关于城镇职工养老金制度改革现实取向的若干思考

由于人口老龄化和较高的工资替代率 ,城镇职工养老总额与职工工资总额的比例逐渐上升 ,因此 ,必须对我国的养老制度进行重构 :提高职工本人缴费数额 ,从现有的国有资产存量中“割一块”注入已退休职工和跨体制职工的养老金个人帐户。而改制成功必须具备三个条件 ,一是大力发展非银行金融机构确保养老金基金保值增值 ;二是发展补充养老保险与个人储蓄养老保险 ;三是要加强法制建设 ,确保养老金制度的有法可依     

东部发达地区应加速农村人口城市化——上海市郊区农村加速城市化问题研究

在生产力迅速发展 ,经济结构发生显著变化的新形势下 ,东部发达地区应高度重视加速推进农村人口城市化的问题。论文以农村生产力处于全国领先水平的上海市郊区为例 ,对与加速农村人口城市化相关的若干问题进行了探讨 ,指出近年来上海郊区农村社会经济包括城市化虽已取得很大发展 ,但城市化仍明显滞后于工业化和非农化 ,城镇的人口规模偏小、“分散式集聚”等矛盾也比较突出。论文提出了加速上海郊区农村人口城市化的目标 ,并对其可行性作了论证。在此基础上 ,还对近期迅速推进农村城市化应采取的主要政策措施进行了研讨。     

吉林省城乡居民消费变化的特点及差异研究

随着城乡居民收入的提高 ,吉林省居民的消费水平有了显著变化 ,按可比价格计算的居民消费水平指数总体上呈上升趋势。进入 90年代以来 ,居民的消费构成也相应发生了很大的转变 ,但城乡之间仍然存在较大的差异。实践表明 ,在经济发展水平相对较高的条件下 ,居民消费的心理、水平、构成及其变化 ,对经济增长的影响力度势必呈现出越来越大的趋势     

Making space for ‘the social’: connecting sociology and professional practices in urban lighting design

Lighting is increasingly recognized as a significant social intervention by both lighting professionals and academic social scientists. However, what counts as ‘the social’ is diverse and contested, with consequences for what kind of ‘social’ is performed or invented. Based on a long‐term research programme, we argue that collaboration between sociologists and lighting professionals requires negotiating discourses and practices of ‘the social’. This paper explores the quality and kinds of spaces made for ‘the social’ in professional practices and academic collaborations, focusing on two case studies of urban lighting that demonstrate how the space of ‘the social’ is constrained and impoverished by an institutionalized division between technical and aesthetic lighting. We consider the potential role of sociologists in making more productive spaces for ‘the social’ in urban design, as part of the central sociological task of ‘inventing the social’ (Marres, Guggenheim and Wilkie 2018) in the process of studying it.     

Conjugal intimacy,gender and modernity in contemporary China

The new generation of modernity theorists have forecast the democratization of gender relations within intimate relationships in late‐modern times. Chinese society has undergone rapid and dramatic changes in its unique trajectory of political, social and economic reform. Using China as an example of a region which has been largely ignored in contemporary social theory, this article enters the debate to contest the extent to which conjugal relationships are democratized in line with modernity. We further test the assertion that modern marriages are characterized by increased self‐disclosure and communication between partners. Data from a national survey on Chinese families is analysed in relation to the level of self‐disclosure between husbands and wives; gender division of housework; household decision‐making; and home ownership. We highlight the impact of gender, cohort and location (urban, rural or migrant) on experiences of modernity and draw attention to the material, social and cultural factors which continue to shape conjugal relations in contemporary Chinese society. Based on our findings, we contest the argument that disclosing intimacy between intimate partners is a defining characteristic of modern relationships, and suggest that other social factors may condition degrees of self‐disclosure in marriage. Similarly, we question the extent to which heterosexual conjugal equality is attained: the cultural practices and values of patrilineal family organization, together with material circumstances, continue to influence marital relations in China.     

Doing gender,modestly: Conceptualizing workplace experiences of Pakistani women doctors

Using the theoretical framework of inequality regimes, this article offers a reconceptualization of purdah as it is practised, lived and experienced by women doctors of Pakistan. Based on an ethnographic study of Pakistani women doctors, this research indicates that practising purdah in the workplace is perceived as doing femininity within the hegemonic masculine workplace culture of Pakistan. In Pakistani organizations, individual and institutionalized practices of purdah create a gendered substructure which marginalizes women doctors by dictating the norms of conduct, international ethics, organization of physical space and work allocation. Patriarchal interpretations of religious doctrines of modesty provide legitimacy to the existence of these inequality regimes. Based on this, the article argues for a system‐level theorization of purdah that accounts for both individual and institutional norms of veil. Such conceptualization contributes to our understanding of how religion intersects with gender, class and race to create complex systemic inequities in organizational structure.     

Knowing cows: Transformative mobilizations of human and non‐human bodies in an emotionography of the slaughterhouse

This ‘emotionography’ of the slaughterhouse elucidates how the identities of both human and non‐human individuals are constructed by line and lairage workers. Hegemonic masculine ideals that underpin slaughterhouse work mean that the emotions of workers as well as the emotional experience of cattle are either denied, diminished or repressed. Based on fieldwork in an Irish slaughterhouse, I articulate how the industrial slaughter of animals entangles human and non‐human life in metamorphic processes that seek to diminish the emotionality of individuals, maintaining the boundary between human/non‐human animals. These transformations simultaneously pacify the emotional toll of killing non‐human individuals and reinforce perceptions of cows as sellable, killable and edible in the commodification of bovine bodies. Amidst the relative absence of emotions in slaughterhouse ethnographies, this article reveals how emotions emerge, erupt and confound the act of slaughtering cattle for slaughterhouse workers unsettling categorizations of masculinity and ‘animals as food’.     

Use of Redundant Industrial Buildings as Injections into the Cultural Sector in Norway

Prime aim is to examine the way the culture sector reuses industrial buildings to instigate cultural activities in the municipalities. The discussion of various actors’ motivation for engagement is based on results from a case study, supplemented with findings from a coarse-meshed telephone survey. At national level overarching political guidelines can be traced back to white papers concerning cultural policy, urban transformation and cultural heritage, and the municipalities’ cultural policies mirror these guidelines. What tends to decide if such initiatives are considered successful are local abilities to cross sectorial divisions and instigate cooperation between municipal planners, private entrepreneurs and NGOs.     

Town Centre Management: Outlook from Portugal

In the last two decades, the Portuguese Government has responded to the decline of centres of commerce. In this paper, we analyse the three different experiences of town centre management (TCM) schemes developed in Portugal since the turn of the millennium. The first two stages were developed using public sector initiatives and their impacts were limited. The third stage is still under way and is composed of private projects created by local business owners. Taking Lisbon as a case study for this third stage we conclude that these projects have become a pro-active means of intervention in Portuguese town centres.     

Observational sketching as method

This paper explores the potential of observational sketching as a social science research tool, informed by our own recent experiments with observational sketching techniques and approaches. We first outline the historical roots of academic sketching and note a recent resurgence of interest in sketching in certain disciplines. We then introduce our own explorations in sketching as method, based on a year-long collaboration between an observational artist and a group of qualitative researchers with interests in creative methods. The paper outlines some of the lessons we learnt from our partnership, focusing on three themes: (i) ‘sketchiness’; (ii) ‘concentrated seeing’ and (iii) sketching as interaction. We conclude that observational sketching generates a refreshingly different form of visual data which has considerable potential to be used as a complement to other methods, including as a participatory method and as a useful tool for thinking.