A New Concept of the Production of Industrial Accidents: A Sociological Approach

Various commentators have expressed dissatisfaction at the predominant methods of analysing and preventing accidents. An ethnographic study, little used as a method for investigating industrial accident production, was carried out on a French construction site. This produced new insights into how accidents are produced. Working within an actionalist perspective a theoretical model of industrial accident production is built. This model is derived from the sociology of work, its workings are illustrated by reference to our field study and some of the literature. This model ruptures with the dominant means of analysing accident causation and of conceiving accident prevention. The article tentatively suggests that the social relations of work may become a central and profitable focus of future attempts to analyse and prevent industrial accidents

Expectations in Micro Data: Rationality Revisited

An increasing number of longitudinal data sets collect expectations information regarding a variety of future individual level events and decisions, providing researchers with the opportunity to explore expectations over micro variables in detail. We present a theoretical framework and an econometric methodology to use that type of information to test the Rational Expectations (RE) hypothesis in models of individual behavior. This RE assumption at the micro level underlies a majority of the research in applied fields in economics, and it is the common foundation of most work in dynamic models of individual behavior. We present tests of three different types of expectations using two different panel data sets that represent two very different populations. In all three cases we cannot reject the RE hypothesis. Our results support a wide variety of models in economics, and other disciplines, that assume rational behavior.Rational Expectations, Retirement, Longevity, and Education Expectations, Instrumental Variables, Sample Selection.

Um salto no escuro: um ensaio interpretativo sobre as mudanças técnicas

294

As tecnologias de informação: morte ou vida para as ciências humanas?

32834

HANDBOOK ON THE SOCIOLOGY OF YOUTH IN BRICS COUNTRIES: GENERAL EDITOR’S ANNOTATIONS

The paper highlights two key subjects of the new Handbook on the sociology of youth in BRICS countries. The first pay attention to mechanisms and structural contexts of youth social mobilization in the BRICS countries. The second deals with the effects of information technologies on social interactions between young people. The author argues that comparative analysis presented in the handbook demonstrates that development of South Africa, Brazil, China, Russia, and India does not follow strictly the path anticipated in the framework of modernization theor

A SOCIOLOGIA E A CONCEPÇÃO INTERDISCIPLINAR DO TRABALHO

Neste artigo, o autor desenvolve a proposição segundo a qual é necessário haver uma interdisciplinaridade entre as diferentes ciências que se ocuparam da questão do trabalho na sociedade capitalista, tendo em vista um conhecimento mais amplo e adequado sobre o tema. O objetivo aqui é elaborar um quadro de análise a partir do qual seja possível estabelecer uma base sociológica para a interdisciplinaridade proposta pelo autor

Acidentes do trabalho: em busca de uma nova abordagem

193

Higher Education, Development, and Inequality in Brazil and South Africa

Received 12 September 2018. Accepted 3 December 2018. Published online 15 December 2018.This article has the premise that South Africa and Brazil spaces share contextual and geopolitical characteristics with a history of great inequalities, racial and gender discrimination and these and other related factors serve as barriers constraining education. Considering the remarkable expansion of higher education systems in both countries on the last 25 years, and its uneven effects, some questions are raised as a challenge in this article. Does this growth in enrolments create high quality or “world class universities” in these countries? Is it possible to find South African or Brazilian universities in the international rankings of institutional higher education? Has such expansion produced a full democratization of educational opportunities? Or, in other words, does any skilled and hardworking student, regardless of his/her social background, have equal chances of access to the best courses and universities? In order to try to answer these questions, we begin characterizing the expansion of higher education systems over the last two and a half decades in both countries. Regarding policies of access by poor students to higher education system, we taking in account and compare some initiatives in both countries, such as Reuni, Fies and Prouni in Brazil, and National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), in South Africa. Our analysis, following the tradition of sociological research, understands that the mode of operation of higher education institutions stands out as one of the key factors in the mechanisms and social conflicts that increase or reduce inequalities. Focusing on the basic distinction between public and private sector, for Brazil, and the persistence of distinction between historically black and white institutions, in South Africa, we try to show that both countries improved the access to higher education systems and managed to create some world-class institutions. Even so, social and gender inequalities persist and there are too few such institutions, especially in Brazil