Climate and society in long‐term perspective: Opportunities and pitfalls in the use of historical datasets

an article by Bas J. P. van Bavel, Michail Moatsos and Joris Roosen (Utrecht University, the Netherlands), Daniel R. Curtis (Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands), Matthew J. Hannaford (University of Lincoln, UK) and Tim Soens (University of Antwerp, Belgium) published in WIREs Climate Change Volume 10 Issue 6 (November/December 2019)

Visual abstract

Recent literature investigating long‐term interactions between climate and society increasingly utilises historical big data. Too often this is done without applying historical criticism, which may lead to misguided narratives.
We propose a set of interventions to avoid this and optimise the use of historical datasets.



Abstract

Recent advances in paleoclimatology and the growing digital availability of large historical datasets on human activity have created new opportunities to investigate long‐term interactions between climate and society. However, noncritical use of historical datasets can create pitfalls, resulting in misleading findings that may become entrenched as accepted knowledge.

We demonstrate pitfalls in the content, use and interpretation of historical datasets in research into climate and society interaction through a systematic review of recent studies

1. conflict incidence,
2. plague outbreaks and
3. agricultural productivity changes.

We propose three sets of interventions to overcome these pitfalls, which involve a more critical and multidisciplinary collection and construction of historical datasets, increased specificity and transparency about uncertainty or biases, and replacing inductive with deductive approaches to causality.

This will improve the validity and robustness of interpretations on the long‐term relationship between climate and society.

Full text (PDF 18pp)

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4 Fears That Create People-Pleasers and How to Ease Them

a post by KJ Hutchings for the Tiny Buddha blog



“It feels good to be accepted, loved, and approved of by others, but often the membership fee to belong to that club is far too high of a price to pay.” ~Dennis Merritt Jones

Like a lot of people, I grew up putting others’ needs and wants first. I learned early that doing things for other people and accommodating their wishes gained me attention and approval. It was only in those moments that I felt good enough and deserving of love.

As a child, I liked nothing more than feeling indispensable and being told I was a good and nice girl. This praise was incredibly important to me, as was making others happy. My own happiness did not come into the equation; I was happy because they were happy. I felt loved, safe, and appreciated, in the short term at least.

As I got older my people-pleasing went into overdrive. I continually tried to gain people’s approval, make them happy, and help them whenever needed.

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Terrorist Masculinities: Political Masculinity between Fiction, Facts, and Their Mediation

an article by Rainer Emig (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany) published in Men and Masculinities Volume 22 Issue 3 (August 2019)

Abstract

This essay proposes that terrorism manifests itself in a relation that encompasses masculinity as well as the media. The origin of this relationship is the joint performativity of gender and acts of terror. This makes terrorism an instrument of social and political change. But in order to legitimize themselves, terrorism as well as masculinity require authorization by a phantasmagorical power.

Drawing on the dominance of males among terrorists, this essay will look at an early depiction of terrorism in Conrad’s The Secret Agent, a contemporary representation in Sahota’s novel Ours Are the Streets and terrorism’s real manifestation in the Paris carnage of November 2015.

It will show that in the desire to satisfy an imagined “higher authority” and thereby assert an individual as well as political identity, masculinity and terrorism share a performative root. This also suggests a possible way of exposing and exploding terrorism and masculinity from within, by feeding into the mediated stream of its representations images and ideas of inferiority, ridicule, and failure.

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Identity, beliefs, and political conflict

a column by Nicola Gennaioli and Guido Tabellini for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

In recent decades, the political systems of advanced democracies have witnessed large changes, often in reaction to economic shocks due to globalisation and technology.

This column uses insights from the social psychology of groups to explain how when large shocks hit, new cleavages in society emerge. This causes individuals to shift their beliefs about themselves and others in the direction of new social stereotypes. If globalisation clusters society in a nationalist versus cosmopolitan cleavage instead of the traditional left versus right, this may dampen demand for redistribution despite potential increases in income inequality.

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Neighbourhood change and neighbour complaints: How gentrification and densification influence the prevalence of problems between neighbours

an article by Lynda Cheshire, Robin Fitzgerald and Yan Liu (The University of Queensland, Australia) published in Urban Studies Volume 56 Issue 6 (May 2019)

Abstract

As people who live in closest proximity to us, the conduct of neighbours can have an impact upon our lives, even if they are relative strangers.

While previous research has generally examined the positive effects of good neighbour interactions, neighbours can also be a source of nuisance, conflict and distress.

In the advent of socio-structural processes of urban policy and change – such as gentrification and densification – the taken-for-granted conventions that once regulated neighbour interactions are being eroded, potentially leading to greater levels of neighbour problems and complaints.

In this paper, we apply a latent modelling approach to identify subgroups of neighbourhoods based on their profiles of neighbour problems and to assess whether these subgroups are characterised by the degree of social change in the neighbourhood towards the dual processes of gentrification and densification.

The findings show that high intensity problems are associated with both processes, but that class factors of gentrification are more influential than density in accounting for neighbour tensions.

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Death and taxes: Political violence shapes local fiscal institutions and state building

a column by Rafael Ch, Jacob Shapiro, Abbey Steele and Juan F. Vargas for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

It is widely accepted that war between states can lead to increased fiscal capacity. Yet, there is no similarly clear, historically consistent accounting of how civil wars have affected state capacity and tax revenues.

Using recent evidence from Colombia, this column shows that municipalities affected by internal conflict have tax institutions consistent with the preferences of the parties that have managed to inflict more violence in the past. Internal armed conflict can help interest groups capture municipal institutions for their own private benefit, impeding state-building.

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How conflict disrupts the economy: New evidence from the West Bank and Gaza

a column by Francesco Amodio and Michele Di Maio for VIX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

The economic impact of conflict can be catastrophic, but disentangling and identifying the different ways in which conflict affects the economy is challenging.

Using data from the Occupied Palestinian Territory during the Second Intifada, this column examines the specific mechanisms through which economic losses materialise in a conflict zone with low-intensity violence.

The findings highlight the close interaction between security and trade issues, calling for an integrated policy approach acting on both fronts.

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The Preference for Belief Consonance

an article by Russell Golman and George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Ove Moene (University of Oslo, Norway) and Luca Zarri (University of Verona, Italy) published in Journal of Economic Perspectives Volume 30 Number 3 Summer 2016

Abstract

We consider the determinants and consequences of a source of utility that has received limited attention from economists: people's desire for the beliefs of other people to align with their own. We relate this 'preference for belief consonance' to a variety of other constructs that have been explored by economists, including identity, ideology, homophily, and fellow-feeling.

We review different possible explanations for why people care about others' beliefs and propose that the preference for belief consonance leads to a range of disparate phenomena, including motivated belief-formation, proselytizing, selective exposure to media, avoidance of conversational minefields, pluralistic ignorance, belief-driven clustering, intergroup belief polarization, and conflict.

We also discuss an explanation for why disputes are often so intense between groups whose beliefs are, by external observers' standards, highly similar to one-another.

JEL Classification: D12, D83, Z13

Full text (PDF)

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Reframing workplace relations? Conflict resolution and mediation in a primary care trust

an article by Richard Saundry and Louise McArdle (University of Central Lancashire, UK) and Peter Thomas (Lancaster University, UK) published in Work Employment & Society Volume 27 Number 2 (April 2013)

Abstract

In recent years, workplace conflict has become increasingly manifest in individual employment disputes as collective labour regulation has been eroded. Accordingly, attention has been focused on finding ways to facilitate the early resolution of such disputes.

Policy-makers have placed a particular emphasis on workplace mediation.

However, the broader impact of mediation on conventional grievance and disciplinary processes and on the workplace relations that underpin them has been largely ignored. This article reports on research into the introduction of an in-house mediation scheme within a primary care trust. It explores the implications of the scheme for: workplace relations within the organisation; the dynamics of conflict management; and trade union influence.

It argues that the introduction of mediation provided a conduit through which positive workplace relations were rebuilt which in turn facilitated informal processes of dispute resolution. Furthermore, it allowed trade unions within the organization to extend their influence into areas traditionally dominated by managerial prerogative.

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