1,721,002 research outputs found
Kertzer D. I., Arel D. — Census and Identity. The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses
No full textLadier-Fouladi Marie. Kertzer D. I., Arel D. — Census and Identity. The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses. In: Population, 59ᵉ année, n°6, 2004. pp. 1010-1011
Toward a Better theory of very low Fertility:Lessons from Italy
No full textDemographers have offered two main lines of theory to explain the unanticipated emergence of very low fertility in a rapidly expanding number of countries. One stresses economic and political economic factors, in good part linked to the upsurge of women in the labor force and to the extent of state support for childbearing and childrearing. The other, identified with Second Demographic Transition Theory, stresses changing values, particularly weakened family ties and increases in emphasis on individual self-fulfillment. This paper looks at the case of Italy, which by the early 1990s had virtually the lowest fertility rate in the world, offering new evidence to show the inadequacies in both major demographic theoretical approaches to the explanation of very low fertility. Evidence from two recent nationally representative surveys, utilizing life history data, is combined with results from recently completed intensive ethnographic research in four Italian cities to offer an alternative explanatory model
Regional Context and Fertility in Contemporary Italy
No full textOur motivation in this paper comes from a growing concern in demography for a
better understanding of context in reproductive behavior outcomes. This takes on particular
importance in Italy, a country still characterized by very low fertility. We exploit detailed life
history calendar data for a large, nationally representative sample of Italian women, and we
conduct a more refined analysis of the relationship between personal traits, regional context
and fertility. After introducing the Italian setting, the descriptive analysis verifies the
persistence of significant differences in the reproductive behavior of women according to
region of origin. Our multivariate analysis tests for the influence of women’s employment,
union status, region of origin, and other standard traits on the annual probability of first and
second birth. Our results point to very strong effects of a woman’s own employment (and
weaker effects of her regional context) on first and second birth. We also find that more
secular unions are associated with lower rates of first birth, and that more secular regional
contexts are associated with lower rates of transition to first birth. Advocates of several
competing explanations of very low fertility will find items of support in these results
An Imperfect Contraceptive Society: Fertility and Contraception in Italy
No full textItaly represents an unexpected and in some ways paradoxical outcome in terms of fertility control: a drop to one of the lowest birth rates in the world has been accompanied by continuing extensive use of traditional methods despite the availability of modern contraception. Using data from 349 interviews conducted in 2005-06 in four Italian cities, we argue that Italian women commonly achieve "unplanned" and desired conceptions through the use of withdrawal and natural methods. While data from other countries reveal similar notions of ambivalence surrounding pregnancy intentions and contraceptive use, Italy stands out for the surprising correlation between highly "managing" the conditions under which children are born and the socially commended approach of "letting births happen." Such results suggest the need to rethink theoretical understandings of low fertility. Through the use of non-technological methods, individuals manipulate culturally produced norms and beliefs about the appropriate time to have a child; simultaneously, their actions are embedded in larger cultural, economic, and political processes. Copyright (c) 2009 The Population Council, Inc..
Italy's path to very low fertility: The adequacy of economic and second demographic transition theories
No full textThe deep drop of the fertility rate in Italy to among the lowest in the world challenges contemporary theories of childbearing and family building. Among high-income countries, Italy was presumed to have characteristics of family values and female labor force participation that would favor higher fertility than its European neighbors to the north. We test competing economic and cultural explanations, drawing on new nationally representative, longitudinal data to examine first union, first birth, and second birth. Our event history analysis finds some support for economic determinants of family formation and fertility, but the clear importance of regional differences and of secularization suggests that such an explanation is at best incomplete and that cultural and ideational factors must be considered. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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