Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:
Peter F. Guardino, Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico's National State: Guerrero 1800–1857
Astvaldur Astvaldsson, Las voces de los wak'a
Katherine Isbester, Still Fighting: The Nicaraguan Women's Movement, 1977–2000
Marta R. Zabaleta, Feminine Stereotypes and Roles in Theory and Practice in Argentina Before and After the First Lady Eva Peron
Jeffrey M. Pilcher, Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity
Antoni Kapcia, Cuba: Island of Dreams
Damián Fernández, Cuba and the Politics of Passion     

太阳灶对贫困妇女生活质量的改善--西藏白朗县的实证研究

实地研究发现,在西藏白朗县,农村利用太阳灶替代出了大量的能源牛粪;减轻了贫困家庭妇女的劳动强度;改善了妇女的生活卫生条件和环境,增加了贫困妇女的自尊心,增加了妇女交流的机会,改善了农户的饮食质量。总之改善了贫困妇女的生活质量。     

我国物权法应当确立不动产善意取得制度

善意取得制度是为世界各国物权法所确立的一种重要法律制度,其中不动产的善意取得也为很多国家物权法律所确认。虽然我国最高法院的司法解释对动产的善意取得作了某些规定,但我国民事立法对此至今仍处于一种空白状态。确立不动产善意取得制度,是促进我国市场交易稳定发展的客观要求。我国即将制定的物权法不仅应确立动产的善意取得制度,而且应当进一步确立不动产的善意取得制度。     

Stones on the Road: The Politics of Participation and the Generation of Crisis in Bolivia

This paper demonstrates that recent protests in Bolivia must be linked to the failure of efforts to improve democratic participation in the country. It argues that such failures can be traced to a history of prejudices in national development and society and persistent biases and contradictions within international development policy and institutions. Despite these obstacles, the paper concludes that ideas for appropriate development and realistic alternatives for change to government and democracy are visible in recent critical development thinking and amongst the different social and cultural groupings involved in the demonstrations.     

Rationalities and Levels of Analysis in Complex Social Issues: The Examples of School Overcrowding and Poverty

This paper presents a 5 × n table for charting complex social issues, particularly those characterized by oppression and injustice. Its five columns are Paul Diesing’s rationalities: technical, economic, social, legal, and political. Its n rows are levels of analysis from individuals, groups, organizations, communities, regions, and nations to international and global perspectives. Utilizing school overcrowding and poverty as examples of local and global social issues, the paper describes the relevance of this analytic framework for social action and research. The framework contributes a complex view of social issues that avoids oversimplifying them and suggests how they are experienced by people living with social injustice. The framework proposes cross-disciplinary projects among scholars and collaborative projects among scholars, practitioners, and advocates.     

Good Urban Governance: Evidence from a Model City?

Few cities in Latin America provide much evidence of good governance. However, during the last fifteen years, Bogotá has been transformed and now qualifies in certain respects as an example of ‘best practice’. The paper considers how Bogotá changed and whether it can continue its improvement, an especially interesting question insofar as a left‐wing administration has been in charge since 2004. Of course, the city is by no means perfect and national issues continue to create difficulties both for the poor and for the local administration.     

REASSESSING NONLINEARITY IN THE URBAN DISADVANTAGE/VIOLENT CRIME RELATIONSHIP: AN EXAMPLE OF METHODOLOGICAL BIAS FROM LOG TRANSFORMATION*

Sociologists and criminologists have become increasingly concerned with nonlinear relationships and interaction effects. For example, some recent studies suggest that the positive relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and violent crime is nonlinear with an accelerating slope, whereas other research indicates a nonlinear decelerating slope. The present paper considers the possibility that this inconsistency in findings is partially caused by lack of attention to an important methodological concern. Specifically, we argue that researchers have not been sensitive to the ways in which logarithmic transformation of the dependent variable can bias tests for nonlinearity and statistical interaction. We illustrate this point using demographic and violent crime data for urban neighborhoods, and we propose an alternative procedure to log transformation that involves the use of weighted least‐squares regression, heteroscedasticity consistent standard errors, and diagnostics for influential observations.     

Equal in Poverty,Unequal in Wealth: Ethnic Stratification in Chile,the Mapuche Case

How does ethnic status affect social stratification in Chile? Despite a rich theoretical debate in the literature on social stratification, there is a shortage of empirical approaches to this phenomenon in Latin America. This research note seeks to bridge the analytical gap by describing the social exclusion of indigenous people in Chile. From a case study in La Araucanía region and using statistical techniques to give equal weightings to indigenous and non‐indigenous groups (specifically Mapuches and non‐Mapuches), we attempt to show that given equal socio‐demographic conditions, the incomes of both groups are similar in the low and middle strata, and differentiated in the higher strata.     

National and Local Vulnerability to Climate‐Related Disasters in Latin America: The Role of Social Asset‐Based Adaptation

The Latin American region is particularly prone to climate‐related natural hazards. However, this article argues that natural hazards are only partly to blame for the region's vulnerability to natural disasters with quantitative evidence suggesting instead that income per capita and inequality are main determinants of natural disaster mortality in Latin America. Locally, the region's poor are particularly susceptible to climate‐related natural hazards. As a result of their limited access to capital, adaptation based on social assets constitutes an effective coping strategy. Evidence from Bolivia and Belize illustrates the importance of social assets in protecting the most vulnerable against natural disasters.     

重视解决高校贫困生的精神贫困问题

随着我国高校收费制度的改革和高等教育的迅猛发展，高校贫困生规模也在逐年增加。贫困生由于经济和生活等条件较差，容易产生自我意识相对迷失、个体心理容易失衡、人际交往面临困境等问题。高校应该对贫困生进行物质和精神双方面扶持，加强精神扶持力度。为此，要从政策关怀、心理关怀、人文关怀、自我关怀等四个方面努力构建贫困生精神关怀助困体系。