The Awkward Class: a foundation for peasant studies

ABSTRACT

Teodor Shanin's The Awkward Class helped to launch two immensely important research directions. First, resistance by Russian peasants to modernizing agricultural policies by both Tsarist and Soviet governments opened new questions about collectivization of agriculture, and made Russian history relevant to the study of ‘developing societies.’ Second, the idea of cyclical mobility of peasant households challenged the then widely held assumption that peasants were destined to disappear. Instead of explaining ‘persistence’ of peasants, Shanin explored distinct logics of peasant households and communities. This helped to define a new inter-disciplinary field called peasant studies.     

Politics of inclusion and exclusion in the Chinese industrial tree plantation sector: the global resource rush seen from inside China

In the last two decades, the industrial tree plantation (ITP) sector has expanded rapidly in southern China, causing important changes in land-use and land control. It involves both domestic and transnational corporations, and has provoked widespread conflict and political contestations. The villagers who are affected by the expansion of ITPs have reacted in varied and complex ways: some of the villagers were incorporated in the ITP sector, while others are excluded; some have embraced the change, while others have complaints; and some of the complaints remained latent, while others developed into (overt or covert) forms of resistance. This paper explores how and why various social groups have responded differently to the expansion of ITPs. This paper reveals the dynamics of villagers’ inclusion and exclusion in the ITP sector, covering both ‘passive’ and ‘active’ forms of inclusion and exclusion, resulting in differentiated political reactions from villagers. This paper hopes to contribute towards a more comprehensive understanding of the complex engagement of villagers in changes in land use and land control, not just in the most commonly studied countries in global land grabbing but inside China, and in transactions that involved large foreign companies, something that has so far been missed in the literature on land grabbing.     

新时期我国公民教育的内容体系和实施途径

我国的公民教育在内容构建上可以按照公民意识——公民知识——公民能力的逻辑顺序来设计。本文从横向和纵向两个维度探讨了公民教育的实施途径。横向分为学校教育系统和非学校教育系统两个方面;纵向强调整体规划、分段实施、有效衔接的过程。     

谈反恐工作与我国和谐社会的构建

建设和谐社会是新世纪、新阶段我国经济社会发展的新要求、新趋势。文章通过分析恐怖活动对我国的现实威胁,研究了反恐工作在我国和谐社会建设中的战略地位,探索了反恐工作与和谐社会之间的关系,从而为公安机关加强反恐工作、确保和谐社会建设顺利开展打下基础。     

The `Ideal' Victim v Successful Rape Complainants: Not What You Might Expect

This article proposes that feminist legal critics need to be able to explain how some rape cases succeed in securing convictions. The means by which rape cases are routinely disqualified in the criminal justice system have received widespread attention. It is well established in feminist legal critique that female complainants are discredited if they fail to conform to an archaic stereotype of the genuine or ‘real’ rape victim. This victim is not only morally and sexually virtuous she is also cautious, unprovocative, and consistent. Defence tactics for discrediting rape testimony involve exposing the complainant's alleged failure to comply with the sexual and behavioural standards of the normative victim. This understanding of how rape complain(an)ts are disqualified is not predictive, however, of the complainants whose cases succeed in securing convictions. This article reviews some successful Australian rape cases and considers the ways in which they disturb feminist understandings of how rape complaints are discredited in the criminal justice system. It proposes that recent research analysing the discourse of rape trials provides a way of explaining the apparent discrepancies between the ‘ideal’ rape victim and successful complainants. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

建立符合我国国情的沉默权制度

处于被司法机关审查状态的公民 ,可以自主地选择说话或不说话的方式表达其意志。沉默的表示应当视为以不作为的方式与司法机关合作 ,将正常行使沉默权纳入抗拒的范畴是不妥的。我国“坦白从宽 ,抗拒从严”的传统政策应当修正为 :“坦白应当从宽 ,沉默受到保护 ,抗拒必须从严”。正确意义上的“坦白从宽 ,抗拒从严”与沉默权并不矛盾。在保护人权的同时 ,必须强化国家的司法权 ,根据我国的国情 ,对沉默权应当予以必要的限制。当前 ,应当审慎地对刑诉法第93条进行修改 ,明确规定沉默权只能有限行使     

Precarity,Cognitive (Non-)Resistance and the Conservative Working Class in China

ABSTRACT

Workers’ resistance is crucial to understanding how the working class respond to the growing labour precarity in post-socialist China. The labour studies literature posits that inequality and volatile capital movements increase workers’ precarity and lead to stronger labour resistance, such as strikes. However, workers’ cognition as an integral part of resistance has been rarely studied. This article examines cognitive resistance by Chinese workers from different tier cities by looking at their social trust, class identity, understanding of policies and class solidarity. Despite capital movements and precarity causing more labour unrest, it does not necessarily lead to a stronger cognitive resistance. While inequality and precarity are greater in the more developed megacities with a shifting capital favourability, workers in megacities display a more conservative cognitive resistance than those from the lower-tier cities. This study of workers’ cognitive resistance provides insight into the future of the Chinese labour movement. It argues that the working class’s current cognitive non-resistance suggests that even if a window of opportunity were to appear in the wall of state oppression, workers are not cognitively prepared to coalesce into a coherent social movement that would bring about transformative changes.     

从运动到法治：“严打”刑事政策的理性趋势

“严打”是我国一项长期的刑事政策 ,在打击刑事犯罪 ,维护社会治安秩序 ,保障社会安定方面起到了积极作用。由于该政策从确立到成型再到发展至今 ,经历了我国刑事法律制度从不健全到基本健全的过程。因此 ,在该政策的形成与实践中不可避免地会存在一些与现代法治理念不相适应的问题 ,集中表现为“运动”模式的色彩过浓。但该政策的生命力是不应否认的 ,应当有所作为的是 ,将“严打”从“运动”引向“法治”轨道。     

The Fragility of Law: Anti-Jewish Decrees,Constitutional Patriotism,and Collaboration Belgium 1940–1944

In October and November 1940, the German Military Command which ruled conquered Belgium, introduced a series of measures aimed at the identification and exclusion of the Jews of that country. The Belgian government of the day refused to allow the measures to be incorporated into Belgian law, but did permit, under their reading of the Hague Convention, government departments and local administrations to assist in implementing the German anti-Jewish Decrees. The Brussels Bar, Prosecutors and Court of Cassation refused to accept the authority of the Occupier to violate basic rights guaranteed under the Belgian Constitution. Officials in Antwerp, on the other hand, struck all lawyers identified as "Jews" from the Roll. This article examines these instances of "constitutional patriotism" and "constitutional betrayal" by these actors in the Belgian legal system, and offers some preliminary discussion of important questions about our historical and current understandings of legality, legitimacy and citizenship in light of this part of the Belgian experience of law under Nazi occupation. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Democratic Political Competence: Clearing the Underbrush and a Controversial Proposal

Though the link between democracy and an appropriately trained citizen is obvious, the theoretical and empirical nature of this association is murky despite mountains of scholarship addressing this topic. Part of this problem is that the term democratic competence has been stretched almost to the point of uselessness. This constant adding of desired traits—many of which are ideologically driven—misdirects effort away from such complex problems as the relationship between individual attributes and collective capacities. Moreover, recent research has often been guilty of using data of uncertain relevance to demonstrate a competence that seems largely an analytical artifact. We conclude by offering an approach that stresses old- fashioned traits such as patriotism that seem necessary to the existing, and quite democratic, status quo.