Completing the Circuit: Routine,Reflection, and Ethical Consumption

Efforts to explain why some people incorporate ethical concerns into everyday shopping for food and household goods, while many do not, have so far left significant variation in “ethical consumption” unexplained. Seeking to move beyond explanations that rely mainly on differences in consumers' social class, gender, and political engagement, I draw on concepts associated with “practice theory” to argue that ethical consumption is closely tied to people's willingness and ability to spend time, while shopping, on distinct activities associated with breaking old routines and establishing new ones. The central insight of practice theory is that most consumption is the product of unconscious routine. And it is precisely because consciously departing from routine is, according to my study, a fundamentally time‐consuming process, that lack of time emerges as a crucial obstacle to translating abstract ethical concerns into concrete action as a consumer.     

ENTRY AND EXIT,PRODUCT VARIETY,AND THE BUSINESS CYCLE

We study the stochastic behavior of a dynamic general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition. Each seller sells his product in the consumption goods as well as the investment goods market and has market power in both. Consumers derive utility from a constant elasticity of substitution (CES) aggregate of all the consumption goods and augment their capital stock by a CES aggregate of all the investment goods. We analyze the equilibrium of this economy allowing for an endogenous determination of the number of firms and therefore of products. The principal effect we wish to highlight is the endogenous propagation and magnification of technology and preference disturbances through product space variations. (JEL E32, D43, L16)     

Ordering competition: the interactional accomplishment of the sale of art and antiques at auction

Auctions provide an institutional solution to a social problem; they enable the legitimate pricing and exchange of goods where those goods are of uncertain value. In turn, auctions raise a number of social and organizational issues that are resolved within the interaction that arise in sales by auction. In this paper, we examine sales of fine art, antiques and objets d'art and explore the ways in which auctioneers mediate competition between buyers and establish a value for goods. In particular, we explore how bids are elicited, co-ordinated and revealed so as to rapidly escalate the price of goods in a transparent manner that enables the legitimate valuation and exchange of goods. In directing attention towards the significance of the social interaction, including talk, visual and material conduct, the paper contributes to the growing corpus of ethnographic studies of markets. It suggests that to understand the operation of markets and their outcomes, and to unpack issues of agency, trust and practice, we need to place the 'interaction order' at the heart of analytic agenda.     

Strengths,weaknesses, opportunities,and threats to housing first in Metro Vancouver

ObjectivesTo understand the experience of Metro Vancouver’s Homelessness Partnering Strategy-funded Housing First program and how it is functioning from the perspective of a representative sample of providers and clients who deliver and receive HF services.MethodsThirty-four clients and providers who currently or formerly delivered HF in Metro Vancouver participated in one-on-one interviews (n = 26) or focus groups (n = 8) between March and April 2017 and data were thematically analyzed.ResultsStrengths of the HF program included: the ability to transition persons from the street into housing with individualized service supports and, in certain cases, with 12-month rent subsidies, household goods, and connection to community resources. Identified program weaknesses were: eligibility criteria, limited rent subsidy funds, limited provider capacity, and workload burden. Suggested opportunities to improve HF were: streamlining federal and provincial reporting and rent subsidy systems and building friendly landlord networks. Potential threats to HF described were: limited affordable housing, stigma and discrimination toward clients, inadequate income assistance, and limited opportunity for cross-sector collaboration.ConclusionsThe delivery of HF in regions that have limited affordable housing presents unique challenges. Recommendations are provided to improve HF practice and policy in these contexts.     

TRAVELLING PEOPLE,TRAVELLING OBJECTS

The paper introduces the essays on consumption, shopping tourism and informal trade in socialism, by presenting the framework of the research project in which they were produced. As opposed to tourists' shopping, shopping tourism is defined as travel abroad with the explicit aim to buy goods, unavailable, difficult to find, or inordinately costly in one's home country, for personal use or reselling to compatriots. Shopping tourism became a widespread practice in the East-European socialist economies of shortage as soon as travel restrictions, at first among socialist countries and, later, to the West, had been relaxed. Following a discussion of official and popular attitudes to consumption during socialism, the author points out that shopping tourism was not a form of popular resistance to the political system but rather a set of ingenious practices of adaptation to the everyday exigencies it created.     

ADVERTISING, CONCENTRATION AND PROFITABILITY IN MANUFACTURING

This paper predicts an inverted-LI relationship between concentration and advertising only for oligopolistic industries facing relatively less elastic demand curves. It rejects the inverted-LI theory based on the hypothesis that the large firms collude and lends empirical support to the idea that causation runs from Concentration to advertising intensity. By confirming that the effect of advertising on profitability is significant and greater for industries producing homogeneous goods than for those producing heterogeneous goods, this study fails to support the barriers-to-entry hypothesis.     

Associations,active citizenship,and the quality of democracy in Brazil and Mexico

In many Third Wave democracies large classes of people experience diminished forms of citizenship. The systematic exclusion from mandated public goods and services significantly injures the citizenship and life chances of entire social groups. In democratic theory civil associations have a fundamental role to play in reversing this reality. One strand of theory, known as civic engagement, suggests that associations empower their members to engage in public politics, hold state officials to account, claim public services, and thereby improve the quality of democracy. Empirical demonstration of the argument is surprisingly rare, however, and limited to affluent democracies. In this article, we use original survey data for two large cities in Third Wave democracies—São Paulo and Mexico City—to explore this argument in a novel way. We focus on the extent to which participation in associations (or associationalism) increases “active citizenship”—the effort to negotiate directly with state agents access to goods and services legally mandated for public provision, such as healthcare, sanitation, and security—rather than civic engagement, which encompasses any voluntary and public spirited activity. We examine separately associationalism’s impact on the quality of citizenship, a dimension that varies independently from the level of active citizenship, by assessing differences in the types of citizenship practices individuals use to obtain access to vital goods and services. To interpret the findings, and identify possible causal pathways, the paper moves back-and-forth between two major research traditions that are rarely brought into dialogue: civic engagement and comparative historical studies of democratization.     

Equivalence scales,the cost of children and household consumption patterns in Italy

This article deals with the estimation of parametric equivalence scales for Italian households with different demographic characteristics: composition, location and number of employed members in the household. Using a sample of 43,701 observations on monthly current expenditures from 1997 to 2004 we estimate a demand system for ten goods and we tackle the problem of corner solutions for some goods adopting the Two Step estimator proposed by Shonkweiler and Yen (Am J Agric Econ 81:972–982, 1999). The consumption behavior of households is also analyzed calculating compensated, uncompensated and expenditure elasticites for each commodity. By considering households that differ in composition (number of children), geographic location (four-different macro-areas of Italy), and number of employed adults, we allow for a range of useful comparisons.     

The Man in the Red Coat—Management in the Circus

Authored by a circus performer/manager and an academic, this paper uses concepts from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre to interpret ethnographic material from the traditional circus. The paper outlines MacIntyre’s conceptual architecture of goods, practices and institutions in which exercise of the virtues by those who manage the institution is required to maintain the integrity of practices. Such exercise is one defining feature of what MacIntyre calls ‘practice‐based communities’. Following a discussion of method it uses ethnographic material to describe the organisation of work in the circus and the self‐understanding of the managerial role of ringmaster. A series of incidents illustrate the use of the virtue of phronêsis, practical judgement in this role to maintain the integrity of the practice. The paper concludes by considering the extent to which travelling circus may be considered an example of the practice‐based community.     

Monopolistic competition,as you like it

We explore monopolistic competition with asymmetric preferences over a variety of goods provided by heterogeneous firms, and compute equilibria (approximating Cournot and Bertrand equilibria when market shares are negligible) through average Morishima elasticities of substitution. Further results concerning pricing and entry emerge under homotheticity and when demands depend on a common aggregator, as with Generalized Additively Separable preferences. Under additivity we can determine which goods are going to be provided under free entry, as well as the selection effects associated with changes in market size, consumers' income, aggregate productivity, and preference parameters.     

Erratum to: Equivalence scales,the cost of children and household consumption patterns in Italy

This article deals with the estimation of parametric equivalence scales for Italian households with different demographic characteristics: composition, location and number of employed members in the household. Using a sample of 43,701 observations on monthly current expenditures from 1997 to 2004 we estimate a demand system for ten goods and we tackle the problem of corner solutions for some goods adopting the Two Step estimator proposed by Shonkweiler and Yen (Am J Agric Econ 81:972–982, 1999). The consumption behavior of households is also analyzed calculating compensated, uncompensated and expenditure elasticites for each commodity. By considering households that differ in composition (number of children), geographic location (four-different macro-areas of Italy), and number of employed adults, we allow for a range of useful comparisons.     

‘Intermediation’ in used goods markets: Transactions,confidence, and social interaction

An economic sociology approach grounded in an empirical study of second-hand sporting goods stores is used to examine ‘intermediation’ in used goods markets and its impact on confidence-building in market relations. Neo-institutional economic interpretation is contrasted with interpretation that uses a Goffmanian microsociological approach. The first type emphasizes the development of market credibility, analyzing the cognitive and formal arrangements (contractual and technical) which, by ‘professionalizing’ the behavior of self-improvised salespeople, reduce both ‘market opacity’ and the threat of opportunistic behavior. The second shows that such analysis is insufficient for understanding how actual relations in the marketplace are maintained. It aims to describe how partners to a transaction co-produce confidence, using their social skills and signaling honesty by the way they allow the quality of second-hand goods to be assessed. The two approaches converge, however, in that they both involve recognition of the limitations of analysis in terms of personal networks and the impersonality of economic transaction determinants. The article concludes by calling for closer attention to social relations in the marketplace and greater focus on how those relations are depersonalized.     

THE RISE OF SERVICES,DEINDUSTRIALIZATION, AND THE LENGTH OF ECONOMIC RECOVERY

Economic recovery is longer in service‐providing economies than in goods‐producing economies. Services cannot be produced and inventoried ahead of demand; goods can. We are the first to document this macroeconomic repercussion of the sectoral shift away from the secondary sector toward the tertiary sector, that is, of deindustrialization and the rise of services. We distinguish between nontradable services and all other sectors, using U.S. state‐level employment data for post‐1960 recessions. Concerns over the endogeneity of services are addressed in two ways: by using 3‐year pre‐recession averages of sector shares, and separately by invoking instrumental variables. Our results are robust to alternative specifications. The increase in service production and deindustrialization in the United States over the last half‐century lengthens the trough‐to‐peak employment recovery from recessions by about 40%. (JEL E24, E32, L80, N12)     

“公交优先”策略的伦理蕴涵与国际视域

＂公交优先＂作为当代全球性的城市交通发展理念,蕴涵着深刻的伦理诉求。城市交通的伦理性源于对最低收入者生存权利的人文关怀,表现为它是一种具有公益性的公共产品;城市交通的公共属性要求在城市交通的规划与发展过程中,重视当代人＂可达性权利＂的平等性和重点关照性。当代发达国家＂公交优先＂的普遍经验证明,＂公交优先＂是中国城市交通发展不可替代的策略抉择。     

Outlines of a Critical Sociology of Consumption: Beyond Moralism and Celebration

The 'new' sociology of consumption that emerged in the 1980s acknowledged that consumption is a significant cultural and social practice and not just a mere signifier of the pathological elements of contemporary societies. Arguably, this rehabilitation of consumption has overshot its mark and has led to an overly positive, complacent and celebratory rendering of consumption and to an overriding concern with the symbolic and communicative dimension of goods. Driven by the debates on globalization, political consumerism and the relation between consumption and citizenship, current work shows increased interest in the politics of consumption. The article explores in what directions the classic concern with the symbolic and communicative dimension of goods might be taken if it is more thoroughly grounded in an analysis of the politics of consumption and of the current reconfigurations of consumers and citizens. The overall aim is to outline a basis for a critical sociology of consumption.     

Being the best or doing the right thing? An investigation of positional,prosocial and conformist preferences in provision of public goods

Based on a simple theoretical framework, we show that when individuals exhibit positional, prosocial or conformist preferences which are endogenous, the end outcomes in terms of private provision of public goods can differ significantly from traditional neo-classical predictions. Indeed, when a given individual selects a specific subset of preferences according to what others do, he/she will contribute positively to the public good provision. We provide anecdotal evidence to support our theoretical analysis by using data from an Internet survey on a sample of French individuals. Analyses of individual responses confirm our theoretical arguments. For instance, we show that relative concerns matter, that is, for several environmental goods, people might prefer polluting more in absolute terms but less than others in society. Moreover, we also test whether people exhibit a social desirability bias and show that they attribute more (less) positional (prosocial) concerns to others in society.     

Inter‐ethnic conflict: a role for social work in sub‐Saharan Africa

African social work educators have consistently argued that conventional social work tasks and practice fail to address the critical socio‐economic needs of communities living in the sub‐Saharan region. This paper identifies inter‐ethnic conflict in Africa as both cause and symptom of the inequitable distribution of natural resources and public goods between ethnic groups in conditions of pressing material need. Reporting on results from a survey of social work students at the University of Ghana which explored their own experiences of inter‐ethnic conflict, this article considers alternative strategies for training in anti‐discriminatory practice. Training approaches developed in the United States of America and the United Kingdom are critically examined and the problems of their direct applicability in an African context discussed. In conclusion the need for a distinctively African approach to conflict management and anti‐discriminatory training is advanced.