Ontological Insecurity,Racial Tension,and Confidence in the Police in the Shadow of Urban Unrest

According to the theory of “ontological insecurity,” people who worry that society is in a state of decline or upheaval will also support punitive social control of deviants. I test the relationship between several measures of people's anxiety about the state of society, their perception of racial tension, and their confidence in the police (as enforcers of social control) during the period of social unrest following the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. I use ordinary least squares regression to analyze data from a nationally representative public opinion poll gathered for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press during August, 2014. I find that pessimism about the state of the economy, pessimism about race relations, and the experience of personal hardship are related to decreased confidence in the police, while pessimism about the state of morals in society is related to increased confidence. I conclude that public confidence in the police is intertwined with public confidence in the stability of the country, more generally. This study supports a “neo‐Durkheimian” model of policing. The opposite findings of economic versus moral insecurity also call for refinement of the ontological insecurity theory.     

一种基于Ferguson曲线的面积计算方法

给出了一种基于Ferguson曲线计算断面面积的算法。通过与现有算法的对比分析,说明该算法的计算精度较其它算法更高,而且计算量小,在实际工程中具有较高的应用价值。     

苏格兰启蒙思想家的社会哲学探究

在社会的起源上,与社会契约论者不同,休谟、斯密、弗格森等苏格兰启蒙思想家认为社会是自生自发的"无意识之后果"。在对社会结构的认识上,他们明确界分了市民社会与国家,科学解答了市民社会与国家相分而又不相离的难题,并从情感主义出发探究了社会的有序化与社会分层。在社会的演进上,他们把人的生存方式、财产关系的变迁看作社会演变的主导因素,并提出了社会演进的"四阶段论"。在社会发展的价值评判上,他们对文明与进步秉持一种辩证的态度,指出了商业社会之利弊。这些丰富的思想意蕴构成了现代社会学的重要源头。     

Stochastic Loss Reserving in Discrete Time: Individual vs. Aggregate Data Models

In this paper, a stochastic individual data model is considered. It accommodates occurrence times, reporting, and settlement delays and severity of every individual claims. This formulation gives rise to a model for the corresponding aggregate data under which classical chain ladder and Bornhuetter–Ferguson algorithms apply. A claims reserving algorithm is developed under this individual data model and comparisons of its performance with chain ladder and Bornhuetter–Ferguson algorithms are made to reveal the effects of using individual data to instead aggregate data. The research findings indicate a remarkable promotion in accuracy of loss reserving, especially when the claims amounts are not too heavy-tailed.     

Putting Adam Ferguson in his place

This paper re-conceptualizes the relationship between Ferguson's life and work by locating him in his biographical and geographical context for the purposes of better understanding his proto-sociological writings. Ferguson's work is relatively unknown outside limited sets of literature and current representations of the link between his life and work risk misplacing him as both Scotsman and sociologist. The popular portrayal suggests there is a strong connection between his Highland background and his famous book An Essay on the History of Civil Society. It will be argued that this claim reproduces the social construction of space in Scottish society and is based on stereotypical views of his birthplace and upbringing. Ferguson did not construct an autobiographical narrative to offer his own understanding of the link between his life and work. This reflects the strengths and weaknesses of sociology as it was developing in the eighteenth century. The 'self' was not recognized as an object of intention or symbolic construction. Ferguson's writings analysed modernity as it was emerging in eighteenth-century Lowland Scotland and contrary to common opinion, there was no self-identity as a Highlander to shape his understanding of that social process.     

The Killer Will Remain Free: On Pat Parker and the Poetics of Madness

Poet and scholar Kazim Ali reads Pat Parker's Movement in Black intimately, one poet to another, uncovering the shadow-fact of the lives of most people of color: not only the anger that is somehow sublimated into every part of our lives but also the issue that carrying this feeling around has on our mental health itself—that “anger” and “madness” might have sources in one another. Ali concludes that Parker offers a brutal and clear-eyed and ultimately hopeful assessment of the conditions that were faced at the time, and even now, by communities of color.     

弗格森自由观念的逻辑谱系与现代意蕴

基于对理性的怀疑和社会发展演进的深度思考，弗格森被哈耶克划归自由主义阵营，然而弗格森自由观念的体系与特征长期以来并未受到关注。弗格森从个人主义的视角出发，倡导经济自由，防范国家的过度干预;从人的社会性出发，借助法律之治和德性之治确保政治自由:法律之治是一种正义的约束，德性之治则仰赖公共精神与政治参与。弗格森的自由观念始自人性基础的深度探寻，终止于秩序建构的审慎调解，这代表着时代先行者立足人性和规则两大层面对即将到来的商业时代的反思与回应。     

苏格兰启蒙运动的思想主题:市民社会的启蒙

苏格兰启蒙运动是18世纪启蒙运动的另一重镇。与法、德等欧陆启蒙运动不同,苏格兰启蒙运动是一场政治转型已然完成的后革命启蒙,它的主要关切不再是政治革命而是经济与社会的发展,不再是政治社会的建立而是市民社会的运行。在这一共同的思想主题下,休谟、斯密、弗格森等苏格兰启蒙思想家明确界分了市民社会与国家,并对市民社会中的人性、道德规范、社会化机制、经济行为、政治法律制度等问题进行了全面而深刻的思想启蒙与理论思考,形成了系统的市民社会理论。     

An international trade model to capture linkages among supply-constrained economies

The development of a country's domestic and international markets depends on its own actions as much as on those of its trading partners. The study of market linkages is thus vital for policy making. Borrowing from the conceptual framework of Leontief's input-output analysis and from the national accounts equation, this paper presents a new model to calculate multilateral trade multipliers while minimizing data requirements. The novelty of the approach consists in the column-wise (supply-oriented) normalization of trade as opposed to the row-wise (demand-oriented) normalization that prevails in the literature. The explanatory power of the model has been successfully tested on data that refer to 1973–1974. Divergence from reality inevitably reflects the great fluidity that characterized trade during that period. Although most successful when applied to trade among supply-oriented economies (such as those of socialist or developing countries), at present empirical tests have been run only for a handful of OECD and OPEC countries.