Getting Beyond the Training vs. Work Experience Debate: The Role of Labor Markets,Social Capital,Cultural Capital,and Community Resources in Long-Term Poverty

SUMMARY

Policy makers and advocates often see either training or work experience as the way out of poverty. Research in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania suggests that family-supporting jobs continue to elude many low-income women for more complicated reasons: (1) a bifurcated labor market where over half of the jobs pay below-poverty wages with limited benefits, (2) a lack of bridging social capital, (3) limited bi-cultural workplace habits, (4) problems juggling kin obligations and work, and (5) inappropriate or limited training. The study suggests that policy makers should take a two-pronged approach to combating poverty. Training, combined with network development and appropriate cultural capital development, will help some women. Given the growing percentage of low-paying jobs, however, policy should also seek to raise wages, supplement wages, and provide universal benefits.     

How to Measure Social Progress?

A good society is the goal for social policy. Recent years have seen a growing awareness that gross domestic product (GDP) alone does not measure this. Happiness and well‐being have increasingly been seen as elements that should influence welfare policies. This review article provides an overview of many of the ways to measure well‐being and happiness. It attempts to cover three distinct, but interrelated subjects. First, why and what can be used to complement GDP as measures for societal development. Second, is there a relation between well‐being, happiness and central social policy areas? Third, whether knowledge on what makes people happy could inform policymakers in their decisions. The article discusses the many new attempts to measure societal development, and the fact that there are so many that decision makers and citizens are drowning by numbers and thereby not able to grasp whether or not there is social progress. Lastly, by using the classical depiction of welfare states, the article analyses whether the indexes are in line herewith, and that, therefore, they might be used as an instrument for steering societies in the direction of a good society.     

师生与文本的“多元有界”对话

伴随着初中及高中语文课程标准的陆续颁布,对话逐步成为一个备受关注的焦点,必须改变传统的教学方式,将对话引入阅读教学中,倡导师生,生生之间围绕文本展开多重对话。在这多重对话活动中,应该说师生与文本对话是核心,是实现阅读教学对话的前提,接受美学、哲学解释学也为其提供了强有力的理论依据。本文对师生与文本对话做了明确的界定和具体的论述,并提出了较为详尽的对话策略。     

浅谈文艺学、美学理论研究中的“发现”与“创新”

文艺学、美学理论研究是多层次、多方法的,但其研究价值在于"发现"与"创新".可以对现有理论的新阐释;也可对理论质疑,修正或否定;还可以就丰富多变的文学实践及审美现象,总结规律从而上升为理论,即采用新材料论证新论题.文学评论作为文艺学、美学实践理论的应用其方法是多元的,而文化心理学的批评方法是当前主要的批评方法.     

社会排斥视角下移民问题研究：理论发展与欧洲实践

20世纪80年代以来无论是走向统一的欧盟还是正在加速进入城市化和工业化轨道的中国,都经历着大规模的人口迁移,并引起广泛的学术界讨论。已有的研究对人口迁移的动因、方向、迁移的人口学特征、劳动力市场重组等问题进行了详尽的阐述;然而关于迁移人口的社会排斥问题分析还较少。本文系统地回顾了关于人口迁移与社会排斥的研究,以期对我国内部迁移的研究提供新的研究视野。本文主要分为四个部分。第一部分回顾欧盟人口迁移的历史背景以及移民危机的产生;第二部分提出迁移背景下的社会排斥问题;第三部分从劳动力市场和福利国家两个角度分析了迁移人口社会排斥的机制与特点;最后一部分是结论和启示。     

中国改革开放政策有效性的定量研究

 1978年改革开放政策执行前后,中国经济发生了巨大的变化,居民的生活水平得到实质性提高。本文对Lucas模型进行扩展得到使用居民福利变动来量化政策有效性的理论模型,并基于中国1952-2007年的居民消费数据从波动和增长福利效应的视角分阶段定量研究改革开放政策的有效性。结果显示,从波动的福利效应视角来看,改革开放后第一阶段居民福利下降,第二阶段居民福利提高,总体而言居民福利收益相当于永久地每年给每一个居民21元;从增长的福利效应视角来看,第一阶段居民福利提高,第二阶段居民福利也提高,总体而言居民福利收益相当于永久地每年给每一个居民1503元。因此,无论是从波动还是从增长的福利效应视角来看,中国的改革开放政策都是非常有效的,进一步深化改革开放是继续有效提高居民福利水平的一个重要政策。     

全球化格局下的民族文化多元化发展趋势

全球化是一个历史潮流,我们一方面要认识到它对民族文化的冲击堪称势不可挡,并不以人们的主观意志为转移。另一方面也要认识到全球化与民族文化多元化两者之间,并非是必然的对立关系,并非不可协调。对于民族文化,不应是没有发展的保护即消极地保护,而是要实现有保护的发展,有发展的保护。从理论上说,人类可以实现全球经济一体化与文化多元化的和谐共生。     

美国宗教政治的基本经验

在关注美国宗教与民主政治关系的同时,去分析宗教信仰对美国政治的影响。普遍认为不了解美国宗教就不理解美国这个国家,因为在这个国家里,处于主导地位的基督教文化长期影响美国的政治,但是我们发现9·11之后,这一传统模式正在迅速改变,其它宗教文化正在快速渗入到美国的政治经济文化之中。这种趋势对美国的政治到底有多大影响,及如何实现它的政治作用,这些甚至能帮助我们预测美国未来的政治发展走向。     

Can we ‘transform our world’ without affecting international power relations? A political analysis of the United Nations development agenda

The Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals are the latest instalments of a development endeavour started by the United Nations (UN) after WWII. This article conducts a discourse analysis of the UN development agenda, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s post-Marxist thought – which combines post-structuralist discourse analysis and Marxist (Gramscian) political analysis. The essay exposes the ontological tenets underlying the UN’s agenda, and how it conditions the way social issues are understood and addressed. It explains how the agenda conceals the political dimension of development and sustainability debates. Rather than ‘transform our world’, the UN development agenda (1) hinders practices that would truly transform it in terms of more emancipation and justice, and (2) subtly reinforces the power dynamics that sustain the status quo in which underdevelopment, poverty, inequality, and exclusion emerged.     

“Welfare Mother” Activism,Mainstream Feminism,and the Cunning of History in Ontario’s 1970s Welfare Debate

ABSTRACT

This article examines the voice of mobilized welfare mothers and the mainstream women’s movement in the welfare debate of the 1970s in Ontario. A question debated was whether welfare mothers had a right to “stay home” while receiving welfare. The article shows that a radical strain of welfare mother activists at this time demanded recognition of women’s unpaid work. While mainstream women’s groups were generally sympathetic to welfare mothers, their overriding focus on employability as the solution to their poverty served to derail the radical possibilities of welfare mother politics and solidify a policy agenda that undermined the deserving status of welfare mothers.