Progress and cumulation in the human sciences after the fall

What do we mean by progress and cumulation in the social and human sciences? Recent thinking in the philosophy and history of science has led to an abandonment of some versions of logical positivism and of verificationism that had a strong deductive and theory testing orientation. What is to replace them is less clear. This paper argues that progress and cumulation can be seen as a process of evaluation and retention within an epistemic community. Scholarly disciplines differ in their social structure and in their epistemic and normative commitments. Since sociology is a fragmented discipline, progress and cumulation differ within its multiple subdisciplines, which to varying extents represent epistemic communities. Brief sketches of progress (advance) and cumulation in several subdisciplines are offered.     

科技兴市:佛山跨世纪的战略选择

作者运用理论分析和实证分析相结合的方法对佛山市经济发展的实践予以深刻剖视后指出:佛山市经济建设处在从物质投入主导型向科技进步主导塑转变的转折点上,在跨世纪的经济发展与经济竞争中,佛山市必须实行科技兴市的新发展战略,作者对佛山市科技兴市战略的涵义,目标,条件作了深入分析,并进而设计了科技兴市战略的运行机制和政策落点。     

What to do with “I Don't Know:” Elicitation in Ethnographic & Survey Interviews

When a researcher enters an interview, she has already construed it as being a standard type of communicative event. This article considers how a researcher's construal of a communicative event as either an ethnographic or survey interview shapes the production of information. Interview standards entail epistemological assumptions that directly inform the type of information sought and produced. I consider this process through a comparison of the elicitation techniques I employed in survey and ethnographic interviews conducted during research in Mexico. I draw on theory in linguistic anthropology on the nature of meaning in language, examining how dialogicality and interaction are essential to understanding the construal of communicative events.     

1917年京直水灾与赈济情况略述

1917年,京直地区出现了数十年未遇的大水灾,一百多个县被淹,几百万人口受灾,灾情十分严重。水灾发生后,北洋政府和社会各界予以高度重视,施行了一系列赈灾措施,使灾民的困苦得到一定程度的缓解。但是,在赈灾过程中也存在着不少的弊端,使赈灾效果大打折扣,这是由当时的社会政治环境所造成的。     

机械设计技能培训功能的教学模块

文章根据专业学习和技能培训的关系,设计了本科教学的机械设计技能培训模块,为培养大学生的设计技能提供了一个实践平台。     

Interfamily economic exchange: A function of culture or economics?

This study explores differences in inter-household exchange of goods and services in Anglo- and Mexican-American families controlling for income level and for ethnicity. The extent of such exchange, its perceived importance to the family's quality of life, satisfaction with the exchange, and the relation of persons in the exchange process are examined. Significant differences are found more often between higher income Anglo- and Mexican-Americans than between low-income families, both in the family providing goods and services for others and in the receipt of them. Higher income Mexican-American families are more likely than their Anglo- counterparts to exchange with relatives. Ethnic effects are more prevalent in higher income households than in low-income households. Economic effects are more predominant than ethnic effects.This study contributes to interregional Agricultural Experiment Station Research Project NC-128, Quality of Life as Influenced by Area of Residence. Cooperating states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Texas.Flora L. Williams' current research interests include income adequacy, financial problems, and indicators of change in economic well-being. She is an Associate Professor, Consumer Sciences and Retailing, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.     

Origins and destinies: Immigration to the United States since World War II

Contemporary immigration to the United States and the formation of new ethnic groups are the complex and unintended social consequences of the expansion of the nation to its post-World War II position of global hegemony. Immigrant communities in the United States today are related to a history of American military, political, economic, and cultural involvement and intervention in the sending countries, especially in Asia and the Caribbean Basin, and to the linkages that are formed in the process that open a variety of legal and illegal migration pathways. The 19.8 million foreign-born persons counted in the 1990 U.S. census formed the largest immigrant population in the world, though in relative terms, only 7.9% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, a lower proportion than earlier in this century. Today's immigrants are extraordinarily diverse, a reflection of polar-opposite types of migrations embedded in very different historical and structural contexts. Also, unlike the expanding economy that absorbed earlier flows from Europe, since the 1970s new immigrants have entered an hourglass economy with reduced opportunities for social mobility, particularly among the less educated, and new waves of refugees have entered a welfare state with expanded opportunities for public assistance. This paper seeks to make sense of the new diversity. A typology of contemporary immigrants is presented, and their patterns of settlement, their distinctive social and economic characteristics compared to major native-born racial-ethnic groups, and their different modes of incorporation in—and consequences for—American society are considered.     

Can we rationally learn to coordinate?

In this paper we examine the issue whether individual rationality considerations are sufficient to guarantee that individuals will learn to coordinate. This question is central in any discussion of whether social phenomena (read: conventions) can be explained in terms of a purely individualistic approach. We argue that the positive answers to this general question that have been obtained in some recent work require assumptions which incorporate some convention. This conclusion may be seen as supporting the viewpoint of institutional individualism in contrast to psychological individualism.     

Professor mom: Woman's work in a man's world

This essay identifies parallels between the traits assigned to gender work roles and the teaching/research division of labor at research universities. The character and definition of undergraduate teaching at research universities is very similar to what has often been described as women's work.     

Homework and domestic work

This study assesses two competing theories about the extent to which homework—paid work in the home—helps integrate work and domestic roles for men and women. Contrasting male and female homeworkers with their counterparts working outside the home, it supports some aspects of both the resource and role overload theories, but predominantly the role overload perspective. Homeworkers, especially in the working class, experience less interference between job and family life, but perform more housework and child care. They have no more leisure time nor greater marital satisfaction than those working outside the home, but receive more family assistance with their paid jobs, suggesting that they combine tasks from their first and second shifts. Working at home does not break down gender roles in domestic life. Despite time saved from commuting, male homeworkers perform no more housework than comparable men working outside the home. Thus, the gender division of unpaid household labor is not simply a matter of resources or spatial logistics.An earlier version was presented at the meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society, Providence, Rhode Island, April 1991.