The Role of Housing in Community Health Promotion Among the Aged

Abstract

A total of 89 aged residents living independently in single and double occupancy housing in an historic, traditionally planned neighborhood in New Orleans were surveyed with respect to their engagement in the outdoor realm in their immediate neighborhood. An index was developed, comprised of variables spanning the scale of the private dwelling to neighborhood scale. Certain dwelling attributes, health status factors, lifestyle factors, and neighborhood factors were found to be associated with a disinclination to walk outdoors in the community. Among the findings, improperly designed porches and insufficient semi-private exterior space adjacent to the dwelling function as strong deterrents to health-promoting walking activity outdoors, closely followed by fear associated with being victimized by crime in one's immediate neighborhood. Such conditions were found to pose a barrier to full engagement with the community in what on the surface would otherwise appear to be an imminently pedestrian-scaled residential setting. Study limitations, and directions for future research within the environmental design disciplines are discussed for both historic neighborhood settings and in new development.     

“They Don't Want to Hear Us”

Abstract

This study used focus groups to understand Hispanic elders' and adult children's concerns about end-of-life planning. Ten older persons participated in the elders group, and ten adult children in a separate group. Themes in both groups included communication, control, burden, spirituality, religious issues, and importance of family relationships. Communication regarding end-of-life planning was of particular importance to both elders and adult children. The most striking indication of the challenges in communication about end-of-life issues is the insistence by both the elders and the adult children that their children/parents do not want to have these discussions.     

The stars hang down over the great emptiness of the level plain,and the moon bobs on the running waters of the Great River: thirty years of New Era research on the essay

新时期以来的散文研究已走过了30年的历程。由于种种原因，散文研究一直受到 轻视和责难。本文从作家作品研究、专题性研究、散文史建设和散文理论建构诸方 面，对30年来散文研究进行了全面系统的梳理和评析，并追寻散文研究长期被冷落的 原因。文章认为21世纪的散文研究要走向深入和阔大，必须从三方面用力：其一是要 建立现代意识的散文批评视野；其二是“化西方”与“中国化”；其三是思维方式与 研究方法的改变。这三方面不但是认识和解决当代散文问题的重要维度，而且对散文 研究具有方法论的意义。

关键词: 新时期?散文研究?现代视野?理论建构

New Era research on the essay and other occasional writing already has a history of thirty years. For various reasons, however, such research has consistently been slighted and condemned. This article offers a systematic and comprehensive review and analysis of the last thirty years of research in this field in terms of writers and their works, research on special topics, and the construction of the history and theory of this genre, and explores the reasons why it has been slighted for so long. To deepen and broaden this research in the new century, we must exert ourselves in three areas: first, we must adopt a modern vision of criticism of the essay; second, we must “digest Western theories” and “Sinicize essay writing and research”; and third, we must change our research methods and way of thinking. These three points not only offer an important dimension for understanding and solving contemporary issues relating to the essay, but also have methodological significance for research.     

The resettlement in Canada of 4,527 Polish ex‐servicemen, 1946–47

After the Second World War, a Canadian immigration policy was negotiated with the United Kingdom whereby Polish ex‐servicemen were resettled in Canada. The policy was developed and presented with great care and resulted in 4,527 Polish ex‐servicemen coming to Canada in 1946 and 1947. Domestic and international functions and dysfunctions of the scheme for Canada and the Polish ex‐servicemen are analysed to determine its success or failure. With regard to the short‐ and long‐term contributions the Poles made to agriculture, the scheme was a failure.     

论巴赫音乐的多重风格特征

文章以西方音乐史上承前启后的复调音乐大师约·塞·巴赫及其音乐创作风格为研究内容,论述巴赫在继承巴洛克时期复调音乐、开启主调和声风格乃至近现代音乐思维的音乐创作中所形成的多重风格特征。从历史的视角提供了认识巴赫及其音乐风格较为广泛的文献背景与史料知识,为研究巴赫的音乐文献,把握其创作风格,提供理论依据。     

Eurocentrism,state-centrism and sexual self-determination in the construction of a global democratic organization

ABSTRACT

Based on conversations with and publications of Samir Amin, the article explores connections between his ideas on global political strategy and sexual self-determination. One of the questions is about struggles related to homosexuality in Africa. To what extent did he believe that some of the demands for sexual self-determination, including certain forms of feminism and LGBT rights, were so overly embedded in Eurocentrism that they were not fully suitable for popular struggles in many parts of the Global South? The question is framed in the context of state-centric conceptions of the political. Even if some of the analysis includes a critical tone toward his strategical options, it also highlights the continuing importance of Samir Amin as a point of reference for future struggles to create transnational and global instruments for democratic transformations.     

The new EU industrial policy: authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives

ABSTRACT

In 2017, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker declared the re-industrialization of the European Union (EU) a top priority. The new EU industrial policy seeks to boost industrial competitiveness and leverage investments into manufacturing, thereby increasing industry’s share of EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 20% by 2020. What may appear to be a Keynesian industrial policy and thus a move away from the EU’s previous neoliberal agenda, however, seeks to calibrate a further neoliberal structural adjustment in a highly authoritarian fashion. Internal devaluation through devaluing labour, intensifying competition and reducing corporate taxes takes centre-stage. As an auxiliary to the European Semester, national productivity boards have been established to monitor wage developments alongside labour productivity and to suggest policy adjustments when cost competitiveness lags behind the Eurozone average and that of the main trading partners. Not only have formal democratic institutions and organized labour been circumvented in the decision-making process regarding such boards, they will have little voice in the future, and this an area that hitherto fell largely within the scope of member states: wage bargaining. Hence, the new EU industrial policy needs to be discredited, de-legitimized and thus, politicized. A political counter-project, rooted in an alternative industrial policy geared towards fostering horizontal and democratic solidarity economy initiatives which have proliferated since 2008, is discussed in the article’s closing pages.     

Capitalism as a social movement: the corporate and neoliberal reconstructions of the American political economy in the twentieth century

This paper examines the ways in which social movements based among leading capitalists have remade the US political economy. In the first part we examine the period from the late 1880s through the 1920s, sketching the emergence of a hegemonic movement that accomplished the re-embedding of capitalist social relations during the corporate reconstruction of American capitalism. In the second, we examine the disembedding of capitalist relations during the contemporary neoliberal era. The paper makes three major arguments. First, capitalists not just subaltern groups resort to collective action outside of institutional channels of authority and power. Second, during organic crises the movements of capitalists will join with movements of subaltern groups to create hegemonic projects, whose disparate supporters are articulated by discourses. Third, the concept of ‘social movement’ itself should be understood as a constituent part of a larger social formation and not sealed off from features of capitalism and the state. Indeed, hegemonic social movements have reconstructed the larger landscape that social movement theory normally takes for granted as a background. In applying this approach to the contested topic of neoliberalism, we argue that it was not primarily a class-based coup, a policy, ideology, or culture shift but a discourse that united elements of the left and the right as well as a ‘historic bloc’ with homes in both major parties. During both periods subaltern groups played an important role in the hegemonic movements that created corporate capitalism and later neoliberalism.     

农村基础教育培养新型农民的适应性改革

培养新型农民是农村基础教育适应新农村建设需要的必然要求，农村基础教育只有树立服务农村经济社会发展的目标，切实转变教育教学理念，提高教育质量，形成自身办学特色，才能在提高新一代农村劳动者的素质、推进新农村建设中发挥独特的作用。     

Moral dialogs

Moral dialogs are social processes through which people form new shared moral understandings. They differ from reasoned deliberations because they are focused on values and not on facts, logic or reason. They differ from irrational passions because value statements require moral justifications. Such dialogs take place not just in families and communities, but often on national levels and sometimes even on transnational ones. They played a core role in major societal changes brought about by social movements, such as those that advanced civil rights, women's rights, and the protection of the environment. Most importantly, when successfully concluded, moral dialogs affect not just attitudes and values, but also voluntary behavior as well as laws. Although dialogs may differ greatly in their normative content, they have the same basic sociological format and follow the same basic ‘natural history.’ The article introduces the author's conception of what constitutes moral dialogs by drawing on available evidence, and provides a framework for additional research on the subject at hand.