Part I. Understanding Secularization: 1. The secularization debate 2. Measuring secularization 3. Comparing secularization worldwide Part II. Case Studies of Religion and Politics: 4. The puzzle of secularization in the United States and Western Europe 5. A religious revival in post-communist Europe? 6. Religion and politics in the Muslim world Part III. The Consequences of Secularization: 7. Religion, the Protestant ethic, and moral values 8. Religious organizations and social capital 9. Religious parties and electoral behavior Part IV. Conclusions: 10. Secularization and its consequences 11. Re-examining the theory of existential security 12. Re-examining evidence for the security thesis.

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Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide

It is widely believed that current disparities in economic, political, and social outcomes reflect distinct institutions. Institutions are invoked to explain why some countries are rich and others poor, some democratic and others dictatorial. But arguments of this sort gloss over the question of what institutions are, how they come about, and why they persist. They also fail to explain why institutions are influenced by the past, why it is that they can sometimes change, why they differ so much from society to society, and why it is hard to study them empirically and devise a policy aimed at altering them. This 2006 book seeks to overcome these problems, which have exercised economists, sociologists, political scientists, and a host of other researchers who use the social sciences to study history, law, and business administration. It presents a multi-disciplinary perspective to study endogenous institutions and their dynamics.

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Institutions and the path to the modern economy

Natural flood plains are among the most biologically productive and diverse ecosystems on earth. Globally, riverine flood plains cover > 2 × 106 km2, however, they are among the most threatened ecosystems. Floodplain degradation is closely linked to the rapid decline in freshwater biodiversity; the main reasons for the latter being habitat alteration, flow and flood control, species invasion and pollution. In Europe and North America, up to 90% of flood plains are already ‘cultivated’ and therefore functionally extinct. In the developing world, the remaining natural flood plains are disappearing at an accelerating rate, primarily as a result of changing hydrology. Up to the 2025 time horizon, the future increase of human population will lead to further degradation of riparian areas, intensification of the hydrological cycle, increase in the discharge of pollutants, and further proliferation of species invasions. In the near future, the most threatened flood plains will be those in south-east Asia, Sahelian Africa and North America. There is an urgent need to preserve existing, intact flood plain rivers as strategic global resources and to begin to restore hydrologic dynamics, sediment transport and riparian vegetation to those rivers that retain some level of ecological integrity. Otherwise, dramatic extinctions of aquatic and riparian species and of ecosystem services are faced within the next few decades.

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Riverine flood plains: present state and future trends

This paper explores the theoretical and empirical literature to examine the use by different social groups of informal sources of information provided by friends, relatives, and acquaintances during job search and its consequences for the job market. It also addresses the role of network structure and size, the resource endowments of contacts, and nature of the links between contacts to explain differences in the effects of job information networks. In doing so, the paper also turns to the sociology literature on job information networks and provides an economic perspective on such sociological concepts as strong versus weak ties, inbreeding, distance from structural holes, etc. The paper distinguishes between models of exogenous job information networks, that is where individuals obtain job-related information through a given social structure, and endogenous job information networks, which are social networks that result from individuals' uncoordinated actions. The paper pays special attention to such issues as physical and social proximity and sharing of information and discusses them in the context of the recent social interactions and neighborhood effects literature. Finally, the paper outlines a model that integrates job information networks, where interactions occur in business cycle frequencies, with the dynamics of human capital formation, which include the joint effects of parental, community and neighborhood human capital, and are set in life cycle frequencies, for the purpose of organizing suggestions for future research and examining earned income inequality.

Job Information Networks, Neighborhood Effects, and Inequality

This essay looks at the literature on social capital from the perspective of game theory. It reviews Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam and Social Capital: A Multifaceted Approach edited by Partha Dasgupta and Ismail Serageldin.

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Can We Trust Social Capital

This book grew out of the keynote address delivered to the 1996 ninth World Congress of Rural Sociology, organized by the International Rural Sociology Association in Bucharest, Romania, July 22, 1996. The author provides a fresh perspective on the need for social science and its role in answering the global challenges of increasing food production and equitable distribution that face all of humanity. The book offers a broad overview of the challenges that development puts in front of rural sociologists worldwide: a) the scope of the global challenge that faces humanity as we approach the third millennium; b) the essential problem of poverty; c) some lessons from the experience of the World Bank regarding the contributions of social science to the practice of development; d) a discussion of some concerns of social science today; and e) a vision for the future. Sociologists at the World Bank have successfully introduced many theoretical propositions, methods, and action-principles derived from sociology in the formulation of development policies. In particular, the author discusses the achievements of Michael Cernea, who, as the Bank's first sociologist, led the build-up of the Bank's sociological group, and broke through intellectual and organizational barriers in the process of putting people first in development.

Themes for the third millennium : the challenge for rural sociology in an urbanizing world

Cancer-related presentations are rapidly communicated through thousands of Websites, chat rooms, newsgroups, list servers, newsletters, YouTube, and e-mails, with no specific attention to the validity of the reported findings. Quality control (QC) of cancer education lectures on the Web is an important concern, just like the quality assessment of all information found on the Web. This paper discusses the Supercourse, a global library of 3,600 online lectures available at www.pitt.edu/∼super1
 and several alternative quality control approaches that are being developed as part of this global effort. Peer review may not be optimal for the review of online lectures because it is labor-intensive and has low throughput. To our knowledge, we are among the first to begin a multilayer and multimetric evaluation approach toward QC (MQC) of PowerPoint lectures on the Web. We hope that future scientific research on peer review as well as on emerging multilayer QC methodologies will help us to determine best measures of QC, especially in the field of rapidly developing cancer education.

Multilayer and multimetric quality control: the Supercourse.

In Egypt and Tunisia, ordinary citizens have toppled autocrats; elsewhere in the Arab World, they still battle dictators, armed with little more than their belief in freedom, human rights, and democracy. What sort of society comes after the revolution? Many fear that the idealism of the revolutionary democrats will only pave the way for theological autocrats who preach an intolerant doctrine. But fighting extremism is best done not by censorship or autocracy but by embracing pluralism and defeating ideas with ideas. And here, science has much to say, particularly about the values that are needed for societies to be truly open and democratic, because these are the values of science.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/332/6034/1127.full.pdf

The Values of Science

to a signifi cant degree. How should they go about this? The InterAcademy Council (IAC), an international advisory group linking the world’s science academies, has recently produced a report on this subject, put together by a panel that I had the honour to co-chair. It recommends paying special attention to fi ve areas: national science policy, teaching reform, the establishment of centres of excellence, the impact of private sector and the fi nancing of research in developing countries. In each of these areas, the focus should be on building up a nation’s ability to conduct scientifi c research and reap the benefi ts of the resulting technologies. For developing countries, it is the only path to progress. The fi rst step is to adopt a coherent national framework to promote science and technology, developed by the government in consultation with the country’s scientists. The strategy should use the experiences of other countries and should spell out a government’s commitment to such things as funding, standards of excellence, innovation and regional and global collaborations. It is also important to get the media on board. It is no longer realistic to expect support for science without the engagement of the public. Winning public support can be a challenge: there is a strong anti-science bias in many societies, perpetrated by religious zealots, romantic-minded non-governmental organizations and those inclined to believe quackery. National academies of science, engineering, agriculture and medicine can help by improving the quality of public discourse, as well as the quality of national science and technology programs. National academies are memberbased autonomous institutions independent of government and motivated by their commitment to scientifi c or engineering excellence. As such they are extremely important for upholding the quality of a country’s scientifi c and technological endeavours, for guiding national policies on science and technology, and for maintaining dialogue with other countries. In the absence of formal academies, some governments might have to rely on a group of the country’s leading scientists and intellectuals to act as an ad-hoc committee. Such a committee could also draw on international In their fi ght to raise living standards and realize their economic and social potential in the coming decades, there is one thing developing countries cannot do without: homegrown capacity for scientifi c research and technological know-how. Increasingly, a nation’s wealth will depend on the knowledge it accrues and how it applies it, rather than the resources it controls. The “haves” and the “have-nots” will be synonymous with the “knows” and the “know-nots”. The gap between the advanced industrialised countries and those whose populations are mostly poor is still growing. Notwithstanding the enormous advances of China and India, and the signifi cant progress made by Brazil, Mexico and a handful of other developing countries, many in the developing world are being left behind, especially in Africa (except for South Africa) and in the Muslim world generally. Yet, with prompt and determined action these countries can turn things around. That is not an unrealistic goal: Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and others have already achieved it. Even if they don’t attain such spectacular results, at least they could close the gap with the developed nations FEATURE

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Joining the Fast Lane

Introduction During a large-scale disaster caused by either natural or human-made hazards, people crave quality information about the event. Despite the cause, location, or severity of the disaster, citizens pause to learn about the disasters. Today, much of the information is gathered through Internet pathways, both for general public and healthcare providers.1 Google Trends is an Internet service that provides a unique opportunity to assess the level of disaster “interest”. If material can be provided when people are most interested in learning, this can have a profound effect on increasing the public’s knowledge about current and future events. Ignorance can be replaced with knowledge, and fear with understanding.

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Ismail Serageldin

Papers

Themes for the third millennium : the challenge for rural sociology in an urbanizing world

Multilayer and multimetric quality control: the Supercourse.

The Values of Science

Joining the Fast Lane

Using Google Trends to assess interest in disasters.