Stop the Beat: Quiet Regulation and Cultural Conflict1

This article explores a recent conflict over the youth phenomenon known as “raving” in the City of Chicago. By interviewing participants involved in the conflict, I set out to understand the extent to which the crackdown on raves in Chicago was similar to earlier social reactions to jazz, comic books, rock and roll, and Dead Head culture, as well as to more recent conflicts over punk, rap music, and raves in other cities. While most previous research on cultural conflict has focused on moral crusades, campaigns, and panics, the Chicago conflict represents an example of “quiet regulation.” Opponents refrained from highly visible, morally charged attacks; instead, in the absence of media hype and visible public discourse, public officials justified the crackdown in highly bureaucratic terms—avoiding risk, collecting taxes, enforcing codes. Nonetheless, they also drew on cultural schemas that linked raves and raving with drugs, sex, and deviance. As a result, officials selected a course of regulation that criminalized DJs and discredited the artform. In the absence of a highly visible moral campaign, the rave participants were unable to mobilize and resist the regulation and defend their lifestyle. Sociologists must move beyond highly visible campaigns and crusades and pay greater attention to quiet regulation, both because such regulation is likely to increase in the future and because it has significant consequences for power, cultural expression, and identity.     

Power and dependence perspectives on outsourcing decisions

Since the 1980s outsourcing has been a major topic in both economic and management literature. Economic literature tends to focus on the transaction cost perspective. In management literature the core competence approach prevails. An emerging alternative view on outsourcing is the power and dependence perspective. Aspects of power and dependence become visible in four case studies involving the maintenance of capital assets. In each instance both the buyer and supplier sides of the dyad are examined. The paper concludes with managerial implications and research opportunities.     

Human Health Risk Assessment of Penicillin/Aminopenicillin Resistance in Enterococci Due to Penicillin Use in Food Animals

Penicillin and ampicillin drugs are approved for use in food animals in the United States to treat, control, and prevent diseases, and penicillin is approved for use to improve growth rates in pigs and poultry. This article considers the possibility that such uses might increase the incidence of ampicillin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (AREF) of animal origin in human infections, leading to increased hospitalization and mortality due to reduced response to ampicillin or penicillin. We assess the risks from continued use of penicillin-based drugs in food animals in the United States, using several assumptions to overcome current scientific uncertainties and data gaps. Multiplying the total at-risk population of intensive care unit (ICU) patients by a series of estimated factors suggests that not more than 0.04 excess mortalities per year (under conservative assumptions) to 0.14 excess mortalities per year (under very conservative assumptions) might be prevented in the whole U.S. population if current use of penicillin drugs in food animals were discontinued and if this successfully reduced the prevalence of AREF infections among ICU patients. These calculations suggest that current penicillin usage in food animals in the United States presents very low (possibly zero) human health risks.     

Classroom sex composition and first-grade school outcomes: The role of classroom behavior

Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (N = 21,409; 10,452 girls and 10,957 boys; mean age = 7.24 years), the association between first-grade classroom sex composition (CSC), measured as the percentage of female students, and end of the year academic (reading, mathematics) and socio-emotional (externalizing problems, internalizing problems, self-control, interpersonal skills) outcomes was examined. Using multilevel modeling techniques and controlling for prior achievement levels, CSC was positively associated with children’s reading achievement at the end of first grade; students performed better in reading in classes with a higher percentage of female students. CSC was also associated with three of the socio-emotional outcomes; controlling for prior levels, students in classrooms with a higher percentage of girls had better self-control and interpersonal skills and fewer internalizing problems. Classroom behavior mediated the effects of CSC on reading achievement and the socio-emotional outcomes. Implications for the composition of first-grade classrooms are discussed.     

Pandemic Recovery Analysis Using the Dynamic Inoperability Input-Output Model

Economists have long conceptualized and modeled the inherent interdependent relationships among different sectors of the economy. This concept paved the way for input-output modeling, a methodology that accounts for sector interdependencies governing the magnitude and extent of ripple effects due to changes in the economic structure of a region or nation. Recent extensions to input-output modeling have enhanced the model's capabilities to account for the impact of an economic perturbation; two such examples are the inoperability input-output model^{( 1 , 2 )} and the dynamic inoperability input-output model (DIIM).^{( 3 )} These models introduced sector inoperability, or the inability to satisfy as-planned production levels, into input-output modeling. While these models provide insights for understanding the impacts of inoperability, there are several aspects of the current formulation that do not account for complexities associated with certain disasters, such as a pandemic. This article proposes further enhancements to the DIIM to account for economic productivity losses resulting primarily from workforce disruptions. A pandemic is a unique disaster because the majority of its direct impacts are workforce related. The article develops a modeling framework to account for workforce inoperability and recovery factors. The proposed workforce-explicit enhancements to the DIIM are demonstrated in a case study to simulate a pandemic scenario in the Commonwealth of Virginia.     

Vocational education,self‐employment and burnout among Australian workers

We examine the relationship between vocational education and occupational burnout among workers in different forms of employment. Although the self‐employed enjoy higher levels of job autonomy and work‐related satisfaction, we do not know whether they experience lower rates of occupational burnout, and whether vocational education plays a role in this relationship. This latter consideration is important, given that vocational qualifications often lead to self‐employment and prior research demonstrated that formal training may reduce burnout. However, formal education was previously measured in years of schooling, without considering the distinction between academically‐oriented and vocational courses. Therefore, using data from a 2001 national survey of working Australians, we first establish that the self‐employed are significantly less likely to experience burnout. We then demonstrate that some resilience to burnout can be attributed to the attainment of skilled vocational training, net of employment characteristics which are also very important.     

城市的精神

面对全球化的挑战,城市风尚具有越来越重要的政治意蕴.这是因为,全球化正在使不同的文化传统、不同的生活方式迅速同一化和均质化,在国家层面,对抗这种同一化和均质化是相当困难的,而在城市层面,城市风尚的培养或恢复可以有效地保护文化多样性.     

A Telephone Intervention for Substance-Using Adult Male Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence

OBJECTIVE: To preliminarily evaluate telephone-delivered motivational enhancement therapy (MET) in motivating unadjudicated and nontreatment seeking intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators, who also use substances, to self-refer into treatment. METHOD: 124 adult men were recruited via a multimedia marketing campaign and were randomly assigned to the intervention (MET) or comparison group following a baseline assessment. Participants in the MET condition received a personalized feedback report on their IPV and substance-use behaviors, consequences, and social norms beliefs. RESULTS: Results supported the likely effectiveness of MET in short-term reduction of IPV behavior, increasing motivation for treatment seeking, and changing perceived norms for IPV and substance abuse (SA). CONCLUSIONS: Applications for brief MET interventions to facilitate voluntary treatment entry among substance-using IPV perpetrators are discussed.     

A Diamond-Stiglitz approach to the demand for self-protection

The existing research concerning the relationship between risk aversion and prudence and the demand for self-protection assumes that the loss variable follows a Bernoulli distribution, and that changes in the level of self-protection are mean preserving. The analysis here replaces these two very strong conditions with ones which are more general. When doing this, the method of analysis is also significantly modified. This modification includes representing a change in the level of self-protection using the procedure developed by Diamond and Stiglitz (Journal of Economic Theory 8:337-360, 1974) for representing a change in risk. This alternate representation allows the existing findings to be generalized considerably, and also simplifies the analysis.