The dynamics and differentials of fertility in the USSR (survey results)

The results of a fertility survey carried out in the USSR in 1978 are presented. The survey included 33,076 women aged 18 to 59. Data are included on fertility rates by region and Union Republic and by urban or rural area, and on expected fertility of women aged 18 to 44. Changes in actual and desired fertility over time are compared for five-year periods from 1945 to 1978. Differences in fertility are analyzed by type of settlement, educational status, and nationality.     

Federal statistics in a complex environment: the case of the 1980 census

A discussion of the 1980 U.S. census is presented. The authors suggest that the taking of a national census is not just a statistical exercise, but an exercise involving ethics, epistemology, law, and politics. They contend that conducting a national census can be defined as an ill-structured problem in which the various complexities imposed by multidisciplinarity cannot be separated. "The 1980 census is discussed as an ill-structured problem, and a method for treating such problems is presented, within which statistical information is only one component."     

Waste paper and the market mechanism

Increasing attention is being given to the possible consequences which might follow from the exhaustion of the world's natural resources. Countering the pessimistic conclusions of such institutions as the Club of Rome, economists such as Wilfred Beckerman have emphasized the importance of substitution, pointing to many examples where a shortage of one raw material has led to the discovery or development of alternative materials, e.g. artificial for natural rubber, aluminium for copper.Substitution usually occurs through normal market mechanisms, i.e. changes in relative prices. However in some circumstances the market mechanism may be inhibited by a variety of factors, so that its operation requires to be supplemented by an outside agency. This article explores this possibility in relation to the paper making industry, which provides a particularly interesting example owing to the existence of a well established market in waste paper, the main substitute for the major natural resource, woodpulp.A brief indication is given of the relative importance of waste paper and an outline of the structure of the U.K. market; the conditions under which greater utilization of waste paper might occur are then considered taking a sideways look at the influence of the individual. In the final section the various implications for the role of the state are summarized.     

Changes in the social definition of early childhood and the new forms of symbolic violence

Conclusion The nursery school may be considered an institution and a market where the habits produced by the family are moulded, developed and standardized; thus, it is confronted with an objective definition of early childhood embedded in pedagogical practices. The proper objective of a sociology of nursery-school practice is the analysis of the lag between the functions delegated to the school by the different social classes and the functions which it objectively tends to fulfill. Here we have the best test of the lag between the pedagogic demands of the different classes and what the schools supply-which is very abstract, with results that are only visible at a later stage in the school career. It is not so much a question of learning to read or of preparing to do so (the acquisition of certain logical operations or a developed sensitivity, of acquiring a few I.Q. points). This learning takes place through many varied activities which apppear to be far from the learning function.All told, the conditions for understanding nursery-school exercises flow from the conditions for inventing these exercises. For instance, in games of manipulation, construction, classifying various objects, is not some knowledge of Piaget (at least in the sense of some psychologikal knowledge) needed to understand that practical manipulation is also logical manipulation, to see in cube games the learning of logic? Similarly, the language naïveté cultivated in language games is a clever naïveté, which supposes for example a cultured re-discovery of popular archaic language or of child talk. p ]Is it not likely to appear as pure childishness to those who, without the ncessary cultural knowledge, do not have the keys to decipher these ostensibly naïve exercises? Similarly, the conditions for understanding children's drawings as artistic learning (and the nursery school as an educational institution) are the very conditions for understanding modern art as art.It is not just a matter of perception and understanding; as the objective definition of early childhood proper to the different social classes becomes pervasive both in the relationship with school and in the socialization practices of the family, it patterns the children's habitus (as long-lasting internalized dispositions), which in turn influence the child's behavior and attitude towards school.The perception categories and the different forms of treatment of young children appropriate to each social class are not simply the result of the diffusion of definitions of early childhood produced by the autonomous evolution of scientific and artistic disciplines. They are the products of all the social and cultural conditions which define the class situation. We may also wonder whether at least some pedagogy and certain types of exercises do not presume that the child has socially marked attitudes, produced in some classes by family inculcation. For instance, a general attitude of disinterested interest is required by a pedagogy offering multiple activities and open to an attitude of active research and exploration. Does not this attitude suppose as an existential possibility the condition of social classes protected from economic pressure and from the urgency of immediate life, a general attitude towards life nearer to leisure than to the constraints of work?Thus, in confronting supply with demand—here even less than elsewhere-there is no question of comparing the expectations arising from users' opinions with the program offered in the official definition of the institution. The expectations are those which arise from objective determinations inherent in each social group, the forms of treatment and perception of early childhood. To analyze the program-and therefore to ascertain the social conditions governing the use of the nursery school—the dominant definition of early childhood on which the institution is founded must be brought to light. Moreover, the way in which this definition is written into the curriculum (and, subsequently, into pedagogical practice) must also be studied. This implies that the preliminary condition for a sociological analysis of the functions performed by the nursery school for the different social classes would be an analysis of a) the components of this dominant definition of early childhood and b) of the social conditions in those groups which make it possible to identify these components.We wish to thank P. Bourdieu for his advice during our research. R. Collins provided useful suggestions after reading the first version of this paper.     

Internalized Other Interviewing in Relational Therapy: Three Discursive Approaches to Understanding its Use and Outcomes

For over 20 years, family therapist Karl Tomm has been engaging families and couples with a therapeutic intervention he calls Internalized Other Interviewing (IOI). The IOI (cf. Emmerson‐Whyte, 2010; Hurley, 2006) entails interviewing clients, from the personal experiences of partners and family members as an internalized other. The IOI is based on the idea that through dialogues over time, one can internalize a sense of one's conversational partner responsiveness in reliably anticipated ways. Anyone who has thought in a conversation with a family member or partner, “Oh there s/he goes again,” or anticipates next words before they leave the other's mouth, has a sense of what we are calling an internalized other. For Tomm, the internalized anticipations partners and family members may have offers entry points into new dialogues with therapeutic potential—particularly, when their actual dialogues get stuck in dispreferred patterns.     

The historical roots of multicultural unity along the Upper Guinea Coast and in Guinea-Bissau

Lusofonia or lusophony is often defined as an identity shared by people in areas that were once colonised by Portugal, which in Africa include Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. Lusofonia assumes that in these places people share something – a language, certainly, but also a history and culture rooted in the Iberian Peninsula. In some ways it is a re-articulation of Gilberto Freyre’s lusotropicalismo, the idea that Portuguese were more adaptable than other Europeans to tropical climates and cultures and created more multicultural colonial communities. Those who espouse lusofonia often have a political agenda – the strengthening of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries. In this article, we argue that, like lusotropicalismo, lusofonia is a dream; it is not rooted in a historical reality. It is luso-centric in that it ignores the power and persistence of local cultures and gives undue weight to Portuguese influence. With regard to Africa, lusofonia’s agenda is elite driven and assumes the inevitability of modernity and globalisation. And we demonstrate that it was through Upper Guinean institutions and languages, and not colonial ones, that community and fellowship were most commonly fostered in the past, as they are fostered today. Those seeking the roots of lusofonia cannot, then, look to this period of Portuguese–African engagement in Upper Guinea. There Portuguese embraced “black ways.” They operated in a peculiar multicultural space in which people possessed fluid and flexible identities. Portugal did not create that space. Lusofonia has not been the foundation for cultural unity. Rather, unity has been found in localised institutions and in Crioulo. In Guinea-Bissau, lusofonia is not an indigenous movement. If it is anything, it is the stuff of elites and foreigners and is not rooted in any historical reality.