Chinese Demography: The State of the Field

1990 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 807-834 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Lavely ◽  
James Lee ◽  
Wang Feng
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Steady State ◽  
Chinese Population ◽  
Human Population ◽  
The State ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Demographic Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Comparative Population ◽  
State Of The Field

As recently as one decade ago, there was no “field” of Chinese demography. There were virtually no demographers of China and little available data. It is fair to say that China was at once the largest and the least known of any human population.The change has been sudden. New sources of data now place China among the better-documented national populations. Publications on Chinese population have boomed. In consequence, we can now speak of a field of Chinese demography, although it is hardly in a steady “state.” We can only outline the explosion of demographic research that is continually expanding and refining our understanding of Chinese population today and in the past. This outpouring of data and knowledge provides unprecedented opportunities for the study of Chinese society and offers unusual challenges to our understanding of comparative population dynamics.

State and Society in Nineteenth-Century China

1955 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Michael
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Military Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
Official Position ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Bureaucratic State ◽  
Strong Control ◽  
Imperial State

Communist China has broken with the Chinese cultural tradition, which it attacks and condemns. This break was prepared in part by the transformation of China during the declining years of imperial rule and in Republican times. But whereas this period was marked by the disintegration and disappearance of old institutions and some uncertainty about things to come, a new, rigid doctrine and social structure are now being introduced to integrate a new society within a totalitarian state. The old values have been discarded, but some of the organizational patterns of the past have been carried over, or have reappeared in the new system. The Communists are attempting to impose their system on Chinese society through the agency of an ideologically oriented elite which not only holds official position in government but also controls society itself. The degree of success which this system achieves may depend in part on the extent to which Chinese society has been prepared by its tradition to accept a centralized bureaucratic state working through a trained elite. In addition to helping us to assess the degree of preconditioning in China for Communist rule, an analytical study of imperial China may provide us with a greater understanding of the social and political techniques which a bureaucratic state employs, and which become of such special importance for a totalitarian government. What, then, were the key features of the imperial state and society which the Communists have retained or replaced in their own way, and what was the role played by the educated elite of the past?The imperial state aimed at a strong control over Chinese society. The struggle to keep an all-powerful central rule was the dominant concern of every Chinese dynasty. The center of all authority was the emperor and the court, the embodiment of the interests of the state. Serving the emperor was a group of officials, small in number compared with the size of the country and the population, and with the importance of the functions to be carried out. These officials represented the interests of the state as a whole—its concern with the well-being or acquiescence of all groups of the population. The last Chinese dynasty had in addition special support from a group which served the state without being a part of Chinese society. The Manchus had come as conquerors from the frontier of the Chinese empire, with their forces militarily organized into units known as “banners.” When the Manchu dynasty was set up, the Manchu banners were kept apart from the Chinese people and the bannermen remained an inner core of dynastic supporters used both as a military force and in key official positions. But these bannermen were only a small group, largely unqualified for the complex tasks of Chinese administration, and thus the Manchu dynasty, like its predecessors, had to recruit its state administration from Chinese society.

scholarly journals Inventory of managed honey bee population in Zhytomyr region (Ukraine)

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
O. V. Lisohurska ◽  
D. V. Lisohurska ◽  
V. M. Sokolyuk ◽  
S. V. Furman ◽  
M. M. Kryvyi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Food Security ◽  
Apis Mellifera ◽  
Honey Bee ◽  
The State ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Pasture Area ◽  
Bee Colonies

Over the last decades, the number of honey bee colonies in the world has been declining. A honey bee is the most important pollinator in agriculture. According to estimates, such a situation can threaten the food security of humanity. The purpose was to investigate the specific aspects of the managed honey bee population in Zhytomyr region. The population dynamics, number, and density were determined. For this purpose the statistics of the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine on the number of bee colonies by categories of producers in Ukraine and Zhytomyr region were used. It was established that in Zhytomyr region over the past quarter century, the population of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) has increased by 2 times up to 193.4 thousand colonies. During the same period, the number of bee colonies in Ukraine has increased by 1.4 times. At present, Zhytomyr region is a leader in the state in the development of the beekeeping industry. Eight percent of all honey bee colonies in the country are concentrated here. In the Zhytomyr region, the density of honey bee population is one of the highest in Ukraine. 82 colonies are concentrated here on one conditional pasture area (1256 hectares), with 7 colonies per 100 hectares of land. In Ukraine, these indicators are 52 and 4 respectively. The distribution of bee colonies in the region is uneven. The vast majority of colonies (58.5%) are concentrated in the Polissia. There are from 1 to 18 colonies per 100 hectares of land in each of the units in the region, on the conditional pasture area from 16 to 224. The results of these studies are relevant for the commodity apiaries for the rational use of honey flow and to make a well-considered decision on the prospect of increasing the number of bee colonies. Further work will be aimed at the investigation into the melliferous base and the calculation of the feed balance of the beekeeping industry in Zhytomyr region.

scholarly journals Turning Around to Look Ahead: Views of Vocational Psychology in 2001 and 2019

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadya A. Fouad ◽  
Michael B. Kozlowski
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Vocational Psychology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Vocational Behavior ◽  
Look Ahead ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Turf Wars ◽  
State Of The Field

Ten scholars in vocational psychology identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in a 2001 issue of the Journal of Vocational Behavior. This article reviews the state of the field in 2001 and then identifies to what extent the strengths and concerns have changed in the past two decades. While the field continues to have a strong theoretical and empirical tradition, old concerns about insularity, methods used to examine research questions, gulfs between science and practice, and turf wars remain a serious threat to the field. We outline the nature of these concerns and propose recommendations from the literature to these concerns.

Collective Memory: Between Values and Historical Knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-142
Author(s):  
VICTOR BURLACHUK
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The State ◽  
Main Element ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

At the end of the twentieth century, questions of a secondary nature suddenly became topical: what do we remember and who owns the memory? Memory as one of the mental characteristics of an individual’s activity is complemented by the concept of collective memory, which requires a different method of analysis than the activity of a separate individual. In the 1970s, a situation arose that gave rise to the so-called "historical politics" or "memory politics." If philosophical studies of memory problems of the 30’s and 40’s of the twentieth century were focused mainly on the peculiarities of perception of the past in the individual and collective consciousness and did not go beyond scientific discussions, then half a century later the situation has changed dramatically. The problem of memory has found its political sound: historians and sociologists, politicians and representatives of the media have entered the discourse on memory. Modern society, including all social, ethnic and family groups, has undergone a profound change in the traditional attitude towards the past, which has been associated with changes in the structure of government. In connection with the discrediting of the Soviet Union, the rapid decline of the Communist Party and its ideology, there was a collapse of Marxism, which provided for a certain model of time and history. The end of the revolutionary idea, a powerful vector that indicated the direction of historical time into the future, inevitably led to a rapid change in perception of the past. Three models of the future, which, according to Pierre Nora, defined the face of the past (the future as a restoration of the past, the future as progress and the future as a revolution) that existed until recently, have now lost their relevance. Today, absolute uncertainty hangs over the future. The inability to predict the future poses certain challenges to the present. The end of any teleology of history imposes on the present a debt of memory. Features of the life of memory, the specifics of its state and functioning directly affect the state of identity, both personal and collective. Distortion of memory, its incorrect work, and its ideological manipulation can give rise to an identity crisis. The memorial phenomenon is a certain political resource in a situation of severe socio-political breaks and changes. In the conditions of the economic crisis and in the absence of a real and clear program for future development, the state often seeks to turn memory into the main element of national consolidation.

A Short Life of Kierkegaard

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Lowrie ◽  
Alastair Hannay
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
The State ◽  
Young Girl ◽  
Love Affair ◽  
Short Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Hans Christian Andersen

A small, insignificant-looking intellectual with absurdly long legs, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a veritable Hans Christian Andersen caricature of a man. A strange combination of witty cosmopolite and melancholy introvert, he spent years writing under a series of fantastical pseudonyms, lavishing all the splendor of his mind on a seldom-appreciative world. He had a tragic love affair with a young girl, was dominated by an unforgettable Old Testament father, fought a sensational literary duel with a popular satiric magazine, and died in the midst of a violent quarrel with the state church for which he had once studied theology. Yet this iconoclast produced a number of brilliant books that have profoundly influenced modern thought. This classic biography presents a charming and warmly appreciative introduction to the life and work of the great Danish writer. It tells the story of Kierkegaard's emotionally turbulent life with a keen sense of drama and an acute understanding of how his life shaped his thought. The result is a wonderfully informative and entertaining portrait of one of the most important thinkers of the past two centuries.

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