Misconceptions and Complexities in the Study of China's Cities: Definitions,Statistics, and Implications

A noted American authority on urbanization and the household registration system in China reviews and clarifies factors leading to misunderstanding and misconceptions regarding the number of inhabitants of China's major cities. Principal sources of confusion linked to reliance on official statistical sources are the multi-layered meanings of the term "city" and, consequently, simultaneous publication and use of a multitude of official population statistics for the country's "cities." Other complicating factors analyzed by the author include the effects of the Chinese hukou (household registration) system and the rapid rate of urban growth and change over the last three decades. Systematic population and per capita GDP data for the years 2000 and 2005, all based on the multiple boundaries and systems for five major cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen), are collected to illustrate both the countrywide situation and specific cases. Also included is a critique of several studies and popular accounts of Chinese cities to highlight misstatements and areas of misunderstanding based on inappropriate use of statistical data. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O18, O53, P20, R12. 2 figures, 6 tables, 130 references.     

Tourism and Community: An Ecuadorian Village Builds on its Past

An archaeological project and a community museum in Agua Blanca, Ecuador, have helped catalyse a remarkable process of ecological and cultural awareness complemented by economic advances. Some twenty-five years after the museum’s inauguration, as well as visiting the archaeological site and museum, tourists can observe the Machalilla National Park’s distinctive flora and fauna, camp, hike, swim, stay in village homes, buy locally made handcrafts, and eat in the community restaurant. These initiatives have been set up by the village in collaboration with local, national, and overseas agencies, in ways which spread benefits as widely as possible. After the introduction of a new constitution in 2008, which recognizes the multi-ethnic character of Ecuador’s population, Agua Blanca and adjacent communities asked to be officially recognized as ‘Pueblo Manta’ — an identity derived from the area’s pre-Spanish archaeology. Agua Blanca’s experience shows that much can be achieved through confidence in cultural identity, and that locally managed community tourism brings tangible economic benefits to local people, while serving to protect vulnerable archaeological sites from destruction.     

Fragments of the Modern City: Material Culture and the Rhythms of Everyday Life in Victorian London

This essay analyses the influence of Charles Baudelaire's and Théophile Gautier's fetishist poetics on the early works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. If the crucial role played by the Victorian poet as a cultural ‘passeur’ between France and England has often been highlighted in recent criticism, his aesthetic delight in certain forms of sexual deviance such as podophilia has rarely been explored in relation to the verse of his French mentors. Swinburne, Gautier, and Baudelaire may have indeed shared this erotic fascination with feet: this is a fascination that was partly grounded in these poets' common interest in antique literary models, in particular in Sappho's poetry. Rather than extolling the Hellenic ‘sweetness and light’ which some of his contemporaries set so high, Swinburne indulged in dangerously eroticised Dionysian aesthetics which were perceived as both ‘too Hellenic’ and ‘too French’. I argue that the fetishism of the poetic foot may be read as one of the keys to the Victorian poet's subversive shift away from the serenity often associated with Victorian neoclassicism in favour of a Dionysian energy that anticipates Friedrich Nietzsche's works.     

Monks and children: corporal punishment in Late Antiquity1*

This article examines the place of corporal punishment in early monastic discipline. By comparing the role assigned to corporal punishment in a variety of monastic rules from across the late antique Mediterranean, from the Rules ascribed to Pachomius (d. 348), to the Rule of Benedict from the mid-sixth century, it demonstrates that late antique monastic writers had a sophisticated and ordered approach to this type of penalty. This approach drew both on the concept of the absolute authority of the punishing father in Scripture, and on the limitations of Roman social expectations and ancient educational values to such absolute authority. As a result corporal punishment was seen either as a last resort when all other disciplinary measures had failed to bring about a reasonable response, or the appropriate punishment for an offence that originated from irrational conduct. Contrary to ancient household practices, however, which seem to have reserved corporal punishment for small children and slaves – conventionally perceived to lack ability to reason – late antique monastic rules invoked corporal punishment as a possibility for every member in the community who demonstrated irrational behaviour. In this way they blurred traditional boundaries between children, slaves and adults.     

基于干旱脆弱性的农户系统体制转换及其影响机制——以榆中县中连川乡为例

通过问卷调查和半结构式访谈获取数据,基于社会-生态系统多体制视角,对农户系统体制及状态进行辨识,并构建农户对干旱的脆弱性指数对其进行评价;采用多元logistic模型识别农户系统体制转换影响因素,并从客观动因、主观动因和决定动因三方面,探讨农户系统体制转换的影响机制。研究表明:①研究区农户系统体制从传统农业体制,向新型农业体制和非农型体制转换。农户由于自身转化力不同,转换结果存在差异。②自然环境和社会经济发展驱动系统体制发生转换,农户期望(教育支出和家庭责任)决定转换方向,农户转变生计方式的能力(行为认知、劳动力比重和社会网络)决定转换程度,在其作用下,农户体制和状态出现差异并最终导致脆弱性分异。     

中国居民消费增长波动多尺度变化及趋势研究

采用经验模态分解(EMD)方法对1953-2009年中国居民消费增长率波动进行分解,得到其IMF分量及趋势分量RES,运用方差贡献率及相关性检验其周期变化,并利用Mann-Kendall非参数统计检验方法对增长趋势进行研究。结果表明:中国居民消费增长波动存在3年、8年和12.4年的准周期,以准8年周期为主,准3年周期次之;56年来居民消费呈波动增长趋势,1978年是其突变点,当年对外开放政策的提出极大促进了居民消费增长,1983年居民消费增长率超过临界直线,此后呈显著上升趋势。经济因素、居民收入水平和消费结构是影响中国居民消费增长波动的主要因素。     

农区地理学国际研究进展

基于对国际文献和中国实际的分析和思考,总结了农区地理学的发展特点和新近研究动向。认为社会学、人类学和政治经济学对农区研究的关注,从不同角度影响着农区地理学的研究内容和思维变化。人文地理学的文化转向,也带来了农区地理学的相应转向。西方发达国家农区地理学的新近研究方向包括:后生产型农区发展、全球化与农区业发展、农区结构变化、农区基础设施、农区管制等。基于以上分析并结合中国实际,文章对中国农区地理学的研究思路进行了思考。     

Recent research in the archaeology of architecture: Beyond the foundations

Although architectural remains have always been a principal focus of archaeological investigation, research on such remains, particularly small-scale structures, has taken on new importance because of the information they can offer on human behavior. This article provides a review of recent trends in the archaeology of architecture (mainly domestic in nature), including current work in household archaeology and spatial patterning analysis of architectural remains, and discusses the new models and methodologies being generated to interpret these remains. The main areas covered in this review include the New World, Mesoamerica in particular, Europe, and general focus on recent work in the Near East.     

Archaeological Investigations at Yunkaray (Cuzco,Peru): Reconstructing the Rise and Fall of an Early Inca Rival (A.D. 1050–1450)

In the highland Andes during the centuries leading to Inca imperial expansion (ca. a.d. 1400–1530s), the people of the Cuzco Basin established alliances and rivalries with diverse neighbors living across the Cuzco region. Among the most powerful of those groups was a polity centered at Yunkaray (occupied ca. a.d. 1050–1450) on the Maras Plain just northwest of the burgeoning city of Cuzco. Recent settlement survey and excavations in and around Yunkaray have identified the site as the principal settlement of the Ayarmaca group, which remained outside the sphere of Inca cultural influence despite its proximity to Cuzco. The distinctive nature of Yunkaray’s interaction with the Incas is examined here through household excavations, which indicate that the large village was occupied by a population presenting modest status distinctions and relying on locally derived sources of social identity.     

Social class and wealth inequality in Italy over 20 years, 1993–2014

Italy is facing its worst economic crisis since the Second World War. As many studies have already shown, the crisis is affecting the country’s social class structure, thus accentuating several inequality tendencies. In this connection, the empirical purposes of this article are twofold: (1) to analyze whether accumulation and inequality in wealth are growing or declining in absolute terms; and (2) to investigate the relationship between social class and wealth inequality. To this end, we adopt a longitudinal approach – that is, we take the 1993–2014 period into account – by using data from the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Our findings suggest that overall net worth has trended down in the years following the beginning of the crisis, and that inequality in wealth has basically been increasing during the 20-year period, with a decline from 2012. However, there has been no persistent social splitting process in wealth distribution by social class. Rather, there is a high (and increasing) level of domestic differentiation in terms of household wealth by class, mainly within the lower class and self-employed middle class, which could put further stress on social cohesion standards and allow new forms of social vulnerability to emerge.