Resident-Defined Neighborhood Mapping: Using GIS to Analyze Phenomenological Neighborhoods

Using a natural quasi-experimental pretest/posttest design, residents in randomly selected homes in a suburb of Los Angeles were surveyed about their perceptions of their neighborhoods with respect to cohesion and sense of community. Responses from the pretest surveys—administered before the construction of a freeway that would bisect the city—were compared to the responses from the posttest survey six years later, administered two years after completion of the freeway. Respondents living adjacent to the new freeway—residents who experienced a fourfold increase in the average decibel levels in their neighborhoods since the freeway opened—reported both a lower sense of community and smaller neighborhood areas as compared to residents not living adjacent to the freeway and as compared to the results from the pretest. The analysis of the data incorporated geographic information system (GIS) software to allow for the analysis of phenomenological neighborhoods—neighborhoods as defined by respondents. This Resident-defined Neighborhood Mapping methodology permitted us to analyze neighborhoods as the respondents outlined them, not as they were preconceived by someone outside the neighborhood. It is suggested that this new methodology may prove useful in advancing the field of neighborhood research by detecting neighborhood-level change that traditional methods may miss.     

(Re)Drawing the Lines on Marriage and Sexuality

The campaign for same‐sex marriage is animated by two, contradictory impulses: a libertarian‐egalitarian strain that continually expands the boundaries of what is publicly legitimate; and a conservative one that seeks to reinforce traditional boundaries. Democratic polities would benefit from public discussion on whether to retain normative, sexual boundaries, and if so, what they should reasonably be. I outline a moderately conservative agenda that would limit public legitimacy to sexually exclusive monogamy (heterosexual or homosexual), but informally tolerate most, consenting, nonconventional sexual practices. A spirit of humility, empathy and tragedy will help us to exercise reasonable judgement as we redraw the lines on marriage and sexuality.     

Getting to know the knowledge economy: ICTs,networks and governance

Do we live in a new information-based networked economy? This is the underlying issue raised in this article. Confronting the claims made that such an economy is in the making provides the opportunity to discuss some ideas about the reconfiguration of knowledge that the interaction of ICTs with networks is providing. The extent and importance of ICTs is analysed and their potential impact on the evolution of economic activity investigated. The question of how to ‘govern’ these interactions is also broached. Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, a key argument made is that the advent of ICTs is pressing networks into a deeper engagement with tacit knowledge and the reappraisal of the virtues of craft production.     

中国农村早婚比例的客观统计与分析--与《改革以来中国农村婚姻家庭的新变化》商榷

<改革以来中国农村婚姻家庭的新变化>一书认为早婚现象严重、晚婚比例低是河南潢川农村男性户主婚龄分布的两大特点,51.3%的男性户主没有达到法定结婚年龄就结婚等.这一结论有些危言耸听.书中用80年代的标准来衡量不同成婚年代的人的情况,且调查问卷设计也有问题.应以成婚年代为纬,结婚年龄为经做成表格,方能准确地获得不同时期婚龄分布的情况,也才能从表格上清晰地看到早婚以及晚婚的情况.     

Partnership in Love and in Business

This article ponders the influences ofthe dichotomous nature of our understanding law andto questions that starting point on different levels oflegal thinking.The purpose of law is to make rules for our socialbehaviour but there are no specific images of humanbeings behind law. When there are no defined images,subconscious cultural images shape our thinkingsometimes even without our realizing it, and withoutserious discussion. The division between family andthe market has to do with gender divisions as well aswith the division between family and contract law. Thelogic and human image behind these two branches of lawis different.Even if we may behave differently in differentsituations we do not become altogether differentkinds of human beings with different values when wechange surroundings. Thus, we might instead develop asa starting point human co-operation law where familyand business partnerships are seen as specialbranches. The starting point of this co-operation lawwould be many-sided and pluralistic human beings, who would be atthe same time loving and egotistic, communal andindividual, feminine and masculine. Such human beingsmay be regarded as multicoloured instead of white orblack.     

台湾的印尼客家新娘——海外客家人的社会变迁之二

客家人常说"人往高处走,水往低处流",这句俗语也许可以用来解释客家人为什么喜欢不断地迁徙。客家人到了海外之后,还会不断地迁徙,促使他们不断地迁徙的原因固然很多,追求更加美好的生活应该是其中最重要的动因。在目前的台湾,有大量的印尼客家新娘,她们为什么要像父辈那样,再一次跋山涉水,移民台湾?她们追求什么?她们在台湾的生活状况如何?     

论涉外婚姻关系的法律适用——兼评《涉外民事关系法律适用法》的相关规定

2010年10月28日通过的《涉外民事关系法律适用法》,于2011年4月1日起开始施行。在该法颁布实施之前,我国涉外婚姻家庭案件适用的法律主要是我国《民法通则》第八章:涉外民事关系的法律适用。该法实施之后,我国涉外婚姻家庭案件将以该法为基本的依据。因此,该法的实施,对我国涉外婚姻家庭案件的处理具有重大理论和实践意义。     

论婚姻忠诚协议之法律效力——与梁慧星教授商榷

近年来,有关＂夫妻忠诚协议＂法律效力的认定问题成为学界新的讨论热点,我国法院在实践中做法的差异很大。从法律适用逻辑的角度来看,婚姻作为一种制度化的特殊法律行为,不能比照适用一般法律行为规则或契约规则。＂夫妻忠诚协议＂并没有得到现行实定法的认可,故不具有法律效力。而违反婚姻忠实义务应负侵权责任,双方通过协议约定损害赔偿数额的行为不合法。进而,从法社会学层面来检视现行法规定,此类协议的有效性有违现代法律精神,缺乏正当性依据。     

How domestic contexts shape international private governance: The case of the European Accord and American Alliance in Bangladesh

The international nature of supply chains has led to the rise of private authority in regulating the environmental and social impacts of production, which companies frequently address through corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the form of private governance (PG). Despite its claim to establish “global” rules, PG usually has national origins, and multiple efforts to address the same issue from different national perspectives frequently coexist. Numerous studies have explored the impact of national business systems on companies' domestic CSR practices, yet little is known about what factors shape CSR practices like PG internationally. Therefore, this study seeks to understand how differing domestic contexts shape approaches to CSR in the form of PG in host countries. I explore this empirically through the comparative case study of competing PG initiatives in the post-Rana Plaza Bangladesh garment industry, uniquely conceived to govern companies' practices rather than certify products. It combines empirical findings with the comparative CSR literature to hypothesize about ideal types of PG organizing in US and European contexts. It extends the analysis to also account for other influential factors, such as stakeholder pressure, thus demonstrating how institutional and agentic factors amalgamate to shape firms' choices. By explicating linkages between international PG and its domestic context, as well as between the comparative CSR and PG literature studies, this study extends our understanding of how and why international PG practices and preferences vary for firms originating from different environments.     

Strengthening the inner circle: the marriage networks of elite families in Joseon Korea

ABSTRACT

Socioeconomic homogamy is a prominent process for reproducing the social structure in preindustrial societies including East Asian countries. Although Joseon Korea was a centralized bureaucratic state under a king, the stratification system was unique by its ambiguity such that the previlege of an upper class was not officially confirmed. Since the social status was rather conferred by the reputation of the family, the quality of marriage relation was important for a man to be ranked as a central official. In this paper, we investigate patterns of social homogamy among elite families in the early Joseon Korea through empirical evidence of the relationship between official rank and spousal family background. We created a novel dataset by compiling the marriage network and official rank information of 14,508 individuals from the jokbos (族譜, genealogy) of 15 elite families and conduct an ordinal logit regression analysis to investigate whether spousal family background increases the probability of an individual being promoted in the bureaucracy. We find that the socio-political power of affinal kin has a greater effect on promotions than the descent and meritocratic effects. Particularly, the empirical evidence shows that marrying into a queen consort’s family increased the likelihood of an individual being ranked in a high position, which was beneficial for retaining the political power of him and the family. The study shows that marriage as a means of managing the socio-political inner circle of elite families, shaping the elites’ socio-political inner circle, built on the marriage network around a queen consort’s family to benefit the royal authority and the elite group.