When scientists dissent

He recently completed a book with social historian Robert Slayton, New Homeless and Old: Community and the Skid Row Hotel.     

British scientists,Lysenko and the Cold War

This study describes the impact of the Lysenko controversy in Britain. In particular, it delineates the way in which it became part of the means by which science and ideologies about scientific work were restructured during the forties and early fifties. As such the Lysenko controversy in Britain had, like its Soviet counterpart, social and political roots and effects.     

From social management to social governance: social conflict mediation in China

China currently faces increasingly serious social conflicts. In the past, China's approach to resolving social conflicts was ‘social management’. Now, however, it is turning to the development of ‘social governance’. This change reflects the inability of government acting alone to recognise and to address comprehensively the type of social problems that require co-ordination of social forces. Our research identifies three dimensions of governance and provides a comparative framework allowing us to illuminate how social governance as conceived in China differs from that in Western countries. Under China's current conditions, the strengthening and development of social governance is a holistic process. Neither market-centrism nor state-centrism is pursued, and pure social-centrism is not the favoured direction of development; the path chosen is rather a state-led social pluralism. The implications we see for the Government are that it should first transform its own functions to achieve a substantially higher quality of public service. This would put it in a position to empower (civil) society to mobilise multiple and varied social forces to participate so that social conflict can be optimally addressed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

社会思潮导向与社会思潮取向要实现双向优化

社会思潮作为一种思想意识,能够反映特定时期社会的发展状况和民众的精神面貌,作为社会发展的"晴雨表"和"风向标"为学界所重视。中国特色社会主义进入新时代,统一思想、凝聚力量成为宣传思想工作的中心环节。稳住社会思潮的方向盘,成为宣传思想工作的现实要求。随着改革开放的深入进行,社会主义市场经济高速发展,人民生活水平日渐提高,产生了不同层次的精神需求,社会思潮取向呈现多样化的发展态势。因此有必要进一步廓清对于社会思潮导向和社会思潮取向的认识,看到二者的区别和联系,加大对二者的理论阐释力度,通过弘扬和培育社会主义核心价值观进行多元化社会思潮的弥合,实现社会思潮导向与社会思潮取向的双向优化,更好地满足人民不同层次的精神需求,凝聚社会共识,推动全面建成小康社会。     

Non-global social contracts: A note on inefficient social institutions

This paper explores some perverse features that can emerge when social contracts are moved from a social vacuum to a setting of social interdependence. In particular we note incentives that might exist in conjunction with externality problems that yield situations in which: (1) social contracts reduce social wealth; (2) sub-global social contracts are Pareto inferior to the absence of social contracts; (3) there are no incentives for global social contracts. While previous works emphasized the benefits of contracts, this paper focuses on their costs. A conclusion reached is that perhaps justice and efficiency demand not a single global social contract but rather a rich melange of sub-global contracts with appropriate interstices of anarchy.