Strongly implementable social choice correspondences and the supernucleus

In this paper, we present a characterization of social choice correspondences which can be implemented in strong Nash equilibrium, stated in terms of the power structure implicit in the social choice rule. We extend the notion of an effectivity function to allow for simultaneous vetoing by several coalitions. This leads to the concept of a domination structure as a generalized effectivity function.  Using this concept and a solution known from the theory of effectivity functions, the supernucleus, we give a characterization of strongly implementable social choice correspondences as supernucleus correspondence relative to an appropriate domination structure. Received: 2 February 1996/Accepted: 2 February 1998     

运动的激情与真正的成就——写在2008北京奥运会之前

来自运动(尤其是最高层次的运动)的许多经验都可以被运用于其他领域,而且在团队运动中最宜于研究成功的必要条件和过程.以团队运动为原型进行研究,得到了普遍性的结论,即内部竞争、"民主"自制、自我激励等都可以提高成就水平.其中,最具普遍性的是对自我满足行为的自我激励--对于所有创造性成就而言,自发的真正的动机是必不可少的条件,依赖于真实的个人动机(即本征动机)的"本征成功"也随之体现着积极的、创造性的个性."本征成功"是源于本征动机而取得的成功,它是真正个人的成功,或者说,是真正或严格意义上的"本征行为"(个人真实的行动),其中表达的是深思熟虑的自我激励、自我投入、自愿完成的个人成就和行为."本征行为"是创造性生命和自由社会的重要表现,自发从事的活动和真正的成就是人类自我理解的基本构成.不仅作为理性认知的存在,而且作为创造性存在、作为不断自我教化的社会和文化存在,人类都是真正实现着的存在.     

Förderung freiwilligen Arbeitsengagements in Organisatione

Two leading questions about the issue on application of research on prosocial organizational behavior are: Who will profit from it? By what measures could it be promoted? The question of benefit is discussed by considering the interests of employers and employees, while the topic of promotion of prosocial organizational behavior is illustrated by considering research with regard to influences of mood at work and the meaning of intrinsic motivation for work performance.     

Homelessness in Sweden–discussion,patterns, and causes

In a number of countries in Western Europe and in North America homelessness has come to the fore once again over the last 15-20 years, a fact to which many books and surveys bear witness. In a number of countries, organizations have been formed both for and by the homeless.¹Newspapers sold on the street to promote the cause of the homeless are becoming an increasingly common sight.²Despite this trend there is at present still no generally acknowledged explanation of the cause of homelessness and we do not know whether the causes are the same in the social democratic European welfare states, in the USA and Canada, or in countries with a poorly developed welfare system. Nor do we know whether homelessness for the individual is a short-term or permanent state. This article highlights Swedish homelessness. It is based on the results of a research project which I ran from 1993 to 1998.³The article has three objectives. First, I wish to provide a brief presentation of the issue of Swedish homelessness using, among other things, a study of how the media have dealt with the issue. Secondly, I wish to discuss the pattern of homelessness in Sweden and provide an explanation of why the length of homelessness varies. Thirdly, I wish to highlight the question of how we explain why people can be homeless in a country where social welfare and housing policies have, decade after decade, been directed at eradicating housing problems. The last two questions were highlighted in a case study conducted by me in Malmö, the country's third largest city.     

Wandlungsprozesse elitärer und populärer Geschmackskultur?

For an entire century — from Veblen (1899) to Bourdieu (1982) — the representation of social status through cultural taste was theorized in terms of “undifferentiated” masses at the bottom, and exclusive elites at the top of the social scale. Using music-related survey data, however, recent American cultural sociology maintains that, increasingly, cultural articulation of social status is performed in a different way: high-status persons show a broad, even “omnivorous” range of tastes and an open mind for different musical styles, low-status persons show a narrow, even “univorous” range of tastes and a closed mind for different musical styles. Testing the hypotheses with data from German concert visitors results in different findings. First, American and German samples show strongly different levels in width of musical tastes. Second, musical highbrows, in accordance with the traditional paradigm, show less interest in popular styles than others and rather dislike such musics. Third, regression analysis reveals that structured symbolic distinction through cultural choices depends on the relative importance of a given symbolic universe for the individual. Discussion of findings takes up questions of method and refers to culturally and historically defined differences between the German and American sample. Simple transfer of “inductively” developed hypotheses into different cultural contexts is critcized as inadequate and misleading.     

European Physicians and Botanists, Indigenous Herbal Medicine in the Dutch East Indies, and Colonial Networks of Mediation

During the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, European physicians and botanists working in the Dutch East Indies displayed an eager interest in Indonesian indigenous herbal medicine or jamu, the investigation of which required them to establish contacts with local informers and mediators who could make indigenous medicine understandable to researchers. In the Dutch East Indies, these mediators were Indo-European women who had built up a medical lore with both European and Indigenous elements. The diminishing trust in the standard therapeutic measures created a window of opportunity for the investigation of Indonesian indigenous herbal medicine. The way medical knowledge circulated in the Dutch East Indies, the intermediaries who aided this circulation and the factors which impeded or facilitated it, and the ways in which European physicians and botanists legitimized indigenous herbal medicine are analyzed.     

Estimation of a linear model in transformed variables under microaggregation by individual ranking

We consider the least squares estimation of a linear regression model in transformed variables from a data set that has been microaggregated by means of the individual ranking method. It is shown that the least squares estimators are consistent even in the case where variable transformations are carried out after microaggregation. Applying individual ranking techniques to a data set thus guarantees the analytical validity of the microaggregated data for a wide class of statistical models.     

“Nothing goes as planned”: Practitioners reflect on matching children and foster families

Matching children with foster carers is an important step in every nonkinship family foster care placement. Although guidelines for matching are provided in several studies, the case‐specific context of the decision can influence the practitioners' ability to adhere to these guidelines. Therefore, this study answers the following question: “How does the case‐specific context influence the practitioners' decision‐making process regarding matching in family foster care?” Using a qualitative design, 20 semistructured interviews were conducted with practitioners matching children with foster families. Three themes emerged representing different layers of practitioners' everyday decision‐making: matching as planned, matching being tailored, and matching being compromised. The results show that exceptions are part of practitioners' daily work, either due to the belief that it might benefit those involved or because of obstacles presented during the decision‐making process. When the decision is compromised, matching practitioners lower their standards, while at the same time safeguarding the quality of the match. This proves that matching in practice is more than choosing a family, and guidelines are needed to determine what “good‐enough” matching should entail.     

The ASA survey of graduate programs: Some problems with unproblematic responses

The most remarkable finding of the American Sociological Association’s first survey of graduate departments in sociology was the striking similarity among programs in terms of course requirements, the number of credits, thesis requirements, and other formal procedures that lead to the M.A. and Ph.D. Moreover, when asked to identify problems with their graduate programs, respondents were much more likely to mention the quality of students and the shrinking of budgets than the content or organization of their programs. The authors suggest that the apparent absence of problems may in itself be a matter of concern for the discipline.