A moral vision: human dignity in the eyes of the founders of sociology

The case argued in this paper is not that the concerns of the founders of sociology are uniformly and in every particular still our own (Runciman, 2008), but that the concepts and methods used to address just one of their concerns were both ground breaking and of enduring value (Shilling and Mellor, 2001, 2011, for example, make a similar claim). Such a concern focused on the kind of morality grounded in a capitalist social order and, by implication, how it might be theorized. This generated in the process the uniquely sociological operationalization of what had seemed hitherto a philosophical concept: human dignity, along with the freedom and autonomy that attend it. Certainly, the priorities differed in each of the contributions to this endeavour but, in coming at the problem from different standpoints, the concept of dignity came to appear more rounded, more substantive and more relevant to the human condition in all its historical specificity. Quite crucially, there is also in these sources from the classical period of sociology an intimation of method: both the way in which human dignity is to be ‘perceived’ within an inter‐personal dialectic at a micro‐level and, at a macro‐level, how we can discern that dignity transcends artificial confinement by any one aspect of life (be it economic, political or cultural).¹     

Social Contagion of Risk Perceptions in Environmental Management Networks

An important requisite for improving risk communication practice related to contentious environmental issues is having a better theoretical understanding of how risk perceptions function in real‐world social systems. Our study applied Scherer and Cho's social network contagion theory of risk perception (SNCTRP) to cormorant management (a contentious environmental management issue) in the Great Lakes Basin to: (1) assess contagion effects on cormorant‐related risk perceptions and individual factors believed to influence those perceptions and (2) explore the extent of social contagion in a full network (consisting of interactions between and among experts and laypeople) and three “isolated” models separating different types of interactions from the full network (i.e., expert‐to‐expert, layperson‐to‐layperson, and expert‐to‐layperson). We conducted interviews and administered questionnaires with experts (e.g., natural resource professionals) and laypeople (e.g., recreational and commercial anglers, business owners, bird enthusiasts) engaged in cormorant management in northern Lake Huron (n = 115). Our findings generally support the SNCTRP; however, the scope and scale of social contagion varied considerably based on the variables (e.g., individual risk perception factors), actors (i.e., experts or laypeople), and interactions of interest. Contagion effects were identified more frequently, and were stronger, in the models containing interactions between experts and laypeople than in those models containing only interactions among experts or laypeople.     

Contingencies in Mother–Child Teaching Interactions and Behavioral Regulation and Dysregulation in Early Childhood

Predictable patterns in early parent–child interactions may help lay the foundation for how children learn to self‐regulate. The present study examined contingencies between maternal teaching and directives and child compliance in mother–child problem‐solving interactions at age 3.5 and whether they predicted children's behavioral regulation and dysregulation (inhibitory control and externalizing behaviors) as rated by mothers, fathers, and teachers at a four‐month follow‐up (N = 100). The predictive utility of mother‐ and child‐initiated contingencies was also compared with that of frequencies of individual mother and child behaviors. Structural equation models revealed that a higher probability that maternal directives were followed by child compliance predicted better child behavioral regulation, whereas the reverse pattern and the overall frequency of maternal directives did not. For teaching, stronger mother‐ and child‐initiated contingencies and the overall frequency of maternal teaching all showed evidence for predicting better behavioral regulation. Findings depended on which caregiver was rating child outcomes. We conclude that dyadic measures are useful for understanding how parent–child interactions impact children's burgeoning regulatory abilities in early childhood.     

Mainstream Discourse and the Construction of Public Understanding of Women's Employment

1949年后在妇女就业知识上存在着三种主流话语。一是计划经济时代，妇女就业知识以“革命话语”来叙述，实现了对妇女参加公共领域劳动的动员；二是从计划经济向市场经济转型的过程，妇女就业知识是以“素质话语”被叙述的，其在力图将妇女推回家庭领域的过程中压低了女性劳动力的价格；三是市场化时代，妇女就业知识以“男性强势话语”被表述，显示了市场经济与父权制的有机结合。与此同时，有关妇女就业知识的女性主体性也在形成，它显示出女性自主意识及其对人权话语的使用。

关键词: 革命话语素质话语男性强势话语

There have been three types of mainstream discourse relating to public understanding of women's employment since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The first was the “revolutionary discourse” that dominated the era of the planned economy. During this period, knowledge about women's employment was heavily influenced by revolutionary discourse, and women were mobilized to take up positions in virtually all areas of social life. The second occurred in the transition from a planned to a market economy. During this process, knowledge of women's employment was constructed by a so‐called “quality discourse,” which depressed women's wages in the course of driving them back into the home. The third important mode of discourse took place in the era of marketization, and saw knowledge about women's employment constructed by male‐centered hegemonic discourse in an organic union between the market economy and the patriarchal system. Meanwhile, female subjectivity in regard to knowledge about women's employment is taking shape. At the same time, women's sense of autonomy in relation to understanding of employment has started to grow and exhibits self‐awareness and use of the discourse of human rights.     

Human capital,technological progress and the demographic transition*

We emphasize the importance to consider components of population growth — fertility and mortality ‐ separately, when modeling the mutual interaction between population and economic growth. Our model implies that two countries with the same population growth will not converge towards the same level of per capita income. The country with the lower level of birth and death rates will be better off in the long run. Introducing a spill over effect of average human capital on total productivity our model implies multiple equilibria as illustrated in Becker el al. (1990) and Strulik (1999). Besides the existence of a low and high level equilibrium ‐ as characterized by low and high levels of per capita output respectively ‐ we show the existence of multiple low level (Malthusian) equilibria. Initial conditions and parameters of technological progress and human capital investment determine whether an economy is capable to escape the low level equilibrium trap and to enjoy sustained economic growth.     

The multistate life table with duration‐dependence

A method for generalizing the multistate, or increment‐decrement, life table to include rates which depend upon duration of exposure to risk, as well as upon age, is proposed. The method is built upon the linear approximation, called the linear integration hypothesis, developed mainly by Rogers and his colleagues. Although the use of rates indexed by duration categories leads to a substantial increase in the state space of the model, it is possible to arrange the rates in such a way that matrices to be inverted are no larger than those encountered in the usual multistate life table. In the more general approach it is possible to derive several new summary indices of the life‐table cohort's history, such as the mean and median time in current status, at any age. The method is illustrated using a simple four‐state marital‐status model which has appeared often in the literature; here, rates of divorce and widowhood vary by duration of marriage as well as age.     

Determining the birth function for an age structured population

This paper deals with an inverse problem in age‐structured population dynamics, namely the recovery of the unknown birth function from the additional or overposed data consisting of the total population over a time interval equal to the maximum life span of the species. Conditions on the data are given to guarantee the existence and uniqueness of a solution, and the question of continuous dependence of the birth function on the data is addressed. Some numerical simulations are presented to indicate that one can in fact use the methods of the paper to reconstruct the birth function.     

Statistical modeling of selected aspects of the childbearing process with application to world fertility survey countries∗

The childbearing process should be monitored in developing countries experiencing high population growth rates and high levels of maternal and infant mortality. A mathematical model for estimation of certain aspects of the childbearing process, which requires only data on age‐specific fertility rates, is developed. Synthetic maternal childbearing indices, namely, mean ages at first and last birth, length of reproductive life span, inter‐birth spacing, and proportion of childless women, in addition to the well‐known mean age at childbearing, for the WFS countries are obtained using the proposed model. The indices are free from age truncation effects, and, under certain assumptions, provide information about a cohort's completed fertility before the women stop reproducing. The effects of women's residence and education on fertility are also examined.     

A model of the age patterns of births by parity in natural fertility populations

This research develops a convolution model to express the age patterns of fertility at each birth order in natural fertility populations in terms of six parameters, directly representing the proximate determinants of fertility, and a series of parity level indicators. The parity level indicators at each birth order are simply the proportions of women in a cohort who will eventually have births at each birth order it the age‐related fecundity decline is controlled. The Coale‐McNeil nuptiality model is adopted to represent the age pattern of first marriage rates and the natural fertility schedule employed in the Coale‐Trussell fertility model is incorporated to adjust age effects. The fast Fourier transform is used in solving the model numerically. It proves that the model is able to provide excellent fits to fertility for rural Chinese women in the 1950s.     

Slow‐fast dynamics in a model of population and resource growth

Models of the interaction of population, the economy, and the environment often contain nonlinear functional relationships and variables that move at different speeds. These properties foster apparent unpredictabilities in system behaviour. Using a simple deterministic model of demographic, economic and environmental interactions we illustrate the usefulness of geometric singular perturbation theory in environmental population economics. In contrast to local stability analysis, the theory of slow‐fast dynamics helps to gain new insights into the global behaviour of the system. In particular, the knowledge of the basins of attraction of the stationary states enables one to determine the regions of sustainable future paths of resources and population.