THE WELFARE EFFECTS OF TEMPORARY TAX CUTS AND SUBSIDIES: THEORY,ESTIMATION, AND APPLICATIONS

This article presents a tractable and intuitive theory on the welfare effects of temporary tax cuts and subsidies, fiscal policies that I generically term “holidays.” The Kaldor–Hicks efficiency effects are theoretically ambiguous, with competing pro‐ and anti‐efficiency effects on newly incentivized versus time‐shifted purchases. To rectify this ambiguity I derive expressions for the welfare effects that are consistent with constant elasticity assumptions and depend only upon readily and reliably observed information. To demonstrate the framework's broad applicability, I analyze two different policies: the 2009 Cash for Clunkers program and states' sales tax holidays. I estimate that both policies generated substantial deadweight loss. (JEL H21, H30, D91)     

Beyond ‘anti‐smacking’: challenging parental violence and coercion

The anti‐smacking lobby concentrates on persuading parents not to smack and persuading the government to prohibit smacking by law. There is much evidence that smacking children is unnecessary and dangerous, and yet smacking continues to be widely practised and accepted in Britain. Our literature review found two underlying reasons for this contradiction: beliefs that children are ‘human becomings’ rather than full human beings and support for ‘parents’ rights' over children's human rights. We suggest that the anti‐smacking lobby's important work will have limited effect until it tackles these two issues, and make comparisons with debates on domestic violence against women to illustrate our argument. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mother Died Today or Maybe Yesterday: Reflections of L'etranger on Team‐Based Forms of Work Organization

One of the most enduring images of late twentieth‐century popular culture was the individualist and iconoclastic portrayal of the ‘grumpy old man’ Victor Meldrew in the BBC television series One Foot in the Grave. Richard Wilson's portrayal of the recently retired security worker is the antithesis of everything that contemporary organizations require from the idealized vision of employee as ‘team‐player’. As one who revels in the way that the epitaph ‘Victor’ is thrown at me at regular intervals both by my partner and children, at times when I think I am behaving normally, I thought it would be interesting for me to reflect, in public, on my relationship to contemporary workplace relations. It is my contention that Meldrew's characterization is not wholly based around the age dimension but is equally based upon his portrayal as an individual ill at ease with the mores of gregariousness. The essay therefore is a self‐reflective piece in which the author places himself in a particular milieu—that of L'etranger and uses this ‘placing’ in order to discuss the relationship between what he defines as ‘the outsider’ and the issue of age discrimination in contemporary blue‐collar environments. It is suggested that whilst the outsider or L'etranger is accepted under certain conditions within the managerial labour process this same level of organizational tolerance is not afforded to older workers within blue‐collar areas. It moves from a reflective, even autodidactic exploration of the relationship between the author and cultural articulations of L'etranger and uses this to inform an analysis of the acceptance of L'etranger within some aspects of the managerial labour within team based manufacturing units. In exploring these issues the essay then attempts to develop a third narrative in terms of now L'etranger, approaching the age of retirement fits in to the new academic labour process.     

The Death Penalty in the Post-Furman Era: A Review of the Issues and the Debate

This is a review of the issues and debate over capital punishment in the United States during the post- Furman era (since 1972). It encompasses a review of the legal issues, highlighting major U.S. Supreme Court cases in which the constitutionality of the death penalty has been challenged. These constitutional challenges have included issues of arbitrariness and race discrimination in the application of the death penalty. Also considered is the Court's 'evolving standards of decency' test in terms of what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment – relative to the execution of juveniles and the mentally retarded and whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual. The post- Furman era death penalty debate is comprised of two phases, both raised questions about public confidence in the criminal justice system. Phase one, occurring in the 1980s and early 1990s, was concerned with the lengthy appeal process and the lack of finality in capital cases. Phase two emerged in the late 1990s and 2000s and focused on the accuracy (wrongful convictions) and fairness (arbitrariness and discrimination) of the administration of capital punishment. The DNA revolution and a parade of high-profile exonerations in the United States contributed to this latter phase. Finally, the death penalty debate is considered from an international and human rights perspective.     

Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Rancière on art/aesthetics and politics: the origins of disagreement, 1963–1985

Rancière published two substantial criticisms of the work of Bourdieu in the early 1980s. It is possible that these were provoked by his sense that he needed to oppose what he considered to be the sociological reduction of aesthetic taste offered by Bourdieu in Distinction (Bourdieu 1986 [1979]) at precisely the moment when he (Rancière) was beginning to articulate his commitment to the potential of aesthetic expression as a mode of political resistance. Except in so far as it draws upon some of the retrospective reflections offered by Rancière in his introductions to the re‐issues of his early texts, this paper examines the parallel development of the thinking of the two men up to the mid‐1980s – but not beyond. The discussion is situated socio‐historically and, by definition, does not seek to offer comparatively any transhistorical assessment of the values of the positions adopted by the two men. I argue that Rancière misrepresented the character of Bourdieu's sociological work by failing to recognize the underlying phenomenological orientation of his thinking. Bourdieu suppressed this orientation in the 1960s but, after the May events of 1968, it enabled him to expose the extent to which the practices of both science and art operate within constructed ‘fields’ in strategic distinction from popular primary experience. The challenge is to introduce an ongoing dialogue between primary and constructed cultures rather than to suppose that either social science or art possesses intrinsic autonomy.     

North Korea's Militant Nationalism and People's Everyday Lives: Past and Present

North Korea's anti‐American state power has operated in individuals' everyday practices by focusing on its post‐war militant nationalism. Existing studies have neglected an aspect of North Korea's nationalist power that has been neither necessarily top‐down nor violent, but rather productive and diffusive in people's everyday lives. While the regime's anti‐American mobilization has come from above, people's politics of hatred, patriotism, and emotion have been reproduced from below. Along this line, I examine the historical and social changes in North Korea's militant nationalism and people's ways of life through a comparison between two periods: from the 1950s through the 1980s and from the 1990s through the present. I focus on how the state's anti‐American power was legitimated by people's solid micro‐fascism from the 1950s through the 1980s, and how it has been contested and recreated through both change and persistence in people's micro‐fascism from the 1990s through the present.     

Trauma and ineloquence

The article is an attempt to interrogate the idea of anti‐capitalist politics in the light Rosa Luxemberg's notion of radical autonomism. My argument is that Luxemberg's hesitation before the Leninist demand for the strategic appropriation of political difference, gestures towards an idea of “the untimely” which is revived in the work of Naomi Klein and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. The essence of this idea is that the media‐techno‐scientific organization of capitalism has given rise to unexpected forms of resistance and communication, and that these provide the basis of a new anti‐capitalist politics. In the concluding section of the paper I will present the difference between Klein and Hardt and Negri's versions of anti‐capitalism through a reading of Derrida's Spectres of Marx. I will suggest that if we take the “untimeliness of the untimely” seriously, then it is Klein's gesture of welcome to the different forms of political activism that arise from the global organization of capital, which is closer to the spirit of Luxemberg's anti‐Leninism.     

Homology and isomorphism: Bourdieu in conversation with New Institutionalism

Bourdieusian Field Theory (BFT) provided decisive inspiration for the early conceptual formulation of New Institutionalism (NI). This paper attempts to reinvigorate the stalled intellectual dialogue between NI and BFT by comparing NI's concept of isomorphism with BFT's notion of homology. I argue that Bourdieu's understanding of domination‐oriented social action, transposable habitus, and a non‐linear causality, embodied in his neglected concept of homology, provides an alternative theorization of field‐level convergence to New Institutionalism's central idea of institutional isomorphism. To showcase how BFT can be useful for organizational research, I postulate a habitus‐informed and field‐conditioned theory of transference to enrich NI's spin‐off thesis of ‘diffusion’. I propose that while NI can benefit from BFT's potential of bringing social structure back into organizational research, BFT can enrich its social analysis by borrowing from NI's elaboration of the symbolic system of organizations.     

Rights of Foreign Workers and the Politics of Migration in South-East and East Asia

The issue of cross‐border migration in South‐East and East Asia is linked to the integration of regional, if not global, labour markets. The types of labour that are currently in demand have changed substantially since the 1990s in terms of (1) overall magnitude, (2) gender composition, and (3) increased diversification. This paper, however, focuses upon those workers classified as unskilled as they constitute numerically the largest and most vulnerable group. The challenges to provide adequate protection from, and prevention of, exploitative and abusive practices that seriously minimize the socio‐economic benefits for these workers are linked to migration policies and the issue of rights in the origin and destination countries. This paper's objective is to provide a broad outline of the emerging trends and issues revolving around contemporary cross‐border labour migration and the politics of migrants' rights in South‐East and East Asia, illustrated by the difficulties experienced with the ratification of the 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of All Migrants and their Families (ICMR). The data this paper is based upon were collected for a report commissioned by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with fieldwork carried out in seven countries located in the Asia Pacific region. It is argued that ratification of the ICMR is obstructed by politics and by a lack of political will. A rights‐based approach to the protection of migrant labour is thus related to a number of macro and micro level issues, revolving around development and practices of “good governance” in addition to interstate relations. This means that the promotion of migrants' rights requires a holistic approach addressing national and transnational issues in an era of increasing mobility across borders.     

Who killed change management?

A story is told here of an investigation into change management's apparent death, provoked by the dubious business novel Who Killed Change [Blanchard, K., J. Britt, P. Zigarmi, and J. Hoekstra. 2009. Who Killed Change? Solving the Mystery of Leading People Through Change. London: Harper Collins Publishers]. The story is told over eight chapters inviting you to investigate competing explanations for the death of change management using the structure of the story arc: stasis, trigger, quest, surprise, critical choice, climax, reversal and resolution. An annoying voice (sometimes interior monologue and at other times dialogue) of another reader keen to inform and frame your understanding of the status of change management remains ever present. The case is solved with the story's resolution providing insights into advantages of investigating over literature reviewing, the problematic/masculine nature of murder metaphors, the academic potential of story arcs and the mystery which characterises organizational change.     

Transnational advocacy in the eighteenth century: transatlantic activism and the anti‐slavery movement

Abstract In this article, I assess how a transnational campaign against the slave trade developed in the eighteenth century, focusing on the seminal role of Quakers. Building on Keck and Sikkink's study of the international campaign against slavery in America in the mid‐nineteenth century, I show how one can identify transnational advocacy on this issue more than half a century earlier. I examine the features of Quakerism ‐ specifically the close links between American and English Quakers ‐and the historical circumstances that gave rise to the campaign. In particular, I assess the role of transatlantic correspondence and travel among individual Quakers and the close organizational links between the society's branches on either side of the Atlantic. I analyse the development of anti‐slave trade activism according to Khagram, Riker and Sikkink's model of network development and find that this model is broadly applicable. I note, however, the change within the campaign from truly transnational (transatlantic) to predominantly domestic (British) as it changed from a coalition to a broader social movement, and as the campaign began to interact with the state, thus suggesting that the development of transnational networks is neither linear nor inevitable.     

The Co-Evolution of Marriage and Parental Rights of Gays and Lesbians

ABSTRACT

Historically, federal and state legislation placed different conditions on same- and opposite-sex couples' ability to marry, adopt, or exercise their parental rights. Given the historical intertwining of marriage and parenting, legal issues remain hinged on differing conceptions of marriage and what constitutes a legal family in the United States, especially for same-sex partners compared to their different-sexed couple counterparts. This article provides a historical review of decisions that serve as the foundation for queer parenting rights in the United States. A key focus is on the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) marriage decision on queer parenting and its relevance to researchers and practitioners whose work involves queer families. State discrepancies continue to exist for the treatment of parental rights in spite of the legalization of same-sex marriage. Finally, suggestions are provided for future directions for the field.     

Young Adults' Attitudes Toward Polygamous Marriage as a Function of Gender,Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Marriage,and Other Sociopersonality Constructs

U.S. citizens are overwhelmingly opposed to the legalization of polygamous marriage, but specific reasons for this opposition remain unclear. In this study we examined young adults' (n = 814) attitudes toward polygamous marriage as a function of myriad variables. Particular attention was given to the presumed association between attitudes toward same-sex marriage and polygamous marriage. Results indicated that, overall, young adults' attitudes toward polygamous marriage were neutral. Also, attitudes toward same-sex marriage significantly correlated with attitudes toward polygamous marriage. However, not all pro–same-sex marriage participants were pro-polygamous marriage. Moreover, opposition to same-sex marriage, (female) gender, higher levels of authoritarianism, and endorsement of traditional family values conjointly and individually predicted opposition to polygamous marriage. Implications of the findings are discussed, particularly in the context of U.S. discourse over the legalization of same-sex marriage.     

Accounting for the Performance of Environmentally Significant Behavior: The Symbolic Significance of Recycling

The scientific community has pronounced climate change unequivocal and its consequences disastrous. Yet Americans' behavioral response to the global social problem of environmental degradation has been largely confined to the individual act of recycling. This article examines why Americans are not doing more to address climate change and other environmental issues. Taking a cognitive sociological perspective, I describe how Americans think about environmental issues and pro‐environmental behavior. I draw on Swidler's concept of a “cultural tool kit,” to examine the cultural narratives Americans use to account for the small amount of pro‐environmental behavior they perform. The act of recycling functions as a synecdoche for pro‐environmental behavior in general, allowing individuals to over‐claim the significance of a modest amount of pro‐environmental behavior. I argue that Americans' failure to engage with environmental issues at a collective level is rooted in the individualized culture of American environmentalism.     

Democratizing States and the Use of History*

Abstract A pervasive anti‐statism often blinds us to the democratic victories in the past and thus to possibilities in our future. This article argues that big government can democratize society and uses historical investigation to make the point. The study of history emancipates us from the tyranny of the present. Progressive social change has come about in the United States and elsewhere as combined bottom‐up, top‐down initiatives. I present two such cases of democratization during the New Deal era. The first is about rural sociologists' participatory‐action research with local citizens for policy planning. This program, while short‐lived, fed into the creation of the field of community development. The other is a land‐reform experiment among poor African Americans. In the 1960s these “resettlement communities” became local strongholds of the civil‐rights movement, and their descendants carry on the struggle today. I use these two historical instances to show that big states as well as social scientists have been effective agents of democracy, and suggest that they can be again. History then enable us to re‐imagine, re‐new, and re‐form our democratic tradition of rural sociology.     

The rights of migrant workers: Economics,politics and ethics

The labour immigration policies of high‐income countries are characterized by trade‐offs between openness to admitting migrant workers and some of the rights granted to migrants after admission. This empirical observation lies at the heart of the author's 2013 book, The price of rights: Regulating international labor migration. In this article, he reviews its main findings, arguments and policy implications and responds to a critical review of the book that was published in the International Labour Review in 2015. He concludes with a plea for more open debate on the linkages between migrant rights, labour migration and development among national and international organizations concerned with these issues.     

Anti‐semitism and the Jewish community of Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne

After briefly outlining the historical development of the Jewish community in Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne, this article examines the extent to which anti‐Semitism was a major concern in the life of modern North‐East Jewry. The focus of this discussion is on the 1930s and 1940s, a period when anti‐Semitism assumed greater significance. What this artcle revals is that on Tyneside, even though the fear of anti‐Semitism gave rise to active responses from within the local Jewish community, anti‐Semitism remained small scale. The experience of Newcastle's Jewish community should caution us against overstating the prevalence of anti‐Semitism in British society.     

Rethinking Gentrification and the Right to the City: The Process and Effect of the Urban Social Movement against Redevelopment in Tokyo

This article focuses on the anti‐redevelopment movement in Shimokitazawa, an area adjacent to the central Tokyo metropolitan area, to analyze resistance to the gentrification‐like phenomenons in Japan. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of international comparative studies on gentrification, and an inductive analysis based on an understanding of the various contexts of each city is needed. This article takes on this task, referring to the key concept of the right to the city, which has been used as a framework for understanding anti‐gentrification movements. In doing so, I aim to reveal the bias in existing gentrification research. In Shimokitazawa the rights to enjoy the culture of the city and the rights to speak out about the state of the city were newly recognized. The evolving debate on this area shows that these rights should be widely shared not only by landowners and residents but also by visitors. However, these rights are not adequately captured by existing conceptions of the right to the city. Shimokitazawa's anti‐gentrification movement provides an opportunity to participate in an autonomous movement. Notably, the opposition movement has been using its newly acquired voice to create alternative public spaces. The emerging trend of urban social movements that recognize and bring to light the potential value of urban space offers insights for guidelines for the future development of urban society.     

Ambivalence and Control: State Action Against the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan

Models that purport to explain the interplay between dissidents and the state generally assert, either explicitly or implicitly, that the path from state interests to action to outcomes is a linear one. Using the case of the United Klans of America (UKA) in North Carolina, I argue that state efforts to exert social control upon a perceived threat are shaped by a range of internal and external contingencies. In particular, I undertake a comparative analysis of two state agencies to demonstrate how a particular mechanism—ambivalence, here conceptualized as the relational consequence of a mismatch between organizational culture and organizational goals—leads to distinct, and sometimes heterogeneous, actions and outcomes not directly traceable to organizational mandates. Findings lend insight into how endogenous organizational processes shape contentious political outcomes in potentially divergent ways.     

Cyclops Cave

Written in the post‐structural traditions of symbolic interactionism, Cyclops Cave is a biographic‐interview‐based and fact‐and‐fiction‐plotted ethnodrama of anti‐Semitism in Soviet higher education. This project is premised on the theories of the “social self”—namely, the “looking‐glass racialized self,” constructed by the dominant ethnic “supremacy,” and the theories of racial stigma as an outcome of the racialized “me” production. Showing the stigma experiences of former Soviet Jewish academics from 1970 to the 1980s, the play adds a new illuminative and self‐interpretive case of a race‐situated symbolic interaction and deconstructs the “root image” of Soviet anti‐Semitism through interpreting the informants' stigma incidents and interactional conflicts between their “selfhood” symbols.