19世纪中期英国中产阶级慈善活动论析

19世纪中期,英国进入从传统农业社会向现代工业社会急剧转型的时期,并形成了以私人慈善、自助互助和政府救济为主要形式的多元救助体系。但由于政府奉行自由资本主义,私人慈善便承担起了大部分的社会责任,中产阶级成为私人慈善活动的主力。私人慈善尽管不是社会发展的核心要素,但它却是英国社会转型的润滑剂,发挥着政府救济不可替代的作用。     

Working in a Risk Society

Through much of the 1980s, discussions of transformations within work and employment debated the emergence of a new, more 'flexible' era - or, at a different level of analysis, the growth of more 'flexible' working practices. Recent accounts of contemporary socio-economic change have been framed within new sets of theoretical contexts, such as Ulrich Beck's notion of 'social risk'. The central aim of this paper is to evaluate the utility of such an approach, drawing upon empirical work which has investigated changes to terms and conditions of manual employment in British local authorities as a result of the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering.     

Recent British research on prehistoric territorial boundaries

The British Isles are very rich, compared to the rest of Europe, in prehistoric boundary earthworks. There are difficulties in deducing prehistoric territories from them, mainly because of the incompleteness of other evidence of settlement patterns. Fortunately, in the past two decades there have been major advances in territorial studies, in particular, of the pattern defined by the reaves (long walls) on Dartmoor in Southwest England and in the Anglo-Saxon pattern in Southern England defined by boundaries in legal documents (charters). These studies enable some general principles of early land divisions to be deduced, particularly the relations of boundaries to the natural features of the terrain. These principles can be applied to the study of other early boundary earthworks, and, in some cases, reasonable deductions on the nature of the prehistoric estates can be made. The paper concludes with a discussion of major problems, namely, the dating of earthworks, the continuity of boundaries between prehistoric and historic eras, the functions of boundary markers, their chronological development, and their social implications.     

What Do Objects Want?

This paper develops an argument for the agency of objects, looking at the effects objects have on people. Groups of related objects, such as pots or metal ornaments, create stylistic universes which affect producers and users of new objects, bound by the canons of style. For an object to be socially powerful in a recognized manner, the form of the object lays down certain rules of use which influence the sensory and emotional impacts of the object. Formal properties of artifacts are influenced by the genealogy of the object class, including historical continuities and changes, and also its perceived source. The forms of objects, the historical trajectories of the class of objects and their perceived sources combine to have social effects on people, shaping people as socially effective entities. Britain’s incorporation into the Roman Empire between 150 BC and AD 200 provides an excellent case study through which to look at the changing corpora of objects, which had continuities and changes in form, a set of subtle attributions of sources and a complex range of social effects.     

中世纪前期的英国封建王权与基督教会

中世纪前期英国封建王权与基督教会的关系 ,处于“二元统一、对立”的状态中。从总体上看 ,英国封建王权和基督教会基于共同利益的政治联合 ,必然居于支配地位 ,而双方权益的纷争则处于从属地位 ,最后常常以相互妥协而告结束。这种看似矛盾而实则存在合理性的状态 ,稳定着英国封建社会的统治秩序 ,推动着社会的发展。     

大农业不是英国农业和经济衰落的原因——与徐正林和郭豫庆同志商榷

18世纪中期以后英国大农业的兴起和发展,从历史实际看,不仅没有导致英国农业的衰落,相反使英国农业进入了一个黄金时期;不仅没有削弱英国工业发展的基础,相反有利于工业资本的积累和农村人口向城市的流动,极大地推动了英国工业化的发展。英国丧失工业霸主地位、走向相对衰落,有着复杂的、多方面的原因,不能简单地归因于大农业。在吸收国外的研究成果时,盲目照抄,或根据某种需要而随意剪裁历史的做法,都是不可取的。     

Pension Exclusion in Grey Capitalism: Mapping the Pensions Gap in Britain

The switch in Britain's pension policy towards private funded schemes and a liberal style of state regulation have exposed variations in individuals' ability and willingness to undertake pensions saving. This paper focuses on the patterns of exclusion and the geographies of pension consumption created by this reform. It argues that there are new patterns of pension provision which have important but neglected spatial dimensions. First, it shows that widening inequality among current pensioners involves a North-South divide in income and benefit take-up. Second, private second tier pension coverage, especially the take-up of personal policies, is found to be lower in areas with lower levels of income among existing pensioners. The paper considers whether the Government's new stakeholder pensions are likely to be able to fill this pensions gap.     

马来亚的独立与英国殖民撤退的策略

英国从其广大的殖民地撤退是一个漫长的历史进程。这一进程既是殖民地民族民主运动的本质性结果,也带有宗主国适时“非殖民化”的色彩,但二者所处地位不同。前者作为主导因素,决定了事件的性质,其强烈程度决定了后者的进程;而后者只是一种策略,是不得已而为之的隐蔽的殖民统治手腕。这一点在一些殖民地都有所表现,而在马来亚则表现得较为典型。在马来亚民族解放运动日益高涨之时,伦敦方面先是拖延、推迟马来亚的独立,后是培育倾向于英国的当地政府和领导人,以便有效地储蓄其自身的巨大利益。     

An Illustration of the Use of an Atypicality Index in Provenancing British Stone Axes

An atypicality index has been used to compare the chemical compositions of 11 British prehistoric implements (axes and axe‐hammers, and a mace) with previously suggested and likely sources in South Wales (Group XIII spotted dolerite from the Carnmenyn area, and Group VIII rhyolite from Carnalw). Atypicality indices together with mineralogy indicate that only two out of six supposed Group XIII implements are likely to be Group XIII, and only one of the five rhyolite implements is likely to originate from Carnalw. These results provide statistical support for earlier provenancing of seven of the implements, and provide the first geochemical source information for four implements. The results illustrate the usefulness of the atypicality index in archaeology, and support the idea that Groups XIII and VIII comprise a larger variety of chemical types than previously thought. Further work is now needed to determine how prevalent this variety is within these implement groups.     

Mapping the New Deal: local disparities in the performance of Welfare-to-Work

In recent years, following the lead of the US, several OECD countries have introduced 'workfare' policies that link receipt of unemployment and related social benefits to compulsory participation on state-administered work and training schemes. The UK's New Deal (Welfare-to-Work) for Young People is one of the largest and most developed of these workfare programmes. Official evaluations of the UK's New Deal for Young People claim that it has been a national success, but overlook local variations in its results. This paper uses the Government's own performance measures, data on local unemployment flows, numbers of New Deal participants recycled through the scheme as second starts, and interviews with both local policy managers and participants, to demonstrate that these local variations have been substantial. These different indicators suggest that the programme has been noticeably less effective in many inner urban and depressed industrial labour markets. In such areas the 'recycling and churning' of participants through the programme are more significant, and suggest that local labour market structures play a significant role in shaping policy outcomes. The paper argues that recent additions to the New Deal to improve job search and matching fail to address this local variation, and that a longer-term approach is required that seeks to improve not only the employability of individuals, but also the local employment opportunities open to them. One key implication is clear: that local labour market conditions can exert a significant influence on the outcomes of national workfare type policies, not only in terms of geographical variations in the problem to be solved, but also in shaping and constraining the local nature of policy outcomes.