《西双版纳份地制与西周井田制比较研究》再版序

本文是为著名历史学家、民族学家马曜教授<西双版纳份地制与西周井田制比较研究>一书再版的序言,认为该书充分利用民族学资料与历史文献紧密结合,将傣族社会封建领主经济与三千多年前西周社会的封建领主经济作了比较研究,并结合经典作家有关东方社会形态的有关论述,对我国历史上的井田制与农村公社等问题进行了深入探讨,有重要的理论参考意义.     

Regulating Chemicals—From Risks to Riskiness

Under current European Union legislation, action to restrict the production and use of a chemical is only justified if there is evidence that the chemical poses a risk to human health or the environment. Risk is understood as being a matter of the magnitude and probability of specifiable harms. An examination of how risks from chemicals are assessed shows the process to be fraught with uncertainty, with the result that evidence that commands agreement as to whether a chemical poses a risk or not is often not available. Hence the frequent disputes as to whether restrictions on chemicals are justified. Rather than trying to assess the risks from a chemical, I suggest that we should aim to assess how risky a chemical is in a more everyday sense, where riskiness is a matter of the possibility of harm. Risky chemicals are those where, given our state of knowledge, it is possible that they cause harm. I discuss four things that make a chemical more risky: (1) its capacity to cause harm; (2) its novelty; (3) its persistence; and (4) its mobility. Regulation of chemicals should aim to reduce the production and use of risky chemicals by requiring that the least risky substance or method is always used for any particular purpose. Any use of risky substances should be justifiable in terms of the public benefits of that use.     

APPLICATION OF LAPLACE'S BOUNDARY-MODE APPROXIMATIONS TO ESTIMATE SPECIES AND SHARED SPECIES RICHNESS

The Laplace method for approximating integrals is a useful technique in a number of research fields. This paper shows that it also has interesting applications in biological and ecological statistical inferences. When sample abundance or replicated incidence (i.e., presence or absence) records of each species are available, the expected low‐order frequency counts in heterogeneous communities can be approximated by the Laplace method when the species discovery or detection probabilities are bounded from below by a constant. The approximation formulae as applied to one community can then be used to derive estimators of species richness and to examine their performance. The approach is also extended to obtain simple and new estimators for the number of shared species in two communities. The replicated species incidence data recorded by competing teams of the Hong Kong Big Bird Race for the years 1999 and 2000 are used to estimate the number of resident birds in Hong Kong and to illustrate the method of estimation.     

Liberal–conservative conflict and consensus in policy making

This study argues that ideology can play a major and positive role in the policy making process. Using the policy areas of civil rights and public education, it demonstrates that when policy initiatives are both ideologically consistent and based on a clear delineation of the dynamics of how the policy will change the current situation for the better, the ensuing debate between liberals and conservatives generally results in effective policy. When both elements are not present, ineffective policy results.     

Genes Spell Danger: mental health service users/survivors, bioethics and control

The focus of this discussion is disability, culture and identities in relation to bioethics and mental health service users/survivors. Taking account of the inclusion of mental health service users/survivors within the administrative categories of disability, this article argues for debates about bioethics and disabled people to address and include the perspectives of psychiatric system survivors, and their concerns about psychiatry and bioethics. There is currently an increasing emphasis in both the media and government policy on the danger, threat and 'otherness' of mental health service users, and increasing provisions to restrict their civil and human rights. This development is international and has also tended to be racialised in its public presentation. While genetic approaches to physical and sensory impairment can be seen to be concerned with physical and bodily conformity, genetic approaches to madness and mental distress that are gaining increasing power and official legitimacy, are also closely associated with regulating diversity, divergence and dissent in thinking and perceptions. The aim of this article is raise and explore these issues, and highlight the common and different concerns for us as survivors and disabled people as a basis for encouraging alliances, shared understanding and common resistance.     

Prenatal and delivery care and childhood immunization in guatemala: Do family and community matter?*

In this paper we investigate family choices about pregnancy-related care and the use of childhood immunization. Estimates obtained from a multilevel logistic model indicate that use of formal (or “modern ”) health services differs substantially by ethnicity, by social and economic factors, and by availability of health services. The results also show that family and community membership are very important determinants of the use of health care, even in the presence of controls for a large number of observed characteristics of individuals, families, and communities.     

Breaking silence: Some fieldwork strategies in cloistered and non-cloistered communities

This paper deals with some of the linguistic difficulties I encountered during fieldwork conducted among cloistered and non-cloistered communities of Roman Catholic nuns. I illustrate here the necessity for taking both active and passive research modes—that is, moving from observer to participant and back—in order to counteract problems related to interaction styles, lack of language, meaning inversions, and silence as a mode of communication. These problems represent a continuum—a progression from least to most problematical in terms of the connection between researcher and researched. I argue that by adopting a stance appropriate to the groups being studied—that is, by using both active and passive research strategies with equal rigor—many linguistic barriers can not only be overcome, but usedas sources of important data.     

Gendered Rationality? A Genealogical Exploration of the Philosophical and Sociological Conceptions of Rationality,Masculinity and Organization

Although feminist organizational theory frequently refers to the association between rationality and masculinity, this association tends to be stated rather than argued for. This article examines, from a philosophical and sociological perspective, how these two concepts have become genealogically so closely and inseparably intertwined. It proposes that it is the early philosophical and sociological interpretations of reason and rationality that linked masculinity and rationality. To explore the connection between rationality and masculinity that is so fundamental to management and, more broadly, organizational discourse, is the purpose of this article. Commencing with a brief overview of pre‐Cartesian concepts of rationality, the main focus of the article is on modern conceptions of rationality, starting with the philosophy of Descartes. It examines the influence of the ideas of Francis Bacon, Enlightenment interpretations of rationality and the influence of Weberian rationality and subsequent interpretations of this concept of rationality by early organizational theorists. Finally, it demonstrates, via a case study of strategic management, how contemporary organizational discourse continues to reflect many of the assumptions about masculinity and rationality that are deeply embedded in more traditional organizational discourse. The article concludes with a number of suggestions for a way forward for critical gender studies that moves beyond the standard feminist critique of organizational discourse and practice.     

Birth spacing and child mortality in bangladesh and the Philippines

This analysis uses data from Bangladesh and the Philippines to demonstrate that children who are born within 15 months of a preceding birth are 60 to 80% more likely than other children to die in the first two years of life, once the confounding effects of prematurity are removed. The risks associated with short conception intervals are confined to children who are also high birth order; they persist in the presence of controls for prior familial child mortality, breast-feeding, mother's age, and socioeconomic status. In Bangladesh but not in the Philippines, these effects are confined to the neonatal period.