In this innovative approach to the practice of social science, Charles Ragin explores the use of fuzzy sets to bridge the divide between quantitative and qualitative methods. Paradoxically, the fuzzy set is a powerful tool because it replaces an unwieldy, "fuzzy" instrument—the variable, which establishes only the positions of cases relative to each other, with a precise one—degree of membership in a well-defined set. Ragin argues that fuzzy sets allow a far richer dialogue between ideas and evidence in social research than previously possible. They let quantitative researchers abandon "homogenizing assumptions" about cases and causes, they extend diversity-oriented research strategies, and they provide a powerful connection between theory and data analysis. Most important, fuzzy sets can be carefully tailored to fit evolving theoretical concepts, sharpening quantitative tools with in-depth knowledge gained through qualitative, case-oriented inquiry. This book will revolutionize research methods not only in sociology, political science, and anthropology but in any field of inquiry dealing with complex patterns of causation.

Fuzzy-Set Social Science

Ethnologue: Languages of the World

Negative of an art work depicting a dead American Soldier. The work has two titles - "Weep No More My Ladies" (title by artist) or "An American Soldier" (title on card attached beneath the image). Govt. Catalog # H.D.7.70.45. Place: Clark Field. Data: attached card info- An American rifleman dead on Clark Field in the Ft. Stotsenberg Area where the Jap made a desperate but futile stand to halt the sweep of Allied Forces on the road to Manila. Pen and ink and watercolor, 30 x 20. By Captain Barse Miller, CE, January 27, 1945.

An American Soldier.

QCA and business research: Work in progress or a consolidated agenda?

This research aims to investigate and understand high school students’ perspectives of using Smartphone use in learning English as a Foreign Language. In the era where learning can be done anytime everywhere, Smartphone become one of significant tools in education. Students can learn English from mobile applications and from open access courses available for them to access anytime everywhere. They can also seek online learning support around the world only by using their Smartphone. We were sending online survey to our potential respondents and gained 250 high school students from five high schools in Gorontalo, Indonesia who participated in this research. The results show that the majority of respondents

Karmila Machmud : Peereviewer Learning English as a Foreign Language in the Disruptive Digital Era: The Smartphone Use in EFL Instructions

This paper applies a Boolean approach to examine the social background of movements for linguistic human rights Predictive determinants to explain the occurrence of LHRs movements in this study included linguistic diversity within a country, literacy rate, population size, national income as an index of affluence, and the existence of a constitution supporting those rights Data for 159 countries were collected and analyzed using a Boolean analysis The result of the analysis shows that there are four combinations of economic and linguistic conditions that cause LHRs movements in a country A further analysis with varying cutoff values reveals that the combination GD (higher gross income AND linguistic diversity) is the "strongest" condition for LHRs movements in the four combinations

Determinants of Linguistic Human Rights Movements: An Analysis of Multiple Causation of LHRs Movements Using a Boolean Approach

Rapid economic growth sometimes intensifies people's frustration. In this article, we attempt to formulate this kind of paradox of economic growth, and to explain theoretically how economic growth increases people's dissatisfaction by way of the notion of relative deprivation by employing the theoretical framework of Yitzhaki's relative deprivation index. We introduce the problem of the China puzzle as the latest case of the paradox. Then, we introduce the definition of Yitzhaki's index of relative deprivation, and use this to explain the China puzzle. Besides, through a theoretical examination of Yitzhaki's index, we propose a proposition proving that an increase of relative deprivation in the society can occur even when the amount of wealth increases and the degree of inequality reduces.

A Paradox of Economic Growth and Relative Deprivation

This paper questions whether personal income comparison explains the distributive gap between income and class identification by exploring the following two issues: empirical validity of income comparison as the determinant of class identification, and theoretical validity of income comparison for the distributive gap. For the first issue, we conduct a statistical analysis using data from the Social Stratification and Social Mobility surveys (1975–2005), and the Stratification and Social Psychology-I survey (2010). We find that the criteria for choosing reference groups changed historically from residential proximity to occupational equality. In addition, income comparison with sensitive to lower-income possessors and a distorted perception of income difference significantly affected class identification, except for the year of 1985. The simulation analysis employed to examine the second issue clarified that income comparison with the above-mentioned features yields a less skewed distribution compared to that of class identification. The data also indicates that the empirical conditions of income are satisfied for realization of this result. Thus, we could ascertain empirical and theoretical validity of income comparison as explanation for the distributive gap between income and class identification.

Income Comparison as a Determining Mechanism of Class Identification: A Quantitative and Simulation Study Using Japanese Survey Data

This study aims to measure the inequality of anticipated lifetime income and the inequality of annual income among the younger generation (24–29-year-old men), and to examine any trends that can be found in terms of inequality between 1955 and 2005 in Japan. Anticipated lifetime income is defined in this study as the present value of the total anticipated annual income that one is likely to earn each year between the ages of 24 and 59 years, assuming that there is no intragenerational class mobility. The anticipated lifetime income for each young male is estimated using the Social Stratification and Social Mobility Survey dataset, which is a Japanese national cross-sectional survey of social stratification and social mobility. An inequality in the anticipated lifetime income can be regarded as an “inequality of outlook” among the younger generation. As a result of this analysis, it was found that the Gini coefficient, the most general measurement of income inequality, had significantly increased for anticipated lifetime income between 1995 and 2005. At the same time, the gap between the Gini coefficient of anticipated lifetime income and that of annual income had narrowed. It is suggested that “inequality of outlook,” which cannot be easily identified using a superficial index, has increased significantly.

Trend Analysis of Anticipated Lifetime Income Inequality among Post-war Japanese Youth

The theories of distributive justice attaching importance to equality of opportunity assert that inequalities caused by circumstances, which are uncontrollable by a person, need to be fixed. As one of these theorists, Roemer has proposed the idea, namely equality of opportunity principle, that if a society is partitioned into equivalence classes by profiles of circumstances, then persons who have the same percentile among equivalence classes can compare their responsibilities with one another. Based on this idea, we propose a measurement method for the degree of inequality under the condition that inequality of opportunity is regulated. Specifically, we assume that if inequality of opportunity does not exist, then the persons who have the same percentile among equivalence classes should have the same level of social resources. Under this assumption, a vector of social resources is virtually rebuilt by the mean of each group where the percentiles correspond to one another. In order to verify how the degree of inequality decreases, we compare the two Gini coefficients before and after the regulation. In general, when we partition a group into disjoint subgroups by a certain index, the number of samples in each subgroup is not equal to one another. Therefore, it is hard to make one-to-one correspondence of the percentiles. For this, resampling procedures of a data is needed.As one of the applications of our method, we analyze the effect of inequality of opportunity in terms of sex on the individual income based on the SSM 1985 and 1995 data. As a result, we find that the inequality of opportunity in terms of sex increases gradually in all job categories except for blue-collar workers of large corporations and farmers.

Atsushi Ishida

Papers

Determinants of Linguistic Human Rights Movements: An Analysis of Multiple Causation of LHRs Movements Using a Boolean Approach

A Paradox of Economic Growth and Relative Deprivation

Income Comparison as a Determining Mechanism of Class Identification: A Quantitative and Simulation Study Using Japanese Survey Data

Trend Analysis of Anticipated Lifetime Income Inequality among Post-war Japanese Youth

Unequal Society and Equality of Opportunity