农业和文明起源

文明起源在考古学上是一个复杂的问题,牵涉到人类社会的许多方面。其中一个重要方面就是农业。本文试图强调农业对文明起源所起的推动作用,并提出一些有关农业考古的看法,希望对目前正在进行的中华文明探源工程和类似课题有所帮助。     

论中国社会工作价值观的“社会主义化”

从产生的背景上看,社会工作是西方资本主义社会为维护和巩固自身统治而实施的一种制度改良方案,是直接为资本主义持久统治服务的。随着社会工作在我国的开展和普及,社会工作的本土化、＂社会主义化＂的问题也逐渐为人们所关注。文章还分析了社会工作价值观与中国古代社会工作价值观念、与社会主义核心价值体系的关系,并试图将它们统一起来,以便使社会工作更好地为构建社会主义和谐社会服务。     

唐代岭南流动文人的数量分析

本文利用大量数据,从时、空、类型等三个方面描述了唐代岭南文人的社会流动,即从不同时期岭南流动文人的数量分布来看,有唐一代岭南流动文人的数量一直处于小幅波动但持续平稳的增长之中,且后段的数量要大大高于前段;从不同时期岭南流动文人的地理分布来看,唐代流动文人在岭南的分布异常不均衡,主要集中于"五管"及以广州、桂州为轴线的各州,各期州数的多寡与人数的增减基本上呈正相关关系;从不同时期岭南流动文人的流动类型来看,向上的、水平的流动都是后期比前期的多,向下的流动则基本持平,表明岭南在唐代后期越来越富有吸引力,而文人大批量地到来,又会对岭南文学风习的涵养产生积极的作用和潜移默化的影响,但这种改善非常缓慢。     

青海发展社会中介组织的必要性

青海作为经济后发展地区,市场化水平较低,中介组织的发展正处于起步阶段。加快和规范青海中介组织的发展,对实施西部大开发,发展区域经济优势,提高青海企业国际竞争能力,加快科技成果转化,实现政府职能转变,适应经济全球化,具有十分重要的战略意义。     

试论我国的社会救助法律制度

本文认为,社会救助法律制度的产生和发展是社会进步的标志之一,但我国目前的社会救助法律制度还不够完备,满足不了现实要求。因此,建立完备的社会救助法律制度已是当务之急。     

Centripetal settlement and segmentary social formation of the Banpo tradition

Creating a spatial environment to facilitate social operation is a common practice among human groups. Segmentary social formations have limited regulatory capacity due to the lack of formally sanctified authorities. The pressure is on the emergency of atternative mechanisms that regulate the practice of segmentary principles. The Neolithic site at Jiangzhai in North China is a classic archaeological example of using the centripetal plan and demarcated space to support the working of segmentary organization. The occupation was partitioned into three concentric divisions of the central plaza, residential and burial zones. The later two zones were further demarcated into spatially discrete areas for allocating the social segments comprising the community. The arrangement translated the abstract segmentary principles into tangible space where everyday practices played out. It created a spatiality that placed individual acts under the watch of the entire community, thus enabling the effective policing against deviated practices by public opinions. Analyses of the material remains distributed in the highly ordered built environment indicate that food sharing was practiced in the communal level, and craft production of the ceramics was likely organized in the household level. Patterns of monochrome paintings and etched signs on the ceramics suggest the sharing of symbolism in a pan-community network. The study also isolates the budding of non-conforming acts that would one day fracture the segmentary community.     

构建和谐社会需要良好的社会心理

构建社会主义和谐社会除了健全各种机制、切实把维护公众的合法权益作为处理社会矛盾、促进社会安定和谐的出发点和落脚点之外,还要密切关注人们的社会心理。因为,良好的社会心理是经济社会转型的重要变量,对社会发展有巨大的能动作用,是社会稳定和社会秩序规范的重要条件。     

追寻西欧市场经济的中世纪起源——评徐浩著《中世纪西欧工商业研究》

徐浩著《中世纪西欧工商业研究》一书,旨在探讨中世纪中期开始西欧如何和为何逐步走上市场经济的道路。该书将社会转型问题从资本主义的起源转换为市场经济的兴起,在理论上充分吸收了经济学的历史经济学理论和经济社会史的商业化理论,着眼于中世纪西欧工商业史中一系列既独立又相互依托的重要专题,探讨中世纪西欧工商业存在和发展的特定历史环境、商业诸问题以及工业诸问题。该书的研究特色体现为对中世纪西欧作长时段的考察,关注普通民众的命运,研究方法上注重比较,主张对社会经济变化的原因作多视角的阐释。     

Identifying high-status foods in the archeological record

More than providing simply nutritive value, food in human societies can be endowed with great social weight. Aspects of any given food system inform, and are informed by, a variety of social, economic, religious, historical, ecological, cultural, and political processes. Moreover, food systems are often intentionally designed and executed to communicate key aspects of a consumer’s identity including class or social status. The manipulation of food systems on the part of socio-political elites or high status individuals is but one example of this phenomenon, the appearance of which is a correlate of increased socio-political hierarchy. As food can come to be used by elites as a socio-political tool in stratified societies, the temptation to use archeologically recognizable differences in foodways as a means of understanding the origin, nature, and functioning of processes of stratification is strong. The obvious difficulty lies in developing theoretically informed methods that reckon food system differences in ways that enable scholars to identify those foods that may have been particularly imbued with social meaning. In this paper, we propose a metric for the identification of elite foods (or, indeed, socially valued foods) using the types of data typically available to archeologists. Based on these proposed criteria, we attempt to unravel the complex and politically charged food system of the stratified societies of the pre-Columbian Greater Antilles with an eye towards refining our understanding of the development and maintenance of prestige and institutionalized power therein.     

Are Members of Business for Social Responsibility More Socially Responsible?

This study examines the association between corporate social performance (CSP) practices and membership in Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) between 1992 and 2006. BSR is a business association that seeks to help its members adopt enhanced CSP practices. While there is an emerging literature examining voluntary initiatives as alternative policy mechanisms to regulations, most research is focused on initiatives that emphasize environmental protection. Further, studies suggest that membership in strictly voluntary initiatives tends to be associated with lower environmental performance because of “free‐riding” behavior by participants. BSR differs along two dimensions when compared with other voluntary initiatives examined in the literature. First, it is a comprehensive voluntary social initiative that helps firms from diverse industries address multiple CSP issues simultaneously. Second, it might limit opportunism by not offering blanket certification to its participants. Our results indicate that BSR members exhibit greater levels of positive social impacts without demonstrating significantly different levels of negative social impacts. This suggests that participation in voluntary initiatives that avoid granting blanket certifications may be associated with the adoption of new corporate social responsibility practices but not linked to the shedding of entrenched routines that produce negative externalities.