Compensating communities for industrial disamenities: The case of shale gas development

Governments often compensate communities for hosting disruptive industries. Sometimes compensation comes with restrictions that preclude highly-valued investments. I exploit policy discontinuities at the Pennsylvania-Ohio border to understand how restrictions affect local investment. Ohio delivers unrestricted revenues to schools and municipalities with shale development. Pennsylvania leaves out schools, and requires that municipalities address the industry's impacts. Municipalities in both states save most of the revenues. Ohio schools leverage them to increase borrowing and finance capital investments. This suggests that affected residents have greater demand for school investments, and that broad use of compensation may benefit communities more than allocating it narrowly.     

Factors supporting resilience during out-of-home care: Experiences of former child welfare clients in Finland

This study aimed to identify factors supporting young people's resilience during out-of-home care (OOHC) in Finland, despite challenges in their lives. In our qualitative study, we applied a social-ecological framework to understand the experiences and perspectives of young people on what helped them and the help they would have needed during OOHC. The findings indicate (1) individual characteristics and interests (positive attitude, understanding own acts and their consequences and meaningful activities), (2) relationships (good relationships with close ones, ability to meet and keep contact with close ones, good relationships with professionals and relationships between parents and professionals) and (3) institutions (place of OOHC, youth-centered practices, needs-based services and support for the family) all supported the resilience of young people in OOHC. Further, to receive support from a particular medium, such as professionals (relationship level), a young person must already have some self-understanding (individual level) of things. Essentially, youth resilience is supported through all these levels as a process.     

Paedophiles, Pornography and the Internet: Assessment Issues

Correspondence to Dr Ethel Quayle, COPINE Project, Department of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland. E-mail: e.quayle{at}ucc.ie Summary As yet, little is understood of the potential problems and benefitsassociated with Internet use, and the resulting social outcomesthat may arise. This article examines issues that emerged outof a subset of nine interviews with social workers and probationofficers, namely the feelings by such practitioners that theydid not understand the function of the Internet for adults witha sexual interest in children. The analysis of these data isnot examined in detail, rather an attempt is made to addressthe issues raised through a discussion of the role of childpornography, how it is accessed through the Internet and whatimplications this might have for assessment. The data are drawnfrom ongoing research by the COPINE (Combating Paedophile InformationNetworks in Europe) Project.     

How does job-related diversity affect boards' strategic participation? An information-processing approach

More than ever, corporate leaders consider the presence of different skills, knowledge, and experience in their boardrooms being important for boards' involvement throughout the whole strategy process. However, even though of great practical relevance, we have limited knowledge about how such diversity affects boards' active contribution to corporate strategy. Applying information-processing theory, we explore how job-related diversity may be an important determinant for boards' strategic participation. Using a survey database collected in Norway, we find that job-related diversity contributes to boards' strategic participation through directors' use of knowledge and skills.     

The semantic distinction between "risk" and "danger": a linguistic analysis

The analysis combines frame semantic and corpus linguistic approaches in analyzing the role of agency and decision making in the semantics of the words "risk" and "danger" (both nominal and verbal uses). In frame semantics, the meanings of "risk" and of related words, such as "danger," are analyzed against the background of a specific cognitive-semantic structure (a frame) comprising frame elements such as Protagonist, Bad Outcome, Decision, Possession, and Source. Empirical data derive from the British National Corpus (100 million words). Results indicate both similarities and differences in use. First, both "risk" and "danger" are commonly used to represent situations having potential negative consequences as the result of agency. Second, "risk" and "danger," especially their verbal uses (to risk, to endanger), differ in agent-victim structure, i.e., "risk" is used to express that a person affected by an action is also the agent of the action, while "endanger" is used to express that the one affected is not the agent. Third, "risk," but not "danger," tends to be used to represent rational and goal-directed action. The results therefore to some extent confirm the analysis of "risk" and "danger" suggested by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. As a point of discussion, the present findings arguably have implications for risk communication.     

Participatory art within,against and beyond financialization: benign pessimism,tactical parasitics and the encrypted common

This essay examines three critical artists who orchestrate participatory spectacles and experiences as a means of challenging neoliberal financialization, an overarching paradigm and process that is reshaping economics, politics, society and culture. Critical art, I argue, can offer us a particularly insightful vantage point on these transformations. This is not, as it is usually supposed, because art has some lofty transcendental perspective above society; rather, it is precisely because art is already so deeply integrated into finance and financialization. Not coincidentally, “participation” appears as a keyword for the restructuring of both art and finance today, which I argue is key to understanding the challenges, limits and potentials of even avowedly critical participatory art, with lessons for cultural production more broadly. In order to analyse and draw broader lessons from the three artworks in question, I identify each with a strategic paradigm: benign pessimism, tactical parasitism and the encrypted common. These strategies, I argue, emerge within, against and beyond financialization and can help complicate our approach to its complex cultural politics.     

Impaired Self-Awareness in Pathological Gamblers

Lack of self-awareness of one’s decisions remains an understudied and elusive topic in the addiction literature. The present study aimed at taking a first step towards addressing this difficult subject through the use of a combination of behavioral procedures. Here, we explored the association between a metacognitive process (the ability to reflect and evaluate the awareness of one’s own decision) and poor performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) in a group of pathological gamblers (PG; n = 30), and in a comparison group (n = 35). This metacognitive process was assessed during the IGT with the post-decision wagering procedure, while a number of potential confounds (i.e., reward/loss sensitivity, dual-tasking) were controlled for. Results showed that: (1) Initial performance enhancement of the control group on IGT occurred without explicit knowledge of the task, thus confirming its implicit character; (2) compared to controls, performance of PG on the IGT failed to increase during the task; (3) taking into account increased reward sensitivity and decreased loss sensitivity as well as poorer dual-tasking in pathological gamblers, PG tended to exhibit a bias in evaluating their own performance on the IGT by maximizing their wagers independently of selecting advantageous decks. Our findings suggest that biased metacognition may affect pathological gamblers, leading to disadvantageous post-decision wagering, which is in turn linked to impaired decision making under ambiguity. Perhaps this deficit reflects the impaired insight and self-awareness that many addicts suffer from, thus providing a novel approach for capturing and measuring this impairment, and for investigating its possible causes.     

An institutional approach to research on public procurement of innovation

The role of public procurement as a means to stimulate innovation has been increasingly emphasized during the last few years. The general argument is that, by applying intelligent demand, public agencies can stimulate private sector innovation that will eventually sustain competitive advantage in a global economy. The emphasis on public procurement used as an innovation policy instrument challenges current institutional practices and skills. The article is based on the assumption that the innovation research community could inform this policy discourse, in particular by drawing on institutional theory, but in order to fully utilize this potential, further revision of the research perspectives seen is needed. The article therefore discusses an institutional approach based on three modes: “multilevel institutional analysis”, “endogenous and exogenous institutions” and “institutions as rationalities”, arguing that such an approach would help to increase innovation research quality and policy relevance.     

Stock and Commodity Exchanges [Die Börse (1894)]

Theory and Society -