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2008-08-28 06:08:58
by Rense Nieuwenhuis in Curving Normality
Sociology
The Catholic church categorically rejects any practice of induced abortion, and, notwithstanding any issues regarding causality, so do its members. Catholic individuals generally have a negative attitude towards induced abortion, indeed. Jelen et al. were able to replicate this in their study on `abortion attitudes in western Europe'. However, they did not find that the average level of objection against induced abortion in a country correlates with the proportion of catholics in those countries. Furthermore, they even found that when individual level catholicism is taken into account, the hig...more
- Wilcox C. (1993) A Contextual Analysis of Catholicism and Abortion Attitudes in Western Europe . Sociology of Religion, 54(4), 375-383.
2008-07-29 10:10:37
by Rense Nieuwenhuis in Curving Normality
Sociology
Neighborhoods are hot in the Netherlands. Especially the problems that have arisen in some neighborhood have attracted a lot of governmental attention the last couple of years. Reason for me dive into some of the literature on residential segregation, troubled neighborhoods, and obviously the people living in these neighborhoods.
I have argued elsewhere that to understand the state that neighborhoods are in on account of whatever characteristic, it is crucial to focus on the individual residential mobility histories of the inhabitants of the neighborhood. The paper discussed today does exact...more
- Hinstman L. (1986) Move histories and socio-economic position. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 1(4), 343-352.
2008-07-19 09:02:24
by [email protected] in Monastic Musings
Sociology
Every once in a while, a research report just stops me in my tracks. When the media reported, in June, that voting behavior (choosing whether or not to vote in an election) was genetic - an inherited tendency - I knew I would have to seek out the study.
The full text of Genetic Variation in Political Participation by James Fowler, Laura Baker, and Christopher Dawes is available from the American Political Science Review - they knew it would draw attention, and people would want to read it for themselves.
This research addresses one of the most basic questions in politica...more
- DAWES C. T. (2008) Genetic Variation in Political Participation. American Political Science Review, 102(02), DOI: 10.1017/S0003055408080209
2008-07-04 10:07:44
by Rense Nieuwenhuis in Curving Normality
Sociology
In the Netherlands it is commonly believed that the newspapers generally have a left-wing orientation. That would be the reason for the attention a research report that was published yesterday is receiving. Based on a content analysis of primarily newspaper articles, the conclusion is drawn that newspapers are more right-wing oriented that we thought. Dutch ...more
- Wester F. (1998) Ethnic Minorities in Dutch Newspapers 1990-5: Patterns of Criminalization and Problematization. International Communication Gazette, 60(5), 415-431. DOI: 10.1177/0016549298060005004
2008-06-20 12:09:20
by Rense Nieuwenhuis in Curving Normality
Sociology
Those of you who have ever attended a ‘Fête Nos’, a typical Brêton festival-type of gathering with music and people dancing, may immediately understand what I’m going to write about. All the others who have attended another gathering of a large number of people will also be completely familiar with my revived curiosity in ...more
- Schelling T. (1971) Dynamic Models of Segregation. Journal of Mathematical Sociology, (1), 143-186.
2008-05-22 17:09:35
by Rense Nieuwenhuis in Curving Normality
Sociology
...more
- ELFFERICH I. (2001) Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands. The Lancet, 358(9298), 2039-2045. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(01)07100-8
2008-04-29 12:52:05
by Rense Nieuwenhuis in Curving Normality
Sociology
Sometimes, you just know that the authors of an article you are reading, have had a lot of fun while writing it. The amount of fun just radiates from the pages (or your screen, in the digital age), and somehow, these articles are often the really interesting ones as well. Perhaps this has something to ...more
- MAKOWSKY M. D. (2007) Accidental Atheists? Agent-Based Explanations for the Persistence of Religious Regionalism. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46(1), 1-16. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2007.00337.x
2008-04-01 07:08:22
by Rense Nieuwenhuis in Curving Normality
Sociology
In the field of social health research, it has been shown difficult to disentangle the correlation between poor health and low social economic status (SES) into causal effects in either direction. Both causal interpretations seem plausible: when in poor health, improving your career becomes more difficult, and people of a low SES generally live in ...more
- PAXSON C. (2005) The lasting impact of childhood health and circumstance. Journal of Health Economics, 24(2), 365-389. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2004.09.008
2008-03-31 00:01:21
by [email protected] in Monastic Musings
Sociology
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the article in The Psychologist, a British psychology journal, Challenging the Banality of Evil. It called into question some of the most famous studies in social psychology - Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, Milgram's obedience studies, Asch's conformity studies. While the authors questioned some of the data (noting that Hannah Arendt had attended only the opening part of Eichmann's trial), they focused on the interpretation of those data: what did they actually mean? More pointedly - did they really demonstrate that human beings are so conformist that th...more
- Geyer A. L. (2006) A Nonconformist Account of the Asch Experiments: Values, Pragmatics, and Moral Dilemmas. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(1), 2-19. DOI: 10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_1
2008-03-21 07:14:21
by Rense Nieuwenhuis in Curving Normality
Sociology
Little is definitively known about how the interplay between `nature’ and `nurture’ brings about the (social) world as we know it. Nevertheless, huge amounts of knowledge on the importance of both nature as well as nurture amasses. Take for instance the incidence of schizophrenia, of which it becomes increasingly clear that a strong genetic ...more
- HOEK H. (2006) Incidence of schizophrenia among ethnic minorities in the Netherlands: A four-year first-contact study. Schizophrenia Research, 86(1-3), 189-193. DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2006.06.010