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The intricacies of urban–rural relations surface with rare detail from the records of Italian field wardens (campari) from the late thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth century. Focusing on the region of Piedmont, in the peninsula’s north-west, this article traces the policing of numerous sites and species by the campari as part of an urban bio- and agropolitical project. The office reflects the growing desire of towns to control their surrounding countryside, not only for military defence, but also as an essential source of calorific and hydraulic energy, a sink for waste and a stage on which to showcase their power before internal and external audiences. Reconstructing the remits, norms and actions of field wardens thus illuminates power negotiations that were shaped by a range of environmental factors and the era’s thinking about hygiene. Yet analysing the activities and responsibilities of the campari also reveals the tactics that rural dwellers devised to contest urban discipline, for instance through self-help, concealment and the embellishment of charges made against them. From the perspective of the area’s historiography, the dynamics captured by these records challenge the centrality of landed aristocracies in narratives of political centralisation. And from a broader perspective, the granular view they afford of middling officials at work invites historians to explore what urbanisation meant at the ground level, on either side of the city walls.

Humans invest in fantastic stories—mythologies. Recent evolutionary theories suggest that cultural selection may favour moralising stories that motivate prosocial behaviours. A key challenge is to explain the emergence of mythologies that lack explicit moral exemplars or directives. Here, we resolve this puzzle with an evolutionary model in which arbitrary mythologies transform a collection of egoistic individuals into a cooperative. We show how these otherwise puzzling amoral, nonsensical, and fictional narratives act as exquisitely functional coordination devices and facilitate the emergence of trust and cooperativeness in both large and small populations. Especially, in small populations, reflecting earlier hunter-gatherers communities, relative to our contemporary community sizes, the model is robust to the cognitive costs in adopting fictions.

Reputation systems are commonplace in online markets, such as on peer-to-peer sharing platforms. These systems have been argued to be a solution to (ethnic) discrimination on such platforms. This argument is based on empirical studies showing that ethnic disadvantages are smaller for users with ratings than for users without ratings. We argue that this conclusion may be premature, because minorities have a harder time accumulating ratings. The greater benefit of ratings to minorities may be offset by their troubles acquiring any, thereby diminishing the potential for reputation systems to reduce discrimination. We tested this counterargument using a unique data set that contains information on all interactions on a peer-to-peer motorcycle rental platform. We find that the reputation system does not reduce initial inequalities between otherwise comparable renters of different ethnicity. Platforms that wish to reduce discrimination should not only make their reputation system more effective, but also help users collect ratings.

A recurring question in public and scientific debates is whether occupation-specific skills enhance labor market outcomes. Is it beneficial to have an educational degree that is linked to only one or a small set of occupations? To answer this question, we generalize existing models of the effects of (mis)match between education and occupation on labor market outcomes. Specifically, we incorporate the structural effects of linkage strength between school and work, which vary considerably across industrialized countries. In an analysis of France, Germany, and the United States, we find that workers have higher earnings when they are in occupations that match their educational level and field of study, but the size of this earnings boost depends on the clarity and strength of the pathway between their educational credential and the labor market. The earnings premium associated with a good occupational match is larger in countries where the credential has a stronger link to the labor market, but the penalty for a mismatch is also greater in such countries. Moreover, strong linkage reduces unemployment risk. These findings add nuance to often-made arguments that countries with loosely structured educational systems have more flexible labor markets and produce better labor market outcomes for workers. An institutional environment that promotes strong school-to-work pathways appears to be an effective strategy for providing workers with secure, well-paying jobs.

Prior scholarship neglected the creative potential of open and strong relationships, because—rooted in a long sociological tradition of balance theory—it assumed that strong ties are always closed, and only weak ties bridge diverse structural locations. We develop two measures of network tension: the relative frequency and the strength of strong, open triads. Our results show that in recorded jazz music–a uniquely synergistic domain of collective creativity—tension is more prevalent than expected, and it is a predictor of several success measures, including deep success, while brokerage and closure are not. We also measure the structural availability of tension to each session and show that unexpected tension (where musicians go beyond chance to bring imbalance into their bands) has an additional contribution to deep success. We discuss implications for project teams and organizations where collective innovation is crucial.

Why do people adorn themselves with elaborate body piercings or tattoos, wear obstructing garbs, engage in life-threatening competitions and other wasteful and harmful but socially stipulated practices? Norms of cooperation and coordination, which promote the efficient attainment of collective benefits, can be explained by theories of collective action. However, social norms prescribing wasteful and harmful behaviours have eluded such explanations. We argue that signalling theory constitutes the basis for the understanding of the emergence of such norms, which we call signalling norms. Signalling norms emerge as a result of the uncertainty about who is a friend and who is a foe. The need to overcome this uncertainty arises when different groups compete for scarce resources and individuals must be able to identify, trust and cooperate with their fellow group members. After reviewing the mechanisms that explain the emergence of cooperation and coordination norms, we introduce the notion of signalling norms as markers of group distinction. We argue that adherence to signalling norms constitutes a commitment promoting parochial cooperation rather than a quality-revealing signal facilitating partner choice. We formalize our argument in a game-theoretic model that allows us to specify the boundary conditions for the emergence of signalling norms. Our paper concludes with a discussion of potential applications of our model and a comparison of signalling norms with related concepts.This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’.

International audience; The so called "disk-crisis" and the rise of music digitization and/or music piracy regularly make the headlines of general and specialized newspapers. The impacts of these metamorphoses on the more visible actors of the national musical industries are relatively well documented. Nevertheless, little is known about the impact of these changes on the musicians' incomes-especially the "ordinary" ones, who are located at the intermediary and the bottom stages of the professional hierarchy. This paper aims to contribute to better understanding the extent to which digitization reshaped the ways these little-known musicians make a living from music. To do so, we use longitudinal data collected from a sample of musicians active in the French-speaking part of Switzerland in the early 2010's. These data mainly consist of life calendar-data, with retrospective information on income sources for every year of the career-from the first gig played in public to 2013. Crossing sequence analysis and geometrical data analysis tools, we analyze whether or not digitization spurred a career reorientation to one of two major "poles" structuring the "ordinary musicians" professional space (the "artist" pole or the "craftsman" one). We show that changes are few. Nevertheless, we point out how social origin and gender impact these potential career reorientations. More broadly, our paper points to the need to analyze the social conditions of appropriability of technological innovationsespecially when it comes to symbolic goods.

Fixed effects (FE) panel models have been used extensively in the past, as those models control for all stable heterogeneity between units. Still, the conventional FE estimator relies on the assumption of parallel trends between treated and untreated groups. It returns biased results in the presence of heterogeneous slopes or growth curves that are related to the parameter of interest (e.g., selection into treatment is based on individual growth of the outcome). In this study, we derive the bias in conventional FE models and show that fixed effects individual slope (FEIS) models can overcome this problem. This is a more general version of the conventional FE model, which accounts for heterogeneous slopes or trends, thereby providing a powerful tool for panel data and other multilevel data in general. We propose two versions of the Hausman test that can be used to identify misspecification in FE models. The performance of the FEIS estimator and the specification tests is evaluated in a series of Monte Carlo experiments. Using the examples of the marital wage premium and returns to preschool education (Head Start), we demonstrate how taking heterogeneous effects into account can seriously change the conclusions drawn from conventional FE models. Thus, we propose to test for bias in FE models in practical applications and to apply FEIS if indicated by the specification tests.

All social roles have positive and rewarding as well as negative or problematic aspects. Research on the work–family interface has predominantly focused on conflicting roles. In contrast, this paper extends research on work–family enrichment (WFE), a positive aspect of work and gender differences in WFE in a cross-national context. Drawing upon social role theory and the culture sensitive theory on work–family enrichment, we examined gender differences in experiences of developmental WFE in a sample of service sector employees in eight European countries. In line with traditional gender roles, women reported more WFE than men. The relationship was moderated by both an objective and subjective measure of gender egalitarianism but in the opposite direction as hypothesized. The gender gap in WFE was larger in more gender-egalitarian countries, where women may be better able to transfer resources from the work domain to benefit their family role than in low egalitarian societies. National differences in labor market factors, family models and the public discourse on work–life balance mainly explain the unanticipated findings.

Internships are a precarious labour practice often driven by a combination of labour market competition, desirable work, employer advantages and fictional expectations. This article is based on an empirical study of intern labour in the Cultural and Creative Industries in Ireland. The data consists of a survey of workers and interns, and interviews with interns past and present. Through approaching internships as a form of precarisation, and intern labour through the lens of ‘fictional expectations’, this article provides an analysis of intern labour as a form of regenerative precarisation through the self-reinforcing tendencies of action, subjectivity, discursive constructs and social structures. The labour market practice of interning creates discursive, normative and structural patterns of precarisation. These patterns in turn shape subjective and intersubjective expectations of work and life, impacting on the actions that individuals make and thus acting as drivers of further precarisation.

Prisoner reentry has received great interest in political sociology, criminology, and beyond. Research documents the struggles of individuals trying to find their way back into society. Less attention has been given to the organizational aspects of reentry. This is unfortunate given the rapid growth of nonprofit reentry organizations in the United States, which introduces a new set of questions about the context and challenges to prisoner reentry. Drawing on an ethnography of Safe, a nonprofit reentry organization in the Northeast, I describe the organization's pivotal role in institutionalizing the pathway to prisoner reentry: a road to reentry, which takes former prisoners through a process that reconfigures their morality, identity, and social relationships. The road-to-reentry concept helps bring together scholars of the welfare state and criminology by highlighting how the challenges of prisoner reentry rely on how this process is organized. The way in which prison reentry is organized, in turn, affects former prisoners' agency and shapes the relationship between these men and women and their respective families and communities.

In recent years, the use of experimental methodologies has emerged as a central means of evaluating international aid interventions. Today, proponents of randomized control trials (so-called randomistas) are among the most influential of development experts. This article examines the growth of this thought collective, analysing how uncertainty has become a central concern of development institutions. It demonstrates that transformations within the aid industry – including the influence of evidence-based policy, the economization of development, and the retreat from macro-planning – created the conditions of possibility for experimentation. Within this field, the randomistas adeptly pursued a variety of rhetorical, affective, methodological, and organizational strategies that emphasized the lack of credible knowledge within aid and the ability of experiments to rectify the situation. Importantly, they have insisted on the moral worth of experimentation; indeed, the experimental ethic has been proposed as the way to change the spirit of development. Through causal certitude, they propose to reduce human suffering. The rise of experimentation has not, however, eliminated accusations of uncertainty; rather, it has redistributed the means through which knowledge about development is considered credible.

The present study tested an extended version of Voydanoff's (2004) 'differential salience vs. comparable salience' model in a sample of German service workers. Our findings partially support the model in a different national/cultural context but also yielded some divergent findings with respect to within-domain resources and boundary-spanning demands. In line with the theoretical framework, work-to-home interference (WHI) mainly occurred because of high work demands and not because of a lack of work resources. Boundary-spanning resources yielded comparable potential to reduce WHI and enhance work-to-home enrichment (WHE). WHE was expected to more likely occur due to the activation of work resources rather than the absence of work demands. However, control over one's work did not have a significant impact on WHE. In addition and contrary to the theoretical model, boundary-spanning demands were found to be differentially rather than comparably salient to the work–family interface.

To what extent are differences in education, occupational standing, and income attributable to genes, and do genetic influences differ by parents’ socioeconomic standing? When in a children’s life course does parents’ socioeconomic standing matter for genetic influences, and for which of the outcomes, fixed at the different stages of the attainment process, do they matter most? We studied these research questions using Finnish register-based data on 6,529 pairs of twins born between 1975 and 1986. We applied genetically sensitive variance decompositions and took gene–environment interactions into account. Since zygosity was unknown, we compared same-sex and opposite-sex twins to estimate the proportion of genetic variation. Genetic influences were strongest in education and weakest in income, and always strongest among those with the most advantaged socioeconomic background, independent of the socioeconomic indicator used. We found that the shared environment influences were negligible for all outcomes. Parental social background measured early during childhood was associated with weaker interactions with genetic influences. Genetic influences on children’s occupation were largely mediated through their education, whereas for genetic influences on income, mediation through education and occupational standing made little difference. Interestingly, we found that non-shared environment influences were greater among the advantaged families and that this pattern was consistent across outcomes. Stratification scholars should therefore emphasize the importance of the non-shared environment as one of the drivers of the intergenerational transmission of social inequalities.

Protest in the gig economy has taken many forms and targets (platforms, customers, and state officials). However, researchers are yet to adequately account for this diversity. We use a European survey of Upwork and PeoplePerHour platform workers in the remote gig economy to investigate worker orientation towards different forms of protest. Results reveal that worker anger, dependence, and digital communication shape contention in the remote gig economy. Support for collective organisation is associated not only with anger at platforms but also workers’ dependence on the platform and communication with other workers. Whereas individual action against clients is associated only with anger and communication but not communication and support for state regulation is associated only with anger but not dependence or communication. We conclude that despite the novelty of these emergent social relations, the relational approach entailed by Mobilisation Theory can aid explanation of contention in the gig economy by shedding light on the dynamic process by which solidarity and dependence alter the perceived costs and benefits of particular remedies to injustice