Social Aggregates Research Articles

The Kinship Domain in an East European Peasant Community: Pinkenhof, 1833- 1850

KINSHIP IS PERHAPS THE MOST INTRIGUING AND LEAST TRACTABLE of the many new subjects social historians have explored in recent years. What did kinship mean to people in their everyday lives? The answer has to be, we do not yet really know. Although much has been done to clarify what is at stake in historical kinship research, a general answer remains elusive.' After several decades of intensive research, social historians would like to have demonstrated convincingly that individuals' perceptions of each other as relatives did or did not affect general social life or at least that, while the importance of kinship may have waxed and waned over short periods of time, a distinguishable long-term pattern existed that related to other developing social changes. Standard historical sources are not easily turned to these purposes. Although sources for the European continent are potentially more promising than those for other regions of the world, the information they contain is so diverse and pertains to so many different aspects of the subject that no single conceptual or methodological paradigm for studying kinship has yet emerged. Progress toward a fuller understanding of kinship has been slow for reasons other than the intractability of sources. The quantitative methods often necessary to analyze kinship have constrained generalization because the profession's experience with them has produced a climate of opinion which demands that historians make specific statements about significance in terms of the size of the social aggregates involved and advance propositions about cause and effect as

Social security wealth and aggregate consumption: An extended life-cycle model estimated for The Netherlands

In this paper a method is developed to calculate a wealth variable accounting for the existence of the basic old-age provisions in The Netherlands (AOW). In line with Feldstein's extended life-cycle model, consumption functions with (gross) social security wealth are estimated for The Netherlands for the period 1957–1986. The marginal propensity to consume social security wealth is statistically significant in the applied specifications. The data favour the use of an age- and period-dependent discount rate. The results compare relatively well with the consumption equations in the models of the Central Planning Bureau and De Nederlandsche Bank.

Breaking boundaries and barriers: Future directions in cross‐cultural research

Abstract The level and degree of understanding of the nature and meaning of leisure in the lives of blacks, native‐Americans, Hispanics, and other ethnic minority populations within the United States is lacking. Most research to date has utilized a social aggregate approach to the study of ethnic/racial differentiation; such research overlooks the dynamics and complexity of ethnicity within poly‐ethnic, pluralistic societies. The objectives of this article are: 1) to present an overview of the types of research which have been conducted among ethnic/racial populations within the U.S., 2) to discuss several ideological and theoretical assumptions which underlie such approaches, and 3) to present several alternative theoretical and methodological approaches which might prove more meaningful in attempts to understand the dynamics of cultural diversity.

The tradeoff between social insurance and aggregate fluctuations

Government programs that insure individuals against idiosyncratic risks, such as unemployment insurance, attempt to offset shocks that are obscured by behavioral variables. The resultant moral hazard reduces the efficiency of the insurance. When this feature is examined in a dynamic setting, the variance and duration of aggregate income fluctuations may be intensified by insurance.

Ontology and the Theory of Justice

To what should theories of justice ascribe rights, goodness, justness, virtue, or utility? Answers, depending on the theory and on what is being ascribed, have included persons, selves, human bodies, institutions, and supra-individual aggregates such as nations. Some of these things, such as social aggregates, have been invoked to save particular philosophical positions against strong objections. Others, such as persons, have been used in raising those objections or in characterizing the distinctive qualities of some position. In this paper, I propose to explore, more systematically than is usual, the delicate relationship between the theory of justice and ontology. By ontology I mean scientific ontology: the things presupposed by empirical theories. I will ignore the controversies over the meaning and criterion of ontological presupposition (the classic statement remains Quine, 1976). Nor will I attempt to establish what an empirical ontology is, except to note by way of illustration that the existence of things such as rights or the Good is not at issue. The notion of a distinct scientific ontology may test the good will of those who are skeptical of the fact-value distinction (for my defense, see Grafstein, i98i). By the same token, a defender of the distinction may worry whether it is violated by an investigation of the normative bearing of scientific ontology. My own view is that so long as we recognize that any reasonable or relevant normative theory will incorporate factual assumptions about ontology and other matters, we see that normative theory is not pure and self-contained. A normative theory that responds to scientific insights need not bridge the logical gulf between facts and values because any normative theory worthy of the name already contains both elements. A further restriction on this investigation of the relation between ontology and the theory of justice is that it will proceed without relying on essentialism. By essentialism, I mean a view that some things exist in a deeper sense than others or that there is a fundamental distinction

Social Indifference Curves and Aggregate Demand

Suppose that the government maximizes a fixed social welfare function through the use of policy instruments. These instruments may be classical lump sum transfers of wealth or such second-best instruments as commodity taxes, income taxes, etc. Then under certain conditions the aggregate demand behavior for this economy will appear as though it were generated by a single representative consumer.

A critique of anarchism

I take anarchism as asserting three principles: (1) There is no such thing as legitimate government; (2) Authority and autonomy are basically in conflict; and (3) Autonomy will be achieved in a post-governmental society filled with voluntary, non-coercive social aggregates. In what follows I will join Marx and Engels (against Bakunin) in taking issue with all three. My tack will be to elaborate upon the critical responses to Robert Paul Wolff's anarchist writings.1 Let me first review briefly the heart of Wolff's case for anarchism. This appears in two paragraphs of his important book:

Human capital and economic growth

Just as accumulation of personal human capital produces individual economic (income) growth, so do the corresponding social or national aggregates. At the national level, human capital can be viewed as a factor of production coordinate with physical capital. The framework of an aggregate production function shows that growth of human capital is both a condition and a consequence of economic growth. Human-capital activities involve not merely the transmission and embodiment in people of available knowledge, but also the production of new knowledge. Its diffusion generates worldwide economic growth, regardless of its initial geographic locus. Contrary to Malthus, economic growth has not been eliminated by population growth. Human-capital accumulation is an important link between economic growth and the ‘demographic transition’.

Race, Sex and Feminist Outlooks

From a national NORC sample, two hypotheses are tested that link combinations of race and gender with sex-role outlooks: 1) black males will be more sex-role traditional in outlook than white males and 2) black females will be more sex-role feminist than white females. These hypotheses are developed from a multiple hierarchy approach to stratification: intersections of race and gender create unique social aggregates, the life chances and experiences of which assume patterns that cannot be anticipated by simply adding the effects of race to those of gender. It is found that black males are more traditional in sex-role outlook than white males, especially so among those identifying themselves as middle class. However, black females are not consistently more feminist in sex-role outlook than white females. Interpretations for these findings are discussed.

Structure and mechanisms of schooling intadpoles of the clawed frog, Xenopus laevis

The geometric structure and sensory bases of social aggregates in larvae of the clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, were studied using photographic data interpreted with the aid of a computerized image analyser. The system records positional data from photographs and uses this information to assess: (1) extent of parallel orientation between tadpoles that are nearest neighbours, (ii) distance over which significant parallel orientation is maintained (interactive distance), and (iii) extent of clumping or evenness of individuals. o (1) Under all density, size, and illumination conditions, tadpoles show a highly significant tendency to line up parallel (0° between neighbours) and, to a lesser extent, antiparallel (180° between neigh-bours) to their nearest neighbour. (2) Tadpoles in the light show a much greater tendency to orient parallel to nearest neighbours than in the dark. (3) The tendency to orient parallel to nearest neighbours increases slightly with increasing tadpole size and density. (4) In the light, tadpoles have an interactive distance of approximately two body lengths; in the dark, only approximately one body length. (5) Interactive distance shows a slight increase with decreasing tadpole density. (6) Interactive distance is proportional to tadpole size. (7) Spacing between tadpoles is random, but there is a weak tendency toward increased evenness with increasing tadpole size and density; tadpoles in the light position themselves more evenly than in the dark. We propose that Xenopus tadpoles use both visual and lateral line input to school. Lateral line input is presumably necessary for maintaining some degree of parallel orientation in the dark and is augmented by visual information in the light.

On the Efficiency and Optimality of Spatially Structured Personal Information Fields, with Some Implications for Heterogeneous Social Aggregates

Geographical AnalysisVolume 12, Issue 1 p. 1-20 Free Access On the Efficiency and Optimality of Spatially Structured Personal Information Fields, with Some Implications for Heterogeneous Social Aggregates Terence R. Smith, Terence R. Smith Terence R. Smith is associate professor of geography, University of California, Santa Barbara.Search for more papers by this author Terence R. Smith, Terence R. Smith Terence R. Smith is associate professor of geography, University of California, Santa Barbara.Search for more papers by this author First published: January 1980 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1538-4632.1980.tb00014.xCitations: 4 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume12, Issue1January 1980Pages 1-20 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Social security and consumer spending in an international cross section

This paper expands the base of empirical evidence on the social security aggregate private saving issue by examining the behavior of consumer expenditure in 16 industrialized countries over the 1951–60 period. The results are mixed in that time series movements of social security exhibit a positive relation to consumer spending, while the cross-sectional variations reveal a negative association. Our overall conclusion is that the cross-country evidence provides neither empirical support for the hypothesis that social security depresses private saving nor an empirical refutation of that hypothesis. We argue that this indeterminacy of results applies also to previous studies of U.S. time series and to analyses of household cross sections in the U.S.

Least Squares with an Adjusted Dependent Variable

Study in Macroeconomic 2nd ed. (New York McGraw-Hill, 1971). Barro, Robert J., Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?, Journal of Political Economy 82 (Nov./Dec. 1974), 1095-1118. ,Reply to Feldstein and Journal of Political Economy 84 (Apr. 1976), 343-349. , Impact of Security on Private SavingEvidence from the U.S. Time Series, American Enterprise Institute, 1978. Buchanan, James M., Barro on the Ricardian Equivalence Theorem, Journal of Political Economy 84 (Apr. 1976), 337-342. Darby, Michael R., The Consumer Expenditure Function, Explorations in Economic Research 4 (1977/78), 645674. David, Paul A., and John L. Scadding, 'Private Savings,' Ultra-rationality, Aggregation, and 'Denison' s Law,' Journal of Political Economy 82 (Mar./Apr. 1974), 225-249. Eisner, Robert, Fiscal and Monetary Policy Reconsidered, American Economic Review 59 (Dec. 1969). 897-905. Feldstein, Martin S., Social Security, Induced Retirement, and Aggregate Capital Accumulation, Journal of Political Economy 82 (Sept./Oct. 1974), 905-926. Perceived Wealth in Bonds and Security: A Comment, Journal of Political Economy 84 (Apr. 1976), 331-336. Feldstein, Martin S., and George Fane, Taxes, Corporate Dividend Policy and Personal Savings: British Postwar Experience, this REVIEW 55 (Nov. 1973), 399-411. Kochin, Levis A., Are Future Taxes Anticipated by Consumers? Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 6 (Aug. 1974), 385-394. Miller, Merton H., and Charles W. Upton, Macroeconomics: A Neoclassical Introduction (Homewood, Ill.: Irwin, 1974). Munnell, Alicia, Effect of Security on Personal Saving (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1974). Musgrave, John C., Fixed Nonresidential Business and Residential Capital in the United States, 1925-75, Survey of Current Business 56 (Apr. 1976), 46-52. Tanner, J. Ernest, Empirical Evidence on the Short Run Real Balance Effect in Canada, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 2 (Nov. 1970), 473-485. Thompson, Earl A., Debt Instruments in Both Macroeconomic Theory and Capital Theory, American Economic Review 57 (Dec. 1967), 1196-1210.

WATER‐BASED ACTIVITY INVOLVEMENT FOR RECREATION CONSUMERS AT STATE, FEDERAL, LOCAL, OR PRIVATE FACILITIES1

ABSTRACT: The water‐based activity involvement of participants at state and federal and local and private facilities identified by using participation rate groups is examined. No differences between participant groups within activities based on socio‐economic characteristics were found. However, groups of highly active individuals were identified at both types of properties. It is suggested that social action system variables be added to traditional social aggregate variables to assist the understanding of leisure involvement.

Electoral Change in the Chilean Countryside: the Presidential Elections of 1958 and 1970

HE BLOODY golpe which abruptly terminated one of Latin America's most durable republics left many unanswered questions about the viability of an electoral route to socialism for Chile. Some behavioral studies suggest that the tragic demise of Salvado Allende's government was partly due to the inability of his Popular Unity (UP) coalition to attract adequate support from peasants and workers.1 Furthermore, it is argued, the UP would never have achieved majoritarian status because, despite the Marxist victory of 1970, there had been no partisan or ideological realignment within the masses; this represented an insurmountable constraint upon government policy-makers in their attempt to implement socialism.2 In one important study, James Prothro and Patricio Chaparro conclude that ... the basic of the Chilean system is rooted in a distribution of opinion that has not changed drastically since the Ibanez regime of 1952-1958.3 The argument is empirical and limited, but some may draw an additional inference: that Allende invited intervention by exceeding his electoral mandate. Some Marxist theorists were also skeptical about the viability of an electoral route to socialism. Many warned before the golpe that constitutional norms would be respected in Chile only as long as the property and power of the international and the dependent, national bourgeoisie were not fundamentally threatened. Electoral majorities, they argued, are not a dependable source of power for socialists.4 On the other hand, theorists aligned with the government maintained that the constitutional road was open, and that the UP could build an electoral majority while in power.5 This latter claim is clearly in conflict with the immobilism conclusion, and it is to this disagreement that I address this study. I will not argue that Allende's victory in 1970 constituted a mandate for socialism; however, I will claim that an ecological analysis of aggregate voting trends in rural communes indicates that subtle, but important changes were occurring within the countryside, and that this means that the inability of the UP to attract votes from at least one class of voters, the peasantry, was not necessarily a permanent constraint. Specifically, I will argue that the 1970 election was more highly polarized along class lines than the election of 1958. Electoral class polarization is the process by which members of social aggregates, defined by their relationship to the means of production, come to vote for

Pluralism & Post-Pluralism in the Study of Public PolicyCases in Public Policy-Making. By James E. Anderson Public Policy-Making. By James E. Anderson The Politics of Pollution. By J. Clarence Davies III and Barbara S. Davies Governing Science and Technology. By W. Henry Lambright Saving the Coast: California's Experiment in Intergovernmental Land Use Control. By Melvin B. Mogulof Politics in America:

Some political scientists view more recent focus on policy as a means of integrating diverse strands of political analysis. The utility of such an approach will depend, inter alia, on its ability to provide a corrective for neglect-so prevalent in recent decades-of institutional factors and social power structures. When pluralism and behaviorism became leading schools of thought in political science some two decades ago, their exponents charged that discipline had not seriously attacked social bases of political events. There had been an overemphasis, they alleged, on phenomenal forms of political groups, institutions, and philosophies, at expense of systematic inquiry into behavioral dynamics of individuals and groups. Easton, an influential advocate of systematic theory and empirical research, observed further that political science neglected the fundamental distribution of power among basic social aggregates. Instead, he wrote,

Problematics in Stratum Consistency and Stratum Formation: An Australian Example

Questions relating to the consistency of the stratification order can be posed at the level of social aggregates as well as at the individual level. This paper draws on Australian socioeconomic data to illustrate issues involved in defining relatively homogeneous social strata in terms of commonly occurring status profiles and in exploring the effects of stratum characteristics such as degree of stratum homogeneity and stratum attribute consistency. Positional awareness, defined in terms of class identification and voting behavior, is examined in relation to the contextual variables of stratum homogeneity and stratum attribute consistency, which show weak effects once the average level of socioeconomic status of different strata is taken into account. The low salience of such contextual variables is explained partly by relatively high stratum permeability, reflected in high rates of father-to-son mobility, and partly by the difficulty of establishing that the strata as defined are perceived as naturally occurring groups.

Militarism, religiosity and psychopathology: Subjective identification vs. structural affiliation1

The ninety‐six item Canadian Peace Research Instrument designed to study war/peace attitudes and their ideological and personality correlates is replicated on nine distinct religious groups and seven additional social aggregates with known characteristics, e.g., military personnel, teachers, and policemen. Analyses indicate that 1) subjective religious identification specifies differently the relationship between orthodox religiosity, militarism, and personal psychopathology than does structural affiliation, 2) denominationals do not differ from nondenominationals, and 3) the nonreligious score lower on the psychopathology and ideology sub‐scales. This extends the contemporary debate between Eckhardt and Ray regarding the association between neuroticism and attitudes toward war.

The Contexts of Tribal Hidage: Social Aggregates and Settlement Patterns

The Contexts of Tribal Hidage: Social Aggregates and Settlement Patterns

Social Security, Induced Retirement, and Aggregate Capital Accumulation

Social Security, Induced Retirement, and Aggregate Capital Accumulation