Gone with the Wind: Federalism and the Strategic Location of Air Polluters

In federal systems, both state governments and firms have incentives to strategically locate polluting facilities where the environmental and health consequences will be borne as much as possible by residents of other jurisdictions. We analyze air polluter location in the United States using a spatial point pattern model, which models where events occur in latitude and longitude. Our analyses indicate that major air polluters are significantly more likely to be located near a state's downwind border than a control group of other industrial facilities, results that are robust to a wide variety of model specifications and measurement strategies. This effect is particularly pronounced for facilities with toxic air emissions. The observed pattern of polluter location varies systematically across states and time in ways that suggest it is responsive to public policy at both the national and state levels.     

Communitarian Antidotes to Populism

Populism is rising in the United States, and this has ramifications for its democratic institutions. The rise is attributable in part to the alienation many Americans feel in their own country, which in turn stems from a combination of various sociological challenges. This article uses a liberal communitarian approach to examine these issues, and calls for the nurturing of communities as a way to reduce violence and xenophobia. It discusses cultural changes brought about by free trade, immigration, and the extension of individual rights and offers moderate policy solutions that encourage communities to flourish by facilitating cultural adjustments while also weighing the concerns of all members of society.     

Donald and Winston at the Ministry of Alternative Facts

Sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four and other dystopian classics have risen in response to the audacious attempts of President Donald Trump to manipulate public opinion by circulating “alternative facts” throughout the presidential campaign and since his November 2016 election victory. Various statements by Trump and his advisors that exemplify what has come to be known as the “post-factual world” account for the meteoric rise and final breakthrough of Nineteen Eighty-Four to the top of the bestseller lists in spring 2017.     

Professional Identity and Dishonest Behavior

This essay discusses the fraud triangle, or how factors such as opportunity to cheat, motivation to cheat or ability to rationalize or justify dishonest behavior lead to dishonesty. The fraud triangle is applied on behavior of professionals active in fields such as medicine, education, research and science or clergy. Evidence shows that even in these fields, which attract more altruistic individuals, the fraud triangle factors predicts emergence of behavior in breach of ethical standards. In the conclusion several measures for reducing dishonesty are discussed. Disciplines such as forensic economics or behavioral ethics are emphasized to provide wider variety of tools to detect and reduce dishonest behavior.     

Extended Mind and Embodied Social Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives

This study traces the evolution of a research program that frames the human mind as an embodied social phenomenon. The essay is divided into two parts, the first one focused on historical issues, the second on contemporary developments. The discussion begins with the mind-body problem central to the scholarship in this area and then focuses the changing perspective on consciousness as a symbolically mediated process. Next, the paper surveys the relevant writings of Mead and Vygotsky, tracks the debate about the place of body in interactionist sociology, and connects this debate to current research in neuroscience. The report concludes with reflections on the prospects for embodied sociology and the contribution it can make to the debate about extended mind.     

American Power: The Challenge Within

The main threat to continued American leadership abroad is social problems at home. These include poverty and the decline of the working class, both of them caused initially by falling levels of work and marriage. Policymakers have traditionally tried to counter these trends by changing social benefits and incentives, but the problems are really cultural, reflecting a decline in individualism. The best answer is more structured schools and social programs that promote the disciplines essential to a free society, especially working. Immigration should also be reduced and more money spent on education, to promote assimilation. Despite Donald Trump’s election, consensus has built supporting such measures.     

How Stable is the Condition of Family Homelessness?

Although research has documented the majority of homelessness experienced by individuals and families in the US to be transitional rather than chronic, the mechanisms by which some families successfully escape homelessness while other do not remains relatively unclear. To provide more information to this area of inquiry, this study analyzed the transitional nature of homelessness for a sample of families with school-aged children who were homeless under the McKinney-Vento definition. By conducting a survey with over 1000 homeless families with children enrolled in two public school systems in Central Florida, we find that over a quarter of families exit homelessness in less than six months. We compare these families to those that remained homeless to examine the potential importance of demographic differences and other potential barriers to securing housing. Many of the commonly assumed barriers were not significant predictors of continued homelessness; the most salient difference between the groups was income underscoring the importance of employment opportunities for families to allow them to exit homelessness.     

“Civilization” and “Mission”

““Civilization” and the Self-Critical Tradition” argues that the word “civilization” in Europe comprises intrinsically the idea of progress contrary to the negative portrayal that prominent theorists have associated to this term. I argue that skepticism will remain about this idea, especially for the formerly colonized people who associate the term with two other words “mission” and “colonialism.” However, exploring a cultural perspective could serve to make the point about the cyclic dimension of the evolution of all “civilization.     

Are We Civilized Yet?

The term “civilization” has been used in many contexts where accusations of Western imperialism, racism, and the like do not at all apply. Works on the history of science and technology in ancient cultures provide one such example, when they speak of Egyptian civilization or early Chinese civilization. It is also not true that works of the Enlightenment view the non-western world as less civilized and inferior. An entire genre of writing inspired by Jesuit accounts discovered in China a higher form of society that Europe should emulate. Two such works were Oliver Goldsmith’s Letters from a Citizen of the World and François Quesnay’s Le Despostisme de la chine, which offer, respectively, an extended satire and a sharp critique of European society.