Specialization and the Survival of Self‐Help Organizations

This article examines the survival rates of 589 self‐help organizations in order to understand how self‐help niches, organizations specializing in biomedical, human services, and behavioral health, differentially impact longevity. Drawing on a study of the self‐help movement, we examine how the various mechanisms by which specialization impacts self‐help movement organizations' chances of survival. Extending the concepts of embeddedness, countervailing powers, and organizational specialization to self‐help organizations, we investigate how formal structures and professional alliances differentially promote longevity. Results show how formalization enhances self‐help organizations' longevity, and serves as a mechanism by which specialization impacts organizational viability. While formalization has a robust and beneficial impact on longevity, some professional linkages are negatively associated with survival and others are positively associated with it.     

Monstrosities and moral publics

Interdisciplinary scholarship on neoliberal urban governmentality has been attentive to the knowledges and techniques of government currently emerging at the interface of local state politics and invested claims of voluntary private actors such as corporate partners and philanthropic agencies. This article draws attention to the workings of the aesthetic as an epistemological grounding for the rationalization of urban rule. Specifically, I explore a Toronto, Canada-based philanthropic agency’s reliance on a mise-en-scene of urban terror to animate its own self-validated knowledges about targeted inner-suburban subjects and spaces. In their circulation and demand for public address, the agency’s graphic public service announcements, launched in 2007, herald what I argue is a moralized set of knowledges about municipal renewal that has its own normative orientations grounded in a neoliberal political rationality, and tangentially, in racialized security imperatives. I detail various dimensions of the social life of a video associated with this public service campaign targeting ‘youth at risk’, considering the ethical, political and economic valences it was expected to convey; its semiotic exchange with other images and representations of disenfranchised spaces, subjects and communities; and the publics it attempted to interpellate. Importantly, given the agency’s current standing as a prominent player in Canadian urban policy arenas, I pay analytical attention to the visual campaign as a site for the production of knowledges about proper urban citizenship and social governance, and as such, a strategic-orienting device for urban policy interventions and directives.     

水工美学的理论框架

人文水利要解决的是水与文化、水利与人的关系问题。水工美学的研究对象是山、水、水工建筑物的序结构,是美学四载体形、光、与声、色的最优配置。我们应以诗心、书骨、画眼、园趣、乐感、文蕴、哲理去建构水工美学。     

英国马克思主义美学在中国的译介与研究

目前,中国学术界对英国马克思主义美学著作的译介与研究存在着不均衡的局面,即译介正在走向繁荣,而研究却相对薄弱。本文认为,在英国马克思主义美学著作的译介和研究过程中还存在探讨不够深入、留有空白领域、忽视方法论的研究与转换等问题,今后应予以修正与完善。     

中国瓷器审美论略

中国瓷器是中国陶瓷史上最重要的篇章。审视中国瓷器的发展历史沿革,按其自身的文化脉络,至今仍然同人民生活密切结合,并维系着中华民族精神和审美情趣。     

论黑格尔艺术美定性的伦理内涵

黑格尔的“美就是理念的感性显现”这一美学论断本身包含了艺术美的定性过程。理念是真是美也是善,要符合道德的要求。因此,艺术美的定性也必然地显示出深刻的伦理内涵。黑格尔在理想的定性中对这一问题进行了辩证的阐述。理想的定性,单就它本身来看,表现为“神性—伦理”的演化,也就是伦理内涵的演化;就动作或情节来看,表现为伦理实体在“情况—情境—情节”,伦理内涵表现为这一过程中发生的分化、冲突及其艺术价值。黑格尔艺术美定性的伦理内涵昭示了艺术的伦理道德价值,这在当前伦理观念发现剧烈变化、艺术创作中的伦理道德底线一再下降的时期,无疑具有很好的现实意义。     

论李泽厚的实践美学

李泽厚的实践美学大体上可以分为三个时期:20世纪50—60年代前期为萌芽和初步形成时期;70年代末—80年代前期为发展完善时期;80年代后期至今为深入时期。对实践美学的主要概念和命题,如主体性、积淀、自然的人化、内在自然的人化、新感性、人的自然化等进行梳理及对实践美学的形成、发展和深化过程的知识社会学研究,不仅可以使我们更清晰地把握实践美学作为一种学术理论逐渐形成和发展的历史过程,同时也可以使我们对中国的现代性进程研究多了一个视角———一个现代美学学术史的视角。李泽厚对美学的研究从来不是空中楼阁,不是形而上的纯粹思辨,他的所有的问题都植根于现实生活并力图在此基础上为中国甚至整个人类、为每个个体幸福生活寻找出一个方向。李泽厚的实践美学不仅从美学上提出了一系列有价值的命题和学说,而对中国的现代性启蒙产生了重要作用并且必将对新世纪中国社会的精神文化建设发挥重要作用。     

Modelling period fertility: Schooling and intervals following a birth in Eastern Africa

We describe a regression-based approach to the modelling of age-, order-, and duration-specific period fertility, using retrospective survey data. The approach produces results that are free of selection biases and can be used to study differential fertility. It is applied to Demographic and Health Survey data for Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe to investigate differential trends in fertility by education. Parity progression fell and the intervals following each birth lengthened between the 1970s and 2000s in all four countries. Fertility fell most among women with secondary education. In contrast to other world regions, postponement of successive births for extended periods accounted for much of the initial drop in fertility in these African countries. However, family size limitation by women with secondary education in Ethiopia and Kenya and longer birth spacing in Zimbabwe also played significant roles. Thus, birth control is being adopted in Eastern Africa in response to diverse changes in fertility preferences.     

闻一多新诗中的民族化建构思想研究

强调中西艺术的融会贯通,这是闻一多的一贯主张。闻一多认为,只有时时刻刻想着我是个中国人,才能做出真正的中国的新诗,因此,在他短暂的诗歌创作生涯中,他始终把新诗的民族性建构作为旨归并长期躬耕于此,他的诗歌表现了对民族历史与文化的关注,对祖国的热爱与对祖国命运的忧虑,对人民命运的同情与对黑暗势力的控诉,在内在精神方面呈现出显著的民族性。     

从苏童的《妻妾成群》探究中国的女性权力问题

本文分析苏童小说《妻妾成群》,深刻地揭示了女性生存权力的抗争。