The Double Center of Gravity in Durkheim's Symbol Theory: Bringing the Symbolism of the Body Back In

By studying Durkheim through a Schopenhauerian lens, the one-sidedly cognitivist and functionalist reception of his social theory can be balanced. Durkheim explicitly rejected such monistic interpretations. His dialectical approach was always aimed at an essentially dualistic perception of man and society, wherein the lower pole, the individual, is central. In Durkheim's symbol theory, this position leads to two kinds of symbols: those that are bound to the human body, here called "this and that" symbols, and those people can choose freely, here called "this for that" symbols. This twofold symbol theory can already be found in medieval philosophy (e.g. Dante Alighieri) as well as in the work of Paul Ricoeur. For Durkheim the human person is the symbol par excellence. By implication the rituals in which the person is (re)constructed, that is the rites of passage, should be central. The interpretation here opens up new perspectives for a more psychological interpretation of Durkheim's sociology.     

Mixture model on the variance for the differential analysis of gene expression data

Summary.  In microarray experiments, accurate estimation of the gene variance is a key step in the identification of differentially expressed genes. Variance models go from the too stringent homoscedastic assumption to the overparameterized model assuming a specific variance for each gene. Between these two extremes there is some room for intermediate models. We propose a method that identifies clusters of genes with equal variance. We use a mixture model on the gene variance distribution. A test statistic for ranking and detecting differentially expressed genes is proposed. The method is illustrated with publicly available complementary deoxyribonucleic acid microarray experiments, an unpublished data set and further simulation studies.     

The European Cultural Foundation's Plan Europe 2000

This article describes the work being done by the European Cultural Foundation for their Plan Europe 2000. It describes four projects which are being undertaken under the plan, and the advantages and disadvantages of the organization which was set up to undertake the research.     

Mortality and population ageing

We are here trying to measure the impact of each element of the total fertility, mortality and migration history of the cohorts concerned on population structure change. Computations are done for both France and Italy on population ageing during the last 30 years as well as until the end of the official population projections around 2040. Though the ageing effect of fertility decrease is usually emphasized, we can see here that the consequences of mortality change are at least equally (and sometimes more) important. The case of the Italian projections is particularly fascinating. Even if the very low fertility level of 1.4 children per woman is maintained until the year 2040, more than half the increase in the proportion of the population aged 60 and over (from 21% to 43% for females) would be due to mortality change and slightly less to fertility change.     

Day-Care supply by Dutch municipalities

In this article the supply of day care is assumed to be demand-induced. Demand factors include both direct and indirect effects. The indirect effects follow from the composition by gender and political party of the members of the town council. The higher the percentage of both left-wing and female councillors the higher the supply of day care. Although the direct effects of the demand factors are found to be stronger than the indirect effects, the results indicate that the mediating effect of the composition of the council according to gender and political party cannot be ignored.     

Changes in Female Labour Supply in the Netherlands 1989–1998: The Case of Married and Cohabiting Women

It is well-known that married and cohabitingwomen differ in labour supply. But we know verylittle about the causes of this difference. Isit due to differences in characteristics, likeage, presence and ages of children, own netwage rate, and net income of the partner? Or isit a difference in behaviour that – even aftercontrolling for variation in characteristics –is the basic cause? In this article we try toanswer these questions for Dutch married andcohabiting women. We use data of nationalsurveys by Statistics Netherlands for 1989 and1998. This also allows us to investigatewhether there have been important changes inthe last decade. Because we are able to comparethe results with those of an analogous analysisthat two of the authors did on similar Dutchdata for 1981 we are able to draw conclusionsabout changes that took place over the lasttwenty years. The results show that the massivegrowth in female labour force participation isespecially due to the growth in participationby married women. A slight decrease in labourmarket participation of cohabiting women can beobserved in the last decade. This seems to bethe result of cohabitation becoming morenormal, including cohabitation when there areyoung children in the household.