Social Movement,Action and Change: The Influence of Women's Movements on City Government in Mumbai and London

This article reports on a research investigation into gender and local government in Mumbai in India and London in England. In both these cities female representation at the political level stands at around one third, achieved in London slowly in recent years and in Mumbai more rapidly through the adoption of a quota, or seat reservation system, implemented in 1992. In considering the experience of the women concerned it is argued that their presence and aspirations have been influenced through the networks of their respective women's movements, operating through civil society and the local state. In considering the ways in which they organize and manage the duties of office and their gendered identities, as well as in their focus on the most disadvantaged in their communities and in their dealings with others, the part played by social movements in influencing change is examined.     

Integration of migrants — an extraordinary undertaking? An analysis of Swiss policy and handling of resident immigrants; a municipal example—Bern

Migration and multiculturalism are key topics in politics, in the media, in education and in the social sciences. It is a phenomenon that has been discussed again and again during the last fifteen years with the aim to find solutions. A theoretical set of points of consideration is established in the first chapter in order to understand how migration is running counter to the ‘normal’ condition and development of society, and tends to cause problems in various contexts. Case histories in the second chapter show how communities are handling the consequences of immigration in practice and in the framework of the specific prevailing national and welfare state structures, and especially how communities are meeting the challenge politically and with their system of social services. In the final chapter the most important findings are summarized.     

Between organization and spontaneity of protests: the 2010–2011 Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the role of social groups in mobilizing resources for protests in repressive contexts. In particular, it examines the impact of organizations and informal groups on individual engagement in the protests developed in 2010 in Tunisia and in 2011 in Egypt. The empirical analysis draws on the following data sources: the second wave of the Arab Barometer (2010–2011), two focus groups in Egypt conducted between 2011 and 2015 with members of trade unions and of Popular Committees who had participated in the 2011 protests in Egypt, eight semi-structured interviews conducted in 2017 to workers in Tunisia who had engaged in the 2010–2011 protests, and interviews conducted in January and February 2011 to 100 women in Tunisia within a study tackling police violence against women during the Tunisian uprisings.

Findings show that both in Egypt and Tunisia protests were neither spontaneous nor fully organized as formal organizations and informal and spontaneous groups strictly interconnected in sustaining protests. In Egypt, established Islamic charity networks provided the structural basis for Popular Committees to engage in the 2011 protests and the initially spontaneous workers’ groups, institutionalized through the legalization of EFITU, were crucial for national wide protests occurred throughout 2011. In Tunisia, the major trade union UGTT was essential for mobilizing workers in the initial stages of protests but was backed by informal and spontaneous groups of workers during the process of protest diffusion.

Results remark that the 2010–2011 Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings were therefore well-grounded on intermediate mobilizing structures capable to survive in the interstices of an authoritarian context. Findings suggest to consider that, in repressive context, spontaneous groups and more established and formal organizations continuously switch from one form to another, overlap, and transform themselves faster than they would do in democratic contexts.     

The Jockey Club and the town in colonial Australia

This analysis examines the formation and development of a Jockey Club and an annual race carnival in a small country town in northern New South Wales, Australia, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. These institutions are discussed in terms of their role in bestowing status and legitimacy upon the town of Grafton, as well as in terms of their importance in local political, social, and economic life. Comparisons are made to similar organizations in Britain and the United States. The seemingly disproportionate power and prestige associated with the Jockey Club is examined in terms of its broader role in establishing purpose and self-image to the rural community.     

Promoting ergonomics in Algeria: activities of "the research and training laboratory" in the University of Oran

The growing need in Algeria to develop ergonomics knowledge and practice in industry was behind the initiative to develop a training and research project within the ergonomics laboratory at Oran University. Since 2005 the laboratory team is running an academic option master in work design and ergonomics. The evaluation of the academic master in 2010 revealed the acute need of the local industry for professional competences in ergonomic and work psychology. A professional training master program in "ergonomics & work psychology" was then developed in partnership with local industry, five European Universities and six Universities from three Maghreb countries. Research projects were initiated around the two training programs, in conjunction with a number of ergonomics dissemination and promotion activities. Preliminary results of the project are presented and discussed in relation to the local context, and in the light of similar cases in Industrially Developing Countries.     

Religion and Incorporation: Islam in France and Germany

This article attempts to examine religion, particularly Islam, as an emergent type of corporate ethnicity in France and Germany and how Islam is represented and recognized in relation to the established principles governing the interaction of church and state both in the histories of each country and in comparison to the United States. Although religion constitutes one element of pluralism and diversity in which Islam would be the “religion of a minority” among other ethnic groups in the United States, in Europe Islam emerges as a “minority religion” in European nation‐states. Such a conceptual difference is reflected in the understandings and applications of multiculturalism and recognition in European countries and the United States. The question then is how to insure a historical continuity between principles and ideals of states on the one hand and how to integrate the religious diversity raised by Islam into the secularism of liberal European societies on the other.     

A comparison of disability management practices in Australian and Canadian workplaces

The health, well-being and productivity of workers and employers in today's society is becoming increasingly important. The social, emotional and economic costs of injury and illness are such that governments throughout the world are attempting to implement policies and practices to contain these costs. One response in this area is Disability Management (DM). DM focuses on the management of employees with work injuries or illnesses in the workplace rather than offsite in rehabilitation centres. Regional interest in the DM approach has now gained momentum in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific. This article briefly reviews two studies that were conducted in Australia and Canada (results have or are being published elsewhere). Although the two studies were not designed for comparison purposes they provide interesting and useful information about the similarities and differences in the practice of DM in Australia and Canada. Findings are compared in terms of five primary principles of DM and it is argued that it is important to understand the ecological contexts in which DM occurs as well as share trans-national research in this area to help inform policy and practice.     

The Spatial Concentration of America's Rural Poor Population: A Postrecession Update

This article examines changes in concentrated poverty in the rural United States between 2000 and 2012. Using data from the decennial census and American Community Survey, we address three main objectives. First, we document changes in the number and share of counties with poverty rates above 20, 30, and 40 percent, stratifying our sample by metropolitan status. Second, we use exploratory spatial methods to identify geographic patterns in county‐level poverty dynamics between 2000 and 2012. Third, we estimate the share of the population living in high‐poverty counties, and track changes over time and by race and poverty status. Overall, we find a substantial increase in concentrated poverty since 2000. Increases in both the number of high‐poverty counties and the share of the population living in these counties were widespread, though spatially and temporally uneven in some cases. We also observe convergence in concentrated poverty between rural and micropolitan areas, and between non‐Hispanic white and Hispanic populations. Overall, we observe a reversal of the declines in concentrated poverty that occurred in the 1990s, and find that in many cases this trend began prior to the Great Recession.     

Is Islam in Western Europe Like Race in the United States?

Asking whether Islam in Western Europe is like race in the United States is, to a large degree, to ask whether Muslims in Europe share the same fate and face the same barriers as blacks in the United States. The article considers (1) the nature of the hostility to Islam in Western Europe and why it is a greater barrier to inclusion for immigrants and their children than in the United States; (2) the dynamics of color‐coded race in the United States, comparing, on the one hand, the severe barriers confronting individuals and groups with African ancestry in the United States with the barriers facing Muslims (as well as black immigrants) in Western Europe and, on the other hand, considering certain advantages available to immigrants of color in the United States that Muslim and other immigrants lack in Europe; and (3) whether the boundary based on religion will prove more permeable for the descendants of Muslim immigrants in Western Europe than the racial boundary in the United States for those with visible African ancestry.     

Political violence within army barracks: desertion and loss among exiled Zimbabwean soldiers in South Africa

While studies on soldiers who leave the army have focused on them as perpetrators of political violence in war and peace, little is known about the ways in which soldiers have been subjected to violence. This paper examines the ways in which Zimbabwe National Army deserters who are currently in exile in South Africa experienced politically inspired violence in the army barracks and the ways in which they mediate and reify it through the image of the “torn underwear.” The ‘torn underwear’ signifies the violence experienced in the army barracks but also represents its reification in their present exile condition and the ways in which it is embedded in the body psyche. In analysing the army barracks as a ‘total institution’ and as a ‘surveillance unit,’ the paper, respectively, situates itself in the discussions of Goffman and Foucault, drawing from life history interviews and conversations with deserters who live in exile in South Africa.     

Beyond 3×1: Linking Sending and Receiving Societies in the Development Process

In this paper, I explore the possibilities of linking and expanding existing sending and receiving countries' initiatives that mobilize immigrants to participate in the development process of their countries of origin in such a way as to advance two main goals of such initiatives: (1) to multiply their developmental impact in sending regions; and (2) to help increase the social and political capital of immigrants and immigrant associations, so as to facilitate both their role in the development of their countries of origin and also their integration in their host societies. In the paper, I will study the Mexican 3×1 programme and Spain's co‐development model and explore the ways in which programmes such as these could be ideally linked and implemented, in diverse contexts, in a way that is advantageous to both sending and receiving societies. The paper is based on research conducted over the past 9 years with Mexican immigrant associations in the United States; on interviews with Mexican government officials in Mexico and the United States; and on interviews conducted in 2008 and 2009 in Spain.     

Deindustrialization, Female-Headed Families, and Black and White Juvenile Homicide Rates, 1970-1990

Recent research in urban sociology posits that the proliferation of female-headed families in American cities is a result of declining economic prospects due to profound changes in the structure of the urban economy. Meanwhile, macro-level theory and research in criminology suggest that an association exists between family structure and rates of lethal violence among juveniles. Given these two streams of sociological thought, there is good reason to expect that increases in juvenile homicide rates since 1970 may be due, in part, to changes in the structure of the economy and the family during the 1970 to 1990 period. However, the nexus between deindustrialization, female-headed families, and juvenile homicide has received little attention in extant research. The objective of the current study is to remedy this gap in the literature by bringing together ideas about deindustrialization and female headship in an attempt to explain city-level changes in Black and White juvenile homicide rates between 1970 and 1990. In particular, the research investigates the hypothesis that a decline in the manufacturing base of cities increased rates of female headship and thereby indirectly raised homicide rates. Race differences in the hypothesized structural relationships also are examined.     

How Sentiments Organize Social Action

Sociological studies of affect and associated processes have a long tradition in the discipline, originating with Durkheim's interest in religious belief and practice. Contemporary interest in the area has focused on several distinct instances in which affective evaluations are learned, are expressed toward others, organize behavior in social situations, and change. Attitudes, emotions , feelings, moods, and sentiments are distinguished from one another and studied as distinct factors in the organization of social action. Affective information is socialized in families and reinforced in social institutions as the actor matures. Interaction with others and the exchange of social rewards leads to patterns of social organization in proximal and distal groups as actors identify others who share similar patterns of orientation to social objects. Status structures in groups are reflected in patterns of sentiment distribution. Similarly, sentiment and emotion structures impact status behavior in groups. Technological developments have advanced measurement of emotional reactions, expression of sentiments toward social objects, and identification of social structures in social media. Theoretical developments in the study of sentiment and emotion are highlighted in the essay.     

Economic socialization in the kibbutz and the town in Israel

This study compared the economic understanding and attitudes of children living in the city with those living in a kibbutz, collective villages where an extreme socialist lifestyle is practised and preached. The differences in the answer patterns of the urban and kibbutz children were not very large, but the pattern was clear, and in keeping with the dominant ideology in both places: socialist in the kibbutz, middle-class capitalist in the city.     

A CENTURY OF HUMAN CAPITAL AND HOURS

An average person born in the United States in the second half of the 19th century completed 7 years of schooling and spent 58 hours a week working in the market. In contrast, an average person born at the end of the 20th century completed 14 years of schooling and spent 40 hours a week working. In the span of 100 years, completed years of schooling doubled and working hours decreased by 30%. What explains these trends? We consider a model of human capital and labor supply to quantitatively assess the contribution of exogenous variations in productivity (wage) and life expectancy in accounting for the secular trends in educational attainment and hours of work. We find that the observed increase in wages and life expectancy accounts for 80% of the increase in years of schooling and 88% of the reduction in hours of work. Rising wages alone account for 75% of the increase in schooling and almost all the decrease in hours in the model, whereas rising life expectancy alone accounts for 25% of the increase in schooling and almost none of the decrease in hours of work. In addition, we show that the mechanism emphasized in the model is consistent with other trends at a more disaggregate level such as the reduction in the racial gap in schooling and the decrease in the cross‐sectional dispersion in hours. (JEL E1, I25, J11, O4)     

Framing the Picture of the Child

The paper studies the forms that are used in planning for a child’s early childhood education and care in Finnish day care from the perspectives of social constructionism and discourse analysis. It asks how childhood is conceptualised in these forms and what are the social functions of early childhood education and care as implied in the conceptualisations. The paper shows that the conceptions of childhood and the understanding of the functions of early childhood education and care are mostly in unison and are rooted in traditional discourses, approaches and practices of Finnish day care. Consequently, the child’s view and the child as an agent in her/his world are not present in the forms.     

Facing east: the World ORT Union and the Jewish refugee problem in Europe, 1933–38

The World Union of Societies for Promotion of Artisanal and Agricultural Work among the Jews (ORT Union) was created in Berlin in 1921 by emigrants from Russia, veterans of the Russian ORT that had been founded in St Petersburg in 1880. By 1933, the ORT Union represented a transnational association of public philanthropic organisations and maintained a large network of professional schools and vocational training courses scattered all over Eastern Europe. After the advent of the Nazis in 1933, the ORT Union managed to work out and fulfil several relief programmes directed towards the rescue of the German Jews and improving the refugee problem. The ORT leadership considered the remote Birobidzhan region in the USSR as a possible asylum for the German‐Jewish refugees and tried to organise their large‐scale resettlement there. Although, because of a considerable change in Stalin’s foreign policy in the late 1930s, this ambitious plan was not fulfilled in full measure, the efforts of the ORT Union to rescue German Jews and solve the refugee problem undoubtedly led to an expansion of its activity and created a transcontinental network of technical and agricultural training institutions. ORT’s connection to the migratory processes of this period cannot be overestimated, especially in relation to professional training, which allowed thousands of refugees to adapt in a very short time to the new socioeconomic reality in the countries of their destination. Using documentary sources preserved in archives in Russia, Britain, Germany and Israel, this article analyses the all‐embracing programmes offered by the ORT Union for ameliorating the Jewish refugee problem in Europe from 1933 until the eve of the Second World War.     

Gender Inequality in Authority and Autonomy in the Workplace in Japan,Britain, and the United States*

Abstract This study examines gender inequality in the distribution of various aspects of autonomy and authority in the workplace in Japan, Britain, and the United States. In all three societies, there are clear gender gaps in access to autonomy and authority relations, but the distributions are most unequal in Japan. The main part of this study involves the testing of four hypotheses which attempt to explain gender differences in autonomy and authority. The first hypothesis, which focuses on family responsibilities, receives limited support from the Japanese and British data. Japanese and British women are disadvantaged in obtaining managerial positions and supervising other employees by the presence of children. The human capital explanation of gender inequality in the workplace appears to be supported to some extent in Japan and Britain because gender gaps are reduced when we controlled for Render differences in education, tenure and work experience in these countries. The differential access to managerial positions is an important source of gender inequality in workplace social relations in all three countries. Nonetheless, significant gender gaps remain. especially in the United States. When all these factors (family responsibilities, human capital and managerial positions) are taken together, gender gaps are reduced substantially in Japan. In contrast. persistent gender inequality is found in the United States.     

Women,marriage and family--traditionalism vs. modernity in Albania

"The aim of the article is to illustrate how the transition from traditionalism to modernity in Albanian society is reflected in the fields of decision-making in choosing the marriage partner, arena of choosing the marriage partner, and factors of importance for harmony in the marital relationship. We also outline the changes in women's participation in productive work, in social and policy life, and in education. The empirical material stems from a survey conducted in Albania [in] 1984. The number of respondents was 1,303. We conclude that there is a strong modernistic tendency both with regard to choosing marriage partner and factors important for harmony. The main feature of the development in Albania is the rapidity and explicitness of changes in attitudes towards marriage and family and in women's position."     

A comparison of perceived health, attitudes to work, leisure time, and social welfare systems among people in a rural area in the north of Sweden and among people in the city of Stockholm

A problem attracting considerable attention in Sweden today is the substantial regional differences in sickness absence. The aim of the study was to investigate and compare how people, from a random sample of the population in both a rural area in the north of Sweden and the Swedish capital Stockholm, perceive their health, and what their attitudes are to work, leisure time and social welfare systems. Results showed that a larger proportion of those answering in Stockholm considered their health status to be "very good", compared with those in the rural area (p<0.0001). A majority in the rural area compared to the city of Stockholm reported a high or very high level of aches/pain (p<0.0001) and that work causes them physical problems p<0.0001). The population in both Stockholm and the rural area is of the opinion that the increase in sickness absence is mainly due to deterioration in the work environment. Almost half of the individuals in both the rural area and in Stockholm are of the opinion that many of those sick-listed are not actually ill. It may be that in the rural area in north Sweden people are more inclined to put their opinions to practice than those in Stockholm are.