推进社会救助体系建设构建和谐海西

本文针对当前海西州在社会救助机制和运行体制方面存在的问题及所面临的困难,认为,要构建海西和谐社会,就要积极推进覆盖城乡的社会救助体系建设,创新社会救助工作机制和运行体制.     

浅谈我国农村低保制度

我国农村低保制度现在已全面铺开,但离实现应保尽保还很远。概括叙述了农村＂五保＂制度和＂低保＂制度的现状及问题,并提出了解决对策,关键是要完善农村低保制度,特别是低保立法问题,完善城乡社会救助制度。     

浅谈我国农村低保制度

我国农村低保制度现在已全面铺开,但离实现应保尽保还很远。概括叙述了农村"五保"制度和"低保"制度的现状及问题,并提出了解决对策,关键是要完善农村低保制度,特别是低保立法问题,完善城乡社会救助制度。     

农村社会保障体系中的政府责任分析

当前我国广大农村地区的社会保障制度还处在一个比较缺失的阶段,政府作为这项制度的强制实施者有着重要责任。新型农村合作医疗保障与社会救助制度是当下农村社会保障体系建设中的关键。必须确立农村社保建设的基本原则,构建中国特色的农村社保体系;发挥政府强有力的组织和引导作用;为农村社保体系的构建提供完善的法律保障;加强管理和监督,推进农村社保体系的制度化和规范化建设。     

以人民为中心:脱贫攻坚中社会救助托底机制研究

坚持以人民为中心的发展理念,做到"弱有所扶",是习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想的重要组成部分,也是加强社会救助体系建设的总体要求和实践遵循。当前,我国已进入精准扶贫精准脱贫的攻坚期和决胜全面建成小康社会的关键期,如何发挥好社会救助兜底在脱贫攻坚战略中的作用,就显得至关重要与紧迫。因此,本文结合地方实践探索阐述社会救助兜底保障在脱贫攻坚战略中的政策体系与运行成效,分析社会救助兜底保障在脱贫攻坚战略中存在的问题,从国家治理体系和治理能力现代化高度,重新审视社会救助政策体系的发展,在坚持"以人民为中心的发展理念"指导下,提出推进社会救助兜底在脱贫攻坚战略中的实践路径思考。     

着力构建城乡一体党建工作新格局

构建城乡一体党建工作新格局,充分发挥党建工作在统筹城乡发展中的思想政治引领和组织保证作用,是党建工作落实科学发展观的必然要求。当前要着力解决进一步明确基本思路、健全组织体系、加强对党员的动态管理、推进城乡人才双向流动、建立城乡基层组织互助机制以及加大基层党建工作投入力度等六个主要问题。     

加强和创新社区社会管理

十七届五中全会将推进社会体制改革、加强和创新社会管理作为＂十二五＂我国经济社会发展的主要目标,强调要＂加强社会管理能力建设,创新社会管理体制,切实维护社会和谐稳定＂。胡锦涛则明确指出：要进一步加强和完善基层社会管理和服务体系,把人力、物力、财力更多地投入到基层,努力夯实基层组织,壮大基层力量,整合基层资源,强化基础工作,强化城乡社区自治和服务功能,健全新型社区管理和服务体制。党的十八大再次强调要加强和创新社会管理,提高社会管理科学化水平。创新社会管理,必然要求进一步加强和完善基层社会管理和服务体系,而加强和完善基层社会管理和服务体系重心在基层、重点在社区。     

全球化背景下的中国新生弱势群体与保护性的社会政策

改革开放所进行的资源重组带来的一个重大变化就是社会分化程度进一步拉大,这一变化在全球化的背景下又得到了进一步的强化和凸现,形成了一个具有相当规模的新生弱势群体。其主要体现在:农民的“弱势”特征在全球化背景下逐步显露出来;城镇新生贫困群体有进一步扩大趋势;处于边缘状态的城市农民工生活状况日益令人担忧。因此对弱势群体而言,在全球化背景下,建立和完善弱势群体的社会支持网络,具有特别的意义。据此,首先要提高认识,采取积极的措施,切实把解决弱势群体的问题当作一件影响国计民生和社会稳定的大事来抓;尽快建立综合性的城市社会救助系统;迅速、全面推进社会保险制度建设;进一步完善社会保障责任共担机制。     

城乡统筹发展背景下寒地村镇规划的几点思考

中共中央在党的十七大工作报告中指出:统筹城乡发展,推进社会主义新农村建设。要加强农业基础地位,走中国特色农业现代化道路,建立以工促农、以城带乡长效机制,形成城乡经济社会发展一体化新格局。根据村镇体系的相关原理,以及寒地的特殊环境和现实问题,对寒地村镇规划几点思考。     

以法制保障社会主义新农村建设

建设社会主义新农村,要适时的把党的政策制度化、法律化,达到政策和法律的有效互动。健全、完善的农村法律体系是推进新农村建设的制度保障;浓郁的农村法律氛围是推进新农村建设的基础;良好的执法体系、完善的执法监督是新农村建设的关键。     

Iran's global reach: The Islamic Republic of Iran's policy,involvement, and activity in Africa

The aim of this study is to analyze the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI)'s policy toward and involvement in the African continent as a case study of the IRI's global policy and reach. The aspiration of the IRI's leadership for international standing and support coupled with a desire to export its revolutionary model and extend its influence beyond its borders have shaped its activity on many continents, including Africa. Africa's strategic location, past colonial experience, political position, rich resources, large Muslim population, and economic attractiveness have all contributed to shaping the IRI's activity within it. This study analyzes IRI's foreign policy in general and its implementation in Africa in particular, identifying the different historical phases of its activity in Africa, distinguishing between the various African regions, the main Iranian organizations involved therein, the means of and channels for Iranian involvement in Africa, and the reasons for IRI's gains and losses on that continent. The study shows how the Islamic regime has managed, during its 40 years of rule, through pragmatism and resilience, to gain influence and support, has endeavored to balance its losses, and has adapted to new circumstances in the African continent.     

Decadent Conservatism: Politics and Aesthetics in The Senate

Abstract: The relationship between late-Victorian Decadence and Aestheticism and politics has long been vexed. This article explores the hitherto under-explored confluence of conservatism and avant-garde literature in the period by introducing The Senate, a Tory-Decadent journal that ran from 1894-7. While Decadent authors occupied various political positions, this article argues that The Senate offers a crucial link between conservatism and Decadence The article presents the journal in its political and publishing context, outlining its editorial position on such issues as the Liberal Unionist-Conservative coalition governments, Britain's relationship with Europe and the threat of ‘State Socialism’, as well as its valorisation of Bollingbroke and eighteenth-century Toryism, and its relationship to, and difference from, key Decadent journals the Yellow Book and The Savoy. It then goes on to articulate its relationship to Decadence by focussing on the presence of Paul Verlaine in its pages and its vitriolic response to the press coverage of Oscar Wilde's trials. The article concludes by exploring the surprising wake of The Senate, briefly tracing the editors' influence in the development of Modernism and links with the journal BLAST.     

China's strategic partnership with Latin America: a fulcrum in China's rise

China has over the last two decades been committed to creating a strategic partnership with Latin American states by persistently extending its economic and political involvement in the continent. China's efforts in this regard reflect not only its desire to intensify its economic cooperation and political relations with nations in Latin America, but also its strategic goals of creating its own sphere of influence in the region and enhancing its ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power in order to elevate China's status at the systemic level. With access to Latin American markets, resources and investment destinations, China may sustain its economic and social progress that bases its long cherished dream of restoring its past glory of fuqiang (wealth and power) and rise as a global power capable of reshaping the current world system. The enormous economic benefits deriving from their economic cooperation and trade may persuade Latin American nations to accept the basic premise of China's economic strategy: that China's rise is not a threat, but an opportunity to gain wealth and prosperity. This will help China gain more ‘soft’ power in and leverage over its economic partners in Latin America, and thereby help it to rise in the global power hierarchy.     

Existentialist manifesto or conservative political science? Problems in interpreting Raymond Aron's Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire

Raymond Aron's Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire is often held to be a paradigmatic book because of either its rejection of positivism in the social sciences, or its anticipation of existentialism in philosophy. The common denominator in these paradigmatic interpretations of the work is its use of various German philosophical influences that, though relatively obscure in France at the time of its first publication in 1938, became prominent features of the postwar Parisian intellectual landscape. During the Cold War, however, Aron was not only a peripheral figure within the Parisian intelligentsia, but also one of its harshest critics. The apparent mismatch between the paradigmatic status claimed for the Introduction as the first French existentialist book and Aron's subsequent critical position towards the leading figures of existentialism in France forms the starting point for a critical re-examination of the book and its paradigmatic interpretations. After seeking an explanation for these interpretations of the Introduction in deeper trends of generational thought, this article suggests that the history of the idea of intellectual engagement offers a more useful angle from which to approach this challenging book.     

Between Principles and Pragmatism: India and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime in the Post-PNE Era, 1974–1980

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that even when India had posited its peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE) of May 1974 as a mark of resistance against a prejudiced nuclear order based upon the NPT, India's policies in the post-PNE period confirmed with many aspects of the emerging non-proliferation consensus. India's response was guided by two major factors. On one hand, were its long-held principles such as the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy (including PNE's) and the right to nuclear technology cooperation for peaceful purposes. On the other hand, were the pragmatic policy choices it had to make as advanced nuclear states worked towards a stricter non-proliferation regime. In this struggle between India's principles and its necessities, India's nuclear behavior was guided much more by pragmatism rather than by its normative preferences. Yet, even when India made major compromises on its nuclear principles in private, in public India stuck to the rhetoric of its principled opposition to the NPT regime. These tensions between India's actual practice and its public policy are evident on three major non-proliferation issues: nuclear safeguards, export controls and the danger of nuclear proliferation in its neighborhood.     

Heritage in trust: Sustainable stewardship in transition?

Abstract

Frequently identified with ‘establishment’ values the National Trust has as often been a focus of critique as of celebration. This essay examines the Trust's changing relation to contested values of heritage as manifest in its acquisitions and management policies, in its engagement with environmental and social issues and an emerging politicisation which transcends a narrow, purely property‐based interpretation of its statutory purpose. Recent acquisitions challenge conventional perceptions of ‘natural beauty’ and ‘historic interest’. Organisational greening has precipitated a review of the implications of stewardship ‘in perpetuity’. Recognition of the needs of local communities and awareness of equal opportunities issues have prompted a reinterpretation of its founders’ concerns with access and enjoyment ‘for the nation’. These developments manifest an inchoate shift in the Trust's emphasis from the preservation of the status quo to engagement with change, both within the context of its own properties and in its relations to the wider society and environment. The Trust is unlikely ever to lead changes in public perceptions of heritage but neither is its role necessarily or irredeemably a wholly reactionary one. Inertial and cautious, the Trust reflects and articulates the shifting resolution of contested cultural values.     

France and its purgatory

This article compares the experiences migrants face in the banlieue of France to rites of passage in Papua New Guinea, where the author has performed long-term fieldwork. Seen from a Turnerian anthropological point of view, the banlieue resembles a rite of passage with its separation, liminality, reintegration and its ambiguous meanings. However, its liminality lacks a communitas characterized by equality, direct relations between its members and an absence of ownership.     

Le groupe cathédral dans le paysage urbain en Italie (XIII–XVe siècles)

Reflecting on the alleged differences between the medieval town, based on its cathedral church, and the Renaissance town, supposedly grouped round its prince's palace, the author embarked on an examination of the role of the duomo and its precinct in the Italian town of the later middle ages. Apart from its central importance in religious functions, especially preaching and processions, and the conscious effort to ensure that the town's greatness was matched by the splendour of its cathedral, the author shows that the duomo served as the venue for recieving distinguished visitors, for public declarations, for miracle plays, for funerals, and even for some purely secular activities. The role of the duomo was thus at once religious and social and political.     

A Response to Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey Robbins,Religion, Politics and the Earth: The New Materialism1

Crockett's and Robbins' significant and groundbreaking book falls short of a genuinely liberating future, one that can put in place alternative social and institutional forms to sustain a comprehensive freedom from structural domination. This major claim is sustained by tracing four deficiencies in the book: (a) its sanguine trust to a developmentalist sensibility that underestimates political antagonism; (b) another neglect of political antagonism in its trust to transformative powers of a “multitude” and its cooperative activity, (c) its failure to build social and political formation into its theory of emergent complexity, and (4) its failure in reflexivity, to interrogate the “we” discourse that proliferates in authors' senses of crisis and calls for transformation.     

Notes and News

Abstract

This paper seeks to cast some light on a so-called Green Man ivory knife handle from Perth and on the cultural context from which it sprang. It was made and lost or disposed of during the 14th century and, although its full life-story includes its archaeological recovery and subsequent curation in Perth Museum, its main importance lies in what it can tell us of medieval people. Exploring its material and production, its function as a handle, its iconography and its cultural background reveals this importance. Bringing these strands together gives us a snapshot of medieval cognition, focusing, on the way elements of seasonal ritual were consumed in the medieval burgh of Perth.