Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

This survey of sexual practices in the United States has been combed by the media for items of interest to the public: monogamous sex is much more widespread in this country than has been thought; infidelity is less frequent than presumed; vaginal intercourse is the defining experience of heterosexual behavior; watching one's partner undress is stimulating to many people; married couples have more sex than single people (unmarried, cohabiting couples have the most sex of all); the majority of couples experience sex twice a week to several times a month; 2.8% of men identify themselves as homosexual and 1.4% of women do so, but a higher percentage of people consider a same-gender experience to have some appeal; 75% of men always experience orgasm compared with 28.6% of women, but more nearly equal numbers of men and women declare themselves satisfied with their sexual experiences. The book is, in fact, a

The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States

Citizen and subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism

This article reexamines spontaneity as an important, albeit neglected, mechanism in collective action dynamics, and elaborates on its operation and effects in protest events and social movements. We do not presume that spontaneity is routinely at play in all collective actions. Rather, based on our grounded analysis of historical and ethnographic data, we contend that spontaneity is triggered by certain conditions: nonhierarchical organization; uncertain/ambiguous moments and events; behavioral/emotional priming; and certain ecological/spatial factors. We conclude by elaborating why the activation of spontaneous actions matters in shaping the course and character of protest events and movements, and we suggest that spontaneity be resuscitated in the study of collective action and everyday life more generally.

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Protest on the Fly: Toward a Theory of Spontaneity in the Dynamics of Protest and Social Movements

Do authoritarian states deter dissent in the diaspora? Using data on Libyan and Syrian activism in the United States and Great Britain, this study demonstrates that they do through violence, exile, threats, surveillance, and by harming dissidents’ relatives at home. The analysis finds that the transnational repression of these diasporas deterred public anti-regime mobilization before the Arab Spring. I then identify the mechanisms by which Libyans and Syrians overcame these effects during the 2011 revolutions. Activists “came out” when (1) violence at home changed their relatives’ circumstances and upset repression’s relational effects; (2) the sacrifices of vanguard activists expanded their objects of obligation, leading them to embrace cost sharing; and (3) the regimes were perceived as incapable of making good on their threats. However, differences in the regimes’ perceived capacities to repress in 2011 produced significant variation in the pace of diaspora emergence over time and guarded advocacy. The study advances understanding of transnationalism by demonstrating how states exercise coercive power across borders and the conditions under which diasporas mobilize to publicly and collectively challenge home-country regimes.

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Transnational Repression, Diaspora Mobilization, and the Case of The Arab Spring

Internet communication technologies (ICTs) enable diasporas to act transnationally by facilitating ties to their places of origin and providing low-cost ways to mobilize against home-country regime...

The ties that bind: Internet communication technologies, networked authoritarianism, and ‘voice’ in the Syrian diaspora

Studies of transnationalism typically account for homeland-oriented transnational political action (TPA) as the product of varying political opportunities. Yet, the opportunity-driven perspective overlooks why some immigrant and diaspora communities refrain from engaging in homeland politics or are forestalled in their attempts to do so. We address this shortcoming by theorizing how sociopolitical conditions can constrain TPA. Drawing inductively from primary data on Pakistani, Syrian, Libyan, and Yemeni diasporas as well as secondary sources, we identify four sources of constraint: 1) geopolitics and interstate relations; 2) origin-country authoritarianism; 3) weak origin-country governance; and 4) exclusionary receiving-country contexts. By demonstrating how these socio-political forces suppress TPA, we contribute a new theoretical approach that emphasizes the conditions and relations that hinder cross-border political action. In sum, the article illustrates the theoretical importance of understanding variation in TPA and the utility of examining negative cases in the study of immigrant and diaspora transnational politics.

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Suppressing transnationalism: bringing constraints into the study of transnational political action

This paper analyzes cross-national and longitudinal variations in criminal laws regulating sexual activities. We blend historical and sociological institutionalisms to argue that criminal sex laws embody exogenous models, supplied by colonial and imperial powers and evolving world society. To test our ideas, we apply logit-panel and pooled-time-series models to original data from more than 150 countries on four aspects of sex laws, 1965 to 2005: (1) maximum prison terms for rape, (2) ages of sexual consent, (3) the existence of sodomy prohibitions, and (4) gender neutrality in adultery regulations. Our analyses confirm the importance of exogenous factors and show that endogenous factors—including the dominance of Islam and the status of women in society—play lesser roles in explaining formal content differences. In supplementary analyses, we explore counterpoint variations, that is, sexlaw reforms that flout global standards, illustrated here by sodomy-law expansions during the period. We find exogenous imprints even in these cases.

Dana M. Moss

Papers

Protest on the Fly: Toward a Theory of Spontaneity in the Dynamics of Protest and Social Movements

Transnational Repression, Diaspora Mobilization, and the Case of The Arab Spring

The ties that bind: Internet communication technologies, networked authoritarianism, and ‘voice’ in the Syrian diaspora

Suppressing transnationalism: bringing constraints into the study of transnational political action

Cross-National and Longitudinal Variations in the Criminal Regulation of Sex, 1965 to 2005