Then press enter: digital payment technology and the history of telephone interface

The internet and other digital networks in the U.S. (and beyond) remain essentially an upgrade of the national telephone network built by AT&T over the first half of the twentieth century, and digital payment remains tethered to telephony at the level of infrastructure. Telephone history also continues to inform digital payment at the level of interface. Debit card readers feature a keypad nearly identical to those introduced (also by AT&T) to the dialling public a half-century ago on touch-tone telephones. In this essay I highlight the development of the touch-tone keypad as a transformative payment technology. There have been three great leaps forward in the history of telephone interface: the dial, the keypad and the touch screen. Each corresponds to a period of technological transformation in the telephone industry and society more broadly: the rotary dial and automation, touch-tone keypads and digitization, and touch screens and computerization. The successful careers of the dial and the keypad, especially when read in tandem, suggest that touch screens will alter the everyday economics of retail payment even more radically than its predecessors. I also describe a broader trajectory of digital naturalization, whereby telephone numbers have proliferated into a personal identification number, passwords and a plethora of personalized information. Payments increasingly circulate today as subsets of personal information within the vast sea of big data. Payment apps are demonstrating a capacity to reorganize retail transactions on a scale as vast as any technology since the cash register. The history of retail payment finds the point of sale heading from the till into shoppers’ pockets. As a result, consumers are increasingly shouldering the costs of purchasing, maintaining, upgrading and securing the technology used for everyday transactions.     

Making Space for the Maid

Chinese television dramas over the past decades have seen the rise and decline of various narratives, but no other narratives speak to the emerging urban middle class's fear and anxiety more palpably than the stories of the maid. However, despite the growing popularity of the maid stories among urban viewers, most of these stories do not resonate with domestic workers themselves. How do we make sense of the growing popularity of the maid stories among urban viewers? And how do we account for the differentiated capacity to resonate and identify with the characters among viewers? These are important questions to consider if one is to understand the new cultural politics of power and social formations in post-Mao China. In this paper, I explore some of the crucial ways in which a controlling gaze is facilitated and naturalised by the visualisation of place and space in these dramas. Then, through both critical analyses and engaged ethnography, I demonstrate how two sets of controlling gaze—everyday and televisual—reinforce and justify each other. Finally, I advance the concept of “peripheral vision,” which, I show, denies the modernist “master” narrative of the city and, instead, empowers the subaltern figure with an epistemological position of “eye-witness” and anthropologist of the city.     

PPP模式在政府债务危机中的应用研究

近年来,政府债务危机频频爆发,国务院办公厅下文要赋予地方政府适度举债融资权,规范地方政府的举债融资机制.政府与社会资本合作模式(P P P模式)被列入规范政府举债融资机制之中,该举措对于化解地方政府债务压力,缓解公用基础设施建设资金短缺发挥重要作用.因此需要对PPP模式适用于政府债务领域的可行性和必要性进行分析,在缓解政府债务的PPP具体模式中加以选择,并从法律层面保障PPP模式的实施.     

双循环驱动我国城市产业转移效应研究

基于201个城市的相关数据,利用动态面板模型和空间杜宾模型,实证分析了内循环、外循环和双循环对产业转移的影响。研究结果表明：前期产业转移在一定程度上会影响后期产业转移,前一期当地产业比例较大,其后产业转移受到的促进作用也较大;内循环、外循环和双循环均对产业转移起到显著的正向促进作用,东部城市受到的促进作用略高于中西部城市;要素流动在产业转移中发挥着重要作用,劳动力要素流动、技术要素流动和资本要素流动不仅受到内、外循环和双循环的促进作用,同时对产业转移也起到一定的促进作用;产业转移具有空间相关性,产业在空间上倾向于向产业转入较高的城区转移。为此,我国在政策上应进一步加快推动内循环,促进外循环,关注要素流动在产业转移中的重要作用,合理分配要素资源。     

Mothering and everyday life during and in the aftermath of domestic violence among women with immigrant backgrounds in Norway

This paper focuses on how immigrant women experience and negotiate their everyday life with children prior to and after leaving a violent partner. Twenty‐three women staying at domestic violence and abuse shelters with their children were interviewed about their experiences with assistance services and their everyday life with their children. At the time of the interviews, most of the women were legally separated or divorced and were either living in or in touch daily with shelters. In this paper, we look at some of the challenges that women face when exposed to violence in a relationship that involves children. Being exposed to violence from a partner raises a number of economic, practical, and emotional concerns, both prior to and after leaving. For the mothers in our study, maintaining a regular routine is key to making the children feel safe in an unpredictable setting. For many, economic dependence on the partner is replaced with economic dependence on assistance services after leaving the partner. Services must recognize that providing help to mothers who have left a violent partner constitutes more than just practical support but is crucial for mothers' ability to re‐establish a predictable everyday life with their children.     

Driven by Inequalities: Exploring the Resurgence of Domestic Work in U.S. Cities

Domestic work, once the most common occupation for women around the globe, was thought to be well on its way to extinction at the end of the twentieth century. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, evidence began to appear that domestic work was in many places again becoming a growth occupation. My goal in this article is to examine the factors related to the recent expansion of domestic work in countries in the Global North, using the United States as a case study. I draw on U.S. Census data to document the resurgence of domestic work both nationally and in many large cities across the country, and then use multivariate analysis to compare rates of domestic work across these cities. The results indicate that rates of domestic work are highly related to variables measuring structural inequalities (racialization of the labor force, immigration, and economic polarization), while showing little relationship with variables measuring unmet care needs (care dependency ratios, female/maternal labor force participation, and availability of institutional care options). These findings underline the urgency of providing protections to domestic workers and point to the need for scholarship that better theorizes the relationships among unpaid care and different forms of paid care.     

Innovative approaches to regulating decent work for domestic workers in Côte d'Ivoire: Labour administration and the judiciary under a general labour code

The authors offer a contextualized analysis of judicial decisions rendered during 1971–2013 in Côte d'Ivoire, where domestic work is regulated by a general labour code. Assessments of those decisions, alongside qualitative interviews of institutional actors, elucidate how innovative practices were mainly derived from the code by attentive inspectors and by jurisprudence evolving to treat domestic work like any other. Yet limitations emanating from the inability to grapple with the specificity of domestic work are also identified. Reaffirming that the regulation of domestic work must embrace its duality (work like any other and work like no other), the authors conclude with a call for an international community of learning on decent work for domestic workers.     

WTO农业谈判的僵局及其原因

多哈回合贸易谈判的主要问题是农产品的贸易自由化。由于谈判各方利益冲突严重,至今仍未取得满意的结局。对9年来多哈回合历次谈判进行总结,分析谈判破裂的原因,以期对未来农业谈判的前景判断有所帮助。     

国内网络集群行为研究文献综述

在互联网时代,全新的网络空间为人们提供了一个自由发表言论、表达观点的互动平台,＂网络集群行为＂正是基于这一平台而形成的一个有别于现实社会中集群行为的全新行为方式。这种网络集群行为的频繁发生,不但直接影响到人们的社会生活,而且也开始引起了不同学科众多学者的关注。这里试图通过对近几年国内就网络集群行为研究成果的梳理,充分展示国内有关网络集群行为的研究现状,以便为今后的研究者提供有益的助力。     

房地产的可持续发展研究

可持续发展是一种全新的发展观,它要求人类的生产活动既能满足当代人的要求,又不对后代人生存的能力造成威胁。房屋作为人类生产、生活中最重要的一部分,开发商在向社会提供这种特殊的商品时,更应该注重可持续发展的理念。作者通过对房地产可持续发展的理论思考,提出了实现房地产可持续发展的基本思路,并举实例说明了如何在房地产开发的实践中做到可持续发展。