Lost in Transitions? Feudalism,Colonialism, and Egypt's Blocked Road to Capitalism (1800–1920)

We revisit the transition debate to capitalism through the historical case of nineteenth century Egypt and the theoretical lens of uneven and combined development. We argue that the twin concepts of formal and real subsumption of labor under capital offer a necessary methodological device to study capitalist transitions. We conclude that nineteenth century Egypt was not a society experiencing an ‘indigenous’ transition to capitalism that was blocked by colonial intervention. Instead, colonialism warped the ongoing formation of a commercial-absolutist state, which led to a combination of feudal and capitalist social forms that lingered well into the middle of the twentieth century. Through a long-term historical analysis of the Egyptian social formation as a complex ensemble of political power relations and ongoing cycles of articulations of multiple mode of productions we problematize the dominant ‘modernization’ thesis. The modernization paradigm presupposes that economic growth will take place due to globalized markets, transforming, in turn, existing social and political practices and institutions along modern lines. This idea has been reiterated by neoclassical and neo-institutionalist economists who understand economic backwardness as a simple lack of market-efficient behavior of local economic agents. As such, we also emphasize that the gradual integration of the Egyptian social formation into the capitalist world market did not automatically lead to the establishment of a dominant capitalist mode of production within this formation.     

Documentary at a Crossroads: Reality TV and the Hybridization of Small‐Screen Documentary

Today, as tendencies of popularization and hybridization have fundamentally redefined conventional notions of (small) screen documentary, the genre (re‐)emerges as a particularly appealing topic of scholarly research. This article elaborates some of the main strands of the multifaceted debate about these ongoing developments, thereby focusing on the ‘reality TV’ phenomenon, which is probably the most notable, yet also most controversial embodiment of the shifting that takes place. Discussing key positions regarding the problem of labeling and definition, questions of documentary values, and ethical issues, it is argued that a comprehensive, nuanced approach based on profound conceptualizations as well as empirical research into production and reception contexts are invaluable in making an astute assessment of the popular hybrid documentary.     

Forms and Functions of Aggression in Adolescent Friendship Selection and Influence: A Longitudinal Social Network Analysis

Aggressive children are known to have friends. However, less is known about the impact of aggression on friendship development and how this can differ for overt and relational (i.e., the forms) and instrumental and reactive (i.e., the functions) aggression. This longitudinal study utilized the forms and functions perspective on aggression to assess social selection and influence in adolescents' (N = 337, 12–14 years) friendship networks. Instrumentally and relationally aggressive peers became mutual friends with similar peers. Influence effects were observed in all types of aggression except overt aggression, suggesting that instrumental, reactive, and relational aggression may be the most susceptible to social influence. The findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and methodological implications for the study of aggression and adolescent friendships.     

How to Nail the Multiple Identities of an Organization? A Content Analysis of Projected Identity

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Multiple-identity organizations possess identity characteristics that belong to different and potentially conflicting...     

Safety Does Not Happen by Accident: Antecedents To A Safer Warehouse

On a daily basis, thousands of employees suffer from severe occupational accidents worldwide. These accidents not only lead to negative consequences for the physical and mental health of employees, but also to high costs for companies and the society as a whole. A large share of these accidents take place in warehouses. Prior research has demonstrated the critical role of leadership, and especially safety‐specific transformational leadership (SSTL), in reducing warehouse accidents. Yet several important questions concerning SSTL remain: What effects does SSTL have on outcomes other than safety, and what determines whether leaders display SSTL behaviors? To answer these questions, this research studies the relationship between SSTL of warehouse managers and not only occupational accidents, but also quality and productivity. Moreover, it investigates the managers who are most likely to display SSTL. Data from 87 warehouse managers and 1233 employees were used to test the conceptual model. The results suggest that the dispositional prevention focus of the manager (one of two possible motivational strategies that people deploy) positively relates to SSTL, and that SSTL negatively relates to occupational accidents. Furthermore, SSTL and its identified negative relationship with occupational accidents does not appear to have detrimental impact on productivity or quality. These results extend existing models of SSTL and safety, and can help companies to reduce the number of accidents and the associated costs by selecting and developing safety‐specific transformational leaders.     

Large-scale simultaneous inference under dependence

Simultaneous inference allows for the exploration of data while deciding on criteria for proclaiming discoveries. It was recently proved that all admissible post hoc inference methods for the true discoveries must employ closed testing. In this paper, we investigate efficient closed testing with local tests of a special form: thresholding a function of sums of test scores for the individual hypotheses. Under this special design, we propose a new statistic that quantifies the cost of multiplicity adjustments, and we develop fast (mostly linear-time) algorithms for post hoc inference. Paired with recent advances in global null tests based on generalized means, our work instantiates a series of simultaneous inference methods that can handle many dependence structures and signal compositions. We provide guidance on the method choices via theoretical investigation of the conservativeness and sensitivity for different local tests, as well as simulations that find analogous behavior for local tests and full closed testing.