THE MARRIED WIDOW: MARRIAGE PENALTIES MATTER!

Marriage penalties are a controversial feature of many government policies. Empirical evidence of their behavioral effects is quite mixed, which is surprising because economic theory predicts that they should have an impact on the headship decision. We investigate the removal of marriage penalties from the surviving spouse pensions of the Canadian public pension system in the 1980s. These reforms provide a simple and transparent source of identification. Our results indicate that marriage penalties can have large and persistent effects on marriage decisions. We also present evidence suggesting that it is individuals with characteristics correlated with greater wealth who respond to the penalties. (JEL: J1, H2)     

Unpolitical solutionism: Wealth elite sentiments against democracy and politics

The last few decades have been marked by discourses that challenge many basic presumptions supporting liberal democracy. Populist parties in particular have raised criticism against democratic systems, and authoritarian programmes have made electoral gains. This article offers the elite's perspective on this phenomenon, which is often discussed in the context of lower income groups. Drawing from qualitative interviews with 90 Finnish top earners, the article shows how wealth elites sustain strong discontent towards liberal democracy and see it as an ineffective and sometimes fundamentally flawed system. They are concerned with its alleged (in)efficiency and disagreements typical of democratic processes and are correspondingly fascinated by solutions that are presented as self-evident but that no one has the courage to execute. In this article, we refer to this type of reasoning by introducing and developing the term unpolitical solutionism, which refers to a preoccupation with quick solutions to complex problems that are political in nature. The concept of unpolitical solutionism builds on discussions of unpolitical democracy (Urbinati) and technosolutionism (Morozov) and brings them to our dialog. By analysing wealth elites' views in a Nordic democracy and by developing the concept of unpolitical solutionism, this article contributes to recent discussions on different forms of unpolitical argumentation in the context of (liberal) economic thinking.     

Social Inclusion of Refugee and Native Peers Among Adolescents: It is the Language that Matters!

This study investigated the role of refugee status and language skills for adolescents’ inclusion or exclusion decisions in hypothetical intergroup scenarios. 100 German adolescents (Mage = 13.65 years, SD = 1.93) were presented three scenarios in which groups of adolescents are planning leisure time activities, and peers from their own country (Germany) versus another country (Syrian refugees) with either good or bad German skills want to join them. Whereas adolescents’ inclusion decisions did not differ between the German protagonist and the Syrian one with good German skills, the Syrian protagonist with bad German skills was less likely to be included than either of the other two. These findings have implications for understanding the role of language in adolescents’ inclusion decisions.     

A slightly slummier area? Negotiations of place‐bound identities through social spatializations and unofficial toponyms

In the article, spatializations (discourses of ideal or stereotyped spaces) are conceptualized as powerful discourses of the surrounding society, providing resources for place‐bound identity construction in interaction. We combine a sociolinguistic analysis with Bakhtinian dialogism to understand how such “third” voices in dialogue empower and pluralize self‐ and other‐positionings embedded in the evocations of unofficial place names. Empirically, the focus is on toponyms that divide the socially mixed Vuosaari suburb in Helsinki into “older” and “newer” territories. The results show that when the stereotypes of “good” and “bad” neighbourhoods or other spatializations interpenetrate the uses of “Old” and “New Vuosaari,” they open room for the (re‐)voicing of the meanings of these toponyms for highly differentiated social ends. With the Bakhtinian framework bridging between socio‐spatial theory and sociolinguistics, the article develops a spatially sensitized approach to analyse the entanglements of the micro‐level contexts of interaction with the macro‐level discourses of meaning‐giving.     

网络虚假新闻的诱因及治理对策

针对网络虚假新闻屡禁不止的现实,对网络新闻造假的诱因进行深入地分析和研究非常有必要.从新闻产品的需求分析,网络媒体在传播新闻的范围、水平、层次、质量、技术等各方面存在的不适应性导致新闻数量的相对过剩与价值的相对不足激化了供需矛盾.从受众的打假成本分析,治理新闻造假的成本过高促使受众对虚假新闻置若罔闻.从广告商、投资商的控制到新闻从业者的利益分析,市场竞争激烈诱使广告商、投资商、网络媒体对自身利益最大化的追求.为从根本上防治虚假网络新闻,应建立正确的利益引导机制、公平的利益约束机制、开放的打假防御机制,化信用危机为发展契机,构建健康和谐的网络环境.     

Gender discourses in academic mobility

Despite increasing geographic mobility among academic staff, gendered patterns of involvement in academic mobility have largely escaped scrutiny. Positioned within literatures on internationalization, physical proximity, gender and parenthood in academic mobility and understandings of gender as a process enacted through both discursive and embodied practices, we use discourse analysis based on interviews with academics in New Zealand to examine differences in language that create differing realities with regards to gender and obligations of care in academic mobility decisions. The findings reveal how academic mobility is discursively formulated as ‘essential’ to successful academic careers, with the need for frequent travel justified despite advances in virtual communication technologies. Heteronormative discourses are shown to disrupt and fragment the opportunities female academics have to engage in academic mobility. However, we also uncover ways in which these discourses are resisted, wherein fathers articulate emotional strain associated with academic mobility. The article shows how discourse works to constitute the essentialization of academic mobility, and the uneven gendered practices associated with it, whilst also giving voice to gender inequities in academic mobility from the southern hemisphere.     

Affective virtuosity: Challenges for governance feminism in the context of the economic crisis

This article explores the possibilities and constraints for feminist knowledge production and diffusion, and its influence over policy making and public debate in the context of austerity and neoliberal governance. By analysing the process in which a group of Finnish academic feminists used their expert position to influence government policy in 2015–2017, the article illustrates the strategies they adopted to engage in political debates and how they negotiated the new political landscape. The research material was derived from two years of action research and participant observation and is considered through the theoretical lens of governance feminism. The article makes a distinctive contribution to extant theories of governance feminism, by drawing upon theories of affects and ambivalence as a complement to governance feminism's focus on discourses and co‐optation. We coin the term affective virtuosity to highlight the importance of affect in feminist knowledge production and diffusion, and in shaping the various perspectives available to feminist scholars in encounters with politicians and policymakers.     

Trisection of forces: gender, religion and the state--the case of state-run religious schools in Israel

This article discusses the theoretical claims that 'gender', 'religion' and 'state' are not universal nor essentialist entities, but rather contingent phenomena embedded in time, place, and changing historical circumstances. Historical analysis of social processes reveals the complex relations between the three categories, as they individually and as a whole are re/constituted as changing co-tangential and often unpredictable phenomena. One case study presented in this article that of state-run religious schools in Israel demonstrates how state, religion and gender intersect. Through the analysis presented here, we see examples of the permeable boundaries between these social categories as well as the inter-relationships and unintended consequences of the interplay between the three. Paradoxically, graduates of these schools, especially women, have evolved from being members of a marginalized - even ignored - social category, to being active participants in the religious and political life of their community and in the political struggle over state policy regarding the future of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.