Naive Monarchism and Rural Resistance in Contemporary Russia

This article applies the concept of “naive monarchism” (i.e., the traditional peasant expressions of reverence for the tsar as their benefactor) to study contemporary rural politics in authoritarian Russia. While Russia is not a monarchy, and its rural dwellers are not traditional illiterate peasants, the veneration of its leader manifests itself in many rural grievances. I analyze three types of rural politics that have traits of naive monarchism: written petitions to the president, rural pickets and delegations to the Kremlin, and geographical renaming in honor of Vladimir Putin. Grievances, voiced in this way, are rarely subjects of repression from above, as they reinforce presidential authority and the existing order. This raises the question of whether rural dwellers faithfully believe in a benevolent president or intentionally exploit their subordinate position and Putin's image as the present‐day tsar. Whether sincere or strategic, these rural politics aim to enforce the existing state commitments. Although they are unable to challenge the status quo, they provide rural dwellers with a means to remedy occasional local injustices.     

The Re-Emerging Role of the State in Contemporary Russia

I examine ownership structure of Russian firms during the 1998?C2006 period, where a greater emphasis is placed on motivations behind increased government ownership in the latter years, when oligarchs?? opportunistic influence on the firm diminished as state ownership correspondingly increased. As this phenomenon is also correlated with improved corporate growth during the period, I argue that state participation in corporate governance acted as an effective substitute mechanism to constrain wealth-tunnelling behaviour of corporate insiders and local bureaucrats in a country defined by a weak property rights system.     

Why Territorial Disintegration Has Not Occurred in Russia: Applying State Breakdown Theories to Explain Stability

Much has been written to explain the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Little attention, however, has been paid to understanding why post-1991 Russia has maintained stability despite continued economic and political turmoil throughout the 1990s. This paper attempts to answer this question by applying an integrated model of territorial disintegration to examine the political, economic, demographic, and geopolitical changes in the pre-1991 Soviet Union and post-1991 Russia. The integrated model is constructed by synthesizing Goldstone's demographic-structural model, Skocpol's and Collins' geopolitical model, and a modified version of Collins' argument of the destabilizing potential brought about by rapid market development as three alternative routes to territorial disintegration. It is found that improvement in Russia's geopolitical condition after 1991 is largely responsible for the decline in disintegrative potential. Slower population growth also rendered the demographic route less disintegrative during the 1990s. More effective taxation and the availability of foreign loans enabled the Russian state to handle its financial crises, thereby curbing the development of destabilizing forces through the dynamics proposed by Collins.     

美对伊战争目的与伊重建

美英于3月20日对伊发动了战争,5月1日,布什总统宣布在伊的"大规模战斗"已经结束.至此,美结束了其"改造"伊拉克的第一阶段行动;第二阶段的工作是重建和掌控伊拉克,从中获取丰厚的经济利益;第三阶段是在伊建立美式民主制度,作为样板供中东各国效仿.但战后,伊社会状况混乱,民不聊生,伊重建将面临诸多困难.     

美对伊战争目的与伊重建

美英于3月20日对伊发动了战争，5月1日，布什总统宣布在伊的“大规模战斗”已经结束。至此，美结束了其“改造”伊拉克的第一阶段行动；第二阶段的工作是重建和掌控伊拉克，从中获取丰厚的经济利益；第三阶段是在伊建立美式民主制度，作为样板供中东各国效仿。但战后，伊社会状况混乱，民不聊生，伊重建将面临诸多困难。     

Promoting Civil Society in Contemporary Poland: Gendered Results of Institutional Changes

This paper is a contribution to the ongoing discussion concerning factors determining the development of civil society in a post-state socialist context. It examines the financial mechanisms designed to promote civic engagement in Poland, including EU grants and the so-called ‘percentage law’ that allows citizens to support NGOs of their choice with 1 % of their taxes. A detailed analysis of these mechanisms demonstrates that they are advantageous for some types of non-governmental organizations and not for others. Instead of enhancing the situation of the whole sector, they tend to support NGOs that already have substantial resources and hold a strong position vis-à-vis the state. Moreover, organizations and groups fighting for issues considered to be controversial—such as women’s NGOs advocating for the right to abortion or criticizing authorities for their lack of concern when it comes to violence against women—have limited chances to gain financial support from both the state and those sources that are independent from the state. This shows how seemingly gender-neutral institutional arrangements may bring gendered results. The following analysis is based on available statistics (several reports provided by the Klon-Jawor Association, Social Diagnosis Reports from 2007 and 2011) and qualitative data (semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis of the Polish media).     

Mode of Socio-Economic Development and Occupational Structure: The Case of Contemporary Russia

The given paper assumes the existence of a correlation between the occupational structure and the mode of social and economic development of a country. It is shown that the modern stage of development in advanced economies could be described by the post-industrial phase with (a) the specific proportions in the occupational structure (predominance of professional managers and technical experts); (b) particular nature of work and the corresponding extent of labor division according to specialization and qualification (highly skilled labor with broad specialization and a new criterion of creativity included within qualifications). Within the certain historical framework these indicators, combined onto the entire scheme, produce the criteria to distinct different types of socio-economic development and arrange them in consistent order. The analysis of occupational structure of Russian population shows that the reforms of 1990s have facilitated the process of deindustrialization alongside with the growth of semi- and low-skilled jobs. According to the scheme, Russia seems to have reached the stage of the development that is similar to one of the 1950–1960s in the USA and the Europe.     

制裁下的伊拉克-伊拉克见闻之一

两伊战争、海湾战争、沙漠之狐行动以及10年经济制裁,给伊拉克带来了什么?真是不看不知道,如今的伊拉克已是满目苍夷,基础设施遭严重毁坏,直接损失达1200亿美元,人道主义状况惨不忍睹,社会生活一片混乱.     

制裁下的伊拉克--见闻之二

一、我们"闯"入"禁飞区" "禁飞区"是海湾战争后,美英以保护伊拉克南部什叶派穆斯林和北部库尔德人为名,在伊拉克南、北专门设立的.从那时起至今,美英的F-15、F-16战机每天都在"禁飞区"上空巡行.美英空军不仅可以随时向伊境内可疑军事目标或被认为是发展大规模杀伤性武器的地方进行空袭,也可以对胆敢闯入"禁飞区"的伊飞机进行拦截、打击.1998年12月16日,美英对伊进行了4天"沙漠之狐"的空中打击,造成数百名平民死亡、数千人受伤.     

从美伊战争透析俄对伊政策

普京时期的俄罗斯外交政策以"务实"为基本精神,以俄罗斯实际为出发点,对各种思想兼收并蓄.其特点是从国家利益出发制定对外政策,内部目标高于外部目标.俄在伊拉克战争中经受了考验,正积极吸取经验教训,做出相应的选择,以确保自身利益少受损害.     

从美伊战争透析俄对伊政策

普京时期的俄罗斯外交政策以“务实”为基本精神，以俄罗斯实际为出发点，对各种思想兼收并蓄。其特点是从国家利益出发制定对外政策，内部目标高于外部目标。俄在伊拉克战争中经受了考验，正积极吸取经验教训，做出相应的选择，以确保自身利益少受损害。     

Disintegration conflicts and the restructuring of masculinity

Protracted, armed, intranational conflict thrives in many spots and regions around the world. Much of the gender and development literature on armed conflict implies that men control decision-making relating to armed conflict and that the fighting itself is an exclusively male domain. Women are perceived and portrayed as the victims of violence, yet ensure survival and continuity in post-conflict situations. However, this depiction seriously oversimplifies men's and women's roles. As relief and development agencies attempt to address the dynamics of organized violence and protracted conflicts which increasingly impede or confuse their work, gender analysis and policy will need to be re-examined and widened to include the issue of male gender identity. The complexity of conflict, gender and armed conflict, reasons for participation in conflict, conflict and contests in constructing masculinity, subverting the warrior discourse, and restructuring masculinity are discussed.     

Turning Points and Trajectories in Military Deployment

Previous military family research has assumed a stable set of deployment phases. In line with critiques of such models within family communication, we identified the varied turning points and trajectories military spouses experience across deployment. We interviewed 50 Army and Army National Guard wives whose husbands served in missions to Iraq and Afghanistan. Participants graphed turning points and corresponding marital satisfaction levels across a recent deployment. Participants reported 519 turning points that fell into four supraordinate categories: Deployment/Military-Related Events, Life Events, Communication Events, and Other. Trajectories within each deployment phase reflected five patterns: Turbulent, Increasing, Decreasing, Stabilized, and Dipped. Most participants' trajectories reflected turbulence during the predeployment and deployment phases, and declining or dipped satisfaction during the postdeployment period. Results reflect varied experiences and provide useful information for those experiencing wartime separations or those supporting military families through deployment.     

An Art-Historical View of Social Disintegration

One hundred and one Fine Arts college students judged seventeen Western Master paintings of small groups spanning six centuries, using a semanticdifferential scale. It was hypothesized that the paintings would porlray a decreased sense of social cohesiveness, reflecting Riesman’s (1950) characterization of social changes from inner-directed to other-directedness. A factor analysis revealed that one of the two factors extracted, group solidarity, significantly related to century of painting, supporting Riesman’s thesis.     

2001年伊拉克的反制裁措施

2001年,尽管美国采取了所能采取的手段对伊拉克进行制裁,但在伊拉克相应的应对措施的反击下,只能以"失败"两字作总结,国际社会要求解除对伊拉克制裁的呼声越来越高,从而使美国新政府在如何处理伊拉克的问题上进退两难.     

Social-psychology and the invasion of Iraq

Abstract

The invasion of Iraq by American and British forces is analyzed from the standpoint of social psychology. The following social phenomena and events are discussed: (a) the role of groupthink in the intelligence failure; (b) asymmetrical consequences of reward and punishment and the role of causal attribution in responsibility assignment as explanations for the alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by Iraq;(c) dissonance avoidance and the refusal by those responsible for the invasion to accept that there were no WMD in Iraq; (d) balance theory, retributive justice and the attempt to link Saddam to bin Laden after the acceptance of the inexistence of WMD; (e) de-individuation, power of the situation, and obedience to authority and the Abu-Ghraib tortures; (f) the escalation of violence and the psychology of malignant social processes. The paper ends with a distinction between science and applications of science, and gives some recommendations to achieve peace in the world based on social psychological knowledge.     

Trajectories of social engagement and limitations in late life

Although studies have established important links between social relations and health, much of this research does not take into account the dynamic nature of both social relations and health over time. The present study combines person-centered and variable-centered approaches and uses social integration theory within the life course framework to examine patterns of change in social engagement and how those patterns relate to trajectories of physical and cognitive limitations among older adults, using data from the Americans' Changing Lives survey, a nationally representative panel study (N = 1,667). Individuals who had trajectories of high and increasing social engagement experienced lower levels of physical and cognitive limitations over time. The findings suggest the importance of maintaining high levels of social engagement for the physical and cognitive health of older adults.     

Work Trajectories of Female and Male Immigrants in Spain

This article aims to examine in depth the work trajectories of individuals over time, in order to provide a wider perspective of the employment history of immigrants compared to native people, by gender and for more than one decade (2005–2017) in Spain. We use microdata (cohort and multivariate analysis) from the Labour Force Survey and carry out a comparison for three groups: the Spanish born in Spain, the Spanish born abroad, and the non-Spanish born abroad. The results confirm that the non-Spanish born-abroad group is characterized by the existence of segmented assimilation. All foreigners suffered a loss in their work trajectories, since their employment rate in 2017 has as yet neither reached the level of the last years of the previous economic expansion nor the level of the previous cohorts at the same age.