Sociological ambivalence: The case of East European peasant-immigrant workers in America, 1880s–1930s

The paper develops an understanding of the tensions experienced by East European immigrants by drawing on the concept of sociological ambivalence: being pulled in cognitively and emotionally opposed directions generated by the social situations in which the actors are located. Using a variety of sources created by East European peasant-immigrants themselves—letters, diaries, poems, prayers, newspaper articles, and oral history collections—the paper discusses four kinds of sociological ambivalence experienced by the immigrants: (1) resulting from the multiplicity of interests incorporated in different social positions occupied by the same person; (2) induced by the opportunity structure characterized by the disjunction between culturally prescribed aspirations and socially structured avenues for realizing these goals; (3) generated by conflicting values and goals contained in a group's cultural system and in normative role expectations prescribed for its members; and (4) resulting from individuals' simultaneous orientation to several different sets of cultural values and reference groups.I wish to thank Renée Fox and Robert Merton for their very helpful comments on the original version of this paper.     

Injuries to Swedish school pupils: Distribution and patterns by type of school and type of municipality

The study examines the distribution of injuries and their patterns among Swedish school pupils. Data were gathered from an injury register created during the school year 1996/97, with the help of 79 schools and using a standardized registration form. Injury ratios (IRs) by gender, type of municipality, and type of school were measured all injuries aggregated and for five injury patterns. IRs did not vary much by gender, but showed considerable variation by type of school and type of municipality. A strong association was found between injury pattern and gender. Taken as a whole, the findings shed light on the circumstances under which school injuries are incurred. They suggest that targets for prevention may vary by gender, school level and, to some extent, by type of municipality. The extent to which the findings are generalizable is uncertain.     

Is there a relationship between socio-economic factors and biodiversity in urban ponds? A study in the city of Stockholm

Urban small water bodies, such as ponds, are essential elements of human socio-economic landscapes. Ponds also provide important habitats for species that would otherwise not survive in the urban environment. Knowledge on the biodiversity of urban ponds and the relationship between their ecological value and factors linked to urbanization and socio-economic status is crucial for decisions on where and how to establish and manage ponds in cities to deliver maximum biodiversity benefits. Our study investigates if the pattern of urban-pond biodiversity can be related to different socio-economic factors, such as level of wealth, education or percentage of buildings of different types. Because of lack of previous studies investigating that, our study is of exploratory character and many different variables are used. We found that the biodiversity of aquatic insects was significantly negatively associated with urbanisation variables such as amount of buildings and number of residents living around ponds. This relationship did not differ depending on the spatial scale of our investigation. In contrast, we did not find a significant relationship with variables representing socio-economic status, such as education level and wealth of people. This latter result suggests that the socio-economic status of residents does not lead to any particular effect in terms of the management and function of ponds that would affect biodiversity. However, there is a need for a finer-scale investigation of the different potential mechanism in which residents in areas with differing socio-economic status could indirectly influence ponds.     

Disabled students’ experiences of higher education in Sweden,the Czech Republic,and the United States – a comparative institutional analysis

Students with disabilities face obstacles in their encounters with higher education. The aim of this study is to investigate how the institutional context shapes students’ experiences of unequal opportunities in higher education. In comparing disabled students’ experiences from universities in Sweden, the Czech Republic, and the United States, the study makes visible the kind of experiences that students share and how experiences differ between these countries within the global context of higher education. The study has shown that students’ possibilities for equal participation are shaped by the institutional context that is based on medical diagnosis and compensation for an inaccessible education.     

The relationship between: occupational status,biological condition and androgen hormone level among Polish adult men: the Wroclaw Male Study

Population health and its determinants are one of the major challenges to social and economic policy. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between occupational activity and biological condition in adult working Polish men. The participants of the study were 300 men (30–65 years), healthy inhabitants of the city of Wroclaw, Poland. Seventeen measures of biological condition were examined. The subjects were divided into three different occupational groups: professionals, soldiers and skilled workers. A comparison of biological age profiles of three occupational groups showed that in the majority of characteristics, professionals had the youngest biological age, whereas skilled workers had the highest biological age. The results for soldiers were not as unambiguous, but biological parameters were generally closer to those for professionals. Inborn biological predispositions and long-term impact of the working environment can influence on the biological condition of various professional groups. Knowledge of the determinants of biological condition might result in efficient use of predisposition to work or may be of help in extending their time of work ability.     

Transfer of control system interface solutions from other domains to the thermal power industry

In a thermal power plant the operators' roles are to control and monitor the process to achieve efficient and safe production. To achieve this, the human-machine interfaces have a central part. The interfaces need to be updated and upgraded together with the technical functionality to maintain optimal operation. One way of achieving relevant updates is to study other domains and see how they have solved similar issues in their design solutions. The purpose of this paper is to present how interface design solution ideas can be transferred from domains with operator control to thermal power plants. In the study 15 domains were compared using a model for categorisation of human-machine systems. The result from the domain comparison showed that nuclear power, refinery and ship engine control were most similar to thermal power control. From the findings a basic interface structure and three specific display solutions were proposed for thermal power control: process parameter overview, plant overview, and feed water view. The systematic comparison of the properties of a human-machine system allowed interface designers to find suitable objects, structures and navigation logics in a range of domains that could be transferred to the thermal power domain.     

Beyond taxonomy

Much of the considerable confusion about the definition of social entrepreneurship in academic literature stems from a lack of empirical research on the subject. This article advances social entrepreneurship research beyond conceptualization discussions by developing and validating an instrument that quantifies the incidence of nonprofit entrepreneurial behavior. Information from 145 Kansas City Metropolitan Area nonprofit organizations was collected to validate the underlying constructs represented in the instrument. Behavior differences were depicted between entrepreneurial and nonentrepreneurial nonprofits. Using principal component factor analysis, the research illustrates social entrepreneurship as a unique nonprofit behavior that occurs at the intersection of innovation, proactiveness, and risk taking.     

Gendering family composition: Sex preferences for children and childbearing behavior in the Nordic countries

It has been argued that a society's gender system may influence parents' sex preferences for children. If this is true, one should expect to find no evidence of such preferences in countries with a high level of gender equality. In this article, we exploit data from population registers from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden to examine continuities and changes in parental sex preferences in the Nordic countries during the past three to four decades. First, we do not observe an effect of the sex of the first born child on second-birth risks. Second, we detect a distinct preference for at least one child of each sex among parents of two children. For third births, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish parents seem to develop a preference for having a daughter, while Finns exhibit a significant preference for having a son. These findings show that modernization and more equal opportunities for women and men do not necessarily lead to parental gender indifference. On the contrary, they may even result in new sex preferences.     

Evaluation of multivariate surveillance

Multivariate surveillance is of interest in many areas such as industrial production, bioterrorism detection, spatial surveillance, and financial transaction strategies. Some of the suggested approaches to multivariate surveillance have been multivariate counterparts to the univariate Shewhart, EWMA, and CUSUM methods. Our emphasis is on the special challenges of evaluating multivariate surveillance methods. Some new measures are suggested and the properties of several measures are demonstrated by applications to various situations. It is demonstrated that zero-state and steady-state ARL, which are widely used in univariate surveillance, should be used with care in multivariate surveillance.     

Children in Residential and Foster Care – a Swedish Example

The article reports on a longitudinal study of children placed in a children's home in Malmö, Sweden, at the beginning of the 1980s. The 26 children, placed when younger than four years of age and staying more than four weeks in the children's home, were followed up three and nine months after leaving the children's home as well as five, ten and fifteen years later. Interviewing the parties concerned was the predominant research method. Twenty of the 26 children in the research group also had later experiences of out-of-home care, including foster care, in addition to the stay at the children's home. This article is about them, 15–20 years old when interviewed in the latest follow-up study. Three aspects of outcome are focused on: the degree of stability in the children's living conditions; relationships to parents and foster parents; well-being and emotional and behavior problems. Bearing in mind that the concept of well-being is relative, a cautious conclusion is that a third of the children in the study experienced well-being, a third felt o.k., and a third had serious problems, including criminal activities and drugs. The somewhat unclear connection between well-being, stability in living conditions, and sense of family belonging is discussed.