Catalog competition: Theory and experimental evidence

This paper compares the standard location-then-pricing Hotelling duopoly with a catalog competition game in which firms simultaneously decide locations and prices. We consider a three-location space and continuous pricing and fully characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium. In both games, firms employ mixed strategies, producing a mainstream product more often than a specialized one. In the catalog game, prices are always above the marginal cost of production, whereas in the sequential model, prices converge to the marginal cost when firms produce the same variety. We experimentally test our theoretical predictions in the laboratory, finding strong evidence in favor of most of them.     

Gender Embodiment as Gender-Enacted Body: A Review of Intimate Partner Violence and Gender Embodiment Perspectives

The author proposes the gender-enacted body as a better perspective of gender embodiment than the three current prevailing views: sex differences (the biomedical organism), socio-cultural imprint (the regulated body) and experienced gender (the lived body), which are not wrong, but misrepresentative of the active nature of gender embodiment. Gender embodiment is both an ongoing process of configuring subjectivity and the ensuing gendered agency. This implementation of the enacted body perspective is supported by two different arguments: first, a theoretical one to establish that the process of gender embodiment and the corporality that results from it are the settlement of human meaning and acting conditions; second, an empirical application of this perspective to resolve the shortcomings of current explanations of intimate partner violence in heterosexual couples by interpreting some well-known gender embodiment processes as enactment processes in which the body becomes an agent that generates practice. These gender-enacted bodies generate, in assemblage with the breakdown of the circuits of dependence within the couple, the agency of this kind of violence.     

Measuring Dimensions of Perceived Discrimination in Five Stigmatized Groups

The purpose of this investigation was to design and validate a multidimensional scale with the potential to measure perceived discrimination in different stigmatized groups. The study was carried out in Spain with a sample of 1,016 participants belonging to five stigmatized groups: Latin American immigrants, Romanian immigrants, people with HIV, gays and lesbians. Confirmatory factor analysis validated the existence of four dimensions in the scale: blatant group discrimination, subtle group discrimination, blatant individual discrimination, and subtle individual discrimination. In accordance with the literature, the scale presents positive relations with the stigma consciousness scale (Pinel in J Pers Soc Psychol 76:114–128, 1999) and negative relations with two measures of psychological well-being, affect balance and self-acceptance. Likewise, the results indicate that the perception of subtle individual discrimination is more negatively associated with participants’ psychological well-being.     

The Relationship Between Social Support, Loneliness, and Subjective Well-Being in a Spanish Sample from a Multidimensional Perspective

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between social support, loneliness and well-being from a multidimensional perspective for which two structural models are proposed. The study included 2042 participants from Malaga City (Spain) who were aged between 18 and 95 years. For the dimensions frequency of support and satisfaction with support, the results show that partner support, family support, and support from friends, respectively, significantly decrease romantic loneliness, family loneliness, and social loneliness. On the other hand, community support has little effect on reducing social loneliness. Of the three types of support analyzed (emotional, informational and instrumental), emotional support was significantly more effective in reducing loneliness (family, romantic and social) and increasing well-being. Loneliness partially acts as a mediator variable, although it is affected by social support, but at the same time decreases the effects of social support on subjective well-being. The three types of loneliness have a strong negative impact on subjective well-being. Implications of these results are discussed.     

Soft Repression and the Current Wave of Social Mobilisations in Spain

The current political and economic crisis has fuelled a new cycle of collective action in Spain. The response of the Spanish authorities to this wave of mobilisations has been to strengthen public order. But on some occasions, the excessive use of police force has given rise to problems of image for the Spanish government. To avoid public criticism, the Ministry of the Interior has tried to camouflage police repression by combining the use of truncheons with other, more subtle, coercive measures. The silent nature of such repressive tactics means that their existence is rarely discussed in the specialised literature, which tends to focus on the violent acts committed by the State. However, this type of ‘soft repression’ plays an important pre-penal role within the official strategies to contain the new and challenging social conflict in Spain.     

Does higher income equal higher levels of happiness in every society? The case of the Mayan people

Guardiola J, González‐Gómez F, García‐Rubio MA, Lendechy‐Grajales Á. Does higher income equal higher levels of happiness in every society? The case of the Mayan people This study analysed happiness and several domains of life of Mayan people in the poor rural areas of Yucatan, Mexico. Using a sample of 373 households, we examined the influence of income on happiness and its domains, obtaining results that lend support to the ‘paradox of happy peasants and miserable millionaires’. According to the results, income influences happiness among the Mayan people, as do material domains and health, but income does not influence the domains related to intangible feelings and public goods. A number of reasons, such as a lack of a means for comparison, close contact with nature, adaptation to deprivation, general material improvements compared with the past, low aspirations and a Mayan culture that is devoted to solidarity and enjoyment of social relationships, could explain why the sample population reported high levels of happiness. Although the Mayans' level of happiness is high, their situation nevertheless requires political attention.     

Destabilisation and cultural literacy

There is a growing body of work on the field of what is now known as ‘cultural literacy’, but little has been written about its application, and even less on how to teach it in the context of higher education. This article discusses ‘destabilisation’ as an approach to teaching cultural literacy in higher education in the context of the global challenges that universities face today. It defines the characteristics of destabilisation and highlights its advantages in relation to other teaching approaches that have a similar focus on developing cultural competence in students. The article also situates ‘destabilisation’ as a pedagogical term within a spectrum of experiential learning methods and techniques that are focused on developing cultural competence.     

Birds of a neotropical green city: an up-to-date review of the avifauna of the city of Xalapa with additional unpublished records

Although urbanization poses severe threats to biodiversity, some wildlife groups manage to thrive within urban areas. Among wildlife, birds are a highly diverse, charismatic and well-known group, establishing complex communities in human settlements around the world, making them suitable bioindicators. However, it is often difficult to have historical species lists that allow understanding current urban ecology trends. In this paper, we compile the available bird records, including unpublished information, for one of the best studied and well vegetated urban areas in México: the city of Xalapa. We gathered records for 329 species, representing ~30 % of the national avifauna in this medium-sized neotropical city. This important avian diversity in the city of Xalapa is mostly due to its environmental heterogeneity, underlining the relevance of its location, and the nature of its surroundings. The information provided in this paper will not only provide an environmental education baseline and represent a starting point for ornithologists, but will represent a reference document on the birds that have been recorded within the limits of Xalapa in the last three decades.     

Relational Work in Economic Sociology: A Review and Extension

Understanding how economic transactions are constitutive in the development, maintenance, and solidification of relationships has been of particular importance for economic sociologists in recent years. Following the work of Viviana Zelizer, economic sociologists have expanded from a purely network‐based approach of analyzing economic action to consider how and in what ways relations shape economic life. This paper provides a review of Zelizer's relational view of economic activity and presents an extension to the theory. While scholars have successfully applied “relational work” to many areas of economic life, this paper asks whether one can use the theory to examine economic interactions between human and non‐human agents. The example of tithing in the Prosperity Gospel tradition is used in order to expand relational work to this realm.