Welfare Sanctions and Deprivation in Germany: Do First Sanctions Lead to Higher Levels of Deprivation Among the Long-Term Unemployed and Recipients of Basic Income Support?

In Germany, as in many other European countries, vast changes in the welfare regime – towards workfare – have taken place. As a central activating element of workfare, sanctions were introduced to take effect by temporarily increasing deprivation through benefit cuts. This paper provides first quantitative insights on the effect of first sanctions on deprivation and contributes to the recent debate on the (un)constitutionality of sanctions, which re-emerged after a verdict of the Federal Constitutional Court, criticizing the lack of knowledge about the effects of sanctions on those affected. We implement a difference-in-differences propensity score matching approach that addresses selection on observables and individual time constant unobserved differences. High data accuracy is ensured by combining the “Panel Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS) with administrative data from the Federal Employment Agency. The results illustrate a slightly higher yet statistically insignificant level of deprivation for first-sanctioned unemployment/basic income recipients compared to non-sanctioned recipients. The results hint in the direction that higher levels of deprivation are not what activates the sanctioned beneficiaries to reintegrate into the labour market. We discuss whether the results imply a significant deviation from the socio-cultural subsistence minimum of sanctioned recipients and a failure of the welfare state.

The Difficult Joining of Theory and Empirical Research

Many approaches to the study of the social sciences rely on the interpretation of reality itself, giving rise to the quantitative/qualitative dispute. These methods cannot exist one without the other – nor can they necessarily find themselves on opposite poles. To follow one does not mean to forsake the other; on the contrary, both offer the opportunity to observe from different angles aspects of the phenomenon investigated, granting more effective readings of its complexity. While sociology has reproduced its various stances in its scholarly analyses, the most recent debate has relinquished this debate to focus on two alternative features. Both pertain to sociology and the role of social science researchers: the conjugation between theory and empirics and the crisis of sociology in providing answers to societal changes. This contribution aims to address the issues related to the conjugation between theory and empirical research considering digital research methods. The author outlines their strengths and weaknesses without forgetting the original status of sociology as a science.

THE OBLIGATION TO OBEY THE LAW IN THE LIGHT OF THE DEBATE BETWEEN FINNIS AND RAZ

The recent debate between John Finnis and Joseph Raz on the existence of a general prima facie moral obligation to obey positive laws is a major contribution to a classical topic in legal and political philosophy. In this paper, I argue that Raz’s normal justification thesis and Finnis’s doctrine of “determinatio,” inherited from Aquinas, complement each other, shedding light on how norms grounded in social facts can give rise to particular moral obligations independently of their content. However, I argue that this on its own does not explain the possibility of a general moral obligation to obey the law, that is, the notion that everyone has a prima facie moral obligation to obey every law that applies to them.

Proclaiming the Divine Logos to the Man of the Future

This paper studies the cooperation of theology in the new evangelization in societies of ancient Christian tradition which are suffering an advanced process of secularization. It begins with Spain, where a recent debate on the influence of Christian intellectuals on social life suggests the ineffectiveness of ecclesiastical resources in transmitting the rich Catholic doctrinal heritage. Then the author deals with the idiosyncrasy of contemporary man, which lies near the one of the immediate future’s man: an uprooted subject who does not believe that life has any meaning, is deeply marked by emotivism and attaches little significance to truth. The theology of tomorrow cannot feed this emotivism but must be proactive in its own way. The proclamation of the Gospel is not different from the exposition of the Church’s doctrine. To detach evangelization from the teaching of Christian doctrine cannot help the encounter with Christ. In order to succeed in transmitting this doctrine by making it suggestive, theologians should work together with experts in communication.

The 2019–2020 Chilean anti-neoliberal uprising: A catalyst for decolonial de-monumentalization

This article analyzes the interventions of monuments that occurred in conjunction with the mass 2019–2020 anti-neoliberal protests in Chile where almost 400 monuments representing Spanish conquerors and colonial and nineteenth-century national heroes were pulled down, contested, or transformed. The article illustrates how a social movement against social injustices and inequalities enacted and engaged with decolonial repertoires of action. It analyzes two performative cases of toppled monuments to Pedro de Valdivia, the leading Spanish conqueror, in the southern cities of Concepción and Valdivia. It then examines recent debate about the anti-racist and decolonial de-monumentalization trend seen around the world and discusses some particularities of the Latin American case. It concludes by arguing that, although the monument interventions involved spontaneous and effervescent ritualistic affects, they are expressive of decolonial challenges to intertwined and long-standing national memories, calling for reconsideration of our national identities.

Disentangling the scarcity of near-natural Iberian hydrological resources since 1980s: a multivariate-driven approach

A significant abrupt decrease of Winter Precipitation (WP) has been noticed in the Iberian Peninsula since the 1980s related to atmospheric drivers. This contribution assesses the long-term variability of water resources based on a multivariate-driven approach. For this purpose, the novel dataset of Near Natural Water Inflows to Reservoirs of Spain (NENWIRES) was created. Results confirm that Winter Water Inflows (WWI) have been modulated by the sudden decline in WP. These drastic reductions of WP/WWI were mainly controlled by the enhancement of the positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAOi+). Nonetheless, our results also highlight the anthropogenic/physical causes contributing to the 1980s shift in the hydroclimate series. The rise of temperature, the cropland abandonment and forest extension provoked evapotranspiration gains and run-off weakening. NENWIRES most humid catchments registered the decrease of WWI promoted by NAOi+ persistence/frequency, while the land greening-up and ET rises explain the WWI losses in the Iberian semiarid environments. This contribution sheds some light on the recent debate about magnitude/drivers of streamflow declining over southern Europe. Therefore, it might help water planning with the goal of mitigating the climate change impacts affecting the water cycle.

How Things Are

This work is designed to introduce some of the more important fruits of Indian Buddhist metaphysical theorizing to philosophers with little or no prior knowledge of classical Indian philosophy. It is widely known among non-specialists that Buddhists deny the existence of a self. Less widely appreciated among philosophers currently working in metaphysics is the fact that the Indian Buddhist tradition contains a wealth of material on a broad assortment of other issues that have also been foci of recent debate. Indian Buddhist philosophers have argued for a variety of interesting claims about the nature of the causal relation, about persistence, about abstract objects, about the consequences of presentism, about the prospects for a viable ontological emergentism. They engaged in a spirited debate over illusionism in the philosophy of consciousness. Some espoused global anti-realism while others called its coherence into question. And so on. This work is meant to introduce the views of such major Buddhist philosophers as Vasubandhu, Dharmakīrti, and Nāgārjuna on these and other issues. And it presents their arguments and analyses in a manner meant to make them accessible to students of philosophy who lack specialist knowledge of the Indian tradition. Analytic metaphysicians who are interested in moving beyond the common strategy of appealing to the intuitions of “the folk” should find much of interest here.

Form, Content, and Space: Methodological Challenges in the Study of Medieval and Early Modern European Graffiti

Scholars of variousdisciplines have focused their attention on European Medieval and Early Modern graffitiduring the last decade, thus confirming and reinforcing the value of thispeculiar written evidence. Their contributions demonstrate that graffiti canoffer valuable information to different fields of study (e.g. shipbuilding,palaeography, history, social culture, and visual culture) through a glimpseinto past daily life. Due to their nature, graffiti present a completely freegraphic expression, which may appear in either textual or pictorial forms, orboth. This characteristic makes their study rather challenging due to the twodifferent mechanisms of communication they employ. In the case of textualgraffiti, the content is transmitted through linguistic codification, whilepictorial graffiti require a decoding process that is more complex andarticulated. The first challenge, though, is to find a way to record andcompare both evidence on the same graphic and verbal levels.  Furthermore, as for any other epigraphicevidence, the graffiti analysis must take into account the writing surfaces andthe context, two elements that are fundamental for the final interpretation ofthis source. This paper will address these methodological issues concerning thepreliminary phase of graffiti documentation and classification/cataloguing. Thestarting point has been the recent debate and application of FAIR dataprinciples in the field of Humanities, which aim to create quality data, easilyexchanged in a digital environment, fostering knowledge in the field. Sincethis approach has not yet been applied to graffiti studies, the paper aims tostimulate a dialogue on innovative and objective methodological approacheswithin the researchers’ community.

The Monetary Nexus

<p>Recent debate on monetary theory has probed increasingly into its fundamental conceptualisations, and some far-reaching proposals for reform have emerged. This study is an attempt to contribute towards such a reform. It begins with an appraisal of the theory in order to evaluate its status as an empirical theory, and finds that the ideas of money as a nexus between producer and user, of economic processes as occurring through time, and of the absence of general equilibrating tendencies, need substantial reformulation if the processes of a modern pecuniary economy are to be adequately represented. The study devotes its major effort to structuring these ideas into a form capable of sustaining the required theoretical development while maintaining contact with the world of experience.</p>

The Monetary Nexus

<p>Recent debate on monetary theory has probed increasingly into its fundamental conceptualisations, and some far-reaching proposals for reform have emerged. This study is an attempt to contribute towards such a reform. It begins with an appraisal of the theory in order to evaluate its status as an empirical theory, and finds that the ideas of money as a nexus between producer and user, of economic processes as occurring through time, and of the absence of general equilibrating tendencies, need substantial reformulation if the processes of a modern pecuniary economy are to be adequately represented. The study devotes its major effort to structuring these ideas into a form capable of sustaining the required theoretical development while maintaining contact with the world of experience.</p>