What are Homes Made of? Building Materials,DIY and the Homeyness of Homes

This article considers the meanings that are attached to, and outcomes produced by, the things that houses are built from. It reflects on the meanings attached to the “robustness” of building materials for people who carry out DIY (Do-It-Yourself) projects. DIY is important to some people as a way to build relationships and perform a culturally valued identity. For interviewees in New Zealand, working on their own homes was an important aspect of their lives, and more malleable building materials allowed such work and had positive connotations and produced feelings of homeyness in contrast to more robust “permanent” materials. The article thus raises questions about how the built material of home relates to our feelings about it as well as highlighting the diverse practices and relationships that—literally—construct homes.     

Challenging the neoliberal view of education: the Center for Ecoliteracy as a transformative educational practice

The neoliberal rationality of recent decades has, as one of its maxims, that of extending market logic to the rest of social dimensions on the basis of competition. However, the spreading of this neoliberal ‘drug’ requires profound political reforms. It calls for a cultural engineering of the public sector which has been fostered by the New Public Management (NPM). This form of governmentality controls current power relations and gives a new meaning to the management of public services, including the educational sector. In this paper, we maintain that there are ‘spaces of resistance’ against the neoliberal educational rationality. We analyse the Center for Ecoliteracy (CFE) as a transformative experience which integrates a holistic perspective into educational practice. We compare the principles of the NPM with those of the CFE, showing that there are more humanistic approaches to education which aim to teach students the need to live in sustainable communities.     

Transition and Adjustment to Professional Identity as a Newly Qualified Social Worker

This article discusses the lived experience of professional identity during the transition from student to newly qualified practitioner. Current literature emphasises the first year of practice as an important time of transition to a job-role as student social workers move into postqualification practice. However, little research has explored how professional identity is experienced during this significant transition period. A phenomenological research project was undertaken with 17 newly qualified social workers in Australia. Three in-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with each participant across the first 12 months postqualification period. Participants described how they resolved personal, relational, and professional questions about becoming and being a qualified social worker. The findings indicate a need for educators, employers, supervisors and the profession to consider how to better integrate professional identity within curricula, policy, and systems of support, including supervision.     

新型城镇化与土地制度改革

土地制度改革的核心就是要改计划配置为市场配置。首先,要建立城乡统一、开放、竞争有序的土地市场,为此须转变政府职能,划清政府与市场的界线;改革产权制度,把公有公用的土地公有制改成公有私用的土地公有制;建立城乡统一的土地市场,开放集体土地入市;改革征地制度。其次,要建立适应市场配置的国家宏观调控体系。政府主要有4种调控手段:确立以公众参与式的规划制订办法;正确实施土地用途分区,限制土地使用权,以提高土地利用效率;建立能促进节约用地、优化配置、公平分配土地收益的财税制度,使税收、投资、补贴成为国家调控土地的主要手段;改革行政审批制度,简政放权。     

Urbanization in China and the Coordinated Development Model—The case of Chengdu

China's urbanization faces two greatest difficulties of creating non-farm jobs to “landless farmers” and providing required amenities and social services to urbanites-to-be. In the earlier phase of development, TVE employment had provided important relief to the job pressure. Later, the “Small-city Strategy” that emphasized forming towns and small cities around where rural population resided successfully deterred rural population's entry into large cities. Today, China is implementing a Coordinated Development between the urban and rural sectors, aiming to reach a balanced development between the two sectors by making not only large cities more welcoming to rural migrants but also the small cities, towns, and areas where rural population now reside harder to leave. At the core of the coordination are three concentrations of rural residents, farmland, and firms, intended to help rural residents to settle in large cities, small cities and towns, as well as new residential areas in the countryside, to de-segment land to realize economies of scale, and to gather firms of a same industry in organized industrial areas to gain agglomeration economies and create non-farm jobs. This article examines the trajectory of China's urbanization, analyzes the working mechanism of the Coordinated Development model, and investigates Chengdu's practice of the Coordinated Development, which will help to provide insights into the new developments in China's urbanization.     

Why the personal remained political: comparing second and third wave perspectives on everyday feminism

Everyday feminist practices are located in the personal lives of feminists, therefore, third wave feminists frequently use the slogan the personal is political to emphasise the political value of such practices. Often, second wave feminists do not agree with this interpretation of the famous feminist catchphrase, which initially meant to call for collective political responses to personal experiences of gender inequalities. This article investigates this dispute that is symbolic of the broader relationship between second and third wave feminism. It compares both perspectives on everyday feminism by relating arguments for and against the political value of everyday feminism to empirical findings of a qualitative study. Based on 40 interviews with second and third wave feminists in New Zealand, I argue that the dispute is based on a number of misunderstandings between the opposing perspectives. Disentangling those misunderstandings, I conclude that although everyday feminism as a manifestation of ‘the personal’ works towards ‘small’ political aims, it is a political practice.     

劳动价值论的“新解释”及其相关争论评述

20世纪80年代初,美国学者弗里、法国学者迪梅尼尔分别独立地提出了劳动价值论的新解释,并引发了西方马克思主义经济学界的长期争论。新解释被普遍认作当代劳动价值论研究中最为引人注目的发展。有关新解释的基本观点和相关争论的主要内容涉及新解释对货币价值和劳动力价值的定义、所谓重复计算的问题、新解释与经验研究、对新解释的评价等问题。新解释为以劳动价值论为基础的经验研究提供了某种便利,但其基本定义仍存有重大理论缺陷。     

Workplace flexibility and new product development performance: The role of telework and flexible work schedules

This paper investigates the effects of telework and flexible work schedules on the performance of teams in new product development projects. Organizations increasingly introduce workplace flexibility practices that provide flexibility with regard to where or when the employee works. The findings of NPD teams in five cases, situated in two telecommunication firms, show that telework has a positive effect on NPD performance through enabling knowledge sharing, cross-functional cooperation and inter-organizational involvement. This improves the speed and quality of product development, provided that face-to-face contact is not completely replaced by virtual contact. A basic level of face-to face contact is necessary to offset the negative effects of telework on the quality of the shared knowledge, which are larger when the knowledge is sticky. Flexible work schedules and unexpectedly hot-desking were found to increase telework usage. This implies for managers that workplace flexibility needs enablers and cannot do without a sufficient level of face-to-face contact.     

新生代农民工的特征、利益诉求及角色变迁——基于东莞塘厦镇的调查分析

文章首先回顾了农民工演变的历史,在此基础上给出了新生代农民工的定义。通过作者在东莞塘厦镇的调查访谈资料,本文归纳出新生代农民工不同于传统农民工的特征和新的利益诉求,并说明新阶层出现后给城市和农村社会分别所带来的负面影响。然后利用迁移者角色变迁的理论来诠释传统农民工与新生代农民工的差异,最后提出了简短的政策思路,其他存而未论。     

对新型生育文化效应的实证分析

新型生育文化是一种与传统生育文化既有联系又有根本区别的现代生育文化 ,它的效应的产生和发挥对人口与社会经济发展具有十分突出的意义。本文对我国新型生育文化效应发挥情况进行了初步的实证研究 ,主要涉及到新型生育文化效应的指标设置、运用、问卷调查分析以及促进效应有效发挥的模式特征。