Social Capital and Communities of Place1

Abstract This paper develops a framework for examining the questions: Does social capital make a difference for well being in communities of place? How might rural sociologists utilize social capital to further well being in communities? The author reviews social capital literature, contrasting rational choice and embeddedness perspectives. Opting for a marriage between embeddedness and conflict theory, he introduces entrepreneurial social infrastructure (ESI) as an alternative to social capital. ESI adds to social capital the notions of equality, inclusion, and agency. Research results are presented which support the embeddedness approach: community-level action (the community field) is not simply an aggregation of individual or organizational actions within the community; social capital and ESI contribute jointly and independently to community action. Examining economic development as a form of collective action, the author concludes?the following: a) ESI contributes to economic development, and b) inclusiveness (internal solidarity) is more closely related to community self-development while industrial recruitment is better predicted by strong external ties.     

From Materialist to Post-Materialist Happiness? National Affluence and Determinants of Life Satisfaction in Cross-National Perspective

This paper takes the theory of value change as developed by Inglehart as a point of departure and tests its implications for the determinants of human happiness. It investigates whether the importance of post-material concerns for happiness, relative to that of materialist concerns, is indeed higher in rich post-industrial societies. Personal autonomy and job creativity serve as indicators for post-materialist concerns, the income domain as an indicator for materialist concerns. The main assumption is put against data for 48 countries from wave 5 of the World Values Survey, the most recent survey, which covers the full range from poor agrarian to rich post-industrial societies. Employing a multi-level design, the paper indeed reveals a quite consistent pattern towards post-materialist happiness as we move from poor to rich societies. This pattern seems to be driven by both a devalorization of material concerns and a valorization of post-materialist concerns, although the evidence suggests that the former trend is stronger and more linear than the latter.     

The educational attainment of second-generation immigrants in The Netherland

Since the mid-1960s the Netherlands has had a positive net immigration, mainly because of man power recruitment from Turkey and Morocco and immigration from the former Dutch colony of Surinam. Immigrants havea weak labor market position, which is related to their educational leveland language skills. Children and grandchildren of immigrants are expected to have a better chance of integration into Dutch society. In this paper we investigate whether this is true with respect to the educational attainment of second-generation immigrants from Turkey, Morocco, Surinam and the Dutch Antilles.The authors thank an anonymous referee and both editors for helpful comments. Responsible editors: David Card and Christoph M. Schmidt.     

Local spatial data infrastructure, Trujillo-Peru

The development of a Municipal Information System, or currently better known as a local spatial data infrastructure, is considered complex due to the required inter-institutional relationships. In many developing countries Geographical Information Systems (GISs) are introduced but the benefits are modest as no changes take place in technical and organisational structure of organisations. Digital databases and computer-aided design (CAD) maps are mushrooming in great variety within different private and public institutions, municipal organisations and even within single departments and with structures similar to the paper period and thus operating on a stand-alone basis.Many national mapping agencies are not able to provide large-scale digital urban base maps, while the absence or low quality of cadastres makes those basic core data sets unavailable or inaccessible. The result is that duplication and incompatible data are frequently observed and also donor-driven stand-alone projects have a limited impact through the lack of institutional embedding and are not able to mature from the project to the institutional level. However, a positive sign is that there is an increasing awareness among data producers and consumers that investments in the development of digital data sets should be combined to reduce costs and increase benefits from especially GIS, and information and communication technology (ICT) in general.Within Trujillo a long-term vision was developed to make full use of ICT and GIS to modernise all operations of the Municipality to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its tasks. However, large investments are not feasible due to the very limited municipal budgets. To guarantee the support of the municipal council, short-term results are required. This paper describes three ‘products’ as part of the vision to develop through a step-by-step approach a local spatial data infrastructure for Trujillo.The three, rather different, products are:

1. fiscal cadastre, to increase municipal revenues through property taxation;

2. an ‘environmental atlas’ based on a compatible spatial and attribute data sets from a variety of organisations; and

3. a municipal website with interactive GIS and meta data information.

The paper concludes with some comments on the institutional and political requirements for the successful development of a local spatial data infrastructure and stresses that such an infrastructure is not a product but an incremental development process that will progress only in case such a process is simple, cost effective, user-friendly, and flexible with clear products.Political interest and institutional stability and genuine interest for inter-institutional cooperation will add much to the success of this process.     

An Obstacle Race: A Case Study of a Child's Schooling in Australia and England

This account of the struggle by a 'disabled' child to experience a normal education, to lead a normal life, is the basis for a critique of science and the professions, for her struggle has been against those specialists who shape our ideologies, the high priests of the religion of science. Her story reveals the deep-seated prejudices of our society, prejudices which derive from the increasing domination, since the sixteenth century, of a mechanistic, phallogocentric scientism which, in the name of reason, denies individuality, creativity, spirituality, variability, defining and thus condemning those suffering physical or perceptual disabilities beyond the pale. They are deemed 'unnatural', 'negative', 'abnormal' through recourse to a narrow, mechanistic and artificial view of nature. A disabled child sets out on the race through life weighed down by ruthless handicappers but in her triumph shows how ignorant the medical model is of humanity and how restrictive our schools are of creativity. Her success questions our most deeply-rooted assumptions.     

Ageing-driven pension reforms

This paper stems from the observation that there are two worldwide trends, pension reform and population ageing, and asks whether the two may be related. Exploring the cases of pension reform in different countries, we find that, although they are very different, the cases share a common characteristic: they shift risks away from workers towards those who are retired. Furthermore, population ageing, by increasing the weight of the elderly relative to working generations, raises the price of intergenerational risk sharing. Combining these findings, we argue and show formally that pension reform can be seen as a welfare-best response to population ageing.     

The Best and Worst Times of Life: Narratives and Assessments of Subjective Well-Being by Anamnestic Comparative Self Assessment (ACSA) in the Eastern Cape,South Africa

The Anamnestic Comparative Self Assessment (ACSA) measure of subjective well-being (SWB) aims to reduce the problems of cultural bias and relativity to external standards by allowing people to define the endpoints or ‘anchors’ of the measurement scale. In medical terminology anamnestic denotes ‘based on memory’. The ACSA uses subjects’ memories of the best and worst periods in their lives to define the anchors of the scale. They then assess their current quality of life relative to these personal anchors. The South African pilot study tested the match between self-assessment of SWB with ACSA and the conventional single-item measures of life satisfaction and happiness used in the South African Quality of Life Trends Study and analysed the narratives of the best and worst times of life. The quota sample of 46 consisted of 26 residents of Makana district in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, and 20 patients undergoing treatment in the local TB hospital. Mean SWB ratings with all three measures of life satisfaction, happiness and ACSA were between 5 and 6 on a 0–10-point scale. Ratings on all three scales were positively correlated. However, on ACSA the TB patients rated their current SWB 1.84 points lower than the community respondents, suggesting a greater sensitivity of this measure. It was observed that the starting points of the life stories produced by respondents to define the anchor periods for ACSA were related to their current assessment of SWB. A typology was developed that combined the starting point of the life stories with current SWB. The majority of community respondents matched the ‘Achiever’ type who scored positively on ACSA (i.e., above the mid-point of the scale) and whose life stories started with the worst period of their lives and proceeded to the best period. The TB patients were the only respondents to represent the ‘Survivor’ type whose morale had recovered after misfortune in life. ‘Survivors’ started their narratives with the best period in their lives, then moved to the worst (often health-related) one, and gave positive ACSA ratings. Based on the qualitative analysis of narratives, it is concluded that ACSA is a sensitive measurement instrument and therefore particularly useful for monitoring the effects of treatments and social interventions in longitudinal studies. However, further research is required to verify its cross-cultural validity.

Ecosystem services deficits in cross-boundary landscapes: spatial mismatches between green and grey systems

Urban Ecosystems - Quantitative analyses of the influence of boundary lines on ecosystem services distributions remain rare. Approaches towards integrative assessments of green and grey landscape...