“Snow’s Proposition” and Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences

“斯诺命题”提出了“科学文化”和“文学文化”的矛盾和冲突, 以及“两种文 化”发展中的困境问题。“斯诺命题”在积极意义上涉及提出了人文科学、社会科学 和自然科学之间存在的对象的整体性与既定学科的局部性的矛盾问题, 提出了人文社 会科学“次文化”分裂和分离化倾向的问题。走跨学科之路是破解“斯诺命题”关键 所在, 其中特别要注重解决好学科研究和问题研究的结合、个体研究和团队研究的结 合、学者的个人禀赋发挥、研究的社会导向和环境导向、研究的评价体制和机制优化 等问题。

关键词: 斯诺命题 科学文化 文学文化 人文社会科学 跨学科研究

“Snow’s proposition” points out the contradictions and conflicts between “scientific culture” and “literary culture” and the dilemma of the development of the “two cultures.” In the positive sense, Snow’s proposition concerns the contradictions between the integrity of the research subject and the particularity of established disciplines, as well as the trend toward division and isolation in subdivisions of the humanities and social sciences. The key to solving Snow’s proposition is to take an inter-disciplinary path that pays particular attention to combining discipline-centered with issue-centered research and individual work with teamwork, giving full play to individual endowment, social orientation and environmental orientation and to the optimization of evaluation systems and mechanisms.     

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。     

That’s the ticket: explicit lottery randomisation and learning in Tullock contests

Theory and Decision - Most laboratory experiments studying Tullock contest games find that bids significantly exceed the risk-neutral equilibrium predictions. We test the generalisability of these...     

We-thinking and vacillation between frames: filling a gap in Bacharach’s theory

We-thinking theories allow groups to deliberate as agents. They have been introduced into the economic domain for both theoretical and empirical reasons. Among the few scholars who have proposed formal approaches to illustrate how we-thinking arises, Bacharach offers one of the most developed theories from the game theoretic point of view. He presents a number of intuitions, not always mutually consistent and not fully developed. In this article, I propose a way to complete Bacharach??s theory, generalizing the interdependence hypothesis and building on his intuition about vacillation. It is a simple model of vacillation between the I and we-modes of reasoning, as a way in which we-thinking can come to mind in the face of a decision problem. The vacillation model makes we-reasoning more easily usable in game theory.     

‘It’s who we are’: eco-nationalism and place in contesting deep-sea oil in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Given near consensus among the scientific community about the anthropogenic nature of climate change, there is pressing concern about how to mobilise enough people to care and demand wider socio-political change. In this article we explore this urgent issue, drawing on recent conflicts over deep-sea oil exploration and drilling in Aotearoa New Zealand. We explore how some activist groups are attempting to mobilise care and concern around deep-sea oil drilling and climate change through the use of narratives that entwine aspects of national identity with the non-human world. We suggest that these activist groups are not concerned about a retreat of the state, but rather, are in direct conflict with the state, and state interventionism, over fossil fuel development trajectories in Aotearoa New Zealand. In drawing upon eco-nationalism, and particularly a way of life related to place, activists have called into question the common sense of business as usual and thereby sought to expand space for ‘ordinary’ Aotearoa New Zealanders to care about climate change.     

Arrow’s theorem of the deductible: Moral hazard and stop-loss in health insurance

The logic of Arrow’s theorem of the deductible, i.e. that it is optimal to focus insurance coverage on the states with largest expenditures, remains at work in a model with ex post moral hazard. The optimal insurance contract takes the form of a system of “implicit deductibles”, resulting in the same indemnities as a contract with full insurance above a variable deductible positively related to the elasticity of medical expenditures with respect to the insurance rate. In a model with a predefined ceiling on expenses, there is no reimbursement for expenses below the stop-loss amount. One motivation to have some insurance below the deductible arises if regular health care expenditures in a situation of standard health have a negative effect on the probability of getting into a state with large medical expenses.     

Conditionality in the context of housing-led homelessness policy: Comparing Australia’s Housing First agenda to Scotland’s “rights-based” approach

Homelessness services and policy have historically tended to be organised by an explicitly conditional logic, wherein people experiencing homelessness must prove their “housing readiness” before accessing settled housing. This model has been robustly challenged in recent decades by “housing-led” approaches that ostensibly eschew conditionality and prioritise the rapid rehousing of people experiencing homelessness. Various countries now include housing-led approaches in the national policy frameworks, including Australia, which overhauled its approach to homelessness in 2008, and Scotland, where a housing-led approach is supported by a legal right to housing for homeless households. Notwithstanding this policy shift, conditionality remains an enduring feature of responses to homelessness in both jurisdictions. This paper sheds light on this phenomenon by comparing the Australian experience with that of Scotland. We demonstrate how conditionality remains a feature of both jurisdictions; however, there is greater effort in Scotland to identify and minimise conditionality, whereas in Australia it is able to persist relatively unchallenged. We conclude with some reflections on what Australia can learn from Scotland’s relative success, highlighting the importance of a national-level policy framework and an adequate affordable housing supply.     

Enlightenment Reason and Modernity: Marx’s Critical Reconstruction

Reflection on and criticism of enlightenment reason is an indispensable part of the Enlightenment itself. It is an important counterbalance to the Enlightenment myth and the crisis of modernity, as well as being a major theoretical subject for political philosophy in the age of globalization. This reflection and criticism must be grasped and examined from both the external perspective of socio-historical requirements and the internal perspective of intellectual history. While giving full credit to the achievements of Enlightenment reason and modernity, we need to review their inherent conflicts, reveal the resultant social crisis, and sort out, reflect on and reference postmodernism’s denunciation of Enlightenment reason and the crisis of modernity in order to provide a more far-reaching solution to these issues. Marx turned the critique of Enlightenment reason and modernity into a critical reconstruction of the logic of capital and the capitalist mode of production, seeing the resolution of these evils as lying in transcendence of capitalist private ownership. In this way, he brought the critique of Enlightenment reason to a climax and showed modern society a way to more advanced development.     

Embodied viewing and Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen: a multi-disciplinary experiment in eye-tracking and motion capture

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a cross-disciplinary project based on an experiment in eye-tracking and motion capture (Sainsbury’s Centre for Visual Arts), which aimed to study viewers’ movements around an iconic sculpture: Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The experiment studies how viewers respond to this three-dimensional artwork not only by looking at it but also through their own bodily reactions to it, such as by unconsciously mimicking a represented attitude or gesture. We compared two groups of viewers: classically trained dancers and non-dancers. Our hypothesis was that the skills and embodied experiences of the dancers would alter the ways in which they engage bodily with the work compared to the non-dancers. Our underlying research question was: how are vision and the body interlinked in esthetic and kinesthetic experience? This paper does not give results, which are forthcoming. It focuses on methodology and provides a commentary on the design and development of the interdisciplinary collaboration behind the project. It explores an interdisciplinary collaboration that bridges the humanities and experimental sciences and asks how being confronted with unfamiliar methodologies forces researchers in a given field to critically self-examine the limits and presuppositions of their practices.     

Statewide Implementation of “Reducing Disability in Alzheimer’s Disease”: Impact on Family Caregiver Outcomes

There have been few replications of efficacious evidence-based programs for dementia caregivers offered in community settings. This study highlights the replication of the evidence-based Reducing Disability in Alzheimer’s Disease program and explores the changes in outcomes for participating caregivers and whether those changes are related to level of program utilization. With data from 219 caregivers, regression results indicate that more exercise sessions are associated with a decrease in caregiver strain and more behavior management sessions are associated with a decrease in unmet needs after 3 months. Findings demonstrate how a multicomponent program can have positive benefits for family caregivers.     

Cultural policy and investment in China: Do they realize the government’s cultural objectives?

Cultural policy in China has both economic and cultural objectives. In this paper we consider how these two objectives are linked through increases in cultural output. We use a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Chinese economy to analyse the impact of cultural investment on the output of cultural goods and services between 2009 and 2015, and we carry forward the simulations to 2030. Our results show that this cultural policy instrument has had a positive impact on the output of cultural goods and services in a manner that also underpins the purely cultural objectives of government.     

China’s National Identity in Transition: Domestic and International Perspectives (1982-2012)

In the era of globalization, China’s national identity is in close interaction with ethno- cultural and cultural identity, and is facing great challenges and is under pressure to reshape itself. An in-depth analysis of the Chinese national identity in its institutional, economic, cultural, political and strategic dimensions from both domestic and international perspectives can help us grasp the transition that has taken place in China’s national identity since 1978. In order to strengthen China’s national identity by building domestic consensus and increasing international recognition, China needs to further foster its civic consciousness, increase its soft power, enhance the ties between its national, regional and global identities and actively assume the role of a bridge between the developing and the developed countries.     

The ‘flood’ of 1945: regimes and repertoires of migration in the Soviet Union at war’s end

The pioneering migration scholar Eugene Kulischer employed the metaphor of the ‘flood’ to characterize the movement of peoples across Eurasia at the end of the Second World War. This article builds on that metaphor by analysing the range of Soviet citizens’ migratory movements within and back to the USSR in 1945. It pays special attention to settlers, deportees, returning evacuees, repatriates, demobilized soldiers and itinerants. Not only did these different groups of migrants appear simultaneously, but each produced the other: settlers moved to deportees’ vacated land; many demobilized soldiers and evacuees were recruited as settlers; some repatriates were deported; and those escaping deportation often became itinerants. In each case the article examines the interaction between the state’s migration regimes – its projects and provision of infrastructure to move people – and migrants’ repertoires, that is, their reliance on networks of kinship and friendship to avoid or mitigate hardship and maximize opportunities. It argues that the fulfilment of the state’s agendas with respect to migration depended not only on its regimes but migrants’ own practices.