Search results for "Sociology and Political Science"
showing 10 items of 2215 documents
The Analysis of the Digital Economy and Society Index in the EU
2019
Abstract The paper analyzes the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), which characterizes the development of digital economy. Based on the data of 28 European countries for 2013–2018, using the panel regression, we studied the influence of the consumption index growth by the purchasing power parity and unemployment among the active population on the structural units of DESI. It is shown that a 1% increase in the consumption index results in about 0.2 increase in the DESI, and an increase in unemployment by 1% leads to about 0.2 DESI decline. It is also shown that the 98% value of DESI is actually determined by its previous trends, and therefore it is impossible to increase this index ra…
Civil society participation in international decision making: recent developments and future perspectives in the indigenous rights arena
2012
This article focuses on key issues and recent developments concerning indigenous peoples' involvement in international decision making affecting their rights and interests. Based on a human rights-based approach to participation, it suggests that while a number of positive steps have been taken to allow indigenous peoples the possibility to take part to, and influence, relevant intergovernmental decision-making processes, there's a need to provide their own self-governing institutions and organisations with a more influential status than that granted to civil society organisations (CSOs) generally, whereby they can exercise different levels of participatory rights, depending upon the nature…
Access to Higher Education: An Instrument for Fair Societies?
2019
Access to higher education (HE) has a long history. To offer a view on the current debates and worldwide issues regarding access to HE, this editorial depicts how the control of educational access has historically been used as an instrument of governance at the interface of two processes: social stratification and the territorialisation of politics. Access to HE has remained embedded in these large structural processes even though HE has expanded from a highly elitist institution into mass education systems with equity of educational opportunities having become a desirable goal across societies. Analysing these processes helps understand the complex mechanisms producing inequalities in HE t…
Esplorare la povertà urbana in una prospettiva mediterranea: il caso del quartiere CEP a Palermo
2020
The paper addresses the issue of the multiple dimensions of urban poverty through mixed analyses carried out in the CEP neighborhood of Palermo. The article tries to avoid incurring the dichotomy between the Global North and South and adopts a Mediterranean perspective, attempting to describe the neighborhood from below and starting from the voices of its youngest inhabitants. In light of the most recent pandemic events, the issue of urban poverty deserves to be explored with renewed academic debates.
An Interview with Zygmunt Bauman: How to Turn the Word into Flesh
2017
Deceased in January this year, the Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has left an extremely rich scholarly legacy. In one of his last academic interviews, he refers to the key issues which had been the subject of his in-depth analysis for many years. Bauman starts with reflections on the gap between political authority and power. Next, given his long-standing research into ‘liquid modernity’, he focuses on the vitality of capitalism, which has now adopted a lighter, consumer form. Another thread of the interview is Bauman’s own research attitude, which he refers to as ‘sociological hermeneutics’. It is characterized by his reluctance to use any ‘-isms’ and a profound mistrust of all…
Field conversations as a data source in qualitative social research
2020
Sammendrag Denne artikkelen belyser feltsamtaler som forskningsverktøy. Feltsamtaler er ofte usynlige og underkommunisert i den vitenskapelige litteraturen. Samtalene lar seg vanskelig tallfeste og beskrive; de mangler tilsynelatende systematikk og framstår gjerne bare som hverdagslig prat. Med søkelys på konteksten for samtalen og samtalens rammer og regi setter artikkelen feltsamtalen inn et kvalitativt metodeunivers. Feltsamtalen plasserer vi i et kontinuum mellom det kvalitative intervjuet på den ene siden og alminnelig prat mellom forsker og informant på den andre. Ved hjelp av eksempler fra vår egen empiriske forskning diskuterer vi feltsamtalenes bidrag som datainnsamlingsverktøy. Vi…
Solidarity in games with a coalition structure
2010
Abstract A new axiomatic characterization of the two-step Shapley value Kamijo (2009) is presented based on a solidarity principle of the members of any union: when the game changes due to the addition or deletion of players outside the union, all members of the union will share the same gains/losses.
Three orientations for understanding educational autonomy: school principals’ voices from Australia, Finland, and Jamaica
2021
This paper reports on the findings from a multi-site case study conducted in Australia, Finland and Jamaica which explored the conditions that enabled and constrained the autonomy of school principals. Systematic data collection was carried out in the form of interviews of school principals and the data was analysed using a qualitative approach. The analysis indicates that: (1) school principals’ practices are prefigured by the peculiarities of historical trajectories and ideological traditions enmeshed in schooling sites; (2) these prefiguring arrangements in turn influence varying realisations of autonomous decision making practices across national sites; and (3) even in the expression of…
Leadership practices in relation to men's work-family balance in Finnish organizations
2020
Leadership practices in organizations play an important role in shaping the conditions for employees’ work-family balance. Previous research on the topic has mainly focused on women; fathers are said to receive little support from leadership for combining work and family. In this study, the focus is on men working in six Finnish organizations representing male-dominated, female-dominated and gender-balanced organizations. Although Finland is considered a frontrunner in gender equality globally, Finnish women still carry the main responsibility for housework and child-care. Through a discursive approach, we seek to answer the following research question: What kind of discourses do working me…
Dynamic properties of successful plural leadership configuration: An exploratory process-study
2023
Our article introduces an exploratory process study of successful plural leadership configuration in searching for alternative solutions to wicked problems. The study was executed within four educational organisations that solved challenging wicked problems arising from today’s changing contexts. We argue that plural leadership configuration is a dynamic process when people in diverse organisational positions, roles, and levels design profitable endeavours through their ideas and activities, bring about desirable outcomes within diverse conditions and outline the future. We searched for potential systemic patterns, characteristics, and structure within this dynamic process. To find these p…