Thinking politics sociologically - The Daily Life of the Professional Politician between Innovation and Determinism

Abstract: The aim of my essay is to present some reflections on the possibility of thinking politics sociologically, from the point of view of a sociologist of everyday-life. During more than one year of ethnographic research on the field, I followed sixteen politicians in Calabria (south of Italy), eleven men and five women, using theshadowing technique and interviews. I will, here, attempt to resume some results of my enquiry, focusing in particular on the relation between innovation and determinism, as it comes out from the everyday actions of the political agents. Referring to the socialtheory of Pierre Bourdieu and to his analysis of the political field, I will underline how this latter influences practically the political agents. The internal dynamics in the political field seem to firmly bind the politicians and by consequence these latter appearto be forced to lay down experience and innovation. Their behaviour and their actions are determined by the political field’s logic and they seem compelled to act and take the world for granted.It appears therefore that there is no space for imagination in the professional politician’s everyday-life. The political field seems to spread an inescapable determinism

A Taxonomy of Information Retrieval Models and Tools

Information retrieval is attracting significant attention due to the exponential growth of the amount of information available in digital format. The proliferation of information retrieval objects, including algorithms, methods, technologies, and tools, makes it difficult to assess their capabilities and features and to understand the relationships that exist among them. In addition, the terminology is often confusing and misleading, as different terms are used to denote the same, or similar, tasks. This paper proposes a taxonomy of information retrieval models and tools and provides precise definitions for the key terms. The taxonomy consists of superimposing two views: a vertical taxonomy, that classifies IR models with respect to a set of basic features, and a horizontal taxonomy, which classifies IR systems and services with respect to the tasks they support. The aim is to provide a framework for classifying existing information retrieval models and tools and a solid point to assess future developments in the field

Apologies of the Rich and Famous: Cultural, Cognitive, and Social Explanations of Why We Care and Why We Forgive

In recent years, U.S. and other Western media have inundated the public with celebrity apologies. The public (measured via representative opinion polls) then expresses clear ideas about who deserves forgiveness. Is forgiveness highly individualized or tied to broader social, cultural, and cognitive factors? To answer this question, we analyzed 183 celebrity apologies offered between October 1, 2000, and October 1, 2012. Results are twofold and based in both cultural and social psychological perspectives. First, we found that public forgiveness is systematically tied to discursive characteristics of apologies—particularly sequential structures. Certain sequences appear to cognitively prime the public, creating associative links to established cultural scripts of atonement and rendering some apologies more successful than others. Second, public forgiveness is contingent on broader patterns of social interaction. Like many persuasive messages, successful apologies exist as ordered cultural moments steeped in characteristics of the social relations that bind offenders, victims, and a broader audience of onlookers

Death comes alive; technology and the re‐conception of death

Browse through your local bookstore, or glance at a nearby movie marquee. Skim the pages of your nightly newspaper or the listings in your television guide. American culture\u27s current focus poses a surprise. The popular eye is centered on a topic more taboo than the steamiest sexual encounter, more solemn than the deepest economic depression, and more universal than the common cold. The current decade reveals a remarkable up- surge in our collective attention toward death. Indeed in the 1990s, Americans have become nearly obsessed with a world that lurks beyond life as we know it

Coming Together: New Taxonomies for the Analysis of Social Relations

In previous work, we have noted a certain rigidity in sociology\u27s approach to the topic of social relations (Cerulo 1997; Cerulo and Ruane 1997; Cerulo, Ruane, and Chayko 1992). With few exceptions, literature on the subject dichotomizes social relations with reference to the scope of the interaction (small group versus large group) and the mode by which social actors connect (direct connections versus mediated connections). Further, many researchers implicitly rank the social value of each relational form. Sociologists typically identify a society\u27s primary and most valuable relations as the result of direct, physically copresent exchange, exchange involving relatively few interactants. In contrast, secondary relations often are characterized as faceless, impersonal, ingenuous, and fleeting–the result of large‐group exchange established via mediated or mechanized connections. Cerulo (1997) suggested the need to reformulate any definition of social relations built upon the small group/large group or the direct/mediated dichotomies. She presented several critical elements upon which new definitions could be built. In this piece, we configure those elements, building six new analytic taxonomies–tools we hope will provoke a richer discussion of connecting, interacting, and resulting forms of social relations

Professional Deceit: Normal Lying in an Occupational Setting

Normal lies are those that social actors legitimate as appropriate means to desirable outcomes. Such lies have been acknowledged in the literature as tools for maintaining social order. Yet, little has been done to document the social structural sources of normal lying. This paper offers a first step in filling this research gap, examining aspects of occupational structure and their connection to the practice of normal lying. Specifically, we discuss four dimensions of occupational structure — occupational rewards and entry requirements, occupational loyalties, social control styles within an occupation, and an occupation\u27s level of professionalization — and we explore the ways in which these dimensions influence normal lying activity. Real estate, a field in which the practice of normal lying is quite common, serves as our case study of the occupational sphere. We conclude our analysis by discussing the implications of our findings for other occupations and for society at large

How Clones are Maintained: An Empirical Study

Despite the conventional wisdom concerning the risks related to the use of source code cloning as a software development strategy, several studies appeared in literature indicated that this is not true. In most cases clones are properly maintained and, when this does not happen, is because cloned code evolves independently. Stemming from previous works, this paper combines clone detection and co–change analysis to investigate how clones are maintained when an evolution activity or a bug fixing impact a source code fragment belonging to a clone class. The two case studies reported confirm that, either for bug fixing or for evolution purposes, most of the cloned code is consistently maintained during the same co–change or during temporally close co–changes

Difetti cardiovascolari nel modello murino di mucopolisaccaridosi IIIB

Mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS) comprise a group of 11 distinct lysosomal storage diseases due to inherited deficiencies of the enzymes involved in glycosaminoglycan (GAG) catabolism. The progressive deposition of GAGs in the tissues results in multi-organ system dysfunctions that varies with the specific enzyme mutation present and the particular GAG deposited. The typical symptoms of the diseases include: organomegaly, dysostosis multiplex, mental retardation and developmental delay. There are currently four main therapeutic options for MPS which include hematopoietic stem cells transplantation (HSCT), the replacement of the missing enzyme with its normal recombinant counterpart (enzyme replacement therapy, ERT), substrate reduction therapy, and gene therapy. However, all of these therapeutic approaches, some of which are still under investigation, show a limited efficacy, and MPS patients usually do not survive beyond the second decade of their life. Among the different causes of the early death of MPS patients, cardiac disorders appear to play a key role. Indeed, cardiac dysfunctions have been reported in patients affected by all types of MPS, although early and evident symptoms have been mainly reported for those with MPS I, II, and VI. In particular, cardiac valve thickening, dysfunction (more severe for left-sided than for right-sided valves), and hypertrophy are commonly present, but conduction abnormalities, coronary artery and other vascular involvement have been also observed in these patients. Reported cardiac causes of death include heart failure, sudden death from arrhythmias (including complete atrioventricular block) and coronary occlusion. While cardiac involvement has been well established for most of MPS types, there is a lack of information about cardiac disorders in MPS IIIB. Mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) IIIB is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in the gene encoding α-N-acetylglucosaminidase (NAGLU) required for heparan sulfate (HS) degradation. Patients with MPS IIIB are characterized by profound mental retardation, behavioral problems and death usually in the second decade, along with somatic manifestations that are highly variable among the different phenotypes. In order to get more insights into the cardiac involvement in MPS IIIB disease, in this study we used the murine model of the disease obtained by NAGLU gene disruption (NAGLU knockout mice, NAGLU-/-). These mice exhibit a massive increase of HS deposition in liver and kidney, and at a lesser extent in lung, spleen, thymus, and heart. The only GAG accumulated in NAGLU-/- mouse tissues is represented by HS due to the specific enzymatic defect that characterizes MPS IIIB disease from other MPS syndromes in which accumulation of GAGs is mixed. Here, we investigated cardiac morphology and function in NAGLU-/- mice compared to wild-type (WT) littermates over time using cardiac ultrasound, and histological and biochemical methodologies. As defects in lysosomal autophagy pathway were found in the murine models of MPS IIIA and MPS VI, we also investigated the autophagic process in the heart tissues of NAGLU-/- mice, in order to explore the hypothesis that an abnormal lysosomal autophagic activity might be responsible for cardiac dysfunctions in MPS IIIB. Echocardiographic analysis showed a marked increase in left ventricular (LV) mass, reduced cardiac function and valvular defects in NAGLU-/- mice as compared to wild-type littermates. The NAGLU-/- mice exhibited a significant increase in aortic and mitral annulus dimension with a progressive elongation and thickening of anterior mitral valve leaflet. A severe mitral regurgitation with reduction in mitral inflow E-wave-to-A-wave ratio was observed in 32 week old NAGLU-/- mice. Compared to WT mice, NAGLU-/- mice exhibited a significantly lower survival with increased mortality observed in particular after 25 weeks of age. Histopathological analysis revealed a significant increase of myocardial fiber vacuolization, accumulation of HS in the myocardial vacuoles, recruitment of inflammatory cells and collagen deposition within the myocardium, and an increase of LV fibrosis in NAGLU-/- mice compared to WT mice. Biochemical analysis of heart samples from affected mice showed increased expression levels of cardiac failure hallmarks such as calcium/calmodulin dependent protein kinase II, connexin43, α-smooth muscle actin, α-actinin, atrial and brain natriuretic peptides, and myosin heavy polypeptide 7. Furthermore, heart samples from NAGLU-/- mice showed enhanced expression of the lysosome-associated membrane protein-2 (LAMP2), and the autophagic markers Beclin1 and LC3 isoform II (LC3-II). Overall, our findings demonstrate that NAGLU-/- mice develop heart disease, valvular abnormalities and cardiac failure associated to an impaired lysosomal autophagic activity. Recently, it was reported that diastolic LV function and contraction synchrony were normalized after laronidase treatment in a patient with MPS I. Therapeutic efforts are under way for MPS IIIA patients, including intratechal ERT and gene therapy. On the light of our results on cardiac impairment in MPS IIIB mice, we suggest that it would be interesting to investigate the effect of current therapies on the cardiac function also in MPS IIIB patients