China’s Migrant Workers: How Far from Being Citizens?

Abstract: Hundreds of millions of farmers have become permanent urban residents. But they do not enjoy the corresponding benefits as citizens. Migration of rural population and labor mobility have become one of the primary elements driving China’s economic growth, but migrant workers have to face economic, social, political and cultural challenges and barriers before becoming real citizens. These changes and barriers include unemployment and poverty of landless farmers, labor resource integration, social inclusion and government administration and so on, among which, the reform and improvement of household registration system, land system, labor system and social security system is becoming urgent for the Chinese government. Thus the migrant workers still have a long way to go before obtaining full citizenship.

A Sense of Place Short Link:  http://wp.me/pISTJ-hC

Full Text: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ass/article/view/23544/15041

Shuya Zhang, Guoliang Luo (2013) China’s Migrant Workers: How Far from Being Citizens?
Asian Social Science   ISSN 1911-2017 (Print)   ISSN 1911-2025 (Online)
DOI: 10.5539/ass.v9n1p171

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Rural Cult Places in the Civitas Cananefatium

Abstract: Rural cult places are a widespread phenomenon in Roman times. They are found across the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France and England. In 1987,  Slofstra and Van der Sanden published a discussion of  such structures for the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt area. They argued that there are several similarities between the structures in terms of the appearance of the features and the accompanying finds.

Although others have discussed open air cult places, so far the focus has never been on the western Netherlands.

This paper intends to redress the balance by presenting an overview of Roman rural cult places from the area between the Rhine and Meuse estuaries (fig.). Furthermore, this study identifies new criteria for identifying new cult places.

A Sense of Place shortlink: http://wp.me/pISTJ-fI

Full Text: http://dpc.uba.uva.nl/jalc/03/nr01/a01

van Zoolingen, R.J. Journal of Archaeology in the Low Countries 3-1 (November 2011)

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The End Of A Geo-Demographic Singularity: The Catholics From Moldavia

Précis:  “Well-known for their vitality, they managed after 1990 to adapt to a new social, economic and political context that re-shaped their demographic profile. Being among the first to emigrate in order to find a place to work, especially to the states in the South of Europe, the Catholic communities from Moldavia have been subjected to a double erosion of  the demographic vitality: firstly, due to the final emigration of a part of the young population and secondly, due to the modification of the behaviour in the sense of the acceleration of the processes specific to the last stage of the demographic transition.

Thus, the result was – only after 2 decades – the degradation of the demographical structures of the communities due to the acceleration of the demographic ageing process. If previously, they managed to maintain a certain advantage on at regional level, they currently seem to be the most vulnerable to demographic risks”.

A Sense of Place permalink:  http://wp.me/pISTJ-cw

Full Text: http://istgeorelint.uoradea.ro/Reviste/Anale/Art/2011-1/06_523_AUOG_%20MUNTELE.pdf

The End Of A Geo-Demographic Singularity: The Catholics From Moldavia
Ionel Muntele,  Ionuţ Atudorei

Analele Universităţii din Oradea, Seria Geografie
TOM XXI, Nr. 1/2011 (Iunie)

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Personification in the Punishment of Primates

Abstract: Nonhuman primates (referred to as primates in this study) are sometimes revered as gods, abhorred as evil spirits, killed for food because they damage crops, or butchered for sport. Primates’ perceived similarity to humans places them in an anomalous position. While some human groups accept the idea that primates “straddle” the human–nonhuman boundary, for others this resemblance is a violation of the human–animal divide.

In this study we use two case studies to explore how people’s perceptions of primates are often influenced by these animals’ apparent similarity to humans, creating expectations, founded within a “human morality” about how primates should interact with people. When animals transgress these social rules, they are measured against the same moral framework as humans. This has implications for how people view and respond to certain kinds of primate behaviors, their willingness to tolerate co-existence with primates and their likely support for primate conservation initiatives.

A Sense of Place permalink:  http://wp.me/pISTJ-9n

Full Text: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.20845/full

Perceptions of nonhuman primates in human–wildlife conflict scenarios

Catherine M. Hill,  Amanda D. Webber

Ecological and Environmental Anthropology

1 JUN 2010 Volume 72, Issue 10

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Begging in Rural India and Bangladesh

Abstract: This paper makes a case for seeing poor people’s experiences of begging as a living strategy propelled by poverty, economic insecurity, ill-health and ageing. Using in-depth interviews with men and women from eastern India and northern Bangladesh, it stresses the narrative accounts of the migrants, their tales of travelling to various destinations and the significance of the remittances they earned.

Through these accounts, the aim is to show the resourcefulness and agency required to engage in begging. Begging may be necessary to better respond to food and cash hardships in poor landless households in rural settings. It is neither a deliberate act of avoiding work nor an institutional tradition.

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Full  Article: https://lbwedes.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/begging-in-bangladesh-and-india-a-narrative

Authors:  Deeptima Massey, Abdur Rafique, Janet Seeley

Economic & Political Weekly

april 3, 2010 vol xlv no 14

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The Implications of Economic Structure for Marriage Prevalence

Abstract: This manuscript explores the relationship between industry of employment and marriage prevalence for both men and women.

An examination of PUMS data reveals that women employed in the service sector are significantly less likely to be married than other women, and this relationship remains pronounced even when the effects of income, education and other control variables are statistically controlled.

For males, service sector employment is not strongly related to marriage prevalence. By far the strongest predictor of marriage prevalence for males is personal income.

This study provides strong support for previous research which has determined that improved economic conditions increase marriage prevalence for males, while improved economic conditions decrease marriage prevalence for females.

Full Text:  http://www.bentham.org/open/tosocij/openaccess2.htm

A Sense of Place Permalink:  http://wp.me/pISTJ-5w

The Open Sociology Journal, 2008, 1, 9-22

pp.9-22 (14) Authors: Don E. Albrecht, Carol Mulford Albrecht

doi: 10.2174/1874946100801010009

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From New Deal to New Frontier in Afghanistan: Modernization in a Buffer State

Abstract:

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Nothing becomes antiquated faster than symbols of the future, and it is difficult, at only fifty years remove, to envision the hold concrete dams once hadon the global imagination.

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In the mid-20th century, the austere lines of the Hoover Dam andits radiating spans of high-tension wire inscribed federal power on the American landscape. Vladimir Lenin famously remarked that Communism was Soviet power plus electrification, anequation captured by the David Lean film Dr. Zhivago in the image of water surging, as a kind of redemption, from the spillway of an immense Soviet dam.

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The promise of dams is that they are a renewable resource, furnishing power and water indefinitely and with little effort once the project is complete, but dam projects are subject to ecological constraints which are often more severe outside of the temperate zone.

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Siltation, which now threatens many New Deal-era dams, advances more quickly in arid and tropical climates. Canal irrigation involves a special set of hazards. . Waterlogging itself can destroy harvests, but it produces more permanent damage, too.  In waterlogged soils, capillary action pulls soluble salts and alkali to the surface, leading to desertification.  Early reports warned that the Helmand Valley was vulnerable, that it had gravelly subsoils and salt deposits.

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From the start, the Helmand project was primarily about national prestige, and only secondarily about the social benefits of increasing agricultural productivity… the engines and dreams of modernization had run their full course, spooling out across the desert until they hit limits of physics, culture, and history.

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Full Text: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/icas/Cullather.pdf

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Permalink this page : http://wp.me/pISTJ-4s

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Author:  Nick Cullather, Professor of History, Indiana University.

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Working Paper: #6

August 2002

The Cold War as Global Conflict

International Center for Advanced Studies

New York University

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The Data Tool Box of Cambodia

Features:

The website is an interactive homepage where more (than) 5 years of maps (GIS layers) and data has been complied into one simplified homepage.  Data has been generated from Danida funded projects and by use of public or other donor supported project data.

The current features of this website can be summarized as follows

• View and pint of geographical maps (GIS layers) of Cambodia at incremental scales
• View and print of geographical maps and social, economic and natural resource data by provinces, districts and communes
• The “Search” tool provide a quick way of finding the location of a specific commune (in future also district)
• The “Identifier” tool provide an overview of the basic data of the selected commune
• The “Query” tool is a innovative data analytical search tool in which the user can:
  • Search 140 data set of all communes and print related maps and data
  • Export selected maps and data for reporting purposes and/or further analysis.

Author:  Royal Danish Embassy. Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Click on Link to Map

To Atlas:  http://www.cambodiaatlas.com

A Sense of Place: http://wp.me/pISTJ-3F

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