真言时刻——生态危机与当下资本主义制度批判

面对日益恶化的地球环境,我们应该考虑的问题不是距离地球变得无法生存还有多长时间,而是按照目前的恶化速度,距离地球环境达到不可恢复的崩溃点还有多久.阻止我们在崩溃点到来之前采取有力措施的不是技术问题而是政治-经济问题,也就是说,现行的资本主义经济体制在其本质上无法接受改善环境所需支付的经济成本,因此,不对现行经济体制进行批判就不可能解决生态问题.     

The Fine Points of Giving Money Away—and Trying to Do It Right

Qualitative Sociology -     

Latino Children's Integration into American Society: The Dynamics of Bilingual Education

Abstract

The Latino population has grown in recent decades due to increased immigration. This group is largely urban, disproportionately young, and typically enters American society with a low socioeconomic status, which has implications for urban schools. Using data from a three-year investigation of the bilingual education program at Maya Angelou Elementary in Texas, this study examines the integration of Latino students into the educational system. More specifically, I utilize a sociological framework which incorporates structural and sociocultural factors of immigrant adaptation to investigate bilingual education at Angelou and the broader context of educating Latino English Language Learners (ELLs). At Angelou, I find evidence of commitment to bilingualism, yet structural constraints in the school undermine this commitment. However, these challenges are minimal in comparison to the broader policy environment concerning the ELLs' education. On this front, Angelou must confront teacher shortages, scarcity of materials, and high-stakes standardized testing. Conclusions indicate the treatment of Spanish language and Latino culture as subordinate despite the school's efforts to serve their students.     

Families and Mental Illness: Contested Perspectives and Implications for Practice and Policy

Abstract

Mental health research, policy, and service provision over the last 50 years have constructed families and their connections with mental illness in various and contradictory ways. Three distinct but intersecting perspectives derive from the clinical mental illness literature, the family advocacy movement, and mental health policy. Within the clinical literature, the perspective of families is largely one of blame and pathology. By contrast, the family advocacy movement has generated the perspective of the burdened family, whereas mental health policy has created the perspective of the obligated caregiver. The result is an ambiguous understanding of the role of the family in both contributing and responding to mental illness. Implications for policy and practice include the need for a commitment to the principles of partnership with families, a recognition of diversity within families, recognising the difference between carer and family positions, and a need for policy to reflect the position of family as both intimately concerned, but not necessarily responsible, for patient care.     

Gender and Pensions: An Analysis of Factors Affecting Women's Private Pension Scheme Membership in the United Kingdom

There has been considerable debate about the future sustainability of pension provision and, in particular, the precarious position of many female pensioners. The reasons for women's lower participation rates in private pensions than men's require greater investigation. Using the General Lifestyle Survey (GLF) 2008, this article examines the impact of various characteristics on the likelihood of contributing to a private pension, such as educational attainments, income, occupational group, full-time/part-time status, and whether an individual has any dependent children. It shows that these characteristics play an important role in access to private pensions. Finally, it suggests that strategies to alleviate disadvantages must take into account the complex circumstances that individuals experience throughout the life course, which result in gendered pension provision.     

Reflecting on participatory methodologies: research with parents of babies requiring neonatal care

This article concerns a study that examines the attitudes of parents, who have had babies in neonatal care, to sharing their babies’ routinely collected health data for research purposes. A participatory methodology was applied to the design of the study; a group of eleven parents who had all previously had babies in neonatal care were involved in designing a large-scale questionnaire survey. The article addresses the rationale for taking this approach, highlighting how it differs from the more common models of patient and public involvement. It presents the five themes that emerged from parents’ discussion in the course of engaging in the questionnaire design: legitimation, expertise, experiential knowledge, a different epistemology, power and control. How these shaped the design of the survey is employed in this article as a means of providing a commentary on the participatory research process itself. The article concludes by reflecting on whether participatory research can achieve its aims of promoting social justice when used for instrumental purposes such as the refinement of a data collection tool.     

A note on the potential for genuine cross-fertilization between anthropology and mathematics

Although there has been much discussion in recent years of the applicability of mathematical methods in the social sciences, little attention has been paid to the interaction of the sociological analysis and the mathematics. In this paper, an example of an extremely fruitful interaction between anthropology and mathematics is described. The interaction has, on the one hand, greatly increased the subtlety and sophistication of the sociological analysis, while on the other hand it has posed interesting mathematical questions.