Branding consultants as cultural intermediaries

Advertising agencies are frequently the focus of sociological studies investigating the ways in which commodities are imbued with meanings, and the impacts of these efforts on consumer activity. However, advertising agencies face increasing competition from other symbolic intermediaries, of which branding consultancies are some of the most successful. This paper explores the nature and significance of branding by focusing upon three key themes: first, its history and relationship to the design industry; secondly, its everyday practice and efforts to translate brand values into material, as well as visual, form; and thirdly, the forms of knowledge drawn upon in its decision-making processes, and their relationship to its broader power and influence. These themes are addressed through a combination of historical analysis and empirical material drawn from interviews with branding professionals, and are framed with reference to the literature on cultural intermediaries     

More on local influence in pllincipal components analysis

Local influence on the eigenvalues of sample covariance matrices in

principal components analysis is examined for a reasonable modification of Shi's (1997) perturbation scheme, The modification is suggested for samples from populations with both unknown mean vector and covariance matrix. While Shi's detection indexes (1997) consist of only quadratic terms, the modified perturbation scheme leads to detection indexes constituted by both linear and quadratic terms associated with centralized observations. These linear and quadratic terms reflect local influences on the first two sample moments. Examples are investigated based on the two detection indexes.     

Narrating political opportunities: explaining strategic adaptation in the climate movement

This article advances theory on social movements’ strategic adaptation to political opportunity structures by incorporating a narrative perspective. Our theory explains how people acquire and use knowledge about political opportunity structures through storytelling about the movement’s past, present, and imagined future. The discussion applies the theory in an ethnographic case study of the climate movement’s mobilization around the UN Climate Summit in Paris, 2015. This analysis demonstrates how a dominant narrative of defeat about the prior protest campaign in Copenhagen, 2009 shaped the strategizing process. While those who experienced Copenhagen as a success preferred strategic continuity, those who experienced defeat developed a “Copenhagen narrative” to advance strategic adaptation by projecting previously experienced threats and opportunities onto the Paris campaign. Yet by relying on a retrospective narrative, movement actors tended to overlook emerging political opportunities. We demonstrate that narrative analysis is a useful tool for understanding the link between structure and agency in social movements and other actors affected by (political) opportunity structures.

     

Persistence and desistance in heavy cannabis use: the role of identity,agency, and life events

Many cannabis users ‘mature out’ of their drug use, and factors of cannabis use cessation have been identified. However, very little in-depth knowledge is available about the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. Criminological studies have gained interesting insights in desistance from crime, yet these perspectives are rarely used in drug research. This qualitative, three-year longitudinal study explored the processes involved in desistance from frequent cannabis use for young adults. Using a narrative approach, desisters (frequent users who successfully quit their cannabis use) and persisters (frequent users with a persistent desire and unsuccessful attempts to quit) were compared. In the course of the study, desisters mainly exhibited increasing agency and goal setting, established strategies to achieve these goals, and could envision another self. Desistance was generally induced by life events that became turning points. Persisters experienced largely similar events, but lacked goals and strategies and held external factors responsible for their life course and failed quit attempts. Identity change is at the core of desistance from frequent cannabis use, and the meaning-giving to life events and experiences is essential. Agency is a necessary ingredient for desistance, develops over time and through action, and leads to a new drug-free identity with desistance in turn increasing agency.     

Family,welfare state generosity and the vulnerability of older adults: A cross-national study

The availability of family can be considered a protective factor for aging well. In this article, we examine to what extent the family situation of older people creates vulnerability with respect to their quality of life. Because not everyone is vulnerable to the same degree, we try to identify the conditions under which older people benefit more from having family resources. Based on the resources perspective, we argue that the impact of family resources on life satisfaction is stronger for older people with fewer resources at both the individual level (material, physical and non-familial social resources) and the country level (welfare state services targeted at older adults). To test our hypotheses we make use of the fourth wave of the European Values Study, and the MULTILINKS Social Policy Indicators database. In general our data offer support for the idea that the presence of intimate family ties (with partner and children) can be considered an important resource for achieving psychological well-being, whereas their absence or loss may act as a constraint. Our vulnerability argument is partly supported by the findings. Partner resources are more important for the life satisfaction of older people with a low education and health problems. Similarly, having children only improves the life-satisfaction of lower educated older adults. However, family resources are not more important for older people with fewer material resources or for older people living in countries with low services levels targeted at older adults.     

Analogien, Subsistenztechnologien Und (Nicht-)moralische Allmächtige Schöpfergötter In Vorindustriellen Gesellschaften

The aim of this paper is to explain the relationship of humans with their god(s) during different stages of technological development. We answer the question under which circumstances what image of God becomes popular. To do so we use Lenski’s ecological evolutionism and combine this macrotheory with Topitsch’ micro-hypothesis that people reason by analogy and explain the unknown in terms of what is known and what is important in a society. The known can consist of a vital process, a social structure or a technological achievement. Using the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample of Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas, we find that high gods are less common in the technologically less advanced societies. High gods are most likely to occur in the advanced horticultural, herding and agrarian societies. When we distinguish between non-moral and moral high gods we see that non-moral ones are most often found in the advanced horticultural and moral ones in the herding and agrarian societies. The relationship between subsistence technology and godly images is to a large extent mediated by a society’s economical and political structure.     

The efficacy of a high school rape prevention program in Israel

Sexual violence against women and girls in Israel is rather prevalent. To address this problem, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI) provides rape prevention programs for middle to high school teens. These programs have been in place for several decades, but their effectiveness has not been evaluated empirically to date. This study seeks to fill this gap by performing an evaluation of one such preventive program. Three hundred and ninety-four 11th graders completed a preintervention and postintervention questionnaire, assessing their rape-related attitudes and behaviors. Results indicate a significant improvement following the workshop in the understanding of what distinguishes rape from mutually consensual relations, along with a substantial shift in many rape-supportive attitudes. At the same time, some victim blaming still remained. Likewise, self-reported behavioral changes were minimal, possibly because of a ceiling effect. Implications for future rape prevention programs in Israel are discussed.     

Effects of a peer-led AIDS intervention with university students

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) has become a major health threat to university students. This study evaluated a peer-led AIDS intervention program with university students (1) increase knowledge of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission and infection; (2) change attitudes to reflect scientific information on AIDS-related facts; and (3) change behavioral intentions to correspond with safer sexual practices. Subjects were students (N = 142) from four undergraduate classes and were predominantly female (65%), white (82%), and sexually active (86%). A non-equivalent control group design was used, with two classes receiving the intervention and two classes receiving no information. For the intervention, peer educators presented AIDS-related information, modeled ways to use condoms safely and ways to discuss condom use with sexual partners, and led discussions on HIV infection and use with sexual partners, and led discussions on HIV infection and AIDS, relationships, sexuality, and condom use. A questionnaire was administered to assess differential changes in AIDS-related knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral intentions between the intervention and control groups. The results showed significant improvements among intervention subjects on the knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral intentions scales compared with the control group.     

Toward a more structured use of information technology in the research community

Information technology has great potential for supporting the activities of research networks. However, some fundamental problems must first be addressed to determine whether the technological support is necessary at all. Once that need has been determined, merely installing a set of isolated, generic information tools is not sufficient to address the full spectrum of network information needs. Therefore, a comprehensive and customized network information system is required. We argue that a specification method can help to structure the development of such an information system. Aldo de Moor finished his M.Sc. in information management in 1993, after which he worked at the University of Guelph, Canada, on the initiation of the Global Research Network on Sustainable Development. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at Tilburg University.     

A simple approximation relation between the symmetric generalized logistic and the students t distributions

In this paper, we obtain a new approximation of the Student's t distribution by using the symmetric generalized logistic (SGL) distribution function. The error of this approximation is shown to be 0(1/n² )where nis the degrees of freedom of thetdistribution. In comparison to similar approximations by George and Ojo and George et al. (1986), this new approximation is much simpler and more accurate. It is also shown that under some conditions, the tdistribution is a good approximation of the SGL distribution. Therefore, the complicated expressions for the cumulants and moments of the SGL can be approximated by those of the t, distribution. Finally, numerical results are given.