structures remained a severe obstacle that prohibited significant increases in divorce rate prior to World War II. It was only during the 1940s and 1960s, when cultural change was complemented by marked decreases in economic interdependence between spouses, that the divorce rate exhibited significant increases. The authors find that there are advantages to looking at the development of divorce as a history in which multiple empirical factors are examined in conjunction, recognizing that these factors played different roles during different time periods.     

Time-space trends in Swedish divorce behaviour, 1911-1974

This study examines how the divorce rates in Sweden have varied over time and across different geographical areas during the period 1911-1974, and how these variations can be connected to the political, socio-economic and cultural development in Sweden. The analysis provides empirical support for the hypothesis that increased divorce rates have been the result of changes in the structural conditions that determine the degree of economic interdependence between spouses. There is a strong connection between the degree of urbanization and the divorce rate on a regional level for the entire research period. The statistical analysis of the regional data indicates that these patterns are connected to the more diversified economy that has developed in urban settings, in the form of a more qualified labour market and higher wages for females. These characteristics resulted in a faster and more pronounced reduction of economic interdependence between spouses, which made divorce more attainable in these areas as compared with rural settings.     

Governing science before it governs us

Abstract

In this article I reflect on the motivation behind my latest book, ‘The governance of science: ideology and the future of the open society’, which is traceable to Karl Popper's dictum that scientists let their ideas die in their stead. I take this insight as the mark of our humanity more generally, even though we are on the verge of losing it. I argue that this is because, over the past century, the material and psychic investments in particular research trajectories have made it increasingly difficult to envisage what it would be like to pursue scientific inquiry in a substantially different way. I begin by discussing the historical significance of rhetoric in distinguishing between our privately held beliefs and publicly expressed theories, and then showing how this necessary – albeit morally ambivalent – distinction has been compromised with the onset of ‘big science’, first in physics and now in biology. We are thus saddled with a conception of scientific progress that threatens to render us, in evolutionary terms, overadapted to our environments. At the end of the article, I suggest some ways in which we may overcome the problem, at least in terms of the emerging ‘bioliberal’ regime.     

None daring to make us afraid

ABSTRACT

J.W. Breyer, the young South African military administration's first game warden in Namibia, was based at Namutoni on the south-eastern margin of the Etosha pan. Breyer died a lonely death and a meticulous inventory was rendered of Breyer's estate. Viktor Franke, the German commander in south-western Africa, and Cocky Hahn, the second South African commissioner of native affairs stationed at Ondangwa, similarly left a visual record of their intimate surroundings. An itinerary of their material worlds and hence of colonialism in Namibia is here revealed using photographs and other evidence, highlighting some of the complexities of the cultural practices of colonial administration and policing in southern Africa.     

爱好旅游能健体 喜欢摄影快乐多

正我平生喜欢旅游,退休以后又开始学习摄影。旅游摄影以其独特的魅力,让我大开眼界,尽情享受生活的乐趣。我们外出旅行的目的不仅是为了欣赏名胜古迹、人文景观,更是为了亲近那一片大自然。当飞机载着我们离开地面,掠过白云,尽情享受翱翔乐趣之时,时常有一种抑制不住的激动萦绕于怀。感谢现代交通工具的发达,是发达的科技让我们看到世界的美妙和宇宙的苍茫。古人云:"读万卷书,不如行万里     

Family,marriage and divorce in a Hausa community: a sociological model

"The aim of this article is to show how a 'traditional' society may produce a household system in which the structural tensions are no less intense than in the Western world. Muslim Hausa society (in northern Nigeria) has one of the highest rates of divorce (and remarriage) in the world. An explanation is sought here in terms of the economic and organisational requirements of a subsistence farming system that is always potentially short of labour. Divorce is a solution to otherwise unacceptable pressures, particularly on young women, in a society that requires them to be subordinate and marginal within the extended family. The data presented here were collected between 1979 and 1989 in the Niger valley of Sokoto State in northern Nigeria." (SUMMARY IN FRE)