Agrarian transformation in the Russian breadbasket: contemporary trends as manifest in Stavropol'

A team of US and Russian geographers combines field observations with satellite imagery in an examination of how major trends in Russian agriculture are manifest in one of Russia's most productive agricultural regions: Stavropol' Kray. A nationwide pattern of agricultural consolidation during the 1990s (featuring rural depopulation and a reduction in cultivated area and herd sizes upon the termination of Soviet-era subsidization levels) has had decidedly different outcomes in different parts of the vast Russian countryside. This paper – using Stavropol' as a surrogate for regions which by physical attributes, location, and human capital are best positioned to support agricultural activity – identifies a number of developments that may signal a new growth trajectory for agriculture in Russia: evolving specialization of former socialized farms in response to market conditions (in Stavropol' involving the shrinkage of animal husbandry and the release of surplus labor); increased levels of absentee (corporate) ownership of farmland in the more favorable locations; decoupling of the economic fate of large farms (success) from local municipal budgets (deficiency); and the expansion of non-Russian ethnic communities in the countryside, with attendant land use changes.     

Relationships,significations, and orientations toward a collective acting of the Afro descendants and Africans in Argentina

In this work, we will analyze the collective actions of Afro descendants and Africans in Argentina regarding social movements (SMs). That is, we intend to understand the relationships, significations, and orientations toward collective action. Following Alberto Melucci's approach, we should not consider SMs as an ‘empiric unit’ but an ‘analytical category’, through which it may be possible to understand Afro-Argentine collective social action. The SMs are social constructions, and their work should be analyzed as a result, not as a starting point. We consider an SM as instituting, not as instituted, as a form of collective action oriented toward the construction of a new identity. Individuals construct their objectives, make choices, and take action according to the perception of their environments in relation to the social expectations. Therefore, we understand an SM as a network formed by a wide variety of groups and individuals scattered but interconnected, a network submerged in the daily life and from where the collective identity and the links for action are structured.     

Forging feminism within labor unions and the legacy of democracy movements in South Korea

Abstract

Although most scholarship stresses that ‘male regular worker-centeredness’ is a trait of mainstream Korean labor unions, the specific reasons why feminism has failed to spread within Korean unionism have not been clarified. In order to answer this question, this article focuses on the entangled interrelations of feminism with broader social movements, maintaining that the historical legacy of the victory of the 1987 Great Worker Struggle – led by male workers from the heavy and chemical industries – is still a powerful factor in discouraging the spread of feminism, even though a fundamental transformation in the nature of Korean labor unions from being primarily class conscious to economistic has taken place. This article also highlights that Korean women’s movements have raised little criticism against the gender-blindness of labor unionism largely because Korean labor unions have been positioned as a ‘moral force’ in bringing about democratization. Furthermore, I stress that conflict between old feminists (socialist feminism) and young feminists (radical feminism), who tend to reflect on the dichotomous relations between gender and/or class, has actually been counterproductive to the proliferation of feminism within Korean labor unions.     

中国妇女运动的“阶级”——中国共产党全国代表大会妇女运动决议研究

本文主要研究了中国共产党全国代表大会妇女运动决议关于中国妇女运动的阶级分析与评价,发现妇女运动是凝聚阶级、民族与性别多重关系的颇具张力的概念。劳动妇女运动和一般妇女运动是两个基本分析范畴。党对妇女运动的评价与态度随着革命形势而发展变化,充满辨证法思想。     

浅析流动人口的犯罪倾向

本文分析了流动人口犯罪的特征 ,指出流动人口犯罪的原因有 :社会控制力的弱化 ;流动人口社会适应性较弱以及我们打击流动人口犯罪乏力 ;最后认为只有从解决流动人口面临的困难与打击少数流动人口犯罪着手 ,双管齐下 ,才能遏止流动人口犯罪高涨的问题     

Convergence as political strategy: social justice movements,natural resources and climate change

Abstract

Critical scholars and activists have now been contending with a widely recognised convergence of global crises for a decade. The issues have intersected decisively, with staple food sources proving inaccessible for the world’s poor, banks foreclosing on the most vulnerable, fuel sources causing war and impacting migration, and climate change-related instabilities shaking low-income communities to their core. At the same time, agrarian, environmental, indigenous and fishers’ movements – among others – have used this moment to converge in their own right. This article explores this intertwining of social justice movements with an eye on such interrelated challenges. Its overall objective is, on one side, to provide some broad empirical brushstrokes on the intertwining of transnational social justice movements at the local, national and regional scales as they work with and trade frameworks of food sovereignty and climate justice. On the flip side, this article offers a set of tools to analyse and understand the politics of convergence as political strategy – as a means of advancing global social justice – against the rising tide of climate-related resource grabs.     

The Two-headed Dragon: Environmental Policy and Progress Under Rising Democracy in Taiwan

Social movements constitute a political link between the power of existing polity and the ability of citizens to influence political outcomes. As a result, social movements can represent a potential rival to the acting political system, acquiring power and facilitating change through actions that create threats to existing political structures. In Taiwan, social movements were born from oppression and neglect by the ruling political class of social concerns. Environmental protests were effective in halting further deterioration of the island’s environment. How have democracy and its ensuing freedoms for citizens and movements alike altered movement structure and their issues in the socio-political environment? This research traces the development and transformation of the environmental movement in Taiwan within this changing political structure and examines how mobilized protest has been increasingly muted as an effective movement strategy, and how environmental justice has been slow to materialize.

日本禁止就业年龄歧视法律制度探析

为了解决中高龄者就业年龄歧视问题,日本建立了禁止就业年龄歧视法律制度。日本力图通过禁止就业年龄歧视的立法在确保高龄者安定雇佣和禁止在招录员工时设定年龄限制这两个方面有所作为。我国在禁止就业年龄歧视立法方面尚处于空白阶段,日本的相关经验带给我国诸多有益的启示。     

论知识创新成果产业化的螺旋运动

随着知识经济时代的来临,社会经济发展越来越依赖于知识这一内生要素的推动作用。知识创新成果产业化是在政府、高等院校或科研机构、产业界三重螺旋运动中实现的从根本上改变了传统的经济增长方式,具有重大的产业效应和社会经济效应。     

Making Decentralization Work: A Cross-national Examination of Local Governments and Natural Resource Governance in Latin America

There has been increased emphasis in the last three decades on the decentralization of natural resource governance decisions to local government in developing countries as a means of improving environmental quality, public service delivery, and the accountability of local officials. We examine the performance of decentralization of natural resource management services in a large sample of municipal governments in four Latin American countries. Our analysis includes a variety of factors discussed in the literature as important in influencing the responsiveness of government officials to local needs. We provide a nested institutional model in which local officials respond to incentives created by the structure of formal political institutions at both the local and national level. The results provide support for the importance of considering local and national institutional arrangements as these co-determine the political incentives within decentralized systems.