Postdemokratie, Humankapital und politische Handlungsfähigkeit

Reconstructing the transformation of manpower into human capital this article shows the effects on individual and collective political agency. In booming societies of the 1960s and early 1970s which were based on mass consumption, the utopia of a revolutionary proletarian subject vanished. It was superseded by the idea of a dualistic society providing a growing sphere of autonomy from economic dependancy. The neoliberal transformation of society destroyed this belief. If there is a strong convergence between labor and human capital, labor tends to interfuse the whole life. Complex governmental and economic regulation restricts democracy and effects individualization. The critical examination of processes of individualization shows the mechanisms that produce social antagonism.     

Mortality, fertility, education and capital accumulation in a simple OLG economy

We develop a simple OLG model to analytically show that aging leads to increased educational efforts through a general equilibrium effect. The mechanism is that scarcity of raw labor increases the return of human relative to physical capital. While a reduction in the birth rate is shown to unambiguously increase educational efforts, increases in the survival rate have ambiguous effects. Falling birth rates also increase capital per worker, but the effects of rising survival rates are again ambiguous. We conclude that our model is a useful laboratory to highlight potentially offsetting effects in models with endogenous education and overlapping generations.     

Using the coproduction principle: no more throwaway kids

Youth development does not take place only in institutions or even primarily in institutions. It takes place in the core economy-the economy of family, neighborhood, and community. Major challenges include rebuilding the kind of village it takes to raise a child and enabling a child to be part of that rebuilding. Another challenge is to make sure that any external incentives that are provided to youth are linked to activities that build self-esteem and convey a definition of value that is different from that established by money and market price. This chapter provides an introduction to time banking and to coproduction, approaches to youth development that enable youth to participate as major players, as opposed to recipients, in the reshaping of their lives and communities.     

‘Making narrative portraits: a methodological approach to analysing qualitative data’

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes the method of ‘narrative portraiture’, which, located within the wider field of narrative studies, offers an analytical tool to narrative data. Two research projects, one on disability and one on identity, are used to illustrate how the method can be applied. While the paper will focus on the methodological benefits and limitations of the approach, throughout the article we also highlight the ethical concern of representation. We suggest that through ‘narrative portraiture’ research findings can be contextualised in broader social narratives without losing sight of the unique personal qualities of the research encounter. Thus, we argue for the importance of bringing the participant and their everyday life experience into focus, highlighting that a portrayal of a sole story can be, not only a medium to understand a research phenomenon, but also a valuable research output in itself.     

Neoliberalisation,the social investment state and social work

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the challenges to social work evolving from two major discourses contributing to the common sense contextualising social work within the new spirit of capitalism and the governing of the soul. Beside neo-liberal ideas and values challenging social work values and the welfare state, the question is also about managerialism. To what extent is the social worker able to contribute to liberating, reflexive critique, or exert pastoral power? I have chosen to see how the idea of the social investment state may be linked to Rose’s and Foucault’s ideas about expanding governmentality and end my discussion by relating to some of the early writing on social work’s challenges in confronting ideas and practices interpreted as neoliberalisation moves.     

Not just a number? NEETs,data and datalogical systems

This paper draws on empirical research with NEET populations (16–24-year-olds not in education, employment or training) in the U.K. in order to engage with issues around identification, data and metrics produced through datalogical systems. Our aim is to bridge contemporary discourses around data, digital bureaucracy and datalogical systems with empirical material drawn from a long-term ethnographic project with NEET groups in Leeds, U.K. in order to highlight the way datalogical systems ideologically and politically shape people’s lives. We argue that NEET is a long-standing data category that does work and has resonance within wider datalogical systems. Secondly, that these systems are decision-making and far from benign. They have real impact on people’s lives – not just in a straightforwardly, but in obscure, complex and uneven ways which makes the potential for disruption or intervention increasingly problematic. Finally, these datalogical systems also implicate and are generated by us, even as we seek to critique them.     

理解的伦理学

人类之间的相互理解现在具有十分重要的意义,而真正地实现理解需要运用复杂性认识方法。看到每个人都具有潜在的多重人格,在随着历史背景条件飘移中实现某一种自身,因此我们不应把犯有罪过的人简化为他们一时犯下的罪过,而看到他们改变的可能性。客观的理性的理解还应辅之以主观的推己及人的理解,才能产生同情。了解产生不理解的各种根源自觉地加以克服,从而力争达到人类的相互宽容和团结。     

Fitness Profiles and Activity Patterns of Entering College Students

Abstract

Fitness levels of American youth have shown a marked decline in the last decade, according to recent studies. To determine whether such a tendency persists for entering college students, the authors evaluated 115 male and 143 female students for performance on the following fitness-related variables: (1) maximal oxygen consumption (estimated from Astrand cycling protocol), (2) body composition (skin-fold techniques), (3) muscle endurance (sit-up protocol), (4) muscle strength (bench-press protocol), and (5) joint flexibility (upper and lower body protocols).

Although neither men nor women exhibited high levels of cardiorespiratory fitness, the women in the study showed higher relative levels than their male counterparts. Both groups showed excellent levels of muscle strength (compared with normative standards), but they achieved only an average standard for muscle endurance. Findings of relatively low levels of cardiovascular fitness compared with levels of muscle strength, particularly in men, seem to be a reflection of an inappropriate concentration of physical activity.