Precarity – Logical Consequence of Societies that Lost the Social

The essay proposes an alternative understanding of social policy, focussing on social quality and as such bringing together biographical and societal development and as well institutional and communal concerns. On this basis the author proposes a definition of precarity that goes far beyond insecurity of employment and its consequences for every day’s life. Thus, actually a definition of precarity is suggested that, while recognising the dimension of individual insecurity with its shortage of resources and the lack of power over the own life, points on a second and crucial dimension. This is the precarity of a society and its integrity due to the loss of its social dimension, being solely shaped by and engaged in individualism. Precarity, then, is the paradox of individuals loosing control in an otherwise individualistic, ‘privatised’ society.Social Precarity; Social Integration; Labour Market; Unemployment; European Societies

Social Economy and Social Economics –The Situation in the Republic of Ireland

The Paper gives a brief overview over the social economy in Ireland, presenting this against the background of the countries history and social structureSocial economy; Ireland

Workfare – The Reinvention of the Social

The presentation aims on refocusing the mainstream debate, starting from looking at work as the central reference rather than seeing the constituting problem of workfare as one of social policy/social security. Of course, at the end the objective is a clearer understanding of how measures aiming on work and employment integration can meaningfully be utilised for responsible policy making. For this, an introductory step will look at what we are actually dealing with when we talk about workfare. Then a second step will very briefly present the EUropean political debate, returning thereafter to the question what we are actually dealing with when we talk about workfare. Then, in a third step, a paradox is presented: the gain of employment, going hand in hand with a loss of work. The conclusion will discuss in the fourth step workfare in the light of power and life.workfare; social policy; Comparative social research

The exit problem for diffusions with time-periodic drift and stochastic resonance

Physical notions of stochastic resonance for potential diffusions in periodically changing double-well potentials such as the spectral power amplification have proved to be defective. They are not robust for the passage to their effective dynamics: continuous-time finite-state Markov chains describing the rough features of transitions between different domains of attraction of metastable points. In the framework of one-dimensional diffusions moving in periodically changing double-well potentials we design a new notion of stochastic resonance which refines Freidlin's concept of quasi-periodic motion. It is based on exact exponential rates for the transition probabilities between the domains of attraction which are robust with respect to the reduced Markov chains. The quality of periodic tuning is measured by the probability for transition during fixed time windows depending on a time scale parameter. Maximizing it in this parameter produces the stochastic resonance points.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/105051604000000530 in the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Large deviations and a Kramers' type law for self-stabilizing diffusions

We investigate exit times from domains of attraction for the motion of a self-stabilized particle traveling in a geometric (potential type) landscape and perturbed by Brownian noise of small amplitude. Self-stabilization is the effect of including an ensemble-average attraction in addition to the usual state-dependent drift, where the particle is supposed to be suspended in a large population of identical ones. A Kramers' type law for the particle's exit from the potential's domains of attraction and a large deviations principle for the self-stabilizing diffusion are proved. It turns out that the exit law for the self-stabilizing diffusion coincides with the exit law of a potential diffusion without self-stabilization and a drift component perturbed by average attraction. We show that self-stabilization may substantially delay the exit from domains of attraction, and that the exit location may be completely different.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AAP489 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Classical Class Analysis and Assessment of Contemporary Eu-Policies - Ontology and Epistemology of Social Policy Debates

The present paper puts the argument forward that social policy analysis today lost very much its ground of systematically approaching its objective. Rather than analysing the objective relations, processes and their foundation political arguments and discourses are very much developed on moral grounds and remain on the level of studying empirical evidence. In this way they fail to provide both, a sound analysis and the development of strategic thinking for policy development. After briefly reminding at some issues brought up by classical analysis of class structures and stratification theories, the text goes on by utilising these perspectives for cursorily assessing some trends in major fields of EU social policy debates. Hereby the ground is provided for looking for principal points of tensions in policy analysis and development, not least reminding critical and left approaches to avoid the trap of a kind of left-intellectual populism

Social Quality and Precarity: Approaching New Patterns of Societal (Dis)Integration

The main issue of this article is to discuss the question of ‘precarity’ in the context of the theory of social quality (see Beck et al, 2001), with which to pave the way for developing further the theoretical foundation of precarity. Societal practice is the main challenge this concept tries to address. However, the danger is to introduce a new term, yet maintaining a discussion on traditional problems as poverty, marginalisation and exclusion. Our thesis is that these problems, far from being sufficiently tackled, are currently going along with and being adjunct to another challenge, namely precarity. Although the ‘old problems’ are not problems of individuals and expression of their ‘personal failure’, precarity – seen in the context of the theory of social quality – means a new stage of socialisation of the problems by further individualisation of the victims. In principle, we can say that this understanding of precarity is an expression of a further erosion of society, characterising especially periods of transformation of economic systems.Social Quality; Precarity; Social Exclusion; Social Disintegration; Social Policy

Classical Class Analysis and Assessment of Contemporary Eu-Policies - Ontology and Epistemology of Social Policy Debates

The present paper puts the argument forward that social policy analysis today lost very much its ground of systematically approaching its objective. Rather than analysing the objective relations, processes and their foundation political arguments and discourses are very much developed on moral grounds and remain on the level of studying empirical evidence. In this way they fail to provide both, a sound analysis and the development of strategic thinking for policy development. After briefly reminding at some issues brought up by classical analysis of class structures and stratification theories, the text goes on by utilising these perspectives for cursorily assessing some trends in major fields of EU social policy debates. Hereby the ground is provided for looking for principal points of tensions in policy analysis and development, not least reminding critical and left approaches to avoid the trap of a kind of left-intellectual populism

2. Wochenbericht Alkor 497 [AL497]

vom 24.07.2017 bis zum 29.07.201

1. Wochenbericht AL485

Alkor 485 1. Wochenbericht, vom 17.09.2016 bis zum 25.09.201