当代印度南部婆罗门状况的个案分析——以奈保尔《印度:百万叛变的今天》为例

当代印度社会正发生着极大的变动,社会各阶层都在极力维护固有地位和宗教传统的稳定,并极力在这种变动中争取着自身社会利益的最大化。其中,南印度婆罗门种姓在逐步丧失传统的各项特权和优势地位的同时,也在努力适应、应对当代社会的新变化和新挑战。英国作家V.S.奈保尔的《印度:百万叛变的今天》一书提供了较为翔实、客观的口述史资料。以书中生活在孟买、班加罗尔、马德拉斯、加尔各达等南印度城市中的当代婆罗门阶层作为个案,可探究出其面对传统社会生活中的各个层面发生变动时的态度与应对及个体内在的深层原因,并在一定程度上考察社会变动与文化传统之间的互动关系。     

Social identities and political cleavages: the role of political context

Summary. Using a novel method, the paper investigates the influence of social group identities on attitudes and on voting in a variety of political contexts. Examining the major regions of Britain, Canada and the USA, we find considerable national and regional diversity in the nature of social cleavages. For example, social class and race had widely different effects across societies, but within societies their effects on attitudes and on voting were very similar. However, despite that, age and religion had a similar effect on attitudes across societies; the effects on voting varied considerably. The significant within-country differences underline the importance of using region, rather than country, as the unit of analysis. More importantly, these results highlight the role of political context, especially competing cleavages and the structure of party competition, in the establishment of politically relevant social cleavages.     

Silphids in urban forests: Diversity and function

Many ecologists have examined the process of how urbanization reduces biological diversity but rarely have its ecological consequences been assessed. We studied forest-dwelling burying beetles (Coleoptera: Silphidae)—a guild of insects that requires carrion to complete their life cycles—along an urban-rural gradient of land use in Maryland. Our objective was to determine how forest fragmentation associated with urbanization affects (1) beetle community diversity and structure and (2) the ecological function provided by these insects, that is, decomposition of vertebrate carcasses. Forest fragmentation strongly reduced burying beetle diversity and abundance, and did so far more pervasively than urbanization of the surrounding landscape. The likelihood that beetles interred experimental baits was a direct, positive function of burying beetle diversity. We conclude that loss of burying beetle diversity resulting from forest fragmentation could have important ecological consequences in urban forests.     

Development of the Mental Illness and Disorder Understanding Scale

Abstract: Although administrative bodies such as community health centers have implemented various awareness campaigns to promote community understanding of mental health and to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness and disorder, there have been few reports that have quantitatively analyzed the effects of these campaigns in Japan. Therefore, this study was conducted for the purpose of developing the evaluative “Mental Illness and Disorder Understanding Scale (MIDUS)” for awareness campaigns and assessing its reliability and validity. A survey was conducted on 1 004 community residents using a self‐administered questionnaire. An assessment of the reliability and validity of the scale was then conducted. The Cronbach a coefficient of the MIDUS was 0.78, thus indicating adequate reliability. Factor analysis of the MIDUS revealed three factors: “Treatability of illness”, “Efficacy of medication” and “Social recognition of illness”. In addition, a significant correlation was observed between the MIDUS and existing scales, and fixed criterion‐based validity was demonstrated. The MIDUS utilizes items worded in the form of affirmative expressions so as to avoid promoting new bias. It was confirmed to be both reliable and valid, thereby suggesting its usefulness as an evaluative scale of awareness campaigns.     

An Existential Approach to Risk Perception

Existential, or existential-phenomenological philosophical approaches to the social psychology of risk perception provide a novel framework for understanding issues that are common to all humanity, such as fear of death, freedom and responsibility, isolation and meaninglessness, as these anxieties are a function of existing, or being-in-the-world. These fundamental anxieties can be related theoretically to the ways people perceive risks within social and cultural milieus, and can also be used practically within case studies, as demonstrated in the three examples presented, which examine perceptions of climate change, food-related risks, and environmental awareness via a mixture of quantitative and qualitative techniques. The discussion focuses on the possible insights that can be gained from taking an existential perspective on risk perception, and relates notions of contemporary technologically-oriented societies to the existential challenges faced by individuals and societies in the contemporary world.     

多样性·批评性·学术性－评《文艺湘军百家文库·文艺评论方阵》

《文艺湘军百家文库·文艺评论方阵》及先此出版的《当代湖南文艺评论家选集》丛书,集中汇聚了湖南文学批评50年的主要成果,展示了老中青三代批评家的探寻的风姿。其主要特点突出地表现在异彩纷呈的多样性、真诚鲜明的批评性、科学严谨的学术性等方面。     

Cognitive and interpersonal abilities related to the primary activities of R&D managers

This study attempted to identify the primary activities performed by R&D managers at different supervisory levels, and the cognitive and interpersonal ability requirements that underlie these activities. A task inventory containing 244 managerial tasks was completed by 117 R&D managers in nine organizations. The 48 tasks which managers rated as having spent the most time were factor analyzed, resulting in the identification of three primary activities: project management, personnel supervision, and strategic planning. Furthermore, these activities varied with supervisory level, with R&D managers performing a wider range of these activities with the progression from first-line to upper-level management.Thirty R&D managers later rated the degree to which 19 cognitive and interpersonal abilities were required for performing these primary activities. Strategic planning was rated as requiring significantly higher levels of oral expression, logical reasoning, originality, fluency of ideas, oral defense, and resistance to premature judgement than was required for the other two primary activities. Personnel supervision required a higher level of social sensitivity than was required for the other two activities. Project management required high levels of information ordering, oral fact- finding ability, problem sensitivity, and oral and written comprehension. Implications of the findings for understanding R&D managerial performance and personnel staffing functions are discussed.     

文化与河流

文化与河流的关系十分特殊，文化既源于河流，又反过来改造河流。文章重点阐述了文化如何由源于河流到改造河流，如何由被动地改造河流到主动地改造河流的过程。     

What to Do at Low Doses: A Bounding Approach for Economic Analysis

To quantify the health benefits of environmental policies, economists generally require estimates of the reduced probability of illness or death. For policies that reduce exposure to carcinogenic substances, these estimates traditionally have been obtained through the linear extrapolation of experimental dose-response data to low-exposure scenarios as described in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment (1986). In response to evolving scientific knowledge, EPA proposed revisions to the guidelines in 1996. Under the proposed revisions, dose-response relationships would not be estimated for carcinogens thought to exhibit nonlinear modes of action. Such a change in cancer-risk assessment methods and outputs will likely have serious consequences for how benefit-cost analyses of policies aimed at reducing cancer risks are conducted. Any tendency for reduced quantification of effects in environmental risk assessments, such as those contemplated in the revisions to EPA's cancer-risk assessment guidelines, impedes the ability of economic analysts to respond to increasing calls for benefit-cost analysis. This article examines the implications for benefit-cost analysis of carcinogenic exposures of the proposed changes to the 1986 Guidelines and proposes an approach for bounding dose-response relationships when no biologically based models are available. In spite of the more limited quantitative information provided in a carcinogen risk assessment under the proposed revisions to the guidelines, we argue that reasonable bounds on dose-response relationships can be estimated for low-level exposures to nonlinear carcinogens. This approach yields estimates of reduced illness for use in a benefit-cost analysis while incorporating evidence of nonlinearities in the dose-response relationship. As an illustration, the bounding approach is applied to the case of chloroform exposure.     

从国际法看巴勒斯坦建国

巴勒斯坦建国问题是巴以冲突中悬而未决的棘手问题，在当前巴以和平进程受挫情况下，它渐渐成为巴以和谈的重要议题，且有可能成为和谈的突破口．本文从国际法角度，结合历史，分析了巴建国问题在法理上具备了哪些条件，缺哪些条件，据此对巴建国前景作个预测．