Suchergebnisse

This article describes suicide-related penal legislation in contemporary Europe, and analyzes and relates the results to cultural attitudes towards suicide and to national suicide rates. Data were obtained from 42 legal entities. Of these, 34 have penal regulations which - according to definition - chiefly and directly deal with suicide. There are three main types of act: aiding suicide, abetting suicide, and driving to suicide. The laws vary considerably with regard to which acts are sanctioned, how severely they are punished, and whether any special circumstances such as the motive, the result, or the object can make the crime more serious. Various ideologies have inspired legislation: religions, the euthanasia movement, and suicide prevention have all left their mark. There are some cases in which neighboring legal systems have clearly influenced laws on the topic. However, the process seems mostly to have been a national affair, resulting in surprisingly large discrepancies between European legal systems. The laws seem to reflect public opinions: countries which punish the crimes harder have significantly less permissive cultural attitudes towards suicide. Likewise, suicide rates were significantly higher in countries with a narrow scope of criminalization and milder punishments for suicide-related crimes. The cultural and normative elements of society are connected with its suicide mortality.

Understanding where and why political change is happening in a country is a fundamental issue in political geography. While electoral choice is individual, it is influenced by various sociological, cultural, and geographical factors postulated to create 'cultural fields' influencing individual decision-making. Here, we test the cultural field hypothesis on Sweden, an important democracy of Europe long regarded as an example by other European countries, by studying the middle-long-term evolution of the spatial structure of political choice over the last three decades. In testing the cultural field hypothesis, an analysis of spatial correlations is combined with groupings of Swedish municipalities into larger communities reflecting the similarity of their voting profiles. We show that spatial correlations decay logarithmically, which is a sign of long-ranged interactions, and also demonstrate that Sweden can be divided into three or four large and stable politico-cultural communities. More precisely, a transition from three to four main politico-cultural communities is observed. The fourth community, which emerged in the early 2000s is of particular interest as it is characterized by a large vote-share for the Sweden Democrats, while almost all other parties underperform. Moreover, the Swedish electoral landscape seems to be increasingly fragmenting even when the voting profiles of the municipalities over the country are slowly converging.

Understanding where and why political change is happening in a country is a fundamental issue in political geography. While electoral choice is individual, it is influenced by various sociological, cultural, and geographical factors postulated to create 'cultural fields' influencing individual decision-making. Here, we test the cultural field hypothesis on Sweden, an important democracy of Europe long regarded as an example by other European countries, by studying the middle-long-term evolution of the spatial structure of political choice over the last three decades. In testing the cultural field hypothesis, an analysis of spatial correlations is combined with groupings of Swedish municipalities into larger communities reflecting the similarity of their voting profiles. We show that spatial correlations decay logarithmically, which is a sign of long-ranged interactions, and also demonstrate that Sweden can be divided into three or four large and stable politico-cultural communities. More precisely, a transition from three to four main politico-cultural communities is observed. The fourth community, which emerged in the early 2000s is of particular interest as it is characterized by a large vote-share for the Sweden Democrats, while almost all other parties underperform. Moreover, the Swedish electoral landscape seems to be increasingly fragmenting even when the voting profiles of the municipalities over the country are slowly converging.

The growing recognition of the importance of indoor environments as 'active political-ecological spaces' has rarely been followed up by a systematic empirical engagement with the constituent dynamics and conceptual issues associated with infrastructural deprivation in this domain, particularly in non-Western contexts. Therefore, we investigate the relationship between self-reported perceptions of thermal comfort in the home, on the one hand, and a range of sociodemographic, housing, and health-related variables, on the other, via a quantitative analysis of a large-scale survey undertaken in the Eastern Ukrainian town of Stakhanov. Using the perceived level of thermal comfort as a starting point for its empirical explorations, we estimate the number and type of households who feel that they are receiving inadequate energy services in the home. Special attention is paid to the role of buildings in shaping the perceptions of thermal comfort.© 2013 Pion and its licensors.

Background: Russian suicide mortality rates changed rapidly over the second half of the twentieth century. This study attempts to differentiate between underlying period and cohort effects in relation to the changes in suicide mortality in Russia between 1956 and 2005. Methods: Sex-and age-specific suicide mortality data were analyzed using an age-period-cohort (APC) approach. Descriptive analyses and APC modeling with log-linear Poisson regression were performed. Results: Strong period effects were observed for the years during and after Gorbachev ' s political reforms (including the anti-alcohol campaign) and for those following the break-up of the Soviet Union. After mutual adjustment, the cohort-and period-specific relative risk estimates for suicide revealed differing underlying processes. While the estimated period effects had an overall positive trend, cohort-specific developments indicated a positive trend for the male cohorts born between 1891 and 1931 and for the female cohorts born between 1891 and 1911, but a negative trend for subsequent cohorts. Conclusions: Our results indicate that the specific life experiences of cohorts may be important for variations in suicide mortality across time, in addition to more immediate effects of changes in the social environment. ; The manuscript version of this article (Age, period and cohort effects on suicide mortality in Russia, 1956-2007) is part of the thesis Suicide in Russia: A macro-sociological study http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:608268