Can the Concept of Lifestyle Migration be applied to Return Migration? The Case of Estonians in the UK

This article makes the case for using the concept of lifestyle migration to understand return migration. The key argument is that there are several advantages for engaging with lifestyle migration literature when analysing people's return, of which the prime reason is to draw attention away from the affective and emotional aspects of return migration and view it as a conscious decision related to future planning. A combination of statistical data and interviews with highly skilled Estonian migrants in the UK shows how the return of these migrants is often related to moving from one life stage to another. In the conscious process of planning for a family, several aspects related to both countries were evaluated and the return was often explained as benefitting the (potential) family. The article also claims that there is a need for lifestyle migration research to engage more actively on interlinkages between lifestyle and life stage.     

From Rights to Responsibilities: Identity Politics and Ethnographic Methodology,Dialogues with South African Musicians

Abstract

The ethnographic endeavour is often riven by a tension between two claims to the ‘right’ to research asserted either on the basis of identity claims or professional expertise. A closely associated debate within the academy is characterised by an oscillation between concern about uneven power relations and the desire to maintain effective research practice. Attempting to address the absence of voices of ‘subjects’ in this debate, I discuss the issue with musicians who critique both notions of identity and academic expertise as providing ethnographic authority, and propose a shift in discourse from rights to responsibility. This progresses beyond essentialism but insists that structural power inequalities between researchers and researched be accounted for, thus moving towards more situated, responsible ethnographic theory and practice.     

Ownership claims,valuation practices,and the unpacking of energy-landscape conflicts

There is now a substantive body of academic literature which focuses on protests against local infrastructural developments. This literature is often characterised by the key words ‘NIMBY’ or (facility-) ‘siting controversies’. The rapid development of renewable energy technologies – which are largely sited in rural areas – has created a new version of this controversy; energy-landscape conflicts. In many countries, large infrastructural developments are regulated through spatial planning legislation, often causing various tensions between new technologies, an evolving policy agenda, and a legislative framework which was largely conceived in a different era and which is slow to adapt. Alternatively, and in line with neo-liberal thinking, the logic of development can be subjected to cost-benefit analysis, whereby the value of the wind farm can be compared with the value of the ‘unspoiled’ landscape. This paper takes a more holistic approach to energy-landscape conflicts, by examining claims of ownership and notions and measures of value inherent in different claims and value systems which (seek to) influence decision-making. We examine both the logic of monetary valuation and the implicit value statements in various policy intervention options to point at the need for a more heterogeneous and multidisciplinary approach to policy evaluation. We then look at notions of ownership, rights and duties in relation to landscape and to our energy future, and we highlight the potential for using an analytical property rights framework which cuts across various levels of claims and value statements, from the national and ideological to the personal and practice-based.     

The myth of salary discrimination in public relations

One of the more puzzling dimensions of the public relations literature is the persistent claim of salary discrimination against women in the field, despite the absence of even a single comprehensive study on the topic. Even more disturbing is that closely related fields like marketing and advertising—as well as more professionalized fields like medicine—have made no such claims of discrimination, despite larger salary gaps and larger correlations between salary and gender than in the PR field.Detailed statistical analysis of a major salary survey and a review of existing studies both indicate that there is no empirical reason to believe that there is gender-based salary discrimination in the PR field. Findings from the PR salary survey show that there is little or no discrimination, even without considering factors (e.g., employment breaks-in-service) that were shown to have substantial explanatory power in salary surveys from other fields.Circumstantial evidence of PR salary discrimination existed 20 years ago, but the evidence available since that time suggests strongly that there has been little or no salary discrimination for at least the past decade.     

Intrinsic and extrinsic effects on behavioral tax biases in risky investment decisions

Individuals often do not take taxes correctly into account, which results in distorted or unexpected investments. We shed further light on the discussion of such behavioral tax perception biases by analyzing intrinsic and extrinsic effects on investment decisions. We study two dimensions: (1) the influence of emotions and perceived risk (individual dimension, intrinsic effects) and (2) the influence of available tax information by varying tax complexity and salience (tax system dimension, extrinsic effects). In our laboratory experiment, we construct the payoff structure such that the subjects are confronted with exactly the same choices in net terms in a situation with or without a capital gains tax. This design allows us to identify pure tax perception biases. We show that both dimensions are able to explain tax perception biases. In particular, we find evidence that perceived risk is lower and consequently willingness to take risk is higher with a capital gains tax (with full loss offset provision) than without taxation. Furthermore, this positive effect on risky investment is higher in a situation with a rather low level of tax information in which tax complexity is high and tax salience is low.     

Integrating psychometric and cultural theory approaches to formulate an alternative measure of risk perception

Psychometric and cultural theory are key approaches used to explain risk perceptions. However, both approaches explain only 20 and 5–10% of the variance of risk perceptions, respectively. Through advances in social psychology, terror management theory revealed that certain survey questions used in the psychometric approach primed thoughts of death. Such unintentional priming evoked defense mechanisms that would subconsciously activate participants’ cultural biases and values when answering some questions but not others. There are two implications: one, psychometric theorists need to modify their questionnaires to reduce the incidence of priming thoughts of death; and two, integrating the psychometric and cultural theory approaches may potentially explain a higher amount of variance in risk perceptions. Specifically, attitudes (psychometric approach), demographics, affect and past behavior collectively influence cultural biases, which in turn exert an effect on risk perception. However, such a model calls for an appropriate measure of the dynamic nature of cultural biases that current attitudinal measures fall short of. Drawing from methodology within industrial/organizational psychology, the Situational Judgment Test (SJT) is proposed as an alternative measure for risk perception. Steps to designing an SJT are outlined and followed through to culminate in a 10-item SJT that measures cultural biases.     

Football hooligans: old bottle,new whines?

This paper reviews the claims about the explanation of violence around football put forward by Armstrong and Harris in the light of more widespread faults in the analysis of ‘hooliganism’. It argues that conceptual, definitional and methodological problems mean that the data Armstrong and Harris supply should not cause anyone to abandon either of the two theoretical positions they think they criticize. In particular their dismissal of the moral panic type of approach to the study of football hooliganism is rebutted. Evidence concerning Scottish football is supplied to support this and to indicate that all English researchers into this issue require to revise their arguments.     

The insufficient imagery of top-down,bottom-up in global movements analysis

Scholars have shown various ways in which new types of transnational interdependence influence conflicts and resistance. Conventional conceptualization often depicts movements as emerging from the ‘bottom-up’ efforts of distinctive, individual collectives to challenge the ‘top-down’ hegemony of bureaucratic states, multinational corporations, and some international civil society organizations. But globalization scholars, and particularly those developing a framework of world society studies, place interactions among different levels of action and orientation at the center of conflict analysis and show how mobilization and change occurs across complex, interdependent relationships. In this article, I interrogate the different and often contradictory ways that dimensions of mobilization and social change are commonly denoted in this usage. I then explore alternative global theoretical frameworks that give greater explanatory power to the dynamic global–local interface. To move beyond the constraints of binary thinking in global movements analysis, I suggest that future scholarship clearly specify significant attributes of mobilization, identify how attributes vary and co-mingle, and locate social processes among a host of global–local relationships.     

Between Mechanism Talk And Mechanism Cult: New Emphases in Explanatory Sociology And Empirical Research

The study of mechanisms has received increased attention in recent years and contributed to the formation of so-called ‘analytical sociology’ that has put the idea of social mechanisms at its core. We discuss the crucial characteristics of mechanism-based explanations and their relation to the longstanding tradition of explanatory sociology. Looking at the widespread and growing number of references to ‘mechanisms’ in the current research literature, we identify typical deviations from the ideal of a mechanism-based explanation. Many references come down to mechanism talk insofar as it is not explicated in detail how and why particular inputs tend to result in particular outputs. To this end, researchers have to give a detailed verbal account of how exactly a mechanism is thought to unfold under specified conditions, or to specify a formal generative model which can be analysed analytically or by simulation. This agenda has been at the core of methodological individualism, sociological rational choice theory, and explanatory sociology for some time, but has received a new coat of whitewash by analytical sociology. This more recent theoretical movement offers a fresh problem-centred agenda based on the well-known macro-micro-macro model and could inspire a new generation of research that places greater weight on analysing social dynamics than on developing theories of action. However, we submit that, rather than constituting a competing approach, these impulses should be located within the longstanding and multifaceted explanatory agenda in sociology. Avoiding any form of mechanism cult and choosing from the full toolbox of explanatory/analytical sociology will be crucial to answer key questions in established areas of sociological research.     

The social bordering of lifestyle sports: inclusive principles,exclusive reality

Lifestyle sports are created and maintained through global youth cultural representations disseminated by many current media channels. Lifestyle sports attract young people due to their images of sociality, joyful creativity, speed and excitement, urban exoticism and their subcultural distinction from mainstream sports. This distinction is maintained with claims of social and cultural openness. Through a case analysis conducted for a research project we asked: How open are lifestyle sports communities and to whom? Who can take part in the subcultural world of lifestyle sports? What kinds of structural or personal attributes connected with individuals restrict certain young people's participation in this world? The research material consists of qualitative and quantitative data collected among skateboarding, longboarding, parkour and roller derby practitioners in Finland. Seeking answers brings researchers to the classical sociological background variables and their intersections: gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and socioeconomic status. In lifestyle sports, these categorisations are linked with physical skills as subcultural symbolic capital, which is central in the exclusive and inclusive practices in lifestyle sports communities. Despite the inclusive principles that lifestyle sports practitioners emphasise, the ideal lifestyle sport practitioner seems to be represented by hegemonic masculinity, muscular strength and agility symbolising sporting abilities.     

Sexuality,Morality and Lifestyle: The ABC of HIV Prevention Strategies in Rural Papua New Guinea

This article explores the national program for the prevention of the spread of HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea and its intersection with the experiences of a rural community in Western Province. The social marketing of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention has seen an influx of categories and definitions of people, sexual behaviour and HIV/AIDS that have the potential to create confusion, but also spaces in which rural populations can understand and conceptualise AIDS. In the present paper, the preventative program is examined from the perspective of the Gogodala, whose understandings of sickness and prevention are based on an intimate and interactive relationship with the local environment. In this context, ‘lifestyle’ (ela gi) and the maintenance of certain ‘laws’ is the primary method of sickness prevention. I argue that an exploration of the local dynamic between sexuality, morality and lifestyle is vital to the evaluation of the impact of these awareness and prevention programs and the possibilities for future prevention strategies.     

The mathematics and marketing of dead chip programmes: finding and keeping the edge

A general perception exists among casino executives that the premium players contribute a disproportionate share of profits. Consequently, to attract and retain high‐end customers, many casinos are using ‘dead chip’ programs and other incentives. Dead chips are non‐negotiable chips that are not exchangeable or redeemable and cannot be used for any purpose except to gamble. Very often the result of such a program is to reduce the effective statistical advantage of the house on games played. This article provides a mathematical framework to determine the effective house advantage under dead chip programs with applications to a variety of games and discusses the marketing and management implications of dead chip programs in light of these results.     

Vulnerability to violence of girls of the street in Mauritania

This article is concerned with an empirical study of girls of the street in Mauritania. This study is original for three main reasons. First, it investigates Mauritania, a country where there have been very few studies of the phenomenon of children of the street. Secondly, it seems to us that though the academic literature on street children sometimes provides comparisons between girls and boys, very few studies focus specifically on girls of the street. Thirdly, the literature focusing on children of the street generally elucidates the mechanisms that lead some young people to live on the streets. On the contrary to previous literature, our study does not directly focus on mechanisms that lead some young people to live on the streets. Our study focuses on the question of the socio-economic determinants of the risk of violence. In other words, whereas the literature, following the hypothesis of aberrant families, uses violence as an explanatory factor for the phenomenon of children of the street, we attempt here to highlight the explanatory factors for the risk of violence and we treat this risk as an explained variable. A novel finding emerges from this study: there is less risk of violence facing girls of the street if the mother does not work. Conversely, the risk of violence is greater if the mother works and the father stays at home.     

Intersectional Approaches in Health‐Risk Research: A Critical Review

The overall aim of this article is to explore how the intersectional approach is used in health‐risk research. The concept has been recognized in health‐risk research since the early 2000s, but not as much as in the broader field of health‐inequality studies. However, in the past 5 years, Social Science and Medicine has published a series of review articles that argue for the necessity of bringing intersectional perspectives to the field of health‐risk studies more generally and quantitative health‐risk research in particular. Asking what it means for health‐risk researchers to practise intersectionality shows the implications of translating a theoretical approach across fields and disciplines. When applying intersectional theory in relation to health‐risks, the theoretical conceptualization of health and risk are often very limited and treated as fixed categories – something that becomes problematic when taken within an intersectional framework. This does not mean that this work is unimportant, but rather that the link between theoretically driven intersectionality and empirical‐focused health research is weak. In order to overcome the dividing lines of health‐risk research and intersectionality, we argue for a new approach that echoes the ‘doing gender’ of gender studies: doing risk.     

The Trouble with Bullying – Deconstructing the Conventional Definition of Bullying for a Child‐centred Investigation into Children's Use of Social Media

This article deconstructs the conventional definition of bullying through analysis of its historical context, and identifies blind spots using lenses of gender, culture and setting. We explore theoretical and methodological problems associated with the conventional definition and its axiomatic use in bullying research, with particular reference to online bullying. We argue that because children may use ‘bullying’ to mean many different practices not captured in the conventional definition, using this definition often obscures the very phenomena researchers are aiming to describe. As a result, adults risk missing these practices in research and for interventions that use these studies as their evidence base.     

Changing Behaviours,Improving Outcomes? Governing Healthy Lifestyles Through Social Marketing

Recent public health policy and practice in the UK and beyond has promoted behavioural and lifestyle change as key methods for health improvement and the reduction of inequalities. These methods contrast with more upstream and structural interventions intended to address environmental and material determinants of health. A current exemplar of this approach is the use of social marketing. These changes represent a shift from the social to the individual as the target of public health interventions and raise a number of critical questions for health social scientists concerned not only with health improvement but also equity and social justice. Further, they can be identified as part of broader social and economic shifts that posit the individual as responsible for the management of their own bodies and selves in late modern societies characterised by ‘government at a distance’ and the repeal of welfare. This paper offers a review of shifting paradigms of public health and considers the implications of newer modes of health governance such as social marketing and their role as a modern form of health governance.     

A new ‘aging males’ symptoms' rating scale

Unlike in women, where instruments are available to measure the severity of symptoms, standardized instruments are lacking for aging males. However, a new ‘aging males’ symptoms' (AMS) rating scale has been developed in the present study, as well as reference values.

A total of 116 medically well-characterized males (aged over 40 years) were recruited to complete a questionnaire of symptoms, the prevalence of which commonly changes with increasing age. Factor analysis was used to establish the raw scale and to identify the dimensions of the scale. This raw scale was applied to a large representative population sample of 992 German males, to establish reference values for the severity of symptoms in males over 40 years.

Three dimensions of symptoms were identified in the patient group: a psychological, a somatovegetative and a sexual factor, that explained 51.6% of the total variance. Reference values of the three dimensions were defined to be used in daily practice. The severity of symptoms assessed using the AMS scale was found to be related to the clinically defined ‘male climacteric’ in the patient group.

The AMS scale is a new and valuable tool for assessing aging males' symptomsc and can be easily used in practice.