Search results for "Politics"
showing 10 items of 2266 documents
Democracy and Depression: A Cross-National Study of Depressive Symptoms and Nonparticipation
2020
Depression is the most common mental health disorder. It has consequences not only on individuals but also on social and political levels. We argue that depressive symptoms impair political participation by reducing the motivation and physical energy of sufferers. We test our hypotheses by conducting regression analyses of four nationally representative cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys that collectively span many democracies. Our results are threefold. First, we find that the severest depressive symptoms lower the probability of voting by 0.05–0.25 points, an effect that is exceeded only by education and age. Second, we show that depressive symptoms negatively affect political inter…
Empowered by stigma? Pioneer organic farmers' stigma management strategies
2019
Abstract Pioneers of organic farming often faced social challenges as their innovative ideas on agriculture not only encountered opposition in the conventional farming community, but led to stigmatization of organic farmers as social deviants. In this study, we examine what kind of stigma management strategies pioneer organic farmers engage with in order to cultivate an alternative positive image of themselves. Our research is based on the interviews with 14 pioneer organic farmers. Based on a qualitative analysis of the interviews, we provide a model of those strategies that the creation from a stigmatized to valued identity requires. Our study increases the understanding of the institutio…
Imagining Africa and blackness in the Russian empire: from extra-textualarapkaand distant cannibals to Dahomey amazon shows – live in Moscow and Riga
2013
In the nineteenth century, Dahomey amazon shows, traveling circuses with menageries and ‘African villages,’ emerged as part of the transnational entertainment industry. This article extends the geography of this global model and generic system and its role in the visual politics of whiteness and blackness in a context outside the imperial colonization of Africa. The first sections examine a rise of visuality in the Russian imperial imagination of race, Africa and blackness through a ‘symptomatic’ reading of Aleksandr Griboedov's play Woe from Wit and Arkadii Averchenko's Death of an African Hunter. These are followed by a discussion of the Dahomey amazon shows in Moscow and their significan…
Collective memory and political generations: A survey of German journalists
1993
Abstract In 1989, just before German reunification, 498 German journalists were asked to indicate which, from a list of 34 major historical events, such as the end of World War II, the 1949 German currency reform, the building of the Berlin wall, the student movement, and the Chernobyl disaster, they vividly remembered, which still oriented their political thinking, and their political reaction to these events. While some events stand out for all ages, younger journalists, having no memory of World War II and its aftermath, focused more exclusively on such recent events as Chernobyl and the discovery of the AIDS virus. The dominant thrust from recent historical experiences on all age groups…
Selective attention in the news feed: An eye-tracking study on the perception and selection of political news posts on Facebook
2018
Social networking sites such as Facebook are becoming increasingly important as a source for news. However, few studies have investigated what drives attention to content within the news feed and what influences the selection of news posts. We hypothesized that attitude consistency, the credibility of a source, and comments of other users raise interest in a news post in the news feed and influence the selection decision. A 2 × 2 × 2 laboratory experiment ( N = 103) using eye-tracking measurement showed that attitude consistency did not influence attention distribution in the news feed, but users preferred to select news posts with content reinforcing their attitudes. Participants spent mor…
Political patterning of urban namescapes and post-socialist toponymic change: A quantitative analysis of three Romanian cities
2020
Abstract Critical scholars of place-name studies have compellingly demonstrated that significant transformations in a society's namescape follow suit major power shifts and regime changes. However, despite the wealth of particular case studies existing in the literature, scarce efforts have been made to examine street name changes in a comparative framework using statistical modeling techniques of multivariate analysis. This paper aims to overcome these shortcomings by developing a comparative approach to analyzing post-socialist street-naming transformations in three Romanian cities from Transylvania (Brașov, Cluj-Napoca, and Sibiu). Based on comprehensive data collected from multiple sour…
Parity of Esteem: A Conceptual Approach to the Northern Ireland Conflict
2010
This article applies a method of conceptual analysis to understand peace processes in a divided society. Through the analysis of the concept of parity of esteem, this article examines some neglected dimensions of conflict studies, including politicizations, contestations and politicking involving key concepts in peace processes and conflict resolution. The analysis focuses specifically on politics in Northern Ireland, but it also seeks to inform a more general understanding of the dynamics of peace processes and conflict reconciliation.
Reintegration Failure and Outsourcing Upside: Organisation of Public Transport in Norway
2014
AbstractAfter two decades of public sector outsourcing, debates for reintegration of services back into the public sector have emerged. However, so far outsourcing remains prevalent and reintegration is sparsely utilised. An in-depth analysis of the reorganisation of public transport in a Norwegian county, Sor-Trondelag, provides three key reasons as to why there is an ‘outsourcing upside’. Firstly, existing structures limit available alternatives for legislators, thereby making reintegration of public services back into public hands difficult. Secondly, under certain conditions competitive tendering may enhance political steering and thus make outsourcing politically desirable. Thirdly, th…
Environmental conflict as a social construction: Nuclear waste conflicts in Finland
1996
Environmental conflicts are a familiar phenomenon in all industrial societies, and social scientists have produced a great number of studies of different environmental conflicts. One conventional way to conceptualize them is known as NIMBY ("not in my backyard"). Although the recent NIMBY literature has revealed the complexity of the issue, the approach continues to be beset by a number of problems. It has been difficult to conceptualize the dynamic character of a conflict from this perspective. This paper suggests that the theory of environmental conflicts should shift in an epistemological and social interactionist direction, toward social constructionist theory. This paper offers a const…
The Five-star Movement inside the institutions in Sicily: from ‘swimming the Strait’ to institutionalisation in local politics
2019
This article considers the institutionalisation of the Five-star Movement (M5s) in regional and local councils. It discusses the process of the Movement’s institutionalisation, analysing the development of its internal organisation; its local platforms and political performance; its institutional repertoire of action, and the several internal and external conflicts between its own rules and the ‘others’. In particular, the article investigates the changes affecting the M5s after its engagement with the Sicilian regional assembly and Sicilian municipal councils, and the ways in which the specific institutionalisation process it underwent was influenced by the complexities of the political an…