Income Transfers Alone Won't Eradicate Poverty

Even in the current economic situation, in developed countries, rhetoric about cutting "poverty" is misleadingly outmoded—because it implicitly suggests that government income transfers can be the vehicle for achieving substantial reductions in poverty. Almost all Americans already live far above subsistence poverty: most because of their earnings, and the rest because of government transfer programs. This decline in material poverty is obscured by weaknesses in how the official U.S. poverty measure counts income. What is now called poverty is really "income inequality." Reducing income inequality is also a vitally important social goal, but it cannot be accomplished through income transfers alone. The authors argue that, although income transfers have a role to play in lessening the impact of material deprivation, real progress in raising incomes will require building the human capital of the economically disadvantaged. This means both increasing the earnings capacity of lower-income workers and reducing the number of female-headed families.     

现代农业与小农制衔接的两个理论问题

走中国特色农业现代化道路需要解决两大实践难题：一是如何实现小农制与现代农业的有效衔接;二是如何培育资本农业的生成机制。归结起来就是“钱从哪里来”和“人往哪里去”的问题。这里涉及到两个理论问题：如何认识现代小农制的历史地位,如何解决资本与劳动的矛盾对立。本文围绕上述问题,对19世纪末以来马克思主义经典作家的相关讨论做一回顾性阐释。     

Social capital and poverty of the wage-labour class: problems with the social capital theory

Social capital, understood as norms of reciprocity and associational life, is supposed to provide a bottom-up approach to poverty alleviation world-wide. The World Bank says that social capital is a necessary condition for long-term development and that social capital is the capital of the poor. This paper will argue that much of the literature is too sanguine of the benefits of social capital for the poor. It is, of course, important to look at the extent to which social capital can help the poor. But how the conditions of the poor people can also affect their social capital is equally important to examine, and this has often been neglected by many scholars who have been busy to prove that social capital is a new paradigm of development. Based on qualitative interviews in two rural areas in Orissa, eastern India, this paper seeks to examine whether and to what extent poor people of the daily wage labour class benefit from their social capital. It then goes on to unpack the mechanisms in which the economic-political conditions under which poor people live and the spatiality of these conditions affect the production of social capital. By seeking to unpack the dialectical relation between social capital and poverty, the paper aims at problematizing the overly optimistic claims about social capital. It shows that it is untenable to posit social capital as an independent variable and poverty as a dependent variable because the economic-political conditions of poor people have an enormous constraining effect on social capital itself and its supposed material benefits for the poor.     

北京历史文化街区现状及发展研究

以北京市西城区西四北头条至北八条和什刹海地区的300多份问卷调查结果显示:无论从历史发展规律、城市发展规律或人居环境科学视角分析,旧城区的改造都是必然的,居住于此的多数居民对于危房改造的态度是积极的,并且认同现代化建设可以与保护古都风貌相结合的观点。鉴于此,建议将传统历史文化街区分为三类,即完全原样保护的区域、住宅区和旅游商业区,在改造的过程中注意从总体上把握建筑外观、布局及周边环境与北京旧城风貌的协调。     

Early capital cities

The early capital cities are the key symbols of early Chinese civilization. By comparing the Erlitou site, Shang city in Zhengzhou, Shang city in Yanshi with Niuheliang site, Mojiaoshan site, Shijiahe site, Taosi site, and Wangchenggang site, the characteristics of the early capital cities could be drawn: First, it should have palace or palace city in big sizes; Second, the palace or palace city should be surrounded by living quarters for noble families, working areas for melting bronze, and quarters for sacrifice. __________ Translated by Chen Bo from Wenwu 文物 (Cultural Relics), 2006, (6): 56–60, 87     

我国旅游景点资源推进资本经营与资产重组势在必行

现阶段我国旅游景点资源的开发和经营面临对产品进行深层次开发和创新、提高经营管理水平及应付国际竞争等各种困难和挑战,必须对其进行资本经营和资产重组,进行产权制度、管理体制等各种制度创新。     

1930年代中国农村合作运动讨论中的“商资归农”问题——以《大公报》社评及其所刊文章为素材的一个考察

20世纪30年代,随着中国农村复兴运动的高涨,农村合作实践中出现大量商资归农现象,并由此推动中国农村合作运动进入“极盛时期”或“农业合作社数量猛进和性质有所变更时期”。这一现象不仅为中国合作运动史上之新鲜事物。亦为“中国独有之现象”,故在社会各界特别是知识界引发了一场关于“商资流入农村问题”或商资归农利弊关系的讨论。而当时重要的新闻媒体天津《大公报》或发表社论及报道或刊发有关人士对这一问题的评论文章,积极参与了这一理论与实践问题的探讨。其讨论的目的在于为中国农村合作事业寻找一条可行之路,并以此复兴农村、振兴民族。不过,由于这场讨论本身是“社会失序时期”理论界的一种反映,所以有时人曾讥讽其为“合作者不合作”。     

偃师二里头遗址的都城空间结构及其特征

在最新考古发掘报告与前贤时俊研究的基础上,分析了偃师二里头遗址的都城空间结构及其特征。二里头都城的选址经过了周密的考虑。都城布局经过统一规划,属于单一城制即单一宫城形态的都城,其规划采取了按功能划分为不同分区的结构方法。宫城是一种"非城郭形态"的宫城,具有多宫城性质。二里头都城空间的形成大体经过四个阶段。都城空间的演变过程及其阶段性特征,与夏王朝的历史发展密切相关,是其时社会发展在都城空间领域的集中反映。二里头遗址是我国古代最早的具有明确规划的都城,后世中国古代都城营建制度的许多方面都可以追溯至二里头都城。     

Rethinking culture and development: the culture-led community development project in South Korea

ABSTRACT

This study examines the use of culture in South Korean community development by analyzing four cases of ‘Initiative for Creating Culture Communities in Everyday Life’ (ICCE) and their development discourses. Effectively mobilized by the state during the period of industrialization and modernization that began in the 1960s, culture has been utilized for social development by the South Korean government since the 2000s. The complex relationship between development and culture in terms of economic and social approaches is reflected in the development discourses of ICCE projects. Indeed, as an alternative to previous economic approaches, these projects show that the government still strongly intervenes in social development through symbolic power. To examine this process, we administered a semi-structured questionnaire and held in-depth interviews with eight members of the government-led ICCE project, including its practitioners, artists, and residents. This study finds that despite its efforts to decrease direct intervention in the development of these societies, government power is strongly exercised in symbolic form through discursive practices. We thus suggest that to prevent a specific participant from unilaterally possessing symbolic power in the development process, the government should create an environment in which various agents can participate in the development discourse.     

“Fixing” Climate Change by Mortgaging the Future: Negative Emissions,Spatiotemporal Fixes,and the Political Economy of Delay

Models suggest that climate change mitigation now depends on negative emissions, i.e. the large‐scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This assumption has been criticised in the climate policy literature for being unfeasible and unjust. This article asks how critical scholars can make sense of, and contribute to these debates. It suggests that negative emissions can be conceived of as a spatiotemporal fix that promises to defer the devaluation of fixed capital. But the negative emissions example also challenges us to broaden our conception of how the socioecological contradictions of capitalism can be “fixed”. I outline three ways in which it does this by highlighting the significance of a predominantly temporal fix, the role of hegemonic, sociopolitical interventions involving multiple actors, and the possibility of safeguarding existing production processes. I conclude that spatiotemporal fixes to climate change should be seen as part of a wider political economy of delay in devaluing carbon‐intensive accumulation processes.