清末潮汕地区瘟疫流行原因与社会救助研究

清末潮汕地区瘟疫流行给潮汕地区的经济和社会造成了巨大影响,而此次瘟疫流行是气候、地理位置等因素共同作用的结果。当地政府和社会各界采取了一系列措施进行救助和防治,极大地降低了死亡率,同时提高了民众的防疫意识。     

Do people have accurate beliefs about the behavioral consequences of incidental emotions? Evidence from trust games

The present study examined people’s expectations of how incidental emotions could shape others’ reciprocity in trusting situations, whether these expectations affect people’s own behavior, and how accurate these expectations are. Study 1 explored people’s beliefs about the effects of different incidental emotions on another person’s trustworthiness in general. In Studies 2 and 3, senders in trust games faced angry, guilty, grateful, or emotionally neutral responders. Participants who were told about their counterpart’s emotional state acted consistently with their beliefs about how these emotions would affect the other’s trustworthiness. These beliefs were not always correct, however. There were significant deviations between the expected behavior of angry responders and such responders’ actual behavior. These findings raise the possibility that one player’s knowledge of the other’s emotional state may lead to action choices that yield poor outcomes for both players.     

How social media matter: Repression and the diffusion of the Occupy Wall Street movement

This study explores the role played by social media in reshaping the repression-mobilization relationship. Drawing on the case of the Occupy Wall Street movement, we examine the impact of Facebook and Twitter on the spatial diffusion of protests during a period of heightened state repression. Results from event history analyses suggest that the effects of repression on protest diffusion are contingent on the presence of social media accounts supporting the movement. We find that state repression at earlier protest sites encouraged activists to create Facebook and Twitter accounts in their own cities, which then served as important vehicles for the initiation of new Occupy protests. Moreover, results suggest that repression incidents can directly facilitate future protests in cities that already have Occupy Facebook accounts. This study highlights the potential of social media to both mediate and moderate the influence of repression on the diffusion of contemporary movements.     

South African social workers' knowledge of attachment theory and their perceptions of attachment relationships in foster care supervision

Despite the prominence of attachment theory in international foster care literature and the importance of attachment relationships in successful foster care, attachment theory and practices do not feature prominently in South African foster care research. Against this backdrop, we interviewed twenty South African social workers' about their knowledge of attachment theory and their perceptions of attachment relationships in their own foster care work. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews. We found that the social workers had limited knowledge of attachment theory and interventions; experienced most biological parents as unmotivated to improve their circumstances and attachment relationships with children; indicated that family reunifications were rare occurrences; reported foster parents were mostly kin; and experienced constraining contextual factors that hindered optimal consideration of attachment relationships in foster care supervision.     

The Decoupling of Social Policy Reforms in Romania

Social reforms in Romania have been, from the beginning of the 1990s and throughout the EU post‐accession phase, the battlefield for many domestic and international actors. The article identifies, from an historical institutionalist perspective, the international actors who decisively influenced reforms of social protection in Romania during the transition, with a special emphasis on the EU pre‐ and post‐accession stages. Further, the article attempts to understand the impact of the various external influences on the sustainability and effectiveness of domestic reforms, by assessing the convergence, or the decoupling, between the rationales – i.e. ideologies and values – that explicitly grounded social reforms in Romania and the domestic public rhetoric on social risks and values. Answers to these questions can provide important insights in regard to both the impact of the EU upon new member states and the challenges of EU enlargement for the EU and its core member states.     

Neo‐liberalism by Decay? The Evolution of the Czech Welfare State

In this article we analyse the evolution of the Czech welfare state and we examine the factors explaining its path. We show that although the Czech welfare regime exhibits a 'mixed profile' that includes conservative and universalist elements, it is increasingly moving in a more liberal, residualist direction – not because of conscious steps but rather through decay. Governments have often zig-zagged in their policies and resorted to symbolic reforms at times rather than implementing ideologically based, consistent policies. We argue that historical and sociological institutionalism combined with a social-capital approach can explain this decay better than the more common arguments about economic pressures combined with ideological hegemony or the protest-avoidance strategy. In particular, the social capital approach adds to our institutional framework by explaining why cutbacks in welfare programmes have not met much opposition, even though public opinion surveys consistently show support for more generous welfare policies, and why policies have deviated so much from political rhetoric.     

Practicing What We Preach: Creating Groups for Ourselves

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the professional isolation faced by social group work practitioners and educators. It identifies the need for peer support and connection in an environment of limited opportunities for professional development. The paper describes and assesses long-term peer support groups initiated and developed by each of the authors, one for group work educators and the other for practitioners. It discusses the potential for expanding the development of such groups, which could benefit individual group workers as well as strengthen efforts to ensure the survival of group work.     

Exploring Neglected Dimensions of Social Policy: The SDW, Fiscal Welfare and the Exemplar of Local Taxation in England

Titmuss's Social Division of Welfare (SDW) thesis is a vitally important but much neglected element of social policy analysis. This article seeks to explore the SDW, with a particular focus on fiscal welfare. Fiscal welfare has been described as forming a hidden welfare state, and while taxation is one of the main ways in which governments affect the lives of citizens, studies of welfare pay remarkably little attention to its impact. Fiscal welfare is examined by using, as an exemplar, local taxation in England, a subject that itself is neglected within social policy. Local taxation in England is of interest because it illustrates the impact of a system of taxation on different groups of citizens, and how this can operate to the benefit of rich over poor citizens. This is because the current system is highly regressive, meaning that those on low and middle incomes spend proportionately more of their income paying the tax than do those on high incomes. What is of further interest is how within the debate about reform of local taxation, concern with regressivity becomes obscured and ceases to be the focus of attention. We are thus provided with an example of how fiscal welfare remains a hidden issue. The article concludes by arguing that social policy analysis needs to move beyond the narrow confines of social welfare and develop a broader understanding of welfare, based on the SDW.     

The burdens of social capital: How socially-involved people dealt with stress after Hurricane Katrina

Research shows that those with greater social capital enjoy better physical and mental health. The current study illuminates a paradox of social capital which may afflict those involved in traumatic events. Several years of survey data reveal a dynamic picture of the link between social capital and stress following Hurricane Katrina. Results reveal that initially after Katrina, those who were more socially embedded carried the greatest load with respect to helping the displaced population, thus experiencing more stress. But over time, the most socially-involved then snapped back from their stressful experiences more rapidly than isolates. This confirms that over the course of stressful events, social involvement first exposes people to more stress, but as time passes, provides them a significant buffer against negative psychosocial experiences.     

Closed-form likelihood estimation for one type of affine point processes

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a closed-form likelihood approximation for one type of affine point processes widely used in financial credit risk models. We proceed by first conjecturing the concrete series form of the transition density, verifying our postulation and then establishing the related coefficients by means of Kolmogorov equations. The asymptotic properties of the maximum-likelihood estimators (MLEs) are given in the end.