Eastern Sociological Society Presidential Address: Globalizing Gender Issues: Many Voices,Different Choices1

Why are the important gender inequality issues different in various countries around the world? This question is answered using a comparative perspective on extant research about gender inequalities in the regions of the world. Just as there is diversity among individual women, based on their intersecting axes of age, race, ethnicity, class, marital status, sexual orientation, religion, or other characteristics, I argue that there is diversity across countries in their gender inequalities based on intersecting axes of transnational, regional, cross‐cutting, and unique national issues that structure gendered or feminist concerns within any country. Global and regional dynamics are the interrelated foundations on which broad gender inequalities are built. Major transnational dynamics include neoliberal economics, migration, and violence, while regional patterns include nation building and gendered inequalities in education and property ownership. On the other hand, unique national trajectories and cross‐cutting themes, found in a few nations in each region, add much greater variation to those basic inequalities. Some of those cross‐cutting themes are problems generated by health status and health services, the relationship of religion to the state, and war or militarism.     

Gesundheitsförderliches Führungsverhalten bei un- und angelernten, kulturell diversen Belegschaften

One of the most important factors affecting inequitable health opportunities is the work activity. The respective supervisor exerts influence on the subordinates’ health and well-being. This study investigates health-promoting leadership behavior among low-skilled, culturally diverse workforces through interviews with employees and managers of the lowest hierarchical level (N?=?53). Information and approachability as well as appreciative feedback and showing interest of the supervisor are identified as relevant target group specific leadership behavior. Health-promoting effects of work design, learning opportunities as well as strain the supervisors themselves suffer from were also examined.     

Introductory Statistics Textbooks and the GAISE Recommendations

The six recommendations made by the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) committee were first communicated in 2005 and more formally in 2010. In this article, 25 introductory statistics textbooks are examined to assess how well these textbooks have incorporated the three GAISE recommendations most relevant to implementation in textbooks (statistical literacy and thinking; use of real data; stress concepts over procedures). The implementation of another recommendation (using technology) is described but not assessed. In general, most textbooks appear to be adopting the GAISE recommendations reasonably well in both exposition and exercises. The textbooks are particularly adept at using real data, using real data well, and promoting statistical literacy. Textbooks are less adept—but still rated reasonably well, in general—at explaining concepts over procedures and promoting statistical thinking. In contrast, few textbooks have easy-usable glossaries of statistical terms to assist with understanding of statistical language and literacy development. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.     

Stochastic metafrontiers

ABSTRACT

We consider the case of production units arranged into a number of groups. All units within a group choose output–input combinations from the same production possibilities set that is represented by a stochastic frontier model. The metafrontier is the envelope of the group-specific frontiers. We are interested in the metafrontier distance, which is the amount by which the group-specific frontier lies below the metafrontier.

Previous work has measured the metafrontier distance using the deterministic portion of the frontier. In a stochastic frontier model, this is not appropriate. We show how to evaluate the metafrontier distance, and we demonstrate the empirical relevance of this issue.     

Adaptive density estimation: A curse of support?

This paper deals with the classical problem of density estimation on the real line. Most of the existing papers devoted to minimax properties assume that the support of the underlying density is bounded and known. But this assumption may be very difficult to handle in practice. In this work, we show that, exactly as a curse of dimensionality exists when the data lie in R^d, there exists a curse of support as well when the support of the density is infinite. As for the dimensionality problem where the rates of convergence deteriorate when the dimension grows, the minimax rates of convergence may deteriorate as well when the support becomes infinite. This problem is not purely theoretical since the simulations show that the support-dependent methods are really affected in practice by the size of the density support, or by the weight of the density tail. We propose a method based on a biorthogonal wavelet thresholding rule that is adaptive with respect to the nature of the support and the regularity of the signal, but that is also robust in practice to this curse of support. The threshold, that is proposed here, is very accurately calibrated so that the gap between optimal theoretical and practical tuning parameters is almost filled.     

NISO Webinar: “The Case of the Disappearing Journal: Solving the Title Transfer and Online Display Mystery” (November 10, 2010)

Abstract

In December 2012, Eric Hanson interviewed Christopher Cronin, director of technical services at the University of Chicago, about their participation as an RDA test partner and issues surrounding RDA training and implementation.     

Depoliticising literature,politicising diversity: ethno-racial boundaries in Dutch literary professionals’ aesthetic repertoires

Although still a neglected area, over the years a growing body of sociological research on the position of ethno-racial minorities in Western artistic fields has emerged. With this article we aim to contribute to this research area by focusing on ethno-racial diversity in the Dutch literary field. Through in-depth interviews, we analyse how gatekeepers mobilise specific cultural repertoires and by doing so draw ethno-racial boundaries when discussing acquisition, assessing quality and positioning themselves in the literary field. We argue that literary publishers and other professionals (selectively) employ an ‘old school’ modernist repertoire that especially values the formal aspects of literary products, by which non-white writers and publishers concerned with diversity are often positioned in an identity politics framework. Their work is said to take in a less prestigious ‘political’/’subjective’ position rather than a ‘literary’/‘universal’ one. As such, this paper informs on how gatekeepers’ practices shape the position of non-white authors in the Dutch literary field.     

Solving Current Social Challenges: Engaging Undergraduates in Policy Practice

This article explores an innovation in teaching policy practice at the undergraduate level. It analyzes an experiential learning model that uses current social challenges as a compelling way to generate student learning about policy practice. Over the course of the semester, students examine antecedents, current issues, and potential solutions to a contemporary social issue through a series of assignments that build knowledge and skills and link the topic to larger social policy concerns. Using quantitative and qualitative evidence from seven semesters, the article explores benefits and challenges of this approach to teaching, and derives lessons for social work education.