孤独个体与向死而生——多元文化社会中《凡人》的身份认同

美国犹太裔作家菲利普·罗斯的《凡人》讲述了一个关于失去与孤独、疾病与死亡的故事。主人公作为一个犹太裔美国人,因其身份的特殊性与美国主流文化格格不入,显得格外孤独与痛苦,这种孤独个体的特性也贯穿了其一生。与此同时,在他的一生中无时无刻不在与疾病和死亡作斗争,体现了向死而生的特点,即在绝望中蕴含着希望。在美国多元文化社会中,主人公追寻的身份认同正是当代美国人普遍的生存状况,表现了普遍的生存困境。     

Heavenly Monsters: The Politics of the Male Body in the Naked Issue of Attitude Magazine

The male body in contemporary gay culture is subordinated to distinct aesthetic and ethical norms that reflect an all-male idolization of the young, muscular, smooth, and transcendent physique. The queer body is manipulated in different techniques including daily work at the gym, diet, hair supplement/removal, tanning, and dying. Liberating the body from heteronormative oppression does not necessarily guarantee the liberation of the (gay) body from other powerful systems that produce and commercialize body fascism. This article problematizes these body politics and economy of identity focusing on the naked issue of Attitude (October 1999), a six-year-old British life-style glossy magazine. This analysis mainly focuses on the illuminating interview with five gay men who express their intimate feelings and criticize the body worship in the gay media: an over-weight man, a skinny man, a psoriasis sufferer, an old and heavily tattooed and pierced man, and a bodybuilder who works as an escort.     

Linguists and other animals

Book reviewed in this article:
Joan Dunayer, Animal Equality: Language and Liberation     

Generations,Identities, and the Collective Memory of Che Guevara1

Has the image of Che Guevara lost its power to evoke radical politics in the face of pervasive commodification? The commercialization of this 1960s political icon has called into question the power of the market to shape collective memories. Meanwhile, antisystemic movements of the left continue to erect his image at protest events. In light of this contest over how Che Guevara is remembered, we investigate, using data from a survey of Spanish citizens, who is most likely to recall him. We find qualified support for the theory of generational imprinting—Che is more often recalled by those generations who saw him rise to prominence during their formative years, although prominent as a collective symbol rather than as a living person. Our results also corroborate the claim that historical figures or events are more salient for, and therefore more likely to be remembered by, some subgenerational units than others. Thus, although the younger generations are in general more likely than their elders to recall Che, he is most frequently remembered by the highly educated leftists who espouse postmaterialist and posttraditionalist values and identify more with their local regions than with the nation of Spain. These patterns suggest that, in contrast to the dire predictions of mass culture theorists, the memory of Che Guevara has become increasingly tied to markers of social, ethnic‐regional, and political identity.     

The organizational shaping of collective identity: The case of lesbian and gay film festivals in New York

Using information gathered during fieldwork on New York lesbian and gay film festival organizations, this paper argues that scholarship on identity has not paid sufficient attention to the organizational mediation of collective identity. The shape of collective identity—how internal instabilities and diversities are accommodated, in this case—depends not only on the emergent characteristics of the “collective,” but also on the resolution of challenges particular to organizational fields. Two very differently conceived lesbian and gay festival organizations, sites at which decision making about collective identity is ongoing and self-conscious, are examined. The analysis traces how each responds to two related tasks: maintaining community legitimacy, which requires racial diversification, and surviving within an altered institutional environment. Rather than imposition from “above” or construction from “below,” the adaptive responses by organizations (to changes in both community expectations and the resource environment) transform the collective identity formulations reaching public visibility. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Colloquium Series of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, City University of New York, 1995, and at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, DC, 1995.     

Estimation of noncentrality parameters

We propose some estimators of noncentrality parameters which improve upon usual unbiased estimators under quadratic loss. The distributions we consider are the noncentral chi-square and the noncentral F. However, we give more general results for the family of elliptically contoured distributions and propose a robust dominating estimator.     

大中城市城郊失地农民的现状调查分析（I）

随着中国城市化进程的加快，在社会主体层面上直接表现为农民身份向市民身份的嬗变和转型。基于此背景，结合对某地区失地农民的120份调查问卷分析，从失地农民主体角度探讨他们对失地农民这一强制性身份的认同程度及其影响因素。研究发现，健全的社会保障体系、稳定工作和收入、城市生活方式及思想观念等3个因素最终影响着失地农民的身份认同。其中健全的社会保障体系、稳定工作和收入、城市生活方式及思想观念对失地农民身份认同起着不可替代的作用，且由大到小影响着失地农民的身份认同。     

South African Indian migration in the twenty-first century: towards a theory of ‘triple identity’

This paper is inspired by three issues, namely ongoing research on South Africans of Indian origin, the anecdotal evidence that accumulates through ongoing discussions on a casual level with such people and the increasing interest among researchers about how globalization and transnational movements are impacting upon identity formation among minorities who are seeking employment or a new life in the developed economies of the ‘big five’ English-speaking countries, i.e. the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. It is in countries such as these that a third identity emerges and develops to instill a sense of triple identity. The information here suggests that, when people of Indian origin migrate to one of these countries, they continue to cling to South Africa because it is their country of birth, as well as to India, more for sentimental rather than practical reasons. The topic of this paper reflects a contemporary phenomenon not just among the Indians in South Africa, but also among other diasporas such as Chinese in Latin America, whose new and final emigration destination always seems to be the US. In addition, people of Chinese origin in the countries of Indochina, such as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, experienced similar patterns of becoming diasporas in Europe, North America and Oceania in the 1970s. However, migration implores them to renegotiate their identities in order to adapt and settle in accordance with their newly adopted host territories. This gives rise to an identity that straddles three countries, which induces the need to examine new ways of identity building in a global transnational economy.     

Boundary Spaces

While shows like The X-Files and 24 have merged conspiracy theories with popular science (fictions), some video games have been pushing the narrative even further. Electronic Art's Majestic game was released in July 2001 and quickly generated media buzz with its unusual multi-modal gameplay. Mixing phone calls, faxes, instant messaging, real and "fake' websites, and email, the game provides a fascinating case of an attempt at new directions for gaming communities. Through story, mode of playing, and use of technology, Majestic highlights the uncertain status of knowledge, community and self in a digital age; at the same time, it allows examination of alternative ways of understanding games' role and purpose in the larger culture. Drawing on intricate storylines involving government conspiracies, techno-bio warfare, murder and global terror, players were asked to solve mysteries in the hopes of preventing a devastating future of domination. Because the game drew in both actual and Majestic-owned/-designed websites, it constantly pushed those playing the game right to borders where simulation collides with " factuality'. Given the wide variety of "legitimate' conspiracy theory, alien encounters and alternative science web pages, users often could not distinguish when they were leaving the game's pages and venturing into " real' World Wide Web sites. Its further use of AOL's instant messenger system, in which gamers spoke not only to bots but to other players, pushed users to evaluate constantly both the status of those they were talking to and the information being provided. Additionally, the game required players to occupy unfamiliar subject positions, ones where agency was attenuated, and which subsequently generated a multi-layered sense of unease among players. This mix of authentic and staged information in conjunction with technologically mediated roles highlights what are often seen as phenomenon endemic to the Internet itself; that is, the destabilization of categories of knowing, relating, and being.     

刑法中的"自然身份犯"概念质疑

长期以来,我国刑法理论的学说在论及刑法中的特殊主体时,一般认为以特殊主体为犯罪成立条件或刑罚加减事由的身份犯可以其形成方式的不同而划分为自然身份犯和法定身份犯,其中自然身份犯中的自然身份主体的形成来源于诸如男女性别、亲属等自然事实。本文通过严密的论证,阐明了刑法中自然身份及自然身份犯的概念在理论上是不妥当的,应从理论中予以剔除。