Development and Governance in the Ex-Soviet Union: An Empirical Inquiry

The widespread adoption of the concept of wellbeing in the social sciences literature has allowed researchers to move beyond a narrow economic focus on income and consumption as the primary measure of inequality and poverty. Although statistical measurement and analyses of wellbeing have become increasingly feasible due to the availability of rich datasets, the empirical literature on wellbeing remains deficient in a number of ways. In this paper we argue that it is necessary that empirical studies of wellbeing encompass multiple. Applying Sen’s capability approach as our theoretical model we subsequently develop a modelling framework that applies the polychoric principal component analysis (PCA) method for the calculation of objective wellbeing and wellbeing inequality using household asset, education, health and housing dimensions. Findings from our case study of Vietnam challenge previous single dimensional analyses and reveal a number of layers to our understanding of wellbeing inequality in Vietnam. We argue that our use of polychoric PCA is especially suited to the analysis of wellbeing by explicitly incorporating the analysis of both cardinal and ordinal variables and overcoming deficiencies established in the literature relating to the use of standard PCA.

     

Assessment of the Living Conditions in Polish and German Transborder Regions in the Context of Strengthening Territorial Cohesion in the European Union: Competitiveness or Complementation?

Social Indicators Research - The European Union's regional policy aims to strengthen economic, social, and territorial cohesion and equal space development opportunities. It is an action...     

Human Capital Disparities and Earnings Inequality in The Portuguese Private Labour Market

Social Indicators Research - This paper examines human capital inequality and how it relates to earnings inequality in Portugal using data from Quadros de Pessoal for the period 1986–2017....     

A new model of the development of deception: Disentangling the role of false‐belief understanding in deceptive ability

“Deception” is defined predominantly as the intentional attempt to create false‐beliefs in others. However, the intentionality behind early acts of deception and its relation to false‐belief understanding remain unresolved. In this article, we offer a three‐stage theoretical model of the development of deception in human ontogeny. We posit that at any age, human deception is an intentional action, but its form changes according to the level of the deceiver's intentionality. As the primary function of deception is to influence the behaviour of others, we argue that first‐stage deceptions‐in‐action involves only in the analysis of behaviours and perceptual access, not beliefs. In our view, the ability to deceive and false‐belief understanding are eventually inter‐connected, but false‐belief understanding is not essential for the earliest form of deception. Based on empirical findings, which suggest that by observing the results of early deceptions children build their knowledge of mental states as causes of human actions, we claim that the second stage of deception is representational deception. Further, as the understanding of beliefs becomes more advanced, the effectiveness of children's deception increases, and new forms of reflective deception (the third stage) emerge. Future directions for research are outlined, and limitations of the current model are discussed.     

LYING ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW OR ABOUT WHAT YOU DO?

We compare communication about private information to communication about actions in a one‐shot 2‐person public good game with private information. The informed player, who knows the exact return from contributing and whose contribution is unobserved, can send a message about the return or her contribution. Theoretically, messages can elicit the uninformed player's contribution, and allow the informed player to free‐ride. The exact language used is not expected to matter. Experimentally, however, we find that free‐ride depends on the language: the informed player free‐rides less—and thereby lies less frequently—when she talks about her contribution than when she talks about the return. Further experimental evidence indicates that it is the promise component in messages about the contribution that leads to less free‐ride and less lying.     

Negative Affect and Somatically Focused Anxiety in Young Women Reporting Pain With Intercourse

After a long history of privileging psychosexual etiological factors over pain and physiological processes, dyspareunia has enjoyed 1 decade of pointed research focused on the presenting problem of pain. Although it is generally acknowledged that certain affective and cognitive styles may play a role in an individual's experience of pain in general, investigations into these questions specifically as they pertain to pain that occurs during sex are relatively scarce. To add to this growing body of knowledge, 759 women aged 18 to 29 completed questionnaires about current sexual functioning, gynecologic history, expectations about intercourse, and various personality and health-related anxiety measures. One-hundred-one women (14% of the sample) reported pain during intercourse on at least 50% of attempts. This group of women significantly differed from 536 women reporting pain on less than 10% of intercourse attempts on personality constructs related to emotional and relational well-being (e.g., neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness), as well as anxiety sensitivity, anxiety related to physical health concerns, and the amplification of somatosensory experiences. This affective and cognitive profile is consistent with previous studies that have found an attentional hypervigilance to health and pain-related information in women with dyspareunia, all of which could prove germane to cognitive-behavioral treatments targeting this disorder.     

“Some Things Never Change,We’re Always Second in Line”: Gendered Experiences of Progress and the Agricultural Crisis in Almeria,Spain*

This article addresses sex‐gender relations within the context of changing class relations shaped by the historical formation of an intensive system of agricultural production in Almeria (Spain). The analysis of work, both on the farm and within the domestic unit, guides the research, which relates socio‐historical conditions and the subjective experiences and identities of men and women farmers. We begin from the theoretical premise that the change from being employed as wage laborers to becoming farm owners was a family project in which women and sex‐gender relations played an essential, though hidden, role. We use a qualitative methodology and an historical perspective focused on the different phases of the Almerian agricultural model: the origin and consolidation of the sector (1960–1970), a boom period (the decade of the 1980s) and the strangulation of the model (from the decade of the 2000s until today). The article discusses and concludes that despite the centrality of the participation of women farmers and the change in class position, the subordinate place they occupy—in both the domestic sphere and on the farm– has continued throughout the different phases of the model. Thus, we find that “Some things never change, we're always second in line.”     

Correction to: Think Tanks: New Organizational Actors in a Changing Swedish Civil Society

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In the captions for Figures 1 and 2, a reference was inadvertently omitted.