The rewriting of home: Autobiographies by daughters of immigrants

This article will explore the autobiographies of three writers who were daughters of immigrants (Audre Lorde, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Eva Hoffman), focusing on the connections between the autobiographers and their parents' place of origin. I will argue that this takes the form of a myth of origin: the autobiographers recreate a magical homeland, or the strong emotions of a childhood that resembles a lost paradise. However, they also show the fraught relationship between daughters of immigrants and this place of origin: for all autobiographers who are second-generation immigrants, “home” can never be fully recovered, but has to be reclaimed and rewritten. On the other hand, Lorde and Kingston, as feminist autobiographers, contest the patriarchal traditions that prevail in their place of origin. They fashion a matrilineal tradition of strong ancestresses that challenges the tradition of fathers and sustains them against the isolation they encounter in the diaspora.     

兼顾表达成员利益与注重社会功能的工会制度选择——学习中国共产党十六届六中全会决议的思考

中共中央十六届六中全会关于构建和谐社会的决议,提出和阐述了协调劳动关系及其建立相应的集体协商制度问题。这是吸取了历史上正反两个方面的经验做出的正确选择。有助于兼顾表达成员利益与注重社会功能的工会制度的建设。而其中认可和认同工会表达成员利益的功能,是需要付出社会成本的。中央决议相关的政策安排,特别是提出党和政府主导而同时又支持社会团体维权的机制,有理由使人们期许一个理想的工会制度前景。而这需要党、政府、工会承担起相应的责任。     

利益一体和公私兼顾的劳动关系理论概述

利益一体和公私兼顾的劳动关系理论,是依据社会主义计划经济体制下劳动关系的特点而形成和发展的劳动关系理论。它认为社会主义公有制和计划经济下劳动关系双方的总体利益是一致的,但双方具体利益的差别和矛盾(即公私矛盾)也是客观存在的,公私矛盾的存在就是社会主义制度下工会存在的客观基础。工会在社会主义劳动关系中的地位和作用是:站在职工群众的立场上,正确调解和处理公私矛盾,把党对工会的要求与工人群众对工会的要求结合起来,在维护全国人民总体利益的同时,更好地代表和维护职工群众的具体利益。     

Socialism and the American labor movement: Some new reflections

The outbreak of the 15M or indignado movement in Spain in 2011 was the biggest episode of social unrest since the end of the Transition in the 1970s. Its emergence caught the political parties, media, trade unions and the most important community-based organisations and pre-existing social movements off guard. It targeted those who were identified as responsible for the recession and how it was handled – politicians and bankers –, and represented a global criticism of the existing political system and institutional framework. The 15M was not a youth movement, but a general movement criticising the current economic model, though it did have a large youth component in its initial stages. It was plural and diverse, and a wide broad spectrum of criticism and degrees of radicality and political awareness coexisted in the squares and camps. In general terms, the links between the indignados and the labour movement were weak and marked by mutual mistrust. The 15M movement was a milestone in the political trajectory of Spain and opened up a regime crisis that would deepen thereafter.     

反虚构:新时期文学创作的一个新动向

20世纪 80年代中后期 ,文学的创作方法潜流着一股从“虚构”到“反虚构”的倾向 ,含有强烈的“非虚构”、“纪实”的新写实小说成了文坛一道流行色。产生这种现象的主要原因是与中国当下的社会变革紧密相关 ,它能将人们在这转型期复杂的情绪最迅速的渲泄出来。     

Differentiation: old controversies,new insights

There is a long-standing debate about the nature, impact and significance of processes of differentiation in driving agricultural development. This contribution discusses three ways in which such processes have been conceptualized: modernization theories that put markets centre stage, Marxist theories that focus on class, and Chayanovian approaches that highlight the dynamics within farming families. The empirical evidence for testing these concepts is normally derived from agricultural censuses. This paper uses a different database that covers all Dutch farms between 1980 and 2006 and enables us to follow the changes on individual farms. Examination of this data reveals that the actual processes of differentiation that have occurred in this 25-year period differ greatly from the classic conceptualizations. It also challenges the conventional wisdom that agricultural development is mostly driven by larger farms.     

Beyond hagiography: new books on gay and lesbian life writing

Abstract

The records of women's rights organisations active in Birmingham during the 1870s and 1880s indicate that these societies were dominated by women and men from families connected with the city's leading Unitarian chapel, the Church of the Messiah. In this article, I explore this phenomenon as a way of illuminating the relationship between religious belief and feminist activism. The shared social, economic and political values and progressive outlook of the Unitarian elite underpinned their emergence as a feminist network. This collective reformist consciousness was channelled into concern to improve the position of women by the ‘feminist gospel’ preached by Henry Crosskey, the minister of the chapel from 1869 to 1893. Furthermore, Crosskey's influential role, along with the substantial presence of other Unitarian men in local women's rights associations, reveals how denominational affiliation could operate to stimulate male support for feminism.     

Women and radio: sounding out new paths in women's history

ABSTRACT

Since its early introduction in the domestic sphere in the 1920s, radio has been used as a medium for the expression of women's voices, needs and concerns. In this introduction we would like to mobilise an understanding of radio as a vital source for doing women's history. Women's radio programming, women broadcasters, and women listeners provide a lens through which a number of histories can be analysed. This introduction provides an overview of the historical relationship between women and radio. It is further dedicated to research that explores the overlapping spaces of radio and women's history, and in particular, points to how radio-related source material can provide new points of departure for women's history.     

Urbanization through dispossession: survival and stratification in China's new townships

Rural land dispossession has become a dominant mechanism of capital accumulation in the Chinese economy. However, the Chinese economy continues to rely on a migrant labor system that enables enterprises to accumulate capital precisely by not dispossessing laborers, but instead enlisting rural communities in absorbing costs of workforce maintenance. These dual and contradictory mechanisms are particularly visible in China's urban construction sector, where enterprises require both low-cost labor and low-cost land for profitability. This contribution draws on long-term ethnographic research in Lan-ding Village, a labor-sending community undergoing land expropriations in Sichuan Province, to document a new system of class stratification resulting from these dual accumulation mechanisms.