Il fantasma di Banfield: una verifica empirica della teoria del familismo amorale

National audienceAmoral familism is a sociological theory, constantly referred to explain the lack of collective action in the south of Italy and other geographical areas, and highly influential in different fields, i.e. political sociology, anthropology, business studies, economics, and psychology. This paper moves from the current theoretical debate to an empirical verification of amoral familism using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and EVS dataset (1999-2000). The findings suggest a paradox: amoral familists are less incline to collective action; however, amoral familism does not explain the lack of collective action among southern Italians. We conclude affirming the general validity of Banfield theory and explaining the incorrect association between amoral familism and southern Italian ethos

Does Family Policy Influence Women’s Employment?: Reviewing the Evidence in the Field

During the past two decades, the debate over the relation between family policy and women’s employment in high-income countries has grown in prominence. Nevertheless, the evidence proposed in different disciplines – sociology, politics, economics and demography – remains scattered and fragmented. This article addresses this gap, discussing whether family policy regimes are converging and how different policies influence women’s employment outcomes in high-income countries. The main findings can be summarized as follows: family policy regimes (‘Primary Caregiver Strategy’, ‘Choice Strategy’, ‘Primary Earner Strategy’, ‘Earning Carer Strategy’, ‘Mediterranean Model’) continues to shape women’s employment outcomes despite some process of convergence towards the Earning Carer Strategy; the shortage of childcare and the absence of maternal leave curtail women’s employment; long parental leave seems to put a brake to women’s employment; unconditional child benefits and joint couple’s taxation negatively influence women’s employment but support horizontal redistribution; policies and collective attitudes interact, influencing women’s behaviour in the labour market; and the effect of policies is moderated/magnified by individual socioeconomic characteristics, that is, skills, class, education, income, ethnicity and marital status. The article concludes by suggesting avenues for future research

From the third way to the big society: the rise and fall of social capital

The policies pursued by the coalition and the Conservative government are at odds with calls to civic engagement, argue Emanuele Ferragina and Alessandro Arrigoni. By tracing social capital in British political discourse, they explain why calls for social engagement are not only mere rhetoric, but actually incompatible with the ideas of competition and individualism which form the current neoliberal agenda

Are young people outsiders and does it matter?

A lot of young Europeans struggle to find a job in a market that does not guarantee stable forms of employment. How does the experience of insecure labour market trajectories affect their social and political participation, or their sense of social exclusion and alienation from mainstream politics

Poverty and Participation in 21st Century Britain

Observatoire sociologique du changement – 27 rue Saint - Guillaume 75337 Paris Cedex 07 http://www.sciencespo.fr/osc/fr Tel +33 (0)1 45 49 54 50 Fax +33 (0)1 45 49 54 86 Résumé : Peter Townsend déclarait que la pauvreté pouvait être scientifiquement mesurée comme un point de rupture dans la distribu tion du revenu en dessous duquel la participation à la société s’effondre. Cet article explore l’hypothèse de Townsend : (1) en élargissant les dimensions de la participation sociale telle que conçue par Townsend, (2) en exploitant de nouvelles données (Un derstanding Society, 2011; 2013, N=40, 000 ménages) et en utilisant le modèle SEM (Structural Equation Modelling) , enfin (3) en prenant en compte l’aspect pluri - culturel/ethnique de la société Britannique. La participation à la société ― définie dans un se ns large qui inclut la non - privation économique, la participation sociale et la confiance ― diminue avec la baisse du niveau de revenu puis cesse de se réduire pour les 30% des individus les plus pauvres. Ceci peut indiquer un effet de seuil de participati on, un pallier plutôt qu’un point de rupture comme le suggère Townsend, qui reste valable même pour les revenus très faibles. Finalement, nous montrerons que les personnes interrogées issues des minorités présentent un moindre niveau de participation socia le par rapport aux autochtones.Peter Townsend argued that poverty could be scientifically measured as a 'breakpoint' within the income distribution below which participation collapses. This pap er investigates Townsend's hypothesis by: (1) broadening his original measurement of participation, (2) using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) in conjunction with a new dataset including 40,000 households (Understanding Society, 2011; 2013); and (3) tak ing into account the multi - cultural/ethnic nature of British society. We find that participation - defined as lack of deprivation, social participation and trust - reduces as income falls but stops doing so among the poorest 30 per cent of individuals. Thi s may be indicating a minimum level of participation, a floor rather than a ‘breakpoint’ as suggested by Townsend, which has to be sustained irrespective of how low income is. Finally, respondents with an ethnic minority background manifest lower levels of participation than white respondents

A Matter of Size and Generosity: Assessing the Complex Relation between the Welfare State and Social Capital

Using confirmatory factor analysis and several regression models, this paper assesses the relation between different welfare state configurations and social capital in 19 European countries over two decades. The results suggest that welfare state configurations characterized by high degrees of decommodification and restrained levels of social spending are associated with higher social capital scores. Moreover, the positive relation between decommodification and social capital is stronger than the negative association observed with social spending. At the theoretical level, on the one hand, the findings seem to partially confirm the concern of neoclassical and communitarian theorists for the negative correlation between large size welfare states and social capital. On the other hand, they support the contention of institutional theorists that there is a strong positive association between high degrees of welfare state generosity and social capital

PlayeRank: data-driven performance evaluation and player ranking in soccer via a machine learning approach

The problem of evaluating the performance of soccer players is attracting the interest of many companies and the scientific community, thanks to the availability of massive data capturing all the events generated during a match (e.g., tackles, passes, shots, etc.). Unfortunately, there is no consolidated and widely accepted metric for measuring performance quality in all of its facets. In this paper, we design and implement PlayeRank, a data-driven framework that offers a principled multi-dimensional and role-aware evaluation of the performance of soccer players. We build our framework by deploying a massive dataset of soccer-logs and consisting of millions of match events pertaining to four seasons of 18 prominent soccer competitions. By comparing PlayeRank to known algorithms for performance evaluation in soccer, and by exploiting a dataset of players' evaluations made by professional soccer scouts, we show that PlayeRank significantly outperforms the competitors. We also explore the ratings produced by {\sf PlayeRank} and discover interesting patterns about the nature of excellent performances and what distinguishes the top players from the others. At the end, we explore some applications of PlayeRank -- i.e. searching players and player versatility --- showing its flexibility and efficiency, which makes it worth to be used in the design of a scalable platform for soccer analytics

Outsiderness and Participation in Liberal and Coordinated Market Economies

The number of labour market outsiders in Europe has dramatically increased, especially among the youth, potentially influencing social and political participation. Using logistic regressions and comparable survey data – the British Household Panel (BHPS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) – we connect insights drawn from Varieties of Capitalism and dualization literature with an investigation of individual level outcomes in Britain and Germany. First, we disentangle the impact of skills on outsiderness among the overall population and the youth. Second, we analyse the influence of skills and outsiderness on peo-ple’s social and political participation. We suggest that skills matter in protecting individuals from labour market outsiderness, but they do so in different ways across liberal and coordinated market economies and age groups. While the possession of specific skills reduces the likelihood of being a labour market outsider among young people, it has the opposite effect on political participation. In contrast, education fosters participation but does not reduce the risk of becoming an outsider in the same age cohort. Moreover, although there is no difference between insiders and outsiders when it comes to political par-ticipation, being an outsider may reduce social participation. Finally, young people are more likely to be excluded from social and political participation in Britain than in Germany as a consequence of different welfare and socio-economic system

Lockdown for All, Hardship for Some. Insights from the First Wave of the CoCo Project

How disruptive is Covid-19 to everyday life? How is the French population experiencing the lockdown? Is it magnifying existing inequalities and affecting social cohesion? The CoCo project sheds light on these pressing questions by comparing living conditions in France before and after the lockdown. This is the first of a series of research briefs that we will publish in the forthcoming weeks. We will explore this new experience of “sheltering-in-place” and its impact on family life, schooling, work, health and well-being. This brief explores how French society has coped with the first two weeks of the lockdown. We find that the virus has rapidly become a tangible threat, as more than forty percent of the population knows someone who has been infected. Despite this, three out of four persons say that they do not feel overly stressed out. In certain cases, the reaction has been almost philosophical -- long hours spent at home allow people to slow down and think about the meaning of life. More than anything else, it is having access to green spaces and nature which provides some relief to those attempting to cope with this home-based social organization. Still, some cracks have appeared. Women, foreign-born residents, and individuals facing financial hardship are subject to greater emotional strain than the rest of the population. Gender inequalities have been particularly reinforced during the lockdown: women have been spending even more time than usual cleaning and taking care of others. Although the Covid-19 virus tends to disproportionately strike men, the consequences of the lockdown more intenselyaffect women

Life after lockdown: Getting back on track or charting a new course?

How disruptive is Covid-19 to everyday life? How is the French population experiencing the lockdown? Is it magnifying inequalities and affecting social cohesion? The CoCo project sheds lights on these pressing questions by comparing living conditions in France before, during, and after the lockdown. This is the fourth of a series of research briefs, which now cover the entire lockdown period Has life under the lockdown been a parenthesis or is it the new normal? Beyond whether or not people began to resume their usual activities on 11 May, the consequences of the lockdown experience on people’s attitudes and opinions are the core of this policy brief. Did the lockdown trigger new sociopolitical orientations? Or did it instead accelerate ongoing trends