Childhood studies,children's politics and participation: perspectives for processes of democratisation

ABSTRACT

From the early Frankfurt School through to the work of Manuel Castells, there has been a rich body of work on the cleavage between technological and social developments of the twentieth century in respect of the consequences for the constitution of subjectivity. However, little attention is paid to the role of children during their childhoods in attempts to bridge this gap beyond discussions about the democratic actors children will become when they are adults. This paper argues that only the full integration of children, during their childhoods, into democratic development of societies will prevent the deepening of the rift between technological and social progress. The paper traces the correspondence between the new childhood studies and those concepts of politics and politicisation which can support social progress towards an emancipatory social perspective undergirded by particular and democratisation of all areas of everyday life. Drawing on Bourdieu and ideas of participation as action, the paper critically examines the various mechanisms by which children are conventionally excluded from democratic participation and then explores how a deeper consideration of agency in childhood and social actorship opens up alternative mechanisms of inclusion and the concomitant expansion of the concept of democracy.     

Identifying treatment effects using trimmed means when data are missing not at random

Patients often discontinue from a clinical trial because their health condition is not improving or they cannot tolerate the assigned treatment. Consequently, the observed clinical outcomes in the trial are likely better on average than if every patient had completed the trial. If these differences between trial completers and non-completers cannot be explained by the observed data, then the study outcomes are missing not at random (MNAR). One way to overcome this problem—the trimmed means approach for missing data due to study discontinuation—sets missing values as the worst observed outcome and then trims away a fraction of the distribution from each treatment arm before calculating differences in treatment efficacy (Permutt T, Li F. Trimmed means for symptom trials with dropouts. Pharm Stat. 2017;16(1):20–28). In this paper, we derive sufficient and necessary conditions for when this approach can identify the average population treatment effect. Simulation studies show the trimmed means approach's ability to effectively estimate treatment efficacy when data are MNAR and missingness due to study discontinuation is strongly associated with an unfavorable outcome, but trimmed means fail when data are missing at random. If the reasons for study discontinuation in a clinical trial are known, analysts can improve estimates with a combination of multiple imputation and the trimmed means approach when the assumptions of each hold. We compare the methodology to existing approaches using data from a clinical trial for chronic pain. An R package trim implements the method. When the assumptions are justifiable, using trimmed means can help identify treatment effects notwithstanding MNAR data.     

Optimal job insertion in the no-wait job shop

The no-wait job shop (NWJS) considered here is a version of the job shop scheduling problem where, for any two operations of a job, a fixed time lag between their starting times is given. Also, sequence-dependent set-up times between consecutive operations on a machine can be present. The NWJS problem consists in finding a schedule that minimizes the makespan. We address here the so-called optimal job insertion problem (OJI) in the NWJS. While the OJI is NP-hard in the classical job shop, it was shown by Gröflin & Klinkert to be solvable in polynomial time in the NWJS. We present a highly efficient algorithm with running time $\mathcal {O}(n^{2}\cdot\max\{n,m\})$ for this problem. The algorithm is based on a compact formulation of the NWJS problem and a characterization of all feasible insertions as the stable sets (of prescribed cardinality) in a derived comparability graph. As an application of our algorithm, we propose a heuristic for the NWJS problem based on optimal job insertion and present numerical results that compare favorably with current benchmarks.     

The flexible blocking job shop with transfer and set-up times

The Flexible Blocking Job Shop (FBJS) considered here is a job shop scheduling problem characterized by the availability of alternative machines for each operation and the absence of buffers. The latter implies that a job, after completing an operation, has to remain on the machine until its next operation starts. Additional features are sequence-dependent transfer and set-up times, the first for passing a job from a machine to the next, the second for change-over on a machine from an operation to the next. The objective is to assign machines and schedule the operations in order to minimize the makespan. We give a problem formulation in a disjunctive graph and develop a heuristic local search approach. A feasible neighborhood is constructed, where typically a critical operation is moved (keeping or changing its machine) together with some other operations whose moves are “implied”. For this purpose, we develop the theoretical framework of job insertion with local flexibility, based on earlier work of Gröflin and Klinkert on insertion. A tabu search that consistently generates feasible neighbor solutions is then proposed and tested on a larger test set. Numerical results support the validity of our approach and establish first benchmarks for the FBJS.     

Delinking of economic growth and materials turnover

National material flow analyses and materials balances are indispensable sources of information with respect to the operationalizalion of sustainable development. Both of these instruments are already employed in official statistics in Germany and Japan, and other countries—especially member slates of the European Union—are likely to follow suit. Because of the preparatory stages of work that have already been carried out, Austria is in an excellent position to assume a leading role in international concerted action. From 1970 to 1990 total materials flow through Austrian society has approximately increased by one third. As can be seen from changes in the amount of primary energy used during this period, economic growth in physical terms and value added in production decoupled slightly, and the same is true for the use of materials. Since 1970, materials input per unit of GDP (material intensity) decreased by 25%. This implies that relative gains in efficiency are compensated by the annual increases in the use of materials which, by and large, are caused by few yet massive ‘strategic’ material flows of steel, cement, wood, paper/pulp, sand, gravel and crushed stone. The empirical findings suggest that delinking of economic growth from the metabolism of human society should be discussed more carefully. The concept of ‘delinking’ involves two alternative perspectives of development differing from each other with respect to their ecological effects. The analysis may either focus upon absolute changes in materials throughput or on the relative changes of materials throughput per unit of output. It is strongly recommended, therefore, to distinguish clearly between relative and absolute productivity of resources. Branch analyses confirmed, once again, that the information contained in material indicators related to value‐added concepts is relatively insignificant when it comes to evaluation of the social ‘pressures upon the environment’.     

Social Metabolism and Labour in a Local Context: Changing Environmental Relations on Trinket Island

From a material and energetic perspective, this paper outlines the patterns of society-nature interactions of a local horticultural, hunter-and-gatherer population that lives on a remote island between India and Indonesia. Based on empirical research, we present several indicators to show an economic portfolio of a local society that combines horticulture, hunting and gathering activities with elements of industrialisation and market economy. In describing these environmental relations, the study narrows its focus to the use of three socio-ecological concepts, namely socio-economic metabolism, colonising natural processes, and the energetic return on investment. Using these concepts, we show the dynamics of social and environmental transformation at a local level and the consequences this may have for sustainability.     

The State and its Welfare State: How do Welfare State Changes Affect the Make‐up of the Nation State?

With respect to changes in the welfare states of OECD countries, scholars most of the time are looking for common trends; that is, they look for similar movements in different states, such as welfare state retrenchment, recalibration, etc. As we show in this article, data on welfare state spending and financing do not, however, support such stark tendencies like retrenchment. We therefore suggest looking for corridor effects rather than level effects, i.e. analysing changes in the dispersion of welfare state regimes rather than shifts in the mean values. Our analysis suggests that convergence, i.e. decreasing diversity among states in spending, financing and regulation patterns, may have been the most important pattern of welfare state change in the last three decades – a pattern easily overlooked in past and current research. Convergence of welfare state regimes also affects our views on the modern nation state itself since the varieties of welfare capitalism in the twentieth century are themselves an expression of the sovereignty and autonomy of the nation state. If nation states are forced to surrender national particularities, to mellow their characteristic differences and to move incrementally towards a one‐size‐fits‐all common model via ‘shrinking corridors’, such a blurring of welfare regimes, such a beclouding of difference, should also be regarded as a significant change taking place in the centre of the Western nation state's make‐up.