Old Wine in New Bottles: The Utility of Data Reanalysis in the Social Sciences

Abstract

The authors reconstruct processes of ethnic identification among residents of rural northeast China from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth through an analysis of naming behavior. They apply discrete-time event-history techniques to individual life histories compiled from longitudinal, nominative household-register data from state farms in what is now Liaoning Province to identify the individual and household circumstances associated with the adaptation of Han or Manchu names, focusing on the role of heredity and status. Ethnic identification in late imperial northeast China was potentially fluid. Many residents were descended from migrants from Shandong who became hereditary tenants on state land administered by a system of Manchu government known as the Eight Banners. As banner people, or qiren, these residents could legitimately claim to be Manchu. As descendants of Shandong migrants, they could also claim to be Han. They could express their choice of ethnic identity through their choice of names not just for their children but also for themselves. Names not only express ethnic self-identification, but their registration by state authorities in the analyzed data also implies official recognition and legitimacy. The authors' results demonstrate that ethnic identity was not hereditary but subject to individual and family choice.     

河南省县域贫困程度及影响因素分析

贫困地区的地理识别,是区域扶贫政策精准、有效实施的前提。以经济指标衡量河南省县域相对贫困程度,并借助有序logit回归模型分析社会经济发展、自然条件、区位交通、历史基础4类变量16个影响因子对区域贫困状况的影响程度。分析发现,河南省县域综合经济发展水平存在较大的区域差异,经济发展水平相对较低的县域多分布在豫西和豫东南,且区域内存在部分潜在贫困县。回归分析结果表明,工业化水平、居民储蓄水平、气温、湿度、到最近城市的距离、国道道路密度、期初经济水平7个因子对县域贫困程度影响显著。地区扶贫政策实施过程中,在重视经济因素的减贫效应时,也应重视自然因素的致贫效应,政府主导,因地制宜,逐步实现区域协调发展。