A Commentary on David Drucker's “Ask a Silly Question,Get a Silly Answer

ABSTRACT

This commentary views Drucker's paper as an example of practitioner research aimed both at developing a stronger evidence base for the profession, and promoting a form of thinking useful to Western social work practice. Links are also drawn between the ideas expressed in “Ask a Silly Question” and participatory social work in several non-Western parts of the world.     

社会参与在鲁迅文学活动价值生成中的意义

社会参与意识在鲁迅文学活动价值生成中具有怎样的意义？从人们对这个问题的不同回答中能窥见文学创作观念、文学批评观念以及整个社会精神文化的变迁。正确认识社会参与意识在文学活动中的意义也有利于当前的文学创作和批评。     

Nanotechnology Risk Communication Past and Prologue

Nanotechnologies operate at atomic, molecular, and macromolecular scales, at scales where matter behaves differently than at larger scales and quantum effects can dominate. Nanotechnologies have captured the imagination of science fiction writers as science, engineering, and industry have leapt to the challenge of harnessing them. Applications are proliferating. In contrast, despite recent progress the regulatory landscape is not yet coherent, and public awareness of nanotechnology remains low. This has led risk researchers and critics of current nanotechnology risk communication efforts to call for proactive strategies that do more than address facts, that include and go beyond the public participation stipulated by some government acts. A redoubling of nanotechnology risk communication efforts could enable consumer choice and informed public discourse about regulation and public investments in science and safety.     

A Realistic Path to Implementing China’s Budget Law

The core issue for the implementation of modern budget law is to optimize the satisfaction of society’s demand for public goods. The form of implementation mechanism that will best achieve this goal has thus become a major topic in the field of legal research. To go beyond the Anglo-Saxon budget model and construct a realistic path for the implementation of China’s budget law, this issue needs to be explored from the perspective of Chinese citizens in a way that safeguards the fundamental interests of the people and is premised on upholding and improving the People’s Congress system, so as to achieve a balance between internal and external budget allocation relationships. There are three routes to implementing China’s budget law: the political, the social, and the judicial. Under the first, citizens’ political identity interests are represented by deputies who oversee the budgetary powers of administrative bodies through the People’s Congress. Under the second, citizens individually or collectively participate, influence or even decide the allocation of public economic resources through dialogue, negotiation, reasoning and argument with the responsible budgetary agency in the course of the budget’s compilation, examination and approval, execution and supervision. Under the third, the establishment of a system for budgetary litigation allows citizens to participate in and supervise the implementation of the budget law, individually or collectively. This provides judicial security for the law’s implementation. These three realistic implementation routes represent the dialectical unity of concerted institutional effort aimed directly at effective implementation of budget law. Judicial interpretations of budget law implementation indicate the importance and urgency of promoting national governance capacity through reform of the legal systems governing finance and taxation. This explains the significant role of finance and taxation law in national governance.     

Beyond talking – children's participation in Norwegian care and protection cases

The attempt to give children an effective voice in social work processes which can have substantial impact on their lives takes different forms in countries with varying professional cultures and legal frameworks. This paper reports on a study of children's participation in decision-making in care and protection services in Norway, which was carried out in conjunction with a project to support social work teams in enabling children to participate, using materials borrowed from England and Wales. The results showed that (a) taking an active part in decision-making did not correlate perfectly with (b) having an influence on the outcome. Cases were therefore classified as ‘participation’ or ‘non-participation’ using a combination of both the above criteria. Statistical analysis of the factors influencing children's participation enabled the proposition of a model which appeared to explain much of the variance. The results point to the inadequacy of equating social work conversation with children with effective participation in decision-making.     

一般信任模式的跨部门差异及其中介机制: 基于2010年中国综合社会调查的研究

本文基于“市场”与“国家再分配”两种不同制度环境的讨论，利用中国综合社会调查2010年的数据，运用倾向值匹配方法处理潜在的选择性误差，考察了不同部门中个体的一般信任水平。结果显示，相比私有部门（外资企业和私营企业），在公共部门中工作的个体呈现了更高的一般信任水平。进一步的分析表明，政治参与水平和相对剥夺感作为中介于工作部门与一般信任水平之间的解释机制是显著的，在公共部门中工作的个体不仅在态度上对内在政治效能感有更高的认定，而且也能积极参与居委会社区的选举。这些特征极大提升了他们的一般信任水平。此外，公共部门中的个体在社会地位与经济地位上所持有的较低的相对剥夺感也有助于其建立更高的一般信任水平。     

比较法视野下的人民陪审员制度改革

新一轮司法体制改革在强化职业化主审法官主导地位的同时，提出了完善人民陪审员制度、拓宽人民群众有序参与司法渠道的改革目标。比较日本、韩国的民众参与司法裁判的新制度，可知中、日、韩三国的制度改革虽然目标相近，但制度背景、制度内容及其取得的效果却有较大差异。如何平衡好司法专业性与民众参与之间的关系并确保专业性优先，是当前中国司法改革需要考虑的首要问题。参与审判并非普通民众参与司法活动的唯一形式，应当拓宽人民群众参与司法的形式和渠道，加强顶层设计，重视发挥人民陪审员提供专业知识和参与纠纷调解的作用。在今后的人民陪审制改革中要转换视角，弱化政治意义而强化司法功能，细化相应的程序实体规则，注意考虑司法审判相关主体与参与司法裁判民众之间的关系。     

西方国家公众参与决策方式对中国的适用性实证研究

公众参与决策,是一个关系到政府与公众关系的重大政策实践问题,得到世界各国包括发展中国家的普遍重视。基于调查问卷的方法,围绕什么参与方式、谁参与、为什么参与,以及参与什么四个方面对西方国家的公众参与决策方式在中国的适用性看,西方发达国家公众参与方式被中国学习或本土化的期望度和可行性很高,但中国地方政府在学习发达国家公众参与方式的经验时应随区域变化而变化。     

Determinants and Mapping of Collective Perceptions of Technological Risk: The Case of the Second Nuclear Power Plant in Taiwan

Nuclear power is a highly controversial and salient example of environmental risk. The siting or operating of a nuclear power plant often faces widespread public opposition. Although studies of public perceptions of nuclear power date back to 1970s, little research attempts to explain the spatial heterogeneity of risk attitude toward nuclear power among individuals or communities. This article intends to improve the knowledge about the major factors contributing to nuclear power plant risk perceptions by mapping the geographical patterns of local risk perception and examining the determinants in forming the nature and distribution of the perceived risk among potentially affected population. The analysis was conducted by a case study of the Second Nuclear Power Plant (SNPP) in Taiwan by using a novel methodology that incorporates a comprehensive risk perception (CRP) model into an ethnographic approach called risk perception mapping (RPM). First, we examined the determinants of local nuclear power risk perceptions through the CRP model and multivariate regression analysis. Second, the results were integrated with the RPM approach to map and explain the spatial pattern of risk perceptions. The findings demonstrate that the respondents regard the nuclear power plant as an extremely high‐risk facility, causing them to oppose the SNPP and reject the compensation payment to accept its continuing operation. Results also indicate that perceptions of nuclear power risk were mainly influenced by social trust, psychological and socioeconomic attributes, proximity, and the perceived effects of the SNPP on the quality of everyday life.     

Gendering Global Governance

In this article I map out the major debates on global governance and the feminist critiques of the mainstream interventions in these debates. I argue that the shift from government to governance is a response to the needs of a gendered global capitalist economy and is shaped by struggles, both discursive and material, against the unfolding consequences of globalization. I suggest feminist interrogations of the concept, processes, practices and mechanisms of governance and the insights that develop from them should be centrally incorporated into critical revisionist and radical discourses of and against the concept of global governance. However, I also examine the challenges that the concept of global governance poses for feminist political practice, which are both of scholarship and of activism as feminists struggle to address the possibilities and politics of alternatives to the current regimes of governance. I conclude by suggesting that feminist political practice needs to focus on the politics of redistribution in the context of global governance.