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Background: Many past and ongoing conflicts in the world are associated with memories. The role of emphatic memories is however often neglected in conflict solving. Therefore, this narrative review gives a short introduction to the phenomenon of emphatic memories and implications for counteracting dysfunctional effects of emphatic memories. Summary: Memory has two connotations. One is remembering and knowing (I can remember when I got married) and on the other is reminding and emphasizing memories (I remind my partner of our wedding day). Memories are less a report on the past but result of current emotions and motives. Emphatic memories serve for self-portrayal and distinction from others, self-exculpation, accusation of others, justification of claims. They are regularly reproachful, have an aggressive character, and are distorted and pseudologic. This is also true on a societal level, as memories are used for defining social groups, and by this for political purposes, in order to juxtapose one group against the other. If memories are revoked, they are regularly accompanied with the very emotions, which were associated with the past event. Corresponding behavior is motivated. Many people suffer from memories and associated emotions and dysfunctional behavior, as is well described in the context of post-traumatic stress disorders. Also, social groups can as a whole suffer from negative emotions because of memories, which may go back up to thousand years. To ensure that memories do not adversely affect individuals and social groups, they should best be forgotten, or at least rescripted, in a way that they are disentangled from negative emotions and motives. An important psychological process in this regard is wisdom and forgiveness, which must not be confused with understanding, justification, tolerating, or reconciliation. Wisdom and forgiveness allow persons to close the books, act self-determined, find freedom from external events, and end suffering because of the past. It is a rational and emotional act. Key Messages: Emphatic memories can cause that individuals and groups do not find peace and persistently provoke new conflicts. Internal and interactional peace can be found if memories are let alone and fade away. Forgiveness and wisdom describe avenues to let dysfunctional memories go. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many animals devote substantial time, energy and resources to assessing nonmating social partners. However, relatively little is known about how individual characteristics influence the process and outcome of social partner choice. Social partner choice is an important aspect of Polistes fuscatus wasp lives, as nest-founding queens form and dissolve many short-term social relationships before settling down in stable cooperative groups. Here, we asked how personality and body size influence social partner assessment, the specific partners chosen, behaviour within social groups and group offspring production. We evaluated social and nonsocial personality traits (exploration, affiliation, aggression, investigation) and body mass in 75 individually marked queens, then released them in a large naturalistic enclosure where we recorded social partner assessment, nest founding behaviour and behaviour on nests. At the end of the season, we collected nests as a measure of group reproductive output. Exploratory personality had a stronger effect on social behaviour than other personality measures. More exploratory wasps sampled more social partners, joined nests later and spent fewer days as members of stable nests. Less exploratory wasps were more likely to become dominant on nests and were more aggressive after partnerships were established. Larger wasps sampled more potential nest sites, suggesting that sampling induces energetic costs that larger individuals are better able to bear. Among dominant and solitary-nesting wasps, more affiliative wasps built larger nests and more aggressive wasps built smaller nests. We did not find that wasps selected partners based on any measured trait. Overall, our work demonstrates that personality traits play an important role in how social partners are assessed, how social groups are formed, behaviour within established social groups and the success of social groups. Our study also suggests that personality mediates a trade-off between time spent sampling partners and social bond stability. • We evaluated effects of personality and body size on social partner choice in wasps. • More exploratory wasps sampled more social partners and joined nests later. • They spent fewer days in stable groups and were less likely to be dominant on nests. • Body size and social personality had little effect on partner assessment. • Personality may mediate a social assessment–stable social bond trade-off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine a news article titled "KPU Chief Rebuffs Allegations of Bias during VP Debate" from the Jakarta Post, focusing on the transition from print to online media or E-Paper. In this research, the two main methods used to collect data are documentation via the Jakarta Post e-paper news page and content review. This approach provides the advantage of exploring information in depth and comprehensively related to the phenomenon or event that is the focus of the research. Utilizing Teun A. van Dijk's CDA framework, the analysis encompasses macro, superstructure, and micro structures. The macro-structural analysis reveals the social and political context, identifying social groups and emphasizing narrative importance. The critical discourse superstructure analysis delves into linguistic patterns, representations of power, and strategic language use. Finally, the micro-structural analysis explores word choice, grammar, writing style, and sentence structure to understand how language constructs arguments and responds to accusations. Through these lenses, the study provides a comprehensive understanding of how the news shapes and reflects social and political dynamics, contributing valuable insights into media discourse surrounding political events in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Response to "The Mexican social unconscious - Part I: The roots of a nation" and "Part II: Politics and group analysis" by Reyna Hernández-Tubert. I fully understand that Carla Penna had much less to say about it, since, as she acknowledged at the beginning of her response, she is not well versed in Mexican history, culture, and the present social and political situation in the country. Soon after I had finished and submitted my response to [9] most critical commentary on my two-part paper on the Mexican social unconscious ([2], [3]), I had access to [8] commentary on the same. [Extracted from the article]

His paper highlights how the norms of society, with all the attendant constraints and taboos, have become internalized at a deep level, causing gay people torments of anxiety and self-rejection. Stuart Stevenson's paper ([4]) is a powerful and persuasive statement of the damaging impact of growing up gay in our society, even in these more enlightened times. Stuart's paper gains strength and credibility from his acknowledgment of being gay himself. [Extracted from the article]

In recent years, the establishment of a substantial amount of academic groups on scientific social network has brought new opportunities for the collaboration among researchers. In this situation, conducting paper recommendation to these academic groups is of terrific necessity in that it can further facilitate group activities. However, when producing group recommendation, existing methods fail to make full use of the abundant group information, from which a great deal of valuable information can be inferred to facilitate the recommendation performance. In addition, those methods tend to assign an equal weight to each group member when aggregating their recommendations, which is unreasonable in practice. Although some improvements have been made to remedy this problem by assigning different weights to group members, they fail to take into account the reliabilities of group members. Therefore, a group-oriented paper recommendation method based on probabilistic matrix factorization and evidential reasoning (GPMF_ER) is proposed in this article to tackle these problems. More specifically, the group and paper content information are integrated into the probabilistic matrix factorization model to enhance the accuracy of individual recommendation. Afterward, evidential reasoning rule is introduced in the aggregation step to consider both the weights and reliabilities of group members. Extensive experiments have been conducted on the real world CiteULike dataset and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genus Polistes is one of the most species-rich and widely distributed groups of social wasps and a model taxon for studies of social behavior. Almost half the Polistes world fauna occurs in the New World, but their classification has been unstable due in part to the scarcity of phylogenetic studies. We investigated the phylogeny of the New World Polistes by combining a previously existing molecular dataset with a new morphological and behavioral matrix for 90 of the 93 New World species. All analyses support a single origin for the New World Polistes. All five traditionally defined New World subgenera (Aphanilopterus, Epicnemius, Fuscopolistes, Onerarius, and Palisotius) were monophyletic, but the relationships among them varied across datasets. Our results, with an expanded phenotypic dataset, improved taxonomic sampling, and enhanced clade support relative to previous studies, strongly support a classification based on five subgenera, which are all diagnosable groups supported by clear morphological synapomorphies. Hence, we propose the revalidation of previously proposed subgenera; we provide a taxonomic account of each subgenus and an identification key to all species of New World Polistes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explaining the evolution of helping behaviour in the eusocial insects where nonreproductive ("worker") individuals help raise the offspring of other individuals ("queens") remains one of the most perplexing phenomena in the natural world. Polistes paper wasps are popular study models, as workers retain the ability to reproduce: such totipotency is likely representative of the early stages of social evolution. Polistes is thought to have originated in the tropics, where seasonal constraints on reproductive options are weak and social groups are effectively perennial. Yet, most Polistes research has focused on nontropical species, where seasonality causes family groups to disperse; cofoundresses forming new nests the following spring are often unrelated, leading to the suggestion that direct fitness through nest inheritance is key in the evolution of helping behaviour. Here, we present the first comprehensive genetic study of social structure across the perennial nesting cycle of a tropical Polistes—Polistes canadensis. Using both microsatellites and newly developed single nucleotide polymorphism markers, we show that adult cofoundresses are highly related and that brood production is monopolized by a single female across the nesting cycle. Nonreproductive cofoundresses in tropical Polistes therefore have the potential to gain high indirect fitness benefits as helpers from the outset of group formation, and these benefits persist through the nesting cycle. Direct fitness may have been less important in the origin of Polistes sociality than previously suggested. These findings stress the importance of studying a range of species with diverse life history and ecologies when considering the evolution of reproductive strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bibliometrics is successful in measuring impact because the target is clearly defined: the publishing scientist who is still active and working. Thus, citations are a target-oriented metric which measures impact on science. In contrast, societal impact measurements based on altmetrics are as a rule intended to measure impact in a broad sense on all areas of society (e.g. science, culture, politics, and economics). This tendency is especially reflected in the efforts to design composite indicators (e.g. the Altmetric Attention Score). We deem appropriate that not only the impact measurement using citations is target-oriented (citations measure the impact of papers on scientists) but also the measurement of impact using altmetrics. Impact measurements only make sense, if the target group--the recipient of academic papers--is clearly defined. Thus, we extend in this study the field-normalized reader impact indicator proposed by us in an earlier study, which is based on Mendeley data (the mean normalized reader score, MNRS), to a target-oriented field-normalized impact indicator (e.g. MNRSED measures reader impact on the sector of educational donation, i.e. teaching). This indicator can show--as demonstrated in empirical examples--the ability of journals, countries, and academic institutions to publish papers which are below or above the average impact of papers on a specific sector in society (e.g. the educational or teaching sector). Thus, the method allows to measure the impact of scientific papers on certain groups--controlling for the field in which the papers have been published and their publication year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers give credit to peer-reviewed, and thus, credible publications through citations. Despite a rigorous reviewing process, certain articles undergo retraction due to disclosure of their ethical or scientific deficiencies. It is, therefore, important to understand how society and academia react to the erroneous or deceitful claims and purge the science of their unreliable results. Applying a matched-pairs research design, this study examined a sample of medicine-related retracted and non-retracted articles matched by their content similarity. The regression analysis revealed similarities in obsolescence trends of the retracted and non-retracted groups. The Generalized Estimating Equations showed that citations are affected by the retraction status, life after retraction, life cycle and the journals' previous reputation, with the two formers being the strongest in positively predicting the citations. The retracted papers obtain fewer citations either before or after retraction, implying academia's watchful reaction to the low-quality papers even before official announcement of their fallibility. They exhibit an equal or higher social recognition level regarding Tweets and Blog Mentions, while a lower status regarding Mendeley Readership. This could signify social users' sensibility regarding scientific quality since they probably publicise the retraction and warn against the retracted items in their tweets or blogs, while avoiding recording them in their Mendeley profiles. Further scrutiny is required to gain insight into the sensibility, if any, about scientific quality. The study's originality relies on matching the retracted and non-retracted papers with their topics and neutralising variations in their citation potentials. It is also the first study comparing the groups' social impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue focuses on the concept of the 'ideal' higher education student. It explores how this concept is played out in different national contexts and the implications it has for particular groups of students and their experiences within higher education. In this editorial introduction, we introduce the seven papers that make up the special issue, and then discuss some of the cross-cutting themes – showing how the papers help to advance our knowledge in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph We are sorry to report that Peter C. Fishburn died on June 10, 2021, in Racine, Wisconsin. In that paper, Fishburn gives a new proof of the theorem and explains issues in the literature with the correctness of the theorem. In paper (Fishburn & Gehrlein, [13]), Fishburn and Gehrlein discuss the propensities of different voting procedures to elect the simple majority candidate when one exists in a multicandidate election. For example, papers (Fishburn, [5]) and (Fishburn, [7]) deal with subjective expected utility theory. [Extracted from the article]

Computerized data collection is gaining favor among social scientists because it facilitates easy data management. Computerization is especially attractive to network researchers because of the large amount of data their studies require. This study sought to validate a computerized data collection technique by comparing it with a traditional pencil and paper survey. Results showed that the two produce comparable data, and that the computerized data shows somewhat higher criterion validity and test-retest reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conference program will include paper, poster, symposia, and panel sessions, and a business meeting open to all members so the future of INGRoup can be collectively planned and shaped. Graph Call for Submissions I 16th Annual Conference i 15-17 July, 2021 Hyatt Regency Greenville Greenville, South Carolina The B Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research (INGRoup) b was created to provide a context for scholars to: (1) promote communication about groups and teams research across fields and nations, (2) advance understanding about group dynamics through research, (3) advance theory and methods for understanding groups and teams, and (4) promote interdisciplinary research. [Extracted from the article]

This paper argues that experimental and behavioral economics complement traditional approaches to studying relational contracting, for two reasons. First, experiments have advantages in identifying core elements of relational contracting theory, despite limitations. Second, insights from experimental and behavioral economics suggest ways to expand or modify standard assumptions of relational contracting. The paper highlights studies illustrating these complementarities, including one testing predictions on involuntary unemployment through laboratory experiments. Another set of studies explores the benefits of social group membership in fostering successful relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios de Traducción is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Traditionally males have been regarded as the more aggressive sex. However, recent research in several countries has challenged this notion by considering different forms of aggression. This paper provides an overview of a qualitative investigation of teenage girls' indirect forms of aggression (e.g., exclusion from the group, spreading false stories). Focus groups and pair and individual interviews were used to collect data from adolescent girls and their teachers in two schools. The study provides some clear insights into the nature of teenage girls' indirect aggression. The predominant indirectly aggressive behaviors include talking about others and excluding peers from the group. Key explanations for these behaviors concern a desire to create excitement and a range of friendship and group processes centered on girls' needs for close personal relationships and to be a part of the peer group. The girls described the devastating effects of indirect aggression, particularly on girls with certain characteristics that predispose them to victimization. The girls were pessimistic about the potential of interventions, although peer mediation processes may be a way forward. Aggr. Behav. 26:67–83, 2000. © 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, solving complex optimization problems with metaheuristic algorithms has attracted many experts and researchers. Nature has always been a model for humans to draw the best mechanisms and the best engineering out of it and use it to solve their problems. The concept of optimization is evident in several natural processes, such as the evolution of species, the behavior of social groups, the immune system, and the search strategies of various animal populations. For this purpose, the use of nature-inspired optimization algorithms is increasingly being developed to solve various scientific and engineering problems due to their simplicity and flexibility. Anything in a particular situation can solve a significant problem for human society. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the metaheuristic algorithms and classifications in this field and offers a novel classification based on the features of these algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Over the last decade, many major cities have experienced a housing crisis to keep pace with patterns of urban population growth. Housing continues to face many challenges such as land use, regulatory issues, and environmental issues. In recent years, new housing research has also revealed that prefabricated housing could indirectly be a solution to environmental issues, as the housing sector has observed an increase in demand for eco-friendly housing solutions. However, while prefabricated housing can be a solution to issues of environmental concerns, it still needs more research to explore its influence on social sustainability. Therefore, this opinion paper investigates how socially sustainable communities could be feasible and practicable through prefabricated housing. In this opinion paper, the social sustainability principles in relation to prefabricated housing was analysed to show situations that can be complex with the benefits and challenges as well. The main objective of this study was to find the potential of prefabricated housing to promote social sustainability, with proper analysis of this housing influence on the key elements of community, diversity as well as adaptability. A survey based on the aspect of social sustainability of prefabricated housing was conducted to collect various perspectives that may influence the future trend in the housing sector, hence making necessary steps towards socially sustainable prefabricated housing solutions. The survey findings highlight the social element of prefabricated households, which refers to how accessible as well as adaptable the prefabricated homes are in terms of targets, build and social group, encouraging dwellers' interaction and participation, which facilitates the implementation of a sense of belonging and social cohesion among societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph B CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS b I 16th Annual Conference i 15-17 July, 2021 Hyatt Regency Greenville Greenville, South Carolina The B Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research (INGRoup) b was created to provide a context for scholars to: (1) promote communication about groups and teams research across fields and nations, (2) advance understanding about group dynamics through research, (3) advance theory and methods for understanding groups and teams, and (4) promote interdisciplinary research. The conference program will include paper, poster, symposia, and panel sessions, and a business meeting open to all members so the future of INGRoup can be collectively planned and shaped. [Extracted from the article]

The article focuses on sociologist Sergio Sismondo's paper on constructivism. Sismondo's paper puts into focus disagreements and differences in understanding between those who have been associated with constructivism and those who are not. In defining ontology as part of historical experience, constructivism makes a characteristic shift, it takes a philosophical question or concept and reconstructs it within the domain of empirical analysis and theory. Constructivism owns many questions to philosophy, a fact picked up very well in Sismomdo's paper. What is often less understood is that, for constructivist studies, what is important and what is not just the question, it is the shift. In other words, these studies display mentality towards philosophical concepts, and it is where they run to and how they reformulated the issue that account for their own interest. Sismondo misconstrues the thesis that the world is a consequence, rather than merely a precondition, of scientific accounts. This is the sense in which he makes it appear as if the material world were an automatic consequence of scientific knowledge.

This paper reports a content analysis of church sermons in terms of social class distinctions in the memberships of two Southern Baptist churches. The major finding is that there is a relationship between social class and sermon content. The data for this analysis were obtained by the transcription of forty Sunday morning sermons. The results are interpreted as suggesting that lower class church members search for consolation while upper class congregations search for justification for and continuation of their elevated social status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article critically explores the notion of legal empowerment and adds to the existing efforts to conceptualize and measure legal empowerment. Our thesis is that legal empowerment should be sought not in the process of providing legal solutions but in the subjective self-belief that a person possesses. This belief concerns an individual's perception of his ability to mobilize the necessary resources, competencies, and energies to solve particular problems of a legal nature. This model rejects the existence of an overall quantity of legal empowerment. People's beliefs in their abilities to solve legal problems differ by type of problem, distribution of power in important relationships, social support infrastructure, language, and many other factors. We propose a measurement framework in which the model of task-specific subjective legal empowerment is estimated through a probabilistic assessment of perceived capabilities to sort out problems from everyday life, which normally could be resolved with legal means. Validity of the tool is assessed through application to convenience samples of beneficiaries of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) providing legal aid to vulnerable people in Azerbaijan, Mali, Rwanda, Egypt, and Bangladesh. The results suggest that subjective legal empowerment is an observable and measurable psychological state. The major policy implication from this proposed model of subjective legal empowerment is that it could be used as a measurable benchmark for assessing the impact of diverse legal interventions on the subjective legal empowerment of individuals and social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I begin from the assumption that the social groups within which people acquire subjective attributes belong to two different orders. Those of the first order follow the model of organized, closed structures that define fixed places. Examples are social institutions, the state, and the oedipal structure. The groups of the second order are ad hoc groups whose life and consistency depend on the emergence of a problem that must be solved and, therefore, on a doing together. I call these groups communities. This approach to the matter of globalization responds to a way of thinking linkage organization that privileges different ontologies and a characteristic topology for each of them. We should ask ourselves whether solidarity requires an ontological definition; whether it constitutes an ethical problem (commitment), a moral problem (behaviour or obligation), an action/doing based on a previous knowledge of one of the parties, a practice created in connection with an emerging problem, a psychic mechanism, and so on. To answer these manifold questions, I travel a path – one among many possible paths – that involves understanding solidarity as a resource and a practice referred to psychic suffering, especially in present-day Argentina. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons. Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The paper examines the approach of United Kingdom (UK) Trade Unions to the use of institutional power resources (IPR) in the second half of the twentieth century. Design/methodology/approach: Using secondary material, it examines the unions' approach to IPR in three cases; collective bargaining; worker representation and trade union structure. Findings: The paper concludes that unions did not appreciate the importance of, and lacked a strategic approach to, IPR. Although employer and government action were largely responsible for the decline of industrial relations institutions, the failure of the unions to engage with IPR contributed to this process. It explains the failure of the unions to engage with IPR by reference to their lack of strategic capabilities and skills in relation to power resources (PRs) in general and IPR in particular. Research limitations/implications: It would have been interesting to collect primary data via interviews with union actors from the period examined to test the interpretation of secondary data contained in the article. Practical implications: The paper has identified the kind of strategic decision-making which is necessary for unions to engage effectively with IPR. It is has also indicated the key skills which unions need to develop to be able to manage their engagement with IPR. Social implications: The paper has implications for the role of trade unions in society, showing the need for them to develop narratives to convince society of the importance of their role and action and to develop the skills which enable them to connect with other social groups, e.g. intermediation, engagement with coalitional resources. Originality/value: Analysis of the decline of industrial relations institutions in this period has emphasized the role of employers and the state. This paper contributes to a more balanced perspective on this decline by drawing attention to the lack of a union strategy towards IPR and the importance of the detail of the management and employment of power resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two experiments evaluated the effect of commitment on paper recycling. Using an ABA design, Experiment I asked 24 individuals in a retirement home to sign a 4-week group commitment pledge to recycle paper. During this intervention, the subjects recycled 47% more paper than they had during baseline. They continued to recycle at this level during a 4-week follow-up period, when the group commitment was removed. Experiment 2 evaluated the relative effectiveness of group commitment, individual commitment, and token reinforcers on paper recycling in a college dormitory. The students in all three experimental conditions recycled from three to five times more paper than those in the control group during the 4-week intervention. However, in the 3-week follow-up period, when the treatments were removed, only the individually committed subjects continued to recycle significantly more paper than the controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses about rural development in different social, economic and political contexts bringing together the analysis of European and Third World situations and tendencies. The article analyses the characteristics and outcomes of contrasting types of rural development policy. The analysis of policy issues requires that people take account policy content, administration means which concerns the organization of implementation and the social, economic, and political consequences of the policy, under different local conditions and as experienced by different social groups. There should be study of the differential responses to change and to programs of development shown by different social groups or classes of a rural population. The emphasis on differential responses is particularly important because it acts as a corrective to centralist views on development that interpret changes in the organization and activities of local populations simply as to externally initiated change and recognizes the heterogeneity of rural communities. A further issue concerns cultural and ideological dimensions. The exploration of these dimensions brings back to the importance of State policies that affect the rural sector.

This paper focuses on how social group work is integral to teaching and learning about critical reflection on practice (CRoP), on three different levels. The paper provides an overview of the theory and practice of CRoP, followed by a description of group work in two MSW CRoP course sections at a school of social work in Ontario, Canada. The paper describes the process of integrating CRoP into practicum integration seminar groups to sustain skills in critical reflection, as well as our own group process in our small faculty research and teaching group. By integrating group work and critical reflection literature and by focusing on the development of critical acceptance and mutual aid, this paper will outline benefits, challenges, and opportunities related to the use of groups in facilitating the CRoP process, along with next steps and further discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turnout has become increasingly unequal in many advanced democracies over the last few decades. Disadvantaged social groups are found to exhibit lower turnout compared to their better-off counterparts. According to numerous scholars, this growing gap is mainly attributed to the weakening of mass organizations that traditionally appealed to socio-economically disadvantaged social groups, particularly trade unions. However, very few studies have investigated these trends in Italy, a country that has witnessed a significant decrease in electoral turnout since the late 1970s, and where the socioeconomic causes of this decline have not been systematically explored. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to analyse, first and foremost, whether electoral participation in Italy is becoming increasingly unequal. Then, it moves to explore the extent to which the turnout gap between individuals with low and high socio-economic status (SES) could be moderated by both de-unionization and trade unions' membership. By utilizing a dataset that combines 10 waves of the Italian National Election Study (1983-2018), the paper demonstrates that the turnout gap between low and high SES individuals has substantially widened over the last decades. Furthermore, it suggests that while the overall turnout gap is at least partially affected by the strength of trade unions in the country, trade unions still seem to be able to mobilize their members, particularly among lower social groups. This finding underscores the potential of trade unions to continue playing a role in equalizing turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is scholarly consensus among theologians and their disciplinary partners that religion closely links with identity formation, unmatched by identification with any other social group. However, detachment from organised religion in Western cultures among young people is increasingly evident. This paper presents research findings for theological reflection derived from an empirical sequential mixed-method, ethnographic Gadamerian doctoral study exploring Ireland's rapidly changing religious landscape. Survey findings (n = 178) and follow-up interviews (N = 22) of a random sample of 18–39 year olds suggest that while Irish Catholicism remains culturally important there is increasing disconnection from the institutional Church. It appears that privatised, self-referential forms of spirituality related to a wellness culture are growing. However, this paper suggests that a positive benefit may also accrue from these trends, specifically that sectarianism as a historically pernicious form of racism may diminish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]