2. 职称英语
  3. In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their

In 1896 a Georgia couple suing for damages in the accidental death of their

游客2024-01-13  8
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 contri- bution 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 juxtaposing 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 throughout society in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as reformers introduced child-labor regulations and compulsory educa- tion 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. [br] Which of the following alternative explanations of the change in the cash value of children would be most likely to be put forward by sociological economists as they are described in the passage?
选项 A、The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because parents began to increase their emotional investment in the upbringing of their children.
B、The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because their expected earnings over the course of a lifetime increased greatly.
C、The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because the spread of humanitarian ideals resulted in a wholesale reappraisal of the worth of an individual.
D、The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because compulsory education laws reduced the supply, and thus raised the costs, of available child labor.
E、The cash value of children rose during the nineteenth century because of changes in the way negligence law assessed damages in accidental-death cases.
答案 B
解析 下面几个解释儿童以金钱衡量的价值起了变化的选项，哪一个符合社会经济学家的观点?先总结社会经济学家的观点，见原文L60～65，把人的一切行为解释为试图获取最大的经济利益。∴几个选项看because之后的内容就可以了。A．父母开始增加对其子女的感情投资。这是Zelizer的观点。B．正确。儿童们在一生能获得的收入有较大增长。之所以对儿童投更多资，是因为回报会更多，符合上文归纳。C．人文思想的传播引起了一场对个人价值的再评价。无。D．义务教育法减少了童工资源，扩大了其成本。因果倒置，义务教育法是儿童价值转变的结果。E．法律变化后使意外死亡赔偿可以获得。这是原文一个例证，和社会经济学家无关，也不能代表其观点。
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