Changes in the social definition of early childhood and the new forms of symbolic violence

Conclusion The nursery school may be considered an institution and a market where the habits produced by the family are moulded, developed and standardized; thus, it is confronted with an objective definition of early childhood embedded in pedagogical practices. The proper objective of a sociology of nursery-school practice is the analysis of the lag between the functions delegated to the school by the different social classes and the functions which it objectively tends to fulfill. Here we have the best test of the lag between the pedagogic demands of the different classes and what the schools supply-which is very abstract, with results that are only visible at a later stage in the school career. It is not so much a question of learning to read or of preparing to do so (the acquisition of certain logical operations or a developed sensitivity, of acquiring a few I.Q. points). This learning takes place through many varied activities which apppear to be far from the learning function.All told, the conditions for understanding nursery-school exercises flow from the conditions for inventing these exercises. For instance, in games of manipulation, construction, classifying various objects, is not some knowledge of Piaget (at least in the sense of some psychologikal knowledge) needed to understand that practical manipulation is also logical manipulation, to see in cube games the learning of logic? Similarly, the language naïveté cultivated in language games is a clever naïveté, which supposes for example a cultured re-discovery of popular archaic language or of child talk. p ]Is it not likely to appear as pure childishness to those who, without the ncessary cultural knowledge, do not have the keys to decipher these ostensibly naïve exercises? Similarly, the conditions for understanding children's drawings as artistic learning (and the nursery school as an educational institution) are the very conditions for understanding modern art as art.It is not just a matter of perception and understanding; as the objective definition of early childhood proper to the different social classes becomes pervasive both in the relationship with school and in the socialization practices of the family, it patterns the children's habitus (as long-lasting internalized dispositions), which in turn influence the child's behavior and attitude towards school.The perception categories and the different forms of treatment of young children appropriate to each social class are not simply the result of the diffusion of definitions of early childhood produced by the autonomous evolution of scientific and artistic disciplines. They are the products of all the social and cultural conditions which define the class situation. We may also wonder whether at least some pedagogy and certain types of exercises do not presume that the child has socially marked attitudes, produced in some classes by family inculcation. For instance, a general attitude of disinterested interest is required by a pedagogy offering multiple activities and open to an attitude of active research and exploration. Does not this attitude suppose as an existential possibility the condition of social classes protected from economic pressure and from the urgency of immediate life, a general attitude towards life nearer to leisure than to the constraints of work?Thus, in confronting supply with demand—here even less than elsewhere-there is no question of comparing the expectations arising from users' opinions with the program offered in the official definition of the institution. The expectations are those which arise from objective determinations inherent in each social group, the forms of treatment and perception of early childhood. To analyze the program-and therefore to ascertain the social conditions governing the use of the nursery school—the dominant definition of early childhood on which the institution is founded must be brought to light. Moreover, the way in which this definition is written into the curriculum (and, subsequently, into pedagogical practice) must also be studied. This implies that the preliminary condition for a sociological analysis of the functions performed by the nursery school for the different social classes would be an analysis of a) the components of this dominant definition of early childhood and b) of the social conditions in those groups which make it possible to identify these components.We wish to thank P. Bourdieu for his advice during our research. R. Collins provided useful suggestions after reading the first version of this paper.     

SOME ASPECTS OF THE DYNAMIC PROPERTIES OF ECONOMETRIC MODELS*

Recent efforts by several authors have resulted in the development of techniques for analytically describing the dynamic properties of linear stochastic difference equation models ¹ 1 For examples of this work see Chow [1]; Chow and Levitan [2] [3]; Howrey [8] [9]; Howrey and Kelejian [10] and Howrey and Klein [11].
. Since these techniques have not been extensively applied to econometric models and consequently are not generally familiar to economic modelers, the purpose of this paper is to summarize the techniques these researchers have developed and to illustrate them using a simple (and admittedly unrealistic) econometric model.     

A NOTE ON A MULTIVARIATE GENERALIZATION OF THE KRUSKAL-WALLIS TEST

Marketers are often interested in testing whether the mean vectors of multivariate distributions are equal. The test usually applied, one-way MANOVA, assumes the distributions are multinormal. Unfortunately, this assumption is not supported in many studies. As an alternative, a nonparametric multivariate one-way analysis of variance procedure is presented.     

Understanding changes in Māori incomes and income inequality 1997–2003

This paper examines recent changes in weekly income levels and dispersion for Māori, New Zealand’s indigenous ethnic group. Changes in the Māori income distribution between 1997 and 2003 reflect rapid increases in economic growth and employment rate. A reduced proportion of people had zero or benefit-level incomes and a higher proportion had high incomes. Income inequality declined for working-aged Māori and was stable for employed Māori. The average income gap between Māori and Europeans declined. The increased Māori employment rate during this period was the single most important driver of changes in the Māori income distribution.

Decision Making in `Random in a Broad Sense' Environments

It is shown that the uncertainty connected with a `random in a broad sense' (not necessarily stochastic) event always has some `statistical regularity' (SR) in the form of a family of finite-additive probability distributions. The specific principle of guaranteed result in decision making is introduced. It is shown that observing this principle of guaranteed result leads to determine the one optimality criterion corresponding to a decision system with a given `statistical regularity'.     

Choice Functions: Rationality re-Examined

On analyzing the problem that arises whenever the set of maximal elements is large, and a selection is then required (see Peris & Subiza 1998), we realize that logical ways of selecting among maximals violate the classical notion and axioms of rationality. We arrive at the same conclusion if we analyze solutions to the problem of choosing from a tournament (where maximal elements do not necessarily exist). So, in our opinion the notion of rationality must be discussed, not only in the traditional sense of external conditions (Sen 1993), but in terms of the internal information provided by the binary relation.     

Women and Poverty in Spain (1981--1991)

Social Indicators Research -     

Residential preferences and population distribution

Public opinion research has revealed decided preferences for living in rural areas and small towns, and proponents of population deconcentration have interpreted this as support for their policies. This study, based on a national sample, yielded similar results, but when we introduced the additional possibility of a preference for proximity to a larger city, then the rural areas preferred were found, for most respondents, to be those within the commuting range of a metropolitan central city. Although persons wishing to live near large cities were found to be looking for the same qualities of living sought by those who prefer a more remote location, these findings are not, in general, consistent with the argument that public preferences support strategies of population dispersal into nonmetropolitan areas. Instead they indicate that most of those who wish to live in a different location favor the peripheral metropolitan ring areas that have, in fact, been growing rapidly by in-migration.