„Politische Religionen“ (Eric Voegelin und Raymond Aron) — ein Begriff zur Differenzierung von Fundamentalismen?

The concept of ?political religion“ has been introduced in the late 1930s by Eric Voegelin and Raymond Aron in order to analyze the ?religious character“ of the new totalitarian political mass movements, i. e. Fascism, National Socialism and Communism, as ?collective religions of salvation“ from a critical perspective. Both abandoned the term later and replaced it by ?modern political gnosis“ or ?ersatz of religion“ (Voegelin) and ?secular religion“ (Aron). In this paper the concept and history of the term ?political religions“will be reconstructed, and the author examines the question, if it can be considered an appropriate tool of differentiation in the discussion of socalled fundamentalisms. This will be accomplished by using the example of ?radical Islamism“.     

Markt – Inklusion – Gerechtigkeit

After providing, at the outset, sketches of a number of current theoretical positions as well as empirical approaches regarding the question of justice, we will present the perspective of historico-genetic theory in greater detail. The explanatory strategy of the latter, as it relates to the postulate of justice, rests on three interlinked lines of argument: from an anthropological perspective, the thematic area of morals and justice will be connected back, in both form and substance, to the human constitution as it emerged over the course of the history of the species; from an epistemological perspective, the development of cognition and the capacity to engage in reflection will be connected structurally and processually to the development of forms of society, in the process reconstructing the genesis of the normative postulate of justice; finally, from a social-theoretical perspective, the question will be posed under which conditions social justice has been demanded in the course of societal development resting on processes of power—and how it can be made valid. In conclusion, we will briefly introduce individual contributions with regard to how they connect with the historico-genetic theory.     

Exploring the relationship between gambling,debt and financial management in Britain

The issue of how and why gamblers end up in debt has received comparatively little attention in the literature. Data from the 2007 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS) revealed that although problem gamblers were more likely than non-problem gamblers to have forms of financial debt, just under two-thirds of problem gamblers (62%) reported having no debt. Using a qualitative approach, this study aimed to explore the issue from the perspective of gamblers themselves through interviews with 27 purposively sampled gamblers drawn from participants who took part in the APMS and the British Gambling Prevalence Survey 2010. Analysis, using the Framework method, suggested the existence of four kinds of gamblers categorized by their approach to gambling spending and their approach to their general spending: ‘controlled gamblers’, ‘uncontrolled gamblers’, ‘uncontrolled spenders’ and ‘chaotic spenders’. Also proposed on the basis of these data is an ecological model which aims to capture the different levels of personal and environmental factors that influenced people's financial decisions, including cognitive factors, control and compulsion, normative spending, resource and financial management, and the credit environment. The implications for practice are also discussed.     

Changes in Social Exclusion Indicators and Psychological Distress Among Homeless People Over a 2.5-Year Period

Although homelessness is inherently associated with social exclusion, homeless individuals are rarely included in conventional studies on social exclusion. Use of longitudinal survey data from a cohort study on homeless people in four major Dutch cities (n = 378) allowed to examine: changes in indicators of social exclusion among homeless people over a 2.5-year period after reporting to the social relief system, and associations between changes in indicators of social exclusion and changes in psychological distress. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was applied to investigate the associations between changes in indicators of social exclusion and changes in psychological distress. Improvements were found in various indicators of social exclusion, whereas financial debts showed no significant improvement. Changes in unmet care needs, health insurance, social support from family and relatedness to others were related to changes in psychological distress. This study demonstrated improvements in various indicators of social exclusion among homeless people over a period of 2.5 years, and sheds light on the concept of social exclusion in relation to homelessness.     

Learning to gamble: early gambling experiences among young people in Denmark

This article presents results from the first phase of a longitudinal qualitative study of gambling among young people in Denmark. The longitudinal study is designed to capture the trajectories of young gamblers and to explore how social and cultural factors and processes impact on young people's gambling careers. The first stage of analysis places a special emphasis on young people's introduction to gambling and the social contexts of these early gambling experiences. Theoretically, this first study is guided by a symbolic interactionist approach. We conclude that early experiences with gambling are socially mediated and that significant social contexts such as the family and peer groups form important contexts of these early experiences. Our evidence suggest that becoming engaged in gambling is a social process involving a transfer of skills and knowledge in which novices learn how to play and to attribute specific meanings to gambling. Overall, our findings indicate that young people start gambling not because of purely individual characteristics or deviant motivations but through social processes within significant social networks. Implications for prevention and further research are briefly discussed.     

Restricted likelihood ratio lack-of-fit tests using mixed spline models

Summary.  Penalized regression spline models afford a simple mixed model representation in which variance components control the degree of non-linearity in the smooth function estimates. This motivates the study of lack-of-fit tests based on the restricted maximum likelihood ratio statistic which tests whether variance components are 0 against the alternative of taking on positive values. For this one-sided testing problem a further complication is that the variance component belongs to the boundary of the parameter space under the null hypothesis. Conditions are obtained on the design of the regression spline models under which asymptotic distribution theory applies, and finite sample approximations to the asymptotic distribution are provided. Test statistics are studied for simple as well as multiple-regression models.     

Evidence-Based Work in the Dutch Welfare Sector

The article addresses the topic of evidence–based workin the welfare sector in the Netherlands. It is argued thatthere is insufficient evidence–based practice in socialwork and the reasons for this are discussed. Ways to developevidence-based practice are discussed and it is recommendedthat welfare professionals and researchers work more closelytogether.     

Exact uniformly most powerful postselection confidence distributions

A conditioning on the event of having selected one model from a set of possibly misspecified normal linear regression models leads to the construction of uniformly optimal conditional confidence distributions. They can be used for valid postselection inference. The constructed conditional confidence distributions are finite sample exact and encompass all information regarding the focus parameter in the selected model. This includes the construction of optimal postselection confidence intervals at all significance levels and uniformly most powerful hypothesis tests.