‘Profits,Savings, Health,Peace, Order’: Prostitution,Urban Planning and Imperial Identity in Halifax,Nova Scotia, 1898–1912

In the early years of the twentieth century, city administrators in Halifax, Nova Scotia articulated a new, modern identity for the former imperial garrison town by identifying the local red light district as both a moral and a spatial problem. Between the twilight of Victoria’s reign and Britain’s entry into the First World War, middle-class toleration of a local sex district as a means of managing the city’s populations of imperial servicemen virtually evaporated. Haligonians were inspired instead by North American urban modernisation initiatives to eradicate this visible and physical space for the world’s oldest profession. This paper examines shifting responses to the imperial sexual and political ideologies underpinning collective toleration of Halifax’s racially mixed sex district, offers a case study of this crucial moment of civic refashioning.     

Screening The Social Face of Denmark to the Nazis

Looking into the state-sponsored creation and presentation of a German-language film on the Danish social state, this article discusses the complexities of Danish–German relations during the German occupation of Denmark, 1940–1945. The film, Das soziale Gesicht Dänemarks, was screened in Berlin to a full house, including a number of Nazi notables, and followed by a presentation by the Danish Minister of Labor and Social Affairs. Based on archival research and film analysis, the article argues that the screening in Berlin informs an understanding of an asymmetrical power relationship between occupiers and occupied, in which the promotion of the Danish social model countered the hegemony of the dominant Nazi state. It did so by seeking to assert Danish sovereignty on social policy in accordance with German intentions to respect Danish sovereignty as stated at the very beginning of the occupation; in other words, for the Danish state, social policy became a means for an intentional but subdued resistance – even a form of counter-power – to the power of the German occupier.     

Path-dependency in segregation and social networks in the Netherlands

Policy-makers in industrialised countries have been implementing polices to create neighbourhoods with diverse populations in the hopes of increasing and ameliorating inter-ethnic relations. However, social networks seem to remain largely segregated. The composition of people’s social networks is traditionally explained by population compositions and subsequent meeting opportunities versus preferences for homophilious interaction. Little attention has been paid to the social construction behind these two factors. This study of Turkish and native Dutch individuals in two neighbourhoods in Rotterdam from a time-geographic perspective shows that path-dependency plays a large role in keeping social networks segregated. The social circles individuals engage in during their lives are linked together. Individuals are introduced to places, activities and people by their existing social networks, starting with their parents and siblings. As such, they are likely to roam in spaces dominated by people of their own ethnicity, which lessens the opportunity to meet people from other ethnic backgrounds. This role of people’s existing social networks in ethnic segregation has been overlooked in the integration debate so far.     

From left-behind children to young migrants: the intergenerational social reproduction of rural migrant labor in China

ABSTRACT

Growing in number in the last two decades, rural migrant workers in China have completed intergenerational replacement, and young migrants have become a principal part of the migrant population. However, the process of such intergenerational reproduction has not been thoroughly examined. Based on field studies in the Chinese countryside, this paper analyzes the mechanisms of intergenerational reproduction of rural migrants from the perspective of rural communities, families, and school education. “Left-behind” rural communities, their migration-oriented social culture, and the cognition of rural–urban differences as constructed through migrant parents facilitated a subjective willingness for migration among left-behind children. Exclusion from urban-biased rural education is often the final external thrust for their migration. Having finished the transition, the households of a new young generation of rural migrants are experiencing a different crisis of reproduction. This paper argues that there is a systematic rupture between labor, households, and rural society and that this presents a critical development trap for China.     

Mortuary practices: Their social,philosophical-religious,circumstantial, and physical determinants

Recent, mainstream, American mortuary archaeology, in its paradigmatic outlook, middle-range theory, analytic methodology, and case studies, has emphasized social organization as the primary factor that determines mortuary practices. Broader anthropological and social science traditions have recognized philosophical-religious beliefs as additional, important determinants. The historical roots of mortuary archaeology's focus on the social, and the consequence of this on theory development, is reviewed. Then, through a Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) cross-cultural survey, the kinds of philosophical-religious, social organizational, circumstantial, and physical factors that affect specific kinds of mortuary practices, and the relative importance of these factors, are documented. The data are also used to test basic premises that mortuary archaeologists routinely use today to reconstruct social organization. A balanced, more holistic, and multidisciplinary approach, which considers many kinds of causes beyond social ones, is found necessary to interpret mortuary remains and to reconstruct the past from them.     

Social agency and the dynamics of prehistoric technology

Technology is not only the material means of making artifacts, but a dynamic cultural phenomenon embedded in social action, worldviews, and social reproduction. This paper explores the theoretical foundations for an anthropology of technology that is compatible with this definition. Because of its focus on social agency, practice theory provides an appropriate starting point for a social theory of technology. In addition, three other themes require explicit attention: scale, context, and the materiality of technology. Four case studies demonstrate how archaeologists are beginning to take technology beyond its material dimensions, and additional questions are proposed stemming from the theoretical issues raised in the paper. The purpose of this essay is to synthesize a diverse set of emerging ideas and approaches to understand better dynamic community-level social processes of prehistoric material culture production.     

晚清社会传闻的宏观态势观照

晚清时期的社会传闻,非常盛行并且内容复杂。从时间上看,高潮迭起又延绵不断;从空间上看,存在大范围、大规模的流布场。其承载形式,则呈多类多样性:口头传播为基本形态;书面形式有报刊新闻型、函牍型、书籍载传型、揭帖型、图示型等。内容上重现复杂性,除了题材方面的表现外,还典型地体现在世俗性内容与神异性内容的混合、叙事性内容与评价性内容的交融。     

中国"儒家社会主义"论析

“儒家社会主义”在中国思想史上占有重要一席,与西欧和俄国的空想社会主义相比,诞生时间早、经历时间长,对古今中国的影响恒久深远。儒家社会主义理论包括其高端纲领——大同社会论,及其低端纲领——小康社会论。“儒家社会主义”是宝贵的民族精神遗产,既有其理想的光辉,又有其空想的色彩。历史证明,惟有科学社会主义与和谐进步的科学发展理论方为当代中国践行必胜的思想道路。     

保障公民的文化权益是维护社会公平的重要保证

公民文化权利与公民政治权利、经济权利一样,属于公民的基本权利。保障公民文化权益,不断满足人民群众日益增长的精神文化需求,对全面建设小康社会和构建和谐社会具有重大的意义。文化差距而产生的文化矛盾、公共文化服务资源短缺等是制约当前公民文化权益健康发展的主要因素。因此,我们必须从现阶段经济社会发展水平出发,以实现和保障公民基本文化权益、满足广大人民群众基本文化需求为目标,坚持公共服务普遍均等原则,兼顾城乡之间、地区之间的协调发展,最大限度地满足人民群众日益增长的精神文化需求。     

阿伦特的公共领域思想研究

公共领域与私人领域的分野是现代生活的一个基本状态,健康发展的公共领域是现代社会的重要标志,它对我国的现代化进程、政治文明建设、公民文化形成意义重大。公共领域的研究已经成为学术界的一个重要热点,本文通过考察汉娜.阿伦特的天才构想,加深对其有关公共领域思想的理解。