Quantifying Intrinsic and Extrinsic Contributions to Human Longevity: Application of a Two-Process Vitality Model to the Human Mortality Database

The rise in human life expectancy has involved declines in intrinsic and extrinsic mortality processes associated, respectively, with senescence and environmental challenges. To better understand the factors driving this rise, we apply a two-process vitality model to data from the Human Mortality Database. Model parameters yield intrinsic and extrinsic cumulative survival curves from which we derive intrinsic and extrinsic expected life spans (ELS). Intrinsic ELS, a measure of longevity acted on by intrinsic, physiological factors, changed slowly over two centuries and then entered a second phase of increasing longevity ostensibly brought on by improvements in old-age death reduction technologies and cumulative health behaviors throughout life. The model partitions the majority of the increase in life expectancy before 1950 to increasing extrinsic ELS driven by reductions in environmental, event-based health challenges in both childhood and adulthood. In the post-1950 era, the extrinsic ELS of females appears to be converging to the intrinsic ELS, whereas the extrinsic ELS of males is approximately 20 years lower than the intrinsic ELS.     

Cosmopolitan sociology and the classical canon: Ferdinand Tönnies and the emergence of global Gesellschaft

How relevant are figures from the classical sociological canon for present day efforts to found cosmopolitan forms of sociological thought? According to the critique of Ulrich Beck, the classical sociologists remain far too wedded to nation‐state‐centred ways of thinking to play an important role in the development of cosmopolitan sociology. This paper argues that such a critique fails to account for the ways in which certain classical sociologists were attuned to the emerging cosmopolitical conditions of their own time, were not wholly wedded to nation‐state‐based conceptualizations, and thus can function as both groundings of, and inspirations for, cosmopolitan sociological endeavours. The apparently unpromising case of Tönnies is focused on, the paper showing how he outlined an account of how and why a planet‐spanning condition of Gesellschaft developed a position which diverges from and counterpoints Marx's analysis of similar phenomena in important ways. The stereotype of Tönnies as an arch‐conservative is also dissolved, allowing him to be considered as one of the most important antecedents of contemporary cosmopolitan sociological practice and a canonical figure still relevant for present‐day purposes.     

The Role of Religion in Adolescence for Family Formation in Young Adulthood

This paper examines the role of religion in adolescence for shaping subsequent family formation. Data were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 13,895). We explored the role of three dimensions of religious life—affiliation, attendance, and religious fervor—both singly and in combination for the transition to either marriage or cohabitation. Although each dimension predicted subsequent union formation, it was the particular combination of these dimensions that was important for understanding the likelihood of cohabiting. We also found evidence that patterns of religious identity, attendance, and fervor in adolescence were associated with the length of cohabitation, the likelihood of the cohabitation ending in marriage, and beliefs about the purpose of cohabitation.     

The Potentials and Limitations of Civil Society Research: Getting Undone Science Done

The term "undone science" refers to absences of scientific research that social movement and other civil society organizations find when attempting to make epistemic claims in the political field. The existing literature has identified various pathways for addressing the knowledge needs of civil society organizations, including asking elected and appointed political leaders to shift funding priorities and directly seeking support and partnerships with scientists. Here, a third pathway is identified and explored: civil society organizations that have the resources to fund their own research. A sample of such "civil society research" from large, mainstream, U.S. environmental organizations demonstrates that although the large organizations do engage in such research, most of it is not published in peer-reviewed journals. The peer-reviewed research is found almost exclusively in large preservation and conservation organizations that have staffs of scientists. Most of the other research reports are oriented toward documenting environmental problems and providing policy and management solutions. The research is highly applied and does not represent fundamental contributions to large mainstream scientific fields. Comparisons with civil society research in the author's previous research projects on religion, health, and economic development are discussed to assess applicability of the concept for other sociological subfields.     

Clinical Social Work and Psychoanalysis: Introduction to the Special Issue

As clinical social work developed in America it was highly influenced by the concepts and techniques of psychoanalysis and many of its practitioners became interested in seeking psychoanalytic training. More and more psychoanalysts are now coming from a background in clinical social work due to the development of a network of interdisciplinary training institutes and the opening of the Institutes of the American Psychoanalytic Association to non-medical candidates. This special issue considers how psychoanalysis may be affected as more of its practitioners and contributors come from a background in clinical social work. This introduction reviews the history of the development of clinical social work and outlines the issues related to “lay analysis” in this country.

Evaluating school and parent reports of the national student achievement testing system (SIMCE) in Chile: Access,comprehension, and use

This evaluation examined school and parent reports of the national student achievement testing system (SIMCE) in Chile regarding three dimensions: access, comprehension, and use. We conducted phone surveys with a representative sample of directors (N = 375), teachers (N = 1145) and parents (N = 625), and we collected more in-depth data through interviews and focus groups in 16 of these schools. The results indicate that access to the reports is not an obstacle to use for school actors, but it is for parents. While summative ratings of the reports in terms of their clarity and utility were generally very positive, the actual recall and interpretation of even basic information (assessed through case scenarios) was incorrect for a majority of teachers and parents, and reported uses of the information were both intended and unintended in nature. We also found some statistically significant differences regarding comprehension and use among subgroups of our sample. Our findings are especially relevant given the expectations attached to the use of the reports for school improvement on the one hand, and parents’ behavior as critical consumers of education on the other hand.     

When being overpaid makes me feel good about myself: It depends on how the other feels

The present research examined whether the emotions of others (i.e., disappointment versus happiness with respect to a received outcome) influence own self-esteem when being overpaid. Results from two experiments demonstrated that participants reported higher performance self-esteem when the other expressed happiness rather than disappointment. This effect was only found in the condition where one was overpaid relative to the condition where one did not yet know one’s own outcome. In the second experimental study we further found that this interaction between the emotion of the other and the distribution situation only emerged among participants low (relative to high) in personal need for structure. Implications with respect to the relationship between overpayment and self-esteem and the interpersonal effects of emotions in this process are discussed.     

Imagining mobility: the prospective cognition question in migration research

Most migration research is focused on migrant experiences after mobility and settlement. We argue that empirical researchers would benefit from studying how cognitive migration, the narrative imagining of oneself inhabiting a foreign destination prior to the actual physical move, influences migration behaviour. This article notes a gap in our current understanding of the process by which individuals decide to cross international borders and offers an agenda for remedying this. The interdisciplinarity of migration research has not fully extended to social psychology or cognitive social sciences, where a dynamic research agenda has examined human decision-making processes, including prospection and the connections between culture and cognition. The study of socio-cognitive processes in migration decision-making has been largely overlooked because of the after-the-fact nature of data collection and analysis rather than an aversion to these approaches per se. We highlight a number of strategic findings from this diverse field, provide examples of migration scholarship that has benefited from these insights, and raise questions about the sides of migration process that have received insufficient attention. A more nuanced understanding of prospective thinking—imagining potential futures—can shed light on the classic puzzle of why some people move while others in comparable situations do not.     

Group betweenness and co-betweenness: Inter-related notions of coalition centrality

Vertex betweenness centrality is a metric that seeks to quantify a sense of the importance of a vertex in a network in terms of its ‘control’ on the flow of information along geodesic paths throughout the network. Two natural ways to extend vertex betweenness centrality to sets of vertices are (i) in terms of geodesic paths that pass through at least one of the vertices in the set, and (ii) in terms of geodesic paths that pass through all vertices in the set. The former was introduced by Everett and Borgatti [Everett, M., Borgatti, S., 1999. The centrality of groups and classes. Journal of Mathematical Sociology 23 (3), 181–201], and called group betweenness centrality. The latter, which we call co-betweenness centrality here, has not been considered formally in the literature until now, to the best of our knowledge. In this paper, we show that these two notions of centrality are in fact intimately related and, furthermore, that this relationship may be exploited to obtain deeper insight into both. In particular, we provide an expansion for group betweenness in terms of increasingly higher orders of co-betweenness, in a manner analogous to the Taylor series expansion of a mathematical function in calculus. We then demonstrate the utility of this expansion by using it to construct analytic lower and upper bounds for group betweenness that involve only simple combinations of (i) the betweenness of individual vertices in the group, and (ii) the co-betweenness of pairs of these vertices. Accordingly, we argue that the latter quantity, i.e., pairwise co-betweenness, is itself a fundamental quantity of some independent interest, and we present a computationally efficient algorithm for its calculation, which extends the algorithm of Brandes [Brandes, U., 2001. A faster algorithm for betweenness centrality. Journal of Mathematical Sociology 25, 163] in a natural manner. Applications are provided throughout, using a handful of different communication networks, which serve to illustrate the way in which our mathematical contributions allow for insight to be gained into the interaction of network structure, coalitions, and information flow in social networks.     

New cultural economies of marginality: revisiting the West Coast,South Island,New Zealand

Marginal regions have been the subject of political concern and remedial action in western states for several decades now. The West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand is an interesting case study in this regard, for recent economic growth has confounded earlier expectations of post-restructuring decline, while also contradicting several of the nostrums of new regionalism. In an effort to understand this trajectory, this paper draws on documents from public and private sector organisations, newspaper articles and field visits to examine developments in four key sectors of the West Coast's economy: mining, dairy farming, forestry and tourism. Economic growth is found to be closely linked to the cultivation of new markets for primary products, but efforts to rework the cultural dimensions of marginality have also been important. Value has been added to specific products through the insertion of references to the region's alpine and forested landscapes. Isolation and peripherality have been recast in more positive terms, echoing the broader reframing of New Zealand as a scenic, unspoiled destination. In adopting a cultural economic perspective on marginal regions, the paper illustrates the significance of symbolic forms of value, the potentially flexible nature of marginality as a discursive category, and the importance of the networks which connect regions to national and international flows of capital and tourists.