A TALE OF TWO VISIONS: Representing the Orientialized West,Representing the Orient

Starting in the eighteenth century, the West’s interest in the exotic was matched with a rival gaze from the East. The fluid seams where the so-called dualities met have generated powerful spaces of tension: Occident, Orient; master, colonized; and public, private. The elite Muslim Ottoman women’s agency in dress via adoption of corsets, tight-fitting dresses and the adoption of overstuffed seating furniture modeled after the Turkish divan in the West resulted in an unprecedented conflict between furniture, the body and the dress. The inclusion of the body and its dress in the discourse helps to construct an interior design theory that deals with the immediate, experiential role of the body unlike the abstract body in space, which served architectural theory for centuries. Furthermore, the body fosters social manifestation of spaces. This is the fascinating story of a cultural exchange between women: an exchange of divans and corsets.     

Eating together and eating alone: meal arrangements in British households

Sociology traditionally accounts for eating in terms of the social organization of meals, their provision and consumption. A recurrent public concern is that the meal is being subverted. This paper examines meal arrangements in British households in 2012, drawing on an online survey in the format of a food diary administered to 2784 members of a supermarket consumer panel. It charts the organization of contemporary eating occasions, paying attention to socio‐demographic variation in practice. Especially, it explores companionless meals, putting them in contexts of food provisioning and temporal rhythms. Findings show that eating alone is associated with simpler, quicker meals, and that it takes place most commonly in the morning and midday. Those living alone eat alone more often, but at similar meal times, and they take longer over their lone meals. Comparison with a similar study in 1955–6 suggests some fragmentation or relaxation in collective schedules. The implications are not straightforward, and the causes probably lie more in institutional shifts than personal preferences. Declining levels of commensality are, however, associated with a reduction in household size and, especially in households with children, difficulties of coordinating family members’ schedules.     

Sustainability reporting patterns of companies listed on the Johannesburg securities exchange

The demand by stakeholders for information about companies’ social and environmental performance has led to sustainability reporting becoming essential. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines are the international reporting standard whereas the Johannesburg Securities Exchange Socially Responsible Investment (JSE SRI) Index guidelines are used in South Africa. Although South Africa is regarded as one of the leaders in sustainability reporting in the world, the JSE SRI Index is still a relatively new standard and its efficiency will only be proved over time. The research on which this paper is based, determined whether reporting patterns exist across specific market sectors of the sustainability reports of companies listed on the JSE in order to establish if the JSE SRI Index guidelines on reporting are efficient. Results indicated that all the selected market sectors reported on the environment, society and governance (ESG) categories as per requirements of the JSE SRI Index. The mining and materials sector reported more in the environment and the society categories than the other sectors, while in the governance category less reporting on indirect impacts by all the sectors was noted. The implication of this is that in general, companies find the JSE SRI Index guidelines on reporting easy to implement. However, less reporting of companies’ indirect impacts on their operating environments could mean that there is still a lack of completeness and transparency from the companies’ reports, which could be as a result of a lack of firmer guidelines by the JSE SRI Index guidelines on reporting of such issues.     

中美作者英语科技论文中名词短语复杂度对比研究

分别选取Nature期刊中美作者55和50篇科技论文自建语料库，采用Biber等人提出的写作发展能力指标，对比分析中国作者和美国作者科技论文名词短语复杂度。研究发现：1）在使用名词短语前置修饰语和后置修饰语的整体模式上，中国作者使用前置修饰语的次数显著高于美国作者；2）受母语迁移影响，中国作者使用关系小句、名词、介词短语做名词短语修饰语的复杂度逊色于美国作者。该研究能够为中国作者科技论文写作提供一定的启示。     

近代以来云南彝族的服饰审美变迁特征与动因

近代以来云南彝族的服饰审美历经朴素、华丽走向包容,其变迁历程包含了诸多特点:审美取向上从“族群向内趋同” 到“群体性向外趋同”,服饰造型上“繁缛复杂”与“经济实用”并存,生产技术上从“以手工生产为主”到“以工业生产为主”,审 美标准上从“单一”到“多重”。 究其原因,外因主要为社会形态的巨变、服饰原材料的极大丰富、多元文化共融的环境及工业 批量成衣对市场的侵占,内因则表现为云南彝族自身物质生活条件、服饰文化传承形式、精英群体创造力等方面的变化,以及 趋易原则的影响。