Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

We may not be able to make you love reading, but archaeology of knowledge will lead you to love reading starting from now. Book is the window to open the new world. The world that you want is in the better stage and level. World will always guide you to even the prestige stage of the life. You know, this is some of how reading will give you the kindness. In this case, more books you read more knowledge you know, but it can mean also the bore is full.

The archaeology of knowledge

BACKGROUND. Balloon-expandable coronary-artery stents were developed to prevent coronary restenosis after coronary angioplasty. These devices hold coronary vessels open at sites that have been dilated. However, it is unknown whether stenting improves long-term angiographic and clinical outcomes as compared with standard balloon angioplasty. METHODS. A total of 520 patients with stable angina and a single coronary-artery lesion were randomly assigned to either stent implantation (262 patients) or standard balloon angioplasty (258 patients). The primary clinical end points were death, the occurrence of a cerebrovascular accident, myocardial infarction, the need for coronary-artery bypass surgery, or a second percutaneous intervention involving the previously treated lesion, either at the time of the initial procedure or during the subsequent seven months. The primary angiographic end point was the minimal luminal diameter at follow-up, as determined by quantitative coronary angiography. RESULTS. After exclusions, 52 patients in the stent group (20 percent) and 76 patients in the angioplasty group (30 percent) reached a primary clinical end point (relative risk, 0.68; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.50 to 0.92; P = 0.02). The difference in clinical-event rates was explained mainly by a reduced need for a second coronary angioplasty in the stent group (relative risk, 0.58; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.40 to 0.85; P = 0.005). The mean (+/- SD) minimal luminal diameters immediately after the procedure were 2.48 +/- 0.39 mm in the stent group and 2.05 +/- 0.33 mm in the angioplasty group; at follow-up, the diameters were 1.82 +/- 0.64 mm in the stent group and 1.73 +/- 0.55 mm in the angioplasty group (P = 0.09), which correspond to rates of restenosis (diameter of stenosis, > or = 50 percent) of 22 and 32 percent, respectively (P = 0.02). Peripheral vascular complications necessitating surgery, blood transfusion, or both were more frequent after stenting than after balloon angioplasty (13.5 vs. 3.1 percent, P < 0.001). The mean hospital stay was significantly longer in the stent group than in the angioplasty group (8.5 vs. 3.1 days, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS. Over seven months of follow-up, the clinical and angiographic outcomes were better in patients who received a stent than in those who received standard coronary angioplasty. However, this benefit was achieved at the cost of a significantly higher risk of vascular complications at the access site and a longer hospital stay.

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A Comparison of Balloon-Expandable-Stent Implantation with Balloon Angioplasty in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

The era of Big Data has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists, mathematicians, political scientists, bio-informaticists, sociologists, and other scholars are clamoring for access to the massive quantities of information produced by and about people, things, and their interactions. Diverse groups argue about the potential benefits and costs of analyzing genetic sequences, social media interactions, health records, phone logs, government records, and other digital traces left by people. Significant questions emerge. Will large-scale search data help us create better tools, services, and public goods? Or will it usher in a new wave of privacy incursions and invasive marketing? Will data analytics help us understand online communities and political movements? Or will it be used to track protesters and suppress speech? Will it transform how we study human communication and culture, or narrow the palette of research options and alter what ‘research’ means? Given the rise of Big Data as a socio-tech...

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Critical questions for big data

The social scientific analysis of social class is attracting renewed interest given the accentuation of economic and social inequalities throughout the world. The most widely validated measure of social class, the Nuffield class schema, developed in the 1970s, was codified in the UK’s National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) and places people in one of seven main classes according to their occupation and employment status. This principally distinguishes between people working in routine or semi-routine occupations employed on a ‘labour contract’ on the one hand, and those working in professional or managerial occupations employed on a ‘service contract’ on the other. However, this occupationally based class schema does not effectively capture the role of social and cultural processes in generating class divisions. We analyse the largest survey of social class ever conducted in the UK, the BBC’s 2011 Great British Class Survey, with 161,400 web respondents, as well as a nationally representative sample survey, which includes unusually detailed questions asked on social, cultural and economic capital. Using latent class analysis on these variables, we derive seven classes. We demonstrate the existence of an ‘elite’, whose wealth separates them from an established middle class, as well as a class of technical experts and a class of ‘new affluent’ workers. We also show that at the lower levels of the class structure, alongside an ageing traditional working class, there is a ‘precariat’ characterised by very low levels of capital, and a group of emergent service workers. We think that this new seven class model recognises both social polarisation in British society and class fragmentation in its middle layers, and will attract enormous interest from a wide social scientific community in offering an up-to-date multi-dimensional model of social class.

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A new model of social class : findings from the BBC's Great British Class Survey Experiment.

This ar ticle argues that in an age of knowing capitalism, sociologists have not adequately thought about the challenges posed to their expertise by the proliferation of `social' transactional data which are now routinely collected, processed and analysed by a wide variety of private and public institutions. Drawing on British examples, we argue that whereas over the past 40 years sociologists championed innovative methodological resources, notably the sample survey and the in-depth interviews, which reasonably allowed them to claim distinctive expertise to access the `social' in powerful ways, such claims are now much less secure. We argue that both the sample survey and the in-depth interview are increasingly dated research methods, which are unlikely to provide a robust base for the jurisdiction of empirical sociologists in coming decades. We conclude by speculating how sociology might respond to this coming crisis through taking up new interests in the `politics of method'.

The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology

Drawing on the first systematic study of cultural capital in contemporary Britain, 'Culture, Class, Distinction' examines the role played by culture in the relationships between class, gender and ethnicity. Its findings promise a major revaluation of the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu's account of the relationships between class and culture.

Culture, Class, Distinction

The travails of class theory the limits to class consciousness economic inequality and social class social mobility and the "Nuffield paradigm" individualisation and cultural distinction the organizational restructuring of class relations.

Class Analysis and Social Transformation

Global Change and Local Belonging The Limits of Local Attachment Parenting, Education and Elective Belonging Suburbia and the Aura of Place The Ambivalence of Urban Identity 'Manchester, So Much to Answer For' Work Cultures and Social Ties Mediascapes in the Mediation of the Local and the Global Cosmopolitanism, Diaspora and Global Reflexivity

Mike Savage

Papers

A new model of social class : findings from the BBC's Great British Class Survey Experiment.

The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology

Culture, Class, Distinction

Class Analysis and Social Transformation

Globalization and belonging