Warten auf Amtsfluren

This article analyzes waiting and the situation of waiting in bureaucratic organizations. First, five central features of waiting are characterized: centrality of time, goal orientation, enforced passivity, serial isolation and event contingency. The different modalities of waiting resulting from social figurations and cultural and societal contexts are distinguished. In a second step hallways and waiting rooms in government offices are investigated in terms of the territorial allotments and demarcations imposed by bureaucratic power. These rooms and public spaces are considered as both sources of and repositories for the waiting clients’ emotional responses. This then leads to a phenomenological analysis of empirical situations of waiting as investigated through participatory observation in various administrative government offices in Berlin. Here interest centers on the situational negotiations and impression management of the actors as well as on the emotional coloring of waiting by the uncertain nature of its outcome.     

Anachronism,Agency, and the Contextualisation of Adat: Van Vollenhoven’s Analyses in Light of Struggles Over Resources

This article discusses the conceptual and analytical contributions of the Dutch scholar Cornelis van Vollenhoven to the study of Indonesian adat law. He argued from a politically inspired concern about gross colonial exploitation in the Dutch East Indies that this was based on flawed understandings of local legal orders. This stimulated him to design a conceptual framework to capture the characteristics of these legal orders, called adat law. His perceptiveness to the distortions caused by using Western legal concepts to describe customary laws was unique for the time, and so was his attention to the various contexts other than in disputes in which adat law was used. This renders his work of importance not only for lawyers but also for social scientists. The article discusses the criticism against his academic work and suggests that despite some major weaknesses, some criticisms are anachronistic as they concerned earlier or later scholars rather than the work of van Vollenhoven himself. The article shows how debates about indigenous rights and the decentralisation policies after the fall of the Soeharto regime have stimulated a renewed interest in adat and adat law. It is argued that van Vollenhoven’s conceptual framework is still of use, but only if it is expanded and set into a broader analysis of migration, exploitation, and power relations.     

Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) and the Role of its 5 Pillars

Computer crime is a matter of increasing concern, and worldwide action is required if the proper responses to it are to be found. One of the tools that can be deployed here is the Global cybersecurity index (GCI), a control and feedback mechanism based on a composite indicator. The GCI is based on a hierarchy of sub-indicators. The indicators used for the final aggregation of the CGI are called pillars. Five pillars are applied to rank the eleven countries that are top of the rankings in a worldwide study. In this paper, our ranking is based on these pillars, and their role is investigated using partial order methodology. It turns out that the pillars “Technical (aspects)”, “Capacity building”, and “Cooperation” are of particular importance. In conclusion, a strategy is suggested for an “individualized ranking” that may be helpful for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or other institutions. Here, we apply the procedure for the project “Awareness Laboratory SME (ALARM) information security” and put our ideas up for discussion. In particular, the mathematical method will be transferred to SMEs as a means to support the effectiveness of awareness-raising measures and to improve the security behaviour of company employees.

     

The ‘Failed State Index’ Offers More than Just a Simple Ranking

The role of indicators to measure trends in every area of interest is increasing. Especially in the field of politics and sociology, where modeling based on multiple indicators typically is difficult, multi-indicator systems call for attention. Multi-indicator systems are most often the first step to derive a ranking indicator. Correspondingly there is a high interest in how to transform multi-indicator systems into a one-dimensional metric scale. The scientific discipline of decision support systems provides many well-known techniques, classical examples are PROMETHEE, ELECTRE, DEA or the simple TOPSIS. The mathematical technique is pretty sophisticated, therefore the simplest variant, namely the weighted sum of indicators plays its role too, just because of its simplicity and transparency. Although the need of a derivation of a one-dimensional scale is evident, we argue that there is an interim step, between the multi-indicator system and the ranking index, provided by simple elements of partial order theory. This interim step bears useful information too and in this paper we show how and which useful additional information can be derived. We derive for example a bias-free sensitivity study, where the indicator “chronic and sustained human flight” turns out to be the most important indicator within the multi-indicator system of 12 indicators, which are the basis of the Failed State Index.     

Reported Happiness,Fast and Slow

The paper uses paradata on response time, cognitive effort and questionnaire order from a large Dutch internet panel survey to study the association between reporting process and reported happiness. We find that slower responses and higher self-stated cognitive effort are associated with lower reported happiness, potentially, because they proxy for momentary mood. Moreover, in multivariate happiness equations, these factors moderate the estimated effect of income on happiness, while no interaction effects are found for other socio-economic determinants of happiness. Our findings have implications for the interpretation of relative marginal effects in economic happiness equations.     

What state,what markets,for what development?

The collapse of “real socialism” and “peripheric late capitalism” and the exhaustion of the various models of “Welfare capitalism” demand the theoretical and practical reconstruction of the entire field of the eco-socio-economy of development and planning. Among the criteria for a new approach would be social equity and environmental prudence. This project should be then translated into a strategy for development which implies in turn a re-definition of state, market and the role of civil society and the forms of interaction between social actors. At the same time, the ways of articulation between the various areas - local, national, global — of development should be defined. In this framework, planning should be seen as a set of procedures for promoting societal debate on the “project”, in order to elaborate long-term strategies and identify the range of the decisions to be taken.     

For the Love of Art? Episodic Volunteering at Cultural Events

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Although episodic volunteering is a popular form of volunteering and has received increasing attention from researchers,...