Insurgency and institutionalization: the Polanyian countermovement and Chinese labor politics

Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I reconfigure Karl Polanyi’s theory of the coutermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined “moments”: the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the market, and the institutional moment, when class compromise is established in the economic and political spheres. In China, the transition from insurgency to institutionalization has thus far been confounded by conditions of “appropriated representation,” where the only worker organizations allowed to exist are those within the state-run All China Federation of Trade Unions. However, in drawing on two case studies of strikes in capital-intensive industries in Guangdong province, I show that the relationship between insurgency and institutionalization shifted between 2007 and 2010.     

Twitter and Political Campaigning

The use of Twitter by politicians, parties, and the general audience in politics, particularly during election campaigns, has become an extremely popular research field almost overnight. Even though Twitter, a medium that emerged early in 2006 – the first tweet was posted on 21 March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, co‐founder of Twitter – and elections occurring only every few years, it has already received much academic attention. The studies produced are very diverse, ranging from analyzing how politicians or citizens use Twitter, to looking at their activities and the content of political Twitter messages, to network studies of Twitter users. This review will cover many types of studies that characterize the field. The large diversity in the studies conducted on elections will be represented in this review of approaches.     

Hiding in Plain Sight

Abstract

“The Scarab” (1907), a sprawling Shingle-style house in Wellesley, Massachusetts, was built by poet and professor Katharine Lee Bates as a home for herself and her partner Katharine Coman, a social economist and labor activist. Both women had lived and taught at Wellesley College, founded as a single-sex institution for higher education in 1870, for over a quarter of a century. In their new home they adapted many of its hybrid spaces for living and working, surrounding themselves with friends, family, colleagues, and students to form a lively and engaged community of women. While it decisively broke with familiar conventions in both plan and program, “The Scarab” nonetheless fits comfortably in its leafy, suburban neighborhood, demonstrating that this committed couple could “hide in plain sight” while radically queering the terms of early-twentieth-century domesticity.     

Still a “Stalled Revolution”? Work/Family Experiences,Hegemonic Masculinity,and Moving Toward Gender Equality

Hochschild described the “stalled revolution” in the late 1980s: women made great gains in labor force opportunities, particularly in stereotypically “masculine” fields, yet men did not move comparably into “feminine” roles. This article examines the current “stalls” in the gender equality movement regarding gendered experiences at work and home, including occupations, the gender wage gap, career trajectories, and the division of household labor. This article also discusses efforts to “unstall” the gender revolution. Pop culture solutions on the individual‐level and academic research on structural/cultural barriers often focus on women's access to historically “masculine” roles (e.g. representation in STEM fields). There is far less emphasis on men's involvement in historically “feminine” roles. Gender scholars examine hegemonic masculinity as the narrowly constrained expectations for men's “appropriate” behavior. While efforts to “unstall” the gender revolution focus largely on expanding women's opportunities, this article addresses why the gender revolution will remain incomplete and “stalled” without redefining hegemonic masculinity. Cross‐national research demonstrates that changing views of masculinity are critical for greater gender equality at work and home.     

Comparison of conflict of interest policies and reported practices in academic medical centers in the United States

The authors reviewed the conflict of interest policies of 9 academic medical centers in the United States and interviewed members of the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and Conflict of Interest Committees (COICs) at those institutions. They found that many institutions used processes for reporting and managing conflicts of interest that were more decentralized than the processes described in their policies. Also, most institutions had no clear and comprehensive policy to guide investigators regarding disclosure of conflicts of interest to potential research participants. Considerable differences in understanding of conflict of interest policies were observed between IRB and COIC officials.     

Financial Reciprocity and Elder Care: Interdependent Resource Transfers

A sample from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study was used to examine the influence of parent-to-child financial transfers and economic resources on child-to-parent financial transfers, caregiving, time-help, and coresidence as multiple, interdependent transfers from middle-aged adult children to their elderly parents. There were strong positive effects of prior parent-to-child financial transfers in the models of caregiving, time help, and coresidence but no effect on child-to-parent financial transfers. Coresidence, caregiving, and time-help are complements but there was no interdependence between child-to-parent financial transfers and caregiving or time-help. The effects of parents’ incomes and net worth are interpreted as evidence about motives for transfers to them.