秦汉政治史观的演变历程

秦汉时期共有三种主要的政治史观：以五行相胜原则运转的五德终始说、以五行相生原则运转的汉为尧后说,以及董仲舒所创三统说。秦到汉武帝时,五行相胜的五德终始说占政治史观的主流,汉昭帝以后则被五行相生的政治史观代替,董仲舒创立的三统说在汉武帝时形成,此后便和五行相生政治史观平行发展。这三种政治史观都与阴阳五行有密切关联,并对秦汉乃至以后两千余年封建社会产生深远影响。     

日本的循环社会建设

上世纪90年代以来,日本政府在环境基本法和环境基本计划的框架下推进了循环社会建设,新世纪以来通过实施《循环社会基本法》和《循环社会基本计划》,继续推进了循环社会建设。同时,环境立国战略也对循环社会建设提出了新的要求。第二次《循环社会基本计划》强调了建设循环社会的紧迫性和新课题,提出了2015年前的任务、目标、政策方向和政策措施。日本循环社会建设取得了初步成效,积累了有益的经验,可供我国学习、参考和借鉴。     

Tesserae Recycling in the Production of Medieval Blue Window Glass

The purpose of this paper is to develop a means of quantifying glass recycling and to discuss the ‘anachronistic’ chemical composition of medieval blue window glass. This method relies on a new numerical method using kernel density estimates and is based on a database of published glass chemical compositions. It seeks to reveal when, to what extent and why blue tesserae were recycled for the production of French and English blue glass. First, it is suggested that blue glass had an ‘anachronistic’ chemical composition only before the 13th century. Second, the ‘anachronistic’ chemical composition of 12th‐century blue glass comes from the recycling of both blue tesserae and non‐coloured glass. Finally, this recycling was motivated by the scarcity of cobalt sources until mines were found in the 13th century.     

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.     

Women's ecological oral histories of recycling and development in coastal Yucatán

This article addresses the formation of the Chen Kole ‘Lob women's recycling cooperative and its relationship to urbanization, plastics consumption, and the exclusionary spaces of conservation-as-development in coastal Yucatán, Mexico. Increasing amounts of plastic containers and other nonorganic garbage contaminate backyards, protected wetlands and marine areas, and individual homes located in low-lying floodable areas. However, in this region, the majority of sponsored economic development programs are directed at managing men's activities in sustainable fishing and ecotourism within natural protected areas. Both women's work and urban issues such as recycling and waste management have frequently been excluded from state policies and development practice. I draw from oral histories of women's experience in the home, in conservation space, and as participants in grassroots plastics recycling to underscore what motivated women to become involved in recycling and garbage cleanup, and how women came to be considered local professionals who maintain clean spaces. These histories underscore the links between gendered work, urban practices, and conservation-as-development, and how women's urban recycling work affects social differences and ecological decline within vulnerable coastal areas.     

Reading Victorian Rags: Recycling,Redemption, and Dickens's Ragged Children

In Victorian Britain rags were not only associated with the inadequate clothing of the poor, they were also viewed as a valuable commodity, widely collected for recycling into paper. This essay examines rags as simultaneously despised and precious objects, tracing the connections between Victorian accounts of poverty, the industrial recycling of rags into paper, and the redemption narratives created by Charles Dickens about rescued children. A supporter of Ragged Schools and champion of rags recycling, Dickens drew on the idea of the transformation of dirty rags into clean paper in his representations of ragged children. To him, the recycling of rags indicated the civilizing forces of modernity, and reading Dickens's representations of ragged children in this context reveals how cloth recycling became a paradigm for society's duties towards destitute children. This essay explains Dickens's juxtaposition of ragged children with references to rag-dealing in his novels; by this means he suggested that street children, like their ragged clothing, were capable of being purified and transformed into social usefulness.     

Working the Waste Commodity Frontier: Metabolic Value and Informal Waste Work

Ambitions for a European “circular economy” imply waste is becoming an important “commodity frontier”. Increased recycling in Europe has been accompanied by a proliferation of informal waste work. “Southern” geographies of informal recyclers provide resources for interpreting this phenomenon but studies of a commodity frontier in urban waste have tended to focus on moments when informal waste workers are displaced by capital intensive waste management systems. I draw on concepts in world-ecology and materialist ecofeminism to explore the proliferation of informal waste workers in Barcelona and the way their (re)production produces “Metabolic Value”. Informal waste work is shown to emerge and persist as part of a commodity frontier process—where the appropriation of unpaid work from non-commodified spaces is the hallmark of how capitalism secures “Cheap Nature”. The study suggests that, rather than internalising ecological costs, recycling often rests on the appropriation of value from uncommodified spaces.     

Shoddy heap: a material history between waste and manufacture

This essay uses a present-day mountain of textile waste known as ‘shoddy’ as an entry point into the history and ramifications of the development of wool recycling technology in West Yorkshire, England. It is argued that this entity, produced since the early nineteenth century by means of the collection, shredding, and re-spinning of old and discarded wool rags, emerged as both technological innovation and raw material. Its history, defined in part by its precarious position at the nexus of waste and manufacture, is that of a reconfiguration of technology with simultaneously ethical, political, and environmental dimensions.     

‘It can be dangerous for the uterus’: hegemonic masculinity and cooperative recycling in São Paulo,Brazil

This study examines performative social relations, specifically the role of hegemonic masculinity in shaping gendered space. First, by drawing on personal experiences and qualitative data from my research in São Paulo, Brazil, I examine the most salient aspects of hegemonic masculinity in the lives of female recyclers. Second, I suggest that masculine domination is not simply something established by men which aims to oppress women, but hegemonic masculinities can be (re)produced by women. I affirm this notion by exploring the ways in which hegemonic masculinity and common perceptions of social roles, abilities, and inabilities are discursively (re)produced by female recyclers. In particular, I argue that exploring the subordinate position of women is a productive means to gain a deeper understanding of hegemonic masculinity, while also, the concept of hegemonic masculinity is an effective tool for understanding the subordinate role of women. My experiences with the recyclers provide a context through which the fluid, complex, and dynamic nature of hegemonic masculinity can be further revealed.