Island Biocultural Assemblages — The Case of Kinmen Island

ABSTRACT A growing mass of research contributes to our understanding of how biological and cultural diversity are related in complex and important ways. This paper presents an assembling process of biodiversity and cultural diversity on an island, Kin‐men (Quemoy), based on 1600 years of its environmental history. The study shows that the island's biocultural assemblages are a result both of external relations with the island's surrounding environment and internal relations within the island's changing human ecology. Distant political powers and economic forces are the two major external influences that have affected the flow of natural and cultural elements to and from the island, while ‘screening effects’ and ‘isolation effects’ are two factors that explain internal interactions. The island's biocultural assembling processes reveal that the openness of the island facilitates increase in the diversity of biocultural elements, while its less disturbed isolated condition fosters natural succession and co‐evolution. The study suggests that biocultural assemblages and the associated processes of co‐evolution and nature–society interactions are accomplished through the intermittent opportunities purposively provided by or inadvertently found in the openings and closures of boundaries, setting the scene for both boundary crossings and bounded shelter, by intent or chance.     

国内旅游：重新认识与发展构想

多年来,国内旅游业服务质量低,设施条件差,潜在市场不能及时转化为现实市场。本文分析了制约国内旅游业发展的因素和国内旅游市场的潜力,提出国内旅游业的发展构想。     

How Political Support Influences Red Tape through Developmental Culture

This study examines the interrelationship between external political support, internal organizational factors, and red tape, using a sample of information managers from state health and human service agencies. The study defines a red tape model and tests the model by structural equation modeling method. The study finds that political support has a direct effect on red tape. The higher the political support, the lower the level of red tape. The study also confirms an indirect effect of political support on red tape, mediated by developmental culture. Indirect effect through goal clarity has the correct sign but is not statistically significant. Practical recommendations are made for the political environment to provide the opportunity for managerial reforms that are often advocated.     

青海省培养新型农牧民的制约因素及其对策

培养造就“有文化、懂技术、会经营”的新型农牧民,是建设社会主义新农村新牧区最本质、最核心的内容,也是全面落实科学发展观的必然要求。本文就青海省在新农村新牧区建设中培养新型农牧民的有关问题进行了分析,并提出了相应的建议和对策。     

生命哲学视野下旅游研究与实践方向的探索

近年来,旅游业已然成为中国国民经济的战略性支柱产业,但以经济发展为主要目标的旅游研究却呈现出固化和乏味的态势。未来旅游研究应科学与哲学齐头并进,与生命哲学的结合,更是旅游研究顺应时代发展的应有之义。文章以生命哲学研究的主要内容梳理为切入点,探索旅游生命观的形成,以生命哲学视野下的旅游概念与本质为整个研究体系的逻辑起点,分析生命哲学视域下旅游发展的内在机理,从矛盾论、价值论的视角逐步探讨未来旅游的研究与实践方向。结合当今时代特征,发现生命哲学下的旅游本质应是体察风景、体验生活与体悟生命的统合。人与自然共同构建生命共同体,科学旅游发展观应转向“以生命为本”,未来旅游的最终目的是促进人的生命自由和全面发展,实现人与自然的生命延续。     

固定和浮放条件下文物展柜动力响应分析与试验研究

目前对文物保护的研究主要以试验为主,本研究试图用数值方法分析文物展柜的动力学特性,以解决试验分析方法所导致的缺陷。为此,对固定和浮放两种不同边界条件的文物展柜进行地震作用和简谐激励下的动力响应分析,给出了展柜展台面处的加速度动力放大系数(简称放大系数)上限值。以某博物馆展柜为原型,按1∶1/0.39进行缩尺振动试验,得出两种边界条件下展柜展台面处的放大系数。对试验展柜建立有限元模型,通过与试验对比,验证模型及分析方法的正确性。然后,建立展柜模型的有限元模型,对5种尺寸的展柜进行了动力响应分析,并考虑激励幅值、激励频率等对放大系数的影响。分析结果有助于指导文物的防震保护工作。     

The equally “bad” French and English farmers of Quebec: New TFP measures from the 1831 census

New TFP estimates drawn from the neglected census of 1831 for Lower Canada are used to test the controversial (but still dominant) traditional “poor French farmers” explanation for a prolonged economic crisis. The new evidence shows that French-speaking areas were equally as productive as English-speaking areas, something that upturns the established consensus and reinforces the minority viewpoint that culture had little to do with the crisis. Using a broad range of controls, the researchers find that this conclusion is robust and that other variables such as settlement recency, environment, and economic structure were much more significant determinants of TFP. These results warrant the abandonment of the cultural explanation and a shift toward other explanatory channels.     

Highly qualified rural youth: why do young graduates return to their home region?

This paper addresses the motivations underlying migration decision-making in the case of young university graduates returning to their rural home region in Switzerland. Empirical results show the joint role of social ties, living environment, and job opportunities, although the weight given to each of these factors varies between graduates. Some strategies used by the graduates to cope with a limited labour market are furthermore identified. I argue that internal migrations are far from being the sole consequence of labour market conditions and that a greater appreciation of non-economic issues is needed.     

Factor Decomposition of Rural Income Inequalities in China

A Chinese geographer explores changes in inter-provincial rural income inequality in China since the late-1970s economic reforms by decomposing it into different component factors based on the Gini index (more specifically, into contributions by different income sources: wages, household operations, properties, and transfers). The influence of each factor on inequality changes is further decomposed into its structure effects and its real inequality effects. Quantitative analysis then makes it possible to determine the relative influence of each component on changes in rural provincial inequality over time.     

Sexuality in diasporic space: rural-to-urban migrant women negotiating gender and marriage in contemporary China

Feminist geographers use the term diasporic subjectivity to emphasize the relational quality of identity as it is constructed in the dynamic in-between space occupied by the migrant and traversed by norms and practices associated with the village community, migrant peers, and urban consumer society, as well as nation-states. Using ethnographic methods, I explore how young, single rural Chinese women who migrated to Beijing in the 1990s negotiate sexuality in diasporic space, within the discursive and institutional orders of state, market and family. Though migration does not fundamentally alter these structures that construct inequality around place-based identity, gender and class, it does enable rural women to shift position within them and, significantly, to imagine that further, future change is possible. Foregrounding migrant women's agency in remaking gender identity from so-called rustic peasants to modern girls as well as in choosing marital partners and conducting courtship provides an important counterweight to the primary emphasis on structure found in much of the migration literature.