Moving Ahead,Falling Apart,Losing Power: Three Narratives to the Development of Human Services

Scholars agree that we live in a society in which the lion’s share of human needs is supplied by formal organizations. This article deals with how society reached this situation and the challenges embedded in it. We will postulate that there are three basic narratives of human services, which we have named the progress, the social disintegration, and the power narrative. The narratives will be demonstrated through examples from the field of juvenile and adolescent mental health services. We claim that meaningful professional training in human services must expose students to the interpretations, insights, and possible directions for practice in light of each of the narratives.     

平台竞争、排他性协议与竞争瓶颈

在很多双边市场中,经常出现平台一边的用户与平台之间产生利益纠纷的现象,例如顺丰速运与菜鸟网络之间的纠纷等,本文从理论模型的角度研究了这种经济现象。文章通过将双边市场的用户分为视平台有差异和无差异两种类型,研究了平台如何掠夺视平台无差异的用户所有剩余的问题。研究发现,平台厂商有与视平台无差异的用户签订排他性协议的激励;无论签订排他性协议与否,这类用户都将被掠夺所有剩余,产生了所谓的"竞争瓶颈";排他性协议带来的福利效应并不明确,当平台的边际成本和交叉外部性参数较大时,排他性协议的签订能够提升社会总福利。     

‘Having to say everyday … I’m not black enough … I’m not white enough’. Discourses of Aboriginality in the Australian education context

This paper interrogates discourses of Aboriginality about, and by, early career Aboriginal teachers as they negotiate their emergent professional identity in specific Australian school contexts. These discourses position the respondents via their ethnic and cultural background and intersect with self-positioning. This relates to the desire to be positioned as teacher rather than (only) as an ‘Aboriginal’ teacher. Consequently, the over-determination of Aboriginality includes such suppositions as the ‘think-look-do’ Aboriginality with a ‘natural’ connection to community, the ‘good’ Aboriginal teacher who fixes Aboriginal ‘problems’, the Aboriginal teacher as ‘Other’, and [the notion that] ‘Aboriginal work’ as easy, not real work and peripheral to core business. Through qualitative methodology, eleven Aboriginal teachers from the University of Sydney were interviewed. They were able to construct stories of early career teaching and the data was analysed to explore how the participants interpreted, accepted and/or resisted various discourses in their efforts to be agentic and resilient and to make a difference for the Aboriginal students they teach.     

Strangers within? Russian-speakers’ migration from Latvia to London: a study in power geometry and intersectionality

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to contribute to debates on ethnic identification and migration through a focus on a specific group – Russian-speakers from the Baltic state of Latvia who have migrated to the UK. Twenty-six interviews with members of this group were gathered in London and the wider metropolitan area during 2012 and 2014. Russian-speakers represent uniquely combined configurations of ‘the other within’: in most cases, they are EU citizens with full rights; yet, some still hold non-citizens’ passports of Latvia. While in Latvian politics Russian-speakers are framed as ‘others’ whose identities are shaped by the influence of Russia, interview findings confirm that they do not display belonging to contemporary Russia. However, London is the ‘third space’ – a multicultural European metropolis – which provides new opportunities for negotiating ethnic identification. Against the background of triple ‘alienation’ (from Latvia, from Russia and from the UK), we analyse how ethnicity is narrated intersectionally with other categories such as age and class. The findings show that Russian-speaking migrants from Latvia mobilise their Europeanness and Russianness beyond alienating notions of (ethno)national identity. The paper also demonstrates that being open to ethnicity as a category of practice helps us towards a progressive conceptualisation of often overlooked dimensions of integration of intra-EU linguistic ‘others’.     

Gendering international student migration: an Indian case-study

ABSTRACT

Despite the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into migration research, very few attempts have been made to gender international student migration. This paper poses three questions about Indian students who study abroad. Are there gender differences in their motivations? How do they negotiate their gendered everyday lives when abroad? Is the return to India shaped by gender relations? An online survey of Indian study-abroad students (n?=?157), and in-depth interviews with Indian students in Toronto (n?=?22), returned students in New Delhi (n?=?21), and with parents of students abroad (n?=?22) help to provide answers. Conceptually, the paper draws on a ‘gendered geographies of power’ framework and on student migration as an embodied process subject to ‘matrices of (un)intelligibility’. We find minimal gender-related differences in motivations to study abroad, except that male students are drawn from a wider social background. However, whilst abroad, both male and female Indian students face challenges in performing their gendered identities. The Indian patrifocal family puts greater pressure on males to return; females face greater challenges upon return.     

The Nature of the Political Reconsidered

I present an immanent, and explanatory, critique of reflections on the nature of politics and of power within political science. I argue that these reflections are problematic, to the extent that they presuppose an actualist conception of the political, and that this is generated by an empiricist way of thinking on the one hand and a constructivist way of thinking on the other. I show how re‐defining politics, power, and the political on the basis of a dialectical critical realist ontology resolves these problems and, thereby, allows us to understand the conditions for social change and the relationship between the political and the economic. My argument has two, important implications: first, that the proposal that those who study politics professionally should celebrate philosophical diversity is dangerous–at least if it makes it difficult to sustain a distinct, emancipatory form of political inquiry; and, second, that the nature of social reality justifies the need both for specialized forms of inquiry, such as politics and economics, and integrative forms of inquiry, such as political economy.     

权力腐败与市场经济陷阱

在中国社会深刻转型过程中,权力腐败成为当前社会生活中一个挥之不去的阴影。对金钱的无限贪欲,使得权钱交易、行贿受贿之风盛行。从经济视角中探寻权力腐败的根源,某种意义上是市场经济对增长无限制追求和对奢侈无限制满足的陷阱。理性地绕开这种陷阱,用信仰有效地控制欲求,是探究遏制权力腐败的理性诉求,也是当前学习实践科学发展观的题中之义。     

俄罗斯联邦检察权性质初探

在俄罗斯,有关检察机关在国家机关体系中地位和角色问题的争论一直没有停止过。理论界和实务界普遍认为检察机关是行使监督权的国家机关。各家学说争执的焦点在于这种监督性质的权力应当归属于哪个国家权力分支。     

论文化建设与城市可持续发展

在市场逻辑的背景下,城市化变成物化的单线过程,精神上的城市化却被忽略了。客观分析文化建设的问题和不足,积极探索文化建设的有效途径,才能推动城市可持续发展。