中国现代经济发展的初始条件

中华民族历史悠久、文化统一,其文化凝聚力和生存延续力的深度是民族复兴、实现现代化的根基。统一的独立自主的社会主义国家的建立,为在一个经济落后、长期分裂的国家进行现代化建设创造了基本的政治前提条件。丰富的劳动力资源、较高的社会整合能力以及社会一体化水平是中国推进现代化的独特的组织资源优势。中国领导人具有强烈的工业化和现代化意识,而且中国作为一个后起的现代化国家,具有诸多的后发优势。但是,中国工业化启动时间晚,经济发展起点低下,工业基础薄弱,物质和资本资源短缺;人口数量多、增长快,城乡差异巨大,各地区发展极不平衡,教育事业落后,医疗卫生条件差,科学技术水平低,缺乏启动工业化的技术创新力量和吸收新技术的能力。由于中国工业化和现代化的初始条件与发达国家差异很大,决定了中国的现代化将是一个由不断量变的积累进而部分质变的长期过程,中国至少要花100年的时间甚至更长的时间才能逐步缩小与发达国家的绝对差距。     

19世纪中叶的中日近代世界秩序体认

19世纪中叶前后,以西力东侵为背景,中日两国的精英分子对剧烈变动的世界作出了不同的回应。在日本,以洋学家和开明政治家为主体的“开放力量”,初步意识到人类文明“一体化”格局,其国际视野不断扩大。确立了近代外交观念。而同时期的中国官僚士大夫则沉浸于传统世界秩序观之中,难以形成系统的开放思想。直到两次鸦片战争后,方才出现明确的对外开放观念。这说明在对近代世界秩序体认的问题上,两国存在着较大的时间差。     

Re‐valuing the Fringe: Some Findings on the Value of Agricultural Production in Australia's Peri‐Urban Regions

The agriculture that occurs in Australia's peri‐urban regions is not well understood, nor has its economic value ever been examined systematically. Using a spatial frame derived from research into population change, Agricultural Census data are used to calculate the value of this agricultural production. The analysis suggests that peri‐urban regions in the five mainland States produce almost 25% of Australia's total gross value of agricultural production. Evidence gathered from other surveys suggests that, in some respects, this may be an underestimate. Although qualified and provisional, these findings have important strategic implications for agricultural development, urban and regional development and, ultimately, sustainable development. However, peri‐urban issues are often submerged in public policy deliberations, and peri‐urban agriculture is poorly served by the Agricultural Census.     

罗斯福“新政”的农业政策

富兰克林·罗斯福上台执政后,面对美国的严重农业危机、农民悲惨处境和反抗浪潮,实行了以<农业调整法>为主要内容,以国家干预为重要手段,以控制农产品产量为目标的农业政策.罗斯福政府的农业"新政",是在维护资本主义制度的前提下,对这种制度进行改革的重要组成部分.这种改革虽然只是一种农业资本主义的结构改革,而非革命性的改革,更未促成一场社会革命,但它保护和促进了美国垄断资本主义,使美国的农业和工业一样进入了国家垄断资本主义阶段.     

不平衡的发展:20世纪与现代化

20世纪历史的主题是现代化,20世纪重大历史事件都围绕现代化展开。就不发达国家而言,现代化对他们的冲击逼迫它们做出回应,于是就出现众多的革命、改良、和民族独立战争。就发达国家而言,经济大萧条和两次世界大战似乎表明它们的“现代化”已经出现问题了,于是它们进入“修正”现代化的阶段。一方面是现代化的全球扩张,一方面是“修正”现代化的努力,这两种相反趋势造成20世纪历史的矛盾发展,“不平衡”引发出无数的“多元化”。     

新时期小城镇建设的回顾与思考

改革开放以来,我国小城镇的建设问题从作为“大问题”提出,到形成经济社会发展的“大战略”,其间经历了艰苦的探索、创新过程,最终实现了一个发展思路上的飞跃,积累了极为宝贵的经验。在中国城镇化的进程中,小城镇的恢复和发展占有十分重要的地位。建设小城镇的主要目的并不仅仅在于建设一批现代化的城镇,而且在于通过城镇发展过程中资本的聚集和人口的集中逐步解决“三农”问题。     

THE ONTOLOGY OF CAPITAL: ON THE SHARED METHODOLOGICAL LIMITS OF MODERNIZATION THEORY AND ITS CRITICS

This article argues that critical scholarship in historical studies has not overcome the methodological limits of modernization theory for failing to question the ontological principles that construct its object of analysis. I call these principles the “ontology of capital” and explicate them through Bourdieu's conceptualization of the field and capital. I argue that this ontology is established according to a distribution model in which social entities come into the analysis with the amount and value of the capital they hold. This model grasps all social relations in the form of competition, and actors and actions enter into the analysis only when they are involved in such relations. I then analyze Bernard Lewis's The Emergence of Modern Turkey, which is written explicitly from a modernization perspective, to show how the principles of the “ontology of capital” operate in this text. The analysis focuses on how sociohistorical facts are constructed through selection and articulation of empirical evidence that become meaningful only on the basis of this ontology. The aim of this analysis is to show the ontology of capital that constructs the object of analysis in Lewis's text rather than the Eurocentric, teleological, and elitist character of his analysis of history that critics in recent decades have addressed as problems of the modernization paradigm. Based on this, I argue that for a productive critical approach, relational analysis, which characterizes critical scholarship in contrast to essentialism, also has to consider the ontological principles in a historical work to overcome methodological limits. The failure to interrogate this ontology leads to an analytical separation in critical scholarship between the analysis of historical reality and of alternatives to this reality. This separation not only produces a dehistoricized analysis of the present from a critical perspective, but also turns the alternatives into utopian models.     

Cluster-internal and external drivers of cluster renewal: evidence from two German agricultural engineering case studies

The question on how regional clusters renew themselves and start a new cycle of prosperity is of vital interest for affected companies, politicians and regions. Recently, the idea of renewing clusters has been conceptualized within the cluster life cycle (CLC) literature. CLC approaches generally assume that cluster renewal is widely driven cluster-internally through agent capability building processes and the systemic utilization of novelty. Critique from other authors highlights the neglected role of the external environment in the CLC literature. This article sheds light on renewal processes in two German agricultural engineering clusters. It is shown that in the case of a farm trailer cluster renewal can be widely explained cluster-internally, while in the case of a stable technology cluster that diversified into the field of biogas technology, internal factors played a less significant role and much of the development was driven externally by political decisions on the national level. Possible explanations for diverging roles of cluster-internal and external factors lie in the differences in the stage of the novel technologies’ development and the complexity of the novel technology.     

Qenja: child fostering and relocation practices in the Amhara region,Ethiopia

In this article we discuss temporary relocation and informal labour of children in rural Ethiopia. We respond to the call ‘to understand the wider logic underlying child relocation and non-parental residence among populations experiencing poverty’ (Boyden, J. 2013. “We're Not Going to Suffer Like this in the Mud: Educational Aspirations, Social Mobility and Independent Child Migration among Populations Living in Poverty.” Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education 43 (5): 580–600. 582). Drawing on the perspectives of children and families involved in the practice of qenja (meaning ‘teaming’ or ‘forming a coalition’) we examine how – in contexts of uneven distribution of rural labour – children's involvement in transient agricultural labour outside the home is a fundamental feature of social reproduction. We argue that qenja is a social coping strategy that co-exists alongside gendered and generational relations of household production and reproduction. An understanding of the practice as merely transactional and exploitative ignores long-standing community strategies of labour acquisition and redistribution. We stress that child protection campaigns by non-governmental organizations and national legislations that intend to criminalize the practice are not in the interest of children, families, and communities.     

Betwixt and between in the intermediate area

The great diversity in early subsistence practices and in the later development of complex patterns of social, political, and economic organization is one of the Intermediate Area's greatest riches for comparative anthropological study. Archaeological research there is now in the midst of the conceptual shift needed to take full advantage of the opportunities offered.