Did the Puerto Rico Project Have Consequences? A Personal View

Those of us who participated as fieldworkers in the Puerto Rico Project gathered regularly at the University of Puerto Rico (Río Piedras) during the eighteen months we were in the field to compare notes, discuss our work together, and advance our research cooperatively. During that time a distinct difference between our integration in the communities where we were working and in the university community where we gathered became apparent to some of us. It was a coefficient of the class and other differences that separated the university faculty from the working men and women among whom some of us lived in the field, and it was reflected in political differences, among others. A substantial fraction of the university faculty was strongly committed to political independence, whereas a large majority of rural dwellers supported the Popular Democratic Party, then in power. It was not surprising that these differences were linked to others, such that some of us felt we were more fully accepted by the laboring classes among whom we lived than by the intellectuals whom we knew at the university. I try here to show how our fieldwork made visible (and troublesome) these sharp political divisions.     

Powerful emotions: symbolic power and the (productive and punitive) force of collective feeling

This article argues that emotions can be a medium of social power. Using qualitative interview material from American Jews discussing anti-Semitism and its relationship to contemporary politics, it engages recent scholarship on emotions and political contention and shows how emotions make effective the various forms of symbolic exclusion by which group members exercise what Bourdieu calls symbolic power. It also explores the emotional connections to group membership by which some “excluded” members can engage in symbolic struggle over “the principles of vision and division” Bourdieu (Sociological Theory 7(1), 14–25, 1989) that define the group. Finally, it shows how emotions work to incite discipline in some group members, inspiring them to conform to dominant definitions of group membership so as to avoid both symbolic struggle and exclusion.     

The Clash between Social Policy and Traditional Values: Unmet Welfare Needs Sustained by the Culture of Familism in South Korea

Drawing from a wider study of the ideas of poverty and inequality in South Korea, this paper reports on the lived experiences of disadvantaged South Koreans and their relationship to the National Basic Livelihood Security System (NBLSS), a flagship social assistance program aimed at addressing poverty and inequality. Utilizing a cultural approach to understanding and analysing policy responses to poverty, the impact of familism in the application of the NBLSS safety net is examined. Research data is presented through the testimonies, obtained through qualitative research interviews, of disadvantaged research participants and those who work with them, as well as policy‐makers' perspectives, revealing key flaws in the current NBLSS policy objectives. It is clearly evident that, by clinging to outdated Confucian conceptualizations of familial piety as a justification for highly selectivist access to what is no more than a subsistence level of financial support for poor people, the proposition of a poverty safety net is compromised and is widely missing its aim of reducing poverty and inequality in contemporary South Korea.     

Self-Regulatory Driving Behaviors: Gender and Transportation Support Effects

This study examined the relationship between transportation support and self-regulatory driving behaviors of 566 community-dwelling older adults living in retirement communities, with a focus on gender differences. The results of logistic regression analysis showed that older women were more likely to avoid driving at night or on the highway than their male counterparts. Transportation support from peer friends was found to increase the likelihood of self-regulatory driving behaviors. The findings of this study imply that transportation policy and driving safety programs for older adults need to be developed, considering available transportation alternatives and gender differences in driving behaviors.     

Indeterminate Responses to Attitudinal Questions About Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Rural Bangladesh

Using data from 165 participants in a survey experiment in six Bangladeshi villages, we explored the levels and correlates of women??s indeterminate responses to a five-part attitudinal question on intimate partner violence (IPV) against women from the 2007 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey. Over 80?% had indeterminate responses to all five parts of the question. Indeterminate responses included silence or initial non-response (53?C58?%), misunderstanding the question (30?C37?%), and conditional opinions (7?C13?%). The percentages of women who justified IPV were lower when indeterminate responses were permitted (7?C12?%) than when they were not (37?C57?%). Older women (??26?years) with less schooling (??2 grades) whose husbands were older (??36?years), had less schooling (??8 grades), and were at least 7?years older than the respondent often had higher odds of giving indeterminate responses. Husbands?? attributes and spousal age gaps were most consistently associated with women??s indeterminate responses. Latent power, or fears of expressing transgressive views, may underlie women??s indeterminate responses to attitudinal questions about IPV against women. Recommendations for further research are discussed.     

A network ridesharing experiment with sequential choice of transportation mode

Within the last decade, there has been a dramatic bloom in ridesharing businesses along with the emergence of new enabling technologies. A central issue in ridesharing, which is also important in the general domain of cost-sharing in economics and computer science, is that the sharing of cost implies positive externalities and hence coordination problems for the network users. We investigate these problems experimentally in the present study. In particular, we focus on how sequential observability of transportation mode choices can be a powerful facilitator of coordination in ridesharing. Our study abstracts the essential issues of coordination in ridesharing into a directed network game with experimentally testable predictions. In line with the theoretical analysis, our experimental evidence shows that even a limited extent of sequential choice observability might lead to efficient coordination. However, convergence to efficiency is slower with more limited observability, resulting in a significant increase in travel cost.     

Age-structure,urbanization, and climate change in developed countries: revisiting STIRPAT for disaggregated population and consumption-related environmental impacts

We focus on three environmental impacts particularly influenced by population age-structure—carbon emissions from transport and residential energy and electricity consumption—as well as aggregate carbon emissions for a panel of developed countries, and take as our starting point the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) framework. Among our contributions is to further disaggregate population into three particularly key age groups: 20–34, 35–49, and 50–64, and by doing so demonstrate that population’s environmental impact differs considerably across age groups, with the older age groups (ones typically associated with larger households) actually exerting a negative influence. Furthermore, those age-specific population influences are different (in absolute and relative terms) for the different environmental impacts we analyze. Also, we find that urbanization, in developed countries, best measures access to a country’s power grid, and thus, is positively associated with energy consumption in the residential sector. Finally, we suggest some modeling and methodological improvements to the STIRPAT framework.     

Specialised Perception, Selection, and Strategic Surprise: Learning from the Moths and Bees

This paper draws on comparisons between organisations and organisms to illustrate how peripheral vision can influence behaviour. Like biological organisms, organisations have sensors to inform them of threats and opportunities. The process by which these sensors are developed is ‘selection, adaptation and learning’, or SAL. While SAL’s influence is helpful, it is not always on the side of the organisation. However there are systems that can help an organisation detect oncoming challenges. These include: leveraging the peripheral vision of the CEO; improving general purpose sensors; a better reading of specialised sensors; and installing new specialised or routine sensors in areas where none presently exists.