无形城市时代城市社会生活特征探析

无形城市是在“后”之时代和全球地域空间这样的时空背景下涌现的新城市形态,它以高流动性和不确定性为主要特征。这种特征成就了特定的城市社会群体,也使得城市社会生活呈现出极具时代感的特征。城市社会心理体现了个性的张扬和自由的释放;城市生活方式因讲究格调和充分享受闲暇而得到提升;城市居民的交往方式既处在一个平等开放的互动平台之上,但也处在互动深度遭受质疑的困境之中。     

Community Economic Development Strategies in Rural Washington: Toward a Synthesis of Natural and Social Capital*

Abstract Routes to economic development attract considerable attention in community and rural sociology. Social scientists draw increasingly on studies of social capital and environmental surroundings as they examine the factors that facilitate and inhibit economic development. However, few empirical analyses exist that analyze the impact of the combination of social infrastructure and natural capital on different forms of economic development such as on industrial recruitment and self‐development. Using data collected from six communities in Washington State, the interaction of a community's social infrastructure and natural capital on industrial recruitment and self‐development efforts is examined. Results suggest that while natural capital positively impacts a community's successful recruitment of outside industries, it is not significant for a community's level of self‐development. However, a community's social infrastructure, measured by the existence of active civic organizations, local businesses that support local community projects, community‐wide fund‐raising capacity, and extra‐local linkages to nearby communities, state, and national agencies, positively affects both industrial recruitment and self‐development. These findings illustrate the need for communities and local activists to carefully weigh their advantages and potential shortcomings when deciding on an economic development strategy.     

浅析义乌市天然气发展前景及对策

该文从义乌地区燃气市场现状出发,分析天然气在居民用户、公建用户、锅炉空调用户、工业用户及天然气汽车等领域的发展前景,并提出下一步推动天然气发展的对策建议。     

Measuring Economic and Social Impacts of Membership in a Community Development Financial Institution

This study uses qualitative and quantitative measures to answer the question: “does a community development financial institution (CDFI) provide a measurable level of social benefit to its members?” Results indicate that a CDFI does change lives in many important ways, from providing members with the ability to get their financial houses in order, to helping members take control of their financial futures, and finally through building a sense of empowerment that reaches beyond the finances of an individual or family. In general, impacts were greater for lower income and less educated households, households with children, households that used more services, and for households that indicated wealth and asset building services were most important.     

Self-Employment as a Social and Economic Development Intervention for Recipients of AFDC

Summary

This paper reports findings from program evaluations of two demonstrations designed to (1) test self-employment as a social and economic development strategy for recipients of AFDC, and (2) identify policy barriers to improving the economic well-being of this population. The authors collected data through interviews with program participants and program operators and used secondary data contained in operators' management information systems and state Department of Human Services electronic files. Program results showed that self-employment is a viable social and economic development strategy for self-selected welfare recipients who receive business training and assistance in locating operating capital. The paper discusses implications for social work practice, education, and research.     

Skipping the Life Fantastic in a Hard City

A case study of large‐volume vaginal discharge during intercourse originally prepared in 1979, is described, as is the course of investigation into its origin. It is argued that this “wetting of the bed” is not a pathological significance but is within the normal range and variation of the physiological function of the paraurethral glands of Skene. A 1982 addendum discusses developments in this field of sexual research, including the rediscovery of female ejaculation; 2 decades dominated by the “paradigm of cliterocentricity” and a recent shift back to the vagina, specifically the urethro‐vaginal body, in female sexual function. A 1983 addendum reports on an immunohistochemical demonstration of the homology between the female urethral glands and the male prostate. Evidence for the secretion of prostatic acid phosphatase by the female glands suggests an ejaculatory function equivalent to that of the male though without the gonadal, “seminal” component. Further investigations of female ejaculation are discussed.     

Social Capital Investment and Immigrant Economic Trajectories: A Case Study of Punjabi American Taxi Drivers in New York City

Although the scholarship on social capital and immigrant economic incorporation has sufficiently documented how immigrants mobilize social capital in their search for employment which often leads to the formation of immigrant niches, how social capital is processed after immigrants acquire employment and its significance for the preservation of immigrant employment niches is less well explored. This paper addresses this gap in the literature with a case study of immigrant Punjabi taxi drivers in the New York metropolitan area. In particular, this study shows how a group of immigrant Punjabi taxi drivers mobilized social capital via embeddedness in co‐ethnic social networks and improved their working conditions – a process that must be considered in explanations of the Punjabi niche in the taxi industry for more than two decades. The study has implications for the relationship between social capital and the structure of the workplace or industry where immigrants are incorporated and its subsequent impact on immigrant economic trajectories. Further, this study contributes to the debate on the usefulness of ethnic communities for the adaptation of immigrant groups. Additionally, this research is relevant to the scholarship on the economic adaptation of South Asian (a subset of Asian Americans) immigrants, an understudied immigrant group in the United States.     

Perceived Impacts from Wind Farm and Natural Gas Development in Northern Pennsylvania

This study examines the environmental, social, and economic impacts that landowners perceive from the simultaneous development of an industrial‐scale wind farm and extensive natural gas drilling in an area of northern Pennsylvania. A mail survey (N = 1,028) reveals that the types of perceived impact from wind and natural gas are similar overall, although the perceived magnitude of positive and negative impacts is greater from natural gas drilling. Impact perception was found to explain a large portion of residents' overall attitudes toward the energy developments, and residents' place meanings for the area also explain some attitudinal variation. Additionally, factors such as place attachment and length and type of residency were found to have little or no effect on either the perception of impact or resident attitudes toward development.