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Providing the first book-length comprehensive study of Russian political and social thought in the post-Communist era, this book portrays and critically examines the conceptual and theoretical attempts by Russian scholars and political thinkers to make sense of the challenges of post-communism.

"Both timely and topical, with 2005 marking the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, this unique book examines the little-known and under-researched area of German migration to Britain in the immediate post-war era. Authors Inge Weber-Newth and Johannes-Dieter Steinert analyse the political framework of post-war immigration and immigrant policy, and the complex decision-making processes that led to large-scale labour migration from the continent." "Based on rich British and German governmental and non-governmental archive sources, contemporary newspaper articles and nearly 80 biographically oriented interviews with German migrants, this outstanding volume, a must-read for students and scholars in the fields of social history and migration studies, expertly encompasses political as well as social-historical questions and engages with the social, economic and cultural situation of German migrants to Britain from a life-historical perspective."--Jacket

This paper analyzes the processes of distribution and redistribution in post-industrial democracies. We combine a pooled time series data base on welfare state effort and its determinants assembled by Huber, Ragin, and Stephens (1997) with data on income distribution assembled in the Luxembourg Income Survey (LIS) archive. In the case of the LIS data, we re-calculate the micro-data in order to remove the distorting influence of pensioners on pre-tax, pre transfer income distribution. We examine the determinants of three dependent variables: pre-tax, pre-transfer income inequality, post- tax, post transfer income inequality and the proportional reduction in inequality from pre to post tax and transfer inequality. We hypothesized that pre-tax, pre-transfer income inequality would be determined by labor market institutions (union density, bargaining centralization), labor market conditions (unemployment), and economic structures (post-industrialism, third world imports). We hypothesized that the reduction in inequality would be determined by political configurations: directly by left government and indirectly via their effect on welfare state generosity by left government and Christian democratic government. Post tax and transfer income inequality was hypothesized to be a product of the combination of labor market variables and political variables. The results broadly confirms our hypotheses and the overall fit is very good.

Collective identity, the emotionally powerful sense of belonging to a group, is a crucial source of popular legitimacy for nations. However efforts since the 1990s to politically support European integration by using identity mechanisms borrowed from nationalism have had very limited success. European integration may require new, post-national approaches to the relationship between culture and politics. This controversial and timely volume poses the logical question: if identity doesn't effectively connect culture with European integration politics, what does? The book brings together leading scholars from several of the disciplines that have developed concepts of culture and methods of cultural research. These expert interdisciplinary contributors apply a startling diversity of approaches to culture, linking it to facets of integration as varied as external policy, the democratic deficit, economic dynamism and the geography of integration. This book examines commonalities and connections within the European space, as well as representations of these in identity discourses. It will be useful for students and scholars of sociology, geography, anthropology, social psychology, political science and the history of European integration

The article addresses the attempts of contemporary continental philosophy to develop a politics that would move beyond the Hobbesian logic of the constitution of political community. In their readings of Hobbes, Roberto Esposito and Giorgio Agamben emphasize the nihilistic character of Hobbes's approach to community. For Esposito, Hobbes's commonwealth is legitimized by a prior negation of the originary human community in the construction of the state of nature as the state of war. Yet, as Agamben shows, this negative state of nature is never fully transcended by the commonwealth, which persistently reproduces it in the state of exception. These critiques emphasize the complex relation between nature and artifice in Hobbes's thought, which have profound implications for the attempts to arrive at a 'post-Hobbesian' mode of political community. Neither a facile search for a truer, more fundamental state of nature nor an affirmation of artifice and denaturation as constitutive of human community are sufficient to evade the Hobbesian constellation. A genuine move beyond Hobbes would rather consist in thoroughly deactivating the very relation between nature and artifice whereby they become indistinct and no longer negate each other.

ABSTRACTThis article examines the institutional characteristics of market and centrally planned economies and their impact on the environment. It argues that while the planned economies are utilising market mechanisms in environmental protection, their market counterparts are facing more and more environmental problems that require governmental intervention. Using the latest statistical information, the records of sulphur dioxide emission under market and planning over the past twenty years are compared. The findings show that while planned economies generated more pollution due to energy inefficiency, they were nevertheless quite effective in reducing pollution under centralised coordination. This is particularly true at the initial stage of pollution control. Although the industrialised market economies were capable of diverting resources into pollution control, they were equally capable of causing environmental disruption, especially at their early stages of industrialisation. Finally, it is argued that environmental protection in post-socialist societies is likely to experience a downturn in the near future. This is due to the decreasing role of government coordination, the lack of a legal system, and the difficulty of developing a well-functioning market.

Social networking services are among the most applied internet services. Studies concerning post-adoption behavior have focused usage motivations, such as usefulness and enjoyment. Nevertheless, the understanding of consumer behavior in the context of these services is still very limited. Especially, there is no model that integrates the highly relevant switching costs to explain the complex interdependencies within the usage phase. Another specific problem of social networking services relates to the acceptance of revenue models. This study contributes to closing this research gap by proposing a model of post-adoption behavior which covers these aspects. The model assumes two important mechanisms: a loyalty-centered dedication-based mechanism, and a constraint-based mechanism, which refers to the switching costs involved. The focus of the model is widened beyond usage intention to other dependent variables which are crucial from a business perspective, such as usage concentration, willingness to pay and acceptance of advertisements. The empirical test of the proposed model was conducted using a sample (N=208) from users of social networking services. The results of structural equation modeling analysis indicate that the model is able to explain substantially the variance of some of the dependent variables, such as usage intention and usage concentration. Concerning the revenue model acceptance, three positions of users to the financing of service providers are deduced: information seller, privacy concerned user and free rider. Based on the results, theoretical and practical implications are derived.

This paper begins with a brief overview of the origins and continued use of standpoint theory in the social sciences. It highlights both historical and contemporary challenges to the utility of standpoint theory as a critical scholarly tool, including developments such as intersectionality and transgenderism / transracialism. Specifically, the implications of a post-truth era for standpoint theory are considered alongside the affective turn, purity politics and the critique of critique. Given the slow, but steady, erosion of the ivory tower in which academics enjoyed privileged access to 'truth', this paper concludes with the need to foster scholar activism via new forms of knowledge politics that move beyond existing approaches to standpoint theory.