The dark side of the family: paternal child homicide in Australia

Abstract

Feminist scholars have produced an extensive literature on the social, economic, psychological, and criminological aspects of female infanticide. By contrast, there have been few historical studies of fathers who have murdered their children. This article analyses the problem of paternal filicide in three ways. First, it contextualises state responses to child homicide in relation to the government's wider treatment of violence in the home. Second, it analyses men's stated motivations for child murder, highlighting the significance of their conceptions of fatherhood and family to their violent actions. And finally, it interrogates onlookers' understandings of male violence, showing that the family was central to the boundaries onlookers drew between understandable and incomprehensible violence. Overall, the article shows that fathers' violent acts stemmed from significantly different social pressures to maternal child killing. The various interpretations of male violence tell us much about historical understandings of fathers' responsibilities, men's family roles, and the place of violence in the home.     

FROM SINGING GIRL TO REVOLUTIONARY ARTIST: FEMALE ENTERTAINERS REMEMBERING CHINA’S SOCIALIST PAST (1949–THE PRESENT)

Abstract

This article explores a unique aspect of gendered socialism by examining the competing narratives of the state and individuals’ oral accounts, particularly the stories of former singing girls and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres. During the socialist transformation of the 1950s, singing girls-turned-revolutionary artists, as popular performers and new socialist women, found mutual interests with the CCP: political propaganda for the Party, making profit for the troupe, and self-transformation for the girls. This article argues that the Party and former singing girls enacted a uniquely gendered socialism by continuously deploying the singing girls’ cultural and financial influence colored with their erotic image. In addition, this essay treats oral history as a process of identity and history construction rather than as “fact.”     

The Mechanism of State Charter School Policy Adoption: The Case of American States

This article concentrates on charter school policy that is regarded as the fastest growing innovative policy in America. Its adoption is more impressive than other innovative policies in the public educational area. By 2008, 40 states among 50 American states have passed charter school law since Minnesota became the first pathfinder to create charter school law about two decades ago. However, 10 states have not adopted charter school law. Based on this dichotomous policy phenomenon, the primary research question of the study focuses on clarifying what factors drive American states to adopt charter school policy. To obtain answers for this research question, the study dedicates to analyzing main hypotheses from the regional diffusion model and state characteristics, using event history analysis. The results demonstrate that the three predictor variables—regional diffusion, similar innovation, and gubernatorial political tendency—positively have significant effects in explaining the adoption of American state charter school policy.     

自然与历史的关系--马克思与现代西方哲学的一个比较研究

自然与历史的关系问题是现代西方哲学中的一个难题.自新康德主义以来,这两者或是借形式规定性或是借自然主义仅仅达到了虚假的统一.前者借历史之名使历史凌驾于自然之上,后者又借自然之名呤唱怀旧恋曲.马克思在此问题上的贡献却一直没有得到应有的重视.自然与历史的真实统一,在马克思那里是通过实践关系为中介才得以实现的.     

战后台湾地方新闻报道的实践历程

战后60年来,台湾地方新闻报道的整体发展历程,乃是台湾特有的历史与政治背景、西方新闻与大众传播论述的引进,以及新传播科技的变革等因素相互激荡的结果。通过“酝酿期”、“发展期”、“衰退期”、“转型期”等四个阶段的划分,本文展现出台湾新闻报导发展历程中,地方新闻报导概念的变迁形貌。进一步,本文以台湾地方新闻报道的实践经验为基础,融合当代社交媒体时代的媒体生态,提出“贴近本土话题,呈现多元意见,创造公共意识”三项功能,作为中国大陆落实地方新闻报道理念的创新路径。     

论召公在我国思想史上的地位

学术界充分肯定了周公在我国思想史上的地位,而召公则被忽视。其实,召公对我国思想史发展的深远影响,是可与周公媲美的。这表现在召公:就如何对待"天"及发展西周王朝,提出了"天不可信",振兴西周王朝这决定于我——"时我",推进了从神本走向人本的历史进程;提出了处在共同体中的"休(美好)"、"恤(忧患)"矛盾的对立统一,强调防止"休"向"恤"转化,此实为和谐哲学的雏形;提出了"弥性"的性善说和"节性"的性恶说,开启了我国人性论的先导;提出了"敬德保民",以德治国的新思想;提出了要以夏、殷"不敬德"而亡国为鉴。其"不敬德"的内涵集中到一点就是"贪婪腐败"。故以夏、殷为鉴,就是要以其"贪婪腐败"而亡国的教训为鉴,从而揭示了一个国家政治清廉则兴,贪婪腐败则亡的历史规律;召公为政清廉,为民不扰民,以利民便民为务,这既是"敬德保民"思想的身体力行,又是其平民化思想的标志。总之,召公对上述六个方面的论述的深刻性超越了周公,对思想史的发展做出了独特的杰出贡献,应充分肯定其在我国思想史上的崇高地位。     

当代中国法律史学研究方法的分析

当代中国法律史研究经过"前十七年"(1949—1966)"文革十年"(1966—1977)与"改革开放"(1978—至今)三个阶段。由于研究方法的不同,每个时期的研究成果都呈现出不同的特点。"前十七前"主要采用的"阶级分析"的方法曾对推动中国法律史的研究起到过重要作用,但"文革十年"中这一方法的绝对化却成为学术发展的桎梏。1978年"改革开放"以来,思想解放使学术研究方法多元化,中国法律史的研究也随着方法的多元而繁荣兴盛,与以往相比,研究成果剧增,多角度地探讨中国历史上的法律拓展了中国法律史的研究领域,但对研究方法的过度重视也带来研究中的其他问题。     

Democracia radical,entre la crítica y el nihilismo: un abordaje de la propuesta desde el diálogo entre Ernesto Laclau y Slavoj Žižek

This article hypothesizes that the work of Ernesto Laclau is a proposal that aims to be a review, in times of crisis, to the very idea of criticism. Throughout the years, this thinker has defended his proposal for radical democracy to different remarks and rants. In these pages, we propose resuming talks between Laclau and Slavoj Žižek as one of the possible ways to address this debate. Given the difficulty of providing an exhaustive answer to the main question in our debate, we have raised the issue in terms of the “risks” or “dangers” that the work of Laclau approaches, while avoiding definitive statements.     

Little Swans with Luxette and Loved Boy Pudding: Changing Fashions in Cookery Books

Cookery books are far from simple things: alongside the recipes we may find narrative, memoir, science, history, politics, travelogue and anthropology. The cookery book also reveals in a profoundly naked form the anxieties and paranoias of its precise historical moment. So the glamorous cookery books of the years between the wars try to persuade the newly servantless middle-class woman that the cooking she must now do herself is a creative and fashionable activity. And the postwar British, sick of the limited stodge of their still-rationed diet, clutched Elizabeth David to their collective bosom, unable to taste her pungent dishes, but in thrall to the sun-strewn fantasy of the good life her books offered. From Mrs Beeton, offering the mid-Victorian mistress of the house the instructions and routines she needed to hide the mechanisms of the domestic machine, to the potent contemporary fantasy of the Mediterranean peasant and his fabulously healthy lifestyle, Humble interrogates the cookery books of the last 150 years, asking what they can tell us about how changing attitudes to class, gender and domesticity intersect with the culture of food.     

Barack Hussein Obama: the use of history in the creation of an ‘American’ president

ABSTRACT

From the time of his nomination as the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential candidate onwards, Barack Obama was the target of a panoply of political attacks. Conservatives, Republicans and even some Democrats played on his alterity in a way that previous non-white political hopefuls, particularly the Reverend Jesse Jackson, had not had to endure. If the intricate twists and turns of Obama's past did not make those attacks particularly surprising, the way in which he chose to deal with them was. In what stands as a deliberate pre-emptive attack, Obama used two substantive texts, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, to create and shape a historical narrative of his own past in such a way as to present himself to the US voting public as a truly American figure, worthy of the presidency. By the time he was running for high office, therefore, Obama had already used his knowledge of the discipline of history to create a usable past with which he and his supporters could denude many of those political attacks of their potency, whether they were focused on the years of his upbringing in an Islamic state, his familial ties to Kenya, his religious background or his purported links to radicalism.