The Human Right to Food as Political Imaginary

The overwhelmingly normative nature of the study of Economic, Social, and Cultural (ESC) human rights enables ESC rights to function in their default settings as taken for granted norms and principles, originating in international agreements. This paper, instead, probes the social and historical “thingness” of ESC human rights themselves. It analyses the emergence of the Human Right to Food (HRF), and proposes a sociological model, political imaginary, as an explanatory tool to identify the historical socio‐discursive conditions of the emergence of the HRF. It uses this model to understand FoodFirst Internal Action Network (FIAN)'s contributions to the development of the HRF.     

Social Costs of Gambling in the Czech Republic 2012

Evidence about social costs of gambling is scarce and the methodology for their calculation has been a subject to strong criticism. We aimed to estimate social costs of gambling in the Czech Republic 2012. This retrospective, prevalence based cost of illness study builds on the revised methodology of Australian Productivity Commission. Social costs of gambling were estimated by combining epidemiological and economic data. Prevalence data on negative consequences of gambling were taken from existing national epidemiological studies. Economic data were taken from various national and international sources. Consequences of problem and pathological gambling only were taken into account. In 2012, the social costs of gambling in the Czech Republic were estimated to range between 541,619 and 619,608 thousands EUR. While personal and family costs accounted for 63% of all social costs, direct medical costs were estimated to range from 0.25 to 0.28% of all social costs only. This is the first study which estimates social costs of gambling in any of the Central and East European countries. It builds upon the solid evidence about prevalence of gambling related problems in the Czech Republic and satisfactorily reliable economic data. However, there is a number of limitations stemming from assumptions that were made, which suggest that the methodology for the calculation of the social costs of gambling needs further development.     

Food Well-Being in Older Adults: Effects of a Universal Non-contributory Pension in Mexico

Social Indicators Research - One of the few universal programs in Latin America is the Food Pension for Adults Older than 68 (PAAM) of Mexico City, which aims to reduce food insecurity while...     

What causes more mistrust: profile owners deleting user-generated content or website contributors masking their identities?

People regularly rely on user-generated contributions to websites to inform their opinions about people, companies, organizations, and products. This study examines how two website affordances uniquely affect the evaluation of user-generated content. Specifically, an experiment was conducted that varied whether a website (a) affords profile owners the ability to delete user-generated contributions or (b) verifies the identity of users who post evaluations of profile owners. The results suggest that although deleting user-generated content is viewed as more problematic, both forms of information control independently affect how viewers evaluate a website and the content it hosts. The findings help establish the conditions under which certain forms of information control differentially produce uncertainty and mistrust and thus have direct implications for warranting theory.     

The estimation of multidimensional fixed effects panel data models

This article introduces the appropriate within estimators for the most frequently used three-dimensional fixed effects panel data models. It analyzes the behavior of these estimators in the cases of no self-flow data, unbalanced data, and dynamic autoregressive models. The main results are then generalized for higher dimensional panel data sets as well.     

How Do the Urban Poor Survive? A Comparative Ethnography of Subsistence Strategies in Argentina,Ecuador, and Mexico

Qualitative Sociology - Drawing on ethnographic data collected in three informal communities, one in Argentina, one in México, and one in Ecuador, we address the long-standing question posed...     

How Perceptions Matter: Organizational Vulnerability and Practices of Resilience in the Field of Migration

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This article presents a qualitative analysis of the practices of civil society organizations (CSOs) to integrate migrants...     

Quadriplegia,virtue theory,and flourishing: a qualitative study drawing on self-narratives

Grounded in the logic of the virtue tradition, the qualitative study “the good life and quadriplegia” collected the self-narratives of people that have lived with the impairment over the medium to long term. This article draws on those narratives to describe how people understood the good life in the context of the losses and hardship of their spinal-cord injury, and the virtues and attitudes that helped them to achieve it. While highlighting the importance of virtue, participant stories resisted the ideology of the positivity myth, recognising that flourishing includes hardships, limitation, and failure, as well as meaning, virtue, and accomplishment.     

Predicting attitudes and behavioural intentions towards social entrepreneurship: the role of servant leadership in young people / Predicción de las actitudes y las intenciones conductuales hacia el emprendimiento social: el papel del liderazgo de servicio en los jóvenes

: Social entrepreneurship (SE) refers to the development of innovative projects whose main aim is not individual profit but the transformation of society. The issue is particularly important for promoting youth development and participation. This research offers insights from two studies designed from a multi-dimensional perspective analysing attitudes and behavioural intentions towards social ventures built upon the constructs of servant leadership and lifestyles. Results of Study 1 indicated that servant leadership is a key predictor of attitudes and behavioural intentions towards social entrepreneurship, while having a violent lifestyle is negatively associated with these attitudes and intentions. Study 2 showed that servant leadership style predicted attitudes towards social entrepreneurship over and above other types of leadership (i.e., transformational, transactional and laissez-faire). These studies demonstrate the importance of considering servant leadership and relational styles as key factors in predicting attitudes and behavioural intentions regarding social and active participation of young people. Limitations of the study and applications to designing interventions aimed at improving attitudes and behavioural intentions towards social entrepreneurship are discussed.