Community involvement in land regularization for informal settlements in Tanzania: A strategy for enhancing security of tenure in residential neighborhoods

This paper documents and analyzes how landholders managed to uplift status of their neighborhood from hazard land as designated by the 1978 master plan to a regularized residential settlement through land regularization in Dar es Salaam city. Specifically, explores policy framework governing land regularization and how the local community explored the opportunities it offers. Documents the local community planning and land regularization processes undertaken focusing on land use planning, drainage construction, and cadastral survey and discuses how financial resources were raised, trust was built as well as factors which sustained community involvement towards meeting their interests of securing tenure. The paper also, draws challenges facing land regularization policy and recommends areas for further interventions commensurate with the human dimension challenges in securing tenure.Underlying community involvement, those aspects of community, which have been connected to the idea of social capital namely existence of committed leadership in land development matters, embracing mechanism for participatory decision making process and educational background to local leaders were particularly important in determining success for the case. Others include economic ability to contribute, high proportion of landholder settlers, land conflict task force formulation, local consensus to solve commonly felt problems, existence of strong community organization, and unwritten norms put in place to regulate individual behavior in building construction. Weak legal recognition of informal settlement, lengthy and bureaucratic procedures in planning and approval of regularization plans, weak knowledge on land management matters, short-term title deeds with low financial betterments, political popularity are identified critical challenges.Some of recommendations put forward include formalization of the grass-roots role in decision-making, decentralizing some of land development control functions to sub-ward leaders and training the same in basic land management matters. Others include definition of norms; by-laws and government facilitation of informal land parceling. Besides community support should be sought so as to create partnership in the promotion of security of tenure in informal areas. The study concludes that, unless land development activities ongoing in informal settlements are closely monitored and regulated as the settlement grow, it will be too costly socially and economically to retrofit once the settlement have identified.     

汉口租界的报刊与传播控制

近代汉口新闻事业之发端与繁荣,与租界及租界特殊的传播环境有密切关系。开埠以来,外侨与国人在汉口的五国租界里创办了近百种报刊。租界内的新闻传播受到多方面控制:汉口租界当局的基本章程中有关于新闻传播管理的条例;满清与北洋政府从多方面对租界内的报刊进行钳制;军阀势力与帝国主义列强亦常插手干涉。与上海租界相较,汉口租界的媒介与传播环境仍有自己的特色。     

The use of GIS in informal settlement upgrading: its role and impact on the community and on local government

The Urban Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Group within the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Cape Town has been coordinating a pilot informal settlement upgrading in Cape Town since 1998. The project objective has been the evolution of a model-based approach to informal settlement upgrading that is both structured and replicable. It was felt that the only way this could be achieved was through the use of a spatial data management system operated through a GIS system. The spatial database has been used for all facets of data collection and data process and forms the basis for all decision-making. Thus it covers all physical data pertaining to the site, cadastral and shack data, demographic and socio-economic data (with an in-depth review of every household) economic opportunities and physical planning and design data. The result is a comprehensive, integrated, settlement upgrading methodology that is built upon a GIS-based spatial data management framework. Such a framework is seen as the basic building block for large-scale informal settlement upgrading.     

哈尔滨:近代东亚犹太人最大的活动中心

:在近代 ,哈尔滨曾是东亚犹太人最大的聚居中心和宗教精神中心。犹太人在哈尔滨进行政治、宗教、经济和文化活动 ,对哈尔滨的经济繁荣、城市建设曾起过重要作用。目前在哈尔滨仍保存着一批犹太人档案、历史文献、建筑遗址及东亚最大的犹太墓地。保护和利用这一文化遗产 ,深入研究哈尔滨犹太人史和散居于世界各地的哈尔滨犹太人及其后裔的生活状况 ,有利于加强中国与以色列、中国与世界各国的犹太人的文化交流与经贸合作     

论江西传统聚落布局的模式特征

聚落布局模式是传统聚落建筑文化研究的中观层次。江西传统聚落布局模式具有受“形势派”风水理论的强烈影响、广泛地采用“横巷式”布局、宗族结构之间的关系极具密切、受到地形条件的制约极大等四个鲜明特征。深入研究这些特征,对于继承和弘扬传统聚落建筑文化,促进社会主义新农村建设,颇具积极的借鉴意义。     

Portrayals of the internal God among Ashkenazi Jewish Orthodox lesbians in Israel

Abstract

Most of the existing literature on Ashkenazi Orthodox Jewish lesbians focuses on sociological aspects, mainly the negative attitudes held by religious communities towards their sexual identity and the various problems that arise from these. Less attention has been paid to lesbians’ psychological coping mechanisms with the tensions between their two central identities: the religious and the sexual. Ashkenazi Orthodox lesbians find themselves in a complicated situation where they remain on the margins of both their “natural” communities: the religious one and the homosexual one. As a result, they feel rejected, isolated, and even punished by society. As believers, God is their ultimate refuge. But there are different conceptions of God, ranging from benevolent to persecutory, accepting or highly judgmental and punishing. This variance has not been considered in regard to the dual identity of Ashkenazi Orthodox lesbians. This article focuses on this neglected issue, examining Ashkenazi Orthodox lesbians’ conception of God and its relation to their managing the conflict between their apparently conflicting identities.     

Translating Spirituality: Universalism and Particularism in the Diffusion of Spiritual Care from the United States to Israel

Research on the transnational diffusion of ideas and practices shows how cultural objects go through translation, adaptation, and vernacularization when implemented in new localities. Less attention is given to the translators themselves and their heterogeneous and often conflicting visions. Drawing on the notion of transnational social fields (TSF s), this article investigates how cultural objects get vernacularized differently in different parts of the TSF , demonstrating how processes of translation reflect larger social and political struggles over questions of identity. As a case study, we focus on the attempt of actors from Israel and the United States to institutionalize spiritual care in Israeli health‐care organizations. The analysis reveals how spiritual care functioned as a porous cultural object, open to a wide range of interpretations and debates. While actors in New York saw in spiritual care the opportunity to bridge to Israeli Jews and create a global Jewish identity, Israeli actors split between using spiritual care as a vehicle for creating a local Israeli Jewish identity and seeing in spiritual care the opportunity to establish universal identities, broader than the Jewish one. The disagreement and conflicts between the groups influenced the translation process, turning it into a contentious struggle that involved different positions on the continuum between particularism and universalism.     

跨文化视野中的卡夫卡及其创作

卡夫卡无疑是一个西方作家,但他对东方文化,譬如日本艺术、印度宗教,尤其是中国文化却情有独钟,他阅读了大量中国文化典籍,深受中国文化的影响,并且,这种影响已明显地体现在他的思想和创作中;卡夫卡是一个犹太人,但他一直生活在基督徒中间,他不信犹太教,但对基督教思想却有着深刻的体悟和亲和性;他是一个接受德语教育并用德语写作的作家,尽管他对德语的掌握和运用已到了炉火纯青的地步,但他在德语中却始终感到自己是一个陌生人。他生活在绝大多数人说捷克语的欧洲城市布拉格,他在家里经常使用捷克语,他还学过英语、法语、意大利和意第绪语,他渴望在犹太语中找到自己的家,但他最终却未能如愿。全部的文化冲突几乎总是以语言为依托的,卡夫卡由于如此深刻地体悟了语言的冲突和困境,因此,他对文化冲突的描述和表现总是和语言问题连在一起,而这又使得卡夫卡的思想和创作具有非常浓郁的现代气息和意义。     

集体无意识与刻意颠覆 ——《雾都孤儿》与《我们共同的朋友》中的犹太形象分析

狄更斯在其第二部小说《雾都孤儿》和最后一部小说《我们共同的朋友》中,塑造了两个迥然不同的犹太人物形象——恶棍费金和绅士瑞亚先生。费金的肮脏丑陋、讨好巴结、吝啬贪婪以及残忍恶毒,与瑞亚的温和优雅、自尊坚定、追求平和以及同情友善形成了鲜明的反差。这种反差背后所反映的,一方面是英国社会对犹太人的盲目偏见所形成的集体无意识的反犹主义文学传统,以及丑化犹太人的典型模式;另一方面是作为人道主义作家的狄更斯刻意进行的犹太人形象颠覆,狄更斯为自己、也为整个犹太民族进行了正名。     

“轴心期”形成的犹太教文化传统对后世之影响——兼对“犹太模式”的历史考察与未来展望

在德国哲学家雅斯贝斯提出的世界历史的"轴心期"的概念里,犹太人所创立的以犹太教为主旨内容的希伯来文明和中华文明、印度文明一样成为东西方文化传统的源头;探讨轴心期产生的犹太教对后世的基督教和伊斯兰教的影响,可以看出三者同属犹太系宗教的范畴;根据汤因比提出的三种文明解体的模式分析当今世界的格局,可以发现美国似乎正在成为罗马帝国的翻版,而道德至上的中华文明的复兴则给世界的美好未来带来了一丝希望之光。同时,由于犹太教、基督教和伊斯兰教同属犹太系宗教,有着很多根本的相同点,所以在人类要共同面对生存危机的条件下也许可以实现和解而和平共处。