Institutional evolution and abrupt change: Reforming the administration of social assistance in Finland

Historical institutionalist studies have explained institutional change as resulting from critical junctures that interrupt long periods of stability or from endogenous, incremental evolution. Building on these theories, discursive institutionalists have focused on the roles of agency, ideas and discourse as explainers of change. Combining these approaches, this article analyses Finland’s decision in 2014 to transfer the administration of basic social assistance from municipalities to the central government. This study demonstrates that institutional change can be both abrupt and evolutionary. Due to sudden, exceptional political circumstances, the decision in question was made quickly and under pressure, circumventing possible veto players. However, it was possible only because of the incremental, endogenous change that had occurred in the way in which social assistance was administered at the municipal level. It enabled a change in political discourse, which eroded the credibility of the ideational frames that policy actors had previously utilised to reject the centralised model.     

‘Public toilets for a diverse neighborhood’: Spatial purification practices in community development discourse

This paper explores the dialectic of place and community identity in Mount Pleasant, a multi–ethnic and multi–class U.S. neighborhood where definitions of place are hotly contested among its residents. In a grant proposal for public toilets, Mount Pleasant writers use linguistic strategies such as presupposition, deixis, and contrast, coupled with discursive themes of filth and geography, to construct a core of the Mount Pleasant community. The writers place themselves and people who share their values in that core, and immigrants at the margins. These strategies serve as a discursive type of spatial purification practice (cf. Sibley 1988) through which the grantwriters set up a moral and spatial order where they and other core community members are deemed to use space ‘appropriately’, and thus inhabit positive moral positions, while immigrant community members’ imputed ‘inappropriate’ use of space is used to construct negative moral positions for them.     

川端康成与《雪乡》

日本著名文学家川端康成作为亚洲第二位诺贝尔文学奖获得者而备受世人瞩目 ,这位多产作家“以敏锐的感受 ,高超的叙事技巧 ,表现了日本人的精神实质价值”。其独特的艺术风格在日本文学史上占据着极其重要的地位 ,代表作《雪乡》、《古都》、《千只鹤》等已被翻译成多国文字并引来众多的研究者。本文拟介绍川端康成的文学历程及创作成就 ,探索其名作《雪乡》的艺术特点 ,为增进大家对日本文学的了解抛砖引玉。     

习近平外交话语英译的叙事建构 ——以《论坚持推动建构人类命运共同体》为例

作为习近平外交专著,《论坚持推动建构人类命运共同体》集中体现了新时代中国特色社会主义外交思想,全面体现了习近平外交叙事风格。以莫娜·贝克的叙事学概念为基础对习近平外交话语及英译进行分析,既能凸显译者作为翻译主体的作用和功效,又有助于中国外交叙事的建构。通过叙事策略的运作,包括建构时空、选择性采用文本素材、建构标示以及再定位人物事件,译文重构了习近平外交话语的本体叙事、公共叙事、概念叙事以及元叙事。同时,叙事学与外交翻译的结合不仅拓宽叙事学学科领域,为外交话语研究提供新视角,而且为完成既定的翻译使命提供了新的路径参考。保持政治上的高度、揣摩文化上的深度、把握思维上的向度以及巧用技能上的广度都成为译者顺利完成叙事建构的重要因素。     

‘The Rule of Men Entirely Great’: Republicanism,Ritual, and Richelieu in Melville’s ‘The Two Temples’

Abstract

This article explores the complex and multifarious reasons behind Herman Melville’s decision to refer to the English playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1839 work Richelieu, or The Conspiracy in his 1854 diptych ‘The Two Temples’. It responds to a critical consensus that has seen the reference merely as a sarcastic attack on William Macready (whose rivalry with the American actor Edwin Forrest was the nominal cause of the bloody 1849 Astor Place Riot in New York), by contextualizing the play within traditions of antebellum American Anglophilia. By using a combination of new critical work on Anglo-Americanism and anthropological ritual theory, I show how Bulwer-Lytton’s play was significant to Melville’s artistic development. In particular, I demonstrate how the play influenced his increasing engagement with republican and theatrical forms of expression that emphasized the importance of filial relationships between America and Britain in a period of increasing hostility between the two nations.     

Searching for the “Sleeping Giant”: Racialized News Coverage of Latinos Pre-2020 Elections

Latinos are often thought as potential game changers in the political world in the United States. As the media discusses and analyzes the 2016 election and the path to the 2020 elections, narratives on the role of Latinos leading up to the 2020 election have started to emerge. In this article, I seek to examine how U.S. daily newspapers frame the role of Latinos in the 2016 election and leading up to the 2020 elections. Previous literature has focused on the racialized media coverage of African American politicians and the effects of racial priming; however, extant literature has not explored how Latinos are framed in U.S. media when it comes to electoral politics. Using a sample of newspaper articles from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, I found that newspapers largely focus on the demographic changes while operating under various assumptions about those changes. First, newspapers frame Latinos as more likely to vote for a politician if they are Latino. Second, they construct Latinos as a monolithic ethnoracial group that has simplistic interests in immigration. Third, Latino voters and African American voters are often lumped into the same category when discussing mobilization. These narratives continue a tradition of framing Latinos in monolithic ways, while also showing slight departures from previous narratives.     

Role of Leaders as Agents of Negotiation for Counterbalancing Cultural Dissonance in the Middle East and North Africa Region

This study provides a unique perspective in the field of cross-cultural management by exploring the relationship between “cultural dissonance”—the gap between cultural values and actual practice—and effective leadership attributes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Incorporating cultural dissonance into implicit leadership theory, the study uses measurements of dissonance on nine cultural dimensions to identify particular leadership preferences in seven MENA countries. The overall findings suggest that societies prefer leaders who counterbalance cultural dissonance by allowing space for negotiations by members of society to reduce disparities between cultural values—“the way things should be”—and actual practices—“the way things are.” The greater the disparity between cultural values and practices, the greater the citizens' desire that leaders act as agents of change by creating space for negotiation.     

行为金融学的投资者风险偏好探析

行为金融学是在质疑经典金融理论关于投资者具有理性预期、风险回避和效用最大化的行为特征的前提假设中产生的。面对金融市场的异常现象,行为金融学引入心理学、行为学和社会学的研究成果与范式,指出投资者在面对不确定性进行决策时,由于个体认知方式与价值判断的不同,往往表现出不同的风险偏好而偏离经典金融理论的前提假设。因而投资者并不总是理性的,其行为经常出现非贝叶斯法则预期、风险追求和期望值的多样性。行为金融理论关于投资者风险决策偏好不完全理性的观点将为我国不够成熟的证券市场防范风险,健康有序地发展提供理论基础和管理对策的支持。     

Person, Perception, and Place: What Matters to Health and Quality of Life

Interest in understanding how characteristics associated with where people live, in addition to the characteristics of the people themselves, affect health outcomes has risen sharply in recent years. While much of the research examining this question focus on teasing apart effects of place and individual on outcomes, less attention has been paid to examining how individuals’ perceptions of where they live may provide some clues to better understanding the influence of place on outcomes. We present findings from analysis undertaken that incorporate the subjective responses of individuals, residing in three socially contrasting neighbourhoods, to their local environment. Our first question addressed whether perceptions related to neighbourhood and city of residence matter to self rated health and quality of life independent of individual characteristics, while the second question examined whether the perceptions and individual characteristics are modified by the neighbourhood socio-economic context. Our results show that perceived neighbourhood characteristics, in addition to individual sociodemographic factors, are significant correlates of self rated health and quality of life. Moreover, we show that the type of perceived neighbourhood characteristics and the magnitude of their influence on self rated health and quality of life vary depending on whether they live in high- versus low-socioeconomic status neighbourhoods.

‘Warren Buffet is my cousin’: shaping public understanding of big data biotechnology,direct-to-consumer genomics,and 23andMe on Twitter

Scholars, educators, regulators, pundits, and other observers are advocating for regulation and oversight of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomic testing. As a result, the technology has been subject of highly visible public and regulatory controversy. In this article, we explore the nature and the shape of the sentiment of public discourse about the DTC company, 23andMe. We conduct a quantitative content analysis and qualitative framing analysis on Tweets. We find that the discourse surrounding DTC genomics and 23andMe is largely positive. We also identify a number of frames users deploy to debate, discuss, and share their experiences with DTC genomics and 23andMe. We argue that these frames create meaning around this emerging technology for its users.