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SocArXiv papers

• Beyond Rational Choice: Identity-Based Motivation, Educational Prestige, and Korean Students' Pursuit of U.S. Higher Education
  International education research often emphasizes economic, academic, or structural factors shaping student mobility, yet such approaches insufficiently capture the psychological meanings students attach to prestigious foreign institutions. This qualitative study examines how Korean undergraduate and graduate students construct self-concepts and future-oriented identities when deciding to pursue higher education in the United States. Drawing on identity-based motivation theory, self-concept and possible selves, and consumer identity perspectives, the study conceptualizes elite U.S. universities as prestige brands that carry symbolic value beyond academic instruction. Based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with Korean students enrolled at U.S. universities, thematic analysis reveals that participants understood university choice as a means of enacting aspirational elite or global identities, signaling social status, and securing social recognition and belonging. Seven interrelated themes capture how educational decisions were shaped by relational self-concepts, collective family expectations, prior academic and cross-cultural experiences, perceived career security, desires for autonomy and meaningful learning, negotiations over cost and sacrifice, and the branding power of U.S. institutions as signals of global competence. The findings suggest that international higher education functions as an identity-driven practice embedded in cultural expectations, social comparison, and symbolic hierarchies. This study contributes an integrative perspective that advances understanding of motivation, stratification, and identity in international higher education decision-making. Note: This is a preprint version. The manuscript may be revised before journal submission.
• THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF WORKPLACE SAFETY PROGRAMS: A COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF INVESTING IN OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY VS. COSTS OF WORKPLACE INJURIES
  Workplace safety is a critical driver of operational efficiency and employee well-being, yet organizations often struggle to quantify its economic value. This study examines the cost-benefit dynamics of investing in occupational safety programs relative to the financial burdens associated with workplace injuries. Using quantitative analysis, industry benchmarks, and an applied case study, the research evaluates the return on investment (ROI) of proactive safety interventions. Findings demonstrate that comprehensive safety programs reduce the frequency and severity of workplace injuries while generating measurable financial benefits, including lower insurance costs, reduced absenteeism, and improved operational efficiency. Although safety initiatives require upfront investment, the results show that proactive interventions consistently outweigh injury-related costs and deliver substantial long-term economic advantages. The study further highlights the strategic importance of integrating safety management into organizational decision-making, emphasizing its role in enhancing economic performance, workforce sustainability, and organizational resilience.
• Decreased motivation for farming tigers and insights into tiger farming practice in Nghe An Province, Vietnam
  Demand for tiger parts has contributed to a global decline in tiger populations. Tigers are extirpated entirely from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and are severely threatened in extant populations in Southeast Asia. Across the region, tiger farms have been established with the main intent of supplying tigers for consumer demand, e.g. tiger bone glue for medicine. Tiger farms are known to operate within Vietnam and within Nghe An province, the focal area of this study. We interviewed 16 former tiger farmers to understand how they obtained their tigers, how they farmed tigers, why they farmed tigers, why they stopped farming tigers, and their beliefs around environmental policy, tiger conservation, and tiger reintroduction. Tiger cubs were trafficked in from Laos and raised by the tiger farmers to adulthood, at which point the tigers were sold to other individuals who slaughtered the tigers for their parts. We found that most of our sample were aware that tigers are in decline globally, and extinct from Vietnam. Farming was perceived as "easy" and lucrative; however, our sample were no longer raising tigers due to fears of fines and jail time. Our sample were ambivalent about the current environmental policy around farming, but were supportive of reintroduction and stated their desire to see tigers in Vietnam again. While tiger farms do still operate in Nghe An, we find it heartening that proactive enforcement appears to be discouraging individuals to continue farming. Our study illustrates the importance of government commitment to policy in driving conservation impact.
• Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of self-control, risk aversion, and fear of infection in shaping compliance with preventive measures
  This paper refers to interview data collected in six municipalities in the Lecce province of southern Italy, across three waves: 2020, 2021, and 2022. The principal aim of the research was to determine whether compliance with four government-recommended non-pharmaceutical measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 differed over the years and, if so, whether these differences were influenced by personal characteristics. Specifically, we focused on the psychological features of self-control, risk attitude, and fear of contracting COVID-19 and their relationships with indoor and outdoor mask use, and indoor and outdoor physical distancing. The results suggest that virus mortality, the regulations in force, and experience of the pandemic affected compliance with certain preventive measures across all waves. With regard to psychological features, the three factors of interest were found to determine preferences and substitutions across measures.
• Return Heterogeneity vs. Participation: The Big Levers of Financial Wealth Inequality?
  Household investment behavior shapes financial wealth inequality, yet the roles of return heterogeneity and risky asset participation remain insufficiently understood. This study examines their distributional effects using individual asset data from the DNB Household Survey and cross-country portfolio information from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey. Applying the Global Capital Asset Pricing Model, I find that returns do not systematically correlate with financial wealth in the Netherlands. Counterfactual simulations indicate that inequality remains stable under the Dutch status quo. However, rising returns or increased return heterogeneity amplify inequality, particularly if participation gaps persist. Broadening financial market participation mitigates these effects and reduces long-term uncertainty in wealth inequality trends. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper)
• Coping with unforeseen contingencies in event management: an analysis of hosts' perception.
  Gatherings and cultural events may face cancellations, postponements, or adjustments due to different unforeseen contingencies. Organizers must swiftly identify solutions, yet there is limited understanding of how hosts perceive changes in the value proposition. To address this, we collected data at the 2020 and 2021 La Notte della Taranta, a prominent European folk music festival that was partially canceled in 2020 and adapted in 2021. Consistently, this research focuses on Covid-19 pandemic as unforeseen contingencies to examine of generic behavioral traits and festival-specific features in determining hosts' attitudes. We focus on two aspects: agreement with organizers' measures in 2020 and 2021, and the perception of tourists' behavior in the last regular edition in 2019. Findings emphasize the objective Covid-19 danger, with preferences for ambiguity consistently influencing both research questions. This underscores the relevance of considering generic behavioral traits when making extraordinary organiza- tional decisions.
• Governing Eurasian Critical Mineral Supply Chains: Institutional Lessons from the Southern Gas Corridor
  This article examines critical mineral supply chains through a geo-economic and governance-oriented lens, drawing on Global Value Chain (GVC) theory and insights from asymmetric interdependence. It argues that supply vulnerabilities extend beyond geological endowment and extraction, increasingly reflecting coordination failures across transnational value chains, particularly at midstream and downstream stages involving refining, processing, logistics, certification, and regulatory alignment. While existing scholarship has largely treated hydrocarbon corridors and critical mineral supply risks as separate domains, limited attention has been paid to corridor-based governance arrangements capable of coordinating extraction, transit, processing, and market access across Eurasia. The study adopts a qualitative, policy-oriented methodology combining conceptual analysis, review of institutional and policy frameworks, and an embedded case study of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC). The SGC serves as an institutional reference to examine how geographically connected actors, including Central Asian producers, Azerbaijan, Turkiye, and European markets, have managed asymmetric interdependence through long-term cooperation, intergovernmental frameworks, and coordinated state and commercial participation. Building on these insights, the article develops a corridor-based governance perspective for Eurasian critical mineral supply chains. It conceptualizes the Eurasian Critical Minerals Corridor not as an existing institutional structure, but as an analytical framework for examining how variable-geometry cooperation can structure interdependence, reduce exposure to value-chain vulnerabilities, and support more resilient supply arrangements. In doing so, the article advances a governance-centered interpretation of critical mineral supply chains and demonstrates how institutional lessons from energy corridors can inform policy debates on critical mineral security and the political economy of the energy transition.
• Kin Networks of Local Officials in 19th and Early 20th Century China
  We introduce a new source for the study of the kinship networks and careers of local officials in China in the late Qing, that is the late 19th and early 20th century. These officials constituted a local bureaucratic and educational elite, but compared with elite officials, relatively little is known about their characteristics, including their family backgrounds and kin networks. To study them, we have constructed a new dataset from Tongguanlu rosters of officials that include their resumes, degree or other qualifications and rosters of their kin and are available for officials in a variety of locations in China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Information for officials includes not only the names and degrees held by patrilineal father, grandfather, and great-grandfather commonly recorded for elite examination degree holders that have been studied previously, but detailed information about uncles, great-uncles, male cousins, sons, and nephews, and basic information about female kin including mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers, daughters. In contrast with other sources that only include holders of elite exam degrees, Tongguanlu include holders of purchased Jiansheng and Tribute (Gongsheng) degrees, low-level prefectural degrees Shengyuan, and other qualifications. We provide background on the Tongguanlu as a source, describe how we constructed the dataset, summarize its contents, and then present results on the posts, qualifications, and kin networks of local officials. We show that holders of purchased degrees and low-level Shengyuan examination degrees were less likely than holders of higher degrees to come from families with a history of holding degrees, and that officials with regular appointments were more likely to have kin with degrees than officials with acting appointments, or who were expectant officials.
• Releasing a Trojan Horse: How Government Parties Use Social Media to Influence the Opposition's Agenda in Parliament
  Agenda setting is pivotal to democratic politics and remains in constant flux. With the rise of social media, many argue that political communication has increasingly migrated to these platforms, overshadowing traditional venues like parliament. However, the interplay between social media and the parliamentary venue remains poorly underswtood, even though understanding this relationship is crucial for grasping behavior in both contexts. In this paper, I argue that agendas initiated on social media can find their way into parliamentary discussions. However, while discussion in parliament is among opposition actors' prime means of confronting the government with its ideas, such discussions carry higher stakes for government actors, making parliamentary talk less cheap for them. This dynamic creates an unexpected opportunity: Government parties can leverage social media to initiate new agendas that opposition parties subsequently introduce into parliamentary debates. In contrast, opposition parties cannot similarly employ social media to force government responses in parliament. Utilizing an original dataset of over 5.5 million tweets by parties and politicians, 400,000 parliamentary questions, and 750,000 news articles from the United Kingdom and Denmark (2015-2022), I employ state-of-the-art automated content analysis techniques. The findings support the proposed ideas. Together, these insights underscore the dynamic interplay between digital platforms and the legislative venue, calling for a renewed understanding of agenda setting in a hybrid communication environment where the boundaries between social media and parliament are increasingly blurred.
• Climate Research Agendas Should Account for Anticipated AI Risks
  Climate change has often been characterized as humanity's greatest threat. However, rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) may cause technological risks to materialize more rapidly than many climate impacts. This raises fundamental questions for the climate community. How should climate professionals address the potential for AI systems to automate cognitive tasks? How might dramatic technological transformation over shorter timescales affect the relative value of near-term versus long-term research priorities? Drawing on recent developments in AI capabilities, expert forecasting, and risk assessment, I suggest three broad scenarios to guide our thinking about AI development and its implications for climate research. Rather than advocating for any single response, I explore how climate professionals might thoughtfully prepare for multiple possible futures while maintaining commitment to addressing the climate crisis. The analysis considers potential adjustments to research communication, graduate education, and collaborative engagement with the AI safety community, while acknowledging the significant uncertainties inherent in technological forecasting. These questions have no easy answers, but they warrant serious consideration as the climate research community navigates unprecedented technological change alongside ongoing environmental challenges.
• Okonomik des Journalismus 1: Positive Externalitaten, oder: Warum Journalismus wichtig ist
  Dieses Kapitel analysiert die gesellschaftliche Bedeutung des Journalismus aus okonomischer Perspektive. Okonomisch betrachtet ist Journalismus ein Gut mit ausgepragten positiven Externalitaten, da sich ein erheblicher Teil seines gesellschaftlichen Nutzens nicht in der individuellen Zahlungsbereitschaft widerspiegelt. Empirische Forschung, insbesondere zu sogenannten ,,Nachrichtenwusten", zeigt, dass der Ruckgang von (lokalem) Journalismus mit geringerer Wahlbeteiligung, steigender politischer Polarisierung, sinkendem politischen Wissen sowie schwacherer politischer und wirtschaftlicher Kontrolle einhergeht. Dieser gesellschaftliche Nutzen entsteht in wesentlichen Teilen durch positive Externalitaten und fuhrt zu einer Unterversorgung mit Journalismus. Die Digitalisierung hat dieses Problem verscharft, da sie traditionelle Erlosmodelle (insbesondere durch Werbung und Anzeigen) untergrabt und die wirtschaftliche Verwertbarkeit journalistischer Inhalte erschwert. Der Beitrag diskutiert verschiedene Regulierungs- und Forderansatze zur Korrektur dieses Marktversagens, darunter offentlich-rechtliche Medien, sowie Nachfrage- und Angebotsforderung.
• topSEARCH: a Comprehensive Tool for the Retrieval and Analysis of Multi-Type Online Resources
  The internet is filled with diverse content types, such as videos, news articles, podcasts, and mobile apps, spread across various platforms and requiring significant time and effort to gather and evaluate. We propose a novel methodology for efficiently retrieving, organizing, and storing more than one type of online resources. This methodology is implemented in a tool called topSEARCH, which automates resource gathering using public APIs. To assess the quality and diversity of the resources, we compare the interest trends from topSEARCH with those from Google Trends. This comparison is done after searching in both tools 10 different queries (e.g. Covid-19 or ChatGPT) with known trends in the last three years. Results show a high mean similarity between both tools (cosine: 0.7766, Pearson: 0.5478, Euclidean: 16.59) indicating that the proposed methodology is able to search and combine different online resource types efficiently and with enough quality. In addition, the application of filters has reduced the average similarity between both tools by up to 15.33%. We publicly release topSEARCH's code to support future research. We also release the database generated with topSEARCH, which contains a total of 27,002 resources for the selected 10 search queries.
• Power Dependency and Cooperative Player Behavior in Multiplayer Game Design A Study of Gambit's Gauntlet
  Most, if not all, multiplayer games have a huge imbalance of teamwork and individualism that contribute very highly to the player experience. This aims to aid in understanding the cooperation and player behavior within a cooperative multiplayer game known as "Gambit's Gauntlet," which was designed with this study in mind. Our primary focus is to examine how players in cooperative games can be affected by player behavior and Level Design that affects the balance of Power Dependency (Emerson, 1962) between players when working in a team and whether they can be affected by categorized cooperative sections between levels, team dynamics based on personality types and player skills. The game pushes and tests players on their tolerance for working as a team, and we aim to study this through our qualitative and quantitative tests that would involve analyzing gameplay recordings, surveys, and personality assessments. Our goal is to learn and observe patterns that can affect cooperation, frustration, conflict, and player motivation, which can be an insightful start to creating the perfect game environment by testing all these factors. We also learn about the elements required in cooperative gameplay and how cooperative gameplay can be hindered. We decided to look at Power Dependency, specifically Power Dependency Imbalances (Emerson, 1962) in a dyadic relationship or Cooperation. Our Methodology consists of pre and post-surveys to a playtest testing Power Imbalances and Power Dependency (Emerson, 1962) between unfamiliar participants via our Capstone Cooperative Game "Gambit's Gauntlet." The levels used for our playtest were designed to create a power imbalance between players to help us understand how unfamiliar players respond to each other and how they would react when switching the power dependency between them. These behaviors were measured via annotating play sessions by tracking Behavioral Markers (Farah et al. 2022) that we find during gameplay. This playtest had a total of 16 male participants, with ages ranging from 18-30, who were all based around the Boston area, with a mix of university students and young professionals from multiple cultural backgrounds. Thanks to our research and our playtest, we were able to find that power dependency Imbalance done via Level Design encourages communication and cooperative behaviors between players since they will take on the imbalance and accommodate each other for the sake of completing the common goal, which is beating a cooperative game that demands both their involvement and cooperation.
• Sustainable Cultural Entrepreneurship of Lesvos: Long-Term Development based on the Island's Competitive Features
  This study explores cultural entrepreneurship in Lesvos, a Greek island with a significant cultural rich, and the perspective for cultural entrepreneurship is such isolated geographical areas to grow and lead a further economic, social, and cultural bloom. The study focuses on quantitative research to analyze local perceptions, willingness to invest in cultural business, and the way that cultural entrepreneurship enforces social cohesion and regional identity. The results indicate that such cultural entrepreneurship forms an added economic branch, which, despite its positive impact, is subjected to seasonality challenges, funding limitations, and infrastructural constraints. A connection between annual income per person and cultural activities is also found, while also the article also focuses on actions that may sustain cultural entrepreneurship, involving other stakeholders.
• Analysis of Textile ETP Technology and Environmental Policies for a Sustainable Future in Bangladesh
  The work focuses on the implementation of textile industry effluent management, the current pollution scenario in Bangladesh caused by these effluents, and the proposed solution of installing an effluent treatment plant. Despite the presence of ETP equipment in almost all textile industries in Bangladesh, many factories do not operate them regularly because of high maintenance and operational costs (Rahman & Islam 2020). Rapid industrialization has intensified environmental pollution through the discharge of untreated toxic waste (Islam Rahman and Akter 2021). On the other hand, increasing industrialization is contributing to severe pollution of the environment by poisonous waste discharge. The liquid effluents from industries are causing major havoc to the environment, ecology, agriculture, aquaculture, and public health since the development of textile industries in the country. It had become a prerequisite to set up ETP in each industrial establishment, particularly at dyeing industries that were discharging immense amounts of liquid waste to the rivers every day. However, for the successful implementation of ETPs, industry owners will need to be socially responsible. At the same time, the government should provide factory owners with logistical support and a relaxed timeframe to set up ETPs.
• Synergies and Gaps in Support for Technical Career Development in UK Higher Education and Research: A Semi-Quantitative Analysis of 'Technician Commitment' Action Plans and Progress Reports using Natural Language Processing
  This study analyses Technician Commitment action plans from UK higher education institutions to address persistent technical talent demand in research. Using natural language processing with Google Gemini, 3558 action items from 104 plans were categorised into 26 key themes. The most common focus areas were "Ongoing Visibility and Communication", "Networking and Presenting" and "Career Pathways and Progression", whilst "Wellbeing and Mental Health", "Environmental Sustainability" and "Equipment Sharing" received minimal attention. Comparison with the TALENT Policy Commission's recommendations revealed strong alignment on improving visibility and diversifying entry routes, but significant gaps in technical staff's policy involvement and strategic workforce planning. Notably, institutions rarely cited external resources from professional bodies, suggesting underutilisation of available support. The study proposes developing a 'Skills Portfolio' methodology with a standardised 'living skills ontology' to provide verifiable mechanisms for demonstrating technical expertise. These findings highlight the need for more prescriptive national guidance and targeted outreach to foster comprehensive technical workforce development.
• The Concentration Mechanism: Male Partner Distribution Bifurcation and the Collapse of the Moderate Middle
  The majority of the widely-discussed "sex recession" reflects a symmetric rise in virginity affecting both genders equally. A companion paper, however, documented an additional asymmetric component: a post-2012 widening of the male-female gap in sexlessness among the sexually experienced. This study investigates the distributional mechanism underlying that asymmetric gap using the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). The analysis focuses on never-married, sexually experienced adults aged 25-34--old enough to have accumulated meaningful partner histories, young enough to reflect contemporary market dynamics, and restricted to those actively in the dating market; similar male-specific redistribution appears in broader sexually experienced samples, indicating the pattern is not driven solely by marital selection. Among this population, I find a male-specific collapse of the "moderate middle": the share of men with 3-5 lifetime partners fell from 30.3% to 21.5% (-8.8 percentage points) between 2006-2010 and 2015-2017. This loss bifurcated: +4.4 pp shifted to the 1-2 category (exclusion) and +4.4 pp shifted to 6+ (concentration). Women's distribution remained stable. The upper tail (10+ partners) actually declined slightly for both genders, suggesting concentration operates specifically in the 6-9 range--not through extreme accumulation. Because this redistribution occurs within the middle of the distribution rather than the extreme upper tail, it is poorly captured by standard inequality measures (e.g., Gini coefficients) and to analyses focused on top-end accumulation. This distributional pattern--middle collapse rather than upper-tail growth--has gone unrecognized in prior work. The asymmetric gap decomposes evenly into exclusion and concentration.
• Organisation des soins et perceptions de la prise en charge du diabete gestationnel a Assandre, Cote d'Ivoire
  Le diabete gestationnel constitue un enjeu croissant de sante maternelle en Afrique subsaharienne et plus particulierement dans les zones rurales ou les dispositifs sanitaires sont pour la plupart sur un pied de vulnerables hors normes. Cette recherche conduite dans le dispensaire d'Assandre, un milieu rural de la Cote d'Ivoire. Elle a necessite pour cadre conceptuel, l'Approche de Donabedian pour analyser l'organisation des soins, evaluer la qualite reelle et percue de la prise en charge du diabete gestationnel. Par une approche methodologique structuree autour des dimensions (structure, processus et resultats) qui combine des observations directes, des entretiens et d'une analyse documentaire, les resultats mettent en lumiere des dysfonctionnements dans lesdites dimensions. Le dispensaire presente des lacunes de gouvernance, un plateau technique minimal et des infrastructures vetustes. Ces dernieres engendrent des processus de soins non standardises, produisant des insatisfactions sur le plan technique que percu. L'etude s'est conclue par une exigence d'intervention systemique qui vise a la fois les trois (03) actions du cadre propose par Donabedian, (1988) pour l'amelioration de la qualite des soins dans les structures peripheriques de premier niveau en Cote d'Ivoire.
• Social Inequalities in the Timing of Childcare Use in Europe
  This study examines when parents across Europe begin using formal childcare and how the timing of entry is socially stratified by socioeconomic resources, employment, and informal care availability. Childcare services are central to work-family reconciliation and gender equality. Existing research focuses primarily on whether families use childcare, largely overlooking when they do so. But timing matters because institutional entitlements only translate into real opportunities when households can convert them into use at specific points after childbirth. Using harmonized EU-SILC data from 22 European countries (2003-2020), this study estimates age-specific probabilities of formal childcare use during the first four years after birth. An analysis with matched longitudinal data complements thus study to assess the stability of childcare use once initiated. Formal childcare use rises steeply with child age but displays pronounced social stratification. Higher maternal education, stronger labor-market attachment, and higher household income are associated with substantially earlier entry into formal care. Informal childcare acts as a key substitute, delaying formal entry. Cross-national differences in usage levels and timing are large. Longitudinal results show that once families enter formal childcare, exit is rare. Inequality in childcare use is fundamentally temporal. Advantaged parents convert institutional entitlements into earlier and longer use, while less resourceful households enter later, reinforcing cumulative inequalities in employment trajectories and early childhood environments.
• Through the Liminal: An Early Journey of Genome-Edited Tomato in Japan--Seedling- Table-Earth
  This study offers an anthropological analysis of the early societal journey in Japan of the world's first commercially released genome-edited tomato, the SRHGABA, conceptualizing it as a societal and planetary rite of "passage." Treating the tomato as a hybrid actor embedded in ecologies and social infrastructures, the study first explores how its cultivation and circulation has generated apprehension and elusiveness exceeding standard risk metrics. This is partly due to the crop's undetectability--it contains no foreign genes--rendering it less radical than conventional GMOs. Next, the study advances a theory of dynamis and dynamist rites, viewing the current transitional stage of adoption as a contradictory and suspended spatiotemporal journey. It draws on liminality and liminoid formations to highlight this limbo-like phase, which nonetheless harbors an undercurrent of potent possibility. The research foregrounds pre-reflective, magico-religious attunements (e.g. awe-like receptivity), arguing that they lie deeper than ethical stances or anticipatory care. Amid current preparations to export genome editing to Asian countries, this study's use of an ethnographic case from the region illuminates the potential and concerns of genome editing adoption that are likely to emerge across Asia and the world in the near future. Keywords: genome-edited, rites of passage, dynamis, multispecies, liminalit
• Top, Bottom, and Average Achievers: A Cross-National Study of School Composition Effects in Italy and Norway
  A longstanding debate in research on peer effects concerns whether exposure to high-achieving classmates enhances or depresses students' academic performance. While normative models emphasize positive spillovers, social comparison theories highlight negative contrast effects, and empirical evidence remains mixed. Moreover, it is unclear whether peer effects operate similarly across institutional contexts. This study addresses these issues through a comparative analysis of Italy and Norway, two educational systems that differ markedly in competitiveness, tracking, evaluation practices, and gender norms. Using harmonized, population-wide administrative register data, we follow three full student cohorts from Grade 5 to Grade 8. This longitudinal design allows us to control for prior achievement--an advantage unavailable in international assessments such as PISA, TIMSS, or PIRLS. We estimate value-added school fixed-effects models that exploit within-school, across-cohort variation in peer composition. Across both countries, higher average peer achievement is associated with lower individual performance, consistent with social comparison mechanisms. Exposure to top-performing peers has negative effects, while exposure to low-performing peers has positive effects. These patterns are similar across countries and do not vary systematically by gender, suggesting that peer comparison processes are remarkably stable across institutional contexts.
• Cosmopolitans Are Nationalists Too: Territorial Identities in European Cleavage Politics
  What is the relationship between global and local identification, and how is it linked to political conflict? These questions are central to scholarship on contemporary electoral politics, which has linked the radical right's rise to a new dimension of political conflict separating tolerant, globally minded voters from exclusionary, locally oriented ones. This cleavage, variously described as universalist-particularist, cosmopolitan-parochial, or globalist-nationalist, implies that collective identification is polarized along a global-local axis and helps drive political mobilization. Yet little is known about how different territorial identities compete with or reinforce each other, let alone how their configurations shape political preferences. Using latent class models and survey data from 35 countries, I find that most Europeans are pluralists, who identify across a range of territories and support mainstream parties. A subset of countries, however, exhibits a division between particularists, who emphasize proximal identities, and expansivists, who emphasize distal ones. Remarkably, both groups converge in their strong attachment to the nation. This division overlaps with educational and geographic divides and separates radical-right supporters from those of new left parties like the greens. The findings demonstrate how collective identities reinforce new electoral divisions while challenging influential accounts of the scope and structure of identity-based polarization.
• Quantifying the Potential of Digital Innovations to Advance Circular Economy in Consumer and Industrial Goods
  Recent advances in digital technologies create opportunities to support circular economy strategies for mass-produced consumer and industrial goods. Building on the CE-RISE project, this study evaluates how Digital Product Passports (DPPs) and related digital innovations can improve circular outcomes across selected value chains. We combine secondary data analysis of production and trade statistics with a PRISMA 2020-compliant systematic review and meta-analysis of published evidence. The empirical scope covers heat pumps, PV panels, printers, ICT equipment, and batteries. We report baseline material flows and circularity indicators for Europe (2010-2023), highlight differences between the EU27 and non-EU Europe (CH/NO/TR), and quantify a DPP scenario with confidence intervals. For the EU27 in 2023, current circularity is 15.5% and the DPP scenario implies 45.6% (95% CI: 29.2-62.0), corresponding to potential savings of 52.3 Mt and EUR 64.7 bn (95% CI: 23.8-80.8 Mt; EUR 29.5-100.0 bn). We also provide a proxy estimate of refurbishment-related employment exposure based on Eurostat production value per employee in NACE J. The paper provides an evidence-informed baseline for estimating DPP-enabled gains and for monitoring future policy impacts.
• Value-driven AI Governance
  Value-driven governance is a prominent topic in AI regulation, with both state actors and tech companies professing a commitment to values like fairness and safety. Despite this seeming agreement, we know little how normative principles are interpreted, operationalized, and assigned responsibilities within particular contexts. This study compares the values invoked within the European Union's AI Act with policy documents of five major AI companies--OpenAI, Anthropic, Google AI, Meta AI, and Mistral AI. Through a combination of frequency analysis and inductive keyword-in-context analysis, we identify prioritized values and map how they are specified in public legislation and corporate policies. Both public and private actors largely invoke the same values (accuracy, authenticity, control, improvement, privacy, safety, and security) but sometimes differ in their specification. While values like privacy, security, and safety typically mean the same thing in policy discourses, we found stark differences in the understanding of improvement, tensions between technical and normative operationalizations of values, and shifts of responsibilities for upholding values from one stakeholder to another. Value specifications surface the politics of values in AI regulations, exposing how private actors employ polysemy to claim alignment with the public interest while avoiding substantial accountability. When it comes to value-driven governance, the devil is in the details.
• Uncovering Edtech's Embedded Values: Making the Case for Socio-Technical Audits In Ethnographic Inquiry
  Drawing on three ethnographic studies of secondary schools in England, this article makes a case for "socio-technical audits" - a method combining technological walkthroughs with observations, workshops, and interviews - as part of ethnographic inquiry. A case example is presented to illustrate how the integration of socio-technical audits enables articulation of the underlying logics of technologies, while producing empirically grounded, contextually situated accounts of how technologies are interpreted, negotiated, and embedded within everyday educational practice.
• Name Uniqueness and Individualism in France: A century of changes across 95 prefectures
  Individualism, the prioritization of personal distinctiveness over group conformity, is theorized to increase with economic development. This study tests this hypothesis over a century (1900-2022) across 95 French departements, using name uniqueness as a behavioral proxy. We first validate this proxy at the subnational level, showing that name uniqueness correlates with regional survey-based individualism indices (World Values Survey), even after controlling for immigration rates. Using complete civil registry data (N [?] 79 million) and a bootstrapped name uniqueness score, we then analyze its relationship with economic development across space and time. Our analysis yields three key findings. First, longitudinal analysis reveals a strong positive association: as GDP per capita increased nationally over the 100-year period, name uniqueness rose significantly across all departements. Second, after removing shared temporal trends by standardizing variables within each year, effectively treating departements (n = `r nobs(norm_model_boy)`) as small, culturally and socially identical countries, GDP per capita continues to predict higher name uniqueness. Third, we uncover nuanced patterns: the relationship was moderated by gender, particularly during the World Wars, and rising economic inequality between regions was accompanied by growing divergence in naming practices, suggesting that development drives both cultural individualism and cultural stratification. Together, these results provide robust, fine-grained evidence that economic development fosters a cultural shift toward greater individualism.
• On the Inappropriateness of the Hodges-Lehmann Estimator for Ordinal Grading Data
  The Hodges-Lehmann estimator (HL) is widely described (in statistical terms) as a nonparametric, robust, consistent and efficient estimator of central location. While this characterization is correct under standard assumptions--continuous, unimodal distributions on a meaningful metric scale--its application to ordinal grading data such as university marks is problematic. Using explicit counterexamples, we show that the HL estimator can exhibit severe jump discontinuities: minimal changes in the sample leads to large, discrete changes in the HL estimate. This behavior persists under sample size inflation by replication. This shows that the HL should not be used to represent a central location in ordinal grading data as frequently present at universities.
• The Immigrant Song: National Identity and Attitudes Toward Immigrants - The Mediating Role of Secure and Defensive In-group Identity
  This research examines the role of various forms of national identity in predicting anti-immigrant attitudes based on the national identity module of a large cross-national dataset (International Social Survey Programme 2013). We show, across 22 European countries, that the relationship between a general measure of national identity and out-group discrimination is mediated by two forms of national attachment: nationalism and patriotism. While both forms are positively related to national identity, they affect attitudes towards immigrants in different ways. Nationalism is positively associated with discriminatory intentions, while patriotism is negatively associated with them. Both effects cancel one another out.
• Commentary on immigrant density and crime in Sweden
  Sarnecki et al. (2025) conclude that there is no association between municipal immigration density and violent crime levels in Sweden. I review their presented results and show that this conclusion is incorrect.
• Analysis of the Social System in Post-Capitalist Society
  The ability to enhance productivity is pivotal in determining the success of a social system. Beyond scientific and technological advancements, productivity primarily hinges on workers' production enthusiasm and labour quality, the scale of production within each unit, and the pattern of resource allocation. Under given productive forces, the scale of production per unit is determined by the rate of exploitation imposed by owners upon labourers. As productive forces advance, new production models emerge. To boost productivity, the rate of exploitation diminishes, elevating the political and social standing of the populace, thereby giving rise to new social formations. Undifferentiated human labour constitutes the origin of goods value, while interest represents the outcome of value distribution. The risk-free rate approximates 20% of the average return on corporate assets. Goods prices in the market are primarily determined by supply, with the labour value of goods serving as the equilibrium point of supply--thus constituting the market's equilibrium price. The labour theory of value quantitatively explains the Equity Risk Premium Puzzle. The higher the automation level of enterprises, the lower the value of goods, and in the long run, the lower the profits of enterprises. After the highly developed productive forces in capitalist society, the vast majority of industries will become low-profit public infrastructure services, making it difficult for private entities to continue operating. Public ownership will replace private ownership. The future social structure will be a "communist society" characterized by public ownership and distribution according to need as the mainstay, supplemented by private ownership and distribution according to work under a free-market economy. In this "communist society" the state will persist, giving rise to a united human government where selfless dedication becomes the socially advocated moral standard. Under current productive forces, public ownership impedes both productive and economic development. Marxism is mistaken about the reasons and timing for the inevitable collapse of the capitalist system. Contemporary society faces issues such as welfare systems, nationalization, unified currencies, and China's economic and political structures.
• Title: AI, Autism, and the Architecture of Voice: From Engineered Exclusion to Designed Dignity
  This paper conceptualizes engineered exclusion--the predictable sidelining of disabled users that results from choices about data provenance, model objectives, and evaluation practices within AI systems. We frame this phenomenon through the lived experiences of minimally and nonspeaking autistics whose multimodal communication profiles challenge the speech-centered defaults of current AI pipelines. "Nonspeaking" is not a single condition or an absence of language but a spectrum encompassing users of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), from text to gesture, rhythmic movement, and partial vocalizations. Communicative profiles vary across time with fatigue, anxiety, sensory load, and motor planning demands, yet design abstractions erase this variability. By tracing exclusionary mechanisms across speech recognition, text-to-speech, plain-language generation, and interface design, we identify how inequities are structurally produced and propose measurable designed dignity metrics for evaluation and governance. We argue that accessibility must be treated as a core dimension of AI ethics--on par with fairness, privacy, and safety. Re-engineering AI for designed dignity requires systems that recognize embodied, multimodal, and state-dependent forms of communication, expanding what counts as valid signal and responsible innovation.
• The Transitional Space: Areas of Spatial Uncertainty and Breaking Down the Urban/Suburban Divide
  Accurately delineating urban and suburban space has become increasingly difficult. Identifying each setting has long relied on capturing where population density and commuting flows differ, with research and policy often operating with binary measures to separate city from suburb. But as urban and suburban spaces expand, age, and reshape, places emerge that do not definitively fit this binary imagination. The uncertainty this generates creates complexities in claims made about urban and suburban space, but it is rarely addressed within empirical classifications. This research focuses on the uncertainty that dichotomous categorizations of place hide. Through a comparison of seven extant definitions of urban and suburban, I identify places that sit reliably in one category or another; but I also highlight the areas of uncertainty and instability. Results demonstrate that there are 'stable' urban and suburban areas, but a spatially uncertain transitional space exists where the nature of the landscape is unclear. By delineating these transitional spaces as a third category, I support research and policy that aims to speak clearly about changes in urban and suburban places, while also opening a conversation about how places might move between these two canonical definitions.
• Algorithmic Management and Its Impact on Employee Autonomy, Job Satisfaction, and Performance
  The growing use of algorithm based systems to manage employees has transformed how work is organized and controlled in contemporary organizations. Commonly referred to as algorithmic management, this approach relies on automated decision making to allocate tasks, monitor performance, and evaluate employee outcomes. While such systems are often adopted to enhance efficiency, their implications for human work remain insufficiently understood. This study examined the relationship between algorithmic management and key employee outcomes, with a particular focus on employee autonomy, job satisfaction, and performance. Using a quantitative research design, data were collected through an online survey from employees working in algorithmically managed environments. Established measurement scales were employed to assess the study variables, and statistical analyses were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings indicate that algorithmic management is negatively associated with employee autonomy and job satisfaction, while demonstrating a significant relationship with employee performance. These results suggest that algorithmic management may improve performance related outcomes but can also constrain employees' sense of control and satisfaction at work. The study contributes to the growing literature on digital and technology-mediated management by highlighting the dual effects of algorithmic management on human work. From a practical perspective, the findings underscore the importance of designing algorithmic systems that balance organizational efficiency with employee well-being. The study also offers directions for future research on the evolving role of algorithms in shaping the future of work.
• Inequality, not regulation, drives America's housing affordability crisis
  A popular view holds that declining housing affordability stems from regulations that restrict new supply, and that deregulation will spur sufficient market-rate construction to meaningfully improve affordability. We argue that this 'deregulationist' view rests upon flawed assumptions. Through empirical simulation, we show that even a dramatic, deregulation-driven supply expansion would take decades to generate widespread affordability in high-cost U.S. markets. We advance an alternative explanation of declining affordability grounded in demand structure and geography: uneven demand growth - driven by rising interpersonal and interregional inequality - is the primary driver of declining affordability in recent decades. For cost-burdened households, trickle-down benefits from deregulation will be insufficient and too slow.
• From Kitchen Practice to the Public Sphere: The Social and Aesthetic Translation of Culinary Home Economics Capital
  This paper develops a theoretical account of how domestic cooking, historically understood as private and relational labor, can come to be translated into publicly visible and socially consequential forms of value. Building on the concept of Culinary Home Economics Capital (CHE Capital), domestic cooking is understood as a relationally embedded, value-generating practice. Through processes of visualization, narrativization, and platformization, CHE Capital becomes legible within contemporary regimes of visibility and evaluation, generating recognition, identity, and hierarchical effects. This paper situates CHE Capital in dialogue with Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital, care ethics, and affect theory, highlighting both its continuities with and distinctions from these frameworks. The analysis contributes to cultural sociology, everyday aesthetics, and feminist political economy by offering a framework for understanding how intimate, relational practices enter public circuits of evaluation and recognition.
• Social Network Structure Rivals Smoking and Income as a Predictor of U.S. County Mortality
  Personal networks influence health and mortality at the individual level, but less is known about how population-scale social network structure relates to mortality. This study examines how US county-level social network structure relates to mortality disparities. Using measures from 21 billion Facebook friendships, we investigate how two structural features of population social networks - cohesiveness and diversity - are associated with age-standardized and age-specific mortality rates. Bivariate results show that measures of social network structure rival smoking rates, median income, and educational attainment in their association with mortality rates. Social network structure remains predictive of mortality even after controlling for traditional measures like socioeconomic status and rural/urban classification. Network diversity is associated with lower mortality in both bivariate and multivariate analyses. Network clustering is associated with higher mortality bivariately, but this association reverses after controlling for county-level demographic and socioeconomic factors, revealing a protective effect masked by confounding. Age-stratified analyses further complicate this picture, showing that clustering predicts lower mortality among adults aged 15-64 but higher mortality among those 70 and older. These findings highlight social network structure as an important dimension of place-based health disparities, one not fully captured by conventional measures of socioeconomic composition or spatial segregation.
• Discipline as Method: Interdisciplinarity as Epistemic Intervention
  Interdisciplinary research is frequently conceptualized as an integrative endeavor that synthesizes disciplinary perspectives to yield more holistic explanations of complex phenomena. Although this integrative paradigm has yielded valuable outcomes, it often frames disciplinary differences principally as barriers to be surmounted. Drawing on insights from science and technology studies (STS), this article advances an alternative epistemological framework by reconceptualizing disciplines not as repositories of accumulated knowledge but as historically stabilized methodological apparatuses that actively constitute explanatory objects and practices. Building upon this reconceptualization, the article develops an interventionist epistemology that positions disciplinary differences as generative epistemic resources rather than impediments. The proposed framework delineates a three-stage mechanism--interpretive juxtaposition, cognitive friction, and methodological reflexivity--whereby the deliberate and sustained co-presence of incommensurable explanatory logics disrupts the naturalized authority of any single disciplinary method, thereby fostering reflexive scrutiny of underlying epistemic commitments and normative implications. Through illustrative cases from climate policy modeling, management research, and evidence-based medicine, the analysis demonstrates how interpretive juxtaposition manifests across diverse institutional contexts, generating cognitive friction that prompts methodological reflexivity without necessitating premature synthesis or resolution of differences. These examples illustrate that prolonged exposure to plural explanatory regimes can productively intervene in epistemic assumptions, thereby reshaping the conditions of legitimate judgment and knowledge production. The article concludes by elaborating the implications of reframing interdisciplinarity as epistemic intervention rather than integration, and by identifying promising directions for future empirical inquiry within STS, including investigations into the institutional conditions that enable or constrain such reflexive dynamics.
• Settler Colonialism and Financial Predation
  In this essay, we extend an invitation to scholars to engage with settler colonialism as an ongoing condition of possibility for racial capitalism penology and a foundational element of the contemporary LFO regime. We argue that criminal justice debt should not be viewed merely as a symptom of neoliberal austerity or as collateral consequence of punitive excess, but as a structural feature of settler governance. We reconceptualize criminal legal debt not as a marker of the punitive turn in U.S. criminal justice policy nor even as the application of recent neoliberal austerity policies to the administration of carceral institutions. Instead, we contend that such forms of state financial extraction must be understood as an integral feature of settler colonialism. In doing so, we shift attention from recent policy frameworks such as neoliberalism toward the deeper and underlying historical trajectories of criminal legal extraction that are rooted in the long-standing pattern of settler-colonial financial predation.
• Spatial Changes in Kathmandu Valley: A review through political perspective
  Kathmandu valley's spatial characters are constantly changing, and as such, its urban morphology can be observed as a frequently altered palimpsest. Developing on the trade route of Tibet and India, settlements of Kathmandu valley can be traced back to more than three thousand years. The foundation of the earliest settlements were laid out by Kirats in 300 BC or before that. The settlements expanded first under the succeeding Lichchhavi ruling house who applied Vedic town planning principles and later the Mallas expanded the settlements further with Astamatrika and Dashmahavidya concepts affiliated to Shakti- cult. After the unification of Nepal in 1769, Kathmandu Valley became the capital of politics, economy and administration, however the political centralization can be vividly observed only after the 1950's. After the dethroning of the autocratic Rana Regime in 1951, the monarchical government had the authoritative grip in government and development. The political turmoil did not stop until the 1990s, which brought two big changes in Nepal, when the re-establishment of Democracy and wave of globalization brought unprecedented change in the urban form of Kathmandu Valley. However, the democratization of Nepal did not go well; the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) declared a civil war that lasted for a decade till 2006 jeopardizing the baby local government (Decentralization) and causing massive migration to urban core from rural regions, especially to Kathmandu Valley. The mass movement of April 2006 changed the governing landscape, turning a democratic monarchical nation into a federal republic, with an expectation to loosen valley's centripetal grip of economy and administration, if not politics. The era of federal republic of Nepal has witnessed the political chaos of more than a decade, in terms of urban policy and development strategy. The paper reviews the spatial changes of Kathmandu Valley from the perspective of the political economy of Nepal till date. It is observed that the political system and social structure have defined the changes in the urban landscape of Kathmandu valley. The paper takes into account the regime changes over the period and the planning strategies carried out in the period along with the political economics behind it. The spatial changes of Kathmandu valley inferential to its political economy is also significant to understand the growth pattern of other growing cities in Nepal, which are largely influenced by political decisions in Nepal.
• Dinamicas de Narcisismo Patologico en Negociaciones Asimetricas: Analisis de Estrategias Efectivas e Inefectivas en Encuentros Diplomaticos de Alto Riesgo con Donald Trump. Recomendaciones Basadas en Evidencia para el Encuentro Trump-Petro.
  La reunion programada entre el presidente colombiano Gustavo Petro y el presidente estadounidense Donald Trump (primera semana de febrero 2026) representa un encuentro diplomatico de alto riesgo cuyo desenlace dependera criticamente de la comprension de las dinamicas psicologicas subyacentes. Mediante analisis comparativo de dos encuentros recientes con Trump - el caso fallido con el presidente ucraniano Volodimir Zelenski (febrero 2025) y el caso exitoso con el alcalde de Nueva York Zohran Mamdani (enero 2026) - este estudio identifica patrones psicologicos que determinan resultados en negociaciones con lideres narcisistas en contextos de asimetria de poder. Empleando metodologia cualitativa de analisis de caso comparativo basada en el modelo de narcisismo patologico de Kernberg y Kohut, y marcos teoricos sobre toma de decisiones en contextos asimetricos, se analizan transcripciones de encuentros publicos, declaraciones oficiales, y reportes periodisticos detallados. Los hallazgos sugieren que el narcisismo patologico de Trump crea vulnerabilidades especificas que pueden ser navegadas exitosamente mediante estrategias que eviten activar rabia narcisista mientras permiten al lider narcisista "salvar face" y declararse ganador. Se argumenta que la estructura de personalidad de Petro - caracterizada por narcisismo ideologico mas que patologico - puede constituir ventaja tactica si es adecuadamente movilizada mediante recontextualizacion del pragmatismo como coherente con identidad revolucionaria. Se identifican siete principios psicologicos generales para negociaciones asimetricas con narcisistas patologicos: (1) priorizar evitar activacion de rabia narcisista, (2) permitir "salvar face" como necesidad estructural, (3) reconocer que la narrativa de "ganar" puede superar el contenido sustantivo, (4) validar selectivamente sin adulacion, (5) reconocer diferencias sin insistir en ellas, (6) crear oportunidades para magnanimidad, y (7) reconocer asimetria de poder implicita pero no explicitamente. Se formulan recomendaciones estrategicas especificas organizadas en tres fases: preparacion pre-encuentro (reencuadre mental, identificacion de triggers, preparacion de propuestas ganar-ganar), tacticas durante la reunion (apertura constructiva, manejo de provocaciones, uso estrategico de validacion), y comunicacion post-encuentro (narrativas para audiencias multiples). El estudio tiene implicaciones para diplomacia en contextos de personalidades incompatibles, gestion de crisis con lideres autoritarios, y comprension de como factores psicologicos individuales interactuan con asimetrias estructurales de poder en relaciones internacionales.
• From Virtuous Circle To Vicious Circle: How Venezuela lost itself on Plenty
  The 1960s, 1970s and late 1980s were significant for Venezuela. However, this period of intense transition saw particularly strong growth, largely driven by unsustainable and impoverishing economic growth. On the other hand, this type of growth did not enrich the vast majority of Venezuelans. Thus, on the one hand, there was in fact the emergence of a virtuous circle and institutional plurality, which naturally lasted in the short term. Thus, the Chavista regime that later took hold in Venezuela largely promoted the significant emergence of vicious circles and a set of extractive institutions, strongly characterised by the very existence of economic destruction, promoted on the one hand by democratic stagnation. In this particular approach, I show some evidence that points to divergences regarding the plausible existence of abundant natural resources. Most countries that are rich in natural resources, for example, have similar characteristics, but are influenced, first by vicious circles, and secondly by the institutional extractivism existing in these countries. Examples such as Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Venezuela, Syria, Democratic Congo, and Congo Brazzaville reinforce the theory that abundance is primarily a promoter of political inconsistency, vicious cycles, and, above all, a large part of the multidimensional poverty that is significantly rooted in these countries in particular. Thus, during the vicious circle in Venezuela, on the one hand, the governmental incapacity promoted by the Chavista government consistently and continuously promoted the breakdown of social protection levels and, on the other hand, the significant increase of a significantly dual society, which is strongly persistent with non-inclusive and stagnant democracies. Democratic stagnation, however, was not economically and politically sustainable, and the marked differences consistently and plausibly led to the emergence of severe deprivation of freedoms, namely the deprivation of democratic freedoms and the deprivation of freedoms of access to basic needs. The lack of these freedoms led the country to institutional collapse and significant state collapse.
• The Legal Consequences of Loss: Parental Bereavement and Youth Criminal Legal Outcomes
  General strain theory posits that parental incarceration--and the corresponding parental absence--leads to youth delinquency and criminal legal contact. However, parental incarceration represents just one form of parental absence and comparatively little research considers how a common--and permanent--form of parental absence, parental death, may similarly precipitate youth criminal legal outcomes. We use data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a broadly representative cohort of youth born around the turn of the 21st century, to examine the relationship between parental death and youth criminal legal outcomes. We find that, net of observed characteristics associated with selection into this experience, parental death is associated with higher levels of youth delinquency and incarceration. Parental death is as relevant to youth criminal legal outcomes as parental incarceration. The associations are largest among boys who experienced parental death in middle childhood or adolescence relative to early childhood. These findings underscore the profound consequences of parental death on youth trajectories, highlighting the need to consider bereavement as a critical yet understudied dimension of social inequality and risk for criminal legal involvement.
• Does Work Experience Change Your Political Attitudes? Gender Gaps and Class in Panel Data
  Existing research has focused on women's primary role in housework as an explanation for attitudinal gender gaps but stands at a crossroads as women's labour force participation rates are catching up to men's and the gender gaps remain. This article seeks to expand the idea of gender roles to the gendered nature of work experience as a result of gender-based occupational segregation. In doing so it synthesises an attempt to redraw the class map into a two-dimensional space divided by task structure and authority logic as a predictor of political attitudes with the literature on gender gaps. Is there a direct link between the attitudinal gender gaps and the gendered experience of work? Drawing on panel data and fixed effects estimation the causal nature of work experience is scrutinised. While previously noted differences in attitudes between different positions in the two-dimensional class scheme are (partly) observable, these differences largely cannot be attributed to a causal effect of work experience across different political attitudes. Rather, evidence points to the existence of personality-based selection into certain class positions and the stability of political attitudes irrespective of work experience. Although individuals in different occupations differ this is not because of their work. These findings contradict social role theory as an explanation for gender gaps by discounting the relevance of specific roles such as occupation in (gendered) attitude formation.
• Cognitive Expectations of Homophily in Village Social Networks
  Homophily, the tendency for individuals to associate with similar others, has long been treated as a central principle of social organization. Yet people may overestimate its importance in reasoning about their social networks. Here, we investigate individuals' cognitive expectations of homophily and compare these expectations to actual homophily among 10,072 adults in 82 isolated Honduras villages. We elicited subjects' beliefs about whether pairs of people in their village social networks were socially tied. We show that people deploy cognitive heuristics that substantially overestimate homophily, including based on wealth, ethnicity, gender, and religion. We also find that people exploit network structure when predicting ties between others, independent of expectations about homophily. Understanding cognitive homophily has implications for models of network formation, interventions targeting social behavior and information diffusion, and the maintenance of social inequality.
• A Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) Manual Developed for Institutional Research Ethics Review Committee (IRERC) Wollo University, Ethiopia: Ubuntu Philosophy Integrated Framework for Multi-Disciplinary Research Ethics Review (WU-IRERC-SOPs-001-Version 2, Revised)
  This finalized Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) manual introduces an innovative framework for institutional research ethics review guidelines that integrates the Ubuntu philosophy with international research ethics standards. The SOPs cover research ethics in a variety of fields, including veterinary medicine, public health, social sciences, natural sciences, agriculture, environmental sciences, business and economics, education and humanities, engineering and informatics. Despite being created for Wollo University, the SOP frameworks are widely applicable to African academic and research institutions. A unique and strong strength of the manual is the combination of the Ubuntu philosophy with a multidisciplinary approach, which advances beyond a simple compliance checklist to create a genuine ethical framework deeply integrated with the local context. Key features of the SOPs manual include: * An ethical framework grounded in Ubuntu philosophy, which emphasizes community interconnectedness and collective benefit as foundational principles guiding ethical review processes. * Customized, discipline-specific evaluation checklists that address the unique methodological and ethical considerations inherent to various research fields. * Comprehensive protocols that extend beyond human subjects research to encompass studies involving animals, plants, environmental systems, and communities, applicable across all academic units, reflecting a sophisticated understanding of contemporary research ethics. * The introduction of innovative procedures and tools for community impact assessment that respect indigenous knowledge systems and actively involve stakeholders. * Full alignment with international standards, including the Declaration of Helsinki and World Health Organization guidelines, while ensuring compliance with Ethiopian national regulations as stipulated in Proclamation No. 1130/2019. * Recognition of interconnectedness through the incorporation of concepts such as environmental stewardship, community impact assessment, and benefit-sharing, which are essential for fostering sustainable and ethical research practices. * Detailed implementation guidelines and training protocols designed to facilitate effective adoption and operationalization of the SOPs. Innovation This manual constitutes the first comprehensive effort to integrate Ubuntu philosophy into institutional research ethics review procedures, offering a culturally grounded approach that upholds international standards while honoring African philosophical traditions. The framework serves as a practical model for the decolonization of research ethics within African universities and research institutions.
• We Are Eternaly Stunked on Oil Economy: Evidences of Angola Economy
  In this particular study, I analyse in detail the strong influence of dependence on natural resources. However, a large number of countries with significant natural resources have not managed to promote high standards of significant transformation. Angola, however, is following the same path where, from the outset, abundance of oil and diamonds providing impoverishing growth, strongly supported by short-term public policies that in fact sustain only a minority. Naturally, the abundance of natural resources, particularly for Angola, has nevertheless promoted vicious economic and political circles, which are in fact consistent with short-term objectives. Most of these cycles are in fact ongoing. On the other hand, another major feature highlighted in the study is that it shows, for example, an economy based on international market expectations, so it is international markets that largely control the Angolan economy. On the other hand, the increase in political inconsistencies and public policies aimed at a minority naturally contributed to the consistency of vicious circles and, on the other hand, to the continuity of economic destruction in particular.
• Monitoring Recreation on Federally Managed Lands and Waters--Aspects of Visitor Use
  Federally managed public lands and waters receive about 1 billion recreational visits each year. Data on these visitors can aid in guiding policy decisions, managing resources effectively, and communicating the economic contributions of lands and waters. This report explores the methods used by agencies to collect data on aspects of recreational visitor use to Federal lands and waters (apart from visitation numbers, which are the focus of a companion publication). Aspects of recreational visitor use include visitor demographics, recreational activity participation, visitor satisfaction, visitor attitudes and experiences, trip characteristics, and economic contributions. We review practices used to understand aspects of visitor use across seven Federal agencies, revealing similarities such as the use of visitor intercept surveys and coverage of similar topic area, and differences in how survey programs are operationalized and how specific questions on visitor surveys are worded. We also evaluate emerging technologies, such as geolocated social media and mobile device location data, for their potential to aid in understanding aspects of visitor use. This report concludes with potential opportunities to enhance data collection and coordination, ensuring cost-effective data collection and informed decision-making.
• Two Cultures of Walking: A Human-Scale Comparison of Pedestrian Behaviors in Hong Kong and San Francisco
  This study compares pedestrian behaviors in station areas of Hong Kong and San Francisco to explore how culture and urban design shape human-environment interactions. With field observation, multisensory and video data from 283 street intersections, I evaluate pedestrian utilization of dedicated space and signal timing, walking speeds, and rule violations. I find that despite the observed differences in infrastructure design and policy contexts, pedestrians exhibit similar behaviors under comparable conditions of perceived risk and right-of-way. The study contributes to a global discussion on context-sensitive street design and sustainable transportation planning across cultures.
• Simulating area-level population outcomes: Should we use Multilevel Regression and Poststratification over Spatial Microsimulation?
  Estimating unknown outcomes at small-area population level is a routine task in spatial analysis. We demonstrate how Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP), now widely used in political polling, overcomes some deficiencies in Spatial Microsimulation (SPM), the de facto approach in quantitative geography. Using individual-level data from Health Survey for England and population-level data from 2021 UK Census, we evaluate MRP and SPM at estimating two known health outcomes that occur with high and low frequency in the population. With few constraints there are only slight differences in estimation between the two approaches. With more and especially area-level constraints extreme errors in the SPM estimates begin to accumulate, and these are particularly pronounced for the low-frequency outcome. Additionally, where uncertainty ranges from MRP posteriors begin to widen we find they map to groundtruthed errors, providing a useful validity check when the true population distribution is unknown. This is the first direct comparison of MRP and SPM for small-area estimation. Alongside metrics for evaluating estimates, we highlight the value of area-level variables that constrain outcomes or that may capture varying processes over spatial units, and of a principled approach to model specification and uncertainty quantification - both central to MRP practice.
• A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Prevalence, Variation, and Cultural Context of Female Drug Use in the Ethnographic Record
  Male-biased drug use is a consistent finding in contemporary epidemiology, yet it remains unclear whether this pattern reflects universal features of human behavior or is primarily a product of industrialization, commercialization, and recent socio-political change. Because most "global" evidence derives from urban or industrialized populations, little is known about how gendered substance use unfolds across small-scale, rural, and Indigenous societies. To address this gap, we systematically examine ethnographic evidence of female psychoactive substance use across 171 societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. Using 1,397 drug-by-document cases identified in the Human Relations Area Files OCM category 276 ("Recreational and Non-Therapeutic Drugs"), we document (1) the prevalence of male and female drug use; (2) regional and subsistence variation; (3) substances most frequently associated with female use; and (4) the cultural contexts of women's consumption, identified through text analysis and exploratory factor and cluster analyses. Findings reveal a robust cross-cultural pattern: women's drug use is consistently less frequent and more culturally regulated than men's. Gender disparities appear in every world region and subsistence system, though with varying magnitude in part due to the density of ethnographic reporting. Textual descriptions most often situate women's use in low-dose, domestic, and socially embedded contexts. Exploratory factor and cluster analyses identify four latent domains structuring female drug-use contexts - prestige-regulated substances, ceremonial and social-sharing practices, medicinal and low-intensity uses, and high-risk entheogenic rites - highlighting the culturally patterned environments in which women's drug use occurs. These findings provide the first global, ethnographically grounded test of whether low female drug use is a cross-cultural regularity and establish the empirical basis needed to evaluate biocultural, political-economic, and evolutionary explanations of gendered substance use.