新生代农民工及其市民化研究述评与展望

新生代农民工及其市民化是学界重点关注的问题之一。现有研究内容丰富,研究方法趋于全面,实证调研分析显著增加。然而,有关新生代农民工及其市民化的研究也存在不足,研究内容有待进一步拓展,研究方法有待进一步完善。今后应从更广的学科范围、充分利用定性与定量相结合的综合性研究方法研究新生代农民工问题,研究重点包括:结合新生代农民工融入城市的宏观背景进行深入、综合性的理论研究;对于新生代农民工相关的现行政策进行评估研究;农民工市民化的战略定位和制度设计的前瞻性、统一性问题研究;新生代农民工与其他群体之间及新生代农民工内部的比较研究。     

La sociedad civil de adentro hacia afuera Comunidad,organización y desafío de la influencia política

Having developed conceptually and analytically civil society as a sociological category (based on a conceptual reflection stemming from a theoretical-epistemological dialogue between the collectivist and liberal perspectives), this article accounts for the implications that allow us to understand the potential of civil society in contributing to democratization. Throughout this work the dynamics that characterize the ambiguous relationship between civil society and community –ambiguous in as much communities with exceptionally strong ties between its members can provide both elements for the strengthening of civil society as well as obstacles to its growth– are analyzed. It is argued that the role of communities in relation to civil society in the social construction and civil strengthening of citizenship will depend on several factors, particularly the mechanisms available to build consensus within the community. The threat stemming from neopluralism as a novel discourse of interest intermediation, both for the community and civil society, is explored. In the final section, the implications of this discourse for democracy are discussed.     

Reworking the metabolic rift: La Vía Campesina,agrarian citizenship,and food sovereignty

Amidst increasing concerns about climate change, food shortages, and widespread environmental degradation, a demand is emerging for ways to resolve longstanding social and ecological contradictions present in contemporary capitalist models of production and social organisation. This paper first discusses how agriculture, as the most intensive historical nexus between society and nature, has played a pivotal role in social and ecological change. I explore how agriculture has been integrally associated with successive metabolic ruptures between society and nature, and then argue that these ruptures have not only led to widespread rural dislocation and environmental degradation, but have also disrupted the practice of agrarian citizenship through a series of interlinked and evolving philosophical, ideological, and material conditions. The first section of the paper thus examines the de-linking of agriculture, citizenship, and nature as a result of ongoing cycles of a metabolic rift, as a ‘crucial law of motion’ and central contradiction of changing socio-ecological relations in the countryside. I then argue that new forms of agrarian resistance, exemplified by the contemporary international peasant movement La Vía Campesina's call for food sovereignty, create a potential to reframe and reconstitute an agrarian citizenship that reworks the metabolic rift between society and nature. A food sovereignty model founded on practices of agrarian citizenship and ecologically sustainable local food production is then analysed for its potential to challenge the dominant model of large-scale, capitalist, and export-based agriculture.     

‘I do not have the means to speak:’ educating youth for citizenship in post-conflict Liberia

Although policymakers stress the importance of education in promoting peace, little research examines the ways that schools prepare students affected by conflict to participate in the restoration of peace in their political community. Post-conflict societies experience severe challenges in strengthening political processes and social cohesion. This paper discusses citizenship education at a school run by a non-governmental organization near Monrovia, Liberia, examining the implemented curriculum in an 8th grade civics classroom. The paper details the ways that young people expressed civic critiques within the classroom, and provides a counterstory to narratives of harsh and violent educational environments in the region. This classroom was a space where students and their teacher engaged in talk about contentious issues: students discussed corruption and injustice, and highlighted the relationship between economic and political power. I argue that if the goal of education is to produce engaged, effective citizens, teachers should have pedagogic support to confront the differences between the implemented curriculum and students’ lived experiences. Peace education in such contexts must include equipping students to seek justice. Furthermore, because possibilities for civic education are embedded in students’ local and national contexts, current global civic education initiatives must be adaptive to local realities.     

Democratization through education? Theory and practice of the Czech post-revolution education system and its reforms

The transformation process from an authoritarian/totalitarian system entails many institutional changes, however, the individual citizen is often being overlooked in this chaotic, fast-paced process and his or her “transformation” into a democrat is taken for granted. The changing socio-political system and its exigencies may lead to nostalgia and social frustrations, which in turn cause democratic backsliding. In order to cultivate a democratic society and avoid future backsliding, the post-communist states quickly set out to reform their educational systems, both in form and substance. By reviewing the reform process of the Czech educational system and discussing the prevailing legacies left by the communist regime, the article will show that through the “destruction” of the former system and its de-monopolization, decentralization and de-ideologization, the state deliberately lost significant means and power to transform Czechs from “homo sovieticus” to “homo democraticus” and is now left with a dependence on the highly autonomous schools and their propensity to foster democratic generations that will uphold the democratic state in the future. This paradox is reminiscent of the so-called Böckenförde dilemma, claiming that the liberal democratic state “lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself”.     

The quest for inclusion and citizenship in Ghana: challenges and prospects

Ghana's tortuous journey to democracy received a major boost in the year 2006 with the enactments of two human-rights-related pieces of legislation. In this article the author contends, on the one hand, that the recent enactments of an amendment to the law on representation of the people and the persons with disability law in Ghana constituted a noteworthy landmark in the search for inclusive citizenship. On the other hand, the relation between society and the political authority during the processes of the enactments highlighted characteristics of a post-colonial African state. The author explores the antagonisms that surrounded the enactments of these laws. The article concludes that although the Ghanaian experience represents a new wave of re-thinking of rights in Africa, it also underscores the deep-seated issues of contestation and negotiations that unavoidably accompany the expansion of democracy and extension of rights to the excluded and the marginalized.     

Gendering the ‘responsible risk taker’: citizenship relationships with gender-neutral social assistance policy

This paper explores the gendered relationships among reforms to social assistance policy, concurrent transformations in citizenship rights to benefits, and low-income parents' experiences of these changes in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. Policy discourse in all three provinces increasingly constructs mothers and fathers as ‘responsible risk takers’ who are entitled to income support conditional on their employability efforts (for example, attendance in welfare-to-work programmes) or market citizenship. Qualitative interviews with 41 mothers and five fathers illustrate how this ‘gender-neutral worker-citizen’ model can be gendered in application and is contradicted by parents' gendered identities and everyday realities when living on social assistance. Using the theoretical perspective of gender as a social structure, the paper draws upon these findings to provide empirical support for a dominant theoretical argument in feminist scholarship – that gender-neutral policy is gendered and has deeply gendered consequences.     

Bernard Crick: citizenship and democracy in the United Kingdom

Bernard Crick's contribution to citizenship studies can be regarded as part of the tradition so ably represented by T.H. Marshall. I want to argue in this brief article on Crick that on the one hand he is part of the ‘golden age’ of political philosophy that has flourished in the English-speaking world over the last two or three decades, but on the other his work also shows the limitations of that tradition, at least from the perspective of comparative and historical studies in political sociology. His work was unquestionably ‘local’ in its focus on the subject of Scottish independence and the viability of the British Isles under the governance of a multi-national state.     

Citizenship in Civil Society?

Abstract

This article seeks to provide a conceptual framework to complement and guide the empirical analysis of civil society. The core argument is that civil society must be understood, not as a category of (post)industrialized society, but as one of individualized society. Civil society is characterized by individualism that is sustained and protected by the civil values of autonomy and emancipation. This, accordingly, implies that empirical data of civil society can be understood most fruitfully within the framework of individualized society. Classical sociology, however, perceives this very individualism and its values as being antagonistic to its own civic vision. Hence, the crucial question is whether there can be any scope for citizenship, classically understood, within civil society. This article begins with the conceptual reconstruction of the social organization of civil society. Thereafter, two distinct civil society perspectives—mediating structures and Tocquevillianism—are explored to see how civil individualism and citizenship relate to each.