青少年增权研究述评

青少年增权基本上包括个人增权和集体增权两个层次,青少年增权是新的研究视野、研究角度、工作理念和工作方式。我国学者和实际工作者应加强对青少年增权理论和实践的本土化、我国青少年实际权力状况和增权途径的研究。     

我国城市弱势青少年群体增权问题探析

目前,城市弱势青少年群体客观上处于无权状态并内化为无权感,从青少年个体发展和社会的协调发展来说都需要增权。在现实条件下,实现城市弱势青少年群体的增权途径,主要通过家庭系统、同辈互动、社区参与和舆论媒体等,从而使其提升能力,获得资源。     

From patronage politics to community deliberation: the recent experience of democratic school management in Brazil

The article discusses the limits and possibilities of school empowerment within education systems plagued by pervasive patronage politics. The analysis focuses on reform initiatives implemented by Brazilian sub‐national governments throughout the 1980s and 1990s to allow for the election of school principals by parents, teachers and students. Until the implementation of this reform, state and local authorities had relied on the school system as a source of patronage resources, and principals were nominated according to political criteria. The new system of democratic school management was expected to undermine this patronage‐based system and foster community participation in school decisions. The article relies on secondary evidence to assess the impact of school elections in what concerns the participation of parents, students and teachers in school affairs and the relationship between schools, party politicians and education administrators. It concludes that high levels of social inequality and the lack of a universalistic and effective system of welfare provision constitute serious obstacles to the empowerment of disadvantaged groups in developing societies such as Brazil. On the other hand, the article argues that school empowerment has the potential to undermine resilient patronage structures, by introducing universalistic mechanisms of decision‐making and making school administrators more accountable to their constituencies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Banking on Social Change: Grameen Bank Lending to Women

The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has become an international model for microcredit as a poverty alleviation strategy. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to evaluate the Grameen Bank as a strategy for empowering and improving the socioeconomic status of women in Bangladesh, and to identify lessons from the Grameen Bank experience that can inform development policy more generally. Arguments for and against Grameen Bank are evaluated in the light of evidence from studies of the Bank and knowledge of women and development. The conclusions that are drawn from this evaluation are that Grameen Bank is not a panacea for poverty alleviation and improving women's lives, that it has increased the income of borrowers, has led to improvements in specific aspects of their lives, and that it has potential if used in conjunction with other progressive social and economic policies to contribute to long-term, sustainable, progressive social change.     

Making the ‘empowered woman’: exploring contradictions in gender and development programming in Kyrgyzstan

This article examines the complexities of women’s increasing participation in international development programming for gender equality. Taking a specific setting in rural Kyrgyzstan where one such project has been operating, the researchers discover adverse effects on the local women’s livelihoods, status and health. Women’s contradictions are attributed to the women’s own failures and lacks, creating confusion and frustration among them. Adopting Smith’s institutional-ethnography approach, we explicate and map out the hidden processes which must be held accountable for these reactionary outcomes, taking women’s experiences as entry points to inquiry. We find that the reactionary effects are not accidental but organized, powerfully, systematically but invisibly, by taken-for-granted institutional practices serving the purposes of global development institutions, where women are seen as instruments of global economic growth. The analysis provokes critical discussion of ‘how’ and ‘what’ it takes to transform Central Asian women into ‘empowered’ people.     

National heroes or coming anarchy? Vigilant youth and the “war on terror” in Nigeria

In this article, I explore analytically how local youth vigilante groups in terror-stricken northeastern Nigeria – locally known as the Civilian Joint Task Force or yan gora (“youth with sticks”) – are responding to threats to their communities posed by the terrorism of Boko Haram and the human rights abuses of the Nigerian security forces. The article argues that vigilantism has been a way for victimised local youth to reclaim a sense of control and agency in a context of risk, radical uncertainty, powerlessness and heightened fear. While one group of victimised and angry youth (Boko Haram) in northeastern Nigeria are violently resisting the state, another group of victimised and angry youth (yan gora) from the same region are joining forces with the state to protect members of their local communities and to restore peace to their troubled region. However, growing concerns that the yan gora are a “coming anarchy” have compelled state-endorsed youth empowerment schemes geared at integrating the militia into Nigerian security service, while regulating their actions and instilling patriotism and discipline in its members. Yet, such hybrid security arrangements may end up reproducing the very insecurity they were meant to forestall.     

Home-grown strategies for greater agency: reassessing the outcome of civil society strengthening in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan

This paper seeks to reassess the outcome of mainstream civil society promotion policies in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. While it agrees with critics that the distorting effects of funding relations have meant that the promised ‘grassroots citizen empowerment’ has not been achieved directly through NGOs, it does not agree that NGOs are therefore merely vehicles of the Western ideological agenda and international aid to the Kyrgyzstani population. It argues that the facilitation of international actors has opened up opportunities for individual NGO activists to pursue their own social and political development agendas. In recent years, some activists have begun to use these opportunities to develop strategies through which grassroots interests are represented to decision-makers, and citizens' abilities to represent their own interests are enhanced. The strategies adopted differ from the mainstream civil society model and have allowed some NGOs to function in a manner more relevant to the specific Kyrgyzstani context. This suggests that local Kyrgyzstani NGOs and activists should not all be written off as ‘artificial’ civil society, irrelevant to the dynamics of state–society relations.     

至关重要的社会性别——21世纪如何开展全球化和社会变迁研究

作为一篇导论性文章,本文旨在促进社会变迁——与本地、国家和地区层面全球化进程相伴随——研究中强调社会性别中心位置的变革性学术和研究。本文的六个主题相互关联,都将全球化视为一种社会性别化的现象,并研究社会性别如何现身于全球化逻辑之内,以及如何被嵌入到全球化的过程和结构之中。这些主题考察了全球化如何塑造了社会性别化的制度;在男女两性资源获得和控制、价值观念、自身认同、选择、角色行为和社会性别权力关系方面,全球化是如何建构社会性别的;全球化如何影响男女两性所生活的社会文化环境。这些主题也将全球化的辨证关系解释为对男女两性产生纷繁影响的全球及地区政治经济和社会文化环境之间冲突性互动的结果。全篇的重点在于提出有效的社会变迁策略。     

城乡融合发展中的农村居民市民化协同联动机制

农村居民就地市民化是实现乡村振兴和城乡融合发展的重要环节,是基于身份的农民市民化和基于流动的农民工市民化基础上产生的新现象,凸显了居民主体自觉自愿转变身份的过程。在催生农村发展内生动力的过程中,更要突出农村居民的主体地位和主体作用,重塑政府、市场与社会三者之间的角色。浙江与陕西的案例表明,要推动农村居民市民化,必须构建起以农村居民为主体的政府赋权、市场赋利与社会赋能协同联动机制,进一步增强农村居民的主体意识,激活蕴藏在广大农村地区的巨大潜力和发展动能,从而逐步让农村居民享有与城镇居民同等品质的现代生活。     

Navigating,challenging, and contesting normative gendered discourses surrounding women’s pornography use

While there exists some empirical research on women’s use of pornography, the manner in which women do, and how they understand their pornographic spectatorship, remains under-examined. Focusing on the narratives of 26 women gained through both focus groups and individual interviews, this research explores how women who use pornography and other sexually explicit materials navigate, reaffirm, challenge, and contest normative gendered boundaries that surround women’s sexuality, sexual pleasure, and women’s pornographic use. While ‘pornography as female degradation’ is the most visible feminist discourse, the findings of this study suggest that the meanings attributed to both the experience of engaging with pornography, as well as with pornographic materials themselves, were far from wholly degrading, and in fact, served to provide pleasure, sexual self-actualization, and even corporeal validation – disrupting normative discourses of desiring and desirable bodies.