Von der imaginierten zur emotional erlebten Nation: Partizipation und Verschmelzung in der Fußballberichterstattung

Not only in a globalized world, our imagination is a space for the construction of all kinds of identity. This was shown e. g. by Anderson (Erfindung der Nation, Zur Karriere eines folgenreichen Konzepts, Frankfurt a. M., Campus, 1996) in his perspective on the nation as an imagined community. This article intends to add arguments from the sociology of emotion and ritual-theory to this mainly cognitive perspective. I will argue that rituals serve to provide an affective experience of the respective imagined community and to actualize its imagined content. In so doing, the nation gains salience compared to other constructions of collective identity. TV-coverage from the FIFA Football-World Cup in 2006 in Germany serves as an empirical example. Besides the interpretative presentation of included images of we-identity (also in discrimination against the identity of ‘the others’) the analysis focuses on showing how the formal, visual and semantic form of the examined broadcast facilitates the experience of collective effervescence by making it easier for the viewers to perceive themselves as participants in the ritual.     

„And for them it’s food and nothing else“ – Umweltschützer im interkulturellen Dialog mit grönländischen Inuit

On the one hand, the indigenous people of Greenlandic Inuit are recognized by its non-exploitative access to natural resources in environmental discourse. On the other hand, within scientific studies the hunting activities are blamed for the decline of individual animal populations. The present paper examines the question of whether Greenlandic Inuit as well as environmentalists from Denmark and Germany recognize alternative perspectives on societal relationships with nature. The qualitative interviews show that the interviewee let their own experiences of foreignness in the horizon of experience and thus legitimize their actions.     

Asian immigrant entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs: A comparative study of recent Korean and Filipino immigrants

Many immigrants go into business for themselves, rather than enter the salaried labor market. Immigrant business owners in the United States are admired for their enterprising spirit, but they may also be the target of envy and hostility, as was evident in the attacks on Korean businesses during riots in Los Angeles in 1992. Recent research shows that Koreans are more likely than members of many other U.S. immigrant groups to go into business. While a number of theoretical frameworks have been developed that explain group differences in entrepreneurship, very few studies have dealt empirically with the actual process of choosing between salaried employment and self-employment. Why do some immigrants go into business while others do not? This paper examines that question from a comparative perspective, drawing upon survey data on recent Korean and Filipino immigrants to the United States. Implications of the findings with respect to U.S. immigration policies are also discussed.     

Reflections on sustainability,population growth,and the environment

The related terms, sustainable and sustainability, have become popular and are used to describe a wide variety of activities which are generally ecologically laudable. At the same time, the term compromise is heard more frequently because the needs of the environment often are in conflict with the needs of humans. A brief examination of the question of compromise shows that a series of ten compromises, each of which saves 70% of the remaining environment, results in the saving of only 3% of the environment. Judging from the ways in which the terms sustainable and sustainability are used, their definitions are not very precise, especially when compromises are involved. An attempt is made here to give firm definition to these terms and to translate the definition into a series of laws and hypotheses which, it is hoped, will clarify the implications of their use. These are followed by a series of observations and predictions that relate to sustainability.     

Sex differences in valuations of the environment?

Sexual selection theory affords a rationale for predicting that men, especially young men, may be more willing than women to risk harms and to discount the future in the pursuit of short-term gains. These propositions apply to many domains of risky behavior, and it is likely that they apply to decisions involving potential harms to the environment and health hazards as well. Two preliminary studies of university subjects' responses to hypothetical dilemmas that support the predicted sex difference are described. Important understudied questions are, to what extent reckless risk acceptance may be mitigated by material wellbeing, by marriage, and by parenthood.     

The evolutionary basis of sex variations in the use of natural resources: Human examples

People, unlike other primates, regularly consume foods acquired by others. When people forage for a living, women and men customarily acquire different foods and consume the products of each other's work. This distinctively human sexual division of labor has seemed the hallmark of human resource use. If men and women have different economic specialties, marriage creates a social unit that deploys their different capacities to serve family needs. Other distinctively human patterns then seem to arise from this fundamental economic cooperation between the sexes. In recent decades, the use of evolutionary theory to investigate and explain social behavior across the living world has revealed pervasive conflicts of interest between (as well as within) the sexes. Application of these tools to human examples shows the sexual division of labor to be the economic aspect of different and conflicting reproductive agendas for women and men. A review of some examples from communities where people hunt and gather for a living illustrates that families are not units of common economic interest. As with other primates, males and females have different reproductive goals and these differences shape sex differences in patterns of resource use.     

The impact of immigration on the Social Security System

In 1992, the estimated deficit of the entire Social Security System attributable to the foreign born was $2.7 billion (i.e., payments the foreign born payed to and received from the system). Also in 1992, there was an estimated surplus of $19.0 billion for the native born population. During the 1993–2002 decade, the $2.7 billion annual deficit attributable to the current stock of immigrants is projected to grow by about one percent annually in present value terms, reaching $2.98 billion yearly in 2002.The ten-year deficit for the 1993–2002 decade would amount to nearly $30.0 billion in 1993 dollars. In policy terms, the addition of large numbers of less skilled foreign workers to the labor force (which will occur if there is no change in immigration law or enforcement policy) in the hope of bolstering the solvency of the Social Security System would in fact have the opposite effect.     

Population growth,environmental awareness,and policy direction

Many policy analysts, commentators, and researchers claim that the issue of human population growth no longer receives the attention and concern it once enjoyed in both the popular and specialized media. Other commentators state that scientists and decision-makers are held captive by media-savvy environmentalists who seek to fulfill a political agenda by limiting population expansion. I investigated the change in media coverage of population issues by tallying the number of population-related articles listed during 1967–1989 in 3 periodical index services. Media coverage has declined sharply since the early 1970's. Possible causes of the decline are discussed in the context of the larger debate between population pessimists and population optimists.     

Mother's education and effect of son preference on fertility in Matlab,Bangladesh

This analysis follows earlier research that hypothesized and substantiated that, in a society with strong son preference, its effect on fertility would be conditional on the level of contraceptive use. Present analysis of the prospective fertility experience of 22,819 women of reproductive age during 3.5 years in Matlab, Bangladesh, shows that this effect is higher among mothers with postprimary schooling versus those with primary or no education. The higher effect conforms with the known positive relationship of contraceptive use with maternal schooling. However, this increase when contrasted with the idea that education promotes modern values, including gender equality, suggests that education in Matlab, with its traditional slant, is not resistant to son preference. In a poor, traditional society with low status for women, schooling alone is not enough to motivate women to abandon low esteem for daughters though schooling promotes child survival. But if preference for smaller family size increases, promoted by education including such modern values as gender equality, then sex preference, although it cannot be completely removed, will have minimal effect on fertility as in most developed countries.Abbreviations DSS demographic surveillance system - ICDDR,B International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh - MCH-FP maternal/child health and family planning - SPEF sex preference effect on fertility