Social Capital,Migration and Development in the Valles Centrales of Oaxaca,Mexico: Non‐Migrants and Communities of Origin Matter

This article investigates the importance of place‐of‐origin communities to an understanding of the impact of migrant remittances on local development, employing the concept of social capital. Two aspects of social capital (each present prior to migration) are shown to be of significance–family relationships and community organisation. Drawing on recent research in two peasant communities in Oaxaca, Mexico, social capital is used to examine the relevance of non‐migrants in shaping the outcomes of migration in communities of origin. Evaluation of migrant remittances and home‐town associations demonstrates the developmental significance of non‐migrants and communities of origin.     

Mobilität,Wahlbeteiligung und Sozialkapital in Schweizer Gemeinden

This paper investigates the relationship between mobility and voting behavior at different spatial levels. To this end, voter turnout in local municipality issues is compared to that in national matters. We find that the difference between local and national turnout strongly correlates with the mobility of a municipality's population. An explanation for the observed negative relationship is that social networks and the sense of duty towards the local community are weaker in municipalities where people are more mobile. In addition to this core result, it is discussed how mobility affects turnout at the local and national level separately, and it is shown how the different measures might be used as proxies for local social capital in a municipality.     

Towards a More Enabling Representation: Framing an Emergent Conceptual Approach to Measure Social Conditions Following Mega‐Event Transformation in Manaus,Brazil

This paper presents a conceptual and methodological approach for researching social conditions to understand how urban change and development affects a community and its residents. Manaus, in Brazil's Amazonia region, received much criticism after US$300 million that was spent on a 40,000+ seat (upgraded) stadium in a city with no regular sporting tournaments. This paper positions the need to look beyond tangible features and assess social impacts based on community perceptions using ethnography to locate local meanings of social transformation. Attention is needed in communities adjacent to new stadium developments in Manaus to understand inclusion, exclusion and social leveraging.     

National and Local Vulnerability to Climate‐Related Disasters in Latin America: The Role of Social Asset‐Based Adaptation

The Latin American region is particularly prone to climate‐related natural hazards. However, this article argues that natural hazards are only partly to blame for the region's vulnerability to natural disasters with quantitative evidence suggesting instead that income per capita and inequality are main determinants of natural disaster mortality in Latin America. Locally, the region's poor are particularly susceptible to climate‐related natural hazards. As a result of their limited access to capital, adaptation based on social assets constitutes an effective coping strategy. Evidence from Bolivia and Belize illustrates the importance of social assets in protecting the most vulnerable against natural disasters.     

The Impact of Fiscal Decentralisation on Education and Other Types of Spending

Scholars have argued about the impact of fiscal decentralisation on public spending for a long time without coming to any firm theoretical and empirical conclusions. In contrast to earlier studies, this paper looks at the impact of fiscal decentralisation across different types of spending. The conventional wisdom of a “race to the bottom” in taxes and spending as a consequence of fiscal decentralization is juxtaposed to the recent literature on expenditure competition, which posits that expansive local competition results in higher spending in fiscally decentralized countries. We argue that the effects of fiscal decentralization should be seen most clearly for those types of policies which are provisioned mainly on the local/regional level. Empirically, we find a robust and positive association between fiscal decentralization and aggregate levels of education spending. However, when looking at public policies provided at the national level (e.g. pension policies), fiscal decentralisation is associated with lower levels of aggregate spending. The argument is tested empirically by means of cross‐sectional regressions as well as a pooled time series analysis of education, pension, social and total public spending in OECD countries from 1980 to 2001.     

The Gender Deficit: Everyday Practices of Differentiation in the Chilean Labour Market

We focus on the reproduction of gender inequality in the labour market, analysing everyday practices of social boundary demarcation that exclude women from accessing resources at work. We argue that women's diminished position in the labour market – or gender deficit – is a result of taken‐for‐granted, day‐to‐day practices, conditioning the distribution of resources. Taking Chilean professional women as a case study, we focus on labour market practices that uphold gendered evaluation criteria, reproduce social classifications, and engender exclusion through social boundary work that limits women's access to labour market benefits and rewards.     

The Totalisation of Human Social Practice: Open Marxists and Capitalist Social Relations, Foucauldians and Power Relations

This article critiques Open Marxism for an ontology which totalises human social practice—for Open Marxists, capitalist social relations are the singular constitutive source of human activity. Such a stance is superficially attractive yet ultimately inadequate, and I reinforce my case by demonstrating how other critical approaches—in this article, Foucauldian perspectives on power—suffer from similar deficiencies. Thus there is a need to resist the temptation of claiming to know how human social practice can be understood with recourse to a singular aspect (no matter how important) of such practice. I conclude that an excellent example of how to avoid such pitfalls is provided by Antonio Gramsci's writings, for they acknowledge the multifaceted yet nevertheless anchored existence lived by humans in capitalist societies.     

Negative Classifications and the Symbolic Order of Social Inequality: Evidence from East Asia

ABSTRACT

This article explains a cultural sociological approach to research on social inequality. “Cultural sociological” means that we do not regard social inequality as resulting only from a distributive order of goods, income and positions, but also from an evaluative order created and reproduced by the actions of social groups. Concerning the topic of this thematic issue, this means that, from a sociological perspective, we see “weakness” not only as the social vulnerability of actors and groups resulting from a lack of material resources, education and power, but also as an attribution and assessment which can have a variety of social consequences. “Weakness” can compel others to help the weak and defend their interests. But if the weak are to be protected and empowered, they must be identified as “weak” in the first place, and this act of identification can have paradoxical consequences. As we demonstrate with evidence from East Asia, the social designation as “weak” can have many adverse effects for the weak groups themselves, because it blames them for their own weaknesses and publicly condemns, disparages, or stigmatizes them. Based on an analysis of the situation of victims of the Fukushima disaster in Japan and of rural migrants and their offspring living in Chinese metropoles, we show how social designations of weakness can produce negative classifications that signal disrespect to weak actors and limit their opportunities for action.     

Anti-immigrant mobilization in Russia's regions: local movements and framing processes

This article argues that increased anti-immigrant mobilization (the targeting of ethnic migrants to limit their rights and/or promote their resettlement) in Russia's regions is a consequence of local social movements adopting an anti-immigrant frame as part of their efforts to promote recruitment, acquire resources, and advance their movement's particular cause. Using the cases of Sverdlovsk's Gorod Bez Narkotikov (City Without Drugs) and Krasnodar's Cossack groups, it develops the argument and demonstrates specific ways in which an anti-immigrant frame is taken up by local movements. As a complement to existing studies of anti-immigrant sentiment or far right ideology, these cases highlight the practical politics of mobilizing support for anti-immigration causes in contemporary Russia.     

日本典型劳动社会保障智库研究:主要类型与特征分析

中国特色新型智库建设已经成为国内外学术焦点,而率先步入少子高龄化社会的日本,其劳动社会保障智库建设可为中国提供有益参考。分别考察了日本具有代表性的劳动社会保障民间智库、官方智库和高校智库的发展演进历程。民间智库通过与公益财团法人结合,得以保持其专业性与财务可持续性;官方智库体现出较显著的整合趋势,由法律赋予其相对独立的法人地位;高校智库在财务可持续性上有天然优势,而有效整合内外部资源是其主要抓手。日本劳动社会保障智库的特征包括:重视田野调查与数据挖掘,依据智库性质分类治理,智库资金来源多元化,智库影响渠道多层次。     

Zwischen Kultur und Kalkül? Vertrauen und Sozialkapital im Kontext der neoinstitutionalistischen Wende

Trust and social capital work in social networks as informal institutions, favouring cooperation between the participants of such social interaction. However, the increasing use of both terms has been accompanied by vanishing conceptual and theoretical precision. In order to counterbalance this development this article tries to clarify some of the major puzzles connected with both terms. First, we embed trust and social capital within the institutionalist turn in political science. Second however, we demonstrate that trust and social capital have been modelled from at least two perspectives: sociological institutionalism and economic institutionalism. Furthermore, attempts of combining those approaches have lead to decreasing theoretical consistency. Finally, we propose that economic institutionalism is theoretically and empirically more fruitful to explain the creation and destruction of social capital.     

Firm entries and exits in Estonian urban municipalities: urban hinterlands and rural peripheries, 2005–2012

This paper studies firm entries and exits in Estonian urban areas, urban hinterlands, and rural peripheries following EU accession, and it analyzes the effects of changes in population density, employee income level, unemployment, and economic climate on firm entries and exits. It concludes that the firm entry rate exceeded the exit rate in all of the years between 2005 and 2012. The urban hinterland is characterized by the highest level of both entries and exits. The fixed-effect regression models show that income and recession, which are the most significant factors to impact on local entrepreneurship, have a similar effect on different municipality types.     

Social Struggles in Present Day Argentina

Since the mid 1970s, Argentine society has gone through a period characterised as counterrevolutionary. The conservative social forces, led by the financial oligarchy, seized power and government by means of the coup d'état of 1976, and imposed an economic and social policy towards the working class, based on wage cuts and a lengthening of the working day. When the military governments were replaced by civilian ones, physical coercion was replaced by economic coercion, through market laws with unemployment and wage cuts reaching unprecedented levels. Although the popular forces were weakened by the unfavourable development of social struggles since the mid–1970s, during the 1990s government policies were confronted by the people through different forms of struggle.
This article presents the results of research on the different forms of social struggle carried out by the working class and other popular classes since the end of the 1980s until today. It aims to conceptualise the forms of rebellion (foot riot, riot, strikes and roadblocks), to determine the different moments of social struggle and the likely trends of its development.     

Contested Territoriality: Ethnic Challenges to Colombia's Territorial Regimes

This article studies ethnic social movement autonomy claims in three regions of Colombia. It maintains that place‐based and regime‐specific political processes condition institutional change affecting common property regimes. The article finds that to assert local self‐determination and territorial control, ethnic social movements (a) respond to territorial regimes threatening local autonomy; (b) use innovative tactics to negotiate autonomy; and (c) engage in deliberation to redefine identities and understand the conditions limiting local autonomy.     

Social cohesion for the unfinished business of land reform in South Africa

Abstract

This article aims to discuss social cohesion as an alternative instrument to address the ever dragging land question in South Africa. Although there are various activities that have been undertaken and policy programmes that have been proposed, all those initiatives have not been able to completely translate land reform policy into practice as intended. Other than recognising the ‘willing seller-willing buyer’ policy which appears not to have been internalised by the stakeholders concerned, this article also presents a transformative approach for both white land owners and black emerging farmers to work together in a tolerant and amicable manner. The most critical step that is required for land reform in the whole country is a public consultation process for government to be able to engage with all parties and to put a list of informed alternatives on the table for discussion. Obviously, that includes the willing seller willing buyer policy. Based on the outcomes of such discussions, the government has to play a mediation role to heal the racial division caused by the Natives Land Act of 1913. In short, this discussion presents social cohesion to heal the past without land owners perceiving transformation policies as apartheid in reverse.     

Bridging social and environmental risks: the potential for an emerging environmental justice framework in South Africa

Whereas anti-apartheid social movements engaged collectively against a repressive regime, especially in actions against social injustices, post-apartheid civil society has witnessed fragmentation when it comes to engaging jointly against neoliberal risks such as poor/no service delivery, privatisation, and environmental pollution. Civil society has not linked struggles into a coherent ideology to comprehensively challenge neoliberalism and associated risks. Research has not explored the underlying elements that contribute to reinforcing fragmentation. This article reviews the literature on key social and environmental struggles in order to draw out common elements and differences that reinforce fragmentation. The paper highlights the need for social and environmental activists to engage collectively both within their respective arenas, as well as across the social and environmental divide, if an environmental justice framework is to emerge. Social movements advocating social justice could serve as a platform to incorporate environmental discourses into their struggle to assist in formulating an environmental justice framework.     

Municipal Democratisation in Rural Latin America: Methodological Insights from Ecuador

As municipal governments in Latin America acquire greater responsibility for public goods and services and the promotion of economic and social development, and play a greater role in local citizenship, questions about the quality of municipal democracy also need to be taken much more seriously. This article proposes a 'relative power approach' that examines the distribution of social power at the microregional level and its impact on municipal governance as the starting point for the analysis of municipal democratisation in Latin America. The approach lays particular emphasis on historical changes in the distribution of local productive assets, the political organisation of local social actors, coalitions between and divisions within local social sectors and the ways in which local power relations are shaped by global and national forces. The article then explores the practical application of the relative power approach to three municipalities in rural Ecuador.     

Aproximaciones y reintegros: La democracia tensionada

Based on the conception of democratic aspiration as hegemonic, the author argues that democracy and its reproduction are doomed to exist in a constant tension. Anchored on a critical review of the ideas of Pierre Rosanvallon, Colin Crouch, Klaus Von Andreas Schedler and Klaus Von Beyme, the author analyzes the particular configuration of this form of government and the challenges it must confront, both those that are inherent to its design and those that are derived from its development in contemporary societies and political systems. Thus, democracy is approached from different conceptual perspectives, although favoring the one that views it as a political-institutional arrangement enabling coexistence and competition of/within political diversity. In turn, and taking as referents the undp and eclac diagnoses, the author analyzes the specificity of democracy in Latin America, its structural weaknesses and the possibility of building a new social pact in order to provide an answer to the prevailing breakdown of social cohesion and exclusion.     

Theory, Practice and'External Actors'in the Making of New Urban Social Movements in Brazil

Abstract – Spontaneity and authenticity have often been key words in the analysis of the'new urban social movements'that emerged in Brazil in the course of the 1970s. The movement discourse was often taken at face value and the involvement of other than'popular'institutional and social actors tended to be concealed. Though in some analyses attention has been directed to the role of the Catholic Church and other institutional actors, very little has been said about the personnel involved and their class position. This article focuses on the latter aspect and in this manner draws attention to the role of segments of the emerging new middle classes in the social construction of the movements. It is argued that processes of professional affirmation in the context of the political conjuncture of the democratisation process contributed to a radical politicisation of segments of the emerging new middle classes. Such processes were related to the theoretical reflection on the new movements and the emergence of a'militant perspective in research'which imbricated with the development of grassroots activism, amplified its impact, and furthered expectations over its role in the democratisation process. It thus contributed to the shaping of the movements. With the return to civilian rule and the changing configuration of state-society relations the relations between middle class and popular grassroots activism changed and this initially reflected in disenchanted accounts of the new movements and their failure to live up to expectations. Analysis of such processes provides an insight into the epistemo-politics of research and theory production on social movements.     

Cooperatives for “fair globalization”? Indigenous people, cooperatives, and corporate social responsibility in the Brazilian Amazon

Cooperatives and socially responsible corporations are being hailed as possible correctives to the socioeconomic and ecological exploitation of transnational capitalism. AmazonCoop—a cooperative linking indigenous Brazil nut harvesters and the multinational firm The Body Shop through trade and development projects—capitalized on indigenous symbolism to generate significant material benefits for both parties. At the same time, however, it made indigenous people more vulnerable and dependent, failed to promote participatory development, masked the effects of unfavorable state policies, and perpetuated discriminatory distinctions among indigenous people. Furthermore, the cooperative did not provide an organizational framework to ameliorate the vulnerabilities of indigenous identity politics or transform symbolic capital into enduring political-economic change. This case strongly supports arguments that cooperatives must be rooted in participation, democratic member control, and autonomy if they are to promote “fair globalization” or social transformation rather than institutionalize existing patterns of exploitation.