明清以来的市镇:中国城镇化发展的历史因缘

本文致力于厘清关于市镇研究的理论传统，对明清以来市镇的演变在经济、社会和政治等多个层面进行考察。从经济层面看，市镇是连接地方性市场和世界体系的节点，并越来越具有超层级、跨区域和金融化的特点；从社会层面看，市镇是有层级、有组织的，并具有很强的包容性；从政治层面看，它是地方自治化和国家政权建设的着力点。在社会结构中的中间性质是市镇的本质特征。社会学对于市镇的研究必须将其看作一种总体性的社会事实，在对生命体验、生活智慧、伦理道德、乡风民俗等民情因素进行调查研究的前提下，考察其与具体制度和社会结构之间的关联。     

A new tool for urban governance or just rhetoric? The case of participatory budgeting in Taipei City

Increasing interest in participatory budgeting has been observed in local governments around the world. This paper stresses direct citizen participation in the budgeting process leads to good governance, deepens democracy and improves social justice, while also highlighting some challenges in its efficiency and effectiveness. Unlike participatory budgeting, the Sub-borough Chiefs Forum is a community-based representative democratic mechanism; it could be regarded as a form of participatory budgeting in a broad sense. If so, then did the Taipei programme simply duplicate the goals of the Forum or lead to a better governance by making up for the inadequacies of the Chiefs Forum? To find out whether the Taipei participatory budgeting programme made a difference, we carried out qualitative and quantitative comparisons of projects passed under the participatory budgeting process and at the Forum. We also interviewed several participatory budgeting participants and sub-borough chiefs. The findings suggested that participatory budgeting and the Forum generated different proposals and budget requests, and the Taipei programme supplemented the shortcomings of the Forum and therefore led to deeper civic engagement and better urban governance.     

Schematising hospitality: Ai WeiWei’s activist artwork as a form of dark travel

The article provides a holistic appraisal of activist-artist Ai WeiWei’s work. It argues that, despite its topical innovations and evolution, it continues to be informed by narratives of ‘hospitality’ as an experiential form of engagement with variations of otherness (father, migrant, tourist and refugee). Dividing Ai’s artwork into two overlapping phases of development (national and international/global), it considers the artist’s construction of a cosmopolitan identity with uses of ‘technology’ as embodied and communal property. As Ai’s work on the refugee crisis on Lesbos attests, his (dark) artistic cosmopolitan symbolisations use geo-political imaginaries of justice and hospitality in subsequent projects.     

Resistance to metropolitan institutionality and planning in Chile

In this article, the authors review and analyse two key processes conducted by the Chilean state over the past 50 years. The first process consists of the development of specific planning instruments for the particular realities of metropolitan areas. The second process consists of the successive legislative attempts to work towards a definition of a new form of institutionality for cities with metropolitan profiles. These attempts have either failed or solely become bills of law. Both processes suggest a political and technical resistance throughout history, to substantially modify institutionality, as well as planning instruments, in order to make them more appropriate and consistent with the needs of growing metropolitan areas in Chile.     

宗教事务依法管理的路径及基础——以四川藏区依法治理为视角

Under the situation that traditional beliefs have remained basically unchanged while the social economy has developed and population mobility has increased, with the trend of an in-creasing diversity in beliefs, and an increasing number of religious followers and temples, the management of religious affairs has become more difficult. In ethnic areas, the speed of moderniza-tion has accelerated, ethnic interactions are fre-quent, and the beneficial conflict or cultural con-flict among various ethnic groups has become nor-mal; the impact of modernity, ways of life, the value and ideals of the temples’ traditional culture and educational model brings new social pressure for the monks who are adapting to modernization, and making a leap in development while safeguard-ing traditional rituals, culture, religious education and development. The number of criminal cases involving monks has increased, which brings a strong negative influence to the religious followers in Tibetan areas. All these factors are directly in-fluencing the stability and harmonious development of the Tibetan areas. As the second-largest Tibetan area, the geo-graphical location of Sichuan’s Tibetan areas is u-nique. In ancient times, the policy of “keeping the Tibetan areas stable means keeping Kham sta-ble at first” had been an important measure for the central government to manage all of the Tibetan ar-eas. From the Qing dynasty to the present times, it still has a practical use, and even has special val-ue in the process of safeguarding the “long-term stability of Sichuan”, especially when the people have but a hazy understanding of the relationship between the freedom of faith and managing reli-gious affairs according to the law in Tibetan areas, and one needs to have a legal response to it. Hence, “keeping Kham stable” needs to depend on the law, and legal means should be taken to safeguard the harmony and stability of the Tibetan areas in Sichuan. Management of the religious affairs according to the law is an inevitable requirement for China to promote the goal of ruling the country by law, com-prehensively deepen reform, and promote the mod-ernization of the country’s governance system and capability. Based on an active response to the guidance principle of strengthening the manage-ment of religious affairs according to the law pro-posed by the Central Government, and the Sichuan Provincial Government, we should standardize reli-gious activities and affairs, insist on a combination of legal management and policy guidance, adopt various measures, search for a practicable path to realize the significant goal of managing the religious affairs according to the law in Tibetan areas of Si-chuan. This article proposes some methods of man-aging the religious affairs according to the law as follows:1 ) To insist on the CPC’s leadership in reli-gious work and management of religious affairs;2 ) to actively and reliably promote the systematic con-
struction of the legalization of religious affairs;3 ) to insist on the combination of legal management and policy guidance;4 ) to encourage the public to manage religious affairs according to law; 5 ) to standardize the scale and number of monks by u-sing new methods of management;6 ) to strengthen the role of the “four troops” ( Party and Govern-ment leading cadres,ethnic religious work cadres, ethnic minority cadres and talents, and religious believers ) , especially religious believers; 7 ) to make full use of the regulatory framework of the Buddhist community; 8 ) to create conditions for those monks who wish to return to secular life;9 ) to distinguish the boundary between normal and il-legal religious activities, between folk custom and extreme religious concepts; 10 ) to identify and distinguish between “monks and lay people”, and“ordinary cases and religious cases”. At present, there are four foundations for managing religious affairs according to the law:1 ) the idea that freedom of faith is not only one’s right, but also one’s duty has gradually enjoyed popular support;2 ) there is a good policy base for managing religious affairs according to the law;3 ) there is a relatively strong theoretical basis for managing religious affairs according to the law;4 ) there exists good legal support for managing reli-gious affairs according to the law.     

Deep Uncertainties in Sea-Level Rise and Storm Surge Projections: Implications for Coastal Flood Risk Management

Sea levels are rising in many areas around the world, posing risks to coastal communities and infrastructures. Strategies for managing these flood risks present decision challenges that require a combination of geophysical, economic, and infrastructure models. Previous studies have broken important new ground on the considerable tensions between the costs of upgrading infrastructure and the damages that could result from extreme flood events. However, many risk-based adaptation strategies remain silent on certain potentially important uncertainties, as well as the tradeoffs between competing objectives. Here, we implement and improve on a classic decision-analytical model (Van Dantzig 1956) to: (i) capture tradeoffs across conflicting stakeholder objectives, (ii) demonstrate the consequences of structural uncertainties in the sea-level rise and storm surge models, and (iii) identify the parametric uncertainties that most strongly influence each objective using global sensitivity analysis. We find that the flood adaptation model produces potentially myopic solutions when formulated using traditional mean-centric decision theory. Moving from a single-objective problem formulation to one with multiobjective tradeoffs dramatically expands the decision space, and highlights the need for compromise solutions to address stakeholder preferences. We find deep structural uncertainties that have large effects on the model outcome, with the storm surge parameters accounting for the greatest impacts. Global sensitivity analysis effectively identifies important parameter interactions that local methods overlook, and that could have critical implications for flood adaptation strategies.     

依赖中的资源争夺:中小学生减负的困境及出路

中小学生减负问题是新中国成立以来，我国教育发展过程中力图解决但却难以根治的历史性问题。依赖中的资源争夺所引发的校际与校内关系的复杂存在，影响了减负工作的深入推进，成为中小学生减负路上的主要拦路虎。突破减负困境，可通过推动基础教育从传统静态、集中走向现代动态、均衡发展，确保义务教育阶段公办教育的公共服务能力，重新思考民办与公办教育的关系及功能定位，形成多元主体参与和共建共享的现代教育治理体系，构建低竞争、低控制、真评价的教育生态环境等举措合力助推。希望以此为我国中小学生减负工作的有效开展提供行动借鉴和理论参考。     

应急管理中缘何出现“信息悖论”现象?——基于中国国家治理视角的考察

信息是国家治理的重要依据。中国国家治理常规机制与运动式治理机制间的矛盾深刻地体现在了日常管理与应急管理的差异之中。当下的治理逻辑必然地要求日常管理采取科层制的非人格化管理模式，对直接上级的负责制形塑了信息沿纵向逐级向上衰减的常规信息传递机制。但在应急管理机制之下，上级应对突发事件的精准决策却有赖于对真实信息的掌握，而常规机制所带来的表象性避责策略则会削弱上级的决策准确性，由此这一张力进一步形塑了中国国家治理在应急管理机制中的“信息悖论”现象。      

The wisdom and madness of crowds: How information networks and board cognition help or hinder firm performance across the business cycle

We know little of why a minority of firms pursue counter-cyclical strategies and consequently outperform competitors during recessions. Based on the theory of institutional isomorphism, we hypothesize that these firms avoid the mimetic and normative pressures that promote strategic convergence during uncertainty. We demonstrate these effects at the board-level in a sample of 1,615 U.S. firms. Mimetic processes are evident, with firms' connectedness in board interlock networks attenuating profitability and decreasing firm value during recessions—a reversal of the positive effects during expansions. Normative pressures arise from homogeneity in directors’ educational and professional experience, with greater consequences for long-term performance. Overall, recessionary performance is improved when firms occupy relatively isolated positions in informational networks and appoint directors from a range of backgrounds.     

Climate justice and sustained transnational mobilization

ABSTRACT

Samir Amin’s final essay called for the creation of a new international organization of progressive social forces. Here I review evidence from twenty-first century transnational movements germane for understanding the likelihood of the emergence of such an international organization and the issues and sectors most likely to facilitate coalitional unity. More specifically, the ecological crises identified by Amin in the form of global warming and climate change have created an unprecedented global environmental threat capable of unifying diverse social strata across the planet. The climate justice movement has already established a global infrastructure and template to coordinate a new international organization for confronting neoliberal forms of globalization. Pre-existing movement organizing around environmental racism, climate justice in the global South, and recent intersectional mobilizations serve as promising models for building an enduring international organization that will represent subaltern groups and have a substantial impact on world politics.