美国联邦官僚系统的自主性和政治控制

在美国的多元政治体制下,其联邦官僚系统保持着一定程度的自主性。与之同时,又接受着来自国会、总统和社会利益集团等多种政治主体的影响和控制,形成"一仆二主"乃至"一仆多主"的现象。基于美国的民主原则,美国联邦官僚系统必须回应来自政治系统的意愿和利益要求,接受其监督,同时凭借自身的专业技术能力及其他职业性资源,又保持着相对独立性,呈现出美国政治中特有的政治行政关系结构和特征。     

The Profound Connotation of Ode to Fairy Disenchantment and Cao Xueqin＇s Complex of the Chu Style Poems

关于《红楼梦》中《警幻仙姑赋》的争议历来颇多。它与曹植的《洛神赋》在文字表达等方面有太多相似之处。从挖掘《洛神赋》背后的深意入手,可最终得出这样的结论：对残酷现实的情感宣泄以及人生理想的幻灭是曹雪芹效仿《洛神赋》的根本目的,更是创作《警幻仙姑赋》的深层动机;同时《警幻仙姑赋》在体裁选择及写作手法上所体现出的＂师楚＂情结,也使《警幻仙姑赋》的悲剧意味得以进一步延伸和升华。     

The cost‐effectiveness of UK parenting programmes for preventing children's behaviour problems – a review of the evidence

Parenting programmes are widely used in the UK, promoted in policy documents as a cost‐effective way for children's services to address behaviour problems and thereby the longer‐term costs associated with conduct disorders, particularly antisocial behaviour and criminality. To explore whether these programmes are a cost‐effective component of family intervention, this paper examines evidence from cost‐effectiveness studies based on randomized controlled trials, modelling studies estimating longer‐term costs and outcomes, and studies estimating costs of UK parenting programmes, including evidence from routine practice. Findings indicate that parenting programmes have the potential to be cost‐saving in the long term; however, gaps in the evidence include: lack of follow‐up of families who drop out of programmes, absence of control groups in longer‐term follow‐ups, and little information about costs and effects of programmes in routine practice. The size of savings resulting from implementation of effective parenting programmes will depend on the extent to which families likely to be most costly to society attend and experience lasting benefit.     

Planning an integrated agriculture and health program and designing its evaluation: Experience from Western Kenya

Multi-sectoral programs that involve stakeholders in agriculture, nutrition and health care are essential for responding to nutrition problems such as vitamin A deficiency among pregnant and lactating women and their infants in many poor areas of lower income countries. Yet planning such multi-sectoral programs and designing appropriate evaluations, to respond to different disciplinary cultures of evidence, remain a challenge. We describe the context, program development process, and evaluation design of the Mama SASHA project (Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa) which promoted production and consumption of a bio-fortified, orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP). In planning the program we drew upon information from needs assessments, stakeholder consultations, and a first round of the implementation evaluation of a pilot project. The multi-disciplinary team worked with partner organizations to develop a program theory of change and an impact pathway which identified aspects of the program that would be monitored and established evaluation methods. Responding to the growing demand for greater rigour in impact evaluations, we carried out quasi-experimental allocation by health facility catchment area, repeat village surveys for assessment of change in intervention and control areas, and longitudinal tracking of individual mother-child pairs. Mid-course corrections in program implementation were informed by program monitoring, regular feedback from implementers and partners’ meetings. To assess economic efficiency and provide evidence for scaling we collected data on resources used and project expenses. Managing the multi-sectoral program and the mixed methods evaluation involved bargaining and trade-offs that were deemed essential to respond to the array of stakeholders, program funders and disciplines involved.     

Thinking about biology and culture: can the natural and human sciences be integrated?

Genomic analyses have shown that only 1.2 per cent of the genome is devoted to protein coding sequences (the most commonly invoked definition of genes), and that much of the remaining sequences are employed in regulation – that is, in responding to signals, first, from the immediate environment of the DNA, but ultimately from the distal environment – from the cytoplasm, from the environment outside the cell, and finally, from the environment beyond the organism. Such signals are not restricted to the simple physical and chemical stimuli that impinge directly on the DNA, on the surface of the cell, or even on the body as a whole: organisms with central nervous systems have receptors for forms of perception that are not only more complex but far longer range. Humans have especially sophisticated perceptual capacities, enabling them to respond to a wide range of complex visual, auditory, linguistic and behavioural/emotional signals in their extended environment. Research has recently begun to show that responses to such signals can extend all the way down to the level of gene expression. The question is this: to what extent are we witnessing (at last) a rapprochement between the natural science of biology and the human sciences of sociology and anthropology, and to what extent do the new promises of synthesis merely reflect an expansion of older reductionist aims, threatening once again to marginalize rather than incorporate the insights of cultural analysis? As in my earlier discussion of the nature/nurture debate (2010), my focus will be restricted to the Anglo-American context.     

Religion in the Lives of Older Women Serving Life in Prison

This exploratory qualitative study examined the roles of religiousness in the lives of 21 older women (mean age = 63) serving life sentences in one southern state. Based on survey and focus group methodology, several themes emerged as important focal points, including early religious experiences prior to incarceration, imprisonment and religious doubt, participation in formal and informal religious activities, and use of religion in coping with stressors such as interpersonal relationships, trauma, and health statuses. Irrespective of their religious upbringing, all participants agreed that religiosity/spirituality played a key role in their ability to cope with their prison experience as well as for maintaining hope and the opportunity for release.     

HIV/AIDS and other household shocks as catalysts of local commercialization of non‐timber forest products in Southern Africa

Local trade in non‐timber forest products (NTFPs) is increasing globally, yet the causes have been little studied. We examine household shock as a driver of NTFP trade in five southern African countries, with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS‐related illness and death. Over the past two years, 95% of trader households experienced at least one shock, with family illness and death recorded for 68% and 42% of households, respectively. Almost 40% had entered the trade because of HIV/AIDS‐related shocks. Additional shocks included natural disasters, crop pests or failure and livestock loss. The sale of NTFPs was the third most common coping strategy, after kinship and agricultural adjustments. Coping strategies differed between sites and type of shock.     

‘Notorious Beyond Any Other European Woman of Her Generation’: The Case of Count(ess) Sarolta/Sándor Vay

The paper investigates the curious case of the Hungarian Count(ess) Sarolta/Sándor Vay, journalist and writer, but, above all, a notorious gender bender in late nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The article examines her case in the context of the history of European cross-dressing and of narrative transvestism. The author argues that nineteenth-century dandyism provided an effective cultural framework for Vay’s contemporaries to accept her unconventional presence in fin-de-siècle Hungarian society. Moreover, she claims that Vay’s narrative transvestism may also be construed within the cultural phenomenon of dandyism, as her writing practices prove to be further instruments for her self-fashioning. Finally, she concludes that Vay’s gender performance and narrative transvestism become illustrative examples of instances that both frame and confuse accepted cultural patterns, destabilize gender binarism, and participate in its maintenance.     

Fat Monica,Fat Suits,and Friends

This paper examines narratives about fatness that are represented and reproduced by the character of “Fat Monica” played by Courteney Cox in a fat suit on the sitcom Friends. By drawing on David T. Mitchell's framework for analyzing “narrative prosthesis,” I examine how Fat Monica's narratives on Friends represent complex intersections of identities. I argue that fat suits often evoke fatness to support limited and clichéd narratives; however, fat suits may also enable new means of representing and understanding fatness. Through an analysis of the ways in which Fat Monica is represented in the episodes she appears in, three key uses of Fat Monica's fatness are discussed. Firstly, I examine the comic uses of Fat Monica and their relationship between fatness and humour. Next, I examine how Fat Monica storylines represent interlocking narratives of fatness, femininity, and sexual desire. Lastly, I consider how Fat Monica represents the construction of the normative body and claims about fatness and authenticity. Ultimately, Fat Monica illustrates how fatness relates to understandings of humour, gender, social class, and heterosexuality.     

‘You Get More Respect,’ Reasons for Sex Among African American High School Youth: A Qualitative Study

ABSTRACT

African American adolescents continue to be disproportionately impacted by HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and unanticipated pregnancies. In-depth, face-to-face interviews among a convenience sample of 32 African American adolescents (16 male and 16 female) were used to explore the reasons why some adolescents decided to engage in sex while others chose to delay sexual debut. Data were analyzed using a thematic analysis. Among the overall sample, psychological motivations, external pressure, physical pleasure seeking, and relationship-related motivations were the major themes cited for engaging in sex by participants and their friends. External support, motivation to avoid negative consequences, not feeling ready or lacking interest in sex, and having negative views about sex were among the major reasons for delaying sex. Several of the emergent themes showed gender differences. Suggestions for future research include the need for sexual education, and STI/HIV prevention programs that are gender sensitive and flexible enough to accommodate multiple factors related to sexual debut.