Compromising the public good? Civil society as beneficiary of gambling revenue

Profits from legal gambling are often channelled to good causes. This system embeds the predicament of whether citizens’ potentially problematic gambling activities should be a source of funding for the public good. In this article, this dilemma is unfolded by the receivers of public grants that stem from gambling revenues. A total of twenty-three representatives of Civil Society Organizations were interviewed as beneficiaries of the Finnish state-owned gambling monopolies. The article illustrates explicit dependencies and hidden ethical dilemmas, suggesting that CSOs may have limited possibilities of making ethically consistent decisions in view of the origin of their funding.     

Westernness,Chineseness, or Life as Essence——A Discussion with Luo Gang and Peng Yuping on the Poetic Nature of Poetic Remarks in the Human World

There have emerged two representative opinions regarding the origin of Wang Guowei's thought as shown in his Poetic Remarks in the Human World, one being Westernness aided by Chineseness, and the other being Chineseness aided by Wesernness. The former opinion holds that Wang's fundamental ideas in Poetic Remarks in the Human World were derived from modern Western philosophy and aesthetics, which, in turn, were used to deal with traditional Chinese poetry; the latter opinion argues that Wang's basic thought originated from Chinese aesthetic traditions, which were aided by western thought in Wang's Case. The two opinions seem to be over-focused on conceptual comparison and identity; therefore, they fail to point to Wang's principle of “Life as Essence” which incorporates thought of all origins. Wang's Poetic Remarks in the Human World is a reaffirmation of the “aesthetic life”, a blending that goes beyond mere conceptual comparison and contrast.     

从法治走向善治的中国特色社会主义治理模式

在国家治理现代化推进的激励之下,21世纪中国治理模式演进为以全面依法治国和全面深化改革为特征的中国式善治。善治的中国模式包含了多重治理系统的内在逻辑,即执政党治理制度化、政府治理法治化、社会治理的协同化和参与全球治理的有效化。善治的中国模式呈现出坚持党的领导和推进执政党续造、坚持全面深化改革和迈向幸福生活的政治图景。     

The life-course demography of convict transportation to Van Diemen’s Land

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on a sample of 16,953 male and 7,783 female convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land between 1818 and 1853 whose life courses have been reconstructed as much as possible from cradle to grave to explore the effects of critical life stages and the impact of a shared exposure to a stress regime of penal servitude, forced labour and exile. It uses survival and family formation of a lineage as the key measures of life outcomes. It finds that male convicts, while not producing many descendants because of sex imbalances, did well biologically out of being transported, while female convicts, entering servitude under a greater burden of previous abuse and deprivation, continued to suffer a severe gender penalty in survival and significant secondary infertility after sentence. Early life effects from the social environment, or crime economy, into which men were born remained remarkably persistent, while the previous history of prostitution and/or alcohol abuse dramatically shortened the lives of women. These were the embodied effects, over generations, of structural violence against women in the most deprived and dangerous neighbourhoods of from the late-eighteenth century through to the 1840s in Great Britain and Ireland, and transported with them to the Australian colonies.     

Workplace Monitoring and the Right to Private Life at Work

In Barbulescu v Romania, the European Court of Human Rights clarified the application of the Article 8 right to private life in the workplace, and the extent of the state's positive obligations to protect the right against workplace monitoring. The decision establishes that there is an irreducible core to the right to private life at work that does not depend on an employee's reasonable expectations of privacy, and sets out clear principles for striking a fair balance between Article 8 and the employer's interests in the context of workplace monitoring. This article considers the nature of states’ positive obligation to protect human rights at work, the scope of the right to private life, and the impact of the decision on domestic law of unfair dismissal.     

Broken Windows or Window Breakers: The Influence of Physical and Social Disorder on Quality of Life

The relationship between neighborhood disorder and fear of crime is well established. According to Wilson and Kelling's broken windows theory, physical and social disorder lead to fear and cause citizens to retreat into their homes. This breaks down informal social control mechanisms and may lead to more serious crime. Insofar as fear is related to quality of life, an implication of broken windows theory is that disorder may impact quality of life, but that relationship has not yet been examined in the research literature. The present study seeks to fill a void in the literature by investigating the relationship between neighborhood disorder and quality of life. Results indicate that disorder is related to quality of life. In particular, physical disorder is negatively associated with quality of life, but social disorder loses significance when controlling for physical disorder. Policy implications of the findings and direction for future research are discussed.     

PRECOCIOUS ROLE ENTRY AS A MEDIATING FACTOR IN WOMEN'S METHAMPHETAMINE USE: IMPLICATIONS FOR LIFE‐COURSE AND PATHWAYS RESEARCH*

Precocious adoption of adult roles and responsibilities at an early age often has been linked to substance abuse and criminal behavior. Yet, much of the existing research suggests that early offending behaviors induce precocious movement into adulthood; less attention has focused on the way in which early adoption of adult roles and responsibilities might itself contribute to the onset of offending. In the following article, we examine the cumulative impact of early transitions into adult roles and responsibilities on the onset of methamphetamine (MA) use. Through inductive analyses of interviews with women methamphetamine users, we identified a range of adult roles and responsibilities that women described as facilitating their initiation into MA use, including family caretaking, motherhood, independent living, and peer and romantic associations with adults. Such findings have theoretical implications for both life‐course perspectives and feminist pathways research. They highlight the importance of attending to the timing and sequencing of experiences as well as highlight the gendered nature of these processes.     

ADOLESCENT VIOLENT VICTIMIZATION AND PRECOCIOUS UNION FORMATION*

This article bridges scholarship in criminology and family sociology by extending arguments about “precocious exits” from adolescence to consider early union formation as a salient outcome of violent victimization for youths. Research indicates that early union formation is associated with several negative outcomes; yet the absence of attention to union formation as a consequence of violent victimization is noteworthy. We address this gap by drawing on life course theory and data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the effect of violent victimization (“street” violence) on the timing of first coresidential union formation—differentiating between marriage and cohabitation—in young adulthood. Estimates from Cox proportional hazard models show that adolescent victims of street violence experience higher rates of first union formation, especially marriage, early in the transition to adulthood; however, this effect declines with age, as such unions become more normative. Importantly, the effect of violent victimization on first union timing is robust to controls for nonviolent delinquency, substance abuse, and violent perpetration. We conclude by discussing directions for future research on the association between violent victimization and coresidential unions with an eye toward the implications of such early union formation for desistance.     

科级公务员工作与生活平衡现状、问题与对策——关于北京市某区科级领导职务公务员的调查分析

通过对北京市某区科级领导职务公务员的调查发现,科级公务员工作与生活冲突一定程度存在;科级公务员的工作与职位因素的挑战性压力大于阻碍性压力,工作任务繁重、工作目标不够清晰以及工作时间紧张等因素是导致科级公务员工作压力的主要来源。针对这些问题,改善科级公务员工作与生活平衡主要表现在以下几方面:一要加强职位分类与职位职责规范管理,提高内在报酬激励水平;二要改革完善基层政府机构编制管理,适度增加基层公务员编制;三要提高科级公务员福利水平,从改善其家庭生活角度提高外在报酬激励。     

我国主要民事单行法中的诚信规定考察报告

考察诚信原则在我国主要民事单行法中的分布状况,分析诚信原则在对其有规定的6部民事单行法中的存在形态,论证在未规定这一原则的其他7部民事单行法中对其加以规定的必要,并分析主观诚信的客观化趋势。建议要么通过制定民法典统合民法中的诚信规定,要么通过整理各个民事单行法改变诚信原则设置不均衡的现状,并在术语上实现客观诚信与主观诚信的统一。