Kann der regionale Kontext zur „Arbeitslosenfalle“ werden?

The focus of this paper is on mobility between local labour markets. Using multilevel data, the effect of local unemployment on mobility between local labour markets is investigated. A distinction is made between several dimensions of unemployment: (1) unemployment as a status in the life course at the individual level, (2) unemployment duration, (3) the unemployment rate at the regional level. One of the main results contradicts neoclassical economics: the rate of mobility between local labour markets decreases with increasing local unemployment. In a sense, persons become “trapped” in the local context because under bad labour market conditions unemployed persons, too, tend to immobility. As a result, a devaluation of human capital might be possible.     

Sociology and the Second Darwinian Revolution: A Metatheoretical Analysis

Sociologists tend to eschew biological explanations of human social behavior. Accordingly, when evolutionary biologists began to apply neo‐Darwinian theory to the study of human social behavior, the reactions of sociologists typically ranged from indifference to overt hostility. Since the mid‐1960s, however, neo‐Darwinian evolutionary theory has stimulated a "second Darwinian revolution" in traditional social scientific conceptions of human nature and social behavior, even while most sociologists remain largely uninformed about neo‐Darwinian theory and research. This article traces sociology's long‐standing isolation from the life sciences, especially evolutionary biology, to divergence in the metatheoretical assumptions that typify conventional sociological thought versus contemporary evolutionary biology. We conclude with a discussion of the recent emergence of a nascent "evolutionary sociology" that integrates sociobiological reasoning with contemporary sociological thought.     

The Spread of Disability Living Allowance

This article examines the spread of Disability Living Allowance across a group of low income households in an industrial town in North West England from the introduction of the new benefits in 1992 until the Spring of 1996. We focus on the changes over time of the incidence of Disability Living Allowance in the low income population and look at the relative spread of different elements of the benefit. We speculate on whether the new benefits have provided the most effective way of fulfilling the aims of the White Paper, The Way Ahead , and discuss the implications for social and medical models of disability.     

Hair loss and electability: The bald truth

This study probes one particular component of the well documented linkage between personal appearance and impression formation by investigating the extent to which and the mechanisms through which bald and balding men are underrepresented in high elective office. Study 1 compares the prevalence of hair loss among governors and members of Congress, on the one hand, and the general public, on the other, and concludes that officeholders are much more likely to have a full head of hair than would be expected of men of their age. Study 2 poses an experimental test of voter bias against bald and balding candidates by presenting voters in a simulated congressional race with materials depicting otherwise identical candidates in either their natural bald or balding condition or wearing a professionally fitted hairpiece. No voter bias against bald or balding candidates is apparent, a finding that suggests that the causal mechanism underlying underrepresentation of bald and balding men is not voter bias.Ugly is a field without grass, a plant without leaves, or a head without hair (Ovid, quoted by Klenhard, 1986, p. 11).Politics represents an area of public life in which the effects of appearance may lead to very important social consequences and in which the idea of special privilege for the pretty is particularly repellent (Efran and Patterson, 1975, p. 352).The authors thank Judee Burgoon, Michael Burgoon, and Carol Sigelman for useful comments and suggestions, and Brandt Baker, Henry Ewbank, Jeff Gardner, Henry Kenski, Dan Singer, and David Williams for their assistance with this project.