1,720,961 research outputs found
Riscoprire il sociale: nota critica su Immigrazione, società e crimine di Luigi Maria Solivetti
No full textLa nota critica, dopo aver passato brevemente in rassegna la letteratura italiana dedicata all'analisi del rapporto tra crimine e immigrazione, analizza dettagliatamente il volume di Luigi Maria Solivetti "Immigrazione, società e crimine
Complexity of social phenomena: measurements, analysis, representations and synthesis
Get PDFDuring the three years of my Ph.D., I have analyzed and studied phenomena often
very different and apparently distant from one another: well-being; sustainable
development; gender inequalities; the Brexit vote. The aim has always been to
understand these facets of reality, to give them an explanation based on a quantitative
point of view. My interest was to provide a measure of concepts often considered
difficult to deal with and to understand.
When I finished my Ph.D., I tried to put together the experience I had gained.
As mentioned, the research interests were many and, therefore, it was necessary
to conceptualize them within a framework that would highlight the elements in
common. This thesis is the result of such an attempt at conceptualisation. The title
itself highlights the concepts common to my research work over the years.
The first concept I deal with is complexity. I have realized that all different socioeconomic
phenomena have in common their complex structure, often mistakenly
exchanged with complication and difficulty. Nowadays, complexity is a concept
that characterizes allthe natural and social sciences and defines our relationship
with knowledge. Chapter 1 examines precisely the theme of complexity, presenting
different approaches and definitions to this issue. I have tried to reconstruct the way
in which complexity became central in the relationship with knowledge, together
with its qualifying concepts such as subjectivity, the concept of system and circular
causality.
The second guiding concept of this research work is measurement. Understanding
the world requires a sort of translation, a shift from the plane of reality in which we
observe phenomena to the plane of numbers in which we try to encode them. This
translation must be meaningful, it must reproduce as faithfully as possible in the
world of numbers the phenomenon observed in the plane of reality. Measurement
is a need for the knowledge of reality, which speaks to us with the language of
numbers. This issue is the subject of Chapter 2, in which I address the question of
the definition of this process. Subsequently, the measurement is contextualised within
sociology, presenting the essential contribution on this theme offered by Paul Felix
Lazarsfeld with the operationalisation. Finally, the concept of indicator is explored,
by analysing their crucial importance in the measurement of social phenomena. The
Chapter presents all the main aspects through which it is possible to obtain a system
of indicators, a tool for measuring complex social phenomena.
The way in which we can measure complex socio-economic phenomena is dealt
with in Chapter 3. Synthesis is presented by a methodological point of view,
considering both aspects of a system, units (rows) and indicators (columns). I focus
on the synthesis techniques that allow a dynamic analysis of phenomena in order to
obtain comparable measures not only in space, but also in time. Only in this way, a
synthesis is meaningful. In the chapter, I define the object of study, the three-way
data array X {xijt : i = 1, . . . ,N; j = 1, . . . ,M; t = 1, . . . , T}, where xijt
represents the determination of the jth indicator in the ith unit at the tth temporal
occasion. The methods of clustering these objects and summarising the indicators
are addressed, considering both the aggregative and the non-aggregative approach
(in particular, I propose an approach to apply posets to systems of indicators over
time).
In the last two chapters, I propose two applications to real data. Both applications
concern regional data. The choice was made because of the importance that the
regional dimension has for a country like Italy, characterized by strong territorial
disparities. The first one (Chapter 4) concerns the concept of well-being and, from a
methodological point of view, the synthesis of statistical units. In particular, using
the time series of regional composites produced by the Italian National Institute of
Statistics for the Equitable and Sustainable Well-being project (BES), we classify
the Italian regions according to different domains. We use a time series fuzzy
clustering algorithm, particularly suitable for that type of data. Chapter 5 deals
with sustainable development and the issue of synthesis of statistical indicators over
time. In particular, an aggregative method, the Adjusted Mazziotta-Pareto Index
(AMPI), and a non-aggregative procedure based on posets will be compared
The Economic-Organizational Balances of the Domestic Unit in a Traditional Peasant Society
Get PDFThe article shows the results of field work carried out in Northern Nigeria. First, the article presents data on the economic production of the local communities collected by the author. Then, these data are analyzed in terms of the economic and social balances of the local society. What emerges from the analysis is that trade - as a model of exchange - is here superimposed by other models, involving both factors of production and utilization of produce. In particular, the author emphasizes the importance of two other models: a model of social exchange of contributory-reinforcing type; and a model of social exchange of redistributive type. The article shows that these models seem to be perfectly rational, in their aiming at a social optimization of the limited economic resources available to the local population
Ecology and space in the COVID-19 epidemic diffusion: a multifactorial analysis of Italy’s provinces
No full textThis study aimed to identify the ecological and spatial correlates of the COVID-19 secondary transmission mechanisms. The dataset comprised cross-province daily COVID-19 cases recorded in Italy from 25 February to 26 May 2020. Several physical and socio-economic variables and a broad set of spatial matrices were employed to explain epidemic spreading. First, the serial transmission interval was identified through autoregressive models. Second, the impact of the ecological and spatial variables on the epidemic’s secondary transmission was analysed by means of ordinary least squares and spatial regression models. The study found that, against widespread belief, the epidemic diffusion was higher in the more affluent and developed territorial units. As for the spatial component, a secondary transmission spatial spillover emerged. Contiguity and distance but also mobility fluxes proved to be significant in this transmission. This study’s contribution is methodological and empirical. As for methodology, it shows that spatial models can be used not only to identify epidemic localisation but also to predict epidemic transmission, provided the problem of the multidirectional nature of spatial dependence is adequately dealt with. Moreover, this study shows that no satisfactory understanding of the epidemic would be achieved without considering both ecological and spatial determinants. As for the empirical aspect, it was found that the main contribution to epidemic spreading came from the anthropologic context rather than the physical one. In particular, direct and indirect indicators of mobility, transport and social interaction emerged as crucial for the epidemic transmission.</p
Economic Reformism vs Sociocultural Conservativism: Parties’ Programmes, Voters’ Attitudes and Territorial Features in the UK General Elections 2019
No full textThis study explored the determinants of the massive vote shift that characterised the UK’s 2019 elections. To do so, this study firstly investigated opinions expressed by pro-Labour social groups about the hot issues of the political campaign; secondly, it conducted a cross-constituency analysis on the 2019 vote. The present findings reveal that the issues emphasised by the Conservative manifesto tallied with the opinions of traditional left-wing social groups. The cross-constituency statistical analysis confirmed this point and found a significant association between Labour’s losses and the territorial distribution of the abovementioned social groups. These findings suggest that the crucial aspect of the vote shift was the Conservatives’ appeal to the sociocultural conservativism of part of Labour’s traditional voters
Family, Marriage and Divorce in a Hausa Community: A Sociological Model
Get PDFThe aim of this article is to show how a 'traditional' society may produce a household system in which the structural tensions are no less intense than in the Western world. Muslim Hausa society (in northern Nigeria) has one of the highest rates of divorce (and remarriage) in the world. An explanation is sought here in terms of the economic and organisational requirements of a subsistence farming system that is always potentially short of labour. Divorce is a solution to otherwise unacceptable
pressures, particularly on young women, in a society that requires them to be subordinate and marginal within the extended family. The data presented here were collected between 1979 and 1989 in the Niger valley of Sokoto State in northern Nigeria
Capitale sociale e sviluppo
Get PDFDescrizione della evoluzione del concetto di Capitale Sociale nella letteratura internazionale. Uso del concetto da parte di vari autori per spiegare il sottosviluppo e lo sviluppo. Forza e limiti del concetto per l'analisi empirica.Description of the evolution of the notion of Social Capital in international literature. Its use by various authors to explain underdevelopment and development. Strength and weaknesses of the notion
Ecology and space in the COVID-19 epidemic diffusion: a multifactorial analysis of Italy’s provinces
No full textABSTRACTThis study aimed to identify the ecological and spatial correlates of the COVID-19 secondary transmission mechanisms. The dataset comprised cross-province daily COVID-19 cases recorded in Italy from 25 February to 26 May 2020. Several physical and socio-economic variables and a broad set of spatial matrices were employed to explain epidemic spreading. First, the serial transmission interval was identified through autoregressive models. Second, the impact of the ecological and spatial variables on the epidemic’s secondary transmission was analysed by means of ordinary least squares and spatial regression models. The study found that, against widespread belief, the epidemic diffusion was higher in the more affluent and developed territorial units. As for the spatial component, a secondary transmission spatial spillover emerged. Contiguity and distance but also mobility fluxes proved to be significant in this transmission. This study’s contribution is methodological and empirical. As for methodology, it shows that spatial models can be used not only to identify epidemic localisation but also to predict epidemic transmission, provided the problem of the multidirectional nature of spatial dependence is adequately dealt with. Moreover, this study shows that no satisfactory understanding of the epidemic would be achieved without considering both ecological and spatial determinants. As for the empirical aspect, it was found that the main contribution to epidemic spreading came from the anthropologic context rather than the physical one. In particular, direct and indirect indicators of mobility, transport and social interaction emerged as crucial for the epidemic transmission
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
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