Writing Distinction – Eine illegitime Kultur als subkulturelles Feld

Graffiti is an illegitimate culture, yet with high potential for distinction and abstract aesthetic principles. The article considers these characteristics as result of the process of the autonomization of graffiti as subcultural field and aims to reconstruct its field logic.     

Simulating space-time random fields with nonseparable Gneiting-type covariance functions

Statistics and Computing - Two algorithms are proposed to simulate space-time Gaussian random fields with a covariance function belonging to an extended Gneiting class, the definition of which...     

Time,Space, Confucianism and Careers: A Contextualized Review of Careers Research in China – Current Knowledge and Future Research Agenda

Career studies attract significant attention, but most of the theories and concepts were developed and tested in Western contexts. Based on a systematic review and analysis of 95 articles published in the field of careers that focus on China in the period between 1991 and 2017, this paper identifies emerging trends and outlines a profile of the current development of careers research in the Chinese context. Using a time and space analytical framework, the review evaluates the theoretical and empirical career lenses embedded in the unique Chinese cultural, institutional and organizational contexts and confirms that research on Chinese careers is significantly underdeveloped. Through a theoretical lens of Confucianism, we propose a need to consider context‐specific factors, in particular time and space, when conducting Chinese careers research, and present implications for future research on careers in China.     

Ordering competition: the interactional accomplishment of the sale of art and antiques at auction

Auctions provide an institutional solution to a social problem; they enable the legitimate pricing and exchange of goods where those goods are of uncertain value. In turn, auctions raise a number of social and organizational issues that are resolved within the interaction that arise in sales by auction. In this paper, we examine sales of fine art, antiques and objets d'art and explore the ways in which auctioneers mediate competition between buyers and establish a value for goods. In particular, we explore how bids are elicited, co-ordinated and revealed so as to rapidly escalate the price of goods in a transparent manner that enables the legitimate valuation and exchange of goods. In directing attention towards the significance of the social interaction, including talk, visual and material conduct, the paper contributes to the growing corpus of ethnographic studies of markets. It suggests that to understand the operation of markets and their outcomes, and to unpack issues of agency, trust and practice, we need to place the 'interaction order' at the heart of analytic agenda.     

PURE: a proposal for more retirement income security

Despite large public policy efforts over the past 30 years, a large minority of households remains consistently inadequately prepared for retirement. If policymakers want to address this shortcoming, public policy has to change from its current path. This paper suggests a system of mandatory private pensions funded by a minimum mandatory contribution of 3% of payroll. In addition, a number of institutional changes are suggested to reduce the costs and risks of individual accounts.     

Risk attitudes and digit ratio (2D:4D): Evidence from prospect theory

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty - Prenatal androgens have organizational effects on brain and endocrine system development, which may have a partial impact on economic decisions. Numerous studies...     

Two for One: Public Welfare and Regime Legitimacy Through State Funding for CSOs in Russia

Civil societies are usually seen as facilitators of democracy or as oppositional powers withstanding authoritarian rule. However, more and more often civil society organizations (CSOs) appear to contribute to the legitimacy of non-democratic incumbents. Taking the example of contemporary Russia, this paper argues that state funding for CSOs under authoritarian regime conditions serves for securing regime legitimacy in two respects—by supporting CSOs contribution to public welfare and by transmitting state-led legitimacy discourse to the civil society sector. The analysis of applications submitted between 2013 and 2016 to the Presidential Grant Competition (PGC), the biggest public funding programme for CSOs in Russia, shows that the state is (1) supporting CSO activities above all in social, health and education-related fields, and (2) privileging projects that relate to a state-led conservative public discourse not only but foremost within those welfare-related fields. These results highlight the importance of investigating state support to CSOs in order to access the changing role of civil society under authoritarian regime conditions.

     

“Sassy Queens”: Stylistic orthographic variation in Twitter and the enregisterment of AAVE

Recent computational sociolinguistic analyses of social media have emphasized the potential of using orthographic variation as a proxy for speech, thereby permitting macro‐level quantitative studies of regional and social variation (e.g. Eisenstein, 2015). However, the extent to which stylistic variation may affect these analyses remains largely unexplored. In this paper, I explore how authors use variant spellings stylistically to deploy personae and characterological figures (Agha, 2003), by examining the presence of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) features in a corpus of 15,804 tweets extracted from the timelines of 10 gay British men. I argue that the stylization of AAVE signals the development of a very specific persona—the “Sassy Queen”—which relies on an essentialized imagining of Black women as “fierce” and “sassy.” Concluding, I emphasize the value of micro‐level analyses in complementing quantitative analyses of linguistic variation in social media.