从生态主义视角解读《黑暗的心》

约瑟夫·康拉德(1857-1924)是19世纪末20世纪初世界最著名的小说家之一,其最为熟知的代表作有小说<吉姆爷>(Lord Jim),<台风>(Typhoon),<黑暗的心>(Heart of Darkness)等.康拉德的代表作<黑暗的心>是作者根据自身亲身经历写成的一部中篇小说,是现代小说的里程碑,在英国文学史上占有重要的地位.从生态主义角度分析小说的文化内涵,集中关注小说中折射出的人与自然、自然环境与科学技术的关系,从而提倡人与自然和谐发展的科学发展观,并从生态文学的视角探讨小说的现实意义.     

The Myth of Postmodernity

In this paper the claim that the advanced market economies have entered a new era of postmodernity (or a postmodern turn) is critically assessed and found to be unjustified by the changes at the economic, political, cultural, or scientific and theoretical levels of the last quarter of a century or so. These changes in no way reflect a kind of break with the past, similar to the one marking the transition from the 'traditional' society to modernity. It is therefore argued that advanced market economies, following the collapse of liberal modernity in the 19th century and that of statist modernity (in both its versions of social democracy and Soviet statism) in the 20th century, have in fact entered a new form of modernity that we may call neoliberal modernity , rather than a postmodernity. Neoliberal modernity represents a synthesis of the previous forms of modernity and at the same time completes the process which began with the institutionalisation of the market economy and representative 'democracy' that have been presently universalised in the form of the internationalised market economy and the developing supra-national forms of governance respectively.     

Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Sociological Morality

Recently Philip Gorski has argued that sociology can help us answer moral questions such as how to live and how to organize societies. Gorski rejects “value-free sociology” and the distinction between factual statements and value judgments, but actually factual statements and value judgments are distinct and sociology can be value-free.  The practice of value-free sociology is ethically imperative, even, if we are to be honest with our audiences and if we are to fulfill our vocation as sociologists.     

Exploring the Origins of the American Administrative State: Recent Writings on the Ambiguous Legacy of Alexander Hamilton

Books reviewed:
Arnold A. Rogow, A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.
John Steele Gordon, Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt.
Peter McNamara, Political Economy and Statesmanship: Smith, Hamilton, and the Foundation of the Commercial Republic.     

Environmentalism undercover: The environmental dimension of public support for domestic water charges

Research shows that environmental attitudes can affect support for environmentally-beneficial policies. However, it is unclear whether environmental attitudes can influence support for such policies when they are not being primarily framed through an environmental lens. Using data from the 2011 Irish National Election Study, this paper examines the issue using the case of support for the reintroduction of water charges. This was a contentious issue with debate largely focusing on the proposal as an austerity measure, but the proposal also had environmental implications. The results find that while individuals' willingness to prioritise environmental protection over economic growth did not affect their support for water charges, their willingness to make individual sacrifices for the environment did. Moreover, voters’ position on this policy impacted their vote choice. The findings are particularly important given the struggles that governments are facing in implementing environmental taxes and charges.     

The Primacy of the Political: Rahe and the Myth of the Polis

Paul Rahe belongs to the long tradition of mythologizing the polis , otherwise known as 'the classical republican tradition', which has two signal achievements to its credit. The first is to claim for the great landed monarchies of Europe the democratic legacy of the polis as their very own. The second is to distance themselves from eastern regimes by characterizing them as 'despotic' and 'other'. This tradition is seriously challenged by modern classical and Near Eastern scholarship, which shows city-republican forms to have originated in the east. Rahe's particular version is open to the additional challenge that it glorifies the male warrior polis , from which women were systematically excluded, 'as a moral community of men united by a common way of life', as if a community which depended on the labour of women but gave them no rights could have moral integrity.     

Myth-Free Space Advocacy Part II: The Myth of the Space Frontier

Space advocates commonly compare the settling of the “space frontier” to the settling of the “western frontier” in the United States, arguing that space settlement will realize the same benefits purportedly realized by the western expansion of the United States: the generation of new cultures; the development of new technologies; and the empowerment of democratic governance. However, much of the reasoning here is based on a faulty understanding of history and on an overly optimistic view of what it will be like to live in a space settlement. Thus, I argue that ardent faith in the promises of settling the space frontier is a mythological belief, rather than a well-confirmed one.     

Myth and reality: The causes and persistence of poverty

Policies directed at alleviating poverty rest on a set of assumptions regarding the demographic composition of the poor and the psychological dispositions of poor individuals. Evidence from a long-term study of a representative sample of low-income individuals shows that poverty is very widespread but not usually very persistent, and that the characteristics of the persistently poor do not conform to the conventional wisdom. Furthermore, the economic status of the poor does not appear to have been caused by psychological dispositions. Intergenerational data from the same study show generally weak links between the poverty or welfare status of parents and that of their children. Public policies for dealing with poverty can be properly devised without attempting to resocialize poor people and without undue concern that poverty programs will generate dependency among the majority of those they help.