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Abstract: To what extent have postmodernism and research modalities which fundamentally question the notion of the objective researcher impacted on the production of Ph.D. theses in the humanities and social sciences? This paper examines the visual and verbal representations of the writerly self through the title pages, tables of contents and introductory chapters of a corpus of 20 recent Ph.D. theses in History and Sociology from an Australian university. While affirming the dominance of the topic-based thesis macrostructure in the social sciences and humanities, it subjects the topic-based thesis category to greater scrutiny, presenting a case for the emergence of a New Humanities Ph.D., marked by its construction of a reflexive self, unable to write with the classic detachment of positivism. The paper briefly considers the implications for disciplinarity and postgraduate pedagogy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Current drug discovery is impossible without sophisticated modeling and computation. In this review we outline previous advances in computational biology and, by tracing the steps involved in pharmaceutical development, explore a range of novel, high-value opportunities for computational innovation in modeling the biological process of disease and the social process of drug discovery. These opportunities include text mining for new drug leads, modeling molecular pathways and predicting the efficacy of drug cocktails, analyzing genetic overlap between diseases and predicting alternative drug use. Computation can also be used to model research teams and innovative regions and to estimate the value of academy–industry links for scientific and human benefit. Attention to these opportunities could promise punctuated advance and will complement the well-established computational work on which drug discovery currently relies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper focuses on the relevance of Kant's anthropologically oriented idea of the pragmatic use of reason for specific theoretical approaches in sociology. As I show in the first part, Kant's explicit presence in 20th-century sociology does not refer much to his anthropology and specifically to its cornerstone – the pragmatic use of reason which establishes a subtle connection between the theoretical and practical functions of reason. As an instrument for gaining systematic knowledge about the social world and ourselves as beings both passively and actively involved in this process, Kant's pragmatic use of reason serves a specific form of the theoretical use of reason. At the same time, it embodies a kind of practical reasoning concerning the "general welfare" in the social sphere. Building on the key arguments in the first part, I then address the question of whether we can view Kant's pragmatic approach as a possible third way for sociology today, beyond the simplifying opposition of 'theoretical' normativity and 'realistic' empiricism, and whether this third way can help us in clearing specific sociological issues. Here, I focus on two examples, namely the use of Kant's notion of "unsocial sociability" in Ralf Dahrendorf's conflict theory and on the criticism of Kant's cosmopolitanism in Ulrich Beck's reformed sociology of cosmopolitanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Paper focuses on Holocaust restitution claims against Swiss banks. • Map justifications that each provides and value they assert for their projects. • Across geographic settings, justifications map on to politics of compassion and pity. • Economies of worth can underwrite ethical responses to honor the past. How do political cultures shape claims of worth? This paper focuses on Holocaust restitution claims against Swiss banks. We study nearly one hundred proposals that were submitted by organizations worldwide, regarding how to allocate funds where individual restitution or compensation was not possible. Relying on the sociology of conventions, we map the justifications that each provides and the value they assert for their projects. Through multiple correspondence analysis and bipartite network graphs, we find that across geographic settings, justifications map on to the politics of compassion and pity. Proposals relating to survivors emphasize an industrial economy and legal language, whereas proposals to rebuild community rely on an inspired economy to underwrite their value. Reliance on law, in turn, is also contingent on the historical paths of political cultures. We conclude that the role of law in justification is limited to situations that are oriented to private redress rather than national memory or community building efforts. Our analysis advances the empirical study of ethical pluralism and the study of valuation, by demonstrating how projects are justified through moral values across political cultures and axiological registers, and how economies of worth can underwrite ethical responses to honor the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Assessing human rights engagement as a series of events rather than long-term trends. • Paying attention to events allows conceptualization of multiple types of state performances when it comes to human rights. • Arab Spring changed voting patterns of most repressive states serving on the Human Rights Council. • A few repressive states (China, Cuba, Russia) did not shift their voting patterns. Sociological research on human rights analyzes the degree to which states engage with international human rights commitments over time. Yet we have a limited understanding of how specific events shape the long-term trajectory of human rights norms. This paper explores the effect of the Arab Spring on voting in the UN Human Rights Council. Using multiple growth curve models, I find that the emergence of the Arab Spring changed the voting patterns of most non-free states, but only temporarily, and that this holds even when controlling for protest events facing a given country. In contrast, a small set of non-free states did not change their votes during the Arab Spring. Drawing on research from cultural sociology, this paper explains these divergent voting patterns as heterogenous performances in the face of an event causing deep uncertainty such as the Arab Spring. The paper concludes that commitments to human rights norms must account for how events puncture broader trends, and that engagement with the human rights regime – and perhaps other performances of state legitimacy — requires an understanding of the multiple audiences, events, and policy possibilities to which states are attuned in international forums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Sociological interest in the digitization of health has predominantly been studied using qualitative approaches. Research in this field has grown steadily since the late 1990′s but to date, no synthesis has been conducted to integrate this now rather comprehensive corpus of data. In this paper we present a meta-ethnography of 15 papers reporting qualitative studies of digitally mediated patient – professional interactions. By dissecting the detailed descriptions of digitized practices in this most basic relationship in health care, we explore how these studies can illuminate important aspects of social relations in contemporary society. Our interpretative synthesis enables us to reassert a sociological view that places changes in social structures and interaction at the core of questions about the digitization of health care. Our synthesis of this literature identifies four key concepts that point at structural processes of change. We argue that when patient-professional interactions are digitized, relations are respatialized, and there are reconnections of relational components. These lead to empirically specific reactions , which can be characterized as reconstitutions and renegotiations of social practices which in turn are related to the reconfiguration of basic social institutions. We propose a new direction for exploring the digitalization of health care to illuminate how digital health is related to contemporary social change. Highlights • A synthesis of 15 qualitative studies on digitized patient-provider interaction. • Four concepts emerged: respatialization; reconnection; reaction; reconfiguration. • Our synthesis goes beyond the micro level and point at structural processes of change. • We propose a conceptual framework to explore the societal relevance of e-health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The overarching aim of this study is to create a theoretical pedagogical framework within which to develop competences for students so they will be able to encounter hitherto unknown challenges related to renewable energy education and thus to apply different aspects of this rapidly developing technology. • The paper aims to make an approach to include solar energy education within the framework of an upgraded version of the socio-cultural theory for learning. • The intention is to connect this educational domain to educational neuroscience and to contemporary research on creativity. Abstract The aim in this paper is to upgrade experiences from traditional studies on solar energy education to include social, sociological and pedagogical aspects. This is done in order to develop insights beyond production of artifacts. The aim is promotion of educational means for utilization of the artifacts developed. This includes upgrading knowledge about hardware as well as about software, and in this process also to upgrade our ways of thinking. This implies changing our neurological mindset in accordance with continuous development of knowledge within these domains. The scope of this paper is thus to discuss development of curricula and pedagogical means for teaching and learning within the domain of renewable energy education. The paper also aims to make a tentative approach to include solar energy education within the framework of an upgraded version of the socio-cultural theory for learning. A tentative approach is also made, with the intention, to connect this educational domain to educational neuroscience and to contemporary research on creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community plays an important role in the field of sociology, biology and especially in domains of computer science, where systems are often represented as networks. And community detection is of great importance in the domains. A community is a dense subgraph of the whole graph with more links between its members than between its members to the outside nodes, and nodes in the same community probably share common properties or play similar roles in the graph. Communities overlap when nodes in a graph belong to multiple communities. A vast variety of overlapping community detection methods have been proposed in the literature, and the local expansion method is one of the most successful techniques dealing with large networks. The paper presents a density-based seeding method, in which dense disjoint local clusters are searched and selected as seeds. The proposed method selects a seed by the total degree and density of local clusters utilizing merely local structures of the network. Furthermore, this paper proposes a novel community refining phase via minimizing the conductance of each community, through which the quality of identified communities is largely improved in linear time. Experimental results in synthetic networks show that the proposed seeding method outperforms other seeding methods in the state of the art and the proposed refining method largely enhances the quality of the identified communities. Experimental results in real graphs with ground-truth communities show that the proposed approach outperforms other state of the art overlapping community detection algorithms, in particular, it is more than two orders of magnitude faster than the existing global algorithms with higher quality, and it obtains much more accurate community structure than the current local algorithms without any priori information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School bullying is an important concern. Whilst there is growing knowledge about the nature, extent and effects of school bullying, areas of complexity in research findings remain. In this paper we develop our thinking on school bullying using a sociocultural theoretical framework. We review existing literature around three main themes: 1) The conceptualisation and interpretation of bullying; 2) The relational aspects of bullying 3) Bullying as part of someone's life trajectory. For each theme, empirical findings are discussed to highlight key issues, and arguments presented from relevant sociocultural theories to provide insight in each case. During the paper, we show how varying strands of research into bullying can be integrated, and how areas of complexity can be explained. Adopting a sociocultural view of school bullying presents implications for both research and practice. Bullying is contextual, and attention should be given to the situated relationships and multiple settings surrounding the behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal recommendation technology is becoming a useful and popular solution to solve the problem of information overload with the popularity of big data cloud services. But most recommendation algorithms pay too much attention to the similarity to focus on the social trust between users. So this paper focus on the research of hybrid Recommendation algorithm for big data based on the optimization combining with the similarity and trust in sociology. In this paper, we introduced some user trust models including trust path model and loop trust model, and then we took these models into the calculation of mixed weighting. The experiment results show that the recommendation algorithm considering the trust models has the higher accuracy than the traditional recommendation algorithm, and we have a 2% increase in both MEA (Mean Absolute Error) and RMSE (Root Mean Square Error). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Social scientists have paid increasing attention to health technology assessment (HTA). This paper provides an overview of existing social scientific literature on HTA, with a focus on sociology and political science and their subfields.Methods: Narrative review of key pieces in English.Results: Three broad themes recur in the emerging social science literature on HTA: the drivers of the establishment and concrete institutional designs of HTA bodies; the effects of institutionalized HTA on pricing and reimbursement systems and the broader society; and the social and political influences on HTA decisions.Conclusion: Social scientists bring a focus on institutions and social actors involved in HTA, using primarily small-N research designs and qualitative methods. They provide valuable critical perspectives on HTA, at times challenging its otherwise unquestioned assumptions. However, they often leave aside questions important to the HTA practitioner community, including the role of culture and values. Closer collaboration could be beneficial to tackle new relevant questions pertaining to HTA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As systematic reviews become more common in the social sciences journal literature, it is important for social science librarians to be familiar with this methodology. Knowledge of characteristics of systematic reviews that have been published in the journal literature can help to inform librarians as they guide researchers to adopt good practices. This paper analyzes a collection of 164 systematic reviews gleaned from the International Bibliography of Social Sciences database for the period 2017 to 2019 from journals in the fields of anthropology, business and economics, communications, education, political science, psychology, social sciences (comprehensive), and sociology. The methodology of each review was checked to answer questions about reporting of keywords and search terms, reporting of inclusion/exclusion criteria, time period searched, external guidelines referenced, initial number of studies retrieved and number of studies included in the review, and number and names of databases searched. Details are provided for the individual subject categories, and the implications of these findings for social science librarians are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from a recent Irish-based study into faculty-librarian collaboration for information literacy (IL) development. Qualitative analysis of comments made by Sociology and Civil Engineering academics shows how entrenched beliefs and perceptions may adversely affect the potential for collaboration, and prevent the inclusion of information literacy in undergraduate curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among men who have sex with men and transgender women in Tanzania, this article explores the various types of work that may go into enrolment into PrEP programming and using pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). PrEP protects against HIV acquisition and is widely touted as an essential tool in 'ending AIDS by 2030'. While taking PrEP has often been portrayed as 'just taking a pill a day' in public health campaigns, a striking observation during fieldwork was that enrolling in PrEP programming and adhering to PrEP involved a wide range of tasks. Inspired by this fieldwork experience and the literature on sociology of work, more specifically illness work and patient work, we started to think of these tasks as work. This paper identifies the range of tasks that PrEP users in Dar es Salaam had to perform as part of their enrolment and usage of PrEP. We provide a description of these tasks, organised into three categories of work that we refer to as (a) readying work, (b) user work, and (c) social navigation work that jointly make up what we propose to call biomedical prevention work. We further suggest that this analytical framework can be applicable to other biomedical prevention methods in other contexts. • Describes what it may entail to use PrEP among key populations in Dar es Salaam • PrEP use among men who have sex with men and transgender women • We argue that PrEP users do 'work' to use PrEP as HIV prevention • Presents novel conceptual framework: Biomedical Prevention Work • Framework describes how people may take preventative care with biomedical technology [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expression “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR) has gained considerable traction among sociologists of religion and culture, media outlets, and the broader public in recent years. Though the expression itself has achieved wide appeal, few studies have explored what SBNRs believe about God, religion, or spirituality. This paper uses survey data from Wave IV of the Baylor Religion Survey (2014) and draws from the theory of “cultural omnivorousness” to show that SBNRs have significant sociotheological differences when compared to those who are both religious and spiritual (RAS). The expression “spiritual, but not religious” is more than a manifestation of religious deinstitutionalization or “believing without belonging.” Rather, being “spiritual, but not religious” involves sociotheological boundary work that distinguishes SBNRs from traditional monotheists. When compared to RAS respondents, SBNRs are more likely to view God as a higher power or cosmic force instead of a personal being and are more likely to adopt an individualistic ethic as opposed to finding moral authority in God or Scripture. By examining the historical context and sociotheological characteristics of SBNRs, this paper locates a boundary between SBNRs and RAS monotheists and offers theoretical reasons why SBNRs engage in sociotheological boundary work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instead of diminishing with the spectacular advancement of medical expertise in the country , unqualified biomedical practice in India has been strengthened by the growth of the pharmaceutical production in the twenty first century. In public health discourse, the view that the informal health practitioners have to be punished and abolished has been countered by the recommendation that they could be trained and incorporated in primary health care where public health amenities are inadequate. The quality of care provided by the informal health care practitioners has also been subject to clinical assessment based on standardized patient vignettes. Based on a sociological approach, this paper examines the time line of chronically ill patients under lived conditions to arrive at an understanding of the role of informal health practitioners in long term treatment and highlights the setbacks. This paper draws on 253 household surveys from two villages in Madhya Pradesh, in depth interviews with four unqualified practitioners in the area, twenty five unstructured interviews of chronic patients, twenty five structured interviews on the cases of untimely death and FGDs with health workers in 2021. Informal health care practitioners offer consultation cum dispensing of medicines and are the primary source of biomedical care in the remote study area without any public transport. But they are 'for profit' economic actors who are ill-equipped to handle chronic diseases. What sets them aside from the qualified private doctors in the town is their social obligation to balance their profit motive with the ethics of proximity and neighborly ties with the villagers amidst whom they reside. These features of the market and community place the informal health care practitioners at the cusp of economy and society and defy simple binaries that they are either crooks or assets. • Unqualified health practitioners provide medical care in India where none is available. • Assessing their practices, clientele and exact role is crucial to health care policy. • One point standardized patient vignettes are used to assess their quality of care. • Their treatment of chronically and severely ill patients over time also has to be examined. • They are 'for profit' economic actors, but embedded in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This paper reviews the sociology of environment and health and makes the case for a postanthropocentric approach based on new materialist theory. This perspective fully incorporates humans and their health into 'the environment', and in place of human-centred concerns considers the forces that constrain or enhance environmental capacities. Study design: This is not an empirical study. The paper uses a hypothetical vignette concerning child health and air pollution to explore the new materialist model advocated in the paper. Methods: This paper used sociological analysis. Results: A new materialist and postanthropocentric sociology of environment and health are possible. This radically reconfigures both sociological theory and its application to research and associated policies on health and the environment. Theoretically, human health is rethought as one among a number of capacities emerging from humans interactions with the social and natural world. Practically, the focus of intervention and policy shifts towards fostering social and natural interactions that enhance environmental (and in the process, human) potentiality. Conclusions: This approach to research and policy development has relevance for public health practice and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemiology provides insights about causes of diseases and how to control them, and is powered by surveillance information. Animal health surveillance systems typically have been designed to meet high-level government informational needs, and any incentives for those who generate data (such as animal owners and animal health workers) to report surveillance information are sometimes outweighed by the negative consequences of reporting; underreporting is a serious constraint. This problem can persist even when modern advances in information and communications technology (ICT) are incorporated into the structure and operation of surveillance systems, although some problems typical of paper-based systems (including timeliness of reporting and response, accuracy of data entry, and level of detail recorded) are reduced. On occasions, however, additional problems including sustainability arise. We describe two examples of a philosophical approach and ICT platform for the development of powerful and sustainable health information systems that are people-centred and do not exhibit these typical problems. iSIKHNAS is Indonesia's integrated animal health information system, and PIISAC is a sustainable secure research platform based on full production data from participating commercial Chilean aquaculture companies. Epidemiologists working with these systems are faced with interesting new challenges, including the need to develop skills in extracting appropriate surveillance outcomes from large volumes of continually-streaming data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract While always an interdisciplinary endeavour, rapid growth in the fields of Ethnomethodology (hereafter EM) and Conversation Analysis (hereafter CA) has led to the broader application of EM/CA methodologies and the engagement of researchers from beyond the more traditional fields of sociology and linguistics. EM/CA methodologies are being used to both understand the orderliness of social interaction and also to address specific institutional issues, in this instance in higher education settings. This paper explores the challenges inherent in using these approaches to researching institutional relationships, particularly when a primary aim of the research is to inform practitioners of practices used within institutional settings. We argue the need to draw on a variety of analytical tools to understand in situ practices alongside other lenses to translate these understandings of institutional practice to practitioners. Drawing on data from a study of audio-recorded conversations between supervisory and preservice teachers during the school-based professional experience component of initial teacher education, our analysis illustrates how the tools of conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis reveal the intricacies of how supervising and preservice teachers negotiate issues of asymmetry and position themselves through references to specific institutional documents. We then use the work of Dorothy Smith to support the translatability of descriptive findings to support interventions in the field. We use this example to demonstrate the affordances of using various analytic tools in complementary ways to overcome methodological challenges and provide new insights into institutional relationships and inform future practice. Highlights • Proposes the combined use of analytical tools to translate EM/CA findings to inform both method and practice. • Explores the ongoing development of CA methods, focusing on moves to applied Conversation Analysis. • Discusses the changing nature of academic research and positioning of CA researchers within disciplinary fields. • Illustrates the affordances of combining analytical tools from CA, MCA, and the work of Dorothy Smith in uncovering patterns and theorising approaches to interactions between preservice teachers and supervising teachers in school-based professional experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Changes in the nature and structure of healthcare pathways have implications for healthcare professionals' jurisdictional boundaries. The introduction of treatment focused BRCA1 and 2 genetic testing (TFGT) for newly diagnosed patients with breast cancer offers a contemporary example of pathway change brought about by technological advancements in gene testing and clinical evidence, and reflects the cultural shift towards genomics. Forming part of an ethnographically informed study of patient and practitioner experiences of TFGT at a UK teaching hospital, this paper focuses on the impact of a proposal to pilot a mainstreamed TFGT pathway on healthcare professionals' negotiations of professional jurisdiction. Based upon semi-structured interviews (n = 19) with breast surgeons, medical oncologists and members of the genetics team, alongside observations of breast multidisciplinary team meetings, during the time leading up to the implementation of the pilot, we describe how clinicians responded to the anticipated changes associated with mainstreaming. Interviews suggest that mainstreaming the breast cancer pathway, and the associated jurisdictional reconfigurations, had advocates as well as detractors. Medical oncologists championed the plans, viewing this adaptation in care provision and their professional role as a logical next step. Breast surgeons, however, regarded mainstreaming as an unfeasible expansion of their workload and questioned the relevance of TFGT to their clinical practice. The genetics team, who introduced the pilot, appeared cautiously optimistic about the potential changes. Drawing on sociological understandings of the negotiation of professional jurisdictions our work contributes a timely, micro-level examination of the responses among clinicians as they worked to renegotiate professional boundaries in response to the innovative application of treatment-focused BRCA testing in cancer care – a local and dynamic process which we refer to as an 'oncogenetic taskscape in the making'. Highlights • A micro-level examination of clinicians' work assembling an 'oncogenetic taskscape'. • Mainstreaming genomic testing requires changes to professional jurisdictions. • Technology's clinical relevance informs clinicians' acceptance of mainstreaming. • Clinical implementation of new technology requires inter-professional collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Objectives This paper explores the emergence of dementia within interpersonal interactions as a matter of deviance and visibility. The sociology of deviance suggests that we rely on assumptions of normal behaviour to help us develop interpretations of other people when interacting with them. When a person acts within expectation, we deem them normal. When a person transgresses expectation, we deem them deviant. In this way, dementia is revealed. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven community-dwelling people with dementia and 26 carers living in the East Midlands, United Kingdom. Carers were selected for inclusion by participating people with dementia. Interview data was analysed using thematic analysis informed by symbolic interactionism. Results Four ways in which audiences may interpret a person as having a dementia are outlined: speech, temporality, conflict and novelty. These four mechanisms of visibility represent key moments in which dementia emerges in interaction. Discussion Examining dementia in terms of deviance and visibility positions dementia within social processes. This externalisation of dementia, relocating it within a combination of action, situation and audience, may suggest new possibilities for mediating its negative repercussions. Highlights • Dementia can be theorised as a deviance, breeching shared situational expectations. • Deviance emerges through a process of visibility, whereby actions fail to satisfy situational expectations and are interpreted by an audience as indicating deviance. • Four mechanisms of visibility are speech, temporality, conflict and novelty. • Through these visibility mechanisms, a 'person' becomes a 'person with dementia'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Academic discourse is characterised by being 'enormously diverse' (Hyland, 2004) because of its different disciplines and genres. Authors of academic texts are influenced by their disciplines, and by the 'discourse formats' (Fløttum et al., 2006) of what they are writing. However, genres exist across disciplines. For instance, research articles and PhD theses are found in different disciplines, namely medicine and sociology. Added to that, Systemic Functional Linguistics proposes that lexicogrammatical choices are activated by the context, which is, in this case, multiple. This paper seeks to study how the different parameters of context might influence the choices of PPs. A corpus of PhD theses and research articles from medicine and sociology is collected, and a sample is extracted and annotated via CorpusTool. The result revealed that certain choices reveal that while research articles are more similar across the disciplines, PhD theses are less restricted and disciplinary and personal differences are prominent. Highlights • Linguistic choices of Prepositional Phrases can be related to the different parameters of context in academic writing. • Certain lexico-grammatical choices are global: they reveal features of the field of academic writing, in general. • Other choices distinguish the different types of context: the genres and disciplines studied. • The boundary between genre and discipline is not fixed; it depends on the genre itself, as certain genres (Research Articles) have more restrictions than others (PhD Theses). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper proposes a logit response game with a spatial social structure and solves it exactly. We derive closed-form solutions for the strategy choice probabilities, the spatial correlation function of strategies of distant players, and the expected utility. We study how the probability of adopting a cooperative strategy in a prisoner's dilemma game and the probability of adopting Pareto efficient strategies in a cooperation game are affected by changes in the parameter that expresses payoff-responsiveness. Highlights • Spatial logit response games admit exact solutions. • Relating spatial logit response models to social interactions. • General two-strategy symmetric payoff games as logit response games. • Econometric interpretation of spatial logit response games. • Generalizing spatial response logit games to d -dimensional torus. [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]

This paper is an attempt to broaden economic discourse by importing insights into human behavior not just from psychology, but also from sociology and anthropology. Whereas in standard economics the concept of the decision-maker is the rational actor , and in early work in behavioral economics it is the quasi-rational actor influenced by the context of the moment of decision, in some recent work in behavioral economics, the decision-maker could be called the enculturated actor . This actor's preferences, perception, and cognition are subject to two deep social influences: (a) the social contexts to which he has become exposed and, especially, accustomed; and (b) the cultural mental models —including categories, identities, narratives, and worldviews—that he uses to process information. The paper traces how these factors shape behavior through the endogenous determination of preferences and the lenses through which individuals see the world—their perception and interpretation of situations. The paper offers a tentative taxonomy of the social determinants of behavior and describes the results of controlled and natural experiments that only a broader view of these determinants can plausibly explain. The perspective suggests more realistic models of human behavior for explaining outcomes and designing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a novel method for building affectively intelligent human-interactive agents. The method is based on a key sociological insight that has been developed and extensively verified over the last twenty years, but has yet to make an impact in artificial intelligence. The insight is that resource bounded humans will, by default, act to maintain affective consistency. Humans have culturally shared fundamental affective sentiments about identities, behaviours, and objects, and they act so that the transient affective sentiments created during interactions confirm the fundamental sentiments. Humans seek and create situations that confirm or are consistent with, and avoid and suppress situations that disconfirm or are inconsistent with, their culturally shared affective sentiments. This “ affect control principle ” has been shown to be a powerful predictor of human behaviour. In this paper, we present a probabilistic and decision-theoretic generalisation of this principle, and we demonstrate how it can be leveraged to build affectively intelligent artificial agents. The new model, called BayesAct , can maintain multiple hypotheses about sentiments simultaneously as a probability distribution, and can make use of an explicit utility function to make value-directed action choices. This allows the model to generate affectively intelligent interactions with people by learning about their identity, predicting their behaviours using the affect control principle, and taking actions that are simultaneously goal-directed and affect-sensitive. We demonstrate this generalisation with a set of simulations. We then show how our model can be used as an emotional “plug-in” for artificially intelligent systems that interact with humans in two different settings: an exam practice assistant (tutor) and an assistive device for persons with a cognitive disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• 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]

The control of rail signalling is known to be highly dependent on local knowledge and local factors. It is also known to be highly cognitive in its nature involving a constant balancing of system performance within the constraints of safety. In the current paper, data generated through field work with signallers were used to understand the role of local knowledge, set against the background of an existing Local Knowledge Framework (Pickup et al., 2013) that was proposed to help determine the contents and mechanisms behind local knowledge in rail signalling. The field work included interviews with signallers and operations managers along with observations of signaller work. The results showed that the local knowledge framework needs to be expanded to include aspects related to the general public at user worked crossings and level crossings. In addition, the analysis highlights some of the issues with the transmission of local knowledge. The paper then discusses some of the gaps in the current framework, highlighting the importance not only of local knowledge for specific functions of signalling, but how these interact to support trade-offs to balance performance with safety. The implications for the design of signaller work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainable product-service system (SPSS) concept highlights that achieving sustainability requires changes in both ‘production’ and ‘consumption’. Nevertheless, attention has focused mainly on ‘production’. This paper enriches the SPSS approach with insights from the sociology of consumption and practice theory to provide a deeper understanding of the use of products and services in daily life contexts. The paper advances three key insights related to: a) the internal dynamics of user practices, b) the strength of linkages of practice elements (loose and tight coupling), c) external linkages to other practices. These insights are mobilised to provide a deeper understanding of the uptake and diffusion of innovations such as SPSS. The insights are illustrated with two cases in which interventions designed to stimulate diffusion have had differential success: energy efficient light bulbs and low temperature laundry. Implications for understanding the diffusion of SPSS are discussed. [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]

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]

Medicalization is increasingly recognized as a bidirectional process, with patients and their families as agents. The paper considers the specific case of the medicalization of autism in Italy, from the point of view of parents of autistic people with different levels of support needs. Through reporting and comparing results of two independently conducted qualitative studies, this paper aims to analyze how parents embrace and resist the medicalization of autism in their everyday lives and in healthcare contexts. Both studies involved participant-observation with services that targeted autistic people and interviews with parents, professionals, and autistic people. Results show that parents of autistic people both embrace and resist medicalization. While parents (sometimes ambivalently) accept the responsibilization inherent in their engagement with interventions (a sort of "therapeutization" of life) and reject lay expertise by deferring to experts' knowledge, they also resist the application of medical labels, language and practices in various ways in their everyday lives. Both embracing and resisting medicalization can be useful for achieving overarching social goals of being a good parent, helping their children, and pursuing respect and social harmony. Medicalization derives not only from the cultural dominance of medical discourses, which seems to incorporate resistance to medicalization stances, but also from the absence of continuity and coordination of services, particularly in the Italian context of public (but increasingly privatizing) health and welfare services. • Parents accept the responsibilization inherent in medicalization and resist it. • Both embracing and resisting medicalization is useful for achieving social goals. • Medicalization is due to the cultural dominance of medicine. • Medicalization also derives from the absence of continuity of services. • Cultural and biopolitical context impact on how people engage with medicalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper focuses on the relationship between the socio-technical system and the user–technology interface. It looks at specific aspects of the organisational context such as multiple user roles, job change, work processes and workflows, technical infrastructure, and the challenges they present for the interaction designer. The implications of trends such as more mobile and flexible working, the use of social media, and the growth of the virtual organisation, are also considered. The paper also reviews rapidly evolving technologies such as pervasive systems and artificial intelligence, and the skills that workers will need to engage with them. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper summarises some of the research that Ken Eason and colleagues at Loughborough University have carried out in the last few years on the introduction of Health Information Technologies (HIT) within the UK National Health Service (NHS). In particular, the paper focuses on three examples which illustrate aspects of the introduction of HIT within the NHS and the role played by the UK National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT). The studies focus on stages of planning and preparation, implementation and use, adaptation and evolution of HIT (e.g., electronic patient records, virtual wards) within primary, secondary and community care settings. Our findings point to a number of common themes which characterise the use of these systems. These include tensions between national and local strategies for implementing HIT and poor fit between healthcare work systems and the design of HIT. The findings are discussed in the light of other large-scale, national attempts to introduce similar technologies, as well as drawing out a set of wider lessons learnt from the NPfIT programme based on Ken Eason's earlier work and other research on the implementation of large-scale HIT. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

How can we analyze the institutional reactions to shocking events producing abrupt and substantial changes? To deal with this question, the paper assumes an interdisciplinary perspective by combining geography and sociology. After defining the foundational concepts of shocking events and institutions, the paper suggests that the outcomes of such events in respect of institutional frameworks should be analyzed at the territorial level as 'spaces of rupture and reconfiguration'. In the concluding section, the collection of the articles included in the Special Issue – to which this paper serves as lead essay – are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the European Union, the building sector is one of the largest energy consumer with about 40% of the final energy consumption. Reducing consumption is also a sociological, technological and scientific matter. New methods have to be devised in order to support building professionals in their effort to optimize designs and to enhance energy performances. Indeed, the research field related to building modelling and energy performances prediction is very productive, involving various scientific domains. Among them, one can distinguish physics-related fields, focusing on the resolution of equations simulating building thermal behaviour and mathematics-related ones, consisting in the implementation of prediction model thanks to machine learning techniques. This paper proposes a detailed review and discussion of these works. First, the approaches based on physical (“white box”) models are reviewed according three-category classification. Then, we present the main machine learning (“black box”) tools used for prediction of energy consumption, heating/cooling demand, indoor temperature. Eventually, a third approach called hybrid (“grey box”) method is introduced, which uses both physical and statistical techniques. The paper covers a wide range of research works, giving the base principles of each technique and numerous illustrative examples. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper reviews the literature from 1986 on the management of those safety rules and procedures which relate to the workplace level in organisations. It contrasts two different paradigms of how rules and their development and use are perceived and managed. The first is a top-down classical, rational approach in which rules are seen as static, comprehensive limits of freedom of choice, imposed on operators at the sharp end and violations are seen as negative behaviour to be suppressed. The second is a bottom-up constructivist view of rules as dynamic, local, situated constructions of operators as experts, where competence is seen to a great extent as the ability to adapt rules to the diversity of reality. The paper explores the research underlying and illustrating these two paradigms, drawn from psychology, sociology and ethnography, organisational studies and behavioural economics. In a separate paper following on from this review (Hale and Borys, this issue) the authors propose a framework of rule management which attempts to draw the lessons from both paradigms. It places the monitoring and adaptation of rules central to its management process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper some tendencies of indicator development and application are presented from a quantitative and a qualitative point-of-view. The results of a mainly statistical analysis of the first twenty volumes of the journal Ecological Indicators are described and discussed. The focus of this investigation has been set on five questions:. [(A)] Which types of ecological indicators have been applied and how frequently have they been used? [(B)] In which management context have the indicators been applied? [(C)] Which integrative tools have been utilized to present the results in an aggregated form? [(D)] Has a theory for the application and interpretation of ecological indicators been developed? [(E)] Which are the resulting challenges in indicator development and application? The answers to the first three questions are given in tables and figures, while the fourth question is answered shortly and with references to the key papers that are covering the theoretical considerations behind the application of ecological indicators. Discussing the focal challenges it is foreseen that two theoretical questions will require enhanced attention the coming years: to apply fewer and more general indices and to translate the multitude of indicators to the concept of sustainability that covers the ecological–sociological–economic and political background of the overall indication activities. Furthermore, the general demands for aggregation and integration and an assessment of normative loadings in indicator systems are listed as focal tasks for future development in the field. [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]

Abstract: Scientific research on the banking crisis 2007–08 has answered many important questions according to generally accepted methodological standards. However, there remains at least one outstanding question that has not been answered with methodological accuracy: What caused the severe USA banking crisis 2007–08? To address this question the paper uses a counterfactual definition of ‘cause,’ distinguishes between separable and non-separable causes, and employs a well-posed methodology for the causation analysis of singular events. In addition, first causes and preponderant causes are distinguished. The main result of this paper is that the preponderant causes of the banking crisis 2007–08 were securitization and ignorance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Social group is a type of mesoscopic structure that connects human individuals in microscopic level and the global structure of society. In this paper, we propose a tag-based model considering that social groups expand along the edge that connects two neighbors with a similar tag of interest. The model runs on a real-world friendship network, and its simulation results show that various properties of simulated group network can well fit the empirical analysis on real-world social groups, indicating that the model catches the major mechanism driving the evolution of social groups and successfully reconstructs the social group network from a friendship network and throws light on digging of relationships between social functional organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé Première femme médecin-psychiatre à avoir eu, bien avant les années 1920, une expérience et un contact direct avec l’institution psychiatrique à Vienne, puis à Berlin, Helene Deutsch a ensuite entrepris une formation psychanalytique suivie de fonctions psychanalytiques institutionnelles à Vienne, puis – à partir des années 1934 – à Boston. Elle a produit une œuvre riche et controversée qui anime encore les débats sur le féminin, la personnalité, la maternité, l’érotisme dans la psychanalyse et la sociologie contemporaines. First woman who as psychiatric practitioner before 1920, Helene Deutsch began her career in psychiatric institution in Vienne and Berlin. She trained further in psychoanalysis first in Vienne, and in Boston. She also developed formal training for therapists and analysts. She also wrote several famous papers on female sexuality and about women's psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper, we are looking at the relationship between globalisation and the professional project, using nursing in Kerala as an exemplar. Our focus is on the intersection of the professional project, gender and globalisation processes. Included in our analysis are the ways in which gender affects the professional project in the global south, and the development of a professional project which it is closely tied to global markets and global migration, revealing the political-economic, historical, and cultural factors that influence the shape and consequences of nurse migration. The phenomenon that enabled our analysis, by showing these forces at work in a particular time and place, was an outbreak of strikes by nurses working in private hospitals in Kerala in 2011–2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé Objectifs En venant compléter deux publications relatives à l’enquête Hepaig-quali, l’une consacrée à la sexualité et l’autre à l’usage de drogues, cet article s’intéresse à la dimension psychodynamique des récits recueillis auprès d’homosexuels masculins séropositifs pour le VIH. L’enquête Hepaig-quali constitue l’un des volets de l’étude épidémiologique Hepaig, portant sur les « hépatites aiguës C chez des homosexuels atteints par le VIH », coordonnée par l’Institut de veille sanitaire (France). En complément de résultats recueillis par questionnaire, et à partir du point focal de « l’événement hépatite C », l’objectif de ce volet qualitatif visait à recueillir des récits de pratiques relatifs à la sexualité et à l’usage de drogues, à connaître les motivations de tels choix et à les replacer dans la trame biographique des sujets, à détailler les événements survenus dans leurs parcours de soins et à explorer les représentations relatives à leur santé physique et psychique. Méthode L’enquête repose sur la réalisation de deux entretiens successifs réalisés auprès de 31 hommes, initialement inclus dans l’étude Hepaig. Ces entretiens, intégralement retranscrits, ont fait l’objet d’une double lecture, psychodynamique et sociologique, selon une posture épistémologique se référant à une approche compréhensive des comportements. Résultats Cet article s’intéresse spécifiquement à la santé psychique des enquêtés et à la dimension psychodynamique de leurs récits. Bien que les entretiens, réalisés par le sociologue, ne soient pas l’équivalent de « cas cliniques », les enjeux psychiques y sont très présents. Les répondants évoquent, avec leurs mots, leurs expériences du stress, de la « déprime » et évoquent pour certains leurs idées suicidaires. Ils abordent en majorité leurs pratiques, et les motivent selon un discours de recherche de jouissance et de maîtrise rationnelle des risques. Discussion À bien des égards, les enquêtés apparaissent comme des « hommes ordinaires », notamment du point de vue de leur socialisation sexuée et de leur représentation du risque. Leur spécificité du point de vue de la santé psychique tiendrait à leur expérience des discriminations et à leur vécu d’une maladie chronique. En exprimant une tension permanente entre pulsion et raison, entre recherche de jouissance et besoin de maîtrise de leur vie, ils présentent les caractéristiques de l’individu hypermoderne dont les contradictions se révèlent dans le rapport à l’autre. Conclusion Les enquêtés, bien informés, adhèrent au discours médical positif des soignants, qui les soutient psychiquement face au poids de morbidité des infections par le VIH et le VHC. L’évolution des cultures sexuelles se traduit, pour ces hommes, par un rejet de la norme du préservatif et par l’adoption de pratiques décrites comme plus satisfaisantes, mais pouvant comporter des risques accrus. Leurs comportements sont toutefois régis par d’autres dimensions que la connaissance et la rationalité. La recherche de jouissance ne s’embarrasse pas toujours des freins et des empêchements que la raison imposerait. Cela devrait conduire les soignants à mieux entendre et accompagner les efforts de réduction des risques de leurs patients. Objectives This paper focuses on the psychodynamic dimension of narratives collected in interviews carried out with HIV-positive gay men, and completes two previous publications concerning the Hepaig-quali study, one centred on sexuality and the other on drug use. The Hepaig-quali study was part of the Hepaig epidemiological survey on acute hepatitis C among HIV-infected gay men, coordinated by the Institut de Veille Sanitaire (InVS, France). In addition to the results gathered from questionnaires, and with a focus on the “hepatitis C event”, the present study aimed to describe sexual practices and drug use among HCV-infected gay men, to assess the motivations of these choices, to position them in relation to their life histories and healthcare experiences, and to explore how they viewed their physical and mental health. Methodology Our study was based on two successive in-depth interviews with 31 men previously included in the Hepaig survey. These interviews, conducted by a sociologist, were fully transcribed, and analysed from a dual psychodynamic and sociological viewpoint, an epistemological stance related to the comprehensive approach to behaviours. Results Thirty-one men were included in this qualitative study. We focused specifically on the mental health of the respondents and the psychodynamic dimension of their narratives. Despite the fact that these interviews were not equivalent to “clinical cases”, psychic issues were very much present. In their own words, the respondents talked of their experiences of stress and depression, and some mentioned suicidal ideations. Most talked readily about their practices and explained them via discourse on achieving pleasure, alongside the rational control of risks. Discussion In many respects, the respondents appeared as “ordinary men”, in particular with respect to their gendered socialisation and their representations of the risks. From a mental health perspective, some specificities were linked to the experiences of discrimination and chronic illness. With the permanent tension between impulse and reason, between the search for pleasure and the need to control their lives, they present the characteristics of the hypermodern individual whose contradictions are revealed in their relationship with the other. Conclusion Accurately informed, the respondents also embraced the positivist medical discourse of their caregivers, which provides them with support and helps them to face the burden of HIV and HCV infections. The evolution of gay sexual culture leads these men, via the rejection of the “condom norm”, to choose practices described as more satisfying, but entailing greater risks. Nevertheless, as with any topic, their behaviours are regulated by other dimensions than knowledge and rationality. The search for pleasure is not always restrained by the hindrance and impediments of reason. This should lead caregivers to better understand and support the efforts that their patients make to reduce risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]