Showing papers in "International Review of Sociology in 2010"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate how human and social capital contribute to individual productivity and find that social capital is the most important factor to determine productivity, while human capital has mixed effects from human capital; only in one firm did human capital have a noticeable effect on productivity; tenure has no effects on productivity.
Abstract: In this article we investigate how human and social capital contribute to individual productivity. We study three firms that complete all their tasks as projects. The employees in all firms initiate and organise their projects. We collected archival data from the firms on performance, human capital, tenure, gender and their project activities. Social network data are generated from interviews and a survey. We find that social capital is the most important factor to determine productivity. We found mixed effects from human capital; only in one firm did human capital have a noticeable effect on productivity; tenure has no effects on productivity.
87 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the informalisation of labour should not be conceived as necessarily taking place in the shadow of the state, and that the state was a strong active agency behind the process of informalisation.
Abstract: Globalisation has affected the industrial trajectories of developing countries, producing an increasing disarticulation between the management of production and regimes of labour control While production regimes have been projected into the global arena, labour regimes have remained apparently anchored to regulatory mechanisms provided by local social structures, and gone through increasing processes of informalisation Examining the case of the Indian garment sector, this paper argues that the informalisation of labour should not be conceived as necessarily taking place ‘in the shadow of the state’ In fact, in the case presented here, the state was a strong active agency behind the process of informalisation, which it supported through formal policies and through its progressive alignment with the interests of capital
50 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the relationship between ethnicity and entrepreneurship in the sociology of immigrant economies and argues that what is ethnic in an ethnic economy has often been confusingly conceptualized and that several factors now call for re-assessing the ethnic nature of immigrants' business activities.
Abstract: This article examines critically the relationship between ethnicity and entrepreneurship in the sociology of immigrant economies. It argues that what is ethnic in an ethnic economy has often been confusingly conceptualised and that several factors now call for re-assessing the ethnic nature of immigrants' business activities. On the basis of a review of recent research, three such factors are outlined: the porosity of ethnic boundaries to cross-group business interactions; the diversity within immigrant economies in terms of status, gender, class and generation; and the political and institutional context in which immigrant economies take place. The conclusion stresses the need for multiple explanations of how and why immigrants become entrepreneurs, which take into account not only the meso-level constituted by ethnicity and social capital, but also micro-individual factors and macro-institutional settings.
49 citations
33 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a case study of a home-grown school feeding program that promotes local food demand is presented, with respect to community involvement in programme implementation and management as well as its socio-economic impacts.
Abstract: This article deepens the understanding of the emerging food sovereignty concept using a case study of a home-grown school feeding programme that promotes local food demand – supply linkages. A school feeding programme in four selected districts in Ghana is analysed with respect to community involvement in programme implementation and management as well as its socio-economic impacts. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches was used in data collection and analysis. Results showed a significant improvement in household food access and months of adequate household food provisioning, which were used as measurement proxies for food sovereignty, as a result of access to local market created by the Ghana School Feeding Programme. However, the study recommends more empirical evidence from research to support the claim that using locally produced food for school feeding actually reduces poverty and malnutrition in rural farming communities.
27 citations
TL;DR: For instance, this paper argued that family-related migration has moved to the centre of public debates about migration and integration and associated debates about multiculturalism and diversity across Europe, and the debates the m...
Abstract: Across Europe, family-related migration has moved to the centre of public debates about migration and integration and associated debates about multiculturalism and diversity. In these debates the m...
25 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors apply a theory of institutional change enriched with mezzorules, fluidity and agency to India's informal sector institutional evolution using two illustrative examples.
Abstract: The paper applies a theory of institutional change enriched with mezzorules, fluidity and agency to India's informal sector institutional evolution using two illustrative examples. The concrete examples are rooted in unfree labour and rural casual labouring in India, a country which has a high degree of informality. Section 1 introduces some concepts, and section 2 examines processes of institutional change in the informal sector. In section 3, two illustrations are explored: (1) the norms for girl child bonded labour; (2) the individualisation of women labourers. Section 4 concludes. The fluidity of institutional rules demands a recognition of the supra-economic nature of the context within which economic-institutional change occurs. We propose the analysis of mezzorules in a dialogic research context, i.e. interactions among workers and collective agents – as a helpful and transformative approach for sociologists specialising in the informal economy.
18 citations
TL;DR: A women's/gender studies were established in the Eastern European post-communist countries during the 1990s, as a new field of academic research and higher education as mentioned in this paper, and works produced in this framework are often used as expert studies and aim to contribute to the improvement of the condition of women in that region, being at the core of the social and political reconstitution programs during the postcommunist era.
Abstract: Women's/gender studies were established in the Eastern European post-communist countries during the 1990s, as a new field of academic research and higher education. Works produced in this framework are often used as expert studies and aim to contribute to the improvement of the condition of women in that region, being at the core of the social and political reconstitution programs during the post-communist era. They were established by agents who were simultaneously active in different social spheres (scientific space, civil society associations, or institutionalized politics) and who exemplarily personify the multisituated feminism of the globalization era. These studies criss-cross national and international levels as well as scientific and militant logics. Hence they seem a pertinent entry to study the reconstruction of social sciences, the emergence of new academic topics, the international circulation and the importation of scientific questions and, finally, the recomposition of the academic elites w...
18 citations
TL;DR: This paper used an oral history resource to document the transformation of population policies into women's focused practices and the perception that guided the major actors of this local revolution, where women program officers played a central role, along with prominent political figures.
Abstract: This article utilizes an oral history resource to document the transformation of population policies into women's focused practices and the perception that guided the major actors of this local revolution. The Population Control movement has been a powerful political and health movement that developed family planning to reduce population growth during the Cold War era. It relied upon philanthropic commitment before successfully becoming an official US policy from Nixon to Reagan. The anti-abortion controversies and political conservatism then diminished considerably the global acceptance of population policies. The revolution in population policies demanded a patient effort to conquer strategic positions and to develop new policies. Women program officers played a central role, along with prominent political figures. Most of the transformation occurred at the Cairo conference in 1994, where moderate population experts and feminists came to a compromise. This study finally focuses on the repercussions of t...
17 citations
16 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a prosopographic analysis of three gender-inclusive civic associations, the Union pour l'Action Morale (later Union pour la Verite), the Societe de Sociologie de Paris, and the Society for Education Sociale, demonstrates that at the turn of the twentieth century intellectual sociability and the networks it fostered enabled certain well-connected women to practice citizenship without the right to vote.
Abstract: Prosopographic analysis of three gender-inclusive civic associations, the Union pour l'Action Morale (later Union pour la Verite), the Societe de Sociologie de Paris, and the Societe pour l’Education Sociale, demonstrates that at the turn of the twentieth century intellectual sociability and the networks it fostered enabled certain well-connected women to practice citizenship without the right to vote. If gender inclusive, these enterprises were far from egalitarian. But their social composition and the sociability that characterized them facilitated women's access to the public sphere, an important dimension of citizenship. For this reason, the article concludes, models of citizenship without voting rights that emerged during the period appealed to contemporary women, to whom they seemed much less contradictory than we find them a century later.
TL;DR: The glurbanization theory as discussed by the authors is based on the premise that major urban transformations and reconfigurations through interscalar strategies and rescaling processes are a good method of increasing the capacity and status of cities (and their regions) to develop global competitive advantages.
Abstract: This article analyzes glurbanization theory. The theory rests on the premise that major urban transformations and reconfigurations through interscalar strategies and rescaling processes are a good method of increasing the capacity and status of cities (and their regions) to develop global competitive advantages. This urban model stems from the fact that cities are increasingly exposed to global competition. An important tenet of glurbanization is that large cities worldwide, called ‘global cities’, come to share the same essential attributes (i.e., cityscapes, skyscrapers, financial markets, cultural centers, etc.). Another important tenet of glurbanization is that it collapses the global and the local: urban spaces are restructured so that globalization does not become just a top-down hierarchical design whereby the nation-state dictates how things work; rather, globalization is made to happen both from ‘below’ and from ‘above’.
TL;DR: In this paper, the effects of trafficking on women's physical and sexual health were examined in Monterrey city, Mexico during the years 2007 and 2008, and the authors found that trafficked women suffer from a wide range of physical, mental, and sexual violence.
Abstract: There has been little research on the health consequences of trafficking in women in Mexico and this study examines the effects of trafficking in women. Twenty internally trafficked women were interviewed in Monterrey city, Mexico, during the years 2007 and 2008. Although the study found that trafficking of women in Mexico results from multi-causal factors, we found that in general trafficked women suffer a wide range of physical and sexual violence. This has direct consequences on their physical and mental health and in particular their sexual health.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the relationship between the state and India's rural informal sector by focusing on the collective mobilizations of middle-sized agricultural producers in Western Uttar Pradesh.
Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between the state and India's rural informal sector by focusing on the collective mobilizations of middle-sized agricultural producers in Western Uttar Pradesh. These cultivators are involved in an economic sector which is at the same time capitalist, largely informal but also, to some extent, state-regulated. Through their mobilizations organized by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), they have attempted to influence state regulation of agricultural markets, obtaining increased input subsidies and better procurement prices for their produce, and thus an increase in the rates of return and profitability of their farming activity. The paper conceptualizes the modality of production of these farmers as ‘subsidized capitalism’, alluding to the self-employed and self-funded producers with holdings large enough to support a pair of bullocks defined as ‘bullock capitalists’ by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (1987), while denoting the crucial role of public subsidies in preservin...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors have conducted four social inquiries in Italian urban contexts involving male and female young people with and without children and the principal purpose of this research programme is to interpret the determinants of the Italian phenomenon of delaying the birth of the first child.
Abstract: A delay in the transition to parenthood is common to all European countries, but Mediterranean and North European young people follow different pathways of transition to adulthood, which are described in the article. Since 2003, we have conducted four social inquiries in Italian urban contexts involving male and female young people with and without children and the article is therefore focused on Italy. The principal purpose of this research programme is to interpret the determinants of the Italian phenomenon of delaying the birth of the first child. The interpretative axes for conceptualizing the problem are intergender and intergenerational comparisons. In particular, the results of these inquiries indicate that in Italy the delay of the parenthood transition is linked to the policy-makers' ‘delay’ in realizing that the decision to postpone having children is not strongly linked to any ‘crisis of family values’. The real problem is that since the beginning of the twentieth century, the present younger g...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose assez souvent une representation spontanee d'apres laquelle, ne dans les annees 60 aux Etats-Unis (gender), il aurait penetre le monde anglo-saxon, puis l'Europe de l'Ouest, l'Euro...
Abstract: Le genre suscite assez souvent une representation spontanee d'apres laquelle, ne dans les annees 60 aux Etats-Unis (gender), il aurait penetre le monde anglo-saxon, puis l'Europe de l'Ouest, l'Euro...
TL;DR: The authors examined intertwined cosmopolitan and national narratives in the context of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games through a discursive analysis of the opening and closing ceremonies, and provided some insight into understandings of Chinese national identity as a displaced agent in the "birth" and "evolution" of Western European civilisation, who returned to claim a central place in human history.
Abstract: The article examines intertwined cosmopolitan and national narratives in the context of the Beijing 2008 Games. Through a discursive analysis of the opening and closing ceremonies it seeks to provide some insight into understandings of Chinese national identity as a ‘displaced’ agent in the ‘birth’ and ‘evolution’ of Western European civilisation, who returns to claim a central place in human history. The artistic production of such resentful discourses develops alongside its technological counterpart, providing insight into the ways national citizenships remain gendered and racialised. For activist networks and the critics of the Olympic project this ‘mediated’ cosmopolitanism harbours a performative contradiction, as it sanctions Chinese policies that erase certain social identities from the nation-state. The multicultural ambiance of the Olympic mega-event symbolically resolves the crisis generated by the calls for national development through careful urban planning that violates human rights. An inter...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present two different ways by which labour standards are regulated in the city: first by the state labour administration and second, by the market of global buyers implementing codes of conduct.
Abstract: This paper is based on fieldwork for a doctoral thesis on the metalware cluster of Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh. I present two different ways by which labour standards are regulated in the city: first by the state labour administration and second, by the market of global buyers implementing codes of conduct. In the context of debate over state versus market-based and voluntary regulation, I discuss the text of each regulatory regime and how this is interpreted, used, subverted and applied in the city's export firms. I show how enforcement of laws and corporate ‘ethical’ codes is undermined not only by limited capacity to survey units deep inside the city, but also by the incentives of enforcement agents. The regulatory regime of the state is revealed to be morally ambivalent, where justice for workers depends on patronage inside the labour department, and on an opaque and complex legal code which keeps employers vulnerable to inspector harassment. By contrast, the regulatory regime of the market is shown to b...
TL;DR: In this paper, the morality of risk and the risk of morality are discussed in the context of risk assessment in the setting of risk management, and the authors propose a framework for risk assessment.
Abstract: (1987). The morality of risk and the risk of morality. International Review of Sociology Series 1: Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 87-101.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore civil suicide through interviews held in Algeria, in which suicide is described as a more feminine, young and rural phenomena, which is reinforced by the upheaval of suicide bombings and terrorism, the clamour of which conceals the phenomenon of civil suicide.
Abstract: According to a popular and widespread belief, suicide is a rare phenomenon, if not absent at all, in Muslim societies. It is considered as a sociologically irrelevant because of the cognitive power and efficacy of religion. This idea is reinforced by the upheaval of suicide bombings and terrorism, the clamour of which conceals the phenomenon of civil suicide. This article will explore civil suicide through interviews held in Algeria, in which suicide is described as a more feminine, young and rural phenomena. These three dimensions are marginal in social science studies on ‘Islamic’ suicide, which are mainly centred on a Durkheimian analysis – that is to say an analysis which considers suicide as an essentially urban and male phenomenon, far from gender issues and conformed to dominant regimes of discourse.
TL;DR: The participation in a research study of the 6th Framework Programme for Undocumented Workers Transitions (FPTP) brought to light a number of elements regarding immigrant women workers that are wor...
Abstract: The participation in a research study of the 6th Framework Programme, titled ‘Undocumented Workers Transitions’, brought to light a number of elements regarding immigrant women workers that are wor...
TL;DR: In this article, the biological basis of culture is discussed, and the authors propose a method to identify the most important genes for each of the genes in a person's DNA sequence.
Abstract: (1989). The biological basis of culture. International Review of Sociology Series 1: Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 33-60.
TL;DR: The study of Arab immigrants has become susceptible to stereotypes because in an era of unprecedented diversity sociological investigation has neglected spirituality in the form of Islam as mentioned in this paper, and therefore any investigation of Arab immigrations is impossible without acknowledgement of a spiritual dimension.
Abstract: Post 11 September 2001, terrorism has emerged as the defining stereotype of Arab immigrants. As a result, the study of Arab immigrants has become susceptible to stereotypes because in an era of unprecedented diversity sociological investigation has neglected spirituality. Among the various Arab populations spirituality is fundamental. Subsequently any investigation of Arab immigrants is impossible without acknowledgement of a spiritual dimension in the form of Islam. Moving beyond the stereotypical implications of terrorism will require Western sovereignties to be more informed about the Arab culture. Otherwise, their lack of effort will destine the uninformed to the stereotypical implications of terrorism that will not be limited to Arab immigrants but extend to other populations as well.
TL;DR: The relationship between local governance and participation in the European Union has been discussed in this article, where the authors focus on the role of the CoR and the actors of civil society.
Abstract: Since the publication of the White Paper on European governance, COM (2001) 428, the Commission has stressed that ‘people increasingly distrust institutions and politics or are simply not interested in them’, registering the growing gap between the EU and European citizens. In this context, the European institutions have been promoting several initiatives with the aim of facilitating participation in the European decision-making process. The paper will focus on: (1) the relationship between local governance and participation in the European Union; in this frame, the European institutions tried to start a dialogue with local authorities (see the role of the CoR) and the actors of civil society (through both the European Economic and Social Committee and the Transparency Policy); (2) the consequences either in the theoretical field or in practice. On one hand, the initiatives carried out have created the basis for a new model of multi-level governance and ‘participative democracy’; on the other hand the dem...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse the relationship between conservatism and fascism in a historical and comparative perspective, and find that under certain social conditions and historical constellations conservatism eventually evolves into or functions as fascism.
Abstract: The article attempts to reanalyze the relationships between conservatism and fascism in a historical and comparative perspective. This analysis is premised on the view that to fully understand and explain conservatism requires reexamining its comparative-historical relations to fascism, and, alternatively, understanding and explaining the second presupposes taking account of the first. The thrust of the issue is whether and to what extent conservatism constitutes or develops into fascism, and, conversely, whether the latter represents or results from the former. The central argument and finding is that under certain social conditions and historical constellations conservatism eventually evolves into or functions as fascism. Alternatively, fascism universally represents and reproduces conservatism.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the development of this intercultural bilingual education in two border regions of the State of Amazonas (Alto Solimoes and Alto Rio Negro) near the populations Ticuna, Baniwa and Tukano during the years 1990 and 2000.
Abstract: In Brazil – and more largely in Latin America – the fight of the indigenous movements for the demarcation of their territory and the installation of an intercultural school education contributed to the constitutional changes of the years 1980–1990 which led these States to regard themselves from then on as pluricultural and multiethnic nations and to recognize collective rights specific to native people and tribes living on their territory. The author analyzes the advent and the development of this intercultural bilingual education in two border regions of the State of Amazonas (Alto Solimoes and Alto Rio Negro) near the populations Ticuna, Baniwa and Tukano during the years 1990 and 2000. He shows in particular how the indigenous school, an assimilationist instrument for the Occidental and Christian culture until the 1980s, has been transformed by supporting the reappropriation of the traditional knowledge; meanwhile this school has opened itself to ‘Western’ knowledge in order to make it possible for th...
TL;DR: In this paper, the basic human needs and objective well-being are discussed, and a discussion of the relationship between objective well being and human needs is presented. International Review of Sociology Series 1: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 133-189.
Abstract: (1988). Basic human needs and objective well being. International Review of Sociology Series 1: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 133-189.