Feeding Mothers’ Love: Stories of Breastfeeding and Mothering in Urban China

ABSTRACT

By analysing narratives of infant feeding, this article explores how emotions are involved in the making of maternal subjectivity. The article is based on interviews with 21 Chinese middle-class mothers of small infants living in Beijing and their stories of how breastfeeding connects to intimacy and love. By merging post-structural approaches of subjectivity with affect theory, the article shows how the emotional dimension of breastfeeding promotes an ideal of mothers as primary caregivers. It finds that this ideal is challenged by practices of multiple caregiving in the mothers’ everyday lives. By exploring the performativity of emotions, the article adds another sociological perspective beyond those concerned with medical discourses of feeding infants. Also, as emotions have been neglected in much social research on Chinese mothering, it contributes to new sociological knowledge about mothering in China.     

(Re)centering street harassment – an appraisal of safe cities global initiative in Delhi,India

Abstract

In 2012, New Delhi (India) was catapulted into the global limelight for the brutal gang rape of a 23-year old woman travelling in a bus. This wasn’t the first time that sexual violence had been perpetrated on the streets of Delhi and nor would it be the last. Yet this universal fact of everyday violence in public spaces particularly streets, though acknowledged by activists and feminists, has been examined minimally in academic scholarship. Further, even though the United Nations has been instrumental in foregrounding gender-based violence as a critical human rights issue, it has only recently turned its attention to street harassment through its ‘Safe Cities Global Initiative’. Therefore, in this paper, we trace how a routine but understudied form of violence becomes central to United Nations’ agenda to eliminate violence against women. By specifically, analysing the Delhi Safe Cities programme as a case study, our second contribution lies in examining the adequacy of the contemporary Safe Cities framework as a model for addressing sexual violence in public space. We conclude the paper by offering critical conceptual and methodological recommendations to further strengthen the framework.     

Global poverty and inequality: are the revised estimates open to an alternative interpretation?

The level of, and trends in, global inequality and global poverty are indicative assessments of who has benefited from economic growth. The revision of price data has led to a reassessment of those estimates. Through an extensive overview of the implications, we argue that the data can be read in different ways. Official estimates show global extreme poverty and global inequality are considerably lower than previously thought. We argue that these changes are much less significant than they at first appear, and we present a more nuanced alternative interpretation by exploring changes across the entire global distribution.     

提高南宁城市竞争力的思考

科学发展观的提出已受到全党和全社会的广泛认同,也为现代化城市建设起到了重要指导作用.我国现代化建设的实践表明,城市在社会主义市场经济的建立和现代化事业的建设中占有举足轻重的地位,但城市并不是单纯的投入对象、建设对象和管理对象,而且还是可供开发利用的客体.而城市竞争力则体现为一个城市的综合能力.文章对南宁市城市经营管理的现状以及优劣势进行分析,相应地提出了提高南宁市城市竞争力的努力方向和前景展望.     

对中国非正规就业发展的探讨

中国非正规就业面临缺乏法律保障和制度支撑、非正规就业劳动关系和劳动制度不规范、城乡劳动力市场的分割成为非正规部门劳动力市场发展的体制性障碍等问题。要从制定系统和长远的非正规就业规划和完善非正规就业方面的立法人手,打破城乡劳动力市场的分割、健全社会保障体系、强化社会服务和增强劳动力培训的针对性和实用性等,积极发展非正规就业,缓解中国城乡就业压力。     

城乡居民收入差异的区域性特点分析

通过分析城乡居民抽样调查资料,建立城乡居民收入差距的回归分析模型,对城乡居民收入差异的区域性特点进行了比较分析。从而为缩小城乡居民收入差距提供了理论参考。     

城市积水考问政府公共服务能力

城市积水处理是城市基础设施建设的一部分,也是政府公共服务的一部分,更是对政府提供公共服务的能力和水平的考问和检验,面对严竣的积水现状,我国政府唯有强化公共服务能力,完善公共服务体系,才是治理之道。     

基于现金流量的财务风险预警体系探析

国内外研究表明,现金流量在财务困境企业与非财务困境企业之间有显著差异,现金流量具有财务预警能力。从现金流量的角度,在对现有的财务风险预警模型比较分析的基础上,研究建立基于现金流量的财务风险预警体系是非常必要的。     

城市农民工阶层化问题探讨

随着改革开放以来中国社会转型以及城市化进程加速,城市农民工内部已经发生了阶层分化,从上到下依次划分为准市民身份的农民工、自我雇佣的个体农民工、依靠打工维生的农民工、失业农民工、失地农民工这五个阶层。经济收入的差异是导致城市农民工内部发生分化的最直接、最本质的原因。农民工阶层化未来发展将呈现出城市农民工数量持续增加,农民工阶层在经济层面进一步分化,农民工阶层由基础的经济层面的分化进一步转向政治和社会层面的分化,城市农民工的阶层流动从自发转为自为等趋势。     

Turkifying Poverty,or: the Phantom Pain of Izmir’s Lost Christian Working Class, 1924–26

This article shows that ‘Turkification’, a term widely used by historians of modern Turkey to refer to the forced transfer of property from Christian into Muslim hands, ought to be conceptualized not only in the sense of ‘enrichment’ but also, with regard to the working classes, as a process in which Muslim people inherited the poverty of their Christian predecessors. Taking ?zmir as a case in point, the article first describes the plight of the overwhelmingly Christian working class prior to 1922. It then studies reports and editorials that discussed the economic and social situation in ?zmir in the years 1923 to 1926, after the Turkish victory and forced migration of her Christian population. Over the course of these years, ?zmir experienced a serious economic crisis, and bread prices reached levels that led to widespread undernourishment and hunger among the city?s poor. Agricultural production was lagging behind pre-war levels, and positive effects of ‘Turkification? policies were failing to materialize. By analyzing the contemporary journalists? attempts at explaining the crisis, but also pointing out national and transnational factors that they were probably unaware of, the article makes an original contribution to the economic and social history of early republican Turkey.