Undelivered: the space/time of the sacred in Bataille and Benjamin

Bataille’s work of the 1930s on the sacred has strong echoes of Walter Benjamin’s writing on space and messianic time. In bringing together Bataille’s theoretical and fictional writings, alongside key Benjamin texts, this article seeks to develop our understanding of a perversely grounded sacred.     

Predicting Peril or the Peril of Prediction? Assessing the Risk of CBRN Terrorism

Since the mid-1990s, academic and policy communities have debated the risk posed by terrorist use of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapons. Three major schools of thought in the debate have emerged: the optimists, the pessimists, and the pragmatists. Although these three schools of thought draw on the same limited universe of data on CBRN terrorism, they arrive at strikingly different conclusions. Given the highly subjective process of CBRN terrorism risk assessment, this article analyzes the influence of mental shortcuts (called heuristics) and the systemic errors they create (called biases) on the risk assessment process. This article identifies and provides illustrative examples of a range of heuristics and biases that lead to the underestimation of risks, the overestimation of risks and, most importantly, those that degrade the quality of the debate about the level of risk. While these types of biases are commonly seen as affecting the public's perception of risk, such biases can also be found in risk assessments by experts. The article concludes with recommendations for improving the CBRN risk assessment process.     

The Contradictory Effects in Efficiency and Citizens’ Participation when Employing Geo-ICT Apps within Local Government

Abstract

With the increasing use of web-based mapping applications, inter-mediation between public planning agencies and citizens is changing. This article investigates how one form of inter-mediation, geo-ICT-enabled apps (applications on mobile phones and/or internet that use maps or locations as basic references for any functional analysis), influences the degree of efficiency and participation in managing public space. The theoretical assumption here is that such apps encourage information disclosure and therefore have the potential to make a local government more responsive and transparent. Drawing on observation, interviews, and document and web content analysis conducted as part of a case study, this article suggests that the apps have indeed enhanced one municipality’s response and have made citizens more active in uploading their complaints. However, unexpected and contradictory effects include an increase in trivial complaints, which has made the handling of reports less efficient, and the emergence of opportunistic behaviour by third parties on the basis of the complaints, which has made the services less effective. Consequently, the assumed causal relation between enhanced citizen participation and increased transparency and information disclosure requires an adaptation that incorporates such wicked effects.     

社会转型的时空压缩性特征对我国生态文明的影响

"时空压缩"是当前中国社会转型的一个显著特点。"时空压缩"给我国生态文明带来影响是双重的:它为我国生态文明建设提供了丰富的物质基础,给我国生态文明建设提供了"择优综合"的外部条件,也为我国生态文明建设提供了合作共赢的国际环境。同时,时空压缩性也使我国生态文明建设面临着国内外的双重挤压。     

Migrant workers and migrant entrepreneurs: changing established/outsider relations across society and space?

Drawing on Elias and Scotson's theory of established/outsider relations, in this paper we argue that migrants can be outsiders in one spatial context and established in another simultaneously. Our empirical focus is the situations and experiences of migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe in four towns across Wales. While their position as outsiders is reinforced in the occupational spaces of meat-processing factories, outside the workplace a small but growing number of migrants are engaging in entrepreneurial activities that create new spaces of cultural diversity. We argue that this is having a wider affective impact on established/outsider relations.     

App时代大学生媒介素养现状及对策研究

以移动终端APP为主体表征的移动互联网络传播时代的最大特征就是信息的自产性、交互性、及时性、随意性。作为社会新知力量的大学生群体主动适应APP互联网时代特色的信息传播方式,培养良性坚定的价值观,树立科学健康的媒介素养观,提高自身甄别传媒讯息、利用传媒工具有目的地检索讯息、利用讯息的综合能力才是得当之法。如何提高大学生群体的媒介素养,从而建构一种科学、美好、负责的媒介生态环境,让大众传媒真正成为一种纯粹有益的思想交流、价值导向平台和一种新型的知识传播平台成为一种迫切的现实需求。     

我国有组织毒品犯罪活动的嬗变及侦查启示

毒品犯罪活动具有广泛和深刻的社会危害性,一直受到国际社会的普遍关注。当代我国有组织毒品犯罪活动不断发展变化,毒品问题愈发严峻,毒品犯罪组织的结构形式和运作模式不断呈现出新的特点,所产生的犯罪能量日益扩大,对我国缉毒侦查工作造成极大的挑战。有必要系统分析我国毒品犯罪的成因及有组织毒品犯罪活动的嬗变过程,在深刻发掘毒品犯罪本质的基础上提出针对有组织毒品犯罪的侦查策略。     

Examining fatal and nonfatal incidents involving the TASER

Research Summary According to TASER International, nearly 10,000 police departments in the United States have deployed the TASER as a less lethal force alternative in some capacity. Despite the TASER's increasing popularity, serious questions have been raised about the device's physiological side effects; in particular, Amnesty International has reported that more than 300 people have died after being subjected to the TASER. Although a growing body of research has examined the physiological effects of the TASER on animals and healthy human volunteers in laboratory settings, there has been virtually no empirical analysis of “real‐world” fatal and nonfatal TASER cases simultaneously. This article examines all media reports of TASER incidents from 2002 to 2006 through a comprehensive review of LexisNexis and New York Times archives. We compare TASER incidents in which a fatality occurred to TASER incidents in which a fatality did not occur and then employ multivariate analyses to identify the incident and suspect characteristics that are predictive of articles describing TASER‐proximate deaths. Policy Implications Several suspect factors were significantly associated with the reporting of a fatal TASER incident, including drug use (but not alcohol), mental illness, and continued resistance. Multiple deployments of the TASER against a suspect was also associated with the likelihood of the article describing a fatality—especially if the suspect was emotionally disturbed—which raises the possibility that the risk of multiple shocks might not be uniform for all suspects. More research is needed to explore the relationship between mental illness, drug use (illicit or therapeutic), continued resistance, and increased risk of death. In the meantime, police departments should develop specific policies and training governing the use of multiple TASER shocks against individuals who could be in these vulnerable physiological and psychological states.     

论白先勇小说的漂泊主题及其美学意涵

漂泊,指的是一种行踪不定的状态,这种状态是和20世纪中叶的台湾社会相契合的。而台湾文学的漂泊主题,是在包括白先勇、王文兴、余光中、於梨华、聂华苓等在内的一批带着“外省人”标签的作家笔下呈现出来的。作为这批作家中的代表人物,白先勇的小说也打上了很强的时代烙印。综观其小说的漂泊主题,可以观察到相互联系的三个方面:情感上的无依感、空间上的无家感、时间上的无力感。这三种看似负面的漂泊情绪,却通过白先勇的文字,向读者传递了共同的孤独美、悲剧美和诗境美。