Government Policy and the Disintegration of Village Community Life and Individual Identity in Urbanising Japan

Author(s):  
John Fawsitt

In this chapter the author tries to assess the implications for society in Japan brought about by the continuing demographic shift from a rural to an urban society, resulting in changes to its communities' environment and social practices. While the decline in a population's economic effects are well-known, the social effects of the flight from the provincial villages, and what this means for society in its cultural, social, and environmental consequences, has been less explored. Particularly in the sphere of identity, the author contends that this phenomenon should be treated as a disintegration that brings unseen consequences rather than a shift, and that government policy is exacerbating the risks rather than alleviating them.

Author(s):  
Esther Kalekye; Wanyoike Kariuki

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of parallel importation of pharmaceutical products on the organisational performance of pharmaceutical firms in Kenya. The paper is guided by research objectives that are focused on: the economic effects of parallel importation of pharmaceutical products on organisational performance and the social effects of parallel importation of pharmaceutical products on organisational performance. This paper concludes that the issue of economic and social effects of parallel importation and how they affect the organizational performance of pharmaceutical companies in Kenya is rich for exploration and recommends that a study be conducted focusing on parallel importation and organizational performance of pharmaceutical companies; especially now that a clear legal framework on parallel importation has been put in place.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. B. Ajibefun

Abstract This study investigated the social and economic effects of the menace of Fulani herdsmen crises in Nigeria. The study specifically examined the causes of Fulani herdsmen and farmers clashes in Nigeria, and the social and economic effects of the menace of Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria. The sample of the study consisted of 250 farmers and 150 respondents from Fulani tribe selected from affected Local Government areas in Southwest, Nigeria via purposive sampling technique. A questionnaire titled Economic and Social Effects of Herdsmen Clashes Questionnaire (ESEHCQ) was used to collect data. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics of t-test were used to analyze the data generated from respondents. The findings revealed that the major cause of the conflict was destruction of crops. The social effect of the menace of Fulani herdsmen are loss of human life, sexual harassment of human life, acquiring of weapons/arms, reduction in quality of social relationship, reduction of social support and high cases of rape while the economic effect of the menace of Fulani herdsmen are reduction in output and income of farmers/nomads, loss of produce in storage, displacement of farmers, scarcity of agricultural products, loss of house and properties and infrastructural damages. The findings also revealed that farmers and Fulani perception of the causes of Fulani herdsmen and farmers clashes in Nigeria are not different while farmers and Fulani perception of the social effects and economic effects of Fulani herdsmen and farmers clashes in Nigeria are different. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that representatives of the host communities and Fulani herdsmen should be conveyed under a public forum and involved in the decision making and permitted to take part actively in the planning procedure of restoring peace to most of the affected communities.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nabil Bouizegarene ◽  
maxwell ramstead ◽  
Axel Constant ◽  
Karl Friston ◽  
Laurence Kirmayer

The ubiquity and importance of narratives in human adaptation has been recognized by many scholars. Research has identified several functions of narratives that are conducive to individuals’ well-being and adaptation as well as to coordinated social practices and enculturation. In this paper, we characterize the social and cognitive functions of narratives in terms of the framework of active inference. Active inference depicts the fundamental tendency of living organisms to adapt by creating, updating, and maintaining inferences about their environment. We review the literature on the functions of narratives in identity, event segmentation, episodic memory, future projection, storytelling practices, and enculturation. We then re-cast these functions of narratives in terms of active inference, outlining a parsimonious model that can guide future developments in narrative theory, research, and clinical applications.


Author(s):  
Ismael Puga

Using a mixed-methods approach based on discussion focus groups and panel surveys of the Longitudinal Social Study of Chile, this chapter demonstrates that Chilean’s neoliberal economic order is not legitimized by the vast majority of the population. Instead, the author argues that social norms are in serious conflict with the prevailing socioeconomic order. Within Chilean society, both citizens and social analysts are prone to agree with the existence of a “neoliberal consensus” due to the strategic adaptation of social practices that take place within a socioeconomic order that most individuals accept as a given. As a consequence, a “fantasy consensus” emerges in Chilean society in order to stabilize the social economic order, thus avoiding collective mobilization and social change. In this scenario, the protest waves that Chilean society has faced since 2011 offer additional proof that the “fantasy consensus” has experienced serious fissures, thus opening a window of opportunity to delegitimize Chile’s neoliberal order in the country.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4410
Author(s):  
Ana Deaconu ◽  
Peter R. Berti ◽  
Donald C. Cole ◽  
Geneviève Mercille ◽  
Malek Batal

Rural Ecuadorians are experiencing a double burden of malnutrition, characterized by simultaneous nutrient inadequacies and excesses, alongside the social and environmental consequences of unsustainable agriculture. Agriculture can support farmer nutrition by providing income for market purchases and through the consumption of foods from own production. However, the nutritional contributions of these food acquisition strategies vary by context. We surveyed smallholder women farmers (n = 90) in Imbabura province to assess the dietary contributions of foods obtained through market purchase, own production, and social economy among farmers participating in agroecology—a sustainable farming movement—and neighboring reference farmers. We found that foods from farmers’ own production and the social economy were relatively nutrient-rich, while market foods were calorie-rich. Consumption of foods from own production was associated with better nutrient adequacy and moderation, whereas market food consumption was associated with a worse performance on both. Food acquisition patterns differed between farmer groups: agroecological farmers obtained 44%, 32%, and 23% of their calories from conventional markets, own production, and the social economy, respectively, while reference neighbors obtained 69%, 17%, and 13%, respectively. Our findings suggest that, in this region, farmer nutrition is better supported through the consumption of their own production than through market purchases, and sustainable farming initiatives such as agroecology may be leveraged for healthy diets.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002071522098808
Author(s):  
Liza G Steele

How does wealth affect preferences for redistribution? In general, social scientists have largely neglected to study the social effects of wealth. This neglect was partially due to a dearth of data on household wealth and social outcomes, and also to greater scholarly interest in how wealth has been accumulated rather than the social effects of wealth. While we would expect household wealth to be an important component of attitudes toward inequality and social welfare policies, research in this area is scarce. In this study, the relationship between wealth and preferences for redistribution is examined in cross-national global and comparative perspective using data on 31 countries from the 2009 wave of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), the first wave of that study to include measures of wealth. The findings presented compare the effects of two types of wealth—financial assets and home equity—and demonstrate that there are differences in effects by asset type and by redistributive policy in question. Financial wealth is more closely associated with attitudes about income equality, while home equity is more closely associated with attitudes about unemployment benefits. Moreover, while the upper categories of financial wealth have the largest negative effects on support for income equality, it is the middle categories of home equity that are most strongly associated with opposition to unemployment benefits. Effects also differ by country, but not in patterns that theories of comparative welfare states nor political economy would adequately explain.


1973 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Vaison

Normally in political studies the term public policy is construed to encompass the societally binding directives issued by a society's legitimate government. We usually consider government, and only government, as being able to “authoritatively allocate values.” This common conception pervades the literature on government policy-making, so much so that it is hardly questioned by students and practitioners of political science. As this note attempts to demonstrate, some re-thinking seems to be in order. For purposes of analysis in the social sciences, this conceptualization of public policy tends to obscure important realities of modern corporate society and to restrict unnecessarily the study of policy-making. Public policy is held to be public simply and solely because it originates from a duly legitimated government, which in turn is held to have the authority (within specified limits) of formulating and implementing such policy. Public policy is public then, our usual thinking goes, because it is made by a body defined somewhat arbitrarily as “public”: a government or some branch of government. All other policy-making is seen as private; it is not public (and hence to lie essentially beyond the scope of the disciplines of poliitcal science and public administration) because it is duly arrived at by non-governmental bodies. Thus policy analysts lead us to believe that public policy is made only when a government body acts to consider some subject of concern, and that other organizations are not relevant to the study of public policy.


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