Consumption and poverty in the homes of the English poor,c. 1670–1834

The consumer behaviour of the poor in the long eighteenth century has attracted more historical attention in recent years. Yet, we have little understanding of whether regional factors affected consumption or how the poor’s ownership of household goods was influenced by level of poverty and the life-cycle. By focusing on Kent and drawing comparisons to other counties, this article argues that the material lives of the poor were improving by the late eighteenth century, but finds that there were distinct regional differences as the poor acquired more and better goods in London and the Home Counties than in relatively remote areas. Moreover, by using pauper inventories and labourers’ probate inventories, the research finds that the poor were not a homogeneous group with similar levels of material wealth, but should be considered in terms of different subgroups which often led very different material lives to one another due to life-cycle-related problems including sickness and old age. Labourers’ probate inventories are found to represent a minority of the poor who were materially richer than most, whilst pauper inventories appear to represent a more typical subgroup of the poor that struggled to make do and owned most types of goods in smaller numbers.     

Integrating Operational and Organizational Aspects in Interdependent Infrastructure Network Recovery

Managing risk in infrastructure systems implies dealing with interdependent physical networks and their relationships with the natural and societal contexts. Computational tools are often used to support operational decisions aimed at improving resilience, whereas economics‐related tools tend to be used to address broader societal and policy issues in infrastructure management. We propose an optimization‐based framework for infrastructure resilience analysis that incorporates organizational and socioeconomic aspects into operational problems, allowing to understand relationships between decisions at the policy level (e.g., regulation) and the technical level (e.g., optimal infrastructure restoration). We focus on three issues that arise when integrating such levels. First, optimal restoration strategies driven by financial and operational factors evolve differently compared to those driven by socioeconomic and humanitarian factors. Second, regulatory aspects have a significant impact on recovery dynamics (e.g., effective recovery is most challenging in societies with weak institutions and regulation, where individual interests may compromise societal well‐being). And third, the decision space (i.e., available actions) in postdisaster phases is strongly determined by predisaster decisions (e.g., resource allocation). The proposed optimization framework addresses these issues by using: (1) parametric analyses to test the influence of operational and socioeconomic factors on optimization outcomes, (2) regulatory constraints to model and assess the cost and benefit (for a variety of actors) of enforcing specific policy‐related conditions for the recovery process, and (3) sensitivity analyses to capture the effect of predisaster decisions on recovery. We illustrate our methodology with an example regarding the recovery of interdependent water, power, and gas networks in Shelby County, TN (USA), with exposure to natural hazards.     

Risk Modeling of Interdependent Complex Systems of Systems: Theory and Practice

The emergence of the complexity characterizing our systems of systems (SoS) requires a reevaluation of the way we model, assess, manage, communicate, and analyze the risk thereto. Current models for risk analysis of emergent complex SoS are insufficient because too often they rely on the same risk functions and models used for single systems. These models commonly fail to incorporate the complexity derived from the networks of interdependencies and interconnectedness (I–I) characterizing SoS. There is a need to reevaluate currently practiced risk analysis to respond to this reality by examining, and thus comprehending, what makes emergent SoS complex. The key to evaluating the risk to SoS lies in understanding the genesis of characterizing I–I of systems manifested through shared states and other essential entities within and among the systems that constitute SoS. The term “essential entities” includes shared decisions, resources, functions, policies, decisionmakers, stakeholders, organizational setups, and others. This undertaking can be accomplished by building on state‐space theory, which is fundamental to systems engineering and process control. This article presents a theoretical and analytical framework for modeling the risk to SoS with two case studies performed with the MITRE Corporation and demonstrates the pivotal contributions made by shared states and other essential entities to modeling and analysis of the risk to complex SoS. A third case study highlights the multifarious representations of SoS, which require harmonizing the risk analysis process currently applied to single systems when applied to complex SoS.     

Decision‐making under uncertainty in child protection: Creating a just and learning culture

The argument is made for having a positive error culture in child protection to improve decision‐making and risk management. This requires organizations to accept that mistakes are likely and to treat them as opportunities for learning and improving. In contrast, in many organizations, a punitive reaction to errors leads to workers hiding them and developing a defensive approach to their practice with children and families. The safety management literature has shown how human error is generally not simply due to a “bad apple” but made more or less likely by the work context that helps or hinders good performance. Improving safety requires learning about the weaknesses in the organization that contribute to poor performance. To create a learning culture, people need to feel that when they talk about mistakes or weak practice, there will be a constructive response from their organization. One aspect of reducing the blame culture is to develop a shared understanding of how practice will be judged and how those appraising practice will avoid the hindsight bias. To facilitate a positive error culture, a set of risk principles are presented that offer a set of criteria by which practice should be appraised.     

Challenge of multi-level governance in developing countries and possible GIS applications

Of the three most prominent issues in governance discourse—the horizontal coordination of markets, government hierarchies and networks, global governance and multi-level governance—this paper argues that the last, developing and sustaining structures of multi-level governance, constitutes the most profound governance challenge for most developing countries.The paper identifies the major forces promoting change in favor of multi-level governance in developing countries. Using the growing literature and comparative national experiences (illustrated with the examples of India, the Philippines, Colombia and Nigeria), it highlights the key achievements of democratic decentralization as well as its nagging problems in these countries. Finally, the paper demonstrates the significance of these developments for democracy and development in these countries and shows some of the ways by which external partners—especially experts associated with the Geographic Information Systems for Developing Countries can assist and possibly benefit from this process.     

评鲍德里亚的"消费社会理论"

鲍德里亚系统提出了"消费社会"的理论。他企图对唯物史观进行"颠覆"是错误的。但是不能简单地认为他是资本主义制度的辩护士。鲍德里亚不懂得马克思从根本上颠覆了国民经济学和唯心主义历史观的两种"幻象",从而奠定了生产和劳动对于人类社会存在与发展的基础性地位;不懂得消费与生产的现实辩证关系,片面地离开生产探讨消费的新特征,甚至主张用消费取代生产。消费异化是劳动异化的表现。技术救赎不可能解决当代人类面临的重大社会问题。     

'Polyphonic' welfare: Luhmann's systems theory applied to modern social work

This article applies a series of concepts from Niklas Luhmann's systems theory in an analysis of modern welfare organisations. The point of departure is that social help in late modern welfare states has become 'polycentric' in that 'help' is today being defined by various different agents: public, voluntary and private care providers. Empirically, this article investigates re-housing work with homeless people, a kind of social work which involves several different welfare organisations. The case study shows how these organisations define themselves by making internal constructions of their surroundings, and how their self-enclosed nature creates a certain 'insensitivity' towards one another. How to coordinate and translate within this 'polyphony' of incomparable observations and values represents a major managerial challenge for present-day social workers.     

质押——个人住房消费贷款的一种制度创新

文章分析了推行个人住房消费质押贷款的优势和可行性,探讨了可以用来作为住房质押贷款的质物和住房消费质押贷款的运作机制,最后指出了个人住房消费质押贷款能顺利运作所必须的支撑体系.     

Consumption and Saving Behavior of Older and Younger Baby Boomers in Korea

The 1998 Korean Survey of Family Income and Expenditures was used to examine the overall consumption and saving behavior of Korean baby boomers and compared the differences in consumption and saving behavior between older and younger boomers. The t -test results indicated that the younger boomers allocated a significantly higher percentage of their expenditures on food away from home, household appliances, transportation and communication than did the older boomers, whereas the older boomers spent higher amounts and allocated larger budget shares on their children's education than did the younger boomers. The results of Ordinary Least-Squares (OLS) regression analysis showed that, holding other factors constant, older boomers not only spent significantly more in the total consumption expenditures and education expenditures, but older boomers also saved significantly less than did younger boomers.     

Consumption Patterns of Chinese Children

In the ten-year period from 1990 to 1999, children's consumption has increased dramatically in proportion to family income. In 85% of urban families, children's average consumption is equal to one third or more of the family's income. Resources are being directed to children's food and dietary supplements, toys, travel, computers and other electronic equipment, and educational resources. Children perceive that they have a significant influence on the family's financial decision-making. Problems related to children's consumption include indulgence in unnecessary or harmful purchases, and conspicuous consumption that cannot be sustained by the family's income. While some child-focused spending is viewed as enriching development, other expenditures may harm the family's economic well-being and foster an overly materialistic outlook among children.