Event history modeling of world fertility survey data∗

Event history analysis seems ideally suited for the analysis of World Fertility Survey, WFS, data, which consists of full birth histories and related information, but it has not been much used for this purpose. This may be because event history analysis has practical drawbacks for WFS data, namely partial dates, computational burden, the need to take account of five clocks at once and the difficulty of interpreting coefficients.

We propose a modeling strategy for the event history analysis of WFS data which overcomes these problems, and we apply it to the previously unanalyzed WFS data from Iran. This yields estimates of the time of onset of fertility decline and the extent to which it was due to compositional changes in the population. It also enables us to determine whether it was a period effect, a cohort effect, or both. These results would have been hard to obtain using other approaches. In addition, the usefulness of ACE as an exploratory tool for determining the best coding of independent variables is illustrated.     

Breaking with English: the nation as ethnoscape1

Broken English and the bone people, a New Zealand film and novel respectively, fall into the category of nation‐building texts. Many narratives in this ‘genre’ accomplish cultural reunification through the family. However, these two works are particularly intriguing because they use land and specific spaces in order to work through these transcultural shifts as they are played out within the main characters' relationships. ‘Breaking with English’ is therefore not only a linguistic concept, but also a metaphor for the transculturation of bodies and land undertaken throughout these two titles.     

伊朗介入中东地区事务的动力及限度

近年来,伴随中东变局的演化以及伊朗与域内外国家间关系的复杂变化,代理人战争成为伊朗地区战略的重要政策工具。为应对不同对手,伊朗在海湾地区、阿拉伯半岛南部和地中海东岸地区分别扶持不同的代理人,并形成了三个次级战略板块。伊朗推行代理人战争的动力主要包括通过代理人战争制衡与掣肘美国、以色列、沙特等全球及地区对手;巩固与扩大本国在中东地区的战略影响力;避免与对手直接开战,实现以最低成本获取最大化收益的战略目标。然而,受代理人能力与战略意愿的改变、国内政局以及民众支持度变化、对手反制和新冠疫情等因素的影响,伊朗推行代理人战争存在明显限度,代理人战争的效果不应被过度夸大。     

伊朗人口政策的演变及特点

1979年伊朗伊斯兰共和国建立后,伊朗政府根据自身民族宗教文化和政治经济现实,不断调整本国的人口政策;先鼓励人口生育,提倡早婚早育,增强本国人力资源储备;两伊战争结束后,鉴于本国资源与环境压力,通过提倡和鼓励的柔性办法减少人口生育,并取得举世瞩目的成效;2005年以后,由于人口增长率下降过快,为了预防将来的老龄化危机,伊朗逐步取消限制生育的政策,目前基本改为鼓励人口生育,但在城市化和现代化的压力下,随着教育水平的提高,人们的生育愿望很低,生育成本加大,人口增长不会太快.     

A first-digit anomaly in the 2009 Iranian presidential election

A local bootstrap method is proposed for the analysis of electoral vote-count first-digit frequencies, complementing the Benford's Law limit. The method is calibrated on five presidential-election first rounds (2002–2006) and applied to the 2009 Iranian presidential-election first round. Candidate K has a highly significant (p<0.15% ) excess of vote counts starting with the digit 7. This leads to other anomalies, two of which are individually significant at p～ 0.1% and one at p～ 1%. Independently, Iranian pre-election opinion polls significantly reject the official results unless the five polls favouring candidate A are considered alone. If the latter represent normalised data and a linear, least-squares, equal-weighted fit is used, then either candidates R and K suffered a sudden, dramatic (70%±15% ) loss of electoral support just prior to the election, or the official results are rejected (p～ 0.01% ).     

多向度思维探析——美国与伊朗核危机下的合作

美伊核危机实质是美国推行全球霸权战略与伊朗实施地区强国战略上的冲突,致使两国矛盾不断升级.核危机下美伊两国的社会政治心理、美伊两国的整体实力、美伊战争所付出的代价、美伊两国的决策能力四个方面的制约因素,促使美伊两国在策略上,选择走对话和谈判的道路,致力于通过政治和外交手段和平解决伊朗核问题.     

第三世界妇女的现实经验与西方女性主义思想的张力——浅析斯皮瓦克的女性主义

斯皮瓦克的研究让英语世界的读者熟悉了法国女性主义,但是同时她又质疑以法国女性主义为代表的西方女性主义。以西方女性主义自我为中心来解释妇女面临的问题,界定妇女的政治目标,忽略了妇女之间所存在的种族与阶级差异,遮蔽了第三世界妇女的经验。     

Impact and significance of the 2016 ‘Campaign to Change the Male Face of Parliament’ in Iran

Iranian women have never represented more than 5.9% of sitting parliamentarians in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This compares poorly with relevant regional and global averages. In the lead up to the 2016 parliamentary elections, the women’s movement took action to address the low representation of women in the legislature by launching the ‘Campaign to Change the Male Face of Parliament’. The Campaign did not reach its goal of achieving 50 seats for women in the 2016–2020 Parliament. It was also subject to some criticism for effectively (or apparently) legitimising what many women view as a broken form of government unable to promote and protect women’s rights in any meaningful sense. However, the Campaign was an important exercise in democracy and had significant higher-order impacts on voter behaviour and women’s capacities. Through personal communication with three Campaign activists, this profile provides an authoritative account of the Campaign experience and its impact and significance for the future of women’s empowerment in Iran.     

Shi'i political discourse and class mobilization in the tobacco movement of 1890–1892

The political role of Shi'i religion in the tobacco movement of 1890–1892 against the Qajar state and a British company in Iran is considered. Using this historically significant event, this article pursues a dual objective. First, it makes a modest attempt to clarify the connection between ideology and class action. The utility of conceiving ideology as a discourse, a set of general principles and concepts, rituals and symbols that shape class action, is suggested. Second, after summarizing and criticizing the existing explanations of Shi'i politics in the 19th century, it offers an alternative interpretation of the oppositional role of Shi'ism in the politics of late 19th-century Iran. I argue that in the tobacco movement Shi'i Islam constituted a language for addressing the problem of British domination; it transcended class differences and provided an effective tactic for mobilizing support against a British monopoly. The merchants' capacity to act was not simply the result of their organization and resources but was enhanced by Shi'i discourse.An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, Toronto, November 1989.     

Voices of girls with disabilities in rural Iran

This paper investigates the interaction of gender, disability and education in rural Iran, which is a relatively unexplored field of research. The responses of 10 female students with disabilities from Isfahan indicated that the obstacles they faced included marginalization, difficulties in getting from home to school, difficulties within the school building itself, and discrimination by teachers, classmates and school authorities. The data collected for the study contain a wide range of conservative gendered discourses, and show how traditional gender beliefs interact with disability to aggravate the problems faced in education by young women with disabilities. It is hoped that the findings will raise awareness among policy-makers of the many formidable obstacles that make it difficult for young women with disabilities to achieve their full potential in education.