海洋强国战略目标下海洋经济统计核算的综述

海洋经济统计核算体系研究,是推动海洋强国建设及海洋经济高质量发展深入研究的关键基础工作,对于夯实我国海洋经济数据基础、综合客观反映我国海洋经济发展状况具有重要意义。本文从海洋经济的概念内涵出发,系统梳理海洋经济统计核算体系的演变历程,深入解析了海洋经济统计核算指标体系构成,并对海洋经济统计核算方法进行了重点剖析,以期推进海洋强国战略目标下我国海洋经济统计核算体系的优化和完善。     

Probabilistic population projections for countries with generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics

In 2015, the United Nations (UN) issued probabilistic population projections for all countries up to 2100, by simulating future levels of total fertility and life expectancy and combining the results using a standard cohort component projection method. For the 40 countries with generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics, the mortality projections used the Spectrum/Estimation and Projection Package (EPP) model, a complex, multistate model designed for short-term projections of policy-relevant quantities for the epidemic. We propose a simpler approach that is more compatible with existing UN projection methods for other countries. Changes in life expectancy are projected probabilistically using a simple time series regression and then converted to age- and sex-specific mortality rates using model life tables designed for countries with HIV/AIDS epidemics. These are then input to the cohort component method, as for other countries. The method performed well in an out-of-sample cross-validation experiment. It gives similar short-run projections to Spectrum/EPP, while being simpler and avoiding multistate modelling.     

Collective Impact: A Review of the Peer-reviewed Research

ABSTRACT

Collective Impact (CI) is a framework for collaborative social change that has gained considerable attention over the past seven years. In this article we review the peer-reviewed academic research on the CI framework to understand what is known about its use. Nineteen articles were located. We identified four themes in the research: A need to adapt CI to the specific context, its technical nature, the importance of relationships, and concerns about power and equity. The literature on the CI framework is in its infancy and as such tends to focus on capacity building or model development. Whilst CI promotes important discussion about collaboration and social change, issues of power, equity and grass-roots engagement require further attention.

IMPLICATIONS

• Peer reviewed academic research on the application of CI is at an early stage and further research is needed.

• Social workers should carefully consider critiques of CI before adopting this framework for social change.

     

The World Social Forum: the paradoxical quest for strength in plurality

ABSTRACT

In this reflexive essay, I explore how the present and the future of the World Social Forum are intimately related to the ability of its actors to acknowledge and actively address the inherent tensions of open spaces. The former must compose themselves articulating seemingly opposites: ideals shared within the World Social Forum vs. some practices not in accordance with its principles (enhanced in contexts of urgency); claimed horizontality vs. dynamic power relations; internal plurality vs. the need to act in unity to achieve systemic global change, amongst others. I will propose perspectives on how the strength of the WSF can be seen as its capacity to continue building radical hope for a positive shift of paradigm within progressive civil society: from divergences to resilient complementarities.     

The paradox of illicit economies: survival,resilience, and the limits of development and drug policy orthodoxy

ABSTRACT

The illicit drug crops opium and coca are conventionally regarded as sources of instability, an ‘evil’ that breeds fragility and violence. Fragile states are supposed to be most vulnerable to their production and consequent harms. Yet by looking into the local contexts of the world’s leading opium and coca producers – Afghanistan, Myanmar, Colombia and Bolivia – these illicit crops are found to also be sources of stability, even drivers of economic growth. They enable marginalized communities and territories abandoned by the state to be reinserted into national and global markets. Within so-called ‘fragile’ and conflict-affected areas are displaced and dispossessed households adopting innovative and unorthodox strategies for coping and survival in changing and insecure environments. This paper maps out an approach, useful for examining the resilience that has emerged amidst violence and uncertainty in illicit-crop-producing territories, and which can hopefully tackle the continuing disconnect between drugs and development policy.     

Comfort Women: Enhancing Students’ Global Awareness through Human Right Education

Abstract

Teaching about the comfort women of World War II offers a compelling case study for the social studies classroom and human rights education. The topic will educate students to become knowledgeable about the larger world and its dark histories that have been omitted or scarcely mentioned in U.S. history textbooks. This article provides high school social studies teachers with the historical background of comfort women, rationales for including this topic in social studies curriculum, and teaching strategies and resources that teachers can use in their classrooms.     

The business of writing: literature as a commodity in Claudia Piñeiro’s Betibú

This article presents considerations about the status of literature as a commodity and writers as professionals in the twenty-first century. These considerations are based on an analysis of Argentine writer Claudia Piñeiro’s Betibú (2011), which follows the story of an Argentine crime novel writer who becomes a ghostwriter after her latest novel receives harsh reviews for being considered commercial rather than literary. I argue that the novel in question points out misconceptions about the influence of the book industry on the aesthetic quality of literary writing, highlighting the need for literary criticism to look into everyday relations between readers, authors, and editors.     

How to keep Rosie the riveter from contracting VD: A case study of how U.S. social reformers used public relations during World War II

Much of public relations historiography on World War II focuses on the government uses of the function. This study fills a gap in the literature by exploring how a non-governmental organization called the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) used persuasion communication efforts to enlist the aid of management, labor, and local communities in the United States in the control of venereal disease (VD) rates. The case study advances a more diverse understanding of how activists have utilized public relations and found that the social reformers’ use of persuasive communications strategies and activities aligned with the view of public relations as the strategic and intentional participation in the social construction of meaning to achieve a planned outcome.     

Business reform outcomes: Why so different?

Post-crisis policy making increasingly focuses on doing business reforms. We argue that the effects of those reforms will be different across countries. To understand the reasons for the reform outcome divergence, we advance a novel firm-size distribution (FSDs) argument. At the center of the argument is the fact that FSDs are different across countries and stable over time. Then, if a given doing business reform induces firms of different size to grow differently, this will produce a variety of reform outcomes across countries. To advance the argument, we set up a tractable general equilibrium (GE) model and study how firms of different size grow after a doing business reform. The model predicts that larger firms will grow faster than smaller firms after the reform. The model predictions are tested on the Enterprise Surveys (ES) data, merged with the Doing Business indicators. We confirm that firms of different size grow differently after a Doing Business reform. Thus, based on the notable differences of firm size distributions across countries, identical reforms to start, operate and close a business will produce a variety of reform outcomes across countries.     

‘Occupation Children’ in Germany after World War II — Problems and Coping Strategies

The article focuses on the autobiographical memories of people born in Germany after the Second World War, whose mothers were local women and whose fathers were members of the allied forces. Based on the analysis of narrative interviews, we ask how these people experienced their growing up and their sociocultural environment in the post‐war era, and what kind of coping strategies they developed to deal with adverse living conditions.