Max Weinreich,assimilation and the social politics of Jewish nation-building

Through an analysis of the methodological and theoretical writings of Max Weinreich that were devoted to the inter-war Jewish youth research programme at the Jewish Scientific Institute (YIVO), this article discusses the ideological and political assumptions that lay behind this scientific project. Deconstructing the main research categories of the project, the author presents ways in which Weinreich and his associates constructed the Jewish nation and its place in the new inter-war political and social reality. This reality was seen in a complex manner, as a simultaneous chance for Jewish modernisation, upward mobility, productivisation, and as a response to the threat of modern state institutions that were introducing discriminatory policies, and, most importantly, assimilation. The last process was seen as the biggest danger, which could fragment and finally even dissolve the essentialist, secular and national model of Jewish community as envisioned by Max Weinreich and YIVO. The author shows how the essentialist vision of the nation omnipotent in inter-war Poland (among both Polish and Jewish communities) introduced unresolved tension between the need for social and cultural integration of the Jews, which was important for Weinreich and his circle, and the simultaneous aim of building a culturally and politically coherent Jewish nation. Further discussion shows how this kind of perception of social reality transformed a scientific research project into a kind of social intervention and nation-building programme, comparable to the ideologies of Jewish national secularist political parties. While presenting itself as a universal, national institution and addressing its call to all Jewish youth, YIVO promoted a particular political view of the Jewish nation and its tradition, history and religion. By engaging Jewish youth in a research programme devoted to its “personality,” one of the hidden aims of the project was to influence the political and social consciousness of Eastern Europe's Jewish youth.     

Amphibians in an urban environment: a case study from a central European city (Wrocław,Poland)

Urban Ecosystems - In 2016, we studied the occurrence of amphibians in 231 selected ponds in the city of Wroc?aw (Lower Silesia, Poland) and confirmed the occurrence of 10 species: Bombina...     

Disruptions in tightly coupled supply chain networks: the case of the US offshore oil industry

Managers have paid increasing attention to the exposure of their supply chains to disruptions and seek ways to mitigate supply chain vulnerability. The interconnectedness of tightly coupled supply chain networks makes this a challenging task, because interconnectedness and tight coupling of nodes in the network lead to an amplification of the actual risk exposure. This phenomenon can be attributed to the propagation of losses through the network, which exhibits certain dynamics. In order to investigate this mechanism, we studied the complex supply chain network of the oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico. Our results provide an estimate of the economic impact of eventual random and hurricane-related disruptions and can be used as a decision support tool for risk management of supply disruptions in interconnected supply chain networks.     

Autoregressive Model with Partial Forgetting within Rao-Blackwellized Particle Filter

The authors are concerned with Bayesian identification and prediction of a nonlinear discrete stochastic process. The fact that a nonlinear process can be approximated by a piecewise linear function advocates the use of adaptive linear models. They propose a linear regression model within Rao-Blackwellized particle filter. The parameters of the linear model are adaptively estimated using a finite mixture, where the weights of components are tuned with a particle filter. The mixture reflects a priori given hypotheses on different scenarios of (expected) parameters' evolution. The resulting hybrid filter locally optimizes the weights to achieve the best fit of a nonlinear signal with a single linear model.     

Estimating potential output in developing countries

This paper describes a parsimonious methodology employed by the World Bank for estimating potential output using the production function method. Despite the necessity of strong assumptions, sensitivity analysis suggests the reported estimates for 159 countries are robust to alternative specifications. Moreover, for the majority of countries estimated output gaps are positively correlated with inflation acceleration and negatively correlated with current account balances. An examination of estimated output gaps and post-crisis economic developments in several middle-income countries suggest that the methods can play a useful role in guiding macroeconomic policy.     

Unemployment of professional artists: empirical evidence from Australia

This paper analyses the determinants of professional artists' unemployment. A sample of 1030 Australian artists was examined to determine the relationship between the probability of unemployment and artistic profession, education, origin and other demographic covariates. Special attention is focussed on factors influencing the probability of long‐term unemployment. It is found that artists in Australia are a heterogeneous labour market group, as regards exposure to unemployment and long‐term unemployment risk. The probability of unemployment episodes varies significantly depending on the artistic occupation: community cultural development workers, actors and directors are most likely to experience unemployment, while musicians and craftspeople are the least likely. Youth, disability, living in a capital city or in Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria or New South Wales, as well as level of tertiary education, can all increase the likelihood of unemployment episodes. On the other hand, participation in formal training in the artistic profession and living in a relationship or marriage are associated with a lower probability of unemployment. Being a writer or visual artist, living in the Northern Territory, and lower levels of education can increase the probability of experiencing long‐term unemployment. Neither gender, nor origin nor age affects the risk of long‐term unemployment of Australian artists.     

Social Participation in Poland: Links to Emotional Well-Being and Risky Alcohol Consumption

Social participation has been hypothesised to have both positive and negative impact on health outcomes via a variety of pathways, but previous studies have found few significant effects of social participation, and there is a lack of research from post-communist societies, which are known to be low on social capital. Using cross-sectional data from Poland on 2,970 individuals surveyed in 2009, we investigated the individual-level relationships between formal and informal social participation, emotional well-being, and risky alcohol consumption while controlling for demographic variables, socioeconomic status, employment and partnership status, health, religiosity, and generalised trust. Frequent joint activities with friends and neighbours were related to higher positive affect but also to more risky alcohol consumption. Membership in voluntary organisations was associated with more risky alcohol consumption, especially among younger males and for certain types of organisations. In contrast, volunteer work was related to higher positive affect and fewer depressive symptoms in the whole sample and to less risky alcohol consumption among the younger participants. The findings illustrate that some types of social participation, even if they are not typical of a given context (e.g., volunteering in Poland), may be more beneficial than others.     

Occupational Stress and Psychological Well-Being in Emergency Services

Sources of occupational stress and their impact on job satisfaction and psychological well-being were examined in a questionnaire survey of 617 Malaysian firefighters. The role of coping strategies and work motivation as moderating factors were also tested. Sources of occupational stress had significant reverse correlations with job satisfaction and well-being. The hierarchical regression analysis was used to examine the moderating effect of work motivation and coping strategies on job satisfaction and psychological well-being. The result suggested that coping strategies and work motivation are one of the potential moderating variables between sources of stress and job satisfaction.