Challenges and Strategy Choices for China's Human Rights Development in the New Period

China＇s reforms have entered a new historical period. We need to carefully analyze the new challenges posed by the new historical stage to China＇s human rights development, in that it enables us to have a more clear view of our tasks and problems and make proper adjustment and improvement on China＇s human rights development strategies in accordance with environment.     

论我国农业保护的制度安排及政策选择

农业是个弱质产业,其特点是投资大、回收期长、风险高,具有特殊的食物安全及生态保护等多样化功能,这些特点和功能为农业保护提供了理论依据,而对农业实施保护是国际惯例。我国长期以来对农业实施的是负保护,导致了"三农"问题的深层次矛盾。必须通过合理的制度安排和政策选择,消除二元经济结构,解决好"三农"问题。现阶段,我国对农业的保护方面尚有许多可利用的空间,应该加大投入力度,积极调动和整合社会资源,力求形成政策合力,使其发挥最大效用,实现农业持续稳定发展的目标。     

Quantitative measures of democracy in Africa: An assessment

Given the fact that quantitative measures of democracy in Africa are increasingly used in scholarly research, it is appropriate to ask the question: ‘Are such measures accurately reflecting empirical observations?’ To answer this question, data‐sets compiled by Zahra Arat, Tatu Vanhanen, Mark Gasiorowski, Keith Jaggers and Ted Robert Gurr, and Freedom House/Raymond Gastil are compared with qualitative observations of events affecting liberal democracy in Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. Two types of problems are found. First, there are many discrepancies between empirical observations and what is shown by the data‐sets. Second, there are inconsistencies in the quantitative measurement of democracy across countries, for example, the same phenomenon does not seem to be measured by the Jaggers and Gurr and the Freedom House/Gastil indices in South Africa and Tanzania. The discrepancies in the quantitative measures suggest that the observations of area specialists of events related to liberal democracy are important not simply to help interpret quantitative measures but to reconstruct them.     

Rethinking Intersectionality: Towards an Understanding of Discursive Marginalization

In recent years, political science research on “intersectionality” has breathed new life into perennial debates about group politics, inequality, and marginalization, demonstrating that unitary identity categories are insufficient for understanding group interests. This article critiques this emergent body of literature, noting the theoretical tensions that have surfaced as the concept has taken hold within political science. It posits that the theoretical underpinnings of this growing research paradigm have to date relied upon a liberal conception of political power that advocates greater administrative attention to particularized subgroups. This pervasive liberalism glosses over the complex and dynamic power structures that both produce political marginalization and offer sites of political resistance. Using the internal tensions of LGBTQ politics as a guiding example, this article calls for a move beyond intersectionality and towards a notion of discursive marginalization to more accurately account for the processes by which citizen-subjects are produced.     

Risk illusion and organized irresponsibility in contemporary finance: rethinking class and risk society

Abstract

This paper analyzes the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to show how processes associated with risk society – the social production and distribution of systemic financial risk in a context of organized irresponsibility – are contributing to the intensification of contemporary class-based inequalities. Utilizing a framework based in Bourdieusian class resources, the analysis moves beyond Beck's rejection of the relevance of class relations to systemic risk, and his critics’ denial that risk transforms existing logics of distribution, to identify key shifts in the relation between contemporary financial risk, power and inequality. The conclusions of this study, showing how systemic financial risk in contexts of organized irresponsibility contributes to differential ‘risk-classes’, suggest that risk is a key source of contemporary inequality and that reconstructing the theory of risk society can illuminate these changes.     

中国政府机构改革30年回顾与反思

本文以30年改革开放历史为线索,对中国政府机构6次改革进行了回顾与反思,认为:中国政府机构改革的核心是适应经济和社会发展的需要来调整政府机构的结构与运行,重点调整政府与社会、政府与市场、中央与地方的关系。在回顾机构改革的目标、方向与内容的基础上,本文对改革的价值与缺失进行了探讨。     

Current psychopathology in previously assaulted older adults

Older adult women age 55+ years (N = 549) were interviewed as part of a population-based epidemiological research study of lifetime experiences with physical and sexual assault and current mental health problems. Although overall rates of psychopathology were low, producing very small cells for comparison, women who reported experiencing physical assault an average of 28 years previously were more likely to present with past year substance abuse, depression, and avoidance and reexperiencing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than those with no previous physical or sexual assault. Women who reported experiencing sexual assault an average of 50 years previously were more likely to present with autonomic arousal and avoidance symptoms of PTSD than those with no prior sexual assault. The aforementioned findings should be considered with caution, however, as sample cell sizes were minimal for all but the PTSD symptom subtypes. Mental health service implications for older adults are discussed.