Dispossession and disalienation: The fulfillment of life in Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed

For Caleb

In The Dispossessed, Ursula LeGuin imagines a non‐authoritarian society that privileges freedom and centers the individual's realization of her creative potentials in social context as the means to achieve the highest functioning, least repressive society. The concept central to this imagination of freedom and the ‘good life’ as expressed in her anarchic vision is that of disalienation, in the Marxist sense. In theorizing an anarchic society, whether or not a particular aspect of social organization is disalienating becomes for LeGuin the key criterion for assessing and determining the human efficacy of, in particular: the organization of work; the relationship between self, society, and nature; and the distribution of both social responsibilities and resources. This paper explores how LeGuin measures the alienating effects of a range of socio‐economic institutions, practices, and bodies of knowledge—from how we organize work, to how we establish the state and its governing power, to how we think about time—highlighting her critique of the alienating structures of our culture and the way they curtail human creativity and disarm individuals from developing freely and fully, that is, in a way that would benefit society as a whole and promote individual happiness.     

A Review of: “Mike Davis. Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb”

Lenin allegedly referred to the thinkers and activists ready to cover up for his crimes against his own people as “useful idiots.” Today, some intellectuals sacrifice their integrity as intellectuals not for a professedly progressive egalitarian movement, but in order to protect radical Islam, one of the most regressive and authoritarian movements imaginable. This article refers to such people as “useful infidels,” showing how their excessive self-criticism is exploited by Islamists to incriminate the West in the evils of modernity. The result is a perversion of human rights discourse and a marriage of pre-modern sadism and post-modern masochism.     

自我防卫机制研究的回顾与展望

本文概述了三种典型的自我防卫机制（认知失调、社会比较和自我肯定）及它们的可替代性，自我防卫机制研究方法的变迁、原因及解决方法，自我防卫机制与相关变量的研究成果，以及我对这个领域今后研究的几点思考。     

论评价的心理机制——兼论情感和认知的内在关系

王智认为,人有两种不同的心理评价手段,一是情感的评价,一是认识的或理智的评价。两者皆可以独立地发挥评价的作用,二者之间的差异是"各有所长",可以在解决评价问题时"互相补充"。作者对王智的理论主张从理论依据上以及现实生活评价活动的发生与发展上加以分析评价,认为评价活动从其发展之初,就是由情感与认识活动的协同活动来实现的,根本不存在人生之初时的单独情感评价的阶段。以后评价活动的发展,也会在两方的协同作用下得以实现。在此分析探讨的基础上,作者得出了评价活动永远是情感与认知协同作用下实现的结论,否定了把情感与理智当做两种独立评价手段的主张。此外,还进一步提出了情感和认知关系的观点,认为二者之间任何一方的活动和作用都不可能离开对方的影响的结论。     

Global Crisis and Latin America

This essay examines Latin America's experience in the crisis and restructuring of world capitalism from the 1970s into the twenty‐first century, with particular emphasis on the neo‐liberal model, social conflicts and institutional quagmires that have engulfed the region, and the rise of a new resistance politics. The empirical and analytical sections look at: Latin America's changing profile in the global division of labour; the domination of speculative finance capital; the continued debt crisis, its social effects and political implications; capital–labour restructuring, the spread of informalisation and the new inequality; the passage from social explosions to institutional crises; the new popular electoral politics and the fragility of the neo‐liberal state. These issues are approached through the lens of global capitalism theory. This theory sees the turn‐of‐century global system as a new epoch in the history of world capitalism, emphasising new patterns of power and social polarisation worldwide and such concepts as a transnational accumulation, transnational capitalists and a transnational state. Finally, the essay argues that global capitalism faces a twin crisis in the early twenty‐first century, of overaccumulation and of legitimacy, and explores the prospects for social change in Latin America and worldwide.     

科学发展观给心理学带来的新机遇——走进企业管理的认知心理学

科学发展观的思想向企业管理提出了新的要求,给心理学的发展提供了新的机遇.企业管理的问题属于知识丰富领域的问题,认知心理学对于解决这类问题能够提供有效的方法.对于新产品的开发,认知图能够揭示出顾客的需求,创造性思维的TRIZ方法能够提供有创意的方案,寻找问题满意解和稳健解的方法,可以帮助企业设计出高质量、低成本、性能稳定的产品.认知心理学在企业管理方面可以开辟出大有作为的新天地.     

甲基苯丙胺对大鼠认知和脑电图的影响

目的研究甲基苯丙胺（methamphetamine,MA）对脑功能的影响机制,实验设计观察慢性反复使用MA是否同时对大鼠认知行为和脑电活动产生影响。方法 14只雄性SD大鼠（180～200g）随机分为生理盐水注射组（对照组）和MA注射组（实验组5mg/kg体重）每天一次腹腔注射。连续注射7d后进行被动避暗回避行为测试和脑电图检测。结果与对照组相比,实验组大鼠表现为被动避暗回避行为的潜伏期延长,脑电图频谱分析显示δ波相对功率值减小,β波相对功率值增大,差异有统计学意义（P〈0.05）。结论慢性反复使用MA对大鼠被动回避行为和脑电活动均有影响,说明MA滥用造成的认知行为改变与中枢神经系统电生理活性改变有关。     

THE COGNITIVE FOUNDATION OF A CO‐PRODUCTION APPROACH TO PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT: HOW DO OFFICIALS AND CITIZENS UNDERSTAND GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE IN CHINA?

In this article, we explore and discuss the implications and relevance of the concept of co‐production to the design of performance measures. Such a co‐production approach to performance management is grounded upon a conception of public management that emphasizes collective problem‐solving involving not only government officials but also citizens. We argue successful application of such an approach requires that both officials and citizens be cognizant of their role as co‐producers in the process of public service delivery. Whether such a cognitive basis exists in a particular context will affect the utility and viability of the co‐production approach and is an important question that needs to be addressed empirically. To illustrate the importance of the cognitive basis for co‐production, we have conducted an empirical analysis of data collected in a survey in three cities in China. Our analysis suggests that the officials and citizens in the sample generally do not recognize that public administration is a co‐production process involving the efforts of both officials and citizens. Yet, our analysis identifies a number of leverage points for building the cognitive basis. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Changing consciousness: autoethnographic mapping in a dialog group

This article introduces a pedagogical tool for raising critical consciousness and nurturing resistance to discrimination. ‘Autoethnographic mapping,’ integrating guided cognitive mapping and autoethnographies, has been implemented for a decade now within the framework of a college course occasioning dialogue between Palestinian Arab and Jewish students in Israel. Participants using the tool in an extended encounter between students from groups embroiled in political conflict have begun to theorize the microgeogrpahies and stories of their everyday existence, gaining nuanced, non-standard insights into how conflict informs lives and selves. Employing the technique in the contact zone of guided encounters, students tend to re-inscribe identities upon a socio-political context, discovering the fluidity of belonging and destabilizing discursive structures. The paper outlines the course, sketches the tool and its theoretical underpinnings and describes some of the results it’s achieved through a spectrum of illustrative instances.     

The New World Order: A Deconstruction of the Nation-State and a Disaggregation of the “Mixed Political Economy”

The structure of the New World Order and its corresponding functions are becoming apparent. First, there will be a deconstruction of the nation-state. It will be bisected as power shifts to higher “macro-regional” levels on the one hand and lower “micro-regional” levels on the other. Second, there will be a disaggregation of the mixed political economy. It will be bifurcated as socialism is used at upper levels of human aggregation to alleviate pollution and as capitalism is used at lower levels to alleviate poverty.