The impact of social heterogeneity and commodity price shocks on civil conflicts

Do exogenous economic shocks promote civil conflicts directly? Do they affect all the societies alike? The current approach presents a large sample panel data evidence not only on the effect of commodity export price shocks on conflict incidence, rather than onsets, but also on the joint impact of both ethnic and religious polarization and fractionalization on political instability. In this regard, we find out that in ethnically polarized societies, the commodity export price shocks increase violence. Nonetheless, in ethnically and religiously fractionalized societies (as well as religiously polarized), the effect of commodity export price shocks on civil conflicts depends on the type of income shocks and category of commodity. These findings contribute to the existing literature by illuminating the compound effect of both income shocks and social diversity on intrastate conflicts.     

Tribute to Jean-Yves Jaffray

Tribute to Jean-Yves Jaffray by the French Group of Decision Theory.     

A generalized Fleming and Harrington's class of tests for interval‐censored data

The class $G^{\rho,\lambda }$ of weighted log‐rank tests proposed by Fleming & Harrington [Fleming & Harrington (1991) Counting Processes and Survival Analysis, Wiley, New York] has been widely used in survival analysis and is nowadays, unquestionably, the established method to compare, nonparametrically, k different survival functions based on right‐censored survival data. This paper extends the $G^{\rho,\lambda }$ class to interval‐censored data. First we introduce a new general class of rank based tests, then we show the analogy to the above proposal of Fleming & Harrington. The asymptotic behaviour of the proposed tests is derived using an observed Fisher information approach and a permutation approach. Aiming to make this family of tests interpretable and useful for practitioners, we explain how to interpret different choices of weights and we apply it to data from a cohort of intravenous drug users at risk for HIV infection. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 40: 501–516; 2012 © 2012 Statistical Society of Canada     

A social policy model for the reconciliation of employment and family life from a gender equality perspective

The issue of family–employment reconciliation has rapidly evolved from being ignored to a certain dejá vu perception in public debate, as a result of its media success during the last decade. This is even more the case in Spain, where it was only in the late 1990s, when a law was passed to regulate and extend parental and other leave for workers with close relatives in need of care, that reconciliation policies began to be generally discussed and considered. In a context of quick population aging as a consequence of low fertility, concern on labor force supply in the middle term is high on the agenda. Women are increasingly considered to be necessary both as workers and mothers (of future workers), thus raising awareness of the importance of social policies to make their double presence in both worlds possible. There is now general agreement from the right to the left on the urgency to develop family–employment policies. But what is not generally addressed is the impact of such policies on gender equality, a dimension which tends to be either ignored or taken for granted. Not all reconciliation measures have the same effects on the women and men relationship. Some of them push forward equality, whereas others go backwards. Efficiency in making job and family responsibilities compatible does not always go hand in hand with increasing equality. The paper presents a theoretical model for the reconciliation of work and family life from a gender equality perspective. The three main kinds of instruments available in social policy – services, leave, and cash – are examined in four different cases: care of under-threes, care of sick children, coordination of work and school schedules, and care of children during school holidays. Each case is looked at considering its effects on social and gender equality, as well as child welfare. The model includes as active agents of the system the State (promotes and regulates), families and individuals (those directly implicated), and the market as labor market, on the one hand, and supplier of private services, on the other.     

Can ‘art Professions’ Be Bourdieuean Fields Of Cultural Production? The Case Of The Architecture Competition

The difference between ‘artistic and literary fields’ and universes such as architecture usually recognized as ‘art professions’ but which enjoy a far lesser ‘degree of autonomy’ than such fields seemingly constitutes an obstacle to the broader application of the notion of a ‘field of cultural production’ sought by Bourdieu in his Rules of Art. The author of this paper overcomes this obstacle by employing his notion of the ‘field effect’, with the architecture competition serving as the test case. Following Bourdieu, the author replaces the notion of profession with that of the field, for the former is a representation fostered by professional groups themselves. Architecture is a field, but, because architects require clients to construct and realize their works, one unlike the artistic and literary fields, which are markets of symbolic goods where ‘distinterest’ reigns and an autonomy unthinkable elsewhere is enjoyed. However, much like artists and unlike any other ‘professionals’, architects enter competitions, suggesting that this practice is an analytically relevant indicator of the field effect. After defining several of the elements of Bourdieu's relational conceptual matrix (field, illusio, collusion, doxa and space of possibles) and demonstrating that the Baptistery competition in Florence (1401) conforms to Bourdieu's historical beginning point for the process of 'autonomization' of artistic production, I examine a number of competitions from 1401 to 1989 (Berlin Jewish Museum) along with the general properties of competitions (structure and organization, publication and exhibition of results, competitors' economically irrational behaviour, practices of designers and jurors and the associated universe of beliefs), analysing them as those of an artistic field. It is concluded that when architects enter competitions, architecture, at least provisionally resembles an artistic field, for there is a field effect shown by a high degree autonomy, disinterest and the creation of an upside-down world.     

Well‐being among employed and non‐employed caregiving women in Taiwan

Chou Y‐C, Kröger T, Chiao C, Pu C‐Y. Well‐being among employed and non‐employed caregiving women in Taiwan This study addressed various groups of non‐employed/employed and non‐caring/caring women in Taiwan. Data from the 2006 National Taiwanese Women Survey (at age 16–64, n= 6,017) were analysed to determine whether there are differences in terms of well‐being, as measured by self‐rated health and family life satisfaction, between women who work and/or care and between different carer groups. Other factors associated with well‐being of carers of young children (n= 1,697) were also analysed. The results showed that non‐employed carers of disabled adults stood out as the most disadvantaged group. However, the importance of work has been replaced by support among carers of young children. This study suggests that unpaid carers, particularly carers of disabled adults who are non‐employed, ought to be supported by policies. To improve carers' well‐being, care–work reconciliation among working‐age women needs to be included in the future care scheme in Taiwan.     

Homosexuality as Practice and the Social Implications of Representation

ABSTRACT

What tends to be represented when talking about homosexuals is not the diversity of people who have sex with others of the same sex-gender, but a kind of group or a defined collective with some identifiable characteristics and specific identities: a collection of others, a historically oppressed minority, a community. As a result, not all people who practice homosexuality are included in the representations of homosexuals, nor do all included in these conform to the images projected onto them. This involves a series of social and political consequences, related to the reproduction of hegemonic gender and power structures. Therefore, I question the use of these representations in social sciences and propose to consider, as the analysis element, sexual practices and not the identities and categorizations created around them, showing the power relations that exist between them.     

Colonialism at the margins: politics of difference in Europe as seen through two Icelandic crises

Scholars have for some time emphasised destabilising the boundaries between colonised and colonisers, in addition to calling for more nuanced analyses of colonialism. I focus here on the politics of difference on a global scale and how the internal logic dividing the world into ‘us’ and ‘other’ is still significant, using two cases revolving around an Icelandic struggle with ‘otherness’ at different times in history: one in 1905 and the other in 2008. I claim that the analysis of those at the margins of the dualistic divide of colonised and coloniser clearly brings out the oppositions at play within historical and contemporary global relationships of power and how participation in colonial ideologies involved multiple politics of identity and selfhood within Europe. Both cases show Icelandic anxieties about being classified with the ‘wrong’ people and their attempt to situate themselves within the ‘civilised’ part of the world.