Retirement:

Stressful life events have been proposed as a possible cause of elder abuse. This study investigates the influence of retirement status on marital conflict and physical violence using a nationally representative sample of 1238 respondents aged 55 years and older. No significant differences were found between retired men and women compared to their nonretired counterparts on measures of depression, stress, marital conflict, and violence. Future research should examine other life events, such as serious illness of one partner or changes in living situation, that might have a more significant impact on marital discord in later life.     

Concepts of Fairness in Marriage and Divorce

Discourses of fairness are bound up with Western ideals of companionate marriage. They are also central to the ways people talk about their approaches to divorce, especially in relation to the division of property and finances. How fairness is understood within marriage, however, is gendered, with husbands more likely to take equity-based approaches and wives equality-based approaches. In this article I discuss previous research on how fairness is understood within marriage, and compare this with data from a study of people going through divorce proceedings in England and Wales. I suggest that some, but not all, understandings about fairness are carried over from marriage into divorce, and note that in many ways English and Welsh divorce law supports a particular conception of fairness that redresses objectively unfair divisions of labor within the marital relationship.     

Leading with racial equity: promoting Black family resilience in early childhood

ABSTRACT

It has been 47 years since Billingsley and Giovannoni penned a pointed analysis of child welfare’s failure of Black children the United States. This conceptual paper asserts that this failure will continue unless we take seriously the role that structural inequality plays in Black families’ lives. It updates Billingsley and Giovannoni’s paper by shifting the focus from children to families, grounding Black family well-being in a developmental model and constructing a racial equity approach to family resilience. The paper begins by establishing an empirical justification for focusing on Black families. This review of data on Black families further reveals early childhood to be a particular priority for intervention. The emerging model centers on Black families’ ability to navigate and negotiate for their needs. The model components are malleable factors that work together to form a “supportive state” and resilient pathway. Implications for the model’s compatibility with clinical family resilience models, two-generation approaches, and family-centered policymaking are discussed.     

Global Aging and Intergenerational Equity

ABSTRACT

The traditional way of caring for frail elders in long-term care facilities is based in the medical model. This type of care focuses primarily on the biological needs of individual elders. A new paradigm for these care facilities is seen in the idea of culture change. This paradigm implicitly has within it elements of compassion emphasized in the teachings of world religions. The focus of this article is on the thoughts of Hesston College students in a World Religions class who spent two hours a week during the spring term 2003 interacting with frail elders in a long-term care facility. These intergenerational interactions are analyzed from the perspective of six world religions. The article concludes with reference to culture change and intergenerational relationships as related to practitioners, policy makers, and researchers.     

The Quest for Legacy in Later Life

Abstract

Anthropological fieldwork among retirees in a rural New York community revealed that a common feature in people's search for meaning was their effort to create a legacy. The results varied, and included innovative programs, the moral lessons of personal experience, and creative works. New retirees also cared about who would succeed them, either in their former positions, or by carrying on the work, stories, or sensibilities they had forged. Ethnographic vignettes relate these twin themes of legacy and succession to American ideas about debts, personal identity, and moral obligation. These stories are also compared with the way legacies are constructed in other societies.     

区域公平视角下的新疆跨越式发展

新疆跨越式发展是深入贯彻落实科学发展观的重要前提,更是维护我国改革发展稳定大局的重要保证。该文根据国家和新疆发展的实际,提出区域公平的概念,并从区域公平这一新的视角和路径出发研究新疆的跨越式发展。在明确区域公平助推新疆跨越式发展的意义的基础上,从区域公平的视角深入分析新疆跨越式发展面临的障碍和挑战,并进而从国家战略的顶层设计、经济和产业结构的优化引导、市场与区域协作体系的构建等多层面,提出促进新疆跨越式发展的对策建议。     

The Marxist View of Equity: Basic Dimensions and Methodological Principles

在社会公正问题的大讨论中﹐ 罗尔斯、诺齐克、哈耶克、麦金泰尔等当代西方思 想家的论述被反复引用和申说﹐ 而将马克思恩格斯等经典作家的观点置于一种被忽视 甚至被忘却的状态。形成这种状态的原因是多方面的。对历史背景和语境不作具体的 分析﹐就难以把握马克思恩格斯对于社会公正问题的真实态度和精神实质﹐ 甚至会 得出他们不仅没有关于社会公正的理论﹐ 而且反对和拒斥从社会公正角度讨论问题 的结论。马克思主义作为无产阶级认识和改造世界、求得自身解放和人类解放的世 界观和方法论﹐ 是真理与价值相统一的理论﹐ 也只有从科学向度与价值向度辩证统 一的角度﹐ 才可能对作为价值之一种表现的公正问题作出合理的理解。公正既是一 种价值观念﹐ 具有评价标准的功能﹐ 也是实际的价值(包括利益、机会、权利等)分 配的一种状态﹐ 其中会涉及自由与平等的矛盾、形式公正与实质公正的矛盾、一般 与特殊的差别、平等与效率的抵牾、公正与不公正的对立﹐ 等等﹐ 只有运用辩证思 维的方法﹐ 才能对其复杂性获得正确的认识。

关键词: 社会公正 公正观 价值立场

In the wide ranging discussion of social equity issues, the theories of contemporary Western thinkers such as Rawls, Nozick, Hayek and MacIntyre are repeatedly cited and expounded. By contrast, for various reasons, classical writers like Marx and Engels have been overlooked or even forgotten. Without a concrete analysis of their historical background and context, it is hard to grasp the true attitude and spiritual essence of the views of Marx and Engels on social equity. We might even conclude not only that they had no theory of social equity but that they opposed and rejected approaching questions from this angle. As a world view and methodology enabling the proletariat to know and transform the world and liberate themselves and mankind, Marxism is a theory that unites truth and value. A rational understanding of the issue of equity as an expression of value is only possible when the dimensions of science and value are dialectically combined. On the one hand, equity is a value concept that functions as a standard for evaluation; on the other, it refers to an actual state of values distribution (including interests, opportunities and rights) that inevitably involves the contradiction between freedom and equality and between formal and substantive equity, the difference between the general and the specific, the conflict between equality and efficiency, the opposition between equity and inequity and so on. Only a dialectical mode of thinking can ensure a correct understanding of the complexity of social equity issues.     

论当前中国高等教育、就业现状和代际公平

一个国家的教育政策决定了该国长远的人才培养。然而,中国目前的高等教育政策已经为社会人士所诟病,其庞大的扩招规模,不仅长期影响国家的宏观就业政策,而且导致了严重的社会问题。文章将从＂代际公平＂的视角,对当前的人才培养政策的弊端进行分析,并指出为了构建和谐社会,限制或者稳定招生人数才是当前高等教育惟一正确举措。     

论民族预科教育的发展与教育公平的实现

民族预科教育是党和国家为加快少数民族地区经济建设和社会发展而采取的一项特殊的教育政策措施,是我国民族高等教育的重要组成部分。经过近六十年的发展,民族预科教育为推进教育公平做出了重要的贡献。但是,在新的历史条件下,继续发挥民族预科教育推进教育公平的作用,需要各级政府的支持,教育主管部门的重视。要坚持以科学发展观为指导,使民族预科教育持续、稳定、科学地向前发展。     

Derrick Bell’s post-Brown moves toward critical race theory

The late Professor Derrick Bell is renowned as the intellectual architect who drafted the blueprints that guided the initial development of critical race theory (CRT). Prior to the advent of CRT, Professor Bell wrote extensively on initiatives designed to improve the lives of African Americans. Among his most influential scholarship, ‘Serving Two Masters’ from the 1976 Yale Law Review emerged as a seminal foundational piece for CRT. We found that Bell’s post-Brown litigation and frustrations were captured in several powerful law review journals from 1970–1976. During this time, he wrote extensively on minority admissions programs, school litigation strategies, racial remediation, equal employment, and of course the Brown decision and its aftermath. These early works attended to the details of how legal remediation for racism in various forms could be considered and approached, but more often were ignored and denied. These same works showed the contradictions built into legal strategies. By working through the details of specific racial remediation strategies, Derrick Bell realized the ubiquity of the negative influences of post-Brown integration goals in all aspects of African American life, including the law. His seminal 1976 Yale Law Review piece emerged not from theory, per se, but from very specific engagements with reasoning about post-Brown policies and practices that failed to serve the interests of most African American families. For Bell, hope seemed to wax and wane as clarity emerged. This article analyses Bell’s law review articles that were published between 1970 and 1976, when he began full-fledged writing that ultimately provided a blueprint for the CRT movement in the academy.