Ageing abjection and embodiment in the fourth age

This paper explores the role of abjection in understanding and interpreting the dichotomy between the ‘third’ and the ‘fourth’ age. We use Kristeva's term abjection to refer to a realm of decay, disease and impurity that embodies the capacity to disgust. While there is a longstanding tradition of representing the aged body as an object of disgust, recent cultural, economic and political changes have undermined the solidity and stability of age and its bodily signifiers. A new potential to transgress the abjection of a long life and an aged appearance has been matched however by an intensification of ‘real’ old age with even less capacity to transgress the abjection that is associated with frailty and the loss of agency and symbolized by the fourth age. Appeals to a universal ontology of human vulnerability and/or the redeeming influence of intimate care are considered as possible sources of protection from such abjection.     

Case–control studies with complex sampling

The use of complex sampling designs in population-based case–control studies is becoming more common, particularly for sampling the control population. This is prompted by all the usual cost and logistical benefits that are conferred by multistage sampling. Complex sampling has often been ignored in analysis but, with the advent of packages like SUDAAN, survey-weighted analyses that take account of the sample design can be carried out routinely. This paper explores this approach and more efficient alternatives, which can also be implemented by using readily available software.     

Loaning Supplementary Benefit and the Introduction of the Social Fund

This paper discusses an episode in social security policy making that has until now remained unexplored. This is the review, at the request of then Labour Secretary of State for Social Services, Richard Crossman MP, in the latter months of 1969 and early 1970 into the possibility of introducing loans to the Supplementary Benefit system as a replacement for some exceptional needs and exceptional circumstances payments. The paper examines files held at the National Archives to discuss the nature and extent of the proposed scheme and the objections of civil servants to loaning Supplementary Benefit. The paper demonstrates how the worst‐case scenario outlined by civil servants in 1970 was introduced some 15 years later as Social Fund loans. The paper then discusses economic, ideological and social change that provided the context for the introduction of loans as part of the Social Fund in the 1980s.     

Third-generation prospect theory

We present a new theory of decision under uncertainty: third-generation prospect theory (PT³). This retains the predictive power of previous versions of prospect theory, but extends that theory by allowing reference points to be uncertain while decision weights are specified in a rank-dependent way. We show that PT³ preferences respect a state-conditional form of stochastic dominance. The theory predicts the observed tendency for willingness-to-accept valuations of lotteries to be greater than willingness-to-pay valuations. When PT³ is made operational by using simple functional forms with parameter values derived from existing experimental evidence, it predicts observed patterns of the preference reversal phenomenon.

Social Spaces beyond Civil Society: European Integration,Globalization and the Sociology of European Society

There has been a renewed interest in the idea of society of late. Sociological studies of globalization have posed the question of how to understand society without the nation-state, and studies of European Union (EU) integration have linked the non-emergence of a European society to the 'democratic deficit'. In both cases what is at issue is how to understand the social dynamics of transnational spaces. This paper advances three main arguments in relation to the idea of European society. First, despite its popularity, the concept of civil society is of limited use for understanding European society. Second, European society should not be seen as a unified and coherent whole but as a series of non-integrated, fragmented and autonomous public spheres. Third, European society cannot be understood in the singular. A plurality of European public and social spaces exist, often beyond the control of, or unrelated to, the EU or its member states. In short, European social spaces are not harmonious and cohesive, nor are they necessarily constituted by European integration.     

Consistent Estimation of the Structural Distribution Function

Motivated by problems in linguistics we consider a multinomial random vector for which the number of cells N is not much smaller than the sum of the cell frequencies, i.e. the sample size n . The distribution function of the uniform distribution on the set of all cell probabilities multiplied by N is called the structural distribution function of the cell probabilities. Conditions are given that guarantee that the structural distribution function can be estimated consistently as n increases indefinitely although n / N does not. The natural estimator is inconsistent and we prove consistency of essentially two alternative estimators.