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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“There Is No Authority But Yourself ”: The Individual and the Collective in British Anarcho-Punk

Abstract:  The heartfelt conclusion to the fifth studio album by seminal British anarchist punk band Crass urges the listener to take up the challenge of personal freedom and responsibility. The exhaustion of vocalist Eve Libertine’s delivery serves to emphasis both the sincerity and desperation of the message. Taken in isolation, such a stark declaration of the “primacy of the individual” might suggest that the concern of anarchist punk began and ended with the agency of the single person. And yet, there can be little doubt that from its 1977 origins onwards, the self-declared role of anarcho-punk was to act as the catalyst for radical, collectivist opposition to the War State. Was there an unresolved tension between anarcho-punk’s concern to maximize the “rights of the individual,” free from societal interference, and its demand for mass mobilization against State power? Did this reveal a critical fault line in the movement’s anarchist manifesto? How could anarcho-punk’s celebration of individual liberty be reconciled with the movement’s “counter-cultural conformity,” as suggested by the critics? This article explores the relationship between the individual and the collective in the culture, politics, and practice of the British anarcho-punk movement, between 1977 and 1984.

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Full Text: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0004.203

Cross, Rich. “‘There is No Authority but Yourself’: The Individual and the Collective in British Anarcho-Punk.” Music and Politics 4.2 (2010).

 

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Names, not social networks, bind us to global cultural and ethnic communities

Precis: Links between hundreds of millions of names belonging to people all around the world have been analysed by geographers from UCL and the University of Auckland. The results reveal how our forenames and surnames are connected in distinct global networks of cultural, ethnic and linguistic communities.

The researchers’ methods could be of use to social scientists and health researchers investigating migration, identity and integration.

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Full Text: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022943

Summary: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1109/11090801-Naming-networks-Mateos

Ethnicity and Population Structures in Personal Naming Networks
Mateos P, Longley PA, O’Sullivan D, 2011 Networks.
PLoS ONE 6(9): e22943.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022943

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Canadian Infanticide Legislation, 1948 and 1955: Reflections on the Medicalization/Autopoiesis Debate

Precis:  This article provides a sociological analysis of the discursive interpretations of the criminal law mitigation frameworks underpinning infanticide law in England and Canada. The passage of infanticide legislation by the Canadian Parliament in 1948 and 1955 is described. The account is contrasted with Tony Ward’s analysis of the passage of English legislation in 1922 and 1938. The Canadian legislation of 1948 was based on the English Infanticide Act of 1922.

Ward claims that his account shows that, despite obvious appearances and the views of socio-legal commentators writing during the 1980s and ’90s, infanticide law is not an example of the medicalization of women’s deviance but, if anything, more closely exemplifies law as an autopoietic system of communication which “enslaves” medical concepts, adapting them for its own strictly legal purposes. We argue that, while Ward’s critique of the medicalization interpretation of infanticide law is broadly apposite, autopoiesis theory provides an overwrought alternative. This is especially true for the Canadian legislation.

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Full Text:  http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/CJS/article/view/839/2368

Canadian Infanticide Legislation, 1948 and 1955: Reflections on the Medicalization/Autopoiesis Debate

Kirsten Kathleen Kramar, William Dean Watson

Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol 33, No 2 (2008)

 

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Rejection of Health Care Treatment: Russian Study

Abstract:  The rejection of professional medical care (except for acute cases demanding urgent or specific treatment).. has become common in contemporary Russia.  Although the statistics for major life-threatening conditions (cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes) show a decrease in their treatment, high mortality levels from the same conditions are observed.. The lowest number of consultations with medical professionals is observed in the adult working population, although this has been the population group with the highest mortality rates since the mid-1990s ..Clearly, this dangerous trend deserves to be analyzed and explained in greater depth.

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Full Text:  http://www.sras.org/rejecting_professional_medicine_in_contemporary_russia

Rejecting Professional Medicine in Contemporary Russia

Polina Aronson

Vestnik

Issue 6, Sumer 2007

 

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Women, Race, and the Conversation Between

Abstract:  The present study explored how the conversation dynamics of women from ethnic majority and minority groups varied in different conversational contexts. … Minority group women used more positive interruptions in both settings, and in introductory talk there was less positive interruption in cross ethnic than same ethnic pairs. Majority group women used a similar pattern of interruptions in introductory and task discussion.

However, in task discussion, minority group women used less positive and more negative interruptions whentalking with another minority group woman, and more positive and fewer negative interruptions when talking with a majority group woman. These findings suggest that minority group women modify their interaction styles depending on the type of conversation and the ethnicity of their partner.

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Full Text:  http://versita.metapress.com/content/a49n64376124662m/fulltext.pdf

Interruption in Women’s Conversations: The Effects of Context in Ethnic Majority and Minority Group Interactions

Patrick J. Leman,  Theresa Ikoko

Psychology of Language and Communication 2010, Vol. 14, No. 1

DOI: 10.2478/v10057-010-0004-7

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The torrent lives of knowledge professionals

Abstract: The lives of knowledge economy professionals look pretty much the same, whether they live and work in New York, Sydney, London, New Delhi or Beijing. It’s a whirlpool of constantly intersecting activities in which they multi-task their way through every minute of the day, feeling ever pressed for time and on the move. Buffeted by streams of information coming via their BlackBerries and laptops, this elite live with only one eye on the here and now.

The road to elsewhere: Work, family and technology.

Elizabeth Hill

Australian Review of Public Affairs. March 2010

Full Text:  http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2010/03/hill.html

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