Leaving Home Early: Passing from Girlhood to Womanhood

This paper presents a case study of a young woman’s narrative of leaving home and her transition to adulthood. The case study is part of a larger research project about young women with an experience of an early break-up from home, through running away or being thrown out. Empirical material underlying this paper consists of a qualitative study of 12 young women that have been interviewed. The aim of the study is to understand how events like running away/being thrown out of home influences their transition to adulthood. The particular narrative demonstrates how a young woman presents and accounts for such a dramatic event as running away or being thrown out from home, and how that is understood in relation to her adulthood. A further aim is to illustrate how social services efforts are reflected in her narrative.     

Beheimatungsprozesse begleiten — ein Werkstattbericht

Supporting processes of belonging in supervision and coachingThe contemporary employee has to cope with frequent changes. Not only does he lose his familiar environment, he also has to find ways to familiarize himself with new places and to develop a fresh sense of belonging. This process can be understood and facilitated by interpreting the German concept of “Heimat“ as something we have to create ourselves. First experiences demonstrate the usefulness of this approach in coaching processes.     

Expected sample moments of concomitants of selected order statistics

In this paper, the task of determining expected values of sample moments, where the sample members have been selected based on noisy information, is considered. This task is a recurring problem in the theory of evolution strategies. Exact expressions for expected values of sums of products of concomitants of selected order statistics are derived. Then, using Edgeworth and Cornish-Fisher approximations, explicit results that depend on coefficients that can be determined numerically are obtained. While the results are exact only for normal populations, it is shown experimentally that including skewness and kurtosis in the calculations can yield greatly improved results for other distributions.     

Saving and consumption patterns of the elderly

The paper provides an empirical analysis of saving and consumption choices of the elderly in Germany, based on the German income and expenditure surveys 1978 and 1983. Main feature of these data is the large sample size making it possible to analyze saving and consumption patterns of the very old (aged 75 and above).The observed age-consumption profiles are very different from those predicted by the pure life-cycle theory. Although wealth is declining between age 60 and 70, it increases again after 70, such that the very old have the highest savings rates among all age groups and accumulate wealth rather than decumulate it. These profiles are not confounded by cohort effects and mortality differences. The corresponding expenditure data suggest the following explanation: due to the generous German pension system and the almost complete coverage of health expenses by the mandatory health insurance in Germany, the declining consumption n very old age cannot exhaust the annuity income of the elderly such that wealth is being accumulated in old age.Research in this paper was supported by the National Institute on Aging, grant no. 3 PO1 AG05842-01. I appreciate the helpful comments by Doug Bernheim, Angus Deaton, Daniel McFadden, Jonathan Skinner, Konrad 'Stahl and David Wise, and two anonymous referees. I am indebted to Hermann Buslei and Johannes Velling who provided most valuable and able assistance.     

视觉现代化——现代艺术背后的人类视觉观念(1)

20世纪初所发生的“视觉现代化”(modernising vision)转向源于自19世纪以来传统的视觉概念所发生的深刻变化。它旨在将人们从过时的观看习惯中解放出来,视觉的本质不应主要被理解为给定可见世界的机械再现模式,而应该从根本上被理解为由文化构造的、具有历史多样性的感知数据的生产性过程。现代艺术试图通过艺术品本身来创造一种现代化的视觉形式,艺术作品被定义为实现视觉现代化的手段或工具,画家试图用艺术来表达一种新的视觉观——观看中充斥着时间的流动,而绝不仅是一个明确的视觉顺序的实现;观看不是一个视觉固定化过程,而是更加有意识地、集中地观察世界。从丢勒式的空间中心透视观到塞尚式的时间和空间相结合的多重透视观,后者更加强调了观者的参与和观看的过程,这种观看方式的变化也是人与世界关系的变化。视觉现代化的探讨在今天仍然具有重要的意义⁽²⁾。