Who Reaps the Benefits,Who Bears the Risks? Comparative Optimism,Comparative Utility,and Regulatory Preferences for Mobile Phone Technology

Although the issue of risk target (e.g., self, others, children) is widely acknowledged in risk perception research, its importance appears underappreciated. To date, most research has been satisfied with demonstrating comparative optimism, i.e., lower perceived risk for the self than others, and exploring its moderators, such as perceived controllability and personal exposure. Much less research has investigated how the issue of target may affect benefit perceptions or key outcomes such as stated preferences for hazard regulation. The current research investigated these issues using data from a public survey of attitudes toward mobile phone technology (N= 1,320). First, results demonstrated comparative optimism for this hazard, and also found moderating effects of both controllability and personal exposure. Second, there was evidence of comparative utility, i.e., users believed that the benefits from mobile phone technology are greater for the self than others. Third, and most important for policy, preferences for handset regulation were best predicted by perceptions of the risks to others but perceived benefits for the self. Results suggest a closer awareness of target can improve prediction of stated preferences for hazard regulation and that it would be profitable for future research to pay more attention to the issue of target for both risk and benefit perceptions.     

The changing sociological construct of the family

Recent attempts to announce the death of the family as a useful analytical category for sociologists are rebutted as being premature. The tendency to view household relations as family relations or, indeed, couple or gender relations as family relations seems to have arisen in the early 1970s. Earlier attempts to construct an empirically grounded analysis of family relationships have been curiously neglected. An account of one family on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent provides some illustrative ethnography on both the positive uses of family members-particularly siblings - and on the way the social boundaries of this family are constructed by its members. It is argued that the family is best understood as a system of relationships that change over time. There is a curious lack of systematic ethnography of contemporary family relationships so that what is taught to students as the sociology of the family may be widely at variance with their own personal experience. This may be partly a result of relying too much on random surveys of households at the expense of detailed explorations of existing patterns of social relationships and social meanings. Developing theoretical arguments on the basis of inadequate or inappropriate ethnography is evidently a dangerous and misleading exercise.     

Between family and friends: a longitudinal study of friendship choice

The increasing role for chosen friends is a key element in current debates on individualization and the transformation of intimacy. This paper describes the changes in friendship choices over time and demonstrates how life events subsequently impact on those choices. We primarily distinguish between kin and non-kin nominations of friends and how these may be related to the social and economic turbulence inherent in late modernity. Analyses of data from ten years of the British Household Panel Survey showed that kin nominations still form a significant proportion of all friends but increasingly so with age and over time as people age. Life events, such as divorce or death of a partner, have large effects on the likelihood of changes in friendship choices as did gender, age, marital status and social class. We frame these results in a discussion of the saliency and nature of friendship at stages of the life course and conclude that the case for a general secular shift to choosing non-kin friendships rather than kin-based friendship is not demonstrated.     

Spreading the word ... hospice information systems

The rapid spread of Saunders' thinking across the world has been facilitated by the Hospice Information service and library at St Christopher's Hospice which she helped to create and further enhanced by Help the Hospices. We have set this article in the context of the Web and other information systems as they are developing today. "Connecting people" and "collecting people's experiences" were terms often used by Cicely Saunders when she described the work of Hospice Information, a service that has in some measure contributed to the rapid spread of her thinking across the world and which is currently in close contact with palliative care workers in over 120 countries. Connecting--or networking--putting people and organizations in touch with each other for mutual benefit and collecting and disseminating people's experiences are central to our work as a U.K. and international resource on hospice and palliative care for professionals and the public. Add to these the crucial role of information provision and advocacy for patients, carers, and health professionals alike and we hope that you may begin to appreciate how our respective organizations have contributed to the spread of Cicely Saunders' vision.     

Soziologie der Zentralbanken. Makroökonomisches Wissen und Geldpolitik

The goal of our contribution is a systematic and critical appraisal of the respective studies of central banking and monetary policy in the social sciences. The starting point is the trends of modern monetary policy in the second half of the 20^th century. Central banks and macroeconomics name them as political independence, ensuring price stability and transparency and take them as a success. Social-scientific research of these phenomena oftentimes is in conflict with this narrative of progress. It can be divided in three perspectives: institutional analysis, communicational approaches, and the analysis of performativity. We argue that these studies all point towards the relation of macroeconomic knowledge and monetary policy-knowledge. The review reveals the precise analysis of the transformation of specific elements of macroeconomic knowledge into the practices of central banking as the desideratum in current research.     

Changing Policy Environments in Europe and the Resilience of the Third Sector

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - In the article, we analyse the impact of changing policy environments on the development of the third sector in Europe....