一些“消极”风格的阅读文章

阅读文章有的是作者解释现象，有的是作者反驳别人观点，还有的可能只是历数世事变迁。最后一类讲变化的文章大部分读起来积极向上，有一种昂扬的进步主义精神，但也有少数文章画风比较消极，告诉我们不是所有的变化对所有人来说都是好事，时代的进程也不是永远向上。这种消极文章比较少见，但也正因为如此，一些同学在理解的时候理解上会出现偏差。比如看到profound effect这样的表达会先入为主觉得说的一定是好事，这样就跟整个文章/段落想表达的意思相反。所以首先是要注意到有讲“消极”变化的可能性，其次不是很确定感情色彩的时候，可以多看看后几句的展开。

下面是几个例子。

In regions of western India where cotton was grown, spinning (the method for creating yarn) had long constituted an important source of cash income for many rural and urban people. Women had particularly gained income from spinning cotton into thread, using in-home, hand-operated spinning wheels. Thus the rise of factory spinning in the last decades of the nineteenth century spelled a radical change in the economic activity of large numbers of households in the Bombay Presidency, an administrative subdivision of British India. This change had more profound effects on the income-earning possibilities for women and persons from poor families than for men and more prosperous agriculturalists. In the Ahmedabad area of the Presidency, the effects were particularly severe for Muslim women who lived in purdah (seclusion), because hand spinning was one activity they had been able to do in the confines of the house. There is little evidence of any alternative new form of employment in the Presidency that could have compensated for the loss of earnings by women.

注意前两句用的had constituted, had gained，是说老早以前就可以在家里挣钱。第三句说新生产方式带来变化，第四句说影响深远，其实都看不出感情色彩。第五句说severe，第六句说原来的收入没了，也没有新的收入可以填补。可见工厂纺纱这种高级的生产方式或许对其他人有正面影响，但起码对于这段话关心的那些女性来说是负面影响，因为她们被限制在家，没法投身于这样的变化而只能被动地受到新生产方式竞争的影响。

Until the mid-1980s, Swedish workers’ wages were largely determined through centralized collective bargaining at a national level, a policy aimed at achieving equal pay for equal work across companies and industries. This policy, designed to raise the relative wages of low-wage workers, resulted in a decrease in overall wage inequality in Sweden's labor market. Furthermore, this policy may have indirectly resulted in a relatively small gender wage gap difference between women's wages and those of similarly qualified men: several recent studies have demonstrated that decentralized wage bargaining produces relatively large wage inequality in general and large gender wage differentials in particular, and international comparisons show that a society's overall wage inequality is positively related to the gender wage gap.

这段话虽然主要是正面的，但要注意第一句话说是直到上世纪80年代中期以前都集体协商工资，也就意味着在那个时间点以后一直到现在可能都放弃了这种集体协商。所以后面讲集体协商的各种好处，但也暗示了放弃集体协商以后这些好处可能会消退。

In 1776, the state of New Jersey adopted a constitution that ignored gender in its suffrage clause, defining voters simply as adult residents worth at least fifty pounds. After 1776 women routinely participated in the state's electoral process, until in 1807, the state legislature passed a law redefining voters solely as adult White male taxpaying citizens. Political historians have been perplexed by New Jersey's deviation from the established norm of exclusive male suffrage, finding no sign of public agitation either for or against the voting rights of women prior to their enfranchisement in 1776 or disenfranchisement in 1807.

一开始新泽西州宪不做性别区分，女性也有投票权，但到了1807年反而做出限制，把选民定义为纳税白男公民。怎么跟说好的不一样呢，历史学家都迷惑了。

In 1886 approximately 20 percent of United States workers belonged to the Knights of Labor, a labor-activist fraternal order. Nonetheless, soon after reaching this peak, the Knights' membership began a rapid decline, and the organization never regained its national prominence. This collapse had wide-ranging repercussions: subsequent worker organization took a less active and less broad-based organizational approach. The Knights' defeat demoralized those who championed radical reform and the organization of workers as a class, while empowering those who promoted a less inclusive strategy.

一个组织成员数量下降，而且导致后来的类似工人组织更消极，更狭隘。