Epistemological Culture Theory: A Micro Theory of the Origin and Maintenance of Culture

This paper presents a new "epistemological" theory of culture that explains how individuals enhance their sense of security in the world by creating and maintaining culture as knowledge of the world. Using cognitive and affective processes previously ignored by culture theorists, the theory posits three dimensions of cultural production: we articulate, typify, and orient our experiences to make them meaningful. The theory asserts that we produce culture because it allows us to feel as if we understand our world, and to perceive it as ordered; this in turn triggers an aesthetic response of knowledge-based affect. The theory explains how cultural production is motivated by the pursuit of meaningfulness as well as material interests. The theory describes how an oppressive culture can be reproduced unintentionally, even by the groups it oppresses. The theory also identifies connections between social structure and culture where conditions of ambiguity or control have implications for how meaning can be created.     

OPTIMAL EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP CONTRACTS UNDER AMBIGUITY AVERSION

The aim of this paper is to compute and describe the conditions of an optimal employee ownership contract between an employer and an ambiguity‐averse employee. We then introduce ambiguity aversion in the baseline model of Aubert et al. (2014) using the multiple prior preferences of Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989) and its extension proposed by Maccheroni et al. (2006). This model offers solutions that reconcile labor and financial economics and behavioral economics research findings on employee ownership. The paper focuses on the most common situation where employee ownership has a positive impact on corporate performance, but can also be used as an entrenchment mechanism. We determine the optimal company stock contribution, which corresponds to a perfect subgame Nash equilibrium in the ambiguity framework. Using the framework of Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989), we show that the optimal ownership contract is increasing with respect to the lower bound of the return expectation in the case of a high level of effort, and decreasing with respect to the upper bound of the return expectation in the case of a low level of effort. In the framework of Maccheroni et al. (2006), we prove that if aversion to ambiguity is sufficiently high, then we find the same behavior as in the case of no ambiguity. (JEL G11, G32, G34, J33)     

A DIRECT TEST OF THE EFFICIENT MARRIAGE MARKET HYPOTHESIS

This paper takes Becker's efficient marriage market hypothesis at face value, and directly confronts it with data from Hong Kong. The theory of optimal assignment is used to develop an empirical model of spouse selection, which resembles a Tobit model. This model can address positive or negative assortative matching as well as marginal product pricing in marriage markets. We also use a computer algorithm to solve the assignment problem for imputed marital output. The degree to which the actual pairing of husbands and wives corresponds to the optimal pairing provides a goodness-of-fit test of the efficient marriage market hypothesis. ( JEL C51, C61, C78, J12)     

REAL WAGE AND EMPLOYMENT UNCERTAINTY AND THE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION DECISIONS OF MARRIED WOMEN

This paper argues that an important factor in a married woman's decision to enter the labor force is the degree of uncertainty associated with expectations offuture wages and (husband's) income, and that high levels of uncertainty during the 1970s may have contributed substantially to the growth in participation in that decade. We apply a model of autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity to aggregate time series data to measure the level of uncertainty in each period. Our estimates support our hypothesis that the level of uncertainty is an important determinant of labor force participation for married women.     

No-decision classification: an alternative to testing for statistical significance

This paper proposes a new statistical technique for deciding which of two theories is better supported by a given set of data while allowing for the possibility of drawing no conclusion at all. Procedurally similar to the classical hypothesis test, the proposed technique features three, as opposed to two, mutually exclusive data classifications: reject the null, reject the alternative, and no decision. Referred to as No-decision classification (NDC), this technique requires users to supply a simple null and a simple alternative hypothesis based on judgments concerning the smallest difference that can be regarded as an economically substantive departure from the null. In contrast to the classical hypothesis test, NDC allows users to control both Type I and Type II errors by specifying desired probabilities for each. Thus, NDC integrates judgments about the economic significance of estimated magnitudes and the shape of the loss function into a familiar procedural form.     

Social Capital,Place Meanings,and Perceived Resilience to Climate Change*

This research analyzes individuals' perceived resilience to changing climatic conditions. Specifically, we suggest individual resilience is composed of an awareness of localized risks created because of climate change, a willingness to learn about, and plan for, the potential impacts of altered environmental conditions, and general appraisals of personal adaptive capacities. We hypothesize that resilience is influenced by the characteristics of individuals' social networks and also by their social-psychological dependence on local environments. Using data collected in three resource-associated communities within the southeastern United States, our analysis suggests bonding ties may limit individuals' willingness to seek new information about the potential impacts of climate change. Conversely, the data suggest the use of a diverse array of bridging ties is positively associated with information-seeking behavior. The data also support our hypothesis that individuals' social psychological dependencies on the local environment influences their perceived resilience to changing climatic conditions. By gaining a clearer understanding of how individuals' social networks and social-psychological dependencies affect their perceived ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions, decision makers can focus on policy solutions that increase adaptive capacities and build social resilience.     

Multiplicity: anarchy in the mirror of sociology

ABSTRACT

Justin Rosenberg’s proposal of ‘multiplicity’ as a new grounding concept for IR aims at liberating the international from the perceived constraints of its dominant framing by Realism. Viewed from within the singular political entity, the international can only appear as absence and negativity, traditionally thematised in IR as ‘anarchy’. Recasting it instead as ‘multiplicity’, through a move from politics to sociology, is intended to change the understanding of the international from negative to positive: from conflict, tragedy and repetition to interaction, combination and development. This move, however, does not succeed in grasping the negativity of the international, and so as a result it remains within the limits that Realism enunciates: multiplicity complements anarchy sociologically rather than transcending it theoretically. A new concept of the international would result not from rejecting the negative in favour of the positive but from recognizing them as dialectically contained within each other.     

What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Performance? Dialogue Theory and Performance Budgeting

This article examines the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)in the federal budgeting process. The early evidence on PARTprompts the search for a theory of budgeting that accepts thatperformance information will influence decisions but will notbe used in the same way from decision to decision, as the espousedtheory of performance budgeting suggests. Dialogue theory emphasizesthe ambiguity of performance information and related resourceallocation choices. An exploratory test of dialogue theory isundertaken through an experiment involving graduate studentsassessing PART evaluations. The results illustrate a varietyof ways in which different individuals can examine the sameprogram and, using logical warrants, come to different conclusionsabout performance and future funding requirements.     

Simulation as a Social Process in Organizations

An emergent research literature is starting to cohere on simulation as a sociological process within organizations. This paper shines a spotlight on this scholarship, and offers new ways to think about the dizzying array of simulation we encounter in our organizational, institutional, and everyday lives. I define simulation as an empirical social process and show how they vary in consequence by their experiential modality, their referential frame, and their perceived realism. I then document three conceptual trends in the literature: (i) treating simulation as an organizational technique for risk management; (ii) a focus on virtual reality, video games, and moral ambiguity; and (iii) studies of the impact of computer simulation on scientific knowledge production and the reorganization of some technical fields, such as weapons research, artificial intelligence, and meteorology. Organizational uncertainty tends to coalesce around disputes about the appropriate qualities and functions of a given simulation technique or technology. I conclude the paper by identifying how the sociology of simulation can connect with more established areas of contemporary research within organizations, work and occupations, and institutional sociology.     

校园垃圾桶的分布调查与分析——以武昌理工学院为例

本文通过对武昌理工学院垃圾桶的调查,发现校园内整体上环境良好,垃圾桶的分布基本合理,在此基础上,针对校园内垃圾桶设置的问题(如校园内某些地方形成垃圾死角)提出一点建议和看法。     

Charisma: From Weber to Contemporary Sociology1

This paper critically examines sociological treatments of the concept of charisma. It demonstrates that the existence of diverse and conflicting views on charisma is due partly to sociologists' selection accentuations of the different types of charisma (magical, prophetic, and routinized) in Weber's writings. Reconsidering charisma as an expression of alienation, the paper also suggests a synthetic approach that may alleviate the conceptual anarchy surrounding it.     

Family Migration Capital and Migration Intentions

Does a history of migration in the family influence one’s decision to move abroad? This paper argues that intergenerational transmission of ‘migration capital’ accumulated in the family is a significant determinant of current decisions to migrate. Using an ordered probit methodology to analyse data from a survey of 2161 respondents conducted in Latvia in 2007, we find support for our hypothesis: children of former migrants are more likely to migrate themselves, compared to people without family migration experience. The country of Latvia serves as an unusually instructive laboratory for our analysis due to the planned nature of its 1945–1991 immigration flows.     

A Tentative Classification of Decision Making*

This paper presents a two-dimensional classification of decision making based on two continuous variables which interact, namely, degree of subjectivity (objectivity) of attitude and degree of dissimilarity (similarity) of function of choice alternatives. On the basis of this typology two new ways of dissonance resolution are proposed.     

Nationalism, Comparatively Speaking

Abstract This paper is offered as an extended exploration of the common sense mythologies of modem nationalism. Using Fijian dualism as a point of comparison, it argues that nationalist ideologies of unity rest on a historically contingent principle of social order: namely, that societies are (normatively) distinct sets of like individuals. Nationalist movements use this principle to delineate and construct various 'nations." To illustrate this approach, the paper compares the unification of France to the disintegration of the Hapsburg Empire, and asks why a singular nation was invented in France, and a plurality of nations in the Empire. The paper suggests that these very different histories can be explained by considering the relationship of these nationalist movements to the hierarchical orders of monarchical absolutism and colonial subordination.
Our current definitions and conceptions stem from our own modern culture, even when anthropological experience … has modified them to some degree. This is not enough in the way of including ourselves - our own culture - in the picture, as true comparison requires. For our current definitions express our own culture, and our own culture … embodies an exceptional development . Any sociological generalisation must integrate it for what it is: an exception, an eccentric phenomenon. It follows that the general sociological model can in no case be modern, or modern with mere modification: it must be such a reflection of the wide experience of mankind that the modern exceptional development is clearly formulated and accommodated in it.     

Social network thresholds in the diffusion of innovations

Threshold models have been postulated as one explanation for the success or failure of collective action and the diffusion of innovations. The present paper creates a social network threshold model of the diffusion of innovations based on the Ryan and Gross (1943) adopter categories: (1) early adopters; (2) early majority; (3) late majority; (4) laggards. This new model uses social networks as a basis for adopter categorization, instead of solely relying on the system-level analysis used previously. The present paper argues that these four adopter categories can be created either with respect to the entire social system, or with respect to an individual's personal network. This dual typology is used to analyze three diffusion datasets to show how external influence and opinion leadership channel the diffusion of innovations. Network thresholds can be used (1) to vary the definition of behavioral contagion, (2) to predict the pattern of diffusion of innovations, and (3) to identify opinion leaders and followers in order to understand the two-step flow hypothesis better.     

The Authenticity in Ambiguity: Appreciating Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Abductive Logic as Communicative Practice

This article is a reading of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "An Unpublished Text" (1964a), as an exemplar of communicative praxis. As a poetic, "stylistic" account of the body of his life's work, this text self-signifies his potential as an "authentic" scholar. Employing a motivated logic that is abductive (Peirce, 1955), he argued for an appreciation of our phenomenological and semiotic circumstances of existential ambiguity. Furthermore, from this phenomenal ground, he articulated the pragmatic conditions of authenticity that inhere within every communication engagement with an Other. My interpretation of the Etre Au Monde of his philosophy depicts authenticity as human potentiality in the context of an existential dialectic between personal consciousness and sociocultural experience. We find that ambiguity and authenticity implicate one another as philosophical issues and thus remain highly relevant for a postmodern philosophy that problematizes our constitution as communicative beings.     

Decision styles in transport mode choice

In this paper it is argued that travel demand analysis should pay more attention to recent findings in cognitive psychology. Especially the rules used by people to reach a decision should be the focus of research. As part of a Park-and-Ride study in the Netherlands a model which specifies the relation between attitudes and behaviour is tested. The hypothesized model is a multi-attribute utility model incorporating weights. Train-travellers are much better predicted by this model than car-travellers. Car-travellers appear to use a small set of important attributes, train-travellers on the contrary seem to weigh satisfaction scores over a broad range of attributes.As a hypothesis for further research a difference of decision style between car-travellers and train-travellers is suggested. The behaviour of train-travellers can be adequately described with a compensatory choice strategy, but for car-travellers a non-compensatory rule (conjunctive model) is perhaps more plausible.     

DOING IT WHEN OTHERS DO: A STRATEGIC MODEL OF PROCRASTINATION

This paper develops a strategic model of procrastination in which present‐biased agents prefer to perform an onerous task with someone else. This turns their decision of when to perform the task into a procrastination game—a dynamic coordination game between present‐biased players. The model characterizes the conditions under which interaction mitigates or exacerbates procrastination. A procrastinator matched with a worse procrastinator may perform her task earlier than she otherwise would: she wants to avoid the increased temptation that her peer's company would generate. Procrastinators can thus use bad company as a commitment device to mitigate their self‐control problem. (JEL C72, C73, D03, D91)     

英语歧义现象及其积极作用

歧义是一种语言形式能够表达两种或两种以上意义的语言现象，它普遍存在于世界各种语言中。一般认为歧义会有碍交流，但如果人们加以巧妙运用，却也能起到积极的作用，更好地达到某一交际目的。文章主要分析了几类英语歧义现象以及歧义在幽默笑话、广告、文学作品中的积极运用。     

The Effectiveness of Environmental Civil Society Organizations: An Integrated Analysis of Organizational Characteristics and Contextual Factors

A push to reverse unsustainable trends has come from environmental civil society, but its track record is somewhat inconsistent. Why are some environmental organizations able to enhance the environmental cause, while others fail to create a substantial impact in the move toward environmental sustainability? This paper considers related but disparate clusters of literature and identifies factors that have an impact on the effectiveness of civil society. It also addresses the ambiguity that is attached to civil society—a concept with considerable historical baggage and contextual differentiation. Given that each conceptualization of civil society has its own body of literature and that these do not necessarily speak to each other, we propose an analytical framework that integrates a variety of dimensions relevant to the analysis of environmental civil society organizations (CSOs): the degree of institutionalization, the mode of interaction with the state, sources of funding, the locus of mobilization, the choice of issue(s), and the degree of politicization. Using these organizational characteristics, our framework further integrates contextual factors, constructing a multidimensional space where there are opportunities and constraints for environmental CSOs. This framework allows us to examine diverse paths shaped by context-dependent strategic choices of environmental CSOs which may either limit or enhance their capacity to make an impact. These strategic choices are tracked by selecting entry points inspired by fieldwork conducted in Turkey—specifically, institutionalization, the choice of issue(s), and politicization.