Homosexual Experience,Desire and Identity Among Young Adults

ABSTRACT

Is young people's sexuality becoming more fluid and less tied to steady, stable identity patterns? Are we developing into a society where sexual relationships between individuals of the same sex are no longer reserved for the small minority of gay men and lesbian women? Adherents of so-called queer theory have promulgated such views. Using a population-based sample of young adults (aged 19 to 26, N 2753), we investigated homosexual experiences, desire and identity. We found that levels of prevalence of homosexuality were primarily a function of the criteria we used. Using the most restricted (“narrow”) definitions, we found that about one percent of both genders reported “exclusive” homosexual interest and identity. Using the most inclusive criteria, we found that one of ten young men and one of four young women reported having some homosexual experience, interest or identity. Still, the most striking finding involved the substantial gender-specific differences: homoerotic activity and interest are far more interwoven with heterosexual activity for women. There are strong indications that homosexuality is a lot more threatening and potentially in conflict with traditional male gender roles than we find to be the case for women. In other words, while there may be signs of more fluid sexual identity categories, this phenomenon primarily applies to women.     

Eros in the field? Bourdieu's double account of socialized desire

In his later works, Bourdieu draws extensively on psychoanalytic approaches in accounting for his concept of socialized subjectivity as bound to the social world by an intense affective grip. This emotional turn holds potential for further developing Bourdieu's account of subjectivity as a formation of socialized desire. However, in accounting for this socialized desire, Bourdieu relapses into a dualism of subjective and objective structures, incompatible with the Merleau‐Pontyian roots of his practice theory. Tracing this problem to the antagonism between desire and culture in the psychoanalytic accounts that Bourdieu draws on, I propose that the psychoanalytic scholar Hans Loewald's account of Eros may enable a move beyond this impasse, offering a promising conceptual basis for taking further the account of socialized subjectivity and socialized desire in Bourdieu's practice theory.     

Completing the Circuit: Routine,Reflection, and Ethical Consumption

Efforts to explain why some people incorporate ethical concerns into everyday shopping for food and household goods, while many do not, have so far left significant variation in “ethical consumption” unexplained. Seeking to move beyond explanations that rely mainly on differences in consumers' social class, gender, and political engagement, I draw on concepts associated with “practice theory” to argue that ethical consumption is closely tied to people's willingness and ability to spend time, while shopping, on distinct activities associated with breaking old routines and establishing new ones. The central insight of practice theory is that most consumption is the product of unconscious routine. And it is precisely because consciously departing from routine is, according to my study, a fundamentally time‐consuming process, that lack of time emerges as a crucial obstacle to translating abstract ethical concerns into concrete action as a consumer.     

Charisma as signal: An evolutionary perspective on charismatic leadership

We present an evolutionary perspective on charismatic leadership, arguing that charisma has evolved as a credible signal of a person's ability to solve a coordination challenge requiring urgent collective action from group members. We suggest that a better understanding of charisma's evolutionary and biological origins and functions can provide a broader perspective in which to situate current debates surrounding the utility and validity of charismatic leadership as a construct in the social sciences. We outline several key challenges which have shaped our followership psychology, and argue that the benefits of successful coordination in ancestral environments has led to the evolution of context-dependent psychological mechanisms which are especially attuned to cues and signals of outstanding personal leadership qualities. We elaborate on several implications of this signaling hypothesis of charismatic leadership, including opportunities for deception (dishonest signaling) and for large-scale coordination.     

Estimation of error probabilities in stochastic dominance

The process of using data to infer the existence of stochastic dominance is subject to sampling error. Kroll and Levy (1980), among others, have presented simulation results for several normal and lognormal distributions which show high error probabilities for a wide range of parameter values. This paper continues this line of research and uses simulation to estimate error probabilities. Distributions considered are a pair of normals and a pair of lognormals. Analysis of these distributions is made computationally feasible through theoretical results which reduce the number of parameters of the pair of distributions from four to two.     

Deficit sustainability,and monetary versus fiscal dominance: The case of Spain, 1850–2000

In this paper, we provide a test of the sustainability of the Spanish government deficit over the period 1850–2000, emphasizing the role played by monetary and fiscal dominance in order to get fiscal solvency. Since the condition of fiscal solvency was satisfied, government deficit would have been sustainable along the sample period. In addition, the whole period can be characterized as one of fiscal dominance.     

基于委托代理理论的会计信息失真问题研究

会计信息失真问题越演越烈,并且已成为一个世界性难题。可靠性、真实性、相关性是会计信息质量的生命,但一系列会计舞弊行为的发生已篡改了会计信息的本来面目,会计信息"诚信工程"摇摇欲坠。造成会计信息失真的原因有很多,就此,我国也采取了相应的措施予以治理,但效果并不显著,往往是治标不治本。本文从产生会计信息失真问题的根源出发,重点剖析了在以委托代理理论为根基的现代股份制企业中会计信息失真的原因,并提出了提高委托代理制度下的会计信息质量的相应对策。     

Modelling of connected processes

The problem of comparing, contrasting and combining information from different sets of data is an enduring one in many practical applications of statistics. A specific problem of combining information from different sources arose in integrating information from three different sets of data generated by three different sampling campaigns at the input stage as well as at the output stage of a grey-water treatment process. For each stage, a common process trend function needs to be estimated to describe the input and output material process behaviours. Once the common input and output process models are established, it is required to estimate the efficiency of the grey-water treatment method. A synthesized tool for modelling different sets of process data is created by assembling and organizing a number of existing techniques: (i) a mixed model of fixed and random effects, extended to allow for a nonlinear fixed effect, (ii) variogram modelling, a geostatistical technique, (iii) a weighted least squares regression embedded in an iterative maximum-likelihood technique to handle linear/nonlinear fixed and random effects and (iv) a formulation of a transfer-function model for the input and output processes together with a corresponding nonlinear maximum-likelihood method for estimation of a transfer function. The synthesized tool is demonstrated, in a new case study, to contrast and combine information from connected process models and to determine the change in one quality characteristic, namely pH, of the input and output materials of a grey-water filtering process.     

大学思想政治理论课课堂教学改革新思路

思想政治理论课是大学生思想政治教育的主渠道,而课堂教学在主渠道的畅通中承担着主要的任务。针对课堂教学存在的诸多问题,教学改革尤为迫切。深入调查研究,及时掌握和分析大学生的各种信息是教学改革最为基础性的工作;树立以生为本理念,课堂教学追求多样性实效性是教学改革的外在表现;教书育人,当好大学生健康成长的指导者和引路人则是思想政治理论课教师的根本职责和庄严使命。