城市减贫的权利再现

城市贫困的发生与城市化进程有关,也与城市权利的实现有关。在全球范围内,城市化多伴随着贫困的治理,收入的差距最终将摧毁城市健康成长的物质与权利结构。中国的城市贫困隐藏在城市化的宏大叙事之中,体现为城市公共生活的个体争取;在城市化已经完成的西方国家,城市贫困则体现为公共生活的机会丧失。从现象上看,城市贫困呈现出空间与职业的分布特征,但是劳动才是城市生活的权利起点,因此劳动权的保障应该成为城市政府的政策起点。在中国的城市化进程中,城乡之间、区域之间的权利差距势必驱动人口流入沿海发达城市,从而形成单向度的权利选择,给一些城市增加了治理难度。因此,中国的城市治理还要立足区域协同发展,确保无差别的城市权利的全过程保障。     

The government of poverty and the arts of survival: mobile and recombinant strategies at the margins of the South African economy

The paper is concerned with marginal populations affected by the ‘truncated agrarian transitions’ of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: people displaced out of land-based employment without reasonable prospects for accumulation in the non-farm economy. It analyses the forms of economic agency of people living in the migrant routes and networks connecting the shantytowns of Cape Town and the rural Eastern Cape in South Africa. It describes the artful and hybrid nature of their livelihood strategies – strategies that involve the integration from ‘below’ of urban and rural spaces, formal and informal income, and which simultaneously take shape outside the regulatory spaces conferred by the state, and make use of the rights and opportunities created by law and formality. Far from being reduced to the ‘outcast’ condition of ‘bare life’, marginalized and poor people in South Africa pursue inventive strategies on uneven terrain, cutting across the dichotomies of official discourse and teleological analysis. This allows a more nuanced analysis of the nature and specificity of the agrarian transition in South Africa.     

Who is poor in China? A comparison of alternative approaches to poverty assessment in Rural Yunnan

Despite widespread recognition of the multidimensionality of poverty among social scientists and policymakers, the monetary approach still dominates poverty assessment. However, it is possible that different poverty assessment methodologies identify dissimilar households as poor, leading to disparate policies for poverty reduction. This empirical research applies four approaches to poverty identification to the same population of rural households in Wuding County, Yunnan Province, PRC. These approaches include China's official poverty identification method, participatory poverty assessment (PPA), the monetary approach to poverty assessment, and use of multidimensional poverty indicators (MDI). This study discovered that these four approaches generate different aggregate poverty incidences, identifying different households with distinctly different characteristics as poor. Each approach evaluates different aspects and dimensions, highlighting some characteristics while concealing others. There is very little overlap among the poor households identified by each methodology. This has implications at the conceptual, methodological, and policy levels. The conceptual understanding of poverty should be broadened to include multidimensional and multidisciplinary socioeconomic indicators. Multiple approaches must be applied in order to avoid marginalising some aspects of poverty. Poverty reduction strategies should shift from promoting short-term income-generating activities to a broader combination of strategies that address the inter-linked structural causes of poverty.     

The Nurturing Neighborhood: The Brownsville Boys Club and Jewish Community in Urban America, 1940–1990, by G. Sorin

Abstract

Corporal punishment (CP) refers to the deliberate infliction of physical pain on children in response to an apparent disobedience or disapproved behavior. It is still used in educational settings in numerous nations worldwide, including Bangladesh. Despite the government’s efforts to ban corporal punishment in Bangladesh, the practice is prevalent, with children routinely enduring various punishments in the school system. Questions remain related to how widespread this practice is and whether certain groups of children (e.g., low income or rural) are being affected more severely than others. This article explores the use of physical punishment in Bangladeshi elementary schools and the socioeconomic variables that may be predictors of its use. The primary research questions that guide this article are: (1) do socioeconomic characteristics (i.e., gender, age, education, school type, parental socio-economic status) predict physical punishment in the school system in Bangladesh? and (2) is there a statistically significant relation between poverty and physical punishment for elementary school children in Bangladesh? Findings indicate that of the 450 children included in the sample, more than 86.6% were subjected to at least one form of physical abuse (e.g., hit with a stick or slapped) and types of abuse varied by their demographics. Findings also show that poverty status is a strong predictor of physical punishment in the school within Bangladesh.     

Insights into Selected Features of Pakistan’s Most Wanted Terrorists

This article attempts to provide insights into selected features of Pakistan’s most wanted terrorists using a dataset of 895 high-profile terrorists provided by the Counter Terrorism Wings of the Criminal Investigation Departments of regional police offices of Pakistan. It identifies spatial patterns of terrorist supply at subnational levels. The educational background of terrorists has also been analyzed. Noteworthy variations are observed in the supply of different types of terrorists across the geographical landscape of Pakistan. Findings also reveal that though terrorists are relatively more educated than the population group they emerge from, there is a higher probability of them emerging in districts with lower socio-economic performance.     

The ‘Feminisation of Poverty’ in Costa Rica: To What Extent a Conundrum?

Quantitative data from Costa Rica suggest that poverty is 'feminising', especially in respect of female-headed households, who, since the early 1990s, have constituted a progressively greater share of the population classified as poor. This presents something of a conundrum given significant attempts on the part of the state to promote gender equality and to direct public expenditure to low-income women. Some light on this apparent paradox is shed by qualitative fieldwork undertaken in Guanacaste province where female headship seems to have become a more viable, and sometimes, preferred, option among women on account of its role in enhancing well-being. This is largely on account of social and legal changes that have contributed to making women less inclined to tolerate gender inequalities at the domestic level. The findings underline the importance of embracing gendered subjectivities in analyses of the 'feminisation of poverty' and invite caution about the latter being a unilaterally negative phenomenon.     

中国"反贫困"社会救助法律制度——农村最低生活保障制度实施的制度障碍分析

中国农村最低生活保障制度的建立是"反贫困"进程推进的必然结果,也是促进社会公平,构建和谐社会的必然要求.虽然我国早在20世纪90年代初期就开始了农村低保的试点工作,但各地农村低保制度在实施过程巾遇到了诸多障碍,很多地区的农村低保工作都处于基本停滞状态.我国各地地方政府应拓宽农村最低生活保障资金来源渠道,科学划定农村最低生活保障线,合理选择农村最低生活保障救助对象,不断完善本地区的相关制度,推进农村低保工作的顺利进行.     

论信息时代军事思维的发展

信息时代,军事实践方式的转换导致并要求军事思维领域发生革命性的变化。与以往时代的军事思维相比,信息时代的军事思维具有跨结构、跨层次的整合功能,虚拟思维成为重要的思维方式,思维的手段、结果也趋于精确化。     

影响南疆绿洲地区精准扶贫的因素与应对策略 以南疆和田地区三个县为例

和田绿洲地区位于南疆四地州,作为新时期的国家连片特困地区与深度贫困地区之一,脱贫攻坚任务十分艰巨。2014年以来,在国家精准扶贫政策支持下,脱贫工作取得了显著成效,贫困发生率大大降低。但是由于特殊地理、人口、文化等因素影响,脱贫攻坚仍然面临诸多困难,迫切需要结合绿洲社会经济文化特点精准施策,促进脱贫成效的提升。