A strong paradox of multiple elections

We consider a stronger version of the paradox of multiple elections and show that it is possible that not only the winning combination of propositions, but also all the combinations sufficiently close to it, receive zero votes. Received: 8 April 1997/Accepted: 18 April 1997     

Family,Social Capital and Family Associations

Social capital (SC) is a concept variedly defined and object today of great attention at an international level: it concerns trust among people, the ability to activate nets, solidarity, and civic engagement in the public sphere.

The SC constitutive character makes it producible only in original and fundamental relationships (in primis the family), where trust is developed and the code of solidarity is current.

Nevertheless, the increasing fragmentation and individualization of the family seem to consume SC, rather than to increase it. This leads to the question about the nature of SC today as constituted by the family. Some phenomena, for example family associationism, show that the family is still a patrimony irrefutable for social life: when families constitute family associations, they produce primary and secondary SC.     

Extended Pareto rules and relative utilitarianism

This paper introduces the “Extended Pareto” axiom on Social Welfare Functions and gives a characterization of the axiom when it is assumed that the Social Welfare Functions that satisfy it in a framework of preferences over lotteries also satisfy the restrictions (on the domain and range of preferences) implied by the von-Neumann Morgenstern axioms. With the addition of 2 other axioms: “Anonymity” and a weak version of Arrow's Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives axiom: “Weak IIA” it is shown that there is a unique Social Welfare Function called “Relative Utilitarianism” that consists of normalising individual utilities between 0 and 1 and adding them. Received: 7 June 1994 / Accepted: 28 April 1997     

Physical exercise,nutrition and hormones: three pillars to fight sarcopenia

Background: Sarcopenia is a pathophysiological condition diffused in elderly people; it represents a social issue due to the longer life expectancy and the growing aging population. It affects negatively quality of life and it represents a risk factor for other pathologies, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. No silver bullet exists to hinder sarcopenia, but it may be counteracted by physical exercise, nutrition, and a proper endocrine milieu. Indeed, we aim to analyze the scientific literature to give to clinician effective advices to counteract sarcopenia.

Main text: Physical exercise, proper nutrition, optimized hormonal homeostasis represent the three pillars to fight sarcopenia. Physical exercise represents the most effective remedy to face sarcopenia, in particular if it is combined with a proper diet and with an adequate endocrine milieu. Consistency in training, adequate daily protein intake and eugonadism seems to be the keys to fight sarcopenia. The combination of these three pillars might act synergistically.

Conclusions: Optimization of these factors may increase their efficiency; however, scientific data may be sometimes confusing so far. Therefore, we aim to give practical advices to clinician to identify and to highlight the most important aspects in each of these three factors that should be addressed.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: FAMILY INTERACTION AND FAMILY THERAPY IN CHILDHOOD PSYCHOSOMATIC DISEASE. Per A. Gustafsson. STORIES FOR THE THIRD EAR: Using Hypnotic Fables in Psychotherapy. Lee Wallas. HUMAN RELATIONSHIP SKILLS: Training and self-help. Richard Nelson-Jones. PSYCHOTHERAPY TRADECRAFT: The technique and style of doing therapy. Theodore H. Blau THE COMPLEX SECRET OF BRIEF PSYCHOTHERAPY. James Paul Gustafson. THE FREUDIAN METAPHOR: Toward Paradigm Change in Psychoanalysis. Donald P. Spence. WOMEN IN FAMILIES: A Framework for Family Therapy. Monica McGoldrick, Carol M. Anderson & Froma Walsh. FAMILY EVALUATION. Michael E. Kerr & Murray Bowen. SECOND MARRIAGE: Make it Happy! Make it Last.! Richard B. Stuart & Barbara Jacobson. FAMILY INTERVENTION THROUGHOUT CHRONIC ILLNESS AND DISABILITY. Paul W. Power, Arthur E. Dell Orto & Martha Blechar Gibbons (Eds.).     

Equitable insurance premium schemes

We analyze the equity properties of insurance premium schemes where agents are partitioned into groups with different average accident probabilities and each individual has to pay a premium according to the average probability of the group to which it belongs. In particular, we examine the question whether choosing finer partitions to define these groups generates more equitable situations than coarser groups. Though it turns out that partitioning the agents into finer groups can never be Lorenz dominated by the coarser partition, it cannot be guaranteed that finer partitions represent improvements over coarser ones except in very restrictive circumstances. Received: 27 March 2000/Accepted: 28 August 2000     

SAMHSA guidelines for recovery housing emphasize MAT

If there's any question about the appropriateness of medication‐assisted treatment (MAT) using methadone and buprenorphine for recovery housing residents, it has been settled by the most recent report from the federal government: Don't ban it, and, furthermore, do it.     

Amateurism and its interpretation: The social origins of british sport

British amateurism was a complex phenomenon: it consisted of a set of principles (notably against profit from sport and against gambling), and also involved a distinctive administrative structure and ethos. A number of ‘theories’ of amateurism are examined in this paper in terms of the social origins of amateurism: Was it an upper class doctrine of ‘honour’ or a middle class doctrine of competition, or perhaps a complex blend of both?     

Notes towards a politics of Bartleby The ignorance of chicken

Abstract

Niels Bohr provided the perfect example of how a fetishist disavowal of belief works in ideology: seeing a horse-shoe on his door, the surprised visitor said that he didn't believe in the superstition that it brings luck, to which Bohr snapped back: 'I also do not believe in it; I have it there because I was told that it works also if one does not believe in it!' This is how ideology works today in our epoch, which presents itself as 'post-ideological': we practice our beliefs, even if, consciously, we do not take them seriously. The disavowed ideological dimension is inscribed in everyday material practices and rituals, especially in the apparently innocent reference to pure utility (a man who lives in a large city and owns a Land Rover doesn't simply lead a no-nonsense, 'down to earth' life; rather, he owns such a car in order to signal that he leads his life under the sign of a no-nonsense, 'down to earth' attitude).     

A STRUCTURE TO PLAY WITH: ON THE ITALIAN ADAGE, 'SE NON E VERO E BEN TROVATO'

‘Se non è vero è ben trovato’: if it is not true, then it is well put. What is it that is ‘well put’? This article argues that there must be two kinds of truth: empirical, applying to the first part of the adage, and another, applying to the second. This study tries the twelve positive and negative permutations of the two parts of the adage, first semantically, then with regard to human relations, and finally, with regard to this paper. This sort of taxonomic orgy becomes tiresome, however, thus leading to a call for and demonstration of playfulness – also as a component of a social science different from the mainstream, but the more ‘scientific’ for it.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Deutsch, F. M. (1999). Halving it all: How equally shared parenting works .
Lusterman, D. D. (1998). Infidelity: A survival guide .
Bobes, T., & Rothman, B. (1998). The crowded bed: An effective framework for doing couple therapy .     

Real Exchange Rates in Transition Countries

This paper discusses the ways in which real exchange rate changes have affected macroeconomic and structural developments in transition economies. More specifically, it deals with four issues: it analyzes the real exchange rate dynamics in transition economies; it provides a comparative evaluation of the exchange rate regimes adopted by transition countries; it focuses on the link between exchange rate movements and financial crises; and it discusses the applicability of the Balassa–Samuelson hypothesis to transition economies.     

On the Arrow and Wilson impossibility theorems

A social welfare function is Arrovian if it is transitive-valued and satisfies IIA. We examine the logical relation between the statements (A) If f is Arrovian with domain 𝒫 then it is dictatorial if it satisfies the Pareto criterion and (W) If f is Arrovian with domain 𝒫 then it is dictatorial or inversely dictatorial if it is non-null and satisfies non-imposition. We exhibit a class of domains on which W implies A and another on which A implies W. We also present examples of domains on which one of the statements is true and the other is false. Received: 23 October 2001/Accepted: 19 March 2002 We thank our two referees for their suggestions for improving the exposition.     

Strategy-proof allocation of indivisible goods

Strategy-proof allocation of a finite number of indivisible goods among a finite number of individuals is considered. The main result is that in a pure distributional case, a mechanism is strategy-proof, nonbossy and neutral if and only if it is serially dictatorial. If the indivisible goods are initially owned by the individuals, a mechanism is strategy-proof, individually rational and Pareto consistent if and only if it is the core mechanism. Received: 15 September 1997/Accepted: 12 May 1998     

Viewpoint The body of intellectuals/the intellectuals’ body (remarks for Roland)

Apparently Arab scholars, when speaking of the text, use this admirable expression: the certain body. What body? We have several of them; the body of anatomists and physiologists, the one science sees or discusses: this is the text of grammarians, critics, commentators, philologists (the pheno-text). But we also have a body of bliss consisting solely of erotic relations, utterly distinct from the first body: it is another contour, another nomination; thus with the text: it is no more than the open list of the fires of language… R. Barthes, 1973:16–17 The corpus: what a splendid idea! Providing one is willing to read the body in the corpus: either because in the group of texts reserved for study (and which form the corpus) the pursuit is no longer of structure alone but of the figures of the utterance; or because one has a certain erotic relation with this group of texts (without which the corpus is merely a scientific image-repertoire). R. Barthes, 1975:161     

The Colonization Perspective in Israeli Sociology: Internal and External Comparisons

Abstract Though the characterization of Zionism as a colonial project is probably as old as the Zionist movement, as a specific scholarly sociological perspective in Israeli academia it was formulated only lately, in the wake of the Six Day War of 1967 This article outlines the contours of this new perspective, its theoretical assumptions and its political implications. It examines the historical circumstances which propelled its emergence, and than discerns two distinct sub-trends in it: Weberian and Marxist Throughout are explored three distinct comparative issues: a comparison of the colonization perspective to other perspectives in Israeli sociology especially the 'dualist perspective': a comparison of the case of Israel with other colonization cases. such as the U.S.A.: and a comparison of the two sub-trends in the perspective itself to each other.     

Propositionwise judgment aggregation: the general case

In the theory of judgment aggregation, it is known for which agendas of propositions it is possible to aggregate individual judgments into collective ones in accordance with the Arrow-inspired requirements of universal domain, collective rationality, unanimity preservation, non-dictatorship and propositionwise independence. But it is only partially known (e.g., only in the monotonic case) for which agendas it is possible to respect additional requirements, notably non-oligarchy, anonymity, no individual veto power, or extended unanimity preservation. We fully characterize the agendas for which there are such possibilities, thereby answering the most salient open questions about propositionwise judgment aggregation. Our results build on earlier results by Nehring and Puppe (Strategy-proof social choice on single-peaked domains: possibility, impossibility and the space between, 2002), Nehring (Oligarchies in judgment aggregation: a characterization, 2006), Dietrich and List (Soc Choice Welf 29(1):19–33, 2007a) and Dokow and Holzman (J Econ Theory 145(2):495–511, 2010a).     

Expatriation: Useful astonishment as cultural studies

Fatherland — a quintessence

My father … called himself English, or rather, an Englishman, usually bitterly, and when reading the newspapers: that is, when he felt betrayed, or wounded in his moral sense. I remember thinking it all rather academic, living as we did in the backveld. However, I did learn early on that while the world English is tricky and elusive enough in England, it is nothing to the variety of meanings it might bear in a Colony, self-governing or otherwise

(Lessing, 1960/68: 7–8).     

Anonymity, ordinal preference proximity and imposed social choices

Extending on an impossibility result by Baigent [1], it is shown that an anonymous social choice procedure which preserves preference proximity cannot satisfy the weakest possible form of non-imposition. Received: 20 September 1999/Accepted: 11 May 2001     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
Gottman, John M., & Leiblum, Sandra R. How to do psychotherapy and how to evaluate it: A manual for beginners .
Nichols, William C., Jr., (Editor). Marriage and family therapy: A reader from NCFR journals .
Greenwald, Harold. Direct decision therapy .
Kaufman, Walter. Without guilt and justice: From decidophobia to autonomy