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Abstract: As a sociologist dealing with futures studies, Wendell Bell encountered considerable obstacles because his topic – the future, imagined, projected and shaped – poses significant problems for contemporary sociology. The paper discusses Bell''s engagement with these disciplinary difficulties and his search for conceptual and methodological solutions. The paper anchors Bell''s achievements in a wider historical context, identifies some of the new challenges facing sociology and considers some openings for change in our knowledge practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: The objective of this paper is to present an overview of ethnicity, ethnic strife, and its consequences, as seen from the perspective of the disciplines of economics, political science, social anthropology, and sociology. What exactly is ethnicity—how is it to be defined, characterized, and measured? What exactly are the causal links from ethnicity so defined to its presumed consequences, including tension and violence? What are the feedback loops from the consequences of ethnic divisions back to these divisions themselves? How can policy, if at all, mitigate ethnic divisions and ethnic conflict? Finally, what role does interdisciplinarity have in helping to understand ethnicity and ethnic strife, and how can interdisciplinary collaboration be enhanced? These are the questions which this paper takes up and deals with in sequence. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The future of the pharmacy profession and concerns about professional identity have been popular and recurring themes in professional journals and at international pharmacy conferences for more than 30 years. The aim of this paper is to contribute to realistic and viable visions for the future of the pharmacy profession via insights through labor market and work organization theories. These insights provide an understanding of contemporary work patterns and what they mean for the future role of community pharmacists. It appears that an important and influential contemporary trend in work organization today is precarious work, i.e. non-standard employment that promotes and relies on a flexible and fluid work force. Contrary to permanent employment, precarious work is often poorly paid, insecure, unprotected, and in many cases cannot support a household. The growth of precarious work among professionals, including pharmacists has been documented in many countries. In the early 21st century a major concern in the UK was the growth in the number of pharmacists who choose to be self-employed "locums" as opposed to seeking permanent employment. With the spread of precarious work a new, involuntary form of employment appeared a decade later with the spread of "zero-hour contracts" and "exclusivity agreements". Particularly affected by these flexible, precarious work conditions are the highly-educated young health professionals such as pharmacists. The profession needs to be proactive in order to stay abreast of economic/workforce and organizational trends. The way forward is a commitment to a dynamic, knowledge-based vision that includes an ongoing analysis of the outside world. The core role of pharmacists in the future includes: 1. engagement in interprofessional education with other healthcare professionals; 2. an acceptance of the contribution that lay knowledge provides to the understanding of health and medicines, and 3.keeping ajour with new and revolutionary treatments, both pharmaceutical and non-pharmacological. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity is an important measure that according to the context, can describe different concepts of general interest: competition, evolutionary process, immigration, emigration and production among others. It has been extensively studied in different areas, as ecology, political science, economy, sociology and others. The quality of spatial context of the city can be gauged through this measure. The spatial context with its corresponding dataset can be modelled using spatial networks. Consequently, this allows us to study the diversity of data present in this specific type of networks. In this paper we propose an algorithm to measure diversity in spatial networks based on the topology and the data associated to the network. In the experiments developed with networks of different sizes, it is observed that the proposed index is independent of the size of the network, but depends on its topology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Degrowth—the reduction of energy and material throughput via shrinking total economic production and consumption in a socially sustainable way—would entail fewer working hours. However, work time reduction is not a sufficient condition for lower throughput because people may engage in environmentally harmful activities during expanded leisure. The purpose of this paper is to revisit the pessimistic and critical traditions to explicate unconventional utopian images of inactivity as a valuable feature of a better society. Pessimism makes a case for renouncing dissatisfaction-causing desires, an ethic that takes on a collective and futuristic form in Eduard von Hartmann and Emil Cioran. In the critical tradition, an indirect foundation of degrowth thinking, the central goal of the abolition of alienated labor is elevated to utopian heights in Theodor W. Adorno's brief portrayal of peace as humanity reconciled with nature in rest. These forecasts and hopes help envision what aspects of leisure may look like in post-growth society. For example, work time reduction policies should be paired with consumption-curbing policies, especially advertising limits. I warn against recuperation via "minimalist" commodities. Readers interested in degrowth and sustainability will benefit from contributions to discussions surrounding work time reduction, sustainable consumption, and post-growth imaginaries. Highlights • Work time reduction is not a sufficient condition for degrowth. • Increased inactivity is an underexplored form of low-impact leisure. • Pessimism and critical theory help visualize an idler society. • The argument is formulated as resignation from desire in the pessimistic tradition. • Critical theory envisions reconciliation, perpetual peace in a post-work society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This special issue offers papers that together reach toward sociological understanding of “meaning.” We contextualize that effort in intersecting intellectual trends—the emerging relational sociology of networks and meanings, which has progressed steadily since the 1990s, and the diverse enterprise of sociology of language, which is much less established in the U.S. Given space limitations, we acknowledge others’ work but concentrate on Harrison White''s turn to language and linguistics, which influenced all the papers herein. We highlight each paper''s contribution to a new relational sociology and new understanding of language as mechanism and methodology, which might change the study of agentic actions, social processes, politics, networks and institutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Whether or not fishers comply with regulation depends on the economic and social context in which they operate their vessels. This is how conventional theory explains the phenomenon of non-compliance. It treats state–community interaction processes not as direct causes for non-compliance but rather as background conditions shaping individual fishers’ perception and decisions for action. This paper argues that conventional theory fails to include the dynamics of tempo-relational processes between state and communities, which explains collective patterns of non-compliance in fisheries. The paper addresses this hiatus in the literature, using a process-sociological approach to analyse non-compliance in Vietnamese marine fisheries. The analysis highlights that Vietnamese marine fisheries are mainly regulated through informal networks of trust and mistrust, which function through their interplay with the highly centralised and formalised Vietnamese state. Based on this assessment, the paper concludes that outcomes of processes of the dynamic social interplay between state and communities are semi-dependent on individual perception and action, and as such have a causal effect of their own on patterns of non-compliance in fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A growing literature in sociology examines external classification systems, usually implemented in the context of industries. Classification systems are analogous to the structure of individual cognition, though the specific nature of the link between these external classification systems and individual cognition is usually unexplored. This paper uses the example of the World Bank''s lending classifications to examine the relationship between rules and classification and to argue that the organizational context of classification is central to assessing the cognitive impact of classification. The paper adds these results to existing work on external classification systems to provide a framework for understanding the range of possible relationships between external classification systems and the cognition of individuals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A theoretical orientation toward 'strategies' is proposed in this paper. This theoretical approach suggests that we study both the context for immediate decision-making and the broader context in which reflection and deliberation occur. Whilst these are very broad concerns, the paper itself is based on fieldwork about land rental relationships in rural South India. The paper introduces strategies as a solution to the theorists' dilemma of choice vs. constraints. We treat tenants (as both households and as individual agents) in their structural contexts whilst respecting the complexity and co-mutuality of their agency. The strategies that people use involve an orientation to current and future events, including possible events which are imagined or which could happen. Both structural relationships and concrete past incidents act as reference points for decisions made today in a given relationship. The strategies of tenants include being pliable vis-à-vis landlords but some tenants make this conditional upon landlords' proper behaviour. Agents negotiate and enforce proper behaviour and, thus, both create and change the system of norms that exists. In Macintyre's terms (1985), the virtues intrinsic to the socio-economic practices are continually being re-worked. The theory of strategies reframes 'virtue' in dynamic structure-and-agency terms. Agents are not simply individuals. The debate about rational choice vs. holism can be augmented by looking at agency supra-individualistically. The strategy of a household is an emergent property of the household as an agent. It includes detailed first-order strategies along with more reflective second-order strategies which reconcile goals in the education, migration, household work, and marriage domains. The paper is, thus, interdisciplinary and contributes to sociology, while pluralistically drawing upon other disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper assesses group differences in severe and fatal road-traffic accidents by using a unique database that merges road-traffic records with the Israeli census data. The database traces, over a period of 9 years, a group of drivers that comprises 20% of the Israeli population and explores the probability of their being involved in an accident. This unique database enables the investigation of drivers’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, while controlling for a variety of variables, such as estimated daily distance traveled and license type. Testing a previously published theoretical paper on the social bases of accidents, the findings expose significant group differences in estimated probabilities of being involved in severe and fatal accidents. For example, estimated probabilities of accident involvement are higher for males than for females, for non-Jewish drivers than for Jewish, and for drivers whose origins are in Africa and Asia than in America and Europe. Furthermore, the higher one''s education and socioeconomic status, the lower is the probability of accident-involvement. The implications of the findings for developing road-safety programs and suggestions for future research are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper provides an examination of the process used by ordinary courts in Chile when making legal capacity determinations. It provides an up-to-date account of various aspects of law and procedure related to legal capacity in this jurisdiction. Also, by drawing on semi-structured interviews with judges, this paper examines judicial understandings of legal capacity decision-making focusing on problems related to the medicalisation of mental disability and the participation of persons with disabilities in legal capacity procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: From the birth of multi-spectral imaging techniques, there has been a tendency to consider and process this new type of data as a set of parallel gray-scale images, instead of an ensemble of an n-D realization. However, it has been proved that using vector-based tools leads to a more appropriate understanding of color images and thus more efficient algorithms for processing them. Such tools are able to take into consideration the high correlation of the color components and thus to successfully carry out energy compaction. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to utilize the principal component analysis in the neighborhoods of an image in order to extract the corresponding eigenimages. These eigenimages exhibit high levels of energy compaction and thus are appropriate for such operations as compression and watermarking. Subsequently, two such methods are proposed in this paper and their comparison with available approaches is presented. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, we present a novel method for the robust control problem of uncertain nonlinear discrete-time linear systems with sector and slope restrictions. The nonlinear function considered in this paper is expressed as convex combinations of sector and slope bounds. Then the equality constraint is derived by using convex properties of the nonlinear function. A stabilization criterion for the existence of the state feedback controller is derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) by using Finsler’s lemma. The proposed method is demonstrated by a system with saturation nonlinearity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Current historiography has considered eugenics to be an emanation from state structures or a movement which sought to appeal to the state in order to implement eugenic reform. This paper examines the limitations of that view and argues that it is necessary to expand our horizons to consider particularly working-class eugenics movements that were based on the dissemination of knowledge about sex and which did not aspire to positions of political power. The paper argues that anarchism, with its contradictory practice afforded by the convulsive social situation of the Civil War in Spain, allows us to assess critically the parameters of the social action of eugenics, its many alliances, and its struggle for existence in changing political circumstances not of its own making. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper starts from a premise relating to the act of fictional writing about eugenics and the way it may be understood as the embodiment and enactment of social imaginaries. It proposes that literature (in the sense of fiction) frequently, if not habitually, expresses the underside of what is expressed in public discourse. That is, far from being the implement of state policy or intervention, it acts in counterpoint to the state, constituting a type of social fantasy in that it explores through the realm of the imagination what might happen. It becomes the arena for contestation, exploration, and nuancing as it essays how ideas from public, ‘real’ life, might transform when acted out. The paper considers two sorts of literary case. First it looks at that of ‘naïve’ literature, harnessed unashamedly to a specific sociological discourse of eugenics. Then, using primarily Ibsen, it considers a subset, the case of literature that does not set out to be explicitly in the service of the cause of eugenics, but is appropriated and disseminated from a platform of eugenics. Lastly, taking the example of Unamuno’s Amor y pedagogía (1902) the paper considers literature that exists in a quite different sphere of public awareness. It shows awareness of the arguments and precepts of eugenics and related beliefs and practices, but acts as a transitional space (in the terms of Winnicott) to enable such ideas to be entertained and thought about, without a requirement of acceptance or belief. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper revisits the concept of state autonomy in the context of globalization. Earlier literature either considered state autonomy from the social forces in broad institutional and cultural terms or from the dominant classes in a restrictive sense. However, in either case the focus remained on domestic/national society, not the global society. The discussion of relative autonomy of the state began among the Marxists in the 1970s and then graduated into the mainstream social sciences in the 1980s and 1990s. In the upshot, the notions of developmental state and the embedded autonomy have significantly added to our knowledge of the role of the state. This paper broadens the idea of embedded autonomy by locating the sources of embeddedness in both local as well global institutions and norms. The paper uses the Singapore case to illustrate some of the possibilities and limitations of the reconfigured role of the state in the face of globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization has influenced the conduct of scientific research in a number of expected and unexpected ways. At the same time the emergence of specific scientific fields has also influenced the texture and trajectory of globalization. In this paper the relationship between globalization and genomics is analyzed. Much like the globalization of traditional manufacturing, genomics research represents a phase of global bio-capitalism. With specific reference to Singapore, the possible social, economic and political effects of the rapid global circulation of scientists, knowledge, capital and DNA are examined in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Drawing on end of life care as an illustrative case, this paper critically examines the provision of care in the home, identifying a number of inherent tensions. For 60 years the hospital has been the preferred site of care. However, the UK caring division of labour is currently undergoing a process of (re)domestication and the provision of home care is increasingly regarded as a ‘gold standard’ for the organisation of care, in institutional and domestic contexts. In this paper we argue that while ‘home care’ policies serve a range of professional and political agendas, they contain unacknowledged contradictions and strains, creating challenges for both family and professional carers. The realities of home care are examined through reconceptualising qualitative data generated from three research projects concerned with dying in the community. We argue that, whilst previous work has highlighted the burdens the redomestication of care places upon carers, home care philosophies and policies have led to over-romanticised notions of care which privilege the value of caring relationships without acknowledging the dynamic interaction of such social relationships with the actual work of caring. Moreover, such policy trends have created a nexus of social expectations and obligations for which modern society is unprepared. With reference to both end of life care, and home care more widely, we argue that health care planners and professionals need to think more critically about the way care is delivered. Home is not merely about a physical space, but the social and emotional relationships therein. Good ‘home care,’ characterised by attention to patient-centred needs and flexible in design and scope, does not have to be located within the private sphere; relationships may actually be maintained and nurtured by enabling people to have a realistic choice of care in an institution. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper re-visits the narratives of select 'Islamists' from South and Southeast Asia to explore what their narratives offer for a discussion on Islamist intellectual space. Departing from resilient biases in scholarship that de-privilege expressions of the 'Ummah in the East', I focus on a realm of Islamist self-understandings that reveal a consciousness of being important interlocutors of Islam. These Islamists blatantly exercised their intellectual authority through deriding a larger Ummah that had become divorced from a 'true Islam' that they were aware of. is paper highlights facets of Islamist contact that occurred between these regions through Islamist Third Worldist discourses. I also emphasize South and Southeast Asian Islamist reconstructions of Islam into a system and/or polity through returning to, and reconstructing 'orthodox' texts, Prophethood and earlier Islamic periods. is study bears implications for the study of regions often reduced to 'peripheries' in discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes and analyses the Hadrami migration to and adaptations in Hyderabad, India. The various adaptive niches exploited by the Hadramis in Hyderabad before the merger with India in 1948 are outlined, particularly the ones relating to the military field. Hadrami officers and soldiers were a typical features of the Nizam's army. But this was to change with the Indian take-over in 1948. The second part of the paper outlines these changes as they relate to Hyderabad in general and to the new adaptive strategies adopted by the Hadramis in particular. The new evolving adaptations during the 1950s was based on petty trade and represented a downward turn in the fortunes of the Hadramis. During this period the Hadrami identity was fading and they tended to disappear among the other Muslims in the city. In the 1970s, however, labour migration to the Gulf helped improve the economic status of the Hadrami families, and it lead to a strengtheneing of the diasporic organisations that could facilitate the migration and which also strengthened the Hadrami diasporic identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper develops a sociological model to explain collisions between two drivers or more. The “Social Accident” model presented here integrates empirical findings from prior studies and extant sociological theories. Sociological theory posits that social groups have unique cultural characteristics, which include a distinctive world view and ways of operating that influence its members. These cultural characteristics may cause drivers in different groups to interpret a given situation differently; therefore, they will make conflicting decisions that may possibly lead to road accidents. The proposed model may contribute to an understanding of the social mechanism related to interactions and communication among drivers by presenting new directions for understanding accidents and collisions. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research that will employ the model to assess its predictive and practical utility. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, boundary cubic rooted planar maps are investigated and exact enumerative formulae are given. First, an enumerative formula for boundary cubic inner-forest maps with the size (number of edges) as a parameter is derived. For the special case of boundary cubic inner-tree maps, a simple formula with two parameters is presented. Further, according to the duality, a corresponding result for outer-planar maps is obtained. Finally, some results for boundary cubic planar maps and general planar maps are obtained. Furthermore, two known Tutte''s formulae are easily deduced in the paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Synthesizing existing work from diverse disciplines, this paper introduces a culture-gene coevolutionary approach to human behavior and psychology, and applies it to the evolution of cooperation. After a general discussion of cooperation in humans, this paper summarizes Dual Inheritance Theory and shows how cultural transmission can be brought under the Darwinian umbrella in order to analyze how culture and genes coevolve and jointly influence human behavior and psychology. We then present a generally applicable mathematical characterization of the problem of cooperation. From a Dual Inheritance perspective, we review and discuss work on kinship, reciprocity, reputation, social norms, and ethnicity, and their application to solving the problem of cooperation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper discusses how HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and mitigation activities and funding for such work can lead to community conflict. The central role of communities in combating HIV/AIDS is widely agreed, with the contributions of social capital networks and civil society seen as pivotal; a rights-based approach to HJV/AIDS activities is considered essential. Yet experiences from a UK Department for International Development funded project in Nigeria suggest that greater critical attention must be given to the impacts and effects of HIV/AIDS on communities, and the ways in which conflict can develop, emerge and be sustained, resulting in severe breakdown of social cohesion and reduction or cessation of HIV/AIDS activities. It is argued here that conflict can be fuelled by the different priorities and perceptions of community members and groups vis-â-vis those of development organisations, and by the impact of funds on often desperately poor communities. Case studies analyse the development of the conflict, failed attempts at resolution, and two post-conflict project interventions whose design and implementation were informed by its experiences and outcome. The paper concludes by considering the potential input of participatory approaches, community psychology and change management in the development and implementation of HIV/AIDS interventions specifically so as to reduce potential for conflict. Its intention is to contribute to the debate on how best to implement genuinely community-based and managed HIV/AIDS interventions. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preoccupation with power in mainstream Western social theory can be challenged from a number of perspectives. In this paper, I consider some alternative ways of conceptualizing ways-of-being in society that are implicit in a number of Asian traditions of thought and, in particular, in Buddhism and Gandhian ideas. In this paper, I challenge the necessity for a power-based approach to social relations. I suggest both that the models of society emerging from Foucault and other major Western theorists are examples of culturally bound local knowledge that have significant negative influences on the conception of alternative social possibilities, and that the resources for such alternatives lie not only in Western forms of utopian thinking but in existing Asian traditions — the full sociological implications of which have not yet been explored or worked out in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synopsis: This paper focuses on the embodied experience of gender. It draws upon Bourdieu''s sociology of practice, cognitive sciences, and feminist phenomenology to highlight instances of non-discursive, cultural conditioning of embodied experience. Specifically, the paper focuses on the internalization by both men and women of the masculine perspective. It does so by discussing regular patterns of word ordering in English, comportment and motility, and orientation to the body. These patterns are cultural in that they are acquired through social interaction. They are non-discursive, though, in that they are not encoded in any system of representations and are not generally transmitted through discourse. Rather, they are infra-discursive, in that they exist below discourse. It emerges that, in general, the prototypical perspective adopted by male and female European social agents is distinctly more masculine than feminine. However, in restricted contexts, such as parenthood, this prototypicality is inverted. In this, we see how internalized structures match the broad overarching social structures. In the course of the discussion, we seek to further develop and contextualize some further analyses, such as Iris Young''s phenomenology of corporeal experience and Cooper and Ross''s analysis of word ordering. We ultimately hope to demonstrate the critical analytical importance of the embodied reality which is clearly culturally variable, yet not, strictly speaking, discursively constituted. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Income inequality is one of the central concerns of sociologists and stratification researchers. While most of the analyses in sociology cover the economic and demographic influences on income inequality, less research has sought to understand the impact of public policies. A major factor absent from the research in both economics and sociology is the role of state-level minimum wages. Neoclassical economic theorists hypothesize that a minimum wage will increase income inequality, while institutional economists argue that a minimum wage reduces economic inequality. This paper uses decennial state data covering 1960-2000 to test the hypothesis that states with higher minimum wages have lower levels of family income inequality. The results confirm the institutional hypothesis that state minimum wages reduce family income inequality. Estimates presented in the paper indicate that the effect of the state minimum wage is non-linear and it should be greater than $4.00 (2001 CPI) to be redistributive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with an underdeveloped notion in the EAP sub-discipline of contrastive rhetoric: culture. It argues that a better conceptualization of contrastive rhetoric needs to include a better conceptualization of culture. After engaging with the complex question “What is culture?” the paper moves on to consider four sets of current issues regarding the concept of culture: (1) received culture versus postmodern culture versus cultural studies culture; (2) culture as product versus culture as process; (3) culture in the head versus culture in the world; and (4) big culture versus small culture. The paper then ends with a call for greater attention to the culture concept in contrastive rhetoric studies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Most data processing techniques, applied to biomedical and sociological time series, are only valid for random fluctuations that are stationary in time. Unfortunately, these data are often non-stationary and the use of techniques of analysis resting on the stationary assumption can produce a wrong information on the scaling, and so on the complexity of the process under study. Herein, we test and compare two techniques for removing the non-stationary influences from computer generated time series, consisting of the superposition of a slow signal and a random fluctuation. The former is based on the method of wavelet decomposition, and the latter is a proposal of this paper, denoted by us as step detrending technique. We focus our attention on two cases, when the slow signal is a periodic function mimicking the influence of seasons, and when it is an aperiodic signal mimicking the influence of a population change (increase or decrease). For the purpose of computational simplicity the random fluctuation is taken to be uncorrelated. However, the detrending techniques here illustrated work also in the case when the random component is correlated. This expectation is fully confirmed by the sociological applications made in the companion paper. We also illustrate a new procedure to assess the existence of a genuine scaling, based on the adoption of diffusion entropy, multiscaling analysis and the direct assessment of scaling. Using artificial sequences, we show that the joint use of all these techniques yield the detection of the real scaling, and that this is independent of the technique used to detrend the original signal. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper reviews how the concept of sustainable development has played out in industrialized countries since 1987. It examines the theory and practice of sustainable development in the context of three criticisms (it is vague, attracts hypocrites and fosters delusions), and argues for an approach to sustainability that is integrative, is action-oriented, goes beyond technical fixes, incorporates a recognition of the social construction of sustainable development, and engages local communities in new ways. The paper concludes with a description of an approach to sustainability that attempts to incorporate these characteristics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper uses a study of women''s participation in the Australian sugar industry to illustrate and critique the process and usefulness of reflexivity in rural research. I begin by situating the use of reflexivity within the feminist literature. Following this, I describe the way in which I used reflexivity to examine different identities I inhabited throughout the study. These identities were: ‘farmers’, daughter’, ‘Italian-Australian’, ‘nice country girl’ and ‘woman’. The paper concludes with a brief reflexive examination of some of the challenges I face in taking up a new identity—that of ‘academic feminist’ in rural sociology. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper analyzes rights-based and economic approaches to the provision of health care and education in developing countries. It assesses the foundations and uses of social rights in development, outlines the economic approach to health care and education, highlights differences and similarities, and assesses the hard questions that the economic critique poses for rights. The paper argues that the policy consequences of the approaches overlap considerably. Differences include the consequences of long-term deprivation, metrics for tradeoffs, and the behavioral distortions of subsidies. But the differences are not irreconcilable, and advocates of the approaches need not regard each other as antagonists. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In recent years what can loosely be described as a sociology of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has begun to emerge. Although work has been conducted with lay therapists, orthodox practitioners, and consumers, overall, research in this area remains patchy and underdeveloped. Despite its role at the forefront of integration, the sociological study of the apparent affinity between nursing and CAM is virtually non-existent. This paper provides an exploratory analysis of how writers within the CAM nursing sub-world adopt a recourse to history (nostalgic and nostophobic referencing) as a strategy to authenticate the relationship between nursing and CAM and so facilitate continuing integration. A text analysis, of articles written on CAM in four nursing journals, was conducted. Eighty papers satisfied the inclusion criteria. Evidence is presented of the way in which writers attempt to authenticate integration of CAM through reference to its apparent interconnectedness with the historically grounded core of nursing values, and more specifically, with the key historical figure of the nurse Florence Nightingale (1820–1910). It is argued that these rhetorical strategies can be understood in the context of the need to engage in (primarily) intra-professional persuasion: to protect and develop the values of their nursing sub-world over alternatives. The findings are preliminary. Themes identified are illustrative of the potential offered by an analysis of nostalgic and nostophobic referencing in this context, and not a definitive account of it. Further research should examine individually produced texts from other sources, and documents produced by relevant professional bodies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• The term 'industry' can be understood in a variety of ways. • Simple understandings of 'industry' miss out on the complexity of relations. • Systemic and social understandings of 'industry' provide more opportunities. Use of the term 'alcohol industry' plays an important role in discussions of alcohol and public health. In this paper, we examine how the term is currently used and explore the merits of alternative conceptualisations. We start by examining current ways of referring to 'alcohol industry' in public health and then explore the potential for organisational theory, political science, and sociology to provide alcohol research with more inclusive and nuanced conceptualizations. We identify, and critique, three conceptualisations based on purely economic understandings of industry: literal, market , and supply-chain understandings. We then examine three alternative conceptualizations based on systemic understandings of industry: organizational, social-network, and common-interest understandings. In examining these alternatives, we also identify the extent to which they open up new ways of approaching the levels at which industry influence is understood to operate in alcohol and public health research and policy. Each of the six understandings of 'industry' can play a role in research but their utility depends on the question being asked and the breadth and depth of the analysis being undertaken. However, for those intending to engage with a broader disciplinary base, approaches grounded in the systemic understandings of 'industry' are better positioned to study the complex nexus of relationships that contribute to alcohol industry influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines contributions of A.K. Romney and associates to analyses of endogamy, and discusses the more general themes explored in these endogamy studies. The techniques used in these papers are relevant to many types of analysis of contingency tables, and to other settings such as social mobility. Some of these connections are explored here, all with a view to the importance of the margins of the table for different kinds of analysis. In particular, the paper discusses descriptive and analytical uses of classical iterative proportional fitting (IPF), some specific log-linear models, and the margins of sociomatrices. The paper also includes analyses of example data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The objective of this paper is to map the sociological context in which the cultural economy of technology of Singapore exists. Taking a socio-historical perspective, this paper argues that the development of Singapore as a technological 'intelligent island' must take centre stage in relation to the sociological analysis of modern Singapore's political, economic, and socio-cultural structure. This involves a critique of theories of the information society and empirical research on East Asian developmental states. The aim is to chart the development of technology in Singapore, from its founding as a colonial port-city to its current status as an 'intelligent island', and to situate this development in its social context. In addressing the issue of the global expansion of localized technological knowledge hubs, I argue that while these technological 'hubs' are increasingly linked in complex political, economic and social networks, one must also account for the developmental trajectory of each particular 'hub' and to explain the socio-cultural complex of societies, which promote themselves as such. This paper intends to demonstrate how this construction of a technological nation state is neither a context-free project nor one that is free of complex historical antagonisms and contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic violence (DV) is a significant concern for the well-being of South Asian (SA) immigrant women. Although there have been empirical studies that discussed socio-cultural risk factors related to SA immigrant women's experience of DV, there have not been any efforts to summarize these factors in a single study. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize empirical studies that explored socio-cultural risk factors of DV among SA immigrant women in English speaking countries. 16 English language peer reviewed articles met the inclusion criteria. The socio-cultural risk factors identified in the reviewed studies included lack of social support, low acculturation, high enculturation, patriarchal beliefs, economic control by the husband, traditional gender role attitudes, and stigma about divorce. Implications for research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community detection is a challenging optimisation problem that consists in searching for communities that belong to a network or graph under the assumption that the nodes of the same community share properties that enable the detection of new characteristics or functional relationships in the network. A large number of methods have been proposed to address this problem in many research fields, such as power systems, biology, sociology or physics. Many of those optimisation methods use modularity to identify the optimal network subdivision. This paper presents a new generational genetic algorithm (GGA+) that includes efficient initialisation methods and search operators under the guidance of modularity. Further, this approach enables a flexible and adaptive analysis of the characteristics of a network from different levels of detail according to an analyst’s needs. Results obtained in networks of different sizes and characteristics show the good performance of GGA+ in comparison with other five genetic algorithms, including efficient algorithms published in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hurricane Ike, the third costliest hurricane in US history, made landfall in the Galveston Bay Area in September, 2008. Existing literature postulates that maladaptive behavior such as increased alcohol use is often exhibited by disaster survivors in coping with both disaster-related traumatic events and post-disaster stressful events. In addition, it has also been postulated that survivors’ perceptions of social cohesion and social control can potentially serve to moderate such behavior. The purpose of this paper is to study such hypotheses for Hurricane Ike. In particular, we investigate the following four hypotheses: (H1) There is an increase of alcohol use by survivors of Hurricane Ike in the Galveston Bay Area; (H2) There are positive associations between both Ike-related trauma and post-Ike stress events and the increase in alcohol use; (H3) There are negative associations between both perceived social cohesion and social control and the increase in alcohol use following Ike; and finally that (H4) perceived social cohesion and social control serve to moderate the associations between both Ike-related trauma and post-Ike stress events and increased alcohol use after Ike. Using public use survey-weighted data from the Galveston Bay Recovery Study (GBRS) of Ike survivors (N = 658), we tested these hypotheses using logistic regressions controlling for other key socioeconomic variables. Our results confirm H1 and H2. Hypotheses H3 and H4 are partially confirmed with respect to social control, but show that (i) there is a positive association between perceived social cohesion and the increase in alcohol use following Ike, and that (ii) while perceived social cohesion and social control do moderate the association between post-Ike stress events and increased alcohol use, they have no effect on the association between Ike-related trauma and increased alcohol use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks provide a powerful reflection of the structure and dynamics of the modern society. One of the promising areas for using the results of social networks content analysis is to reveal the hidden patterns of the social processes development and factors that determine the changing moods in different social groups. In this paper, we propose an approach to measure social tension in certain regions of Russia based on the analysis of users’ posts in the social network Vkontakte (VK). We developed a program that obtains posts reflecting negative attitudes of VK users on popular social issues such as level of unemployment, corruption crimes, and inflation. We used this program to collect statistics about the number of such posts in certain periods and to analyze common information about users who post them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vulnerable groups are found to be over-represented in fire fatalities statistics. In official Norwegian documents vulnerability is described as related to factors such as old age, reduced mobility or cognitive abilities, mental health problems, and substance abuse. As vulnerability to fatal fire is frequently related to residents’ health and life situations, prevention work often exceeds the competencies and responsibilities of the fire department. Cross-sector collaboration is therefore required in order to reach the groups that are at risk. This paper reports from a qualitative interview study with representatives from municipal fire services, property management, housing administration, health and social care. The study explores the challenges experienced by service providers in achieving cross-sector collaboration on fire prevention for vulnerable groups. The findings describe challenges at three levels: 1) the national regulatory level represents an obstacle to local cross-sector collaboration, 2) the municipal level lacks strategies and arenas for cross-sector collaboration for fire safety, and 3) the professional level experiences conflicting values and norms, including uncertainties about professional boundaries. Organizational measures that support the fire services in their efforts to reach vulnerable groups must be targeted to all three levels and go beyond the boundaries of the fire services. The study contributes with a social scientific approach to fire prevention and contributes with new perspectives on fire safety for vulnerable residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The faith that science and democracy are indissolubly bound up in a single cultural mode had enjoyed a long history before it was passionately reaffirmed in the late 1930s and early 1940s by enemies of the Third Reich. Democracy's link with science was addressed by a host of academic intellectuals in the U.S. and Great Britain who entered into what one of their number, the young sociologist Robert K. Merton, called realistic participation in the evolutionary conflict of cultures. Merton made this observation in an essay of 1942 entitled 'A Note on Science and Democracy'. The paper was to become in later decades, under a succession of different titles, one of the most widely discussed papers in a discipline that Merton helped to found: the sociology of science.

With Simmel's essay about the poor as a point of departure this paper develops three points about the sociological conceptualization of poverty, social exclusion and agency: (1) much research on poverty is exceedingly dominated by distributional perspectives on poverty, while there is too little research adopting relational perspectives, (2) on account of the stigmatisation, isolation and powerlessness that poor people often experience, societal reactions, for example, relief or assistance aimed at them, may be vital in establishing poor people as a distinct social category, (3) poor people are often seen as socially marginalized in the sense that they are unequivocally excluded from society. On closer examination, however, poor people occupy an ambiguous position; they are in some respects "outside" society, in other respects "inside" society. In conclusion, the paper indicates some possible directions for cross-national research on poverty, exclusion, and agency, adopting a relational perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's comments on a paper related to egocentric networks. The author refers to various researchers' work on social networks and egocentric networks. He recalls his days at Harvard University during his sociology course. What came to be known as the first East York study was conceived by Donald Coates, a psychiatrist at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, Toronto. Coates believed that psychiatric symptoms were affected by interpersonal relations as well as by the social characteristics identified in the famous Midtown Manhattan study. Through conversations with social author Charles Tilly, newly arrived at the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto in the summer of 1966, Coates developed the idea of asking about interpersonal relations. Charles Tilly, who came up with several of the East York ideas, started writing in 1966 about personal community networks, tightness of boundary, intersection, differentiation, density and knit. His working paper went through several revisions and expansions at the University of Toronto, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the University of Michigan.

The first part of this paper presents a statistical model which integrates individual, relational and network data, despite their different units of analysis. The model uses a stepwise approach to find the last number of parameters which adequately fit the data. The second part of this paper uses this model to analyze how the marital status of Torontonians is related to the kinship composition and social density of their intimate networks. It shows that kinship and friendship usually comprise independent social circles within these networks. The larger networks of married respondents tend to contain a higher proportion of kin, and consequently, to be more densely-knit. Yet single respondents tend to have more densely-knit clusters of intimates within their friend- ship-based networks. This is because marriage rarely joins the intimates of spouses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the earliest days of research on blockmodeling, one primary goal was to develop a method that would exploit the algebra of the social relations among individuals to describe the social structure of the group. This goal was reluctantly abandoned, however, because the presence of idiosyncratic relational ties in the data obscured the structure and no reliable method for identifying these ties existed. This paper presents such a method. We have found it useful to distinguish emotionally weak ties (Granovetter 1973), those with low intensity, from structurally weak ties, those that fail to conform to the pattern of ties that exist in and are reinforced by the social structure. The latter type of weak ties are the idiosyncratic ties that interfere with attempts to describe a social structure. This paper operationalizes the concept of structurally weak ties and presents an algebraic method for identifying them in sociometric data. This enables us to use the algebra of social relations to identify a blockmodel that describes the social structure of the group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a conceptual framework within which one can discuss the identification and comparison of subsets of actors and relations in social networks. Consider the adjacency matrix of a social network: Let a region be any subset of elements in the matrix and a subgroup be any subset of units (rows and corresponding columns). Then, a subgroup defines four regions: all possible relations among subgroup members, all possible relations between subgroup members and nonmembers (two regions), and all possible relations among nonmembers. This paper uses the properties of regions formed by subgroups to: (I) construct consistent and general definitions of degree and density in mathematical graphs; (2) discuss the relationship between subgroups produced by relational analyses and those produced by positional analyses; (3) show how to use region and subgroup to analyze egocentric networks; and (4) indicate directions for the further development of an analytical framework based on region and subgroup. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This response is about the role of “orchestration” as a useful metaphor to assist the investigation of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) settings. The paper argues that current positions on orchestration are based on a technologically-orientated viewpoint on the issue of technological under-usage in schools. The paper suggests that this is a form of circular reasoning, and a distraction from the actual, socially shaped dynamics at play. The paper’s main contention is that orchestration is an opportunity to incorporate a more ‘sociological’ angle in TEL scholarship. Orchestration – as often used in the English language to signify ‘political work’ – is indeed a welcome addition to the field. Insofar as the metaphor allows teachers and researchers to recognise the complex interplay of influences, pressures, and expectations that surround the use of technologies. In other words, insofar as orchestration allows us to appreciate the ‘political’ nature of educational technology and the impacts of implementation. As such, orchestration can help us move away from an idealised understanding of teaching as a neutral practice, that is, the idea that teachers act always rationally, positively planning and executing their work to maximise learning for students. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Situated between the Altai Mountains and the Chinese Loess Plateau, the current territory of Mongolia played a pivotal role in Pleistocene human population dynamics in Northeast Asia with archaeological evidence suggesting the existence of cultural links with southern Siberia beginning in the Late Pleistocene. Here, we present preliminary results from the newly discovered site of Kharganyn Gol 5 in northern Mongolia. The results obtained from the Kharganyn Gol 5 site allow new reconstructions of chrono-cultural sequences and human behavior in eastern Central Asia. The site has yielded evidence of human occupation corresponding to several phases of the regional Upper Paleolithic. In addition, we present the first evidence of human occupation of the region prior to Greenland Interstadial 12 (GI12; 40,000–43,000 BP) and discuss the implications of such data. The Kharganyn Gol River basin contains sedimentary rock formations including numerous raw material outcrops, containing various types of chert. Prehistoric people used all these chert varieties for tool production, but the modes of raw material exploitation changed through time. This paper reports the presence, unique in Central and North Asia, of a non-utilitarian object made of muscovite mica in an Initial Upper Paleolithic assemblage in Archaeological Horizon 5 of the Kharganyn Gol 5 site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the intrinsic design constraints and performance limits of networked control systems. We propose new information measures and correspondingly, develop an information-theoretic paradigm for analyzing the performance trade-offs and limits in disturbance attenuation over information-constrained networked feedback, which is enabled by a cohesive development of new information measures, Bode-type integral inequalities, and performance bounds. The integrals and bounds incorporate the information measures and serve to quantify the trade-offs and limits in disturbance attenuation for broad classes of networked feedback systems consisting of linear time-invariant plants and causal, possibly nonlinear, time-varying stabilizing controllers communicating over general noisy channels with causal encoders and decoders. The notion of negentropy rate is introduced to address general, non-Gaussian disturbances. The channel blurredness, a newly proposed information measure for the quality of communication channels, is used to characterize the effect of communication channel noises on the integrals and henceforth the trade-offs in disturbance attenuation. Bounds on the power gain, a novel disturbance attenuation measure tailored for performance analysis of networked control systems, provide the fundamental limits of disturbance attenuation achievable by networked feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]