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Part II Reading Comprehension (40%)
Directions: There are 4 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished sentences. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and then mark the corresponding letter on ANSWER SHEET I with a single line through the center.
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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 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 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 uexpulsion 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.
31. It can be inferred from the passage that accidental-death damage awards in America during the nineteenth century tended to be based principally on the .
A. earnings of the person at time of death
B. wealth of the party causing the death
C. degree of culpability of the party causing the death
D. amount of money that had been spent on the person killed
32. It can be inferred from the passage that in the early 1800s children were generally regarded by their families as individuals who •
A. needed enormous amounts of security and affection
B. required constant supervision while working
C. were important to the economic well-being of a family
D. were unsuited to spending long hours in school
33. 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?
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.
34. The primary purpose of the passage is to .
A. review the literature in a new academic subfield
B. present the central thesis of a recent book
C. contrast two approaches to analyze historical change
D. refute a traditional explanation of a social phenomenon
35. Zelizer refers to all of the following as important influences in changing the assessment of children’s worth except changes in .
A. the mortality rate B. the nature of industry
C. the nature of the family D. attitudes toward reform movements