For the Sake of the Children

THE United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has come a long way in China. Since its assistance program was resumed in 1979, UNICEF has assisted children of China through 100 major projects involving a commitment of more than US$ 200 million through 1995. The global organization's contribution to improving the well-being of 380     

Feeling the World in the Forest

SINCE July, 1986 China had formally proposed the resumption of full membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). However she failed to accomplish this wish till 1995 when the World Trade Organization (WTO) replaced the GATT. November 15, 1999 was an important day for China, because on that day China and the United States finally reached a bilateral agreement in Beijing concerning China's entry into the WTO after hard and tortuous negotiations. China was thus much nearer to the gate of WTO membership and the talk on China's     

Locating the Source of the Changjiang

Aiding a colleague‘s recovery from mountain sicknessSeracs at the source of the Changjiang RiverThe magnificent Tuotuo RiverA Tibetan girl in the regionLocal herdsmen milking COWSLocating the Source of the Changjiang     

Representing the interests of the public?: the case of the local health council in Scotland

The statutory function of local health councils in Scotland (and of community health councils in England and Wales) is to represent the interests of the public in the health service. This article, based on data from a four-year research project financed by the Scottish Office, examines official and participants' assumptions and claims about the legitimacy of health councils, as at present constituted, to carry out this function. Clarification of the basis of their legitimacy would assist, it is argued, in the resolution of a central dilemma: How are councils to represent the interests of the public? The conclusion is reached that inadequate thought was given to developing theoretically sustainable arrangements. Several interpretations of representation are admixed in the rationale for the present system and they cannot be aggregated to produce a coherent defence of it.     

Striking the Notes of the Twilight Years

The first Sunbeam Amateur PianoContest was held in the BeijingYouth Palace.More than 400people signed up and 130 of them wereselected to perform on stage.Theyoungest was 45 years old and the oldestwas 80.Most came from the BeijingTraining Class for Middle-aged andElderly People but some came from asfar away as Liaoning and Hubei.The     

Pipa Music Spreads from the Mountain to the Rest of the World

LIKE a giant, the Tiantai Mountain Range in Zhejiang Province holds Tiantai County in its arms. The natural beauty of this area is plentiful with talent and music. For years Tiantai County has nurtured groups of pipa players and is known as the "home of the pipa." Pipa is the traditional musical instrument of China, which prevailed in the Sui and Tang dynasties(A.D.581-907).     

Postmarks for the Year of the Tiger

This is the year of the tiger, according to the traditional Chinese lunar calendar, which used twelve animals to symbolize each year in The and Telecommunications has issued a set of "tiger Stamps" to commemorate the event, complete with postmarks issued by local post authorities. Shown here are postmarks from one bears the chinese characters “戊寅” (read as "wu yin"), which is how this year is marked on the Chinese lunar Calendar.     

At the Window of the Old House

ONE winter, my mother told me that the old house had to be sold. Among us children I was the one who most bitterly opposed the scheme to sell because of reasons that were hard to explain. But my mother's words seemed to be irrefutable: "Nobody has been living in the house for years and we should sell it before it collapses. You have always cherished your feelings for the house, so go there and stay for one last time." Our family's old house was a two-     

She is the Pride of the Chinese Nation

In the spring of 1958 when Princeton University awarded scientist Wu Jianxiong an honorary doctorate—the first ever to be given to a woman—the university president praised her as "the most honorable and most outstanding woman experimental physicist in the world."     

A Soldier on the Roof of the World

IT was during the Cultural Revolution, in, the year that I turned 16, that I put on an army uniform, got on a train, and left Beijing for Urumqi in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. After six days of driving on the vast Gobi Desert, I reached Kashi of southern Xinjiang. After another six days' severe jolting, I arrived at the hig'nest land in China. I was one of the five first women soldiers     

Back to the future? From pragmatic approaches in the social sciences to the development of the patchwork theory

The debate on the function of the social sciences in complex societies, and more generally of the role of knowledge, leads necessarily to a discussion on pragmatism. The gap between theoretical approaches and empirical research still exists and has even widened, in part as a result of the use and abuse of social science knowledge in politics and by the media. However, the academic system is equally to blame for this. Mutual ignorance and scholastic fights are barriers against openness, creative and imaginary thinking. The structures and the practices of the academic system reinforce this trend. Pragmatism aims at overcoming these cleavages by looking at commonalities between different approaches rather than by disputing their validity. It aims at a comprehensive understanding of the process of knowledge production and at the productive use of results. Defining itself in this tradition, the patchwork theory goes beyond the traditional pragmatic approaches: it catches part of the reality of social phenomena from a certain perspective that allows for an overview without having the full picture. Methodologicall, the approach guided by patchwork theory emphasizes the relevance of stakeholders’ knowledge and citizen science, and calls for public participation and democratic access to the production and use of knowledge in a discursive manner.     

Dangjia Village Blends the Old and the New

DANGJIA Village is located nine kilometers north of Hancheng City, Shaanxi Province. The building complex in this village is Oriental in style, and the customs here show the development of Chinese traditional culture. Dangjia Village was established in 1331 A.D. Residents of the village had two family names—Dang and Jia. The descendants of Dang and Jia lived,     

State and Regional Professional Associations—the Case of the CSA and the PSA

The CSA and the PSA share several critical challenges including maintaining a stable membership, providing opportunities for students to present their work while at the same time maintaining their position as an organization of professional sociologists, meeting the needs of a diverse membership and balancing the teaching and research needs of this diverse membership. The need is for the CSA and the PSA to work together to form an even closer partnership.     

Expected subjective utility: Is the Neumann-Morgenstern utility the same as the Neoclassical's?

Using axioms no stronger than those for the Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility hypothesis, with the recognition of finite sensibility, it is shown that the utility function derived by the N-M method is a neoclassical subjective utility function, contrary to the belief otherwise by prominent economists. This result is relevant for issues of utility measurability, social choice, etc. since it is subjective utility that is relevant for social choice. The relevance of individual risk aversion to the form of social welfare functions and the rationality of pure risk aversion are also discussed.     

Ethical injunctions: the University of the Western Cape in the face of the ‘here and now’

This essay poses the question of the ethical in relation to the work of memorialising the University of the Western Cape (UWC) after apartheid. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s statement on the ethical in The Logic of Sense and reading its implications through Walter Benjamin’s ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ and Jeremy Cronin’s ‘Even the Dead’, I argue that the ethical entails becoming adequate to the fracturing of event, leading to an understanding of the subject effect prior to its stamping by race, gender and identity. The ethical, in this formulation, reckons with the materiality of the past as its weight orders the present. It is this possibility of becoming adequate, of ‘not being unworthy of what happens to us’, which is offered in Ingrid Masondo’s photo-essay on UWC. I read Masondo as offering an encounter with images of the Leibnizian world as they appear at UWC, an encounter that registers alternate trajectories as they are expressed in ‘point of view’. Becoming adequate, here, involves registering the role of UWC (both conscious and unconscious) in the subjectification of persons during and after apartheid. This essay punctuates the rhythm of the memorialisation of UWC, by asking that this weight of the past be reckoned with while articulating alternate trajectories for both the university (and particularly the disciplines of the humanities) and for the understandings of subjectivity that attend to it, a demand that cannot be settled cheaply.     

Will the EU Disintegrate? What Does the Likely Possibility of Disintegration Tell About the Future of the World?

Is it true that either the EU will be democratised or it will disintegrate? I concur that the current policies, principles, and institutions of the EU both generate counterproductive politico-economic effects and suffer from problems of legitimation. These effects and problems, which are not confined to Europe, give rise to tendencies towards disintegration. My second point concerns the timing of the required learning and reforms. Modest policy proposals and tentative steps within the existing EU Treaty framework may be too little too late. The question is whether there is enough time for deeper transformations in Europe—and also globally.     

Exploring the formation of the “leave-it-to-experts” storyline during the initial outbreak of the 2013 smog hazard in Beijing

Beijing’s smog hazard is one of the most urgent issues on China’s public agenda. Drawing on the recently developed dynamic discourse coalition (DDC) approach, this article examines the ways in which the hazard’s initial outbreak in early 2013 was reported by four news sources: the Xinhua News Agency; China Daily; South China Morning Post; and the Associated Press. The findings suggest that although domestic and overseas media first provided different explanations for the hazard, these were eventually consolidated into the same problem-solving discourse of “leave-it-to-experts.” This discourse included a proposal to address the hazard under the current political economic structure of industrial capitalism. The proposal, however, was constrained by an elitist bias that downplayed China’s existing social and regional inequalities. The article argues that environmental challenges such as the smog hazard call for not only a sustainable model to direct China’s future development, but also the explicit recognition of the country’s existing environmental injustices.