Boat race: rhythm and the possibility of collective performance

Many sociologists have observed the close connection between coordination and rhythm. In order to accomplish a communal task, participants need to develop a common rhythm if they are to coordinate their actions. Indeed, the harder the collective task, the more critical - but difficult - it is for participants to develop a common rhythm in order to synchronize their actions. Rhythm is thus an important and recurrent feature of social performance. This article explores the ways in which participants try to generate common rhythm in order to execute collective performances. To this end, the paper takes a single sporting example. It examines a decisive period in the 153rd Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race in 2007 to examine how a small social group, the Cambridge crew, struggled to create and maintain a rhythm in order to maximize their rowing performance.     

Increasing the Revenue of Self‐Storage Warehouses by Facility Design

Self‐storage is a booming industry. Both private customers and companies can rent temporary space from such facilities. The design of self‐storage warehouses differs from other facility designs in its focus on revenue maximization. A major question is how to design self‐storage facilities to fit market segments and accommodate volatile demand to maximize revenue. Customers that cannot be accommodated with a space size of their choice can be either rejected or upscaled to a larger space. Based on data of 54 warehouses in America, Europe, and Asia, we propose a new facility design approach with models for three different cases: an overflow customer rejection model and two models with customer upscale possibilities, one with reservation and another without reservation. We solve the models for several real warehouse cases, and our results show that the existing self‐storage warehouses can be redesigned to generate larger revenues for all cases. Finally, we show that the upscaling policy without reservation generally outperforms the upscaling policy with reservation.     

论民生视角下的农民政治认同建设

由于农民的民生需求突出、基层民主的局限和国家民生政策的作用等原因,民生成为当前影响农民政治认同的主要因素。受民生因素的影响,农民政治认同表现出强调物质利益、规则意识、公正观念等重要特征,并呈现出鲜明的层次差异性。这些特征既反映了农民的生存压力和国家民生政策的执行偏差,也反映了农民对贯彻落实好民生政策的强烈要求,因此落实国家民生政策就成为增强农民政治认同的关键。要使国家的支农、惠农政策得到贯彻落实,当前主要应该做好限制县乡党政部门的自利性、建立合理的资金拨付机制、消除乡村裙带关系的消极影响三项工作。     

Editorial collaborators

Editorial collaborators     

Options and sequences: Europe’s demographic patterns

It is argued in this lecture that Ryder’s approach to the study of the role of the cohort in social change is too narrow. Cohorts do not only permit change; they actively create the options succeeding cohorts have to choose from. Through its own choice from amongst the options perceived, each cohort both limits and enriches the options of the next. It is through the choice people make with regard to life shaping demographic events that they group themselves into ‘mental’ cohorts. The course of demographic events in Western Europe in the postwar period is difficult to understand if one does not appreciate that these events form a sequence. A sequence generated by the quite specific option(s) each ‘mental’ cohort, through its own choice, created for the next. Current demographic patterns in Europe have to be interpreted in terms of differences in social and cultural heritage of the countries concerned, and in terms of the differences in options perceived and selected.     

Several Common Bonds: Addressing the Needs of Gay and Bisexual Men in LGBT-Specific Recovery Housing

ABSTRACT

Recovery housing is a promising way to augment the substance use continuum of care, but we know little about the experiences of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community who live in them or about residences specifically for them. Within the LGBTQ community, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) often experience co-occurring syndemic conditions (e.g., trauma, depression, HIV) that present unique recovery challenges. Using qualitative data gathered from residents living in a recovery residence specifically for gay and bisexual men and from community key informants, we examine the experiences of men living in the home and factors that facilitate operating it. Findings highlight the need for residences that can address syndemic burden among gay and bisexual men in recovery and identify programmatic and community-level factors critical to operating residences for this population.     

LETTER GRADING GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY

We mailed letters to non‐existent business addresses in 159 countries (10 per country), and measured whether they come back to the return address in the United States and how long it takes. About 60% of the letters were returned, taking over six months, on average. The results provide new objective indicators of government efficiency across countries, based on a simple and universal service, and allow us to shed light on its determinants. The evidence suggests that both technology and management quality influence government efficiency, just as they do that of the private sector.