Suchergebnisse

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Under the current Social Security benefit formula, retired workers can receive benefits at age 65 that equal about 50 percent of preretirement earnings for an illustrative low-wage worker but only about 30 percent for an illustrative high-wage worker. Factors other than earnings also influence the distribution of benefits, including the program's provisions for disabled workers, spouses, children, and survivors. Changes in the program over time also affect the distribution of benefits across generations. Social Security faces a long-term structural financing shortfall. Program changes to address that shortfall could alter the way Social Security's benefits and revenues are distributed across the population and affect the income security of millions of Americans. The Chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging asked us to discuss how selected Social Security reform proposals might affect the distribution of benefits and taxes."

The aim of this paper is to analyse the interrelationship between the structural changes and personal destinies of people who worked in the secondary sector at the beginning of the transition period. The focal question is whether structural and institutional changes were brought about by a minimum of adaptations and fluctuations or a by maximum of turbulence and mobility. The paper is based on indepth interviews conducted in 2003 and 2004 with people who graduated from secondary educational institutions in 1983 and belong to the so-called 'winners' cohort. One of the pivotal results of the analysis is that when companies were winding down and being reorganised, it launched processes of intercompany workers' displacement and lead to their imminent unemployment. Individuals changed their plans and behaviour because they had to adapt. Opportunities proved to be less a matter of individual control and planning, than of unfavourable structural conditions. A work place in the secondary sector often worked as a 'push' factor for mobility during the reforms, as massive layoffs and restructuring in the economy did not leave any other choices for people than to start looking for new possibilities. In spite of some attempts to set up businesses, the majority of former industrial workers belong to the same occupational group and are working in the same sector, even 15 years after the reforms. This means that the relative occupational ranking of the workers remained the same despite the change in the political and social order.

ABSTRACTDevelopment alternatives arguably emerge out of practices, negotiations and critiques of dominant development narratives and paradigms. Critical Development Studies' (CDS) practices of insightful critique and a willingness to challenge hegemonic paradigms are alive and well. Yet this article argues that CDS could fruitfully pay attention to emergent issues that have yet to receive sustained analysis and critique. The article focuses on three very different registers of development futures: evolutionary and resilience‐based thinking; post‐neoliberal experiments in Latin America; and the challenge of social heterogeneity. After summarizing the issues involved with respect to each topic, the article suggests some aspects that require further research and debate.

ABSTRACT Aid encounters in three community forestry endeavours reveal different strategies of development cooperation. The first, intervention, is a unilaterally designed aid strategy where the external intervening party takes the lead, sets goals, draws up plans, etc. The second, facilitation, is a mutually designed strategy of cooperation which focuses on collective action and mutual learning. The third, encouragement of self‐development, is a unilaterally designed strategy where local actors take the lead in development endeavours. This article analyses these three distinctive strategies with reference to social, discursive, political and performative practices found in development cooperation. This provides an integrated framework for assessing local community situations which could guide strategic decisions and promote effective development cooperation.

This article argues that the specific features and dynamics of China's environmentalism can be attributed to two factors: the 'greening' of the Chinese state at the time when environmentalism emerged, and the alternating politics of toleration and strict control of social organizations. As a result, environmentalism has developed in a gradual way, encompassing the various forms of 'green' NGOs that we see in the West and the ex–socialist states of Eastern and Central Europe. Yet, on the other hand, environmentalism was also robbed of the opportunity, as well as the immediate urgency, to openly confront the government. This is where it deviates from environmentalism in the West and the former Eastern–bloc countries.

This article explores the links between globalization and ethnic violence in comparative perspective. By looking at ethnographic material from Central Africa, Europe, India and China, the paper suggests that bodily violence between social intimates may be viewed as a form of vivisection, and as an effort to resolve unacceptable levels of uncertainty through bodily deconstruction. This approach may cast light on the surplus of rage displayed in many recent episodes of inter‐group violence. At the same time, the study suggests that the conditions for such extreme and intimate violence may partly lie in the deformation of national and local spaces of everyday life by the physical and moral pressures of globalization.

ABSTRACTWith the end of the Cold War, some students of international affairs have suggested that the next field of conflict will be defined in cultural terms, between West and East, and particularly between liberal democracy and Islam. In this essay, it is argued that constructing a dichotomy between 'rational' Western democracy and 'irrational' Islam is not only dangerous but hypocritical. Support for the most backward and fanatical forms of Islamic fundamentalism has long been an element in the global geopolitical strategies of Western democracies. The trade in oil and arms has had particularly perverse social and political effects, which must be confronted in order to provide greater opportunities for the development of a modern civil society in the Arab world.

ABSTRACTNeo‐liberal theories of informality have emphasized the potential of the informal sector for independent employment creation and growth. An alternative perspective is provided by the structuralist 'informalization' approach which regards the expansion of informal activity as part of the restructuring strategy of the formal sector in the face of economic recession. The informalization perspective challenges the traditional notions of the informal sector by focusing on such issues as differentiation, social networks, subcontracting and supply linkages with the formal sector, and the role of the state in informal sector expansion. Despite its First World and Latin American focus, the informalization approach offers important insights for the study of urban informal sectors in Africa.

Intro -- Contents -- About the Author -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- 1 Foreword -- Part I The Transformation of Traditional Grassroots Social Order and Significance of Its Modern Construction -- 2 The Cognitive Paradigms for Understanding Traditional Grassroots Social Order -- 2.1 Self-Governance or Official Governance -- 2.2 Different Cognitive Paradigms for Understanding Self-Governance and Official Governance -- 2.3 The Theoretical Origin of the Cognitive Paradigms -- 3 Rules of Order: Structure of Social Authorities at the Grassroots -- 3.1 Rules and Order -- 3.2 Public Sphere and Private Sphere -- 3.3 Rule of Rituals: A Method or Something Else -- 4 The Structure of Social Order and the Relationship Between Society and State -- 4.1 Order Through the Rule of Rituals and Law and the Relationship Between the Society and the State -- 4.2 The Order Dimension of Tax System: Relationship of Personal Bondage in the Imperial Society -- 4.3 The Structural Pattern of Social Authority and Power at the Grassroots -- 5 Grassroots Governance by Local Government Clerks and Runners and Its Modern Transformation: Social Restructuring and Remolding of Social Order -- 5.1 Rectification of Grassroots Governance by Local Government Clerks and Runners -- 5.2 Social Restructuring and Modernization of Grassroots Authority -- 5.3 From Order Through the Rule of Rituals and Laws to Order Through Modern Authority -- 6 The Significance of Modern Construction of Grassroots Social Order -- 6.1 The Historical Evolution of Social Order Transformation -- 6.2 Social Authority Order System at the Grassroots -- 6.3 The Nature and the Changes of Public Social Relationships -- Part II The Contemporary Authority Structure and Governance System of Grassroots Social Order -- 7 The Historical Basis of the Governance Order in Rural Society.

The pedagogic relation has always been studied and thought about. When education went beyond the limits of family and became universal as a mass education, the connection between educational authority and democratic values turns problematic. With the coming of new information and communications technology (ICT) the scene changes again. The aim of this article is double: on the one hand, gaining insight into recent bibliography about the transformations that ICT introduces in pedagogical authority; on the other hand, checking these results with a field study. The last articles about educational authority and ICT have been examined by means of browsers like Google Scholar, Dialnet or Web of Science, prioritizing the more recent ones. The field study makes use of focus group technique, as well as a subsequent Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDAS), by means of the Atlas.ti.7 programme. As a result, far from destroying teacher's authority, ICT strengthen it, but in a very different perspective from the traditional one; it takes place in a gradual process of adaptation in which the sense of authority is modified, from an imposing character to a demonstrative one. Therefore, the study of the recent literature lights up the impact of the networking society and ICT in educational task, something that it is checked in the field study. On the other hand, the size of the sample and its qualitative character are opened to the perspective about ICT as a reinforcement of teacher authority, as we suggest, instead of its cancellation, as most critical views point out. ; La relación pedagógica ha sido siempre objeto de estudio y reflexión. Cuando la educación trasciende el ámbito familiar y se generaliza su acceso en la escuela de masas, se vuelve problemática la conexión entre autoridad docente y valores democráticos. Con la irrupción de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC) el escenario cambia de nuevo. El objetivo de este artículo es doble; por una parte, analizar la bibliografía reciente sobre las transformaciones que las tecnologías imprimen en la autoridad pedagógica; por otro se contrastan esos resultados con un estudio de campo. Se han revisado los últimos artículos sobre la relación entre autoridad docente y TIC a través de Google Scholar, Dialnet o Web of Science, primando su actualidad; el estudio cualitativo se basa en la técnica de los grupos de discusión, así como en el posterior Análisis de Datos Cualitativos Asistido por Ordenador (CAQDAS), por medio del programa Atlas.ti.7. Como resultado, las TIC, lejos de anular la autoridad del profesor la afianzan, aunque con un enfoque muy distinto al tradicional; se advierte así un proceso todavía paulatino de adaptación que modifica el sentido de la autoridad desde un carácter impositivo a uno demostrativo. Por tanto el estudio de la literatura reciente destaca el impacto que la sociedad red y las tecnologías tienen en el quehacer docente, algo que se comprueba en el estudio de campo. Por otro lado el tamaño de la muestra y su carácter cualitativo dejan abierta la perspectiva de si las TIC reforzarán el papel de autoridad del profesor, como aquí se sugiere, o lo harán superfluo, como indican los más críticos.

From the mid-1920s, the dance hall occupied a pivotal place in the culture of working- and lower-middle-class communities in Britain - a place rivalled only by the cinema and eventually to eclipse even that institution in popularity. 'Going to the palais' examines the history of this vital social and cultural institution, exploring the dances, dancers, and dance venues that were at the heart of one of twentieth-century Britain's most significant leisure activities. 'Going to the palais' has several key focuses. First, it explores the expansion of the dance hall industry and the development of a 'mass audience' for dancing between 1918 and 1960. Second, the impact of these changes on individuals and communities is examined, with a particular concentration on working and lower-middle-class communities, and on young men and women. Third, the cultural impact of dancing and dance halls is explored. A key aspect of this debate is an examination of how Britain's dance culture held up against various standardizing processes (commercialization, Americanization, etc.) over the period, and whether we can see the emergence of a 'national' dance culture. Finally, the volume offers an assessment of wider reactions to dance halls and dancing in the period. 'Going to the palais' is concerned with the complex relationship between discourses of class, culture, gender, and national identity and how they overlap - how cultural change, itself a response to broader political, social, and economic developments, was helping to change notions of class, gender, and national identity

Government inspections are a typical approach that the Chinese government adopts in executing its policy agenda and propagating its ideological ideals. However, top-down administrative imperatives as such tend to be consuming in resources and less effective in actual governance. They are not necessarily the most sustainable means to ensure efficient governance in the long term. Bottom-up self-governance in rural China, on the other hand, provides the essential mechanism for sustainable governance. In this paper we study one of these bottom-up self-governance approaches in China&mdash ; rural elections. We propose that, via three distinctive mechanisms, rural elections in China serve as a stabilizer for the entire state and fill the loopholes that top-down government inspections potentially allow. Specifically, we argue that individuals with electoral experiences are less likely to engage in protests, or other forms of collective actions, than those without. This effect holds in that, first, elections improve public goods provision in rural China ; second, voters&rsquo ; personal experience in elections changes their perception of the Chinese regime from being authoritarian to being benevolent and caring ; third, elections expose the Chinese regime to emerging social dissent in a timely fashion that allows for self-correction. This theoretical prescription receives strong empirical, statistical analysis using the latest Asian Barometer Survey (ABS 2014) dataset.

The paper presents an overview of M. Weber's modelling paradigm assessing it against the opportunities of using the models in modern science of public policy and administration. Two types of research problems requiring modelling of different levels are identified. The paper defines the static and the dialectic methods of modelling, the limits and possibilities of their application are defined. The novelty and relevance of the paper lies in the substantiation of advantages and drawbacks of static modelling and in the proving of the importance of normative character of science, which contradicts the traditional Weber's methodology. In public administration one may not rely only upon formal procedures, forms and rules, because this will not reveal the functions of the State and the interests underlying them. A public administration model must be characterised by normative content. Models of social processes must not necessarily reflect the reality exactly, however, they may serve as a tool for simplifying the mechanisms of social reality and for attempting to understand its mechanisms. Modelling may be static or dialectic. Static modelling is simpler since the number of variables it takes account of is smaller. In certain cases static modelling may be presented or desirable due to value considerations raised by the idealistic world. Idealistic philosophy gives rise to relevant phenomena, which can be neither confirmed nor rejected. Such models may be desirable as the given required by a peculiar belief and as components of the given. As far as social science is a value and "humanitarian" science, to such extent metaphysics, the static given and static modelling may yield results. Philosophical idealism is often presented as a source of political and economic liberalism, or a sign of equality Is placed between them. This is not entirely correct since state and social policy studies in the liberal social sciences are based on formal concepts without any normative content. Liberal sociological definitions designed for a parliamentary-democratic constitutional state usually cover only procedures, forms, rules and state activity instruments, avoiding a definition of the State's functions completely or partially. Not only the functions of the State remain unsubstantiated; possible consequences of manifestation of these functions or the interests of those who defend them or any backstairs interests behind the declared interests arc not explained. The Weberian methodological concept of democracy turns liberal democracy and pluralist theory into a sheer arsenal of technical means, which is unpredictable and incapable of explaining the deep phenomena of public administration and the more so - of social policy. It is not only in the West, but also in Eastern Europe including Lithuania, individual politicians and public administration experts wish to reduce the principle of social welfare to the constitutional and legal level, absolutising the legal aspect. Dialectic modelling is a kind of opposite to static modelling, or modelling that may supplement the latter substantially. And this is not just because it is able to "see the context". Using the dialectic relationship one may examine such historical dichotomies as belief and science, nationality and globalism, central and local government, private and public interest etc. In the most general sense, dialectic modelling is focussed on the determination of the content, form, contradiction between content and form, and finding of the place of this relationship in the world's development process. The methodology of dialectic modelling asserts that the dialectic relationship is a universal means of modelling of qualitative processes and may be used for the modelling of the processes for which sufficient qualitative exceptionality may be determined as compared with the previous qualitative stage. Eastern Europe encounters difficulties in social modelling due to a distinct transformational nature of social systems of these countries as well as due to frequent changes in the laws governing social security and tax policy. The latter factor also poses problems for Eastern European social scientists in processing the material and in modelling socio-economic development on its basis.

The paper presents an overview of M. Weber's modelling paradigm assessing it against the opportunities of using the models in modern science of public policy and administration. Two types of research problems requiring modelling of different levels are identified. The paper defines the static and the dialectic methods of modelling, the limits and possibilities of their application are defined. The novelty and relevance of the paper lies in the substantiation of advantages and drawbacks of static modelling and in the proving of the importance of normative character of science, which contradicts the traditional Weber's methodology. In public administration one may not rely only upon formal procedures, forms and rules, because this will not reveal the functions of the State and the interests underlying them. A public administration model must be characterised by normative content. Models of social processes must not necessarily reflect the reality exactly, however, they may serve as a tool for simplifying the mechanisms of social reality and for attempting to understand its mechanisms. Modelling may be static or dialectic. Static modelling is simpler since the number of variables it takes account of is smaller. In certain cases static modelling may be presented or desirable due to value considerations raised by the idealistic world. Idealistic philosophy gives rise to relevant phenomena, which can be neither confirmed nor rejected. Such models may be desirable as the given required by a peculiar belief and as components of the given. As far as social science is a value and "humanitarian" science, to such extent metaphysics, the static given and static modelling may yield results. Philosophical idealism is often presented as a source of political and economic liberalism, or a sign of equality Is placed between them. This is not entirely correct since state and social policy studies in the liberal social sciences are based on formal concepts without any normative content. Liberal sociological definitions designed for a parliamentary-democratic constitutional state usually cover only procedures, forms, rules and state activity instruments, avoiding a definition of the State's functions completely or partially. Not only the functions of the State remain unsubstantiated; possible consequences of manifestation of these functions or the interests of those who defend them or any backstairs interests behind the declared interests arc not explained. The Weberian methodological concept of democracy turns liberal democracy and pluralist theory into a sheer arsenal of technical means, which is unpredictable and incapable of explaining the deep phenomena of public administration and the more so - of social policy. It is not only in the West, but also in Eastern Europe including Lithuania, individual politicians and public administration experts wish to reduce the principle of social welfare to the constitutional and legal level, absolutising the legal aspect. Dialectic modelling is a kind of opposite to static modelling, or modelling that may supplement the latter substantially. And this is not just because it is able to "see the context". Using the dialectic relationship one may examine such historical dichotomies as belief and science, nationality and globalism, central and local government, private and public interest etc. In the most general sense, dialectic modelling is focussed on the determination of the content, form, contradiction between content and form, and finding of the place of this relationship in the world's development process. The methodology of dialectic modelling asserts that the dialectic relationship is a universal means of modelling of qualitative processes and may be used for the modelling of the processes for which sufficient qualitative exceptionality may be determined as compared with the previous qualitative stage. Eastern Europe encounters difficulties in social modelling due to a distinct transformational nature of social systems of these countries as well as due to frequent changes in the laws governing social security and tax policy. The latter factor also poses problems for Eastern European social scientists in processing the material and in modelling socio-economic development on its basis.