首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their two year old was told that since the child had made
In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their two year old was told that since the child had made
admin
2017-06-30
71
问题
In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their two year old was told that since the child had made no real economic contribution to the family, there was no liability for damages. In contrast, less than a century later, in 1979, the parents of a three year old sued in New York for accidental-death damages and won an award of $ 750, 000.
The transformation in social values implicit in just a posing these two incidents is the subject of Viviana Zelizer’s excellent book, Pricing the Priceless Child. During the nineteenth century, she argues, the concept of the "useful" child who contributed to the family economy gave way gradually to the present-day notion of the "useless" child who, though producing no income for, and indeed extremely costly to, its parents, is yet considered emotionally "priceless". Well established among segments of the middle and upper classes by the mid-1800’s, this new view of childhood spread through-out society in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as reformers introduced child-labor regulations and compulsory education laws predicated in part on the assumption that a child’s emotional value made child labor taboo.
For Zelizer the origins of this transformation were many and complex. The gradual erosion of children’s productive value in a maturing industrial economy, the decline in birth and death rates, especially in child mortality, and the development of the companionate family(a family in which members were united by explicit bonds of love rather than duty)were all factors critical in changing the assessment of children’s worth. Yet "expulsion of children from the ’ cash nexus’ , ... although clearly shaped by profound changes in the economic, occupational, and family structures," Zelizer maintains. "Was also part of a cultural process ’of sacralization’ of children’s lives. " Protecting children from the crass business world became enormously important for late-nineteenth-century middle-class Americans, she suggests; this sacralization was a way of resisting what they perceived as the relentless corruption of human values by the marketplace.
In stressing the cultural determinants of a child’s worth. Zelizer takes issue with practitioners of the new " sociological economics" , who have analyzed such traditionally sociological topics as crime, marriage, education, and health solely in terms of their economic determinants. Allowing only a small role for cultural forces in the form of individual "preferences" , these sociologists tend to view all human behavior as directed primarily by the principle of maximizing economic gain. Zelizer is highly critical of this approach, and emphasizes instead the opposite phenomenon: the power of social values to transform price. As children became more valuable in emotional terms, she argues, their " exchange" or "surrender" value on the market, that is, the conversion of their intangible worth into cash terms, became much greater.
The primary purpose of the passage is to______.
选项
A、review the literature in a new academic subfield
B、present the central thesis of a recent book
C、contrast two approaches to analyzing historical change
D、refute a traditional explanation of a social phenomenon
答案
B
解析
本题是主旨题。本文通过举例,前后对比说明孩子的货币价值逐渐发生改变,引出Viviana Zelizer的新书,并介绍书中的观点与社会经济学家观点的不同之处。由此可判断B正确。并且强调自己人性化的观点。文中没有提及academic subfield,故排除A。C项“对比分析历史的变化”,对比是为了突出作者观点的人性化,与原文不符。D项“反驳对于社会现象的传统解释”,不符合原文。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/hcFO777K
0
考博英语
相关试题推荐
Ofthegreatvarietyofopinionsconcerning"marriageformoney",thefollowingthreeareimportantwithreferencetothedevelopm
Ascorchingsun,anendlessseaofsandandawaterless,forbiddinglylonelyland—thatistheimagemostpeoplehaveofdeserts.
Ascorchingsun,anendlessseaofsandandawaterless,forbiddinglylonelyland—thatistheimagemostpeoplehaveofdeserts.
Evenplantscanrunafever,especiallywhenthey’reunderattackbyinsectsordisease.Butunlikehumans,plantscanhavethei
Thegreatchariotofsociety,whichforsolonghadrundownthegentleslopeoftradition,nowfounditselfpoweredbyaninterna
FranklinDelanoRooseveltwastheU.S.Presidentwhenmanybusinesseswere____duringtheGreatDepression.
Thecurrentpoliticaldebateoverfamilyvalues,personalresponsibility,andwelfaretakesforgrantedtheentrenchedAmerican
Atthefall2001SocialScienceHistoryAssociationconventioninChicago,theCrimeandJusticenetworksponsoredaforumonth
Evenbeforeheis80,theagingpersonmayundergoanotheridentitycrisislikethatofadolescence.Perhapstherehadalsobeen
TheBritishCourtofAppealhascutlibeldamagesawardedtoMcDonald’s,theworld’slargestfast-foodchain,againsttwopennil
随机试题
血糖的来源是()
Apioneeringstudyintotheeffectsofamother’sfatintakeduringpregnancyonherchild’shealthwhenheorshegrowsupisb
A、角膜B、虹膜C、脉络膜D、晶状体E、玻璃体不含血管,具有丰富感觉神经末梢的结构是()
OCT阳性是指在测试
某4m高的挡土墙,墙背直立,填土面水平,并有超载q=20kPa。已知填土γ=20kN/m3,c=5kPa,φ=30°,K0=0.55,实测墙后土压力合力为64kN/m,求主动土压力并判断墙后土体是否已达极限平衡状态?()
下列选项中,最适合填在问号处,从而能够使图形序列呈现一定规律性的是()。
党委的政治领导与政府的行政领导()。
8,14,26,50,()
(2013年第2题)一位机械工程专家讲过这样一件事:“文革”中,他在农场劳动,有一天领导要他去割羊草。他没养过羊,怎么认得羊草呢?但脑子一转办法就来了。他把羊赶出去,看羊吃什么就割什么。不到半天就割回了羊草。这位专家之所以这样做是因为他意识到,“羊吃草”与
Linguistshaveunderstoodfordecadesthatlanguageandthoughtarecloselyrelated.Humansconstructrealityusingthoughtand
最新回复
(
0
)