Deaf and disabled? (Un)Employment of deaf people in Belgium: a comparison of eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century cohorts

In this article, the employment characteristics of pre-industrial and industrial cohorts of deaf men and women are compared with each other, as well as with a cohort of non-disabled siblings. The aim is to determine the extent to which the employment patterns of deaf persons lined up with those of non-disabled people and to see how nineteenth-century industrialization processes influenced their employment opportunities. This article challenges the widely held assumption that the nineteenth century constituted a definitive break by arguing that the professional lives of deaf people were not necessarily better before industrialization. Moreover, I demonstrate that the development of deaf schools in the course of the nineteenth century opened a new range of career opportunities for deaf individuals.     

Employers' perspectives on benefit conditionality in the UK and Denmark

This article examines the under-explored demand-side of active labour market policies (ALMPs). Based on interview data from a comparative study of the UK and Denmark, the paper analyses employers' perspectives and experiences of ALMPs. In both countries, employers were favourably disposed towards employing unemployed jobseekers but held negative views on conditionality. First, benefit conditionality led to employers receiving large numbers of unsuitable and unfiltered job applications, with associated negative resource impacts. Second, employers perceived this as a product of ‘box ticking' and compliance targets. Finally, employers criticised policy and media rhetoric for focusing solely on the supply-side and for problematizing unemployed candidates. The paper argues that these crucial, but neglected, employer perspectives demonstrate that the current benefit conditionality regime in the UK risks irrevocably ‘tarnishing' candidates, which undermines, rather than enhances, their chances of securing employment through ALMPs. This unique dataset provides further evidence that the current direction of policy requires urgent and radical re-thinking.     

考虑属性关联的两阶段获胜者确定模型

研究了多属性逆向拍卖的获胜者确定问题。考虑属性之间的两两关联，以定义在2-可加模糊测度上的Choquet积分表达拍卖人的偏好，其中模糊测度的值由拍卖人提供的偏好信息推测得出。由于一般情况下与偏好信息一致的模糊测度取值并不唯一，考虑所有一致的评分函数提出了两阶段获胜者确定方法。首先采用线性规划挑选出在任意评分函数下可能获胜的报价，再通过混合整数规划确定一个与所有一致的评分函数的评价结果最为接近的报价排序，以得分最高者为稳健获胜报价。仿真实验表明，大量的报价为不可能获胜报价，说明了在第一阶段进行筛选的必要性。与现有方法的比较表明了该方法的有效性，且在拍卖轮数较大、报价数目较多时，该方法在计算效率上更有优势。     

Changes in work and care trajectories during the transition to motherhood

In most mid- and high-income countries, there have been significant demographic, structural, and cultural changes in the past decades. However, we know little about how these changes have shaped women's work patterns during a key life stage: the transition to motherhood. Using longitudinal data from Chile, covering over 30 years of employment histories and three periods of first births (1980–2010), I conduct sequence analysis to identify women's work-care trajectories during an eight-year period of the transition to motherhood. Over time, I find that continuous care work at home has declined, for which education plays a key role, while the chances of working continuously have not changed over time. Instead, I find an increasing trend of unsteady paths that combine paid work with either caretaking or unemployment. I discuss how these changes, as well as their association with education, have important implications for both gender and social inequality.     

Humor and satire in politics: Introducing cultural sociology to the field

The landscape of political humor and satire is changing rapidly, and it is becoming an increasingly relevant aspect of our culture. Although scholars have been actively trying to capture this change, majority of the existing frameworks for understanding humor and satire in politics still reduce these phenomena to mere genres or rhetoric tools. In addition, they provide insufficient accounts concerning the reception of humor and satire, and neglect to interpret and explain what they communicate. In the article, a general understanding of humor and satire outside of a political context, followed by an overview of studies discussing humor and satire in politics through their applications in social movements, as leadership tools, and through their manifestations in mass media has been presented. Lastly, a cultural sociological perspective to the field has been introduced. It has been argued that approaching humor and satire in politics through a structural hermeneutic method of the Strong Program will enable us to recognize and treat political humor and satire as autonomous and complex cultural systems which carry an internal power to move people.     

就业优先:以"公平而有质量"的教育 在民族地区阻断贫困代际传递

“发展教育脱贫一批”是在民族地区实现共同富裕的重要方针。然而在“教育改变命运”的共识之外，布迪厄认为教育一代代地维持着对社会中下阶层的不公平的“文化再生产”理论，被一些学者应用于对我国少数民族教育的研究。如在“三区三州”等民族地区，代际间的贫困传递难以阻断，因家庭文化资本弱势而造成子女求学、求职受阻，看似可用“贫困文化的再生产”予以概括，但笔者不同意直接套用西方理论认定中国存在“教育不公平”的论述。因为我国社会实际与布氏提出“学校教育再生产社会阶层结构”观点之环境不同，有多项教育政策在切实保障着少数民族通过“教育改变命运”——当前在我国民族地区实现教育公平的主要障碍，并非 “文化再生产”的结构性阻力，而在于就业环节的阶段性困难。教育公平可分为起点、过程和结果三个环节，民族地区经多年教育扶贫，“起点”入学机会和“过程”教育质量已明显改善，而作为“结果”的就业环节亟待改善。以“就业优先”方针多渠道扩大少数民族就业，可激发内生动力、促进市场融入、巩固减贫成效和精准防控返贫，是助少数民族自主掌握教育“社会阶梯”和阻断贫困代际传递的有效路径。     

试析“秘书问题”的本质及解决路径

“秘书问题”是20世纪90年代出现的一个具有特殊含义的词语，主要指存在于部分秘书身上的晋升快、越权干政、贪污腐败和领导权力掮客等负面现象。其实“秘书问题”与领导问题息息相关，与领导权力寻租、权力失控有密切的关系。要解决“秘书问题”，可从加强领导权力制约和运行监管、健全秘书使用监管机制、培育秘书信念道德三条途径入手，关键是有效制约领导权力。     

The disembedded digital economy: Social protection for new economy employment in China

This research focuses upon employment in the new economy, exploring labour protection and social protection in the digital age in China. Through an empirical survey conducted in three Chinese cities, social insurance and the labour rights of employees in the digital economic sector, such as gig employment, e-commerce, and various other forms of online employment, have been examined in-depth. This study reveals new regulatory loopholes in the digital labour market, which have substantially eroded the basis of social policy arrangements in China, “softening” participation in social insurance branches and compliance with labour regulations remarkably. Drawing upon the theoretical concepts of Polanyi on embeddedness and disembeddedness, we argue that the digital employment sector in China has been increasingly disembedded from social institutions and social control. The new configuration in the digital field of social policy requires novel conceptual models and institutional settings to cope with increasing social risks in virtual spaces.     

Wage and Non-Wage Compensation Among Young Alcoholic and Heavy Drinking Women: A Preliminary Analysis

The association between drinking and selected job characteristics among women aged 24 to 31 is examined. Using the 1989 NLSY, women are classified as alcohol abusers or dependent based on DSM-III-R criteria or as heavy drinkers based on reported frequency of six or more drinks. Heavy drinking is negatively associated with wage and non-wage compensation. These effects diminish when human capital measures are controlled. Current alcoholism and current and past heavy drinking are strongly negatively associated with years of schooling. The association between alcoholism and job compensation and characteristics is not as strong as that seen for heavy drinking. It is not known if this is a consequence of errors in identifying alcoholic women in population-based surveys.     

Middle School Children's Perceptions on Welfare and Poverty: An Exploratory, Qualitative Study

This study was undertaken to determine how middle school children assess the effects of welfare reform on their daily lives. The study consisted of thirty interviews with children and their mothers recruited from a middle school in a large, metropolitan area. From the children's perspective, multiple jobs and evening/night hours interfered with the child-parent relationship. Other consequences included grades going down and not getting to school on time. All the children stated that mothers should work, but most children felt mothers should only work when their children are in school. Welfare and poverty were issues about which children were teased at school.