Border Crossings and Diasporic Identities: Media Use and Leisure Practices of an Ethnic Minority

The diaspora of peoples whose origins were in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia) and who are now living in Western countries (especially the U.S. and UK) provides an interesting example of processes of negotiation of new hybrid cultures and identities, using new technologies, such as the Internet, and older technologies like the video player, cable or satellite television, radio, and telephone. These developments may require a revision of the classic sociological picture of assimilation as a zero sum model of acculturation, in which the acculturation of immigrants and their children involves the gradual replacement of their ethnic culture by that of the culture of the host nation. The electronic media, in the context of policies of multiculturalism, may lead to an accentuation of religio-ethnic differences. Contrary to previous assumptions, middle-class immigrants may be more inclined to resist cultural assimilation than their lower-class counterparts.     

Assimilation vs. multiculturalism: Views from a community in France

A recent American survey of attitudes toward societal multiculturalism vs. assimilation has found surprisingly widespread support for maintaining heritage cultures not only among immigrant minority groups but also among most subsamples of majority host groups, black and white. Working-class whites are the one exception. This pilot study explores the same attitude domain in a contrasting European setting. Randomly selected samples of middle- and working-class families (a mother, father, and teenage son or daughter) from a small city in France were interviewed. As a group, they were neutral to slightly favorable to immigrants maintaining heritage cultures and languages rather than losing them through assimilation. On measures of attitudes toward specific immigrant groups, there were marked intergroup dyfferunces with Maghrebian Arabs rated leist favorably and Southeast Asians, the model immigrants, most favorably. Comparisons of subgroups of respondents who varied in terms of (a) political left-right orientation, (b) social class standing, (c) degree of religiosity, and (d) generational level provide the base for a more general discussion of cultural assimilation and multiculturalism.     

二代流动人口——对新生代流动人口的新划分与新界定

"新生代流动人口"或"新生代农民工"的提法将随着时间的推移越来越不符合现实情况的需要,本文在全面梳理国外二代移民研究成果的基础上,提出"二代流动人口"的概念和划分方式,通过与现有的"新生代流动人口"从理论上进行对比论证了"二代流动人口"群体在未来流动人口研究中的重要意义,最后为人口普查和各项有关流动人口的专项调查提供了数据采集方法上的建议,并提出了未来一些相关的研究议题.     

The Whitening Hypothesis Challenged: Biculturalism in Latino and Non‐Hispanic White Intermarriage

Assimilation theory holds that intermarriage between minorities and non‐Hispanic whites is a gauge of integration and assumes that minorities jettison their ethnic identification in favor of whiteness. Drawing on race relations theory to argue that intermarriage is potentially transformative for non‐Hispanic whites as well as Latinos, this article challenges assimilation theory's bias that minorities (should) undergo cultural change and that non‐Hispanic whites remain unmoved. This article uses in‐depth interviews with Latino and non‐Hispanic white married couples to assess the consequences of ethnic intermarriage from the perspectives of both partners. Interethnic partners engaged in four “ideal types” of biculturalism, running largely contrary to assimilation theory's social whitening hypothesis. Due to boundary blurring, exemplified by affiliative ethnic identity, non‐Hispanic whites can migrate into Latino culture.     

Bayesian updating of atmospheric dispersion after a nuclear accident

Summary.  We consider a Bayesian forecasting system to predict the dispersal of contamination on a large scale grid in the event of an accidental release of radioactivity. The statistical model is built on a physical model for atmospheric dispersion and transport called MATCH. Our spatiotemporal model is a dynamic linear model where the state parameters are the (essentially, deterministic) predictions of MATCH; the distributions of these are updated sequentially in the light of monitoring data. One of the distinguishing features of the model is that the number of these parameters is very large (typically several hundreds of thousands) and we discuss practical issues arising in its implementation as a realtime model. Our procedures have been checked against a variational approach which is used widely in the atmospheric sciences. The results of the model are applied to test data from a tracer experiment.     

政党嵌入与体制吸纳——执政党引领群众自治的双向路径

在我国住房商品化改革日益深化,社区形态发生深刻转型的现实背景下,执政党引领基层群众自治有必要遵循政党嵌入和体制吸纳的双向路径:一是采取党组嵌入、党员(公职人员)嵌入和规则性嵌入等形式,充分挖掘体制内的政治资源,将其嵌入到基层社会中去代表民意,理性促进党和政府引领社会;二是采取代议性吸纳、商议性吸纳、机构性吸纳和精英性吸纳等方式,激活现行体制中的民主因素,创设各种利益协调机制,及时化解社区中的多样矛盾,充分吸纳和整合社情民意。     

英语语流音变现象浅析

语音变化是语言变化的主要方面之一,英语语流中的音变对英语听力产生重大的影响。本文对英语语流中音变的一些规律进行分析,以助提高我们的英语听力教学质量。     

试论词义“组合同化”应遵循的原则——兼与张博同志商榷

针对张博《组合同化：词义衍生的一种途径》一文提出的词义组合同化的演变过渡中赖以实现的必要条件,补充提出了探讨“组合同化”必须遵循的两条原则,即社会的原则与历史的原则。并据此对该文举列的范例进行了考辨,说明其所引范例是难以用来论证“组合同化”说的。     

茅盾文学批评中的“同化”与“顺应”——中国现代“主流”批评生成演化的微观分析

政治追求是贯穿于20世纪中国文学批评进程的一条鲜明线索.茅盾一生的文学批评活动恰好提供了中国现代"主流"批评生成演化的个人证词.在文学与政治、个人与集体、权力意志与个人思考之间,茅盾一直处在不断的同化与顺应过程中,他的批评成果不仅表现了一代知识分子不断选择、不断徘徊、不断矛盾的心路历程,也显现了"主流"批评发展的历史轨迹.     

Imaginandose Mexicano: The Symbolic Context of Mexican American Ethnicity Beyond the Second Generation

This study explores how third-plus-generation Mexican Americans are able to perpetuate Mexican ethnicity within the relatively integrated environments they occupy in and around Phoenix, Arizona and San Jose, California. By using an imaginary approach in this analysis, I seek to demonstrate the limited applicability of the symbolic ethnicity approach for this group, in particular, as well as to downplay thinking about culture as a set of traits or fixed characteristics that define an ethnic subgroup. I do this through an exploration of how the third-plus-generation Mexican Americans interviewed for this study utilize a range of relational resources—specifically, religion, Spanish-language television, and cross-national encounters—to reinforce and recreate Mexican ethnicity in their day-to-day lives.