China’s Role and Influence in the Incidents in Po-land and Hungary in 1956

在苏联处理波匈事件的初期,中国因情况不明未及参与。而在苏联决定从布达佩斯撤军和再次武装占领匈牙利的问题上,中国的意见起了主导作用。这就是说,在危机处理的后期,苏联听从了中国的建议和主张,其结果是毛泽东既批判了苏联的大国主义,又保证了社会主义阵营的团结。波匈事件标志着中共在国际共产主义运动中的地位和声望已经迈上了一个新台阶。     

Searching for ‘analysis’ in the southwest: AM vs. PM newspapers in four ‘fire zones’

Never in the history of newspapering has our Fourth Estate been so unsure of what its premiere medium should be doing as we approach the 21st century. Because daily newspaper circulation and readership have been declining since 1987, every newspaper consultant in America has an opinion about what papers must do. This exploratory study focuses on what Southwest media managers think newspapers must do—provide analysis and context in local news coverage. Context is defined and eight competing southwestern newspapers in Alburquerque, El Paso, Phoenix, and Tucson are content analyzed for “analysis” by investigating 200 seperate 1994 editions in this non-probability, purposive benchmark sample.     

Transparency and ‘uncomfortable knowledge’ in child protection

Australia's child protection systems and the provision of out-of-home care, in particular, have been subject to sustained criticism for decades from dozens of official inquiries and reviews. It is now well established that many children in state care are treated significantly less well than required by relevant legal frameworks and community standards. Much attention and significant resources have been directed toward trying to ameliorate this ‘wicked problem’ and yet it continues. This article focuses on one reason the problems persists, namely the secrecy and closed cultures that characterize relevant organizations which reinforce strategies of denial that avoid acknowledging or dealing with ‘uncomfortable knowledge’. It is a situation many people in child protection systems confront. It is, for example, when we know abuse is taking place, or when they see or are ourselves party to corrupt or negligent practices. It is knowing that important ethical principles are being abrogated. We draw on recent official reports and inquiries noting the repeated calls for greater transparency and independent oversight. An argument is made for a default position of total transparency subject to caveats that protect privacy and any investigation underway. An account of what this can look like is offered.     

Friedman's ‘instrumentalism’ and constructive empiricism in economics

This reassessment of the long debate about Friedman's thesis on the pointlessness of testing assumptions in economics shows that Friedman's three famous examples, on which a large part of the credit given to this thesis is based, far from substantiating it, can be used to establish radically opposite conclusions. Furthermore, it is shown that this so-called instrumentalist thesis, when applied by Friedman to economics, is of a quite different nature and raises much more serious problems than the standard instrumentalist thesis devised by some methodologists of physics. To disentangle these ambiguities concerning realism and instrumentalism applied to physics or to economics, this paper refers to Van Fraassen's constructive empiricism, which is helpful in reformulating, in a more satisfactory way, the essentials of Friedman's considerations about empiricism and anti-realism.     

Group leaders’ experiences in heterogenous grief support groups

Group processes in social work are complex. In this article, the authors examine how Norwegian leaders experience these processes during their grief support group work. The authors take a qualitative approach, specifically semistructured interviews. Seven group leaders participated. Using qualitative content analysis, the authors found new and supporting information as presented in two inter-related themes: (1) Achieving cohesion is a challenging balance and (2) Facilitating the group activity is linked to group leaders’ engagement and competence. The authors suggest that group work is enhanced by well-qualified leaders paying attention and understanding toward the ongoing group processes, homogenous groups, prescreening, individual timing, and group cohesion.     

Changes in China and China’s Diplomatic Strategy

With regard to discussions on China's diplomatic strategy, an appropriate conceptualization based on social changes in contemporary China can help us grasp the fundamental functions, underlying causes and basic direction of the strategy.     

Enlightenment and Its Fortunes in China’s Modernization

Abstract

The central concept of Western Enlightenment is scientific reason. It catalyzed the development of modernity, but itself contains a series of paradoxes: between “ought” and “is,” between necessity and freedom, between universality and historicity, and so on. The impact of Enlightenment reason on China was negative in that it generated a superstitious belief in the omnipotence of scientific method and in Western experience and political principles. Consequently, Chinese liberals were unable to handle the relationship between modern Western culture and traditional local culture and the relationship between the ideals of Enlightenment modernity and the objective requirements of real-life politics. At the same time, they were unable to identify the rational and non-rational elements in Western modernity or to develop what was useful and discard what was not. The real value of the Enlightenment lies in its spirit of reflective criticism. It is, therefore, an unfinished business in terms of eliminating superstition and dogma.     

Mothers’ Experience of Post-Traumatic Growth in Pediatric Kidney Transplantation

ABSTRACT

Parenting a child with chronic kidney disease has a profound impact on the parental caregivers across social, emotional, and physical functioning. As the survival rates for children with chronic kidney disease increase, the demands on parents caring for these children intensify. The aim of this study was to understand the lived experience of being a mother of a child who has undergone kidney transplantation. Seven mothers caring for children with chronic kidney disease in Ontario, Canada participated in in-depth interviews that were analyzed according to the principles of hermeneutic phenomenology. The present study presents the findings concerning post-traumatic growth: personal strength, new possibilities, enhanced relationships, appreciation of life and spiritual change. Recognizing positive aspects of stressful situations and the potential for growth can impact the practice of social workers and other health-care professionals. Ultimately the assistance that is provided to parent caregivers can be improved with a better understanding of the whole experience.     

Preferences and decision errors in the winner’s curse

The problem of asymmetric information causes a winner’s curse in many environments. Given many unsuccessful attempts to eliminate it, we hypothesize that some people ‘prefer’ the lotteries underlying the winner’s curse. Study 1 shows that after removing the hypothesized cause of error, asymmetric information, half the subjects still prefer winner’s curse lotteries, implying past efforts to de-bias the winner’s curse may have been more successful than previously recognized since subjects prefer these lotteries. Study 2 shows risk-seeking preferences only partially explain lottery preferences, while non-monetary sources of utility may explain the rest. Study 2 suggests lottery preferences are not independent of context, and offers methods to reduce the winner’s curse.

Timing contradictions in von Neumann and Morgenstern's axioms and in savage's ‘sure-thing’ proof

At the point of choice, let N be the delay in learning the outcome. Then von Neumann and Morgenstern's postulates contradictorily imply that N = 0 and N > 0. As a consequence, Savage's sure-thing proof, which has bestowed on expected utility theory most of its normative appeal, depends on inconsistent assumptions. Further, the validity of Savage's proof cannot be retrieved by minimizing N > 0, by making the delay a mere moment or so. The historical origins of these contradictions are traced to (i) von Neumann and Morgenstern inadvertently limiting their risk model to the certain period, that is the period after gamblers learn the outcome(s), and (ii) Savage's use of the sure-thing principle for analysing atemporally but also quite formally compound gambles [Savage, 1954, p. 23].     

Reification: A New Symptom in Women’s Writing in the Context of Consumer Culture

A major evil of capitalist society denounced by Marx, Lukacs, Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, reification developed as a concept thanks to the work     

The relevance of institutions and people’s preferences in the PSNP and IN-SCT programmes in Ethiopia

The effective implementation of social protection interventions is key for achieving positive change. The existing literature mainly focuses on issues related to programme design and impact, rather than the factors that influence the emergence, expansion and provision of these programmes. This article builds on the recent literature that indicates that the quality of institutions and people’s preferences play an important role in the implementation of social protection. It does so by using Ethiopia and its Productive Safety Net Programme – one of the largest social protection programmes in sub-Saharan Africa – as a case study, thereby contributing to debates on how to implement social protection more effectively, particularly in settings of widespread poverty and relatively low levels of institutional capacity. Based on primary qualitative data, the article finds that greater institutional quality at the local level is associated with the more effective provision of social protection. The ability of community members and social protection clients to voice preferences can lead to adaptations in implementation, although the extent to which this occurs is highly gendered.     

Risk of a ‘revolution of rising expectations’ in China?

This article analyses developments in Chinese living standards with special focus on urban-rural inequalities. The analysis and discussion target the rapid economic lift, accompanied by inequalities and the risk of revolution of rising expectations in the last three decades. Although this economic lift brings China from one of the poorest countries in the world to the second largest economy globally, many are also concerned about social instability as a result of increasing inequalities and social gaps. We have examined existing data, including international statistics and Chinese national sources. It shows that average Chinese citizens, in general, have enjoyed improvements in their living standard, but an increasing gap in per capita disposable income between urban and rural residents is observable. The discussion section connects to results from secondary surveys. The conclusion is that conditions for feelings of relative deprivation are diminutive and so is the risk of a forthcoming revolution of rising expectations in China.     

Historical Changes and Reform Trends in China’s Population Control Policy

There can be no doubt of the signifi-cance of a review of the merits and demeritsof China’s population regulation and controlpolicy since 1949 and exploration of the fu-ture direction of population policy reform.     

Localization of Marxism in China and the Construc-tion of China’s Modernity

现代性在中国的生成与建构,是与马克思主义中国化历史地联系在一起的;中国现代性的建构,也历史地确定了马克思主义中国化的起点、任务与方向。马克思主义中国化的理论任务就是要求确立以建设为核心的观念、以促进人与社会的全面发展为主旨的马克思主义理论话语系统,构造一套符合全球化时代要求、有利于中华民族复兴及长治久安、并具有自检与防御机制及能力的开放性的社会、政治与文化体系。     

Changes in the Chinese Population’s Fertility Intentions: 1980-2011

On the basis of the findings of 227 surveys of Chinese fertility intentions over the years 1980-2011, this paper investigates the longitudinal changes in fertility intentions through cross-temporal meta-analysis. It is found that the ideal number of children for the Chinese trended downwards from 1980, but since 2000 the average number has remained basically stable at 1.6 to 1.8. In the 1980s, people’s fertility levels were higher than their fertility intentions. With economic and educational progress in China, both fertility levels and fertility intentions showed a downward trend, with the former declining faster than the latter. Since 1990, people’s fertility levels have been lower than their fertility intentions; that is, their actual number of children has been less than their ideal number. This provides an empirical basis for examining the changes in China’s fertility intentions and fertility levels.