LOCAL STATUS AND NATIONAL SOCIAL WELFARE

Perceptions of individual well-being are influenced by local status, i.e., one's place in the income distribution of one's reference group. In general, reference groups are smaller than the entire nation. If national social welfare is an aggregate of individual's well-being, then it is not symmetric with respect to all individuals. A geographical interpretation of reference groups means that the welfare of a family living in one region is only influenced by other families in that region. An empirical application, using states, shows that a Gini index modified to reflect local status showed much less improvement 1949-1979 than did the standard Gini.     

Tourism,leisure and work in an east African pastoral society (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article investigates what happens with leisure experience between cultures when the Mursi of southwestern Ethiopia meet with international tourists. I propose that instead of regarding leisure as a fixed human condition within one society, it might fruitfully be approached as a process that evolves when different societies meet, i.e. as a constantly emerging (and disappearing) practice in cross‐cultural encounters. Tourism, studied broadly from an anthropological point of view, offers an excellent field for this investigation. The Western ideology of leisure, mobilized by tourists in non‐Western settings, is a good entry point to make tangible how societies understand leisure pursuits in intercultural encounters.     

Unfolding various academic mobility experiences of Southeast Asian women

This article draws on data from a qualitative research study undertaken with the main aim of investigating the issue of the gender dimension of the academic mobility of Southeast Asian women. Our research describes Southeast Asian women’s experiences of mobility, narrating why they choose to be mobile, how the experience of going abroad was responded to and/or rejected by their family, how they experienced life in a different country, and what evaluations they make about these experiences in personal, familial, and professional terms. The article stresses the need to improve the understanding of the factors that are still determining the chances of women to be mobile and obtain fruitful gains from these experiences. For this to be attained, the article follows through an intersectional approach to mobility, considering it is of much use as it allows to comprehend that the disadvantages associated with gender are cumulative, multi-layered, resulting from effects of several variables, including of the emotional, social, economic, and political contexts.     

Attitude of Iranian Female University Students to Sport and Exercise

Women's sport has always been a challenging subject in Muslim countries and Muslim women have had to face various constraints regarding their participation in sport and exercise, which also influence their attitudes to sport. This study aims to explore the attitude of Iranian female university students toward sport by survey method (N?=?1,120) and qualitative interviews (N?=?50). The results indicate that the majority of the participants have negative attitudes to sport, and accordingly they do not practice it. Various macro-, meso- and micro-level factors were found as perceived barriers. From the results it can be concluded that the media as a tool for raising awareness to providing role models and shaping the social values of mainstream society does not take a positive role in order to develop the culture of women's sport, and to change the attitude of female students and their social environments to sport in Iranian society.     

The persistence of white ethnicity in New England politics

There was a consensus among earlier students of New England politics that the political influence of European ancestry was fading by the latter half of the 20th century. We examine this proposition in recent times by exploring the role of ethnic ancestry in explaining the political divide in the region's presidential voting in over 1500 New England towns. Contrary to earlier predictions, ethnic origin does retain some explanatory power in models of recent voting behavior, and ethnic cleavages have not been entirely replaced by economic divisions in the electorate. Although the settlement patterns of the more established and numerous nationality groups (i.e. Irish and Italians) are less associated with partisanship than they were 50 years ago, the political salience of white ethnicity persists, suggesting that ethnic groups do not simply dealign or politically “assimilate” over time. Some groups maintain a strong identity in spite of upward mobility because movement from city to suburbs is selected not just on housing, income or school characteristics, as is usually the case, but on ethnicity too. Towns with significant concentrations of specific European ancestry groups lean Republican, even after we have accounted for the presence of other sources of political leaning and past voting tendencies, while Democratic attachments are undeniably strong in towns where the newer immigrant groups have settled. The “new ethnicity” (i.e. racial minorities) and the “old ethnicity” (i.e. white ethnics) clearly carry distinct political implications for this region's presidential politics.     

Measuring Relative Sustainability of Regions Using Regional Sustainability Assessment Methodology

Scientists analyze sustainability at the regional level with a combination of multiple indicators which reflect different characteristics of regions without combining the results in a single comparative unit. Moreover, the assessment of interdependencies between different characteristics requires experts' analyses, which makes sustainability analysis subjective, time consuming, and limited in use. This article analyzes the relative sustainability of subnational level regions through the application of regional sustainability assessment methodology (RSAM) based on accounting of resources capital and its internal and external transfers. This approach allows for assessment of regional sustainability as a function of resource quantity, quality, and interchangeability. The comparison of the two case study regions presented in the paper indicates the difference between a more sustainable region and a region of “weak sustainability.” First, the article indicates the discussion of the relevant geographic, economic, and social literature for both sustainability assessment and regional comparison. This discussion is followed by a conceptual representation of proposed RSAM and its application to various regions. Next, the article covers the data used and applied methods to test the proposed methodology and compare the two case study regions. The article concludes with a discussion of findings and recommendations for further application and testing.     

The First ‘Urnfields’ in the Plains of the Danube and the Po

Journal of World Prehistory - Archaeological research is currently redefining how large-scale changes occurred in prehistoric times. In addition to the long-standing theoretical dichotomy between...     

Does Diversity Matter? Measuring the Impact of High School Diversity on Freshman GPA

At the heart of arguments for affirmative action in university admissions are various claims about ethnic diversity. One assertion is that a diverse student body improves the quality of the educational experience: all students learn more. Further, a diverse educational experience better prepares students for the pluralistic society in which they will live. Previous studies examining these issues have been based on informal and survey methods. To better assess the impact of diversity we utilize a data set that allows us to measure student performance at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) as a function of the diversity of a student's high school. Do students from diverse high schools do better in the ethnically diverse environment at UIC? After controlling for other factors that affect GPA, such as ACT, high school rank, and high school quality, we find significant diversity impacts. Depending on the diversity measure, a student from a very diverse high school has an expected first semester GPA that is a one‐fourth to one‐half point higher than a student from a nondiverse high school. The diversity impacts tend to be greater for students in the lower tail of the GPA distribution. There are also large gender differences with females helped most by diversity. Although the results represent outcomes at only one university, they nevertheless serve as a starting point for quantitatively assessing the impact of a diverse learning environment.