Small Gestures and Acts of Grace: An Interview with Germaine Koh

Knitwork is an 80-metre long work generated by unraveling cast-off garments, and reknitting them into a wide blanket. The piece is visually rich: bands of bright colours, softer shades and painterly mixes. The artist Germaine Koh, who lives and works in Canada, conceived the piece in February 1992 as a life-long project. It has since been shown in galleries across North America, Australia and, most recently, in 2002, at the British Museum in London, where it cascaded down marble steps in the Great Court. Knitwork is reminiscent of the work of feminist artists of the 1970s (such as Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro in the United States, or the Feministo group in Britain), work that commented on the devaluation of both domestic labour and craft, particularly with regard to textiles, traditionally associated with women. Although Koh intends this reading, Knitwork is one of a series of-what might be described as-conceptual art projects that she has exhibited over the last decade. These focus on the ways in which we invest time and effort in seemingly mundane activities, what Koh describes as 'the weighty psychic accretion of everyday habits and mundane debris'. By using commonplace objects, abstracting them or changing their context, she aims to stimulate reflection about how we interact, and the tokens or gestures we use. Sometimes Koh knits alone, privately; and, at other times, publicly, when the piece is on exhibition, transforming it from object to performance. By 1998 the piece had 'consumed' more than 260 garments and was over 60 metres long. By 2002 it had grown to 80 metres, including nearly 300 garments, and weighing 400 pounds. Koh describes Knitwork as a comical object, somewhere between the sublime and the ridiculous. Yet, because it has both its past and future written into it, it contains a certain melancholy. It is a measurement of a life, its output, and also its duration, each stitch a record of a decision, and of a moment in time.     

消费伦理观转变的理性反思

消费伦理观具有时代性,不同的时代会有不同的消费伦理观引导着人们。我国长期在崇俭黜奢的消费伦理观的左右下,消费的形式多为生存性的物质消费,具有明显的保守性。随着经济的发展,我国人民的消费观念和消费方式发生了巨大的变革,这种消费伦理观念的变化在给人们的消费方式带来发展的同时出现了一些新的消费观,如享乐主义的消费观、信贷消费观、冲动性消费观等。因此,在社会转型期要继承和发扬传统消费观念中的优秀部分,合理分配消费比例,努力倡导可持续消费和绿色消费,用一种科学、健康的消费伦理观念引导人们的生活。     

东北地区消费过度敏感性分析

在东北地区经济发展的历程中,传统经济范式使得消费的拉动效应较弱。通过采用面板数据模型对东北三省消费过度敏感性检验可知,城镇和农村居民的消费过度敏感性系数都较高,当期消费与当期可支配收入之间具有较高的相关性。较高的消费过度敏感性抑制了居民的消费水平,限制了消费对经济的推动力。东北地区要维持健康稳定地发展,需扩大本地区的消费水平,因此要改变居民的传统消费观念和行为,完善消费信贷市场,提供有效的生活保障措施,并维持政策的可持续性。     

燃煤锅炉滚动炉排的研制

链条炉排和往复炉排是国内燃煤锅炉行业中占主导地位的技术。其耗煤量大 ,污染较重 ,操作不便 ,劳动强度大。本文介绍的具有我国独立知识产权的创新产品——滚动炉排 ,克服了前述 2种炉排的缺点     

近时期中国文学面貌掠影

文学越来越丰富,越来越多样化,如果像过去那样对当下文学的潮流、趋势作一个明晰的判断、展望,似乎已不再可能。然有一点可总结的是,虽然文学在社会文化中的"份额"和分量都有所削弱,但是跟它自身过去比,文学反倒更加兴旺、更具活力——当其"强大"时,它实际上是有些单薄的;当其好像变得"衰微"时,它反而五光十色起来。     

消费异化现象探析

消费本来是满足人们需要的手段,但在现代社会,消费的这一功能却异化了。消费异化带来能源浪费、生态危机和环境污染,不利于经济社会的可持续发展和人的全面自由发展。因此必须充分认识其危害性,探析其产生的原因,并积极采取措施加以防范。     

家政女工的身份与团结权政治——一个家政工会女工群体的个案研究

本文试图通过对西安市家政工会项目的考察与分析,凸显在企业改革和重组中下岗、继而走进家政行业的女工在社会转型中经历的一个去工业化、边缘化、性别职业隔离化及去权利化过程,并讨论和观察项目如何利用国际与本土资源,对家政工群体进行组织动员和干预,为这个群体进行赋权,并帮助这些散在地分布于家庭私领域的家政女工实现了团结权的过程和影响。     

从行政成本看节约型政府的制度体系构建

构建节约型政府的最大障碍就是行政成本居高不下，造成这一问题的根本原因在于“制度缺失”，因此，要有效控制行政成本，建设节约型政府，必须多管齐下，综合治理，健全和完善严密有效的制度体系，从而最大程度地减少行政成本，推进政府机关的可持续发展。     

水资源管制立法内涵解读

Water resources have the functions as domestic water, resource water and environmental water, on the basis of which the legislative framework of water resource regulations shall be studied. Firstly, domestic water shall be deemed as property right and the legislation shall protect the realization of the fundamental human rights for use of domestic water. Secondly, with respect to resource water, an independent water resource regulatory agency shall be established; and meanwhile, the legislation shall promote the construction of water right market based on property rights and improve the utility of water resources. Thirdly, since environmental water is one of the public goods, the legislation shall create a path of privatization in implementing mechanism for realizing the use of environmental water and the franchising system provides a practical solution to privatization of environmental water. Xu Jinhai, Ph.D in Law, is a vice director of the Public Utilities Law Institute of Hohai University. Since 2001, he has released nearly twenty articles in Nanjing University Law Review and Jiangsu Social Science Journal and other academic journals.     

网上消费环境下的消费者权益保护问题

目前,网络环境下的消费者权益保护问题广受关注。本文着重围绕网上消费合同中的格式条款、消费者的知情权及网上消费的冷静期和解约权问题,对网络环境下消费者权益保护法律的适用和完善提出了意见和建议。