Just Who Are You Calling Risk Averse?

This paper estimates individual risk preferences based upon data that are generated by the same individuals acting in different institutions. The results show that the (estimated) numerical values of individuals' implied risk parameters are not stable within individuals across institutions. Furthermore, the ranking across subjects of the numerical values of individuals' implied risk parameters is not preserved across institutions.     

The objective and subjective rationalization of war

Perhaps the most engaging theories in historical sociology have been those pertaining to the rationalization of Western society. In particular, both Max Weber and Michelle Foucault point to the unique nature of societal rationalization in the early modern period, a thorough-going upheaval both in forms of social organization and in individual subjectivity. These correlative changes led to the nature of the modern state and its citizens. One example used by both is the rationalization of warfare. Close attention to the question of rationalization and the history of infantry warfare, however, suggests that far from representing a watershed change from non-rationalized to rationalized war, the early-modern period was more like other rapid expansions of armies based on recruitment of commoners, and had little to do with the distinctive characteristics of the emerging nation-states.     

Development,inequality, health care,and mortality at the older ages: a cross-national analysis

We examine mortality at ages 50 and above in female populations of 38 countries and control for variation in quality of the mortality data. We find that economic development, economic distributional inequality, and basic primary health care have independent cross-national effects on cause of death structures and that these effects are not uniform across the age intervals of interest. As improvements occur in level of living and heath care, age-specific death rates decline except at the oldest ages, at which point they may increase. Our results are interpreted in terms of their relevance for mortality research, theory, and policy.     

Culture in the transitions to modernity: seven pillars of a new research agenda

How did cultural dynamics help bring about the societies we now recognize as modern? This article constructs seven distinct models for how structures of signification and social meaning participated in the transitions to modernity in the West and, in some of the models, across the globe. Our models address: (1) the spread, via imitation, of modern institutions around the world (memetic replication); (2) the construal, by socio-cultural forces and by state organizations, of the modern citizen-subject (social subjectification); (3) the continual search for new meanings to replace traditional religious meaning-systems (compensatory reenchantment); (4) repeated attempts, in modern revolutions, to remake society completely, according to a utopian vision (ideological totalization); (5) the cultural origins and social consequences of scientific and humanistic worldviews (epistemic rift); (6) the gendered politics of state formation (patriarchal supercession); (7) the invention and production of race in the colonial encounter (racial recognition). We explicate the models in reverse chronological order, because in our synthesis, we argue that the original modern break results from a dynamic combination of racial recognition, patriarchal supercession, and epistemic rift; these changes set the stage for the four other processes we theorize. In addition to our synthesis, we also consider, from a more neutral perspective, the kinds of causal arguments upon which these models tend to rely, and thus explicate the analytical undergirding for the application of any of these models to empirical research on transitions to modernity. Throughout the article, we consider how these models might, and might not, mesh with other families of explanation, such as the politico-economic.     

Real men do not read labels: the effects of masculinity and involvement on college students' food decisions

Consumer literature shows that a decision's degree of personal importance and relevance--one's level of involvement in the decision--indicates which type of intervention strategy will be effective in influencing consumers' choices. The authors surveyed 358 college students at a state university in the western United States to test the applicability of involvement on issues of obesity and eating habits. They found food decisions to be of greater personal importance and relevance to female students than to their male counterparts. The results suggest that efforts to address levels of obesity and being overweight among male college students must recognize that men's food choices are very much rooted in the ideology of what it means to be female and male in contemporary American society. The authors advance 5 peripheral-route intervention strategies to augment existing cognitive-oriented, information-based intervention programs.