Squashed dreams and rare breeds: ableism and the arbiters of life and death

The week beginning 29 June 2015 is not just historic for the closure of the Independent Living Fund in the United Kingdom, but for me was the week they decided that my life is not worth investing in; they being NHS England, NICE and, with them, the Department of Health. They chose not to support the enzyme replacement therapy that has been not only keeping me alive, but giving me a quality of life – enabling me to return to finish my Disability Studies PhD exploring how Christian leaders explain disability, where ethics have become the main topic, and to rebuild my career – or so I thought.     

Humor and satire in politics: Introducing cultural sociology to the field

The landscape of political humor and satire is changing rapidly, and it is becoming an increasingly relevant aspect of our culture. Although scholars have been actively trying to capture this change, majority of the existing frameworks for understanding humor and satire in politics still reduce these phenomena to mere genres or rhetoric tools. In addition, they provide insufficient accounts concerning the reception of humor and satire, and neglect to interpret and explain what they communicate. In the article, a general understanding of humor and satire outside of a political context, followed by an overview of studies discussing humor and satire in politics through their applications in social movements, as leadership tools, and through their manifestations in mass media has been presented. Lastly, a cultural sociological perspective to the field has been introduced. It has been argued that approaching humor and satire in politics through a structural hermeneutic method of the Strong Program will enable us to recognize and treat political humor and satire as autonomous and complex cultural systems which carry an internal power to move people.     

The context of employment discrimination: interpreting the findings of a field experiment

Although field experiments have documented the contemporary relevance of discrimination in employment, theories developed to explain the dynamics of differential treatment cannot account for differences across organizational and institutional contexts. In this article, I address this shortcoming by presenting the main empirical findings from a multi‐method research project, in which a field experiment of ethnic discrimination in the Norwegian labour market was complemented with forty‐two in‐depth interviews with employers who were observed in the first stage of the study. While the experimental data support earlier findings in documenting that ethnic discrimination indeed takes place, the qualitative material suggests that theorizing in the field experiment literature have been too concerned with individual and intra‐psychic explanations. Discriminatory outcomes in employment processes seems to be more dependent on contextual factors such as the number of applications received, whether requirements are specified, and the degree to which recruitment procedures are formalized. I argue that different contexts of employment provide different opportunity structures for discrimination, a finding with important theoretical and methodological implications.     

语言问题的理论思索

从功能的角度考察语言的本质 ,是诸多著作理解语言性质的哲学基础。功能论固然看到了语言对于人类社会的决定性作用 ,然而却丝毫未触及语言自身的结构特征和机制。仅从功能的角度认识语言是不够的 ,还必须深入到语言结构内部 ,对语言的特征、机制及结构体系进行多角度观察 ,才能较为完整地揭示语言的本质     

Alternative boundaries for CUSUM tests

Alternative boundaries for the common Recursive (or Standard) CUSUM test and the OLS-based CUSUM test for structural change are suggested and their properties are examined by simulation of expectedp values. The poor power of the tests for early and late structural changes can be improved for the OLS-based version, whereas this weakness of the Recursive CUSUM test cannot be overcome by the new boundaries. Research supported by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) under grant SFB#010 (‘Adaptive Information Systems and Modeling in Economics and Management Science’).     

名词性复合词的意义建构诸理论述评

名词性复合词的意义建构是一个看似简单,实际上非常复杂的过程。传统语法把这一意义建构过程简单化,认为名词性复合词的意义等于各组成部分名词的意义总和。转换生成语言学家 意义特征理论学家也都提出了各自的理论解释,但都有很大的缺陷。概念合成语言学理论对名词性复合词的意义建构做出了比较完整的理论解释,但也有待于进一步的改进。     

论石油存续企业的结构调整与优化改革的总体思路

石油存续企业的结构调整与优化，是当前石油企业深化改革的难点和重点问题。石油存续企业改革的核心应在明确定位的基础上，合理确定企业的主营业务与辅营业务，并以此为基础对现有的业务经营单位进行重组，最终对辅业经营单位进行结构调整和整合，实现企业的长期生存和发展。     

A Bayesian method for classification and discrimination

We discuss Bayesian analyses of traditional normal-mixture models for classification and discrimination. The development involves application of an iterative resampling approach to Monte Carlo inference, commonly called Gibbs sampling, and demonstrates routine application. We stress the benefits of exact analyses over traditional classification and discrimination techniques, including the ease with which such analyses may be performed in a quite general setting, with possibly several normal-mixture components having different covariance matrices, the computation of exact posterior classification probabilities for observed data and for future cases to be classified, and posterior distributions for these probabilities that allow for assessment of second-level uncertainties in classification.     

Doing Gender unto the Other: Fiction as a Mode of Studying Gender Discrimination in Organizations

Although ‘doing gender’ has been recently defined as an accomplishment, an element of social practice, this understanding of the concept needs to be extended to coercive action such as subtle workplace discrimination. Even though great effort has been invested in revealing the dynamic of such social practices, the researcher's task is not easy for a variety of reasons. This type of study is difficult to conduct by following traditional research design and many alternative approaches have been tried. This article presents the possibility of using fiction as one possible and relatively unexploited venue of research.     

善意取得制度研究

善意取得制度意在对特定类型的非正常的利益变动,做出价值判断,进行利益衡平。那么,善意取得制度对何种类型非正常的利益变动进行衡平?又是如何进行衡平的呢?这就引出了善意取得制度的构成要件及其效力问题。笔者正是从这两方面着手对善意取得制度基础理论和实践应用提供一孔之见。