Towards a Theory of Medium Term Life Satisfaction: Similar Results for Australia,Britain and Germany

We analyse the Life Satisfaction trajectories of respondents in three long-running, national panel surveys: the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia Survey (HILDA), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Previous research has shown that substantial minorities of respondents in all three countries recorded long term changes in LS (Fujita and Diener in J Personal Soc Psychol 88:158–64, 2005; Headey in Soc Indic Res 76:312–317, 2006; Headey et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci 107:17922–7926, 2010; Headey et al. Soc Indic Res 112:725–48, 2013). In a recent SIR paper based on the German data (Headey and Muffels in Soc Indic Res, 2015. doi: 10.1007/s11205-015-1146-8), we showed graphs of LS trajectories which suggested—and subsequent statistical analysis confirmed—that respondents typically spend multiple consecutive years above and, in other periods, below their own long term mean level of LS. Here we extend the analysis to Australia and Britain, showing that results replicate in two more Western countries. It appears that most people go through relatively happy periods of life, and relatively unhappy periods. The evidence runs counter to set-point theory which views adult LS as stable, except for short term fluctuations due to life events. In the second half of the paper we try to contribute to a theory of medium term life satisfaction. We estimate structural equation models with two-way causation between LS and variables usually treated as causes of LS, including health, social support, frequency of social activities, and satisfaction with one’s work, partner and family life. In all three countries we find that there are positive feedback loops between these variables and LS, which partly account for extended periods of high or low LS. The two-way causation models are based on a modified concept of ‘Granger-causation’ (Granger in Econometrica 37(3):424–38, 1969). The main intuition behind Granger-causation is that if x can be shown to be statistically significantly related to y in a model which includes multiple lags of y, then it can be inferred that x is one cause of y.     

Measuring the Efficiency of Health Services in Lower‐income Countries: The Case of Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea (PNG) faces enormous health challenges and information concerning how to allocate limited health resources efficiently is lacking. This article finds that geographical location is important in achieving higher efficiency scores. In addition, it compares efficiency scores against a range of quality indicators. The results demonstrate that different conclusions are reached when efficiency scores are assessed in the context of broader health system objectives. Analyses of this kind can provide valuable information to policy‐makers in lower‐income countries.     

生产性破坏:破坏作为社会生活的中心组织形式

This paper is a reflection on observations about the place of destruction in the or-ganization of social life .In contemplating the model of sacrifice , the author draws upon sources ranging Hubert, Mauss, and Evan-Pritchard to Levi-Strauss, and considers the circumstances of his life as a scholar of Melanesia and as a resident of the United States .The question that in-trigues the author the most is：＂ what quality is there in social life that makes destruction so often the condition of creation？＂ The author names this kind of destruction as a productive destruction and gives an analysis .He argues that destruction not only makes creation possible , it also pro-duces the conditions for the formation of not just difference , but a rank order or hierarchy .He suggests that it is not religion which creates the ritual hierarchies of power and destruction , but the latter which gets taken up by religion and ritual , and, thence, by the development of forms of social order .     

The Strategy of Multinational Country in Modern China-The Exploration for the Historical Reason of minzu Recognition

The Chinese Communist Party （ CCP ） launched a nationwide census and voter registration campaign in the summer of 1953 .After debating which questions should be posed to their nearly six hundred million respondents , officials ultimately decided upon only five .The first four of these involved the most basic of demographic infor-mation, including name , age, gender , and rela-tionship to the head of one ＇ s household .The fifth one was settled upon a question：that of nationality or minzu.The outcome of the census proved shock-ing to Communist authorities and ultimately precip-itated the Ethnic Classification Project . Why the Communists wished to include minzu on the census schedule？ The author argues that there were three reasons .The first reason is the deeply historical problem of maintaining the territo-rial integrity of a highly diverse empire .The sec-ond problem is more proximate , and originates in the ongoing rivalry between the Communists and the Nationalists during the first half of the twentieth century.Third, with regards to categorization , the advent of the Classification is attributable to a po-litical crisis prompted by the failure of the state ＇ s initial experiment with a highly noninterventionist policy of self-categorization . To understand each of these questions , the author brings the readers to explore the history of the term minzu itself, and suggests that the very in-clusion of minzu in the 1953-54 census schedule was itself the culmination of a complex history dat-ing back to the fall of the Qing dynasty （ 1644 -1911 ） and the formation of the first Chinese repub-lic.     

The Problem of Pseudoscience in Social Work Continuing Education

The National Association of Social Workers requires social workers to obtain continuing education (CE) after they receive their social work degrees. A large and profitable industry that has emerged catering to this need for CE that is particularly focused on the needs of licensed social workers. Quality control mechanisms in place to monitor the content and delivery of CE approved by the field of social work is relatively lax, and as a result a considerable number of social work CE programs convey content that can be labeled as pseudoscientific. We provide illustrations of currently approved social work CE courses that provide training in a variety of bizarre and unsupported assessment methods and treatments that are pseudoscientific.     

European Youth Gang Policy in Comparative Context

The past decade has seen increased reports of street gangs across a range of contexts. In Europe, anxieties over street‐based youth has led to the development of gang‐specific policies across a range of jurisdictions, most notably the UK. Following a similar pattern of policy mobility in criminal justice, many of these policies have origins in the US system. In this review of international gang policy developments, we critically examine a number of these policies in a comparative context ‐ including gang policing units and intelligence databases ‐ and interrogate their efficacy. Drawing on cogent examples from the UK, we argue for caution in adopting US gang intervention tactics due to the lack of empirical evidence relating to their applicability or efficacy, and the corresponding potential for discrimination toward the most marginalised and socially excluded children and young people in society.     

Relationships between Borda voting and Zermelo ranking

There are many situations wherein a group of individuals (e.g., voters, experts, sports writers) must produce an ordered list of ‘best’ alternatives selected from a given group of alternatives (e.g., candidates, proposals, sports teams). Two long established mechanisms that have been used for this task are ‘Zermelo’s Ranking Method’ (1929) and ‘Borda’s Voting Scheme’ (1781). The main purpose of this paper is to point out that they are, under certain common circumstances, identical. We then show that Zermelo’s Method can be used in situations that Borda’s Method is not designed to handle.     

过去与当代教育模式在亚洲国家的比较：印度、东南亚、中国

人类学目前还较少关注于教育问题,但研究教育有助于我们更好地理解不同的亚洲社会面对现代化所采取的应对措施。基于让-马克?德格拉夫（Jean-Marc de Grave）主编的《东亚国家正式与非正式教育：社会化及学习内容的关系》（2012）一书,本文将论及新型教育模式：印度英语的普及;印度和印度尼西亚现代学校的建立;印度尼西亚新兴的捕鱼技术;泰国克伦族人对“生态传统”的推广;中国村庄“故事堂”的成立;印度传统舞姬的消失以及当代社会家境良好的家庭对年轻女孩学习舞蹈的重视,并探讨不同社会中“传统”教育模式的同质性与价值观层面上的共通性,以及随着新型教育模式的引入,这些社会在教育领域所经历的不同程度的转型。