‘Assisting you to become a local’: NGOs and constructed foreign spouses in Eastern Taiwan

As social and cultural contexts change and globalization spreads, the number of transnational-marriage migrants mainly from Southeast Asia has increased in Taiwan. Using institutional ethnography, this article investigates the roles of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and projects aimed at helping foreign spouses to adapt to their new life. I mainly elaborate that NGOs emerge as important actors in assisting and empowering transnational spouses to ‘become locals’. In empowerment projects, foreign spouses are given a voice to elaborate themselves. However, this article elaborates that these projects are a scheme of education to shape each such migrant into a proper ‘Taiwanese wife/mother/daughter-in-law’. Also, these projects particularly promote ‘exoticism’ of migrants and become key sources of how local people understand the images of ‘foreign spouses’. As a result, though NGOs play positive roles in empowering foreign spouses, we need to be aware that NGOs’ efforts may ironically become a mechanism to strengthen transnational spouses’ gender roles and cultural stereotypes.     

Middle power,status-seeking and role conceptions: the cases of Indonesia and South Korea

This article examines how role theory can enhance the middle-power literature in understanding the role preferences of middle powers. Rather than treating it as merely a function of material capability or good international citizenship, this article resituates middle power as a concept of international status that states aim to pursue through the enactment of role conceptions. Thus, it reinstates a conceptual distinction between ‘middle-power status’ and ‘middle-power roles’. The article suggests that the notion of role conceptions can analytically connect the status-seeking behaviour of middle powers with their foreign policy agenda. In so doing, it provides a more nuanced explanation of middle-power behaviour, which might differ between one middle power and another. Using Indonesia and South Korea as case studies of middle power, this article contends that foreign policymakers have strategically conceptualised and enacted several main roles that aim to capture historical experience, as well as ego and alter expectations, in order to pursue middle-power status. These role conceptions determine the foreign policy agenda of states in articulating their middle-power status.     

FROM LEFT‐WING TO COMMUNIST MELANCHOLY: TRAVERSO'S WAGER

Enzo Traverso's inspired book Left‐Wing Melancholia revisits iconic representations of revolutionary hopes and defeats not to draw up an inventory of what has been lost but rather to remind his readers that past defeats also contain the traces of unfulfilled possibilities. After the end of the Soviet Union and the global triumph of neoliberal capitalism, the communist utopian imagination of a classless society, Traverso suggests, can be reignited through memorial practices of resilient, resistant melancholy. Traverso's argument draws on Walter Benjamin's notions of materialist history, redemptive memory, and knowing melancholy. Yet the nameless vanquished masses to whom Benjamin's concept of history seeks to do justice remain marginal in Traverso's book. Instead, revolutionary defeat is cast in the tragic mold of succeeding by failing, a trope exemplified by figures such as Auguste Blanqui, Charles Péguy, or Daniel Bensaïd. In response to Traverso's reliance on the transhistorical category of the tragic, this essay argues for a more abstractly theoretical understanding of left‐wing melancholy as conditioned by historically specific class relations that constrain and challenge the engaged intellectual. Moreover, this essay questions Traverso's dualistic treatment of politically committed (Benjamin, Brecht, C. L. R. James) and elitist intellectuals (Adorno) and concludes that the concept of left‐wing melancholy must ultimately be interrogated against the backdrop of a lingering uncertainty about the relationship between theory and praxis that, as Adorno claims, one can already find in Karl Marx—an uncertainty that is hence inscribed into the history of any Marxist theory of revolution and history.     

清末民初农会组织述论

清末民初的农会组织大体经历了酝酿、兴起、发展、隐退四个阶段.其基本结构表现为组成了一个层层连接的直属组织系统;建立了较为完备的领导体制;实行了严格的民主选举制度、议事办事原则以及定期的会议制度等.呈现出组织制度的近代民主性、一定程度的自治性、成员构成的复杂性、机构权限的官督性等基本特点.所从事的活动内容相当广泛,主要表现为编辑农报,翻译农书;创办农业学堂;开办农业试验场;举行农产品评会,设立陈列所;开展调查研究;向主管官署建议农业改良进行事宜,等等.这对推动近代中国农业发展具有重要的影响与作用.     

部门管理人员感知的组织支持与组织氛围对旅游企业员工角色压力的影响

欧美学者普遍认为,角色压力是影响员工服务态度和服务行为的一个极为重要的因素,包括角色负担、角色冲突、角色模糊等3个组成成分.本文对我国11个地区的33个旅游企业进行了一次实证研究,检验部门管理人员感知的组织支持、企业的支持型领导氛围、授权氛围和员工服务行为评估氛围对员工角色模糊的影响.多层次线性模型分析结果表明,部门管理人员感知的组织支持会通过企业的支持型领导氛围,间接影响员工感知的角色模糊.企业的支持型领导氛围会通过企业的授权氛围,间接影响员工感知的角色模糊.此外,部门管理人员感知的企业支持还会调节员工感知的角色负担和角色冲突对他们的角色模糊的影响.     

英国新社会史思潮的兴起及其整体社会史研究的国际反响

“新社会史研究”作为一种史学新思潮,与西方史学的整体化趋势,几乎同时出现于现代国际史学舞台。英国新社会史思潮具有广泛和深刻的国内外史学渊源。英国新社会史学派宣扬的核心问题是坚持“自下而上”史学观念,它彰显了由此观念指导下的整体社会史取向和研究实践。从较广泛的分析角度看,在国际史学发展格局重新调整的现时背景下,英国马克思主义新社会史学派引起国内外史学界的广泛注意和效仿。它对国际史学发展的推动性作用是不可忽视的,这集中体现了该学派及其整体史学研究的国际反响。     

19世纪英国工人阶级子女童年生活转型原因探析

在19世纪,英国工人阶级子女的童年生活,逐渐由参加劳动转变为接受教育。这种转型根源于当时的社会、政治、经济生活所发生的深刻变化。思想文化界看待童年的观念变迁影响着人们对待儿童的态度。工业社会对劳动者的素质提出了新要求,改变了人们对待儿童的劳动和教育问题的传统态度;国家出于社会控制以及对民族未来的考虑,也在下层儿童的教育和劳动立法问题上采取越来越主动的态度;工人阶级家庭对于子女的教育和劳动问题的态度,也因为时代和社会的变化以及生活水平的提高而发生着改变。正是在这些因素的作用下,工人阶级儿童的生活重心逐渐由劳动转移到教育,这种转变不仅改变了几个世纪以来英国普通儿童的命运,也使得现代意义的童年生活初具模型。     

书画鉴定与个案研究

最传统的书画鉴定,靠的是零碎的感性经验,用的是以视觉印象对照待鉴作品的比较方法,而对书画在历史承传中发展的系统知识及相应的视觉把握,需要较长时间的积累,因此传统的鉴定每每陷入先入为主和少见多怪的误区。现代的书画鉴定引进了美术史的风格概念,把时代风格和个人风格作为鉴定方法论的主要依据,使大体依赖感性认识的鉴定眼光,变为讲求方法和理性认识的学问。虽然在鉴定实践中,首先要看时代风格,而后再看个人风格。但时代风格包含在个人风格之中,大家的个人风格又会左右一个时代的风气。所以把握风格应从研究著名书画家个人风格入手,即为把握风格而进行书画家个案研究,以便为鉴定积累翔实系统而扎实有据的样板系列,让临场鉴定奠立在坚实的学术研究的基础上。个案研究要根据具体对象使用不完全相同的方法,本文亦就此进行了有关研究方法和研究程序的讨论。     

个人发展问题在马克思唯物史观中的地位

马克思从个体视角考察人类历史的基本思想包括：人类历史的前提是有生命的个人的存在,人们的社会历史始终只是他们的个体发展的历史,人类总体的进步、社会历史的发展,最终都落脚在每一个体的发展上,未来社会是每个个人都得到全面自由发展的联合体,本文从这些方面说明了个人发展问题在马克思唯物史观中的作用.     

评蒋大椿和吴英、庞卓恒围绕唯物史观的理论争鸣

蒋、庞二位先生都以人类实践为中心看待唯物史观,但是庞先生强调物质生产实践的基础性,蒋先生更注重以系统的方式把握人类实践的总体性。合理的态度应当是结合这两种眼光,兼顾抽象与具体,开展历史观和历史学的对话以及跨学科的理论吸收,建构中介层次的社会有机体理论,作为唯物史观新的生长点。