Dueling for honor and identity economics

Dueling is one of the best indicators of political transition from anarchy to order. This paper explores the dynamics of dueling for honor as a social institution in England, France, and Germany. It identifies major differences regarding the frequency, duration, and nature of dueling. Although dueling for honor emerged as a self-organizing and self-regulatory collective action of the aristocracy in crisis, it transformed into a middle class institution in France and Germany. However, this institution suddenly ended in England around 1850. In this study, we will follow a cognitive version of identity economics to explain the emergence of this institution, and its divergent trajectories in these countries in terms of identity choice. We will argue that while dueling is an identity investment, it might have different values according to its diverse social meanings. We will show that different social meanings that were attached to dueling in England, France and Germany gave rise to different values in identity investment, and led to different results in enhancing social identities

The Concept of ‘Peasant Embourgeoisement’ in the Perspective of Different Historical Conjunctures

Abstract The paper combines the historical analysis of the social transformation of rural Hungary with the evolution of the sociological concept of ‘peasant embourgeoisment’. The authors highlight the long lasting impact of the concept in the understanding of academic knowledge production. The concept was the product of thorough ethnographic studies in the inter- and postwar periods by scholarly intellectuals, whose aim went beyond academic purposes and translated into a political agenda of rural modernization. To make such a methodological combination the authors demonstrate that the global historical context is necessary in the understanding of how knowledge production occurs and interacts at various historical conjunctures, especially during periods of crises.</jats:p

Class Origin, Family Culture, and Intergenerational Correlation of Education in Rural China

This paper examines the determinants of intergenerational correlation of education in rural China by using a data from a large survey of households. Three generations who completed education during the period from pre-1949 to the beginning of the 2000s are included. The focus is on the influence of family class status (chengfen) on offspring education. Our investigation suggest that family class status is still important for the intergenerational transmission of education. The offspring of landlord/rich peasant families are more likely to achieve higher educational attainment, even though parental education, family wealth, and other family characteristics are the same. The unique determinant of the intergenerational transmission of education in the postreform era is found to be an education-oriented family culture, created as an intergenerational cultural rebound against class-based social discrimination during the Maoist era. We have also found that the cultural reaction is a combination of class-specific effects with cohort-specific effects.education, intergenerational correlation, social class, social discrimination, family culture

Book Review-- Prison Pedagogies: Learning and Teaching with Imprisoned Writers

Prison Pedagogies, Learning and Teaching with Imprisoned Writers Edited by Joe Lockard and Sherry Rankins-Roberson Syracuse University Press, New York, 2018 ISBN 9780815654285 Reviewed by JUNE EDWARDS Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, Irelan

The Oak Park Redevelopment Plan: Housing Policy Implications for a Community Undergoing Early Stage Gentrification

Abstract: With the reemerging discussion of gentrification in the urban landscape, an exploratory case study of the Oak Park Redevelopment Plan in Sacramento, CA, was conducted in order to better understand the community’s gentrifying characteristics and the implications once the redevelopment goals are met. In addition, a Conceptual Framework [CF] was formulated in order to unpack the components and processes of gentrification. The findings suggest that the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency’s redevelopment polices act as a catalyst for gentrification that exclusively favors the in-migration of middle- and upper-income residents into the area at the expense of lower-income residents. These implications include the displacement of low-income renter-residents, changes to a neighborhood’s socio-economic and cultural characteristics, and the defacto exclusion of low-income residents as they will never be able to afford to live in the gentrified Oak Park neighborhood

INSTITUTIONAL Change as Cultural Change. An Illustration by Chinese Postsocialist Transformation

Culture of a society reflects its social values. So, through Chinese experience, we want to show that institutional change is not only an economic or a political process but fundamentally a cultural one. It is therefore based on a change in values and mentalities. Like in a chemical reaction, we discern initial conditions, factors which triggered the reaction, catalysts and elements of synthesis. Chinese institutional change per se derived from a cultural shock induced by the Chinese economic, political and cultural opening which acts as trigger. The remain paper deals with the other elements of the process.China; institutional change; culture; causality

Class Origin, Family Culture, and Intergenerational Correlation of Education in Rural China

This paper examines the intergenerational correlation of education in rural China. The focus is on the influence of family class origin (jiating chengfen), the political label hung on every family throughout the Maoist era. A nationally representative cross-sectional household survey for 2002 is used. It is shown that the effects of family class origin on family members' educational attainment varies across historical periods. Regarding the educational level of male heads of household with landlord/rich peasant background, we found a drop caused by the class-based discrimination in the Maoist era and a rebound in the postreform era. It was also found that family class origin remains significant for the educational achievement of the current younger generation. Children aged 16-18 who are of landlord/rich peasant and middle peasant origins are more likely to achieve higher educational attainment. We conclude that a class-specific, education-oriented family culture has been shaped first as a mixture of family cultural capital inherited from the pre-Maoist era and surfacing again in the postreform era, and, second, as intergenerational cultural reaction against class-based discrimination during the Maoist era.education, intergenerational correlation, class origin, family culture, social discrimination

Religion and development in post-famine Ireland

This paper employs a variety of economic and financial indicators to examine the relationship between Roman Catholicism and Irish development in the Post-Famine period. County-level decennial data are used for all census years from 1871 to 1911, and Catholicism is instrumented using the distance from Stranraer in Scotland - exploiting the religious transformation of Ireland via plantation. The results reveal that Catholicism is an important factor in illiteracy, professional class, and saving propensity variation. However, the Catholic association is consistently diminishing in statistical and economic importance over time - indicative of religious convergence in development outcomes, and consistent with the idea of a "Catholic Embourgeoisement" in the Post-Famine period. The lack of a significant association between Catholicism and either company formations or bank branch prevalence suggests that Catholicism was not inhibitive to entrepreneurship or financial development