Borrowing,Dwelling, Owing

Abstract

Taking the movie The Company Men (John Wells, 2010) as its starting point, the article attempts to think the condition of indebtedness in its connection with living in and with a home. Through readings of Martin Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking,” the article claims that the predicament of the indebted person and his or her house can be described as linked to a shift in the way we view houses, from “places of dwelling” to “standing-reserves.”     

Musculoskeletal disorders and productivity

Conclusion On balance, the evidence supports an association of higher productivity increases with lower MSD rates and greater reductions in MSD rates. Across all industries for which data were available, lower MSD rates were significantly correlated with higher productivity increases. Since both changes in MSDs and in productivity have many varied causes, the effects of efforts specifically intended to reduce MSDs are difficult to isolate from these data. Nevertheless, in two subsets of industries those effects may be more likely to be discernible: industries with the largest reductions in MSD rates would be more likely to have made changes intended to reduce MSDs, and industries with lower productivity growth may reduce the effects of unrelated productivity gains on MSD/ productivity observations. Statistically significant correlations between reductions in MSDs and increases in productivity were found among both of these groups. In addition, among industries with the highest MSD rates in 1992, the extent of implementation of ergonomic controls was significantly correlated with increases in productivity. A special thank you is extended to William Weber, William McCarthy, and Linda Garris of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Office of Safety, Health and Working Conditions, for providing MSD industry data for 1992 and 1998. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the department or agency with which the writers are affiliated. Jens Svenson is currently on detail to the Office of Management and Budget.     

Dualismus oder Reduktion – Eine Antwort auf Gregor Bongaerts

Gregor Bongaerts (2016b) has objected to my criticism of arguments in favor of a non-reductive sociology (both articles in this journal) and my proposal of a reductive individualism more generally. This contribution defends reductive individualism as a viable program in social theory. Bongaerts’s main objection, that I do not distinguish sufficiently between creation (Urheberschaft) and causation (Verursachung), can only be understood as an objection if one conceives the social sense of an action as an irreducible collective concept. Although this possibility cannot be excluded a priori, it poses a number of fundamental challenges. Firstly, it has to be asked whether or not this position can be connected with a realization proviso (that everything social is ultimately realized by individuals). Secondly, the attribution argument used by Bongaerts is either no objection to individualism, or it is threatened by a logical regress, since it is not plausible that subsequent interpretations of an action can produce the subjective meaning related to action. Finally, the question arises whether a collectivist argument does not require a collective bearer of meaning-attribution, the existence of which can hardly be asserted within the framework of a practice theory inspired by Bourdieu. The essay ends with some questions, especially with regard to the multi-dimensionality and unity of Bongaerts’s concept of meaning (Sinn).     

Privacy revisited? Old ideals, new realities, and their impact on biobank regimes

Biobanks, collecting human specimen, medical records, and lifestyle-related data, face the challenge of having contradictory missions: on the one hand serving the collective welfare through easy access for medical research, on the other hand adhering to restrictive privacy expectations of people in order to maintain their willingness to participate in such research. In this article, ethical frameworks stressing the societal value of low-privacy expectations in order to secure biomedical research are discussed. It will turn out that neither utilitarian nor communitarian or classical libertarian ethics frameworks will help to serve both goals. Instead, John Rawls’ differentiation of the “right” and the “good” is presented in order to illustrate the possibility of “serving two masters”: individual interests of privacy, and societal interests of scientific progress and intergenerational justice. In order to illustrate this counterbalancing concept with an example, the five-pillar concept of the German Ethics Council will be briefly discussed.     

Out of mind,out of sight? Leading distributed workers to ensure health and safety

ABSTRACT

Current frameworks of leadership are based on face-to-face interaction. A growing number of workers work away from their main location of work; this makes it challenging for leaders to ensure the health and safety of distributed workers. In the present study, we explore the relationship between line managers’ health and safety leadership and distributed workers’ health and safety behaviours. We also explore the organisational procedures and practices that may enhance the impact of health and safety leadership. We included a broad range of distributed workers (in analyses, minimum N?=?626) from 11 organisations. We found that health-and-safety-specific leadership was positively related to distributed workers’ self-rated health, safety compliance and safety proactivity. These relationships were augmented by distributed workers’ sense of being included in the workplace. Knowledge sharing among colleagues was associated with safety compliance when health-and-safety-specific leadership was low. Our results indicate that one way of addressing the challenges of distributed working may be through line managers putting health and safety on the agenda.     

The Danish psychosocial work environment and symptoms of stress: the main, mediating and moderating role of sense of coherence

The aim of this cross-sectional study was to explore the main, mediating and moderating role of sense of coherence (SOC) on stress symptoms and on the association between perceived psychosocial work environment and stress symptoms. The sample includes 2053 Danish employees from 52 workplaces. Hierarchical regression models were applied for each measure of stress. The results strongly supported the presence of a main effect for SOC. People with high levels of SOC experienced fewer stress symptoms. A mediating effect of SOC was also supported. Thus, SOC in part explained the association between work environment and stress symptoms. In addition, some support for a moderating effect of SOC was found, suggesting that people with higher SOC coped more efficiently with work environmental strain that people with lower SOC. Taken together the regression models explained 11-32% of the variance in stress symptoms. The results suggest that measures of individual factors such as SOC should be included in analyses of the effects of work environmental factors on stress and well-being.     

ALCOHOL, ETHNICITY, AND VIOLENCE: The Role of Alcohol Availability for Latino and Black Aggravated Assaults and Robberies

This article is one of the first to assess the impact of alcohol availability, an important but understudied neighborhood element, and other social disorganization measures for Latino and black aggravated assault and robbery victimizations. Using data from Miami, Florida, for 1996 and 1997, we find that although most predictors have similar effects on the outcomes for both groups, higher alcohol availability rates are associated with more Latino but not black victims. To explain this finding, we relate the criminogenic influence of alcohol to contextual features of Latino and black neighborhoods, thereby integrating qualitative observations and quantitative data. Higher concentrations of recent immigrants are also related to fewer black assault victims, more Latino assault victims, but not to robberies for either group.