Substantive Meanings of Missing Data in Family Research: Does “Don't Know” Matter?

In this article we analyze “don't know” responses from three sources of longitudinal data: the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 14,528), the National Survey of Families and Households (n = 5,488), and the National Health Interview Survey Second Longitudinal Study of Aging (n = 1,131). We asked whether these responses are meaningful in family research, and, if so, how evaluating these responses can contribute to the development of theory, the discovery of novel findings, and identification of sensible methods for analyzing these nebulous responses. We found that “don't know” responses to questions about family members predicted less educational attainment, poor marital quality, and earlier mortality. Results suggest that this response category may have substantive meanings rather than indicating neutral responses or being missing data.     

How Activity Systems Evolve: Making │ Saving Salmon in British Columbia

The purpose of this article is to describe the history of a state-sponsored salmon enhancement project in British Columbia and to explicate the development of the former using cultural historical activity theory. We make thematic the notion of inner contradictions, which express themselves outwardly as a function of both quantitative and qualitative changes. We propose also that the Marxian notion of change of quality from quantity can fruitfully unpack how these dialectical units push activity systems forward.     

Labiaplasty and the Melancholic Breast

This article is an attempt to think through the sociosymbolic dimensions of the phenomenon of nonmedical or cosmetic surgical reduction of the labia minora, an interventionist medical practice that is gaining currency in the contemporary Western context. The article seeks to navigate the symbolic meaning of labial excision in the contemporary Western “postfeminist” context. I suggest that the desire for labiaplasty is embedded in a dialectical narrative of femininity that draws upon a specifically postfeminist distinction between desirable sexuality and undesirable maternity. I use the Kleinian theory of melancholic loss to argue that the contemporary desire for labiaplasty is indicative of a failure of mourning and the inability to establish the maternal breast as a good internal object in the psychosocial formation of the feminine body-ego. I argue that because the mother’s breast cannot be legitimately mourned, the female body is compelled to abject its reproductive, animal materiality.     

Söhne bevorzugt? Geschlechtsspezifische Unterschiede beim Gymnasialbesuch türkischstämmiger Schülerinnen und Schülern

It is often assumed that in Germany the situation in Turkish families can be characterized by traditionalism, a patrilineal organization of family relationships and a rigid gender role orientation including a traditional gender division between gainful employment and housework. Against this background one would expect Turkish parents to have a particular strong interest in a high educational attainment of their sons and consequently they should invest more in their education. This article examines whether there is evidence for such preferences and relevant behaviours. An analysis of official school statistics of the federal state North-Rhine Westphalia shows that Turkish boys are more likely to make a transition to a Gymnasium than Turkish girls. However, a systematic preference of Turkish parents of a transition to secondary education for their sons cannot be confirmed by way of micro data. Moreover results from our macro data indicate that already in grade seven the gender ratio is reversed. All in all our analyses indicate that there is no significant and sustainable disadvantage for Turkish girls in comparison to Turkish boys.     

A Resource‐Process Framework of New Service Development

Motivated by the increasing attention given to the operational importance of developing new services, this paper offers a theoretical framework that integrates both process‐ and resource‐oriented perspectives of new service development (NSD) by defining and organizing 45 practice constructs for NSD‐related practices and activities that occur in contemporary service firms. We employ a rigorous procedure whereby both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered through multiple rounds of interviews and card‐sorting exercises with senior service managers. This iterative refinement process helps ensure that the construct domains and definitions are consistent and that they are applicable across multiple service sectors. A primary contribution of this research is to provide precise operational definitions of theoretically important NSD practice constructs. Importantly, this study expands on the NSD literature by including both resource‐ and process‐centric perspectives within a single framework. A second contribution is to illustrate a general methodology for developing clear, concise, and consistent construct definitions that may be generally useful for production and operations management scholars interested in new construct development for emerging areas. Empirical results suggest that the resource‐process framework can help guide and organize future research on, and provide insight into, a more comprehensive view of new service development.     

Cooperation,Contracts and Social Networks: From a Bounded to a Procedural Rationality Approach

The idea of this paper is that ifdecision-making processes are more consideredin a procedural rationality assumption, thenthe interplay of trust and calculativereasoning, and, at a more collective level, theinterplay of contracts and social networks maybe clarified. We use Lindenberg's framingtheory to define enlightened self-interest asthe rationality of contractual relationships.Cooperation is then explained by thewillingness to pursue the relationship which,from the background, decreases the salience ofthe gain frame. This willingness is supportedby a process of mutual relational signaling.When temptations of opportunism are strong,cooperation needs to be embedded, first in aformal contract and then, if stakes are toohigh, in a social network. In this framework,we show that the acceptance of contractualincompleteness by the parties is a positivesignal, which favors cooperation.     

Max Weber's ethics and the peace movement today

Conclusion The decisive change since Weber spoke of our responsibility before history has not been the demise of the German nation state after only seventy-five years but the sudden dawn of the nuclear age. Now the survival of populations, not of nation-states is at stake - a situation not anticipated by Weber and his contemporaries. It is quite possible that many millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, will die because of rational strategic decisions by political and military leaders, but it is no longer possible to legitimate a great war as a matter of honor, as Churchill and Weber did, or as an enterprise to make the world safe for democracy, as Wilson and Roosevelt did. If there can be no more victors, it also becomes impossible to load the responsibility before history on their shoulders, as Weber did in Politics as a Vocation.Today a new concept of responsibility is appropriate, which has a general and a specifically German aspect. The latter involves the German responsibility for the World Wars. Weber had vehemently rejected the Allied charge that Imperial Germany was primarily responsible for the war, even though he was very worried about what might be buried in the German archives. Today it can no longer be denied that Imperial Germany was largely guilty as charged. After the second war, it was impossible to deny the German responsibility. During his tenure as chancellor Helmut Schmidt pointed time and again to the Federal Republic's moral obligation to assure the Soviet Union that it would never again be attacked. Since the German nation does no longer exist, the foreign minister under Schmidt and Kohl, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, now speaks of a German-German community of responsibility (Verantwortungsgemeinschaft), in contrast to the community of fate shared with the Western allies. At the same time the peace movement has used the German responsibility for the Second World War and for organized genocide as a moral argument for a special German duty to help prevent another war.Before the First World War pacifism was propagated by only a handful of intellectuals. Afterwards the Nie wieder Krieg (Never again war) movement was supported by masses of people who had experienced the horrors of the Great War. Today the peace movement is no longer what it was for Weber, a cause for a few pacifist Utopians or of a generation that suffered through a world war. The danger of a nuclear holocaust has given the movement a novel historical significance. If the new kind of pacifism is not merely a matter of humanitarian commitment, which aims at a world without war, but a movement that struggles to help humanity survive, then it is equally a matter of good intentions and of responsibility - and Weber's distinction collapses.Weber could take it for granted that there would be generational succession and hence history in the future. We cannot do so any more. This has created a special kind of responsibility not before our descendants but for the very possibility that new generations will be able to live - a totally new ethical situation. Saving whole populations and even having to ensure the continuance of life has become a new ultimate value, transcending the salvation concerns of religious virtuosi and the political Utopias of revolutionaries as well as the traditional interests of the leaders of nation-states. Before this situation Weber's distinction between the two ethics loses its political applicability. Finally, the new ethical situation forces us to look beyond politics as a vocation as a matter merely of political leadership. Today the peace movement is an endeavor to make politics everybody's vocation in the face of perplexed governments who surrender the people to the rationality of military technology. During the Second World War the atom bomb was constructed in total secrecy. For many years afterwards its further development lay in the hands of a tiny number of political leaders and scientists, who withheld as much information as possible from the public. The tendency toward secrecy has remained strong, but a large part of the public is now fighting for disclosure. If Clemenceau believed that war was too important to be left to generals, the new wisdom has it that the dangers of a nuclear war are too great to leave the armaments race and military strategy to elected politicians without effective public participation.In contrast to Weber's polar concepts, his battle-cry our responsibility before history has not remained part of public memory. Perhaps it should be resurrected today with a changed emphasis as a peaceable call to take responsibility for history. This might help both sides in the current struggles over nuclear defense policies in western Europe and the United States to remember their human commonality in spite of highly emotional confrontations.

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