Is the customer always right? Class,service and the production of distinction in Chinese department stores

This article argues that service interactions can serve as key sites for the recognition and performance of class distinctions in urban China. The author develops the concept of distinction work to describe service work in which a key part of the service interaction becomes the recognition of a customer’s class position. A contrast between working-class and luxury service environments in urban China demonstrates that distinction work becomes especially important when retailers compete over customers who themselves seek social distinction from their shopping experiences. This study links the study of service work and class while providing a better understanding of the evolving culture of inequality and emerging structure of entitlement in reform era China.

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The inverse plurality rule—an axiomatization

Under the ‘inverse plurality rule’, voters specify only their least preferred alternative. Our first result establishes that this rule is the only scoring rule that satisfies the minimal veto condition (MV). We then prove that the inverse plurality rule is characterized by MV and the four well known conditions that characterize scoring rules; namely, Anonymity (A), Neutrality (N), Reinforcement (RE) and Continuity (CO). Our new characterization result is related to the characterizations of approval voting and of the widely used plurality rule. We finally show how the axiomatization of the inverse plurality rule can be extended to the axiomatization of elementary scoring rules (vote for t-alternatives scoring rules). We are indebted to two anonymous referees for their most useful comments.

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Informalization and contemporary manners: The Wouters studies

This is a discussion of two books by Cas Wouters, Sex and Manners: Female Emancipation in the West 1890–2000 (London: Sage, 2004), and Informalization: Manners and Emotions since 1890 (Sage, forthcoming 2007, English version).

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Strengths-Based Approach and Coping Strategies used by Parents Whose Young Children Exhibit Violent Behaviour: Collaboration Between Schools and Parents

This research study explores the strategies adopted by 60 parents of children between 3 and 9 years of age considered to have engaged in violent behaviour, within the meaning of the Safe Schools Act (Ontario Ministry of Education, Canada, 2000). This legal framework requires parents to be involved in the decisions concerning their children. Parents’ perceptions of their involvement lead them to develop coping strategies enabling them to play a more active role in such decision making. This article analyzes their perceptions according to a strengths-based approach and seeks to provide a mediation perspective to social work practice with families.

The scoring rules in an endogenous election

Plurality rule is mostly criticized from being capable of choosing an alternative considered as worst by a strict majority. This paper considers elections in which the agenda consists of potential candidates strategically choosing whether or not to enter the election. In this context, we examine the ability of scoring rules to fulfil the Condorcet criterion. We show for the case of three potential candidates that Plurality rule is the only scoring rule that satisfies a version of the Condorcet criterion in two cases: 1) when preferences are single-peaked and, 2) when preferences are single-dipped.

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Bringing the body back into theory and methodology

This is a discussion of a book by Kathryn Linn Geurts, Culture and the Senses. Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002; and a book by Judith Farquhar, Appetites. Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002.

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Chinese Property Law (Rights in rem) in the Civilian Tradition

The legal transitions of private ownership from being admitted limitedly to being protected equally with public ownership, and of the peasants’ right on rural lands from a contractual right to the right in rem, are almost the same process of social reform. And in the interaction of social development and legislation, the law has taken on an increasing role in social transition.

Interdisciplinary foundations of urban ecology

Researchers have identified urban ecology as a new field integrating social and ecological science. Critics have portrayed the field as under-theorized with negative implications for research and urban environmental planning. Unprecedented urbanization and historical bias against research integrating social and ecological systems are identified as driving this deficit. Researchers have called for new integrative approaches to address this issue. In response, this paper applies ecology’s analytic framework of “patch dynamics”, Kuhn’s concept of “normal science” and Mazoyer and Roudart’s “evolutionary series” to demographic data and historical texts to perform an analysis of interdisciplinary contributions to theory applicable in the field of urban ecology. The subsequent exploration reveals a rich history of interdisciplinary inquiry along the nature/society divide. The paper concludes that these “largely ignored” contributions offer urban ecology the opportunity to claim much broader depth as a field gaining access to precedents and innovations accomplished during the field’s early theoretical development. Drawing upon this history, a framework for ecological urban development is suggested to inform and assist contemporary research in urban ecology and planning.

Mindsharing: Transitional Objects and Selfobjects as Complementary Functions

This paper introduces the concept of “mindsharing” as an overarching construct that encompasses the familiar clinical phenomena described by the concepts transitional objects, auxiliary ego functions, selfobject functions, intersubjective sharing, and others. The common denominator in each of these is that one person uses others psychological functions for the purposes of maintaining self-cohesion. A case is presented to illustrate some of the implications of this position.

Reduced prizes and increased effort in contests

We study the general class of two-player public-policy contests and specify the asymmetry condition under which a more restrained government intervention that reduces the contestants’ prizes has the “perverse” effect of increasing their aggregate lobbying efforts.

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On the influence of extreme parties in electoral competition with policy-motivated candidates

We study and compare equilibrium platforms in models of unidimensional electoral competition with two and four policy motivated parties. We first analyze the plurality game, where the party getting the most votes is elected and implements its proposed platform. Restrictions on the set of credible announcements are needed to get existence of equilibria. Comparing equilibria with two and four parties, we obtain that moderate parties react to the introduction of extreme parties by proposing the same or more extreme equilibrium platforms. We then study the proportional system, where the policy implemented is a weighted sum of the proposals, with the voting shares as weights. Here, the existence of extreme parties leads moderate ones to choose more centrist platforms. We finally test the robustness of our results with respect to, first, the enlargement of the strategy space to entry decisions and, second, to asymmetric distributions of voters' blisspoints.

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Professional Women, Good Families: Respectable Femininity and the Cultural Politics of a “New” India

This study of professional software women in urban India examines practices of respectable femininity and discourses of the Indian family to understand the changing and abiding aspects of a seemingly new national culture. Colonial and nationalist constructs of the Indian home, and the middle-class women who protected that home, continue to powerfully shape everyday articulations of national belonging, even as they are transformed through individual negotiations and a global economy. Drawing from extensive interviews and ethnographic work, this paper analyzes the interplay of gender, class, and nation in contemporary urban India as individualized, gendered efforts to accumulate symbolic capital.

Appropriating the city: space,theory, and bike messengers

Over the last 30 years, social theorists have increasingly emphasized the importance of space. However, in empirical research, the dialectical relationship between social interaction and the physical environment is still a largely neglected issue. Using the theory of structuration, I provide a concrete example of why and how space matters in the cultural analysis of an urban social world. I argue that bike messengers—individuals who deliver time-sensitive materials in downtown cores of major cities—cannot be understood outside an analysis of space. Specifically, I connect the cultural significance of messenger practices to the emplacement of those practices inside the urban environment.

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Urban ecosystems: What would Tansley do?

The ecosystem concept was introduced in ecology originally to solve problems associated with theories of succession and ecological communities. It has evolved to become one of ecology’s fundamental ideas, and has proven to be applicable to a wide variety of research questions and applications. However, there is controversy about whether or how well the ecosystem concept is suited to urban habitats. By examining Arthur Tansley’s original presentation of the ecosystem concept, and exploring how the ecological context of the concept has changed, we indicate that the fundamental concept of the ecosystem is well suited to urban ecological studies. The concept can be clarified for urban use by including a social complex and a built complex to insure that human social institutions and actions, and the structures and infrastructure they build are explicitly included in the ecosystem concept. The ecosystem concept is thus seen as clearly robust to use in urban areas.

Nonprofit Isomorphism: An Australia–United States Comparison

This paper examines the organizational structures of nonprofit organizations in Australia and the United States. Using random samples of nonprofits drawn from the two organizational populations, the analysis compares the extent of structural resemblance or isomorphism in each. It detects similar levels of isomorphism for several structural characteristics. The paper interprets this finding as reflecting expectations for nonprofit organizations that stretch worldwide.

Chinese Contract Law and the Economic Reform

China’s previous contract laws had many contradictions and failed to meet the needs of China’s developing market economy. Although some problems still need to be dealt with, the unified contract law is more advanced, systematic and plays an important role in fostering and encouraging transactions.

The crisis of neoliberalism and the future of international institutions: A comparison of the IMF and the WTO

The current crisis of neoliberalism is calling into question the relevance of key international institutions. We analyze the origins, nature, and possible impacts of the crisis through comparing two such institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Both originated in the post-World War II U.S.-led hegemonic order and were transformed as part of the transition to global neoliberalism. We show that while the IMF and the WTO have been part of the same hegemonic project, their distinct institutional features have put them on significantly different trajectories. Historical differences in the two institutions’ systems of rules have placed the IMF in a more vulnerable position than the WTO, which provides clues to the future contours of global economic governance.

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Do Reservation Wages Really Decline? Some International Evidence on the Determinants of Reservation Wages

Using cross-country data, we investigate the determinants of reservation wages and their course over the jobless spell. Higher unemployment benefits lead to higher reservation wages. Further, again consistent with the basic search model, repeated observations on the same individual provide scant evidence of declining reservation wages.

What is child care? Lessons from time-use surveys of major English-speaking countries

This paper examines the definition and measurement of time devoted to child care in the diary-based surveys administered by the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain. Detailed analysis of the relationship between measures of care activity and supervisory care in the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) illustrate the larger conceptual issues at stake.

Export, Import and Economic Growth: The Case of Transition Economies

This study analyses the relationships between export, import and economic growth for the 13 transition economies. Empirical results show that there is a unidirectional causality from economic growth to export. Empirical findings show that the growth-led export hypothesis is valid in those countries and growth is rather shaped by increase in import demand.