Floating Population and Construction of a New Socialist Countryside——Speech by Minister Zhang Weiqing at the Second Forum on Population and Family Planning Frontier Issues

Ⅰ. Significance and role of the construction of a new socialist countryside Construction of a new socialist countryside is an inherent necessity for the implementation of scientific development, a significant strategic decision of the central government to ensure the realization of building a well-off society in an all-round way. Building a new socialist countryside is the only way to do so.     

National Report on Population and Development——A report submitted by the People''''s Republic of China to the Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference, August, 2002

I. Current Situation and Prospects of China's Population Development China is the most populous developing country in the world. A large population size, a weak economic base, and a lack of resources on a per capita basis form its basic national conditions. Many issues and difficulties encountered in the process of China's economic and social development are closely related to the population issues. Population is the principal factor and the major constraint to China's economic and soc…     

Sex/love skirmishes: “swinging,” “polyamory,” and the politics of naming

The contested definitions of “swinging” and “polyamory” reveal profound inconsistencies in the logics of sex, love, commitment, and coupledom. In this article, I use a number of non-monogamy blogs and online glossaries as examples of the way these two words are often deployed against each other in an effort to position the speaker in relation to mononormative practices of sex and love. Leaving aside questions of the accuracy of particular definitions, I map a range of definitions against two existing scholarly/activist tools for describing relationship styles, specifically Gayle Rubin’s “Charmed Circle” and Meg-John Barker’s sex/love continuums. This exercise is doubly fruitful: first, the tools reveal the political stakes of the definitional debates; second, the definitions demonstrate that the distinctions we commonly use to distinguish between types of relationships—including types of non-monogamous relationships—in fact rely on mononormative assumptions about sex, love, and friendship. If “mononormativity” is defined as the system of ideas, institutions, and practical orientations that provide the backdrop against which the idea of monogamy as coherent, common, natural, and right congeals, the sex/love skirmishes of “swinging” and “polyamory” remind us that its logics are both pervasive and deeply fractured.     

Living Arrangements and the Elderly: An Analysis of Old-Age Mortality by Household Structure in Casalguidi, 1819–1859

The elevated levels of protection, assistance, and care enjoyed by the elderly living in complex households has long been a key assumption of many family system theories. However, although this hypothesis has been demonstrated for contemporary contexts, quantitative evidence for past populations is particularly scarce, if not nonexistent. This article investigates the relationship between old-age mortality and living arrangements in a mid–nineteenth century Tuscan population, where the joint family system of sharecroppers coexisted alongside the nuclear system of day laborers. Our findings demonstrate that within complex households, the complexity of relationships, gender inequalities, and possible competition for care and resources among the most vulnerable household members—namely, the elderly and the young—weakens the assumption that the elderly benefitted from lower rates of old-age mortality.     

The Socioeconomic Attainments of Second-Generation Southeast Asian Americans in the 21st Century: Evidence from the American Community Survey, 2012–2016

Population Research and Policy Review - Although decades have passed since the initial immigration of Southeast Asians to the U.S. after the Vietnam War, the socioeconomic outcomes of the...     

Assessing the temporal stability of the population/environment relationship in comparative perspective: a cross-national panel study of carbon dioxide emissions, 1960–2005

This study examines the temporal stability of the population/environment relationship. We analyze panel data from 1960 to 2005 to determine whether the national-level association between population and carbon dioxide emissions has remained stable, declined, or intensified in recent decades. Results indicate that population size has a large and stable positive association with anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. The findings of temporal stability generally hold for both developed countries and less-developed countries. The authors conclude that population, in tandem with other social drivers, remains an important consideration for research that addresses the human dimensions of global environmental change.     

The spatial distribution pattern of the brown planthopperNilaparvata lugens St?l (Homoptera: Delphacidae) in west Java, Indonesia

Summary Spatial distribution pattern of the brown planthopper (BPH) was analyzed at 9 experimental fields in the northern part of West Java during two consecutive rice cropping seasons, i.e., wet and dry seasons. The population of each developmental stage and wing form of BPH at each location showed consistent departure from the random (Poisson) distribution, the variances of the densities in most cases exceeding their means. Namely, the distribution pattern of BPH per hill of rice plant was found to have a general tendency to be aggregated or contagious and to fit fairly well to the negative binomial model. The tendency for aggregation was further confirmed by both the β-values of -m regression being larger than unity and theC _A -values being larger than zero for each developmental stage. Although significant variations in the distribution pattern as measured by β- orC _A -value were observed between different developmental stages, between wing forms and among locations, the degree of aggregation for a given developmental stage at each experimental field remained fairly stable throughout the crop period, despite wide temporal changes in population density. Possible factors to explain these characteristics of the spatial distribution pattern of the BPH in West Java were discussed with reference to the process generating it.     

“Fruits,” “Fags,” and “Dykes”: The Portrayal of Gay/Lesbian Identity in “Nance” Jokes of the ’50s and ’60s

ABSTRACT

What is humorous and how it is interpreted very much depends on the norms and values of a culture at a particular point in time, the characteristics of who is telling jokes, and the makeup of the audience. This article presents archival material and an analysis of an outsider's jokes about gays and lesbians. These were told to primarily heterosexual audiences by a heterosexual comic. They reveal the assumptions Americans held about gays and lesbians throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and a few years into the mid-1970s, when most of these jokes were compiled. Although generalizations about gay/lesbian humor in that period cannot be made from one person's private collection of nearly 1,000 jokes, they do reveal several clear patterns: Much of the humor about male homosexuality is used to debase men and their masculinity, by making them passive, feminine, or weak, except for their hypersexuality. The women are also depicted in the jokes as sexually eager, especially to give oral sex to possibly straight women or acting in the male insertor role. Rarely were the gay/lesbian jokes focused on political issues of discrimination, oppression, or romantic relationships.     

Drinking,Smoking, and Morality: Do ‘Drinkers and Smokers’ Constitute a Stigmatised Stereotype or a Real TB Risk Factor in the Time of HIV/AIDS?

This paper follows up an unexpected finding from a community survey that identified drinking and smoking as the most important tuberculosis (TB) risk factor, far ahead of ones commonly associated with TB such as poverty, overcrowded living conditions, and HIV-positive status. It reports perceptions of drinking and smoking from a three-phased study of the stigma associated with TB, consisting of a qualitative pilot study using focus-group discussions (2006), a larger-scale community survey (2007), and follow-up group discussions (2009). The community attitude survey was conducted with a sample of 1,020 adults living in a low-income township in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The study found that the moral and the biomedical understanding of TB risk are intertwined. In the community survey, perceptions of drinking and smoking as TB risk were predicted by fear of contracting TB and being a self-reported born-again Christian. In the follow-up study, heavy drinking and smoking in shebeens (unlicensed township liquor outlets) was associated with a risky lifestyle that can spread both TB and HIV. The paper discusses the similarities and differences in the roles of church and shebeen in providing social support to township dwellers to cope with problems of daily life. It is tentatively concluded that the stereotypical shebeen ‘drinkers and smokers’, alternatively pitied and maligned by moral society, might serve as the scapegoat that deflects pollution from the ‘new’ TB linked to the AIDS epidemic.     

Barbie princesses and Star Wars clones: gender stereotypes in the representation of children’s favourite heroes—a participant study in urban and rural contexts,among Hungarians from Romania

Cartoon heroes play an important role in constructing gender narratives in children’s lives. According to previous studies, these narratives are often based on stereotypes, but they reflect new gender tendencies as well. This research analyses hero representations in Romanian children’s everyday lives. In East European countries, media consumption habits show remarkable differences between urban and rural environments; thus, in the present study, these gender narratives are discussed in a social context. Based on 80 interviews and group activities in 4 group sessions, this article presents the commercial and social aspects of the most popular cartoon heroes represented in various media. The findings of the study suggest that gendered heroes have a greater impact than genderless characters; however, several factors influence the process of children’s identifying with their favourite characters, such as social background, parents’ education, and the effect of the larger community.