Reassessing the validity of research assessments. A social experiment

The literature concerned with bibliometry and scientometry has been concerned with the question of how the actual output and impact of scholars can be ascertained. Whereas a situation in which scholars were mainly judged of subjective criteria was deemed undesirable, scientometry has developed new strategies based on objective criteria such as the number of published articles in ISI-rated journals, the number of citations to an author in ISI-rated journals, the number of citations on Google scholar, The H-index, Crown-index etc. Recently our faculty has introduced personal metis – a tracking system for mapping one’s output, which has to be maintained by the researchers themselves. Because personal metis is connected to repub, researchers can keep their output up to date and upload the papers so as to make them widely available through the internet. On the one hand, it is nice that researchers themselves have the autonomy to be responsible for their research output, but on the other hand it makes you wonder about the checks on this system – For instance, are all publications which the researcher says they are A-rated papers (top-quality internationally peer-reviewed papers) counted as such, or are there checks and balances so as to prevent employees to submit even the most obscure papers as top-quality papers

Op weg naar een nieuwe politieke cultuur : Klassen en stemgedrag in laatmoderne samenlevingen

The purpose of this article is to understand why the traditional pattern of a leftist working class and a rightist middle class has declined over the years in many Western countries. Two explanatory theories are put forward. The material explanation suggests that because Western countries have become richer over the years, issues tied to class conflict have become less salient while new, cultural issues of individual freedom versus order have become more salient. The second explanation, focusing on the process of secularization, suggests that cultural issues have become more salient as church membership has declined in these countries. It is studied whether the emergence of a new political culture has weakened economic voting motivations for the working class to vote left and the middle class to vote right, whereas it has strengthened cultural voting motives leading members of the working class to vote right and members of the middle class to vote left. Hypotheses are tested using party-manifesto data and World Values Survey Data. It is concluded that as societies become more secular cultural issues become more salient, causing cultural voting motives to undermine the conventional pattern of a left-wing working class and right-wing middle class

Class, Culture, and Politics: Cultural Capital and Its Political Implications

Paper prepared for the workshop Collapsing Cultural Canons: Elite Culture, Popular Culture, and Politics in Late Modernity Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Marseille, France, October 28-29, 200

Het einde van duurzame armoede?

Om verschillende redenen stellen bekende individualiseringssociologen als Ulrich Beck en Antony Giddens dat armoede in laat-moderne samenlevingen een steeds tijdelijker fenomeen wordt en dat het daarmee eerlijker verspreid raakt over de hele bevolking. Vroeger of later, zo betogen zij, komt iedereen wel een korte periode in aanraking met armoede. In dit artikel onderzoeken Achterberg en Snel de houdbaarheid van deze vertijdelijkingsthese voor Nederland aan het einde van de vorige eeuw

Onderscheiden of niet onderscheiden? De Koster en Van der Waal over moreel conservatisme en autoritarisme

In hun recente artikel ‘Moreel conservatisme en autoritarisme theoretisch en methodisch ontward’ in Mens en Maatschappij bepleiten De Koster en Van der Waal (2006) een onderscheid tussen moreel conservatisme en autoritarisme, twee culturele waardeoriëntaties die wij (net als andere door hen aangehaalde onderzoekers) de afgelopen jaren in ons onderzoek hebben samengevoegd. Zij tonen overtuigend aan dat beide waardeoriëntaties niet identiek zijn, maar wij zien niet in waarom dat per se zou betekenen ze van elkaar gescheiden moeten worden – zeker niet in het door ons verrichte onderzoek. Wij verbazen ons er ook over dat De Koster en Van der Waal de wat ons betreft belangrijkste uit hun theorie af te leiden hypothese niet toetsen

The Politics of the Omnivores: Elite Culture, Popular Culture, and Libertarianism

Paper prepared for the workshop Collapsing Cultural Canons: Elite Culture, Popular Culture, and Politics in Late Modernity Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Marseille, France, October 28-29, 200

Voluntary risk Seeking in the Risk Society: Explaining Involvement in Edgework

__Abstract__ How does voluntary participation in dangerous leisure activities requiring skills (‘edgework’) compare, for example, to gambling and thrill seeking and why does edgework thrive in societies preoccupied with safety and security? Lyng (1990) assumes edgework constitutes an escape from alienating working conditions and disenchanting rationalism in risk societies bearing upon blue and white collar workers alike. He also distinguishes these structural forces as drivers of edgework from a cultural explanation tying participation in edgework to individualism and anti-institutionalism. Besides, according to Fletcher (2008) and others, although athletes themselves legitimize their engagement in edgework as an escape from alienating and disenchanting living conditions, this is actually not the real reason for their participation in edgework. Instead, edgework supposedly provides an arena for the accumulation and display of cultural capital needed for members of the professional middle class to sustain their position on the labor market. We refute Lyng’s explanation and partly the cultural explanation as well and we validate the latter one based on two surveys among Dutch citizens (N=1,302; N=299). On the one hand, edgework cannot be explained by either perceived alienation, disenchantment, and institutionalism. On the other hand, it can be explained by individualism and the professional middle class is overrepresented in edgework, partly because its members cherish Protestant ethics such as the deferral of gratification and perseverance. This suggests that although edgeworkers resist the risk society in name, they in fact reproduce its underlying stratified class structure by investing in the symbolic capital needed to sustain and shield their own socio-economic position

Het spook van de rechtse arbeidersklasse : Een culturele verklaring voor 'tegennatuurlijk' stemgedrag

The traditional class approach to politics maintains that the working class 'naturally' votes for left-wing parties because those represent their economic interests. This traditional working class voting pattern has however become less typical, giving rise to today's 'Death of Class Debate' in political sociology. Against this background, we study why so many people, working and middle class alike, today vote for parties that do not represent their 'real class interests'. Critically elaborating on Lipset's work on working-class authoritarianism and Inglehart's on post -materialism, we first confirm that 'natural' voting perfectly complies with the logic of class analysis. 'Unnatural' voting, however, is not driven by economic voting motivations and class, but by cultural voting motivations and cultural capital. Right wing working class voting is thus caused by its cultural conservatism that stems from its limited cultural capital. Voting for the two small leftist parties in Dutch politics underscores the significance of this cultural explanation: those with limited cultural capital and culturally conservative values vote for the Socialist Party ('old left') rather than the Greens ('new left'). The spectre of the rightist working class that haunts today's political sociology can thus be dispelled by breaking the traditional monopoly of the one-sided class approach and give a complementary cultural approach its proper place in the explanation of voting

Detraditionalization, mental illness reports, and mental health professional care use in Europe

In this study, we address the question of whether individuals that live in more detraditionalized countries have higher levels of mental illness and mental health professional care use. We argue that it is meaningful to consider the different facets of detraditionalization, that is the level of secularization, the ethos of personal autonomy, and self-realization, the erosion of traditional gender roles when understanding patterns of mental illness reports and mental health professional care use. We use data collected in 2010 in 25 European countries by Eurobarometer and find that, generally speaking, people living in more detraditionalized countries are more inclined to use mental health professional care, and that they, on average, report less mental illness than people in less detraditionalized countries. Furthermore, not all forms of adversity result in higher levels of mental health professional care use in the more detraditionalized countries. This is the case only for those experiencing financial strain while for those experiencing unemployment or divorce this was not the case. Furthermore, in more detraditionalized countries, the experience of divorce was related to fewer mental illness reports, a result that could be linked to processes such as the erosion of the traditional institution of marriage and the normalization of divorce in these societies