Injunctive Norms and Problem Gambling among College Students

Two studies examined the relationships among injunctive norms and college student gambling. In study 1 we evaluated the accuracy of perceptions of other students’ approval of gambling and the relationship between perceived approval and gambling behavior. In study 2 we evaluated gambling behavior as a function of perceptions of approval of other students, friends, and family. In study 1, which included 2524 college students, perceptions of other students’ approval of gambling were found to be overestimated and were negatively associated with gambling behavior. The results of study 2, which included 565 college students, replicated the findings of study 1 and revealed positive associations between gambling behavior and perceived approval of friends and family. Results highlight the complexity of injunctive norms and the importance of considering the reference group (e.g., peers, friends, family members) in their evaluation. Results also encourage caution in considering the incorporation of injunctive norms in prevention and intervention approaches.     

Bridging the gap between social work practice and community based welfare agencies

This article argues that social work in the UK needs to renegotiate its relationship with community welfare agencies. It begins by examining what we mean by local community and how welfare needs reflect complex non-linear dynamics unique to the local circumstances. It is argued that these are not always recognised in centralised policy agendas. The article broadly draws a parallel between policy issues for the European Community and for the national state. The drive for both is towards uniformity, which potentially fails to acknowledge the unique circumstances at both the national level between nations and the local level between communities.

The focus of the analysis is the lack of engagement with the subtleties of the local within the arena of social work education and practice. With the opportunity presented by the introduction of a new social work degree in the UK, the authors describe how a social work programme in Liverpool undertook a piece of research with the aim of creating an appropriate place for community welfare agencies in practice placements, the academic curriculum and, ultimately, with the next generation of social work practitioners. Eight welfare agencies within the proximity of Liverpool University, an area known as Toxteth, agreed to participate in the research to investigate what kind of placement module would enable local welfare agencies to engage meaningfully in the social work degree. Out of this process emerged a model for research based curriculum development involving local community agencies and academic institutions. More specifically for Liverpool, it placed the notion of social work's relationship with local community welfare at the heart of professional development for qualifying social workers, paving the way in this region of England for closer links between welfare agencies associated with civil society and professional social workers.     

经济史视角下的清末民初官方邮局与民信局之争

官方邮局与民信局为争夺邮政市场,在资费与业务等领域展开激烈竞争。为适应形势变化,民信局开始利用新式交通工具发展业务。民信局虽然通过请愿、走私等形式规避官邮控制,但还是走向衰落。民信局与官方邮局的竞争促使官方邮局更趋商业化。民信局积极利用轮船等新式交通工具,而大清邮局则积极学习民信局优点,拓展业务范围。     

Crafting social change: former global factory workers negotiating new identities in Sri Lanka’s villages

This article explores how former factory workers negotiate new identities in villages, as new brides, mothers and daughters-in-law, after 5–6 years of employment in an urban Free Trade Zone. I argue that their performances of self-discipline and disavowal of transgressive knowledges allow them to make use of the limited social, economic and political spaces available while gradually reshaping local understandings about the good daughter-in-law. Former workers’ strategic deployment of social conformity represents the foundation on which their entry into village social, economic, political spaces is based on. Although individual social conformity would conventionally be identified as everyday politics, I argue that former workers’ performance of self-discipline and social conformity is strategic and leads to changes in gender norms and village social hierarchies and thus represents a form of politics that is in between everyday and transformative politics – politics that creates conditions of possibility for social transformations.     

Fostering social capital in an international multi-stakeholder issue network

Scholars have theorized that public relations contributes to societies and communities by bringing attention to pressing public issues and fostering social capital in civil society networks. However, the extant research has studied civil society networks of NGOs, donors, and the media in transitional countries. This study extends the public relations model of civil society in two ways. First, it broadens the scope to an international context. Second, it draws from the multi-stakeholder issue network perspective to conceptualize a civil society network as a space where stakeholders of an issue mix their interests as they collectively address a pressing public issue. The literature on international and multi-stakeholder networks suggest that the international scope and the mixing of interests across sectors may restrict the production of social capital. The results from the social network analysis suggests that the mixing of interests across sectoral and geopolitical boundaries did not restrict the production of social capital. Rather, the patterns of the relationships among those on the core and those on the periphery of the network restricted the production of social capital. Such finding demonstrates how public relations’ functions like relationship building can have profound influences on social capital and civil society networks. The implications for public relations theorizing and research are discussed.     

The disorganized family: institutions,practices and normativity

This paper considers the value of a normative account of the relationship between agents and institutions for contemporary efforts to explain ever more complex and disorganized forms of social life. The character of social institutions, as they relate to practices, agents and norms, is explored through an engagement with the common claim that family life has been de‐institutionalized. The paper argues that a normative rather than empirical definition of institutions avoids a false distinction between institutions and practices. Drawing on ideas of social freedom and creative action from critical theory, the changes in family life are explained not as an effect of de‐institutionalization, but as a shift from an organized to a disorganized institutional type. This is understood as a response to changes in the wider normative structure, as a norm of individual freedom has undermined the legitimacy of the organized patriarchal nuclear family, with gender ascribed roles and associated duties. Contemporary motherhood is drawn on to illustrate the value of analysing the dynamic interactions between institutions, roles and practices for capturing both the complexity and the patterned quality of social experience.     

关于民事主体的内涵与外延的立法思考

民事主体制度,是民法理论和立法实践中的重要内容,特别是我国这样的成文法国家,民事主体的立法是关乎整个民法体系的建构和市场经济发展的重要环节。在自然人和法人当然和已然地成为民事主体的内核之情况下,文章对民事主体的内涵和外延在新的历史条件和时代环境下作出新的解释,特别就经济关系和生活关系中大量存在的“非法人团体”是否应该成为“第三主体”作出思考。     

Evaluating the effect of a campus-wide social norms marketing intervention on alcohol-use perceptions,consumption, and blackouts

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a campus-wide social norms marketing intervention on alcohol-use perceptions, consumption, and blackouts at a large, urban, public university. Participants: 4,172 college students (1,208 freshmen, 1,159 sophomores, 953 juniors, and 852 seniors) who completed surveys in Spring 2015 for the Spit for Science Study, a longitudinal study of students' substance use and emotional health. Methods: Participants were e-mailed an online survey that queried campaign readership, perception of peer alcohol use, alcohol consumption, frequency of consumption, and frequency of blackouts. Associations between variables were evaluated using path analysis. Results: We found that campaign readership was associated with more accurate perceptions of peer alcohol use, which, in turn, was associated with self-reported lower number of drinks per sitting and experiencing fewer blackouts. Conclusions: This evaluation supports the use of social norms marketing as a population-level intervention to correct alcohol-use misperceptions and reduce blackouts.     

农村公共文化服务有效供给的现实困境与策略创新——基于社会资本理论的视角

作为政治社会学的一个重要概念,社会资本的理论构成了农村公共文化服务有效供给的重要资源,对提升当下我国农村公共文化服务的供给实效具有借鉴意义,信任社会资本能够提升农村民众对公共文化服务供给的价值认同,规范社会资本可以促进农村公共文化服务供给的制度化,而公民参与网络有助于扩大农村公共文化服务的融资渠道。然而,在当前社会转型期内,我国农村现代社会资本的分布还很不均衡,总体发育不够成熟,这其中,农村民众普遍社会信任的产生还面临许多困境,各级政府对农村公共文化服务供给的制度规范存在不足,同时,农村公民社会不发达,农村文化类民间组织发育不良,农村民众参与意识较为薄弱,这些都构成了当下制约农村公共文化服务有效供给的社会根源,因此,在推进农村公共文化服务有效供给的过程中,地方政府必须大力提升其现代社会资本存量,强化宣传教育,着力提升地方官员的公共服务能力与农村民众的认识水平,积极转变地方政府的供给模式,实现地方政府文化管理过程的善治转变,并积极完善供给机制,大力培育农村民间组织,实现农村公共文化服务资金来源的多元化。     

中国公民社会成长中的若干问题

处于现代化纵深发展的中国社会,正在经历着方向相反的两种变化趋势,一种是向下的变化即社会的衰败,另一种是向上的变化即中国公民社会的发展。只有中国公民社会充分发展了,社会才能获得足以克服衰败的巨大力量。中国公民社会的产生和发展是在市场经济基础上社会发展的必然趋势;人文主义的启蒙和人性的解放是公民社会生长的精神支柱;志愿者行动对公民社会具有重要意义;公益慈善是公民社会人际关系的基本纽带。中国公民社会的建设在现有的政治体制下,还要走很长的路,还会遇到许多困难和曲折,需要我们坚持不懈地共同努力,才能把它不断推向前进。