Division of labor

In this article, we describe the social and economic changes that have contributed to contemporary problems of work-family conflict, gender inequality, and risks to children's healthy development. We draw on feminist welfare state scholarship to outline an institutional arrangement that would support an earner-carer society-a social arrangement in which women and men engage symmetrically in paid work and unpaid caregiving and where young children have ample time with their parents. We present a blueprint for work-family reconciliation policies in three areas-paid family-leave provisions, working-time regulations, and early childhood education and care-and we identify key policy design principles. We describe and assess these work-family reconciliation policies as they operate in six European countries widely considered to be policy exemplars: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, and France. We close with an analysis of potential objections to these policies.

This paper analyzes the development over the postwar period of output, employment, and the number of plants in manufacturing in the United States. It is shown that the distribution of flexible technology in the form of machine tools (NCMTs) shifted markedly toward small plants during the 1980s. It is found that the probability of adoption and the penetration rate of NCMTs are higher in large than in small plants, even though the number of NCMTs per worker is much higher in small plants, This apparent paradox is explained. It is also suggested that the shift of output towards smaller plants is correlated with the increased use of flexible technology, and that this reflects changes in the division of labor among plants of various sizes, as welt as changes in the composition and organization of production in large plants.

State policies vary widely on paying friends and family rather than home care agencies to care for the elderly. We explore two state programs that exemplify different payment options: Michigan, which pays clients' informal caregivers, and Illinois, which generally pays agencies to provide services. We ask how different payment policies affect clients, specifically exploring program structure (division of labor and bases for need determination) and financing incentives created by Medicaid (centralization, means testing, and quality assurance). These factors shape provider and client preferences, well-being, and assessment of care quality. Comparatively, Illinois's approach favors professionalism, high cost/quality, documentation, and an orientation toward medical and physical needs. It has experienced high worker turnover and less regard for caregiver-client relationships. Michigan's approach favors informality, casual accountability, long-term stability of helping relationships, and respect for client preferences and autonomy. Both approaches offer important client benefits, but state precedents and incentives to administering agencies have shaped their overall directions. The recent rapid growth of the home care industry in Illinois could proscribe a fuller range of provider options. We recommend greater flexibility in considering states' payment.

T his paper examines the staffing, division of labor, and resulting profitability of primary care physician practices. Division of labor is viewed as a mechanism to increase the efficiency of production processes through specialization. At the same time, division of labor also introduces coordination cost as handoffs and communication needs increase. We attempt to empirically assess the net effect in primary care physician offices. We collected data from a sample of these practices and tested two hypotheses: (H1) controlling for staff size, greater delegation through the use of more staff types will decrease the throughput of visits, and (H2) controlling for staff size, income per unit time generated by the practice is decreasing in the number of staff types. We find evidence supporting both hypotheses. We conclude that many physicians are gaining little financial benefit from delegating work to support staff. This suggests that small practices with few staff may be viable alternati...

The paper finds Hayek's basic building block, the natural/artificial contrast, to be illuminating. But the manner in which Hayek classifies entities according to the contrast generates two major problems in his socioeconomic theory. First, Hayek's concept "design" confuses the technical construction of, e.g., a chair with the deliberate organization of division of labor within the firm. Second, Hayek's notion "spontaneous order" fails to note two kinds of natural order -firms and markets.

Studies of cultural artifacts and faunal remains from European Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic sites indicate a shift in hunter gatherer subsistence strategies, involving an intensification and diversification of resource exploitation relative to earlier foragers during the Tardiglacial and Postglacial periods. This trend has been recognized as well through the analysis of non-pathological skeletal adaptations of the upper limbs of European Upper Paleolithic human fossils. These paleoanthropological studies of adaptive bone modeling also raise the question of female use of throwing-based weapon technology in the Upper Paleolithic. Here, we studied another type of osteological marker of activity, enthesopathies, of the upper limb remains of 37 European Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic human fossils, with the goal of testing two hypotheses: 1) that activity levels were heightened at the end of Upper Paleolithic and into the Mesolithic relative to earlier foragers of the Gravettian, and 2) that there was an absence of a marked sexual division of labor in European hunter-gatherers during this time span. Our results are consistent with the first hypothesis; upper limb enthesopathies are significantly less frequent in the Gravettian group, but raise doubts about the second hypothesis. Four males exhibit lesions that can be confidently associated with throwing activities, while no females exhibit such lesions.

We present a theoretical framework for understanding the roles of the hippocampus and neocortex in learning and memory. This framework incorporates a theme found in many theories of hippocampal function, that the hippocampus is responsible for developing conjunctive representations binding together stimulus elements into a unitary representation that can later be recalled from partial input cues. This idea appears problematic, however, because it is contradicted by the fact that hippocampally lesioned rats can learn nonlinear discrimination problems that require conjunctive representations. Our framework accommodates this finding by establishing a principled division of labor between the cortex and hippocampus, where the cortex is responsible for slow learning that integrates over multiple experiences to extract generalities, while the hippocampus performs rapid learning of the arbitrary contents of individual experiences. This framework shows that nonlinear discrimination problems are not good tests of hippocampal function, and suggests that tasks involving rapid, incidental conjunctive learning are better. We implement this framework in a computational neural network model, and show that it can account for a wide range of data in animal learning, thus validating our theoretical ideas, and providing a number of insights and predictions about these learning phenomena.

This paper is a product of the World Bank Group. The World Bank Group does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors or the governments they represent. Rights and Permissions The material in this publication is copyrighted. Copying and/or transmitting portions or all of this work without permission may be a violation of applicable law. The World Bank Group encourages dissemination of its work and will normally grant permission to reproduce portions of the work promptly.

Although largely absent from modern accounts of the Industrial Revolution, watches were the first mass produced consumer durable, and were Adam Smith’s pre-eminent example of technological progress. In fact, Smith makes the notable claim that watch prices may have fallen by up to 95 per cent over the preceding century; a claim that this paper attempts to evaluate. We look at changes in the reported value of over 3,200 stolen watches from records of criminal trials in the Old Bailey court in London from 1685 to 1810. Before allowing for quality improvements we find that the real price of watches in
nearly all categories falls steadily by 1.3 per cent per year, equivalent to a fall of 75 per cent over a century, a rate considerably above the growth rate of average labour productivity in British industry in the early nineteenth century.
(JEL N0, Keywords: Watch prices, Adam Smith, Industrial Revolution.)

I would like to thank Renee Monson for helpful comments and discussions about gendered interests, the nature of the relationship between gender relations and welfare states, and the feminization of poverty. Thanks to Kathrina Zippel for general research assistance on this project, and for providing a summary of the literature on gender and the welfare state in Germany, including many works written in German.

This article draws from my reading and thinking in sociology in interaction with my lived experience as a sociology graduate student and a political activist over the last ten years. As a graduate student, I have found it frustrating to see politically-minded faculty and students become or remain academic specialists satisfied with defining their public engagement largely in terms of teaching and research. As a political activist and a 2002 Green Party candidate for state elected office, I have been frustrated with what sociologist Richard Flacks would call the taken-for-granted distance for most people between making history and making everyday life, and the consequently evanescent, crisis or election-focused nature of most political participation. The paper suggests some fundamental social problems with the existing division of labor, including the division of “knowledge power,” and proposes some ways sociologists can help address these problems.

Conceitos centrais da vida contemporânea, tais como política, civilização e cidadania, derivam da forma e organização da cidade. A cidade expressa a divisão socioespacial do trabalho, e Henri Lefebvre propõe pensar sua transformação a partir de um continuum que se estende da cidade política ao urbano, onde se completa a dominação sobre o campo. A efetiva passagem da cidade ao urbano foi marcada pela tomada da cidade pela indústria, trazendo a produção -e o proletariado -para o espaço do poder. A cidade, lócus do excedente, do poder e da festa, cenário privilegiado da reprodução social, ficou, assim, subordinada à lógica da indústria. Sofreu, então, um duplo processo: sua centralidade implodiu sobre si mesma e sua periferia explodiu sobre o entorno sob a forma de tecido urbano, que acabou por carregar consigo o germe da pólis e da civitas. Assim, a práxis urbana, antes restrita à cidade, re-politizou todo o espaço social. No Brasil, o urbano teve sua origem na política ao mesmo tempo concentradora e integradora dos governos militares, que deram seqüência à centralização e expansionismo varguista e à interiorização desenvolvimentista juscelinista. Hoje, o urbano-industrial impõe-se virtualmente a todo o espaço social, na urbanização extensiva dos nossos dias.

"Now written as a chapter in Rational Freedom vol 2 Philosophical Origins by Dr Peter Critchley

This paper considers Rousseau’s importance as a prophet of popular sovereignty and of the democratic state. In examining these claims, this paper makes an important distinction between the negative and positive conceptions of freedom. The paper proceeds to show how, in Rousseau’s construction, government becomes an agent of individual freedom so that individuals are perfectly free in a democracy worthy of the name - that is, which embodies and expresses sovereign power actively and directly."

Research on children of lesbian parents has suggested that such children are developing well, but questions have been raised about their gender development. In this study, we explored associations among parental sexual orientation, parental gender-related attitudes, parental division of labor, and children's gender development. Participants were 66 preschool children and their 132 parents from the East Coast of the United States. Thirty-three families were headed by lesbian and 33 by heterosexual couples. Parents who divided paid and unpaid labor more unequally had children whose occupational aspirations were also more traditional. Measures of children's gender development were generally unrelated to parental sexual orientation. Parents' attitudes and behaviors were more strongly associated with children's gender development than was parental sexual orientation.

The transfer of food among group members is a ubiquitous feature of small-scale forager and forager-agricultural populations. The uniqueness of pervasive sharing among humans, especially among unrelated individuals, has led researchers to evaluate numerous hypotheses about the adaptive functions and patterns of sharing in different ecologies. This article attempts to organize available cross-cultural evidence pertaining to several contentious evolutionary models: kin selection, reciprocal altruism, tolerated scrounging, and costly signaling. Debates about the relevance of these models focus primarily on the extent to which individuals exert control over the distribution of foods they acquire, and the extent to which donors receive food or other fitness-enhancing benefits in return for shares given away. Each model can explain some of the variance in sharing patterns within groups, and so generalizations that ignore or deny the importance of any one model may be misleading. Careful multivariate analyses and cross-cultural comparisons of food transfer patterns are therefore necessary tools for assessing aspects of the sexual division of labor, human life history evolution, and the evolution of the family. This article also introduces a framework for better understanding variation in sharing behavior across small-scale traditional societies. I discuss the importance of resource ecology and the degree of coordination in acquisition activities as a key feature that influences sharing behavior.

This study examines the hypothesis that the effect children have on their parents' marriages is due to stress in the parental role. A multivariate model was specified to assess the relationship between fathers' and mothers' parenting stress and their psychological well-being and perception of marital quality. In addition, the effects of 6 other variables were assessed: 2 competing roles (mother's

The aggregation of urban population has been described by Bücher and Weber. A sociological study of the growth of the city, however, is concerned with the definition and description of processes, as those of (a) expansion, (b) metabolism, and (c) mobility. The typical tendency of urban growth is the expansion radially from its central business district by a series of concentric circles, as (a) the central business district, (b) a zone of deterioration, (c) a zone of workingmen's homes, (d) a residential area, and (e) a commuters' zone. Urban growth may be even more fundamentally stated as the resultant of processes of organization and disorganization, like the anabolic and katabolic processes of metabolism in the human body. The distribution of population into the natural areas of the city, the division of labor, the differentiation into social and cultural groupings, represent the normal manifestations of urban metabolism, as statistics of disease, crime, disorder, vice, insanity, and suicide are rough indexes of its abnormal expression. The state of metabolism of the city may, it is suggested, be measured by mobility, defined as a change of movement in response to a new stimulus or situation. Areas in the city of the greatest mobility are found to be also regions of juvenile delinquency, boys' gangs, crime, poverty, wife desertion, divorce, abandoned infants, etc. Suggested indexes of mobility are statistics of changes of movement and increase of contacts of city population, as in the increase per capita in the total annual rides on surface and elevated lines, number of automobiles, letters received, telephones, and land values. A cross-section of the city has been selected for the intensive study of urban growth in terms of expansion, metabolism, and mobility.

Available reports indicate a shift in conventional gender roles in agricultural labor among the Igbo of Nigeria. This study shows that the participation of Igbo men in nonfarm activities and waged employment has resulted in an increased workload for women in food crop production as well as a breakdown of the gender division of labor in agriculture. Igbo women now undertake some of the conventional male agricultural tasks in addition to those in the female domain. In spite of this, women experience greater constraints in access to production resources. These issues should be addressed by appropriate policy measures.

This paper outlines a proposal for the development of educational multiplayer online games based on the activity theory, as an alternative to the current trend in multiplayer gaming and a means of promoting collaboration among students. In order to examine whether online games are engaging for learners, we consider multiple factors regarding game play -such as frequency of game use, gender differences, identification with the characters, and game preferences -as well as some psychosocial factors that may influence learning -such as academic performance, self-esteem, and computer self-efficacy. This paper suggests that online multiplayer educational games should be approached as a complex learning system, based on the principles of activity theory, where the Subjects would interact with other Subjects, Objects and Tools of the game, under specified Rules and create Communities through division of labor, leading to the expected learning outcome. Thus, we suggest taking into account some important issues concerning the Subjects that the activity theory refers to, such as gender differences in playing games, academic performance, self-esteem and computer self-efficacy.

A partir d’une problématique suscitée par l’élaboration de l’Observatoire des Conditions de Travail de l’Agence Nationale pour l’Emploi (ANPE) auquel nous avons participé en Convention Industrielle de Formation par la Recherche (CIFRE), la thèse retrace les généalogies conceptuelles qui ont amené aux visions actuelles du concept de « conditions de travail », qui s’est institutionnalisé en France vers 1970 en restant sans définition. Marqué au niveau de sa structure par une conception factorielle issue de la division du travail, et par une conception séquentielle issue du taylorisme qui s’y est superposée, il se constitue progressivement au niveau de son sens dans les débats du XIXe siècle dans une dialectique entre droit-liberté et pouvoir-domination qui s’apparente à une conception politique des conditions pour le travail, subsumée à partir du mouvement de rationalisation du début du XXe siècle par une conception organisationnelle de conditions entièrement normées ou normables. Ces conditions tendent alors à être traitées dans des négociations institutionnelles, en désadhérence de la dialectique permanente et sans cesse renouvelée du normatif et du normé dans l’activité. Cette distance entre le concept et la vie est une usurpation épistémologique dont nous proposons le dépassement par une modélisation ergologique du concept mettant en visibilité les multiples entités de débats de normes, et donc de valeurs, du micro au macro dans l’espace social. Ce mode de traitement renouvelé du concept au profit de ceux qui travaillent, favoriserait l’émergence d’alternatives laissées en pénombre dans l’activité, sources potentielles de performance pour les entités productives.


The « working conditions » : modeling proposal for use.
Between epistemology and social philosophy, an ergological approach for processing the concept

Stemming from an issue concerning the creation of the observatory of the working conditions within the French National Employment Agency (ANPE) that we participated in as beneficiary of an industrial research grant (CIFRE), the thesis retraces the conceptual genealogies that led to the current views on the concept of « working conditions », which was institutionalized in France around 1970 but remain undefined. Initially structured according to a factorial understanding based on the division of labour, then extended using sequential design derived from taylorism, its meaning is progressively built during the nineteenth century through dialectics between rights-freedom and authority-domination which refers to a political understanding of the working conditions, subsumed from the early twentieth century’s rationalization movement by an organizational design of fully standardized or standardizable conditions. These conditions then tend to be exploited within institutional negotiations, being disconnected from continuously renewed dialectics between normative and normed in activity. This gap between the concept and real life is an epistemological usurpation which we propose to surpass using an ergological way of modeling the concept that brings visibility to multiple groups of debates regarding standards, and therefore values, from micro to macro in the social space. This renewed way of addressing the concept which benefits to those who work, could promote the emergence of alternatives left in the semi-darkness of the activity, potential sources of performance for productive groups.

Bu makale fındık temalı iş ve imece türkülerinde bahçe tarımı, iş bölümü ve toplumsal cinsiyeti sözlü folklor kuramları bakımından incelemektedir. Türkü performansını, işlevini bahçe gibi mekânlar ile imece çalışma biçimleri üzerinden açıklayarak günümüzde unutulmak üzere olan müzik ve iş üretme biçimlerini tasvir etmektedir. Tarım ve hayvancılığa dayalı yaşama tarzına bağlı kültürel mirasa ait türkülerin çoğunda fındık meyvesinden bahsedilmektedir. Bunlara gerçek anlamından öte sembolik çağrışımlar yüklenmiştir. Makale öncelikle fındık kelimesi içeren türkülerle fındık meyvesinin tarımı hakkında kültürel aktarımlar içerenleri ele almaktadır. Daha sonra fındık yetiştiren bölgeye ait olanlarını ayırt etmekte ve iş bölümü üzerinden toplumsal cinsiyetin yansıtma biçimlerini ele almaktadır. Yazı bu bağlamda performansa dayalı icra ortamları olarak fındık bahçeleri ve harmanlarını, fındık imece türkülerindeki yaşama kültürü üzerinden toplumsal cinsiyet anlayışı ve işbölümünü konu etmiştir.
Halk şiirinin müzikal formu türküler, bireysel ve toplumsal hayatla doğrudan bağlantılıdır. Melodiyle birlikte yaratılan sözleri kişinin iç dünyasını yansıttığı gibi bazı türlerinde iş ve çalışma hayatına ait gözlemleri, pratikleri, yaşantıları anlatırlar. Bu bağlamda ezgisi, ritmi, anlamı, çalgısı, zamanı, icrası, bağlam ve mekânı insanı yaşantısının göstergesidir. Bu anlamda türkülerin geleneksel icrası ve söylenişi topluluğun içinde dolaysız biçimde doğar ve irticalen gerçekleşir. Toplulukla yapılması gereken büyük işlerde, üretim zamanlarında müzikler ve salt sözle icra edilen türküler olumlu hisleri güçlendirir. Üretime ve çalışmaya kolaylık sağlar. Yakın tanışık olmayan bireyler arasında güveni arttırır, o ortamdaki insanlar arasında karşılıklı tanıştırıcı, yakınlaştırıcı, kaynaştırıcı oluşunun yanında karşılıklı konuşmayı kolaylaştırarak sevdalanma ortamını olumlu etkiler. Bu makalede fındık imece türkülerinin yapısı ve işlevi bu açıdan ele alınmaktadır. Doğduğu ve yaşamayı sürdürdüğü fındık bahçelerindeki asıl icra zamanlarında bu özellikleri taşıdığı uzun yıllara bağlı gözlemlere dayalı biçimde metinlerle karşılaştırılarak aktarılmıştır.
Fındık üretimi imeceliğine veya işçiliğine ait yöreden TRT Müzik Dairesi tarafından derlenmiş fındık bahçesi ve fındık toplayıcıları türkülerinin hasat ve harman sezonu içinde işbirliğine katkı verici, dayanışmayı kolaylaştırıcı işlevi vardır. Türkülerin fındık toplama esnasında çalışmayı ritmik açıdan düzenlediği, imece sırasında bahçelerde, harmanlarda toplu yemeklerde geçen zamanı ve eylemleri ritüelleştirdiği gözlemlenmiştir. On yıldan fazla bir süredir imece türkülerinin yaratılma ortamı bulunmamaktadır. Geçmişte yapılan işin bütünlüğü içinde meydana gelen fındık tarımı ve üretim biçimi Güneydoğu’dan gelen mevsimlik toplayıcı “profesyonel” tarım işçiliğiyle beraber bugün ortadan kalkmıştır.

Uvod Interesovanje za pojam, strukturu, načine prilagođavanja izmenjenim društveno-istorijskim uslovima i nestajanje porodične zadruge naročito je bilo veliko u XIX veku. Vuk Karadžić je 1818. godine, objavljivanjem Srbskog riječnika, upoznao domaću i svetsku javnost sa zadrugom kod Srba. Izmislio je imenicu "zadruga", dok se u narodu pominjala "zadružna kuća" ili "velika kuća". Ona je "plures familae in eadem domo (more Serbico)". Smatrao je da je to ustanova specifična za Južne Slovene, i da je tada najviše bilo kod Srba (Karadžić, 1969: 173). Jedna od osnovnih karakteristika literature o porodičnoj zadruzi jeste njena raznovrsnost i izuzetna brojnost. U pitanju je etnološka, istorijska, ekonomska, sociološka, demografska i srodna građa. Postoje radovi koji se odnose samo na pojedine njene aspekte, ali i oni u kojima se iznosi i celovita i razvijena teorija društvenog razvoja i mesta porodice i zadruge. U jednima je u prvom planu saznajni motiv istraživanja, u drugim je on podređen političkim stremljeljima autora. Tek uvidom u celinu nečijeg shvatanja, i osvrtom na društvene uslove u kojima je ono nastajalo, može se objektivnije proceniti njegov doprinos nauci. Ovde će to ostati u drugom planu. U prvom je klasifikovanje teorija o porodičnoj zadruzi.

By the year 2000, it is estimated that there will be 1 billion illiterates, 98% of whom will be in developing regions. Oral traditions and the preponderance of local languages and dialects are _mong the reasons the situation is so widespread. Illiteracy is linked to contextual factors in which social class distinctions, linguistic affiliations, general levels of socioeconomic development, and marginalization of certain groups play important and mutually supportive roles. However, women comprise more illiterates, representing 63% of all illiterates in 1983, up from 58% in 1960. The subordination of women is related to the sexual division of labor and the control of women's sexuality, which in turn affect women's participation in literacy programs. Illiteracy is also higher 1.41 rural areas, again ,:elated to the sexual division of labor. Var.ous international studies are reported that document the benefits of literacy for women, and constraints of existing literacy programs are discussed. Implications of the International Literacy Year are described. It is concluded that efforts to enable poor and marginal women to become literate will need the pressure of people committed to large-scale social change. Contains 29 references. (LB) (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Literacy Education)

This article evaluates theories of the origins of sex differences in human behavior. It reviews the cross-cultural evidence on the behavior of women and men in nonindustrial societies, especially the activities that contribute to the sex-typed division of labor and patriarchy. To explain the cross-cultural findings, the authors consider social constructionism, evolutionary psychology, and their own biosocial theory. Supporting the biosocial analysis, sex differences derive from the interaction between the physical specialization of the sexes, especially female reproductive capacity, and the economic and social structural aspects of societies. This biosocial approach treats the psychological attributes of women and men as emergent given the evolved characteristics of the sexes, their developmental experiences, and their situated activity in society.

In this paper, through the history of women in Afghanistan, I want to locate the position of women in the future by lessons learnt from the past. Given Afghanistan's current situation of poverty, political disenfranchisement and social disarray, I argue that these very deficiencies could be maneuvered to favor the empowerment of women by redefining her role in the family and the community. Afghanistan's social development can only be ensured through democracy and the reduction of poverty, the success of both being assured through full participation of women, especially in rural Afghanistan. In this paper I would like to trace the history of women in Afghanistan for three main reasons. One, to show that women in Afghanistan were not always oppressed by fundamentalism as occurred under the Mujahideen and the Taliban. Second, to go back into history and reflect on regimes and politicians to show that women's issues were an integral part of national construction agendas even...

This paper analyzes the failure of Israel's Ashkenazi (Jewish, of European, Yiddish-speaking origin) feminist peace movement to work within the context of Middle East demographics, cultures, and histories and, alternately, the inabilities of the Mizrahi (Oriental) feminist movement to weave itself into the feminist fabric of the Arab world. Although Ashkenazi elite feminists in Israel are known for their peace activism and human rights work, from the Mizrahi perspective their critique and activism are limited, if not counterproductive. The Ashkenazi feminists have strategically chosen to focus on what Edward Said called the Question of Palestine-a well funded agenda that enables them to avoid addressing the community-based concerns of the disenfranchised Mizrahim. Mizrahi communities, however, silence their own feminists as these activists attempt to challenge the regime or engage in discourse on the Question of Palestine. Despite historical changes, the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi distinction is a racialized formation so resilient it manages to sustain itself through challenges rather than remain a frozen dichotomy.

All rights reserved 1 2 3 4 13 12 11 10 This volume is a product of the staff of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this volume do not necessarily reflect the views of the Executive Directors of The World Bank or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgement on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. v Foreword xiii Acknowledgments xv Abbreviations xvii Currency xviii Chapter 1 How Do Special Economic Zones and Industrial Clusters Drive China's Rapid Development?

The successful life of insect societies has evolved from the division of labor among more or less specialized individuals, who carry out all necessary tasks for the maintenance and growth of the colony. The extreme division of labor has produced workers specialized in the removal of dead members of the colony, an evident and highly stereotyped behavior called undertaking which consists of the ability to recognize and dispose of the dead members of the colony using specific chemical cues. Although living in enclosed nests has contributed to the ecological success of social insects due to environmental control, it also poses disadvantages. Nests of social insects, containing dense groups of genetically close individuals with frequent physical contact, present ideal conditions for the incidence and dispersion of infectious diseases. To maintain strict microbiological control inside the nest, these insects have evolved hygienic behavioral strategies to avoid and control the proliferation of pathogens. Undertaking behavior is one of the fundamental strategies to exert microbiological control inside the nest by means of suitable management and removal of dead members of the colony, to prevent the emergence of epidemics that may lead the insect society to extinction. Therefore, undertaking behavior has been fundamental to the evolution of social insects. This stereotyped behavior constitutes an excellent model for the understanding of both social evolution and the neurobiological basis of social behavior. In this paper, we review the present knowledge on undertaking behavior, and outline some perspectives of the study of such farreaching behavior of social organization.

Honeybees have been studied for centuries, starting with Aristotle, who wrote the first book about bee breeding. More than 2000 years later, the honeybee entered the genomic era as the first social insect whose genome was sequenced, leading to significant insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying social behavior. In addition, gene expression studies and knockdown using RNAi have extended the understanding of social interactions. Much of the work has focused on caste determination -the mechanism that results in reproductive division of labor, division of labor within the worker caste, and worker reproduction -an essential process underlying eusociality. Here we review the molecular factors involved in caste determination and the differential regulation of caste-specific genes. Recent findings suggest that division of labor is influenced by a small number of loci showing high levels of pleiotropy, suggesting that changes in a small number of genes lead to large changes in the phenotype.

BackgroundPhosphatase and TENsin (PTEN) homolog is a negative regulator that takes part in IIS (insulin/insulin-like signaling) and Egfr (epidermal growth factor receptor) activation in Drosophila melanogaster. IIS and Egfr signaling events are also involved in the developmental process of queen and worker differentiation in honey bees (Apis mellifera). Here, we characterized the bee PTEN gene homologue for the first time

Kuhn wanted to install a new research agenda in philosophy of science. I argue that the tools are now available to better articulate his paradigm and let it guide philosophical research instead of itself remaining the object of philosophical debate.

Globalisation is an ambiguous concept that is an integral part of the world that we live in. It is multi-faceted and whether it is defined in economic, political or socio-cultural terms; the concept itself is likened to a living organism that grows every second. Many have explained and deliberated the various aspects pertaining to the magnitude of the term that is globalisation, and one such person is Emile Durkheim. He developed what is now known as the Durkheimian Approach (from now on referred to as the Approach) that centres on his book Division of Labour (1893) as the key component in his discussion for a global society. It bears a sense of peculiarity as it creates a controversial position with classical sociological explanations of globalisation. As such this essay, will discuss three main ideas namely: solidarity, social change, and organisation studies based on the Durkheimian Approach and ideas cited from Durkheim’s book:  Division (the Division of Labour). It will further seek to relate how such ideas under this approach works in my society.

The successful life of insect societies has evolved from the division of labor among more or less specialized individuals, who carry out all necessary tasks for the maintenance and growth of the colony. The extreme division of labor has produced workers specialized in the removal of dead members of the colony, an evident and highly stereotyped behavior called undertaking which consists of the ability to recognize and dispose of the dead members of the colony using specific chemical cues. Although living in enclosed nests has contributed to the ecological success of social insects due to environmental control, it also poses disadvantages. Nests of social insects, containing dense groups of genetically close individuals with frequent physical contact, present ideal conditions for the incidence and dispersion of infectious diseases. To maintain strict microbiological control inside the nest, these insects have evolved hygienic behavioral strategies to avoid and control the proliferation of pathogens. Undertaking behavior is one of the fundamental strategies to exert microbiological control inside the nest by means of suitable management and removal of dead members of the colony, to prevent the emergence of epidemics that may lead the insect society to extinction. Therefore, undertaking behavior has been fundamental to the evolution of social insects. This stereotyped behavior constitutes an excellent model for the understanding of both social evolution and the neurobiological basis of social behavior. In this paper, we review the present knowledge on undertaking behavior, and outline some perspectives of the study of such far-reaching behavior of social organization.

Using a systems framework from the sociology of occupations, this article maps the journalism-blogging relationship, revealing areas of conflict between the two, vulnerabilities, and predictors of vulnerability. The systems framework suggests occupations exist within a network of other occupations and that they encroach into each other's jurisdictional areas. A variety of factors shape these fluid processes. Factors that are external to the occupation include organizational division of labor, revenue needs, and relationships with other institutions. Internal factors include the degree to which journalists control the definition of problems and inference to solutions, and the success with which they solve problems. Difficulties posed by external and internal factors have led journalism to neglect some types of news information, which in turn have been poached by bloggers. These include partisan expression, 'old stories', stories driven by non-elite sources, and highly specialized content. A model for future study is constructed from these observations.