While fashion is thought of usually in relation to clothing, it is important to realize that it covers a much wider domain. It is to be found in manners, the arts, literature, and philosophy, and may even reach into certain areas of science. In fact, it may operate in any field of group life, apart from the technological and utilitarian area and the area of the sacred. Its operation requires a class society, for in its essential character it does not occur either in a homogeneous society like a primitive group, or in a caste (社会等级) society.Fashion behaves as a movement, and on this basis it is different from custom which, by comparison, is static. This is due to the fact that fashion is based fundamentally on differentiation and emulation. In a class society, the upper classes or so-called social elite are not able to differentiate themselves by fixed symbols or badges. Hence the more external features of their life and behavior are likely to be imitated by classes immediately below them, who, in turn, are imitated by groups immediately below them in the social structure. This process gives to fashion a vertical descent. However, the elite class finds that it is no longer distinguishable, by reason of the imitation made by others, and hence is led to adopt new differentiating criteria, only to displace these as they in turn are imitated. It is primarily this feature that makes fashion into a movement and which has led one writer to remark that a fashion, once launched, moves to its doom.As a movement, fashion show little resemblance to any of the other movements which we have considered. While it occurs spontaneously and moves along in a characteristic cycle, it involves little in the way of crowd behavior and it is not dependent upon the discussion process and the resulting public opinion. It does not depend upon the mechanisms of which we have spoken. The participants are not recruited through agitation. No morale is built up among them. Nor does the fashion movement have, or required, an ideology. Further, since it does not have a leadership imparting conscious direction to the movement, it does not build up a set of tactics. People take part in the fashion movement voluntarily and in response to the interesting and powerful kind of control which fashion imposes on them.1. It is known from the first paragraph that ________.2. According to the author, which of the following people usually lead a new fashion?3. Which of the following statement is true?4. According to the author, a fashion movement ________.5. It can be inferred from the passage that a fashion movement ________.
The _______ feature in Ted’s character was pride; he couldn’t ever think of depending on anyone but himself.
So much data indicate the world’s progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of targets adopted by world leaders at the UN more than ten years ago. But the goal-setting exercise has further pitfalls. Too often, the goals are reduced to working out how much money is needed to meet a particular target. Yet the countries that have made most progress in cutting poverty have largely done so not by spending public money, but by encouraging faster economic growth. As Shanta Devarajan, the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa, points out, growth does not just make more money available for social spending. It also increases the demand for such things as schooling, and thus helps meet other development goals. Yet the goals, as drawn up, made no mention of economic growth.Of course growth by itself does not solve all the problems of the poor. It is also clear that while money helps, how it is spent and what it is spent on are enormously important. For instances, campaigners often ask for more to be spent on primary education. But throughout the developing world teachers on the public payroll are often absent from school. Teacher-absenteeism rates are around 20% in rural Kenya, 27% in Uganda and 14% in Ecuador.In any case, money that is allocated for such services rarely reaches its intended recipients. A study found that 70% of the money allocated for drugs and supplies by the Uganda government in 2000 was lost; in Ghana, 80% was siphoned off. Money needs to be spent, therefore, not merely on building more schools or hiring more teachers, but on getting them to do what they are paid for, and preventing resources from disappearing somewhere between the central government and their supposed destination.The good news is that policy experiments carried out by governments, NGOs, academics and international institutions are slowly building up a body of evidence about methods that work. A large-scale evaluation in Andhra Pradesh in southern India was shown, for example, that performance pay for teachers is three times as effective at raising pupil’s test scores as the equivalent amount spent on school supplies.And in Uganda the government, appalled that money meant for schools was not reaching them, took to publicizing how much was being allotted, using radio and newspaper. Money wastage was dramatically reduced. The World Bank hopes to bring such innovations to the notice of other governments during the summit, if it can. For if the drive against poverty succeed, it will owe more to such ideas and wider use than to targets set at UN-sponsored summits.26. According to the text, which of the following merits can’t we derive from economic growth?27. Teacher-absenteeism is cited as example ________.28. According to the author, we should ________ when dealing with allocated money.29. On which of the following would the author most probably agree?30. We may infer from the last paragraph that ________.
The floods did not start to ______ until two days after the rain had stopped.
It is imperative for the Chairman to look into this mate personally.
A great deal of attention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide—the division of the world into the info(information) rich and the info poor. And that _21_ does exist today. My wife and I lectured about this looming danger twenty years ago. What was less _22_ then, however, were the new, positive _23_ that work against the digital divide. _24_, there are reasons to be _25_.There are technological reasons to hope the digital divide will narrow. As the Internet becomes more and more _26_, it is in the interest of business to universalize access—after all, the more people online, the more potential _27_ there are. More and more _28_, afraid their countries will be left _29_, want to spread Internet access. Within the next decade or two, one to two billion people on the planet will be — 30_ together. As a result, I now believe the digital divide will _31— rather than widen in the years ahead. And that is very good news because the Internet may well be the most powerful tool for __32_ world poverty that we’ve ever had. Of course, the use of the Internet isn’t the only way to _33_ poverty. And the Internet is not the only tool we have. But it has _34_ potential.To _35_ advantage of this tool, some poor countries will have to get over their outdated anti-colonial prejudices _36_ respect to foreign investment. Countries that still think foreign investment is a/an _37_ of their sovereignty might well study the history of _38_ (the basic structural foundations of a society) in the United States. When the United States built its industrial infrastructure, it didn’t have the capital to do so. And that is_37_America’s Second Wave infrastructure —_40_ roads, harbors, highways, ports and so on—were built with foreign investment.