Overcoming Old in Age-Friendliness

In this article, we explore views on an age-friendly space in the Netherlands by analysing the responses of older individuals (N = 54) in focus groups and by examining the perspectives around an age-friendly zone in the Netherlands, Parkstad Limburg. We found that a central issue in the wishes for living at a later age are adjustments to envisioned physical limitations that come with the ageing process; this includes adjustments to ensure safety, accessibility and mobility, in order to facilitate older individuals' efforts to stay engaged with the world around them. In their wishes, the older participants constructed ideal dwelling places that closely resembled a senior home, but at the same time they rejected wishing to live in a place that was identified as a senior home. We explain this paradox by the representation of such a space as being for old people, i.e. needy older individuals, which was not how the older participants wished to be identified. We conclude that the conception of age-friendly environments will have to face the difficult challenge of overcoming the association with old age, while simultaneously taking into account adjustments that signify and relate to the ageing process and that seem inescapably tied to oldness.     

Institutional evolution and abrupt change: Reforming the administration of social assistance in Finland

Historical institutionalist studies have explained institutional change as resulting from critical junctures that interrupt long periods of stability or from endogenous, incremental evolution. Building on these theories, discursive institutionalists have focused on the roles of agency, ideas and discourse as explainers of change. Combining these approaches, this article analyses Finland’s decision in 2014 to transfer the administration of basic social assistance from municipalities to the central government. This study demonstrates that institutional change can be both abrupt and evolutionary. Due to sudden, exceptional political circumstances, the decision in question was made quickly and under pressure, circumventing possible veto players. However, it was possible only because of the incremental, endogenous change that had occurred in the way in which social assistance was administered at the municipal level. It enabled a change in political discourse, which eroded the credibility of the ideational frames that policy actors had previously utilised to reject the centralised model.     

试论延吉城市旅游形象设计

在延吉城市旅游形象的诸要素中,民俗要素最为重要,因此,在对延吉城市旅游形象进行定位时,无论是从延吉城市形象的硬件上(如交通、餐饮),还是在城市旅游形象的软件上(如市民素质、民俗民风等方面),都要突出民俗特色,同时要用多种形式大力宣传。     

Juvenile Delinquency Under Conditions of Rapid Social Change

Increased juvenile delinquency can be seen as an indicator for a deteriorating social fabric under conditions of rapid social change. Criminological theories suggest, however, that such conditions do not per se produce delinquency: They force youth into prodelinquent leisure activities with peers, leading to an endorsement of delinquent behavior and offering the infrastructure for it. Resources acquired in family and public life, however, may prevent youth from drifting into such prodelinquent leisure activities and indirectly from delinquent behavior. Empirical tests of these hypotheses have to employ simultaneous analyses of societal-level and individual-level data. On the basis of an international youth study, the paper undertakes such an analysis: In the years 1992–95, data from 42 independent samples of seventh graders from East and West Germany, Poland, Russia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary, Czechia, and Greece were surveyed. Data on deviant school behavior, delinquent drift, nurturant parenting, and subjective feelings of justice in public were obtained from 7282 thirteen- to fourteen-year-olds. Processes of rapid social change were incorporated as data on changes in GNP in the years proceeding the surveys. Analyses show that delinquent drift is a valid predictor of deviant school behavior only on the individual level. The extent to which adolescents engage in prodelinquent peer activities depends more on the cultural context in which adolescents live than on their personal experience in the family and in public. Nurturant parenting does, however, covary negatively with deviant school behavior irrespective of level of analysis.     

Frontier spaces of vulnerability: Regional change,urbanization, drought and fire hazard in Santarém,Pará, Brazil

Fire hazard is a mounting concern in tropical rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon and has raised awareness within the science community of the links between agricultural fire use, drought and accidental fire. As a result, fire is being addressed as a crisis event with mitigation focused on those who light fires, particularly smallholder agriculturalists. Little attention is paid to the historical and ongoing ways in which Amazon landscapes and peoples have been made more susceptible to fire. Frontier regions of the Brazilian Amazon serve a variety of functions within the larger Brazilian society, including as extractive reserves for economic development, as social safety valves to reduce population pressures, and as areas to support urban regional integration. Each of these functions has impacted frontier environments in ways that create more flammable landscapes and/or shape the vulnerability of people to fire hazard. This paper uses a case study inthe Brazilian Lower Amazon to understand how vulnerability to fire hazard develops. It argues that if fire mitigation remains centered on fire as a crisis event, an understanding of what constitutes frontier spaces of vulnerability, both in landscape and in populations, will be limited.     

The University: An Agent of Social Change?

Can universities be agents of progressive social change? How would we know if a university was acting as an agent of social change? Drawing on four case studies, I raise a number of questions to problematize our understanding of the university as an agent of social change. I outline a number of contributing factors that appear to explain successful cases. I conclude by arguing the relevancy of these cases for larger, and more traditional, sociological projects.     

图书馆工作人员应该转变的六个观念

文章认为,要使图书馆工作适应新的技术革命和社会主义市场经济的需要,就必须转变观念.当前需要转变的观念有以下六个方面:图书馆由藏书中心变成文献资料中心、信息中心、智力开发中心;从关门办馆到开门办馆;从无偿服务到有偿服务;从独自办馆到馆际协作;从手工操作到运用现代技术手段;从与世无争到积极竞争.     

论后印刷时代话语中图像与文字的关系

当代图像与文字的关系体现为“超媒体”和“互动电视网络系统”两种形式。传统符号学以语言为本体论基础来处理两者之间的关系在认识论上是误导，符号的本质也被还原为符号现象。图像与文字，由于各自的不同“给予”，具有不同的认识论要求。认知的中介本质、符号的非中立性以及符号体系必须拥有的三大元功能不仅为区别图像与文字奠定了认识论基础，而且也为探讨它们之间的关系提供了可能性，同时，更是理解虚拟现实的有效途径。     

隐逸词在南宋遗民词中的新变

元初南宋遗民词人是一个颇具特色的群体,南宋遗民词中的隐逸词是宋亡后士大夫心理与境遇的反映。南宋遗民词人的心奥,南宋遗民词中隐逸词的新特点,是在宋末元初那一特定历史时代的产物,是其时的特有文化现象。     

论《周易》思维形式的特色

在我国思想史上 ,《周易》思维独具特色。这种特色在形式上表现为思维的意象性、数术性、逻辑性、直观性。《周易》因其显著特色产生独特而巨大的魅力 ,成为中华民族传统文化的源头活水