Can Capitalism Solve Its Own Rural Problems? Japanese Lessons for the World Bank's Vision of Rural-Led Development

Recent research and policy advice by international development organizations have, by their own account, sought to reverse a prior neglect of conditions in agriculture and rural areas. In pursuit of this, they have developed a vision of dynamic but incremental development in rural areas, anchored in a smallholder-based and economically diversified market economy. This vision, articulated in the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report and continuing to animate research and policy advice today, presents itself as a solution to persistent poverty in the world's least developed countries. This paper adopts a historical sociological lens to use the case of Japan, in the period from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the opening decades of the twentieth, to assess how realistic this vision is. This analysis shows that the lessons of Japan's experience are chastening for this vision of rural development. The mechanisms of growth in Japan were remarkably similar to those advertised by the World Bank's vision. However, its rural economic dynamism was based on deep socioeconomic inequalities and brought improved material conditions and greater economic security to agricultural households only with excruciating slowness, if at all. Rather than demonstrating the potential of incremental, market-oriented rural development to offer a path towards widespread poverty reduction, Japan instead serves as a warning of this development model's limitations.     

伦敦诺丁山狂欢节发展中的戏剧和政治

本文以英国北肯色诺顿丁山狂欢节的精彩叙述和深入分析为线索,展示了社会象征的戏剧性过程和仪式符号承载的权力再生产状态,揭示出文化样式与社会形态之间的内在联系.本文是分析复杂文化情景的范例.它探讨了在种族、阶级、移民、贫富等交织而成的复杂社会里,人们如何认同身份,继承文化传统,利用仪式,节日创新,组织社会剧,达到娱乐自己,满足心理需要,动员群体力量,寄托信仰,表达政治渴求的目的?最后对艺术和政治应该保持何种关系才能完成这一任务作了回答.     

About Steaks Liking to be Eaten: The Conflicting Views of Symbolic Interactions and Talcott Parsons Concerning the Nature of Relations Between Persons and Nonhuman Objects

Reasoning on the basis of the nature of a series of characteristics of social systems, Talcott Parsons asserted that relations of persons with others are interactional, but that their relations with what he called nonsocial objects-physical and cultural objects-are other than interactional. Logical as well as common sense considerations show that persons do interact both with categories of objects. Symbolic interactionists hold that interaction of persons with nonhuman objects-their designation of what Parsons called nonsocial objects-occurs during the course of the persons taking the roles of such objects internally with presumed mutuality, that is thinking about them, and interpreting them as one or another of three different kinds of signs. In the symbolic interactionist perspective, the overarching background of all interaction is the active self mediating reflexively between the persons and whatever kinds of objects with which they are involved.     

Probabilistic Risk Assessment of Wastes Buried in the Ground

The differences between probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) and safety analysis (SA) are discussed, and it is shown that PRA is more suitable than SA for determining the acceptability of a technology. Since a PRA by the fault tree-event tree analysis method used for reactor safety studies does not seem to be practical for buried waste, an alternative approach is suggested using geochemical analogs. This method is illustrated for the cases of high-level and low-level radioactive waste and for chemical carcinogens released in coal burning.     

Testing hypotheses about the common mean of normal distributions

An overview of hypothesis testing for the common mean of independent normal distributions is given. The case of two populations is studied in detail. A number of different types of tests are studied. Among them are a test based on the maximum of the two available t-tests, Fisher's combined test, a test based on Graybill–Deal's estimator, an approximation to the likelihood ratio test, and some tests derived using some Bayesian considerations for improper priors along with intuitive considerations. Based on some theoretical findings and mostly based on a Monte Carlo study the conclusions are that for the most part the Bayes-intuitive type tests are superior and can be recommended. When the variances of the populations are close the approximate likelihood ratio test does best.     

Does it Work for Them — Does it Work for Us? Evaluating a New Model of Team Practice

This article describes a change in team practice from a model targeted at individual families to a combined model that supplements family therapy with group programs for children. Unacceptably long waiting lists for family counselling services, high levels of stress in clinicians, and consumer dissatisfaction motivated this change. Robust quantitative data and a qualitative analysis of the project confirm that the change has made a positive impact and the new treatment model deserves to be continued. The article concludes that internal team changes are insufficient in a treatment context which requires more profound changes beyond the boundaries of the team.