Anglophone marriage-migrants in Southern Europe: a study of expat nationalism and integration dynamics

Today marriage-migration remains the dominant form of naturalization in Italy and Greece, even for women from such high-income countries as the USA. Pilot studies of intra-OECD female migrants to Southern Europe show that the majority of them marry local men, consider their matrimony a mistake, and feel isolated. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive knowledge about dynamics of their socio-cultural integration or expat nationalism (although scholarship generally acknowledges a strong relationship between these two processes). Based on narrative-biographic interviews with 60 Anglophone female expatriates married to Italian and Greek men, our study explores the women's negotiation of culture within the context of their Italian and Greek families, and looks at emerging challenges for their integration. We show that these women are nationalistic and culturally stringent actors, who often find it extremely difficult fully to learn and integrate to the new cultures of Southern Europe.     

虚拟世界网络用户生活方式测量模型研究

近年来,以"第二人生"为代表的虚拟世界在互联网应用领域所产生的影响及其蕴含的巨大商机已经引起企业界的高度重视.然而,关于虚拟世界的理论研究目前仅处于起步阶段,尚缺乏对虚拟世界用户生活方式等行为规律系统深入的认识,可供借鉴的研究方法和测量工具也很有限.基于现有的关于现实世界消费者生活方式和网络用户生活方式的研究,提出虚拟世界生活方式的概念及其测量模型,并采用在"第二人生"中进行街头拦访和问卷调查的研究方式荻取数据,对该模型进行量表设计和实证分析;通过探索性因子分析和验证性因子分析,初步建立包含个性满足、人际交往、社会融入和虚拟体验4个维度的虚拟世界生活方式测量模型,用以综合反映虚拟世界居民的行为、兴趣、价值观和态度等基本特征.为今后关于虚拟世界居民生活方式的研究与应用提供可以借鉴的测量工具,同时也表明在虚拟世界进行街头拦访这一实证研究方法具有可行性.     

Toward a critical sociology of lifestyle migration: reconceptualizing migration and the search for a better way of life

This article places under critical and reflexive examination the theoretical underpinnings of the concept of lifestyle migration. Developed to explain the migration of the relatively affluent in search of a better way of life, this concept draws attention to the role of lifestyle within migration, alongside understandings of migration as one stage within the ongoing lifestyle choices and trajectories of individual migrants. Through a focus on two paradigms that are currently at work within theorizations of this social phenomenon – individualization and mobilities – we evaluate their contribution to this flourishing field of research. In this way, we demonstrate the limitations and constraints of these for understanding lifestyle migration; engaging with long‐standing debates around structure and agency to make a case for the recognition of history in understanding the pursuit of ‘a better way of life’; questioning the extent to which meaning is made through movement, and the politics and ethics of replacing migration with mobilities. Through this systematic consideration, we pave the way for re‐invigorated theorizing on this topic, and the development of a critical sociology of lifestyle migration.     

论构建和谐社会生活方式

构建和谐社会生活方式是21世纪中国社会生活方式现代化的基本目标。构建和谐社会生活方式是实现马克思主义未来社会理想的需要,是弘扬中华民族和谐精神的需要,是全面建设小康社会的需要,是中国现代化战略发展的需要。其基本目标是以人为本的社会和谐,其基本模式是“文明、健康、节约、合作、民族”的社会生活方式。     

Women in Denmark - why do they die so young? Risk factors for premature death

In Denmark the life expectancy of women has been declining since 1980, and is now the lowest of all OECD countries. Based upon analyses of the different trends in mortality of 35–64-year-old women in Denmark compared to women in Norway and Sweden, national differentials in external determinants of morbidity and premature mortality are described. The excess mortality of women in Denmark is linked to lifestyle factors: tobacco smoking, alcohol and drug consumption. We discuss the possible impact of other external factors: full-time employment, work load, job insecurity, unemployment, single motherhood, and social isolation. The main hypothesis is that the daily life of women in Denmark has deteriorated over the years, and that changes in lifestyle and behaviour in part can be explained by evolved strategies in order to cope with anxiety and strain. Contrary to conditions in Sweden, the welfare system in Denmark has not facilitated the combination of child-bearing and paid work. The analysis points to the importance of including data of external stressors in discussions of national variances in lifestyle factors linked to premature mortality.     

Dangerous Houses

ABSTRACT

The home, in its material and symbolic dimensions, holds a special place within the Anglophone countries of the West as a sphere of privacy and security, of sanctuary. Lifestyle television has played a key role in this process. Yet this article explores how two Australian lifestyle television programs, Is Your House Killing You? and Carbon Cops, present the home as a site of danger, either to the private sphere and its inhabitants or to the broader environmental public sphere. It is argued that such programs play a role in disseminating neoliberal ideologies, encouraging the implementation of governmental regimes to discipline, transform, and ultimately self-regulate householder and consumer behavior. Through such regimes, the subjects produce less dangerous houses, and the home is restored as a sanctuary and site of ontological security.     

消费社会与生活方式的变革

消费社会的到来改变了人的生活方式,具体表现为三个方面:人的需要由内在生成转变为外部制造,自然的真实需要被市场的虚假需要所取代;人的社会角色实现了由生产者向消费者的转变",消费力"成为经济发展的强大动力;消费信贷日益盛行,预支未来和负债消费成为普遍的生活方式。从消费社会带来的生活方式转变的角度分析当下的经济危机,可以看出这是一场生活方式的危机,消费手段的过度创新只是外在表象,资本本性带来的生产过剩才是其内在根源。     

The Theory of Risk Homeostasis: Implications for Safety and Health

No strategy for countermeasure design or future directions of research in the areas of human behavior which leads to traffic accidents or lifestyle-related diseases can be rationally developed without an acceptable working theory of human behavior in these domains. For this purpose, an attempt has been made to conceptually integrate the available evidence with respect to the role of human behavior in the causation of road accidents. From this integrative effort it would seem that the accident rate is ultimately dependent on one factor only, the target level of risk in the population concerned which acts as the reference variable in a homeostatic process relating accident rate to human motivation. Various policy tactics for the purpose of modifying this target level of risk have been pointed out and the theory of risk homeostasis has been speculatively extended to the areas of lifestyle-dependent morbidity and mortality.     

低碳生活方式支撑体系研究——基于协同演化的分析框架

目前国内尚无对低碳生活方式支撑体系的系统研究,对低碳生活方式支撑问题已有的研究,其主流方法还局限于线性的单因素静态分析,缺乏综合性和系统性。运用系统学、协同学、经济学、演化学等学科的理论和方法,有助于推进这一研究,并形成综合性的协同演化分析框架。因为低碳生活方式支撑应有一个整体的框架,并协同演化,才能形成放大的协同支撑力;协同演化遵循一定的逻辑过程并能基于此构建由层次结构模块、动力机制模块、功能形态模块、新的有序模块等四大模块有机构成的理论模型;协同演化具有多向因果关系、多层级和嵌入性、非线性和复杂性、正反馈和有机性、路径依赖和可控性等五个基本特征,其动力机制包括国际社会目的性控制与反馈力、支撑体系内在确定性协同力以及支撑体系随机性动力。     

两代农民工生存方式代际差异分析研究

受教育程度、时代变迁和文化观念等因素的影响,农民工内部产生了巨大变化,新生代农民工与老一代农民工在务工目的、流动范围、职业选择、劳动条件、生活方式和利益诉求等方面存在明显的差异。了解和正视这些差异,能更好地把握新生代农民工问题,促进社会和谐发展。