THE ECONOMICS OF SOCIAL SECURITY POLICY

Books reviewed in this articles:
Henry J. Aaron, Economic Effects of Social Security
Peter J. Ferrara, Social Security; Adverting the Crisis
Carolyn L. Weaver, The Crisis in Social Security; Economic and Political Origins     

STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM AND THE FUTURE OF ETHNOHISTORY IN NORTH AMERICA

Leeds, Anthony, Sanjek, Roger, eds. Cities, Classes and the Social Order. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994. xiii + 272 pp. including bibliography and index. $39.95 cloth; $16.95 paper.     

中国社会地理学发展综述

在中国人文地理学众多分支学科中,社会地理学属于发展较慢的一个分支,但近年来出现了较快的发展势头,研究内容日益广泛,研究人员对社会地理学的诸多领域开展了研究,包括:
1.社会地理学的性质与内容。在吸收西方社会地理学成果的基础上,结合中国实际,认为要重点研究社会集团的空间活动,也有人认为要研究社会集团、社会文化、社会生态、社会问题。
2.社区地理研究。主要内容包括社区地理的理论、城市社会区域的划分、农村社区、社会集团等方面的研究。
3.社会问题的研究。主要有犯罪现象、贫困问题等。
随着人文地理学在中国的全面复兴,地理学出现了明显的人文化、社会化趋向,人文地理工作者从原先注重经济活动转而关注社会问题,特别是进入九十年代以来,社会转型加快,社会问题愈加突出地显现出来,迫切需要建立中国的社会地理学理论体系,加强对现实社会问题的研究,开拓新的研究领域,如生活水平与生活方式、生活空间、社会变迁等,为我国制定有关方针政策提供依据。     

Book Reviews

Books Reviewed:
Katharine Neilson Rankin , The Cultural Politics of Markets: Economic Liberalization and Social Change in Nepal .
Eric Klinenberg , Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago .     

From Steering Capitalism to Seeking Market Acceptance

This article puts into a historical context the employment conceptions and policies of leading Social Democrats in Finland from 1975 to 1998. It takes into account both the strategic decision-making and public argumentation of the Social Democrats in employment-sensitive issues related to economic, employment, labour market, state company, competition, globalization and integration policies.

Finland’s Social Democrats moved towards emphasizing private sector-led employment, approached the middle classes, adopted monetarist ideas, accepted the ‘market economy’ and favoured ‘controlled restructuring’ over counter-cyclical measures in a series of steps in 1975–1998. The deregulation of financial markets meant a shifting of the basis of Social Democratic employment policy from steering the capitalist economy to seeking market acceptance of the party’s politics. This did not manage to guarantee full employment in Finland during the period.

Furthermore, Finland’s Social Democrats seemed initially to practise a ‘third way’ type of ‘Bad Sillanpää’ policy long before its adherents in the UK. such as Tony Blair. After the mid-1970s, the Finnish Social Democrat-led governments no longer imitated Sweden, while implementing many reforms which were followed by the Swedish Social Democrats.     

THE SOCIAL EVALUATION OF A TERRITORY UNDER CONDITIONS OF THE SCIENTIFIC-TECHNICAL REVOLUTION

The present practice of economic and technological evaluation of a territory for development purposes is found to be inadequate because the evaluation made by Soviet planning and design agencies does not always coincide with the perception of particular places by individual citizens. As a result, the outflow from rural areas has been particularly heavy in areas where agricultural labor is especially short, and the predominant direction of interregional migration has been southward rather than to the east, where it is most needed. It is therefore suggested that spatial planning is based on a social evaluation of territory that would eliminate the present conflicts in perception and bring the interests of society more into line with the interests of individual citizens. Social evaluation is based on two value indicators: (1) the uniqueness of the creative process localized in a particular place, tending to make that place attractive; (2) accessibility of the place from surrounding areas. One possible approach to measuring the social attractiveness of a place is the extent to which individuals strive to establish direct contact (visits, direct dealings) or indirect contacts (eliciting of information) with that place.     

Book Reviews

Mona Domosh and Joni Seager, Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World
Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again
J Donald Hughes, An Environmental History of the World: Humankind's Changing Role in the Community of Life     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Manning Marable , The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life
Martin Powell (ed) , Evaluating New Labour's Welfare Reforms
Philip E Steinberg , The Social Construction of the Ocean
Don Mitchell , The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
The Geography of Social Well-Being in the United States , by David M. Smith.
The Geography of Poverty in the United States , by Richard L. Morrill and Ernest H. Wohlenberg.
The Black Ghetto: A Spatial Behavioral Perspective , by Harold M. Rose.
Conflict, Power and Politics in the City: A Geographic View , by Kevin R. Cox.
Indicators of Social Change: Concepts and Measurements by Eleanor Bernert Sheldon and Wilbert E. Moore (eds.).
Urban Residential Patterns , by R. J. Johnston.
Housing, 1970–71 , by G. Sternlieb and L. B. Sagalyn (eds.).
The Social Fabric of the Metropolis , by James F. Short, Jr. (ed.).
Introduction to Multivariate Analysis for the Social Sciences , by John P. Van de Geer.     

Would it be rude if I asked…

Esther N. Goody, ed. Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology 8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. viii + 324 pp. $7.95 paper; $29.95 cloth.     

IV. LITERATURE REVIEW

Book Reviewed in this article:
Henry W. Riechen and Robert F. Boruch, eds., Social Experimentation: A Method for Planning and Evaluating Social Intervention
John M. Johnson, Doing Field Research
Peter H. Rossi and Walter Williams, eds., Evaluating Social Programs; Theory, Practice, and Politics
Richard Rose, ed., The Management of Urban Change in Britain and Germany
John P. Ross and Jesse Burkhead, Productivity in the Local Government Sector
Richard D. Gustely, Municipal Public Employment and Public Expenditure
Lawrence M. Friedman, The Legal System: A Social Science Perspective
Isaac D. Balbus, The Dialectics of Legal Repression
Raoul Naroll, Vern L. Bullough, and Frada Naroll, Military Deterrence in History; A Pilot Cross-Historical Survey
Charles O. Jones, Clean Air: The Policies and Politics of Pollution Control
Daniel Quinn Mills, Government, Labor, and Inflation
Ithiel de Sola Pool, Wilbur Schramm, Frederick W. Frey, Nathan Maccoby, and Edwin B. Parker, eds., Handbook of Communication     

Reviews/Comptes rendus

Book reviewed in this article:
Manufacturing Montreal: the Making of an Industrial Landscape
Thailand's Crisis by Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker
Territoire et Vieillissement
The Enigma of Ethnicity: Another American Dilemma
Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Enquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again
Land Power and Economics on the Frontier of Upper Canada
International Tourism Attractions in Central and Southeastern Europe (Multicolour map print; 1:3,000,000; 50.5 times 56.6 cm)     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
Dean T. Jamison and Emile G. McAnany, Radio for Education and Development
Ruth Thomas, Broadcasting and Democracy in France
Arthur Williams, Broadcasting and Democracy in West Germany
James B. Rule, Insight rind Social Betterment: A Preface to Applied Social Science
Charles E. Silberman, Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice     

Vampires: Social Constructivism, Realism, and Other Philosophical Undead

Books reviewed in this article: Andre Kukla, Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What?     

BOOK REVIEWS

book reviewed in this article:
Craufurd D. Goodwin, ed., Energy Policy In Perspective: Today's Problems, Yesterday's Solutions
Loren Cobb and Robert M. Thrall, eds., Mathematical Frontiersv of the Social and Policy Sciences
David Collingridge, The Social Control of Technology
Frank J. Thompson, Health Policy and the Bureaucracy: Politics and Implementation
Joseph A. Yager. International Cooperation in Nuclear Energy
Philip van Slyck, Strategies for the 1980s: Lessons of Cuba, Vietnam, and Afghanistan     

Telling government to fool people somewhere else

Robert Paine, ed. The White Arctic: Anthropological Essays on Tutelage and Ethnicity. Newfoundland Social and Economic Papers No. 7. Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland. 418 pp. $12.00.     

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE REGULATORY STATE

It is well-established in various strands of historiography that the First World War was a formative phase in the evolution of the modern state. This article deals with the Danish case, in which the politics of neutrality made a previously unseen kind of economic regulation necessary. This led to a heated debate about the functions and role of the state, especially its role in economic life. On the one hand, the Social Liberals in government saw the great potential of economic regulations, and their experiences during the war confirmed their beliefs in the importance of a strong state in dealing with the problems of capitalism; on the other, liberals and conservatives began to voice strong criticism of this slide towards stronger state control. Hence different visions of the role of the state came to be the dividing line between Left and Right, and the ideologies of the liberal and conservative Right were redefined in direct opposition to socialism and economic regulation.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
Stan Openshaw and Christine Openshaw, Artificial Intelligence in Geography
Clifford Winston and Chad Shirley Alternative Route: Toward Efficient Urban Transportation
Katherine Jensen and Audie Blevins, The Last Gamble: Betting on the Future in Four Rocky Mountain Mining Towns
Ali Madanipour, Göran Cars, and Judith Allen (eds.), Social Exclusion in European Cities: Processes, Experiences and Responses
Paul Lawless, Ron Martin, and Sally Hardy (eds.), Unemployment and Social Exclusion: Landscapes of Labour Inequality
William A. V. Clark, The California Cauldron: Immigration and the Fortunes of Local Communities     

城市建成环境如何影响老年人体力活动——模型构建与大连实证

针对建成环境与老年人体力活动关系研究中,较少定量刻画其与社会、心理要素交互作用的不足,本文构建了三者交互影响下的体力活动关系模型。研究发现：①老年人体力活动参与率整体不高,性别与家庭结构差异在活动表现形式上存在不同。②活动意向未能有效触发老年人体力活动,自我效能感是其重要参考因素;建成环境、社会资本对老年人体力活动的影响,由直接或间接通过自我效能感中介完成,心理健康作用则未显现。③家庭结构存在调节作用,建成环境单一要素对空巢老人体力活动的作用并不明显,但其对与子女共同居住老年人影响稳健。④社会资本是建成环境发挥空间干预老年人体力活动作用的重要前提;环境对公共健康的影响,更应采应取组合式干预策略。     

网络文化的社会方言研究

方言是社会交际的工具,社会的发展是方言发展的根本原因和基本条件。网络方言也同样是随着网络信息社会的出现而产生的,本文就网络方言产生的原因、本身特点以及发展趋势进行了探讨。针对网络方言研究背景,从网络文化社会方言的发展现状及特点入手,提出网络语言正在成为一种新的社会方言并从其简略化、图形化、符号化和时尚化等方面分析了当前社会文化发展的新趋势,从而证明也只有在对社会全面关注和考察基础上才能发现社会语言的变化。