Bringing politics into class analysis: state power and class formation in post-Mao China

Traditional class theories invariably embrace the ‘proposition of economism’, either extruding politics from the causality of class formation or treating politics as epiphenomenal. Similar ideas of class inform much of the literature on class in the People's Republic of China (PRC). This article contends that social stratification and class formation in post-Mao China cannot be fully understood without recognising state power as a critical determinant of life chances and a major organising principle in the country's class map due to the authoritarian nature of the Party-state and the ubiquity of state power in the economic sphere. It proceeds to illustrate the part that state power plays at the macro and micro levels in the production and reproduction of class.     

How to improve the quality of life in peripheral and lagging regions by policy measures? Examining the effects of two different policies in Germany

Peripheral regions commonly appear to be less attractive to live in and policymakers all over the world are applying various measures to make them more attractive. This paper analyzes the effects of two very different measures: The German municipal fiscal equalization scheme and the German structural funds for economically weak areas (GRW). It focusses on the impact on perceived quality of life, measured through interregional migration between German labor market regions. Using a spatial vector autoregressive panel model, we find evidence that equalization transfers have a significant positive impact on regional net migration and contribute to the aim of regional equity. These effects are especially found for regions with low endogenous fiscal capacities. GRW funding reveals no significant effects on net migration rates in total, but short-term effects in rural regions.     

From folklore to patriotic and protest songs: Music,youth, and Basque identity during the 1960s

Taking a bottom‐up approach to the study of nationalism, the following pages constitute an attempt to shed light on the role singing played for a young generation of Basques who actively participated in the process of construction of Basque collective identity during the cultural revival movement of the 1960s. In doing so, this article aims at showing the fundamental role of active audiences, as well as their changing political and social context, in conforming the meaning of “Basque songs” as means to promote Basque nationalism and sustain opposition to the Franco regime. The study of the production, reception, and reinterpretation of Basque music during the cultural revival of the 1960s presented here intends to emphasize the interest of focusing on how ordinary people contribute to the recreation of the nation through their appropriation and interpretation of cultural symbols and practices.     

Prostitution,variegated homes,and the practice of unhomely life in China

This paper studies a group of female sex workers and their ambivalent experiences of home in Dongguan, China’s so-called sin city, before the local government technically cracked down on the city’s sex industry in 2014. It has two objectives. First, we explore these workers’ life journey: spatially from their rural hometown to Dongguan, socially from domestic migrants to sex workers, and subjectively from poor persons to extravagant spenders. Through this journey-based perspective, we show that the departure from one home opens a door to another home, but the door to the sex industry engulfs our respondents into a perpetual condition of unhomely life. Second, we analyze sex workers’ practices of (un)homely life in various spaces of working (sauna), dwelling (rented apartment), and consumption (shopping center) in Dongguan and their imagination of a new home. We argue that home is a liminal space of ambivalent experiences that revolve around dichotomous distinctions between privacy and publicity, friendship and segregation, marginalization and belonging. This paper contributes to the critical geographies of home by incorporating these ambivalent experiences of home into sex workers’ life journey of leaving and making home in the context of China.     

‘Watching like a hawk’: gendered parenting in automobilized urban spaces

The growing interest in automobility theory and feminist perspectives on daily mobility points to the importance of considering parental mobility care of children. Hanson (2010, Gender, Place & Culture 17(1), 5–23) argues that feminists have long known that gender and mobility are bound together but have not sufficiently examined their contexts. The article extends this approach in its exploration of parental mobility care practices. It illustrates how automobility constructs disciplined parental practices to immobilize and safeguard children. Conversely, it shows how parental mobility care practices use, generate and resist automobility. These practices, the article argues, are deeply embedded within contexts of gender and automobility that (re)produce social inequalities. This analysis, which emerged out of our qualitative, interpretive approach, suggests new ways of thinking about automobility and parenting in relation to one another. The research is based on in-depth interviews with parents located in four urban areas in Vancouver, British Columbia.     

WHY PHOTOGRAPHY MATTERS TO THE THEORY OF HISTORY

Georges Didi-Huberman's study is concerned with epistemological and ethical questions that arise from visual representations of the Shoah, while Michael Fried's is concerned with the ontological possibilities explored by contemporary art photography. The books have two things in common: an argument against postmodern skepticism, and an insistence that photography has become a field in which questions of history, truth, and authenticity are being explored with particular acuity. Rather than reject even the possibility that photographs have something to tell us about the Shoah, Didi-Huberman shows that they can offer important insights into the difficulties and the possibilities of apprehending some aspects of the past.
Fried shows that contemporary photographic work has taken on the ambitions of high modernism by accepting the challenge of "to-be-seenness." Photography as a "historical practice" does not escape from the difficulties of evidence and of the "constructed" nature of historical understanding; photography functions neither as a pure trace of the past, nor as a mere invitation to spectacle.     

THE HISTORY OF EMOTIONS: AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM REDDY,BARBARA ROSENWEIN,AND PETER STEARNS

The history of emotions is a burgeoning field—so much so, that some are invoking an “emotional turn.” As a way of charting this development, I have interviewed three of the leading practitioners of the history of emotions: William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns. The interviews retrace each historian's intellectual‐biographical path to the history of emotions, recapitulate key concepts, and critically discuss the limitations of the available analytical tools. In doing so, they touch on Reddy's concepts of “emotive,”“emotional regime,” and “emotional navigation,” as well as on Rosenwein's “emotional community” and on Stearns's “emotionology” and offer glimpses of each historian's ongoing research. The interviews address the challenges presented to historians by research in the neurosciences and the like, highlighting the distinctive contributions offered by a historical approach. In closing, the interviewees appear to reach a consensus, envisioning the history of emotions not as a specialized field but as a means of integrating the category of emotion into social, cultural, and political history, emulating the rise of gender as an analytical category since its early beginnings as “women's history” in the 1970s.     

民主是民生的生命——关于构建以民主促民生工作机制的理论思考

在当前条件下,中国的民生问题,本质上是民主问题。从政治民主、经济民主到社会民主,反映了民主内涵的不断深化,以民主促民生是社会主义民主政治发展的必然趋势,也是落实科学发展观的必然要求。民主是实现民生目标的基础和重要手段,是贯穿于民生建设全过程的一项基本内容。只有实行民主,才能不断提高包含物质和文化生活在内的民生水平。离开了民主这块基石,民生的大厦就不可能建立起来。     

儿童生活往昔:丰子恺作品之社会史考察

清末民国时代的丰子恺,以艺术的视角观照儿童生活的琐屑与微末,发现:与成人世界不同,生活于特定社群中的儿童,熨贴着亲属和邻里关系,少受自然的支配和社会习惯的束缚,由其本真的生活激活出无限的创造性,而伴随着初始社会化而来的异化生活终结了儿童的本真,同时也斫丧了他们的创造力。透过往昔儿童生活场景,可以依稀发现一个历史时段儿童的生活方式、区域特色、时代特征以及演变痕迹。     

清代以来塔里木盆地东部罗布人的生活及其环境变化

罗布人是生活在新疆塔里木盆地东部罗布泊地区的土著民族,以渔猎为生。300年来,不仅他们的语言、生活习俗发生了巨大的变化,生活在罗布泊一带的人口数量也有非常大的变化。本文根据文献记载分析了罗布人的生活习俗和生活地域环境及其变化,认为罗布地区河流湖泊的变化是罗布人生活发生变化的主要原因。