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Happy Easter- Juniper Publishers

Juniper Publishers wishes Happy Easter to you and your family members.

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The Crisis of our Time and the End of the New “History”-Juniper Publishers

Introduction

The time has come to understand that we are facing an anthropological and not economic crisis as it is reductively defined; it is the failure of a socio-cultural model that has erased the fundamental human rights inscribed in 1948. The response to the crisis [1] as anthropological is in understanding the cultural and historical path that has brought us to chaos, overthrowing the dominant paradigm, to place man and society at the centre of our interests as an end and to bring economics back to its natural role as a means. The technical culture, master of the world, as defined by Emanuele Severino, has unnaturally transformed economics as a social science into an exact science; in the exact sciences we study the relationships between measurable things to define universal laws, but in the social sciences, such as economics, we study relationships between men where human subjectivity does not allow defining universal laws [2-4].

Von Hayek in his Nobel acceptance speech in 1974 denounced the serious mistake that would pave the way for rational finance and speculative markets distant from the real world; but he remained unheard. The extreme financialization of the real economy became deeply rooted since 1971 when Nixon unilaterally declared the end of the dollar’s convertibility into gold. Let us look at the sequence of events. In 1945, after the drama of war, rules were defined to stabilize markets and exchange rates; the printing of paper money that has no value was tied to a defined quantity of a real good and the “gold exchange standard” was launched - 36 $ for every ounce of gold. In that period that lasted until the beginning of the 70s, we had a fixed exchange rate system that favoured unprecedented economic and social growth [5-7]. In 1971, the point of maximum social cohesion in the US coincided exactly with the point of lower inequality in income, providing evidence that the two aspects are closely related and that only a cohesive and just society can lead to solid economic development [8] (Figures 1 & 2).

All the positive curves of the “golden age” have an inflection and deteriorated between 1971 and 1974 as a result of Nixon’s decision; from the “gold exchange standard” we would go to the “petrodollar exchange standard” and to a system of flexible exchange rates, and we would suffer terrible inflation that went from 4.4% to 24%, paving the way for today’s drama of uncontrolled finance, as we see in following graphs (Figures 3-6).

Italy would suffer the influx of petrodollars, which began to drain the efforts made in the post-war period to bring the country among those with the highest growth rate; the price of oil per barrel went from $ 1.40 to $ 40, and the dollar/lira exchange rate after 25 years of the fixed exchange rate of 624/5 lira for every dollar to 2450 lira for a dollar in just 9 years: it was to be the first financial war, but in reality a third World War not fought with traditional means but with the power of the financial markets [9- 11] (Figures 7 & 8).

The separation of paper money from the real finite created two incompatible systems: the infinite and non-measurable of currency that would be totally deregulated, and the finite and measurable of the real world that became fictitiously subordinate to the former [12,13]. Everything changes, and the neoliberal model taken as an end justifies unlimited personal accumulation and the legitimisation of human aggression. Everything becomes finance and pure speculation in virtue of a paper currency that, detached from finite bonds and the real world, becomes infinite and would turn into “macro-usury” capable of keeping companies and entire countries in check [14,15]. Infinite finance without constraints can be studied with exact mathematical models generating the false idea that financial markets are rational and never err in the allocation of wealth. The study of financeeconomics severs the ties with the humanistic sciences, becoming a pure arithmetic calculation far from reality but assumed as incontrovertible truth thanks to the many Nobel prizes assigned to economics, unfounded but serving higher interests [16-18].

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The Role of the Humanistic Culture that the Academy has Lost

Since the late 60s, in awarding the prizes for literature, economics, and peace - the three prizes with the most obvious contradictions - the anomalies have become more apparent, favouring a cultural model and its interests that have brought us to the true crisis of our time, the anthropological crisis that we still refuse to see. Since 1969, when the first prize for economics was awarded, American scholars have won the lion’s share [19- 21]. In the 44 years of Nobel prizes in economics, one or more than one has been awarded the prize 41 times: a monoculture without inconsistency and change 41 times out of 44. Only in three years did they not win: 1969, 1974, and 1988.

The trend was accentuated after the fall of the Berlin Wall when the awards rained down on economics scholars who defined the financial markets as rational and exact without possibility of error [22]. Finance has become a sort of hegemonic weapon over States able to exert pressure on the policies of individual States and global choices. Wealth is thus created without States and States without wealth, a model of an individualistic and conflictual society in which moral sense is subservient to personal interests and the strongest command. Yet, is the soul of this cultural model able to inspire feelings such as kindness, altruism, solidarity, respect for humankind, in short, the ideals that Alfred Nobel sought?

The answer can be found with disarming evidence in the prizes awarded for literature. In fact, since the end of the 60s, the United States that seemed omnipotent has only won one real prize in literature. Morrison, in 94, expressed the racial pain of coloured minorities, now majorities; Bellow in 76 and Singer in 78, were the expression of the European culture where they had lived for a long time before moving to the United States [23-25]. The other awards over the years have been divided among different countries where the type of wellbeing expressed by the economy was absent or irrelevant - for example, Ireland, Peru, Chile, Saint Lucia, Poland, Romania, Greece... The two cultural models are opposed, without the possibility of dialogue and sharing because the interests of economics and finance put the maximization of self-interest in first place and not the “common good”, exactly what Alfred Nobel wanted to avoid. The legitimacy of the single thought has suffocated the imagination and the universal values of freedom, equality and solidarity. In the words of Pascal, “l’esprit de finesse” was finally separated from the “esprit de geometrie”, but rational man arrived last in the race. Everyone is responsible, albeit in different ways, because everyone contributed, even in silence, to ascribing the value of incontrovertible truth to these positions [26].

The technical-rational culture of the post-modern era prepared by the field of speculation since the Enlightenment with Kant, Hegel, and then Marx transformed economics into an exact science by studying only what is measurable. The materialistic objectives promoted by capitalism and liberalism assumed as an end and not a means contributed to the creation of a society aimed at achieving self-interest at the expense of the common good and the normalization of unlawful behavior [27]. This has increasingly forced dominant interests to legitimize such studies with the Nobel Prizes that elevated their achievement to ultimate truth but not the real sciences, eventually disrupting the system of social relations, because the dogma has become ‘live to earn’ and not vice versa. This year once again, in rewarding the disrupting sociocultural model of human society, the Academy has deeply betrayed the noble intentions of Alfred Nobel.

Understanding the deviations of economic studies transformed from a social and moral science into a merely quantitative, exact, and positive science requires understanding the causes that favour the interests of the few at the expense of everyone else. At the end of World War II, the global dramas led to defining the universal and “inalienable” rights of man and the technical operational rules of economics in such a way as to guide global policymakers to restore the dignity of man as a person and not as he is in fact today.

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Literature Review

Everything becomes finance and everything is justified as “strictly scientific” by the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences; the pursuit of maximum personal gains justifies the normalization of illicit behaviours, everything is played in a short or very short term logic in an infinite exchange at high speed where computers decide according to algorithms based on the nothingness of infinite finance, without anything underlying it. Stock exchanges become infinite casinos without rules or maximum profit in an amoral logic because those deciding in finance never pose themselves the problem of the consequences of their actions, and since it is always man who engages in illicit behaviours they become a practice of life that extends to young people who lose their identity in the confusion of value, becoming plankton at the mercy of the waves. Society without values and a humanistic culture become territories in which it is difficult to live and the individualism pursued as an end eradicates the first impulse that dictates the human spirit, that of aggression and lack of attention to others; “societas” understood as an alliance is transformed into the monster of the “bellum contra omnes”, the war of all against all, and everything becomes lawful [28].

The search for “maximum shareholder value” to reduce costs leads to the savage delocalisation that separates capital from labour by making it subordinate to the former, but also by countries, because the tax system allows leaving the taxes of blacklist countries by the wayside (Figures 9 & 10). We passively forget our history and become victims of this finance by transforming ourselves from the best creative artisans in the world into losing and checkmated financiers; the social system disintegrates and fragments, social ills explode, and the old solidarity of our people becomes a war of all against all with growing moral degradation because it justifies living to earn and not vice versa. Locust finance must be brought under strict control, eliminating the speculative derivatives that have emptied the reserves, redefining the boundary between business and commercial banks, but also with a return to the convertibility of currency into gold, as China, Russia, and other emerging countries close to creating an alternative financial system to the dollar are doing, because the new balances of power allow it [29].

The challenge of our time is to rebuild a cohesive social system, recovering the solidarity of our familial roots and the small and medium-sized businesses that constitute the backbone of our nation over time, and recover the pride of our history and autonomy that allows us to decide without having a gun pointed at our heads. History, forgotten by a society that lives only in the present, teaches over the millennia that a society can live only on solid family roots and maintain a trade-off between the agricultural world that generates solidarity and the urban world that creates individualism. Will we be able to understand the lessons of history? This is the enigma we have before us [30-31] (Figure 11).

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Behaviour-Education-Technology-Juniper Publishers

Education can really benefit from the many opportunities, although not always immediate and explicit, that technology makes available. Let’s consider the following example. The use of the Internet has determined, among others, the redefinition of the methods of creation and access to teaching and learning resources, of the physical spaces in which the education takes place, of the frequency and type of interaction between learners and teachers.

It is a phase of the education’s lifecycle that is neither stoppable nor preventable. We could consider that as a phase of renewal that can further enhance the whole educational process. In other words, new and interesting opportunities are opening for redefinition of educational models. Although the path of “educational evolution” has already begun, there is a lot of potential yet to be explored. As it’s well known, technology offers a wide range of opportunities but, ultimately, Universities and Schools are responsible for organizing themselves to manage and coordinate this educational evolution path.

In the managerial discipline the adoption of educational models that make use of experiments and, more generally, experiential learning models do not represent a novelty per se. Technology today has increased the value of these models for educational purposes. Leveraging on continuous feedback on their behaviors, students can verify their learning progress. The integration of behavioral analysis in economic disciplines is also consistent with the concept of “evidence-based economics” recently proposed by Nobel laureate Richard Thaler, according to which the use of descriptive models, through which to analyze the behavior of human beings, would help to increase the value of economic models.

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Physical Education Teachers’ Practical Obligation to Legal Responsibilities and Liabilities (Case Study: Physical Education Teachers of Isfahan Province)

Abstract

Background & Purpose: Sports law is a set of rules, regulations, norms and principles that creates certain context and specific guidelines on relations between people (coaches, referees, spectators, athletes, administrators, teachers, and others) in sports environments and in exercises, especially competitions with the aim of establishing the Justice, law and creating order. The purpose of this study was the evaluation of physical education teacher’s practical obligation to legal responsibilities and liabilities.

Methodology: The method of this research was survey research and fieldwork were done. For this purpose, 407 physical education teachers were selected with using random stratified sampling method. A researcher-made questionnaire was used for collecting the data; its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha test= α) 0.84). The data were analyzed using T tests and analysis of variance.

Results: The findings indicated that the physical education teachers’ knowledge of sports law components was above average (μ>3). There was a significant difference between the service record, the level of education and the educational level regarding the practical obligation physical education teachers to legal responsibilities in the components of commitment and responsibilities, equipment standards, responsibilities of the manager and expert, and objectives and missions (P ≤ 0/05)

Conclusion: According to the results of the research, it is suggested that to be taken the necessary steps for further improve the legal and lawful awareness of the sports community, including the continuing education of physical education teachers in the form of in-service training courses, the formulation of new rules and regulations, etc.

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Respect for Parliament? Do VIP Criminals Want Complete Immunity for Committing Crimes, Corruption and Human Rights Violations?

Abstract

Sanctity of vote, respect and dignity of parliament, dignity and respect of elected members and other related issues have become central and extremely hot topics of debates in media since the disqualification of Mian Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister as well as politician and chairman of Muslim League N for rest of his life.

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Numerical Economy and New Industrial Firm Power

Abstract

Numerical economy put in a prominent place the fact that the digital revolution imposes a new model in consumption and production. The whole ecosystem is modified by the development of Internet, networks, big data, information flows, connected objects and applied services. The firms are adopting monopolistic and oligopolistic strategies that converge towards a new model.

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Bringing Complexity into Social Analysis: Three Principles from Emergence Benyamin Lichtenstein

Abstract

Systems are increasingly complex, and traditional theories and constructs don’t consider the dynamics of the social world. Through 60+ published papers exploring these complexity dynamics, I have summarized the differences into three core insights: Non-linearity, Interdependence, and Emergence. This brief review summarizes how to use each of these insights, and how they can reveal dynamics that are important but mostly hidden.

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The Role and Priorities of International Development Agencies to Democratic Governments’ towards Education and Research in Africa: Educationists Perspective

Abstract

Education and Research is eminent to every economic advancement and development, i.e. how many resources and management decisions are taking nationally or as constitution mandates for government organizational operations. Hence, the main objective of this study is to evaluate both national and international policy framework in education and research on Africa from the IMF, World Bank, EU, OECD, World Vision International, UNESCO, UN, UNICEF, Getfund and the Scholarship Secretariat. The essence of this study is to review the challenges faced by Africa Democratic Governments in a short change of staggering education and research delivery policies and systems, hence, confounding the development of specific educational and research policies. This is to establish scholarship challenges at the advance stage of nation building where access to scholarship or government sponsorship at national level is poorly managed by delivery. These test three hypotheses such as H1: whether there is a relationship of International Development Agencies’ policies, support more of education and research in Ghana as far as national HR development is concerned. H2: there is positive relationship between IDA to Public Administration (government) as recipient of supports. H3: there is positive significance of Public Administration (government) in targeting and executing Education and Research work.

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Happy Easter- Juniper Publishers

Wishing you and your family Happy Easter!

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The Coronavirus Crisis. Governance, Social and Political Economy Issues (A Short Note)-Juniper Publishers

Introduction

Within just three months, the coronavirus crisis has hit all continents with, after China, Europe becoming the new center of propagation. As indicated by Figure 1, in the Annex, the number of deaths is spiraling – virtually out of control. The US is affected. Africa and Latin American countries are lagging behind. In this note, three critical issues, related to the on-going crisis, are discussed. In the first section, the seemingly lack of crisis management with adequate forecasting tools is discussed. The next section concentrates on the social dimensions of health when pandemics prevail. The influence of the big pharmaceutical companies and major countries is briefly presented in the third section.

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Tools for Assessing Risks

The role of think tanks

The RAND Corporation, a leading US think tank, has developed a number of tools to analyze and prepare for crisis management, including public health emergencies. Considering COVID-19, one of the most recent works produced by the RAND Corporation is the contribution of a multidisciplinary team, involving a mathematician, an information scientist and a physician policy researcher, to assess the evolution of fatality rates [1]. The authors conclude that good estimates of fatality rates can hardly be calculated before the full termination of the pandemic. This work is important and raises key-questions about the forecasting models that can be used and the seemingly limited reference to such tools by authorities, at least at the very beginning of the crisis.

Forecasting models

Even when major pandemic waves end, as shown by a systematic review of studies on the global spread of diseases, there are modelling challenges, related to the quality of data and other factors. Despite problems, findings are interesting. Relying on a well-structured and transparent scoping approach and a series of key-words, three scholars selected 78 studies [2]. They underline the variety of sources and modelling perspectives – including deterministic mathematical models and so-called gravity models, developed by economists to explain trade flows between countries. Most interestingly, they report that, with globalization, models confirm that travels contribute significantly to the spread of diseases. Even if the validation of models remains a difficult exercise, such findings could have been a source of inspiration for governments (and WHO also perhaps), especially following the alarming information that flew from China at the very end of 2019. The compulsory quarantine of all travelers coming from China could have been imposed very early – considering actual developments and measures adopted in Europe and the US, it would have represented a low-cost option indeed.

Exponential trends and the benefits of early action

Even without the use of advanced and complex mathematical and statistical tools developed for simulation and forecasting exercises, when drawing simple graphs based on reported cases of contamination, the exponential nature of the spread of coronavirus could have been detected early, within the five to ten days that followed the very first cases, and interpreted as a serious warning about what may happen when countermeasures are not quickly adopted and effectively implemented. As shown by Figure 2, early action may help contain, or at least slow down, the spread of the virus and save thousands of lives [3].

Considering France, it takes about 3 days for the number of cases to double [4]. It implies that, left alone, without public and private initiatives, the virus could potentially hit at least half the population within 2.5 months. Such an extreme scenario would mean that the national health system cannot anymore provide adequate cares to people in need, especially the most vulnerable (ageing population and people with underlying conditions). It could virtually collapse, especially if a significant proportion of the medical staff is contaminated, which is not impossible when resources and protective material are lacking, and healthcare professionals are working long hours under stressful conditions. In fact, it is foreseen that the Italian scenario could happen in other countries [5]. In such a context, wealth, incomes and status in political-administrative and economic structures will matter a lot for effective access to health care services in well-equipped private and public clinics and survival – this is especially true in the countries that are or will be adopting the so-called unethical and risky ‘herd immunity’ strategy [6].

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Social Dimensions

Poverty and epidemics

When epidemics occur, they have different impacts on people. The poor people are generally the most impacted by the outbreaks. Poverty explains vulnerability because of low education, detrimental habits, the living environment, low incomes and lack of access to health cares. In the case of Norway, which is a high per capita income country, and despite inclusion policies and generous safety nets, there are still vulnerable groups when pandemics occur – they include people with complex social and/ or health needs, and people with low education and incomes [7]. Similar findings are reported for other developed countries. In the US, the black African and the Hispanic/Latino minorities are seen as the most vulnerable minorities.

Coronavirus and the elites

The spread of coronavirus outside China is associated with international travels, which contributed to its rapid expansion in Europe. Travelers are generally not perceived as poor people. They seem to be business people, traders, international civil servants and tourists that do not belong to the poorest strata of the society – extensive information is perhaps needed to be more conclusive about these travelers. Considering the richest people, with coronavirus, the use of private jets is booming, which allows to avoid contacts with people in crowded airports and escape from risky urban areas to large and safe properties in remote places (countryside, islands, mountains). New Zealand is a favorite destination for Silicon Valley billionaires [8]. Moreover, they can hire 24/7 services of private MD’s, with adequate medical equipment. In some cases, luxury nuclear shelters filled with food reserves could also be used for the sake of complete isolation from the rest of the world. Some billionaires became very rich with globalization, which is also associated with the rapid spread of the virus – largely because of travelling and the lower costs of transportation. However, it is worth noting that wealth inequalities have decreased because of the coronavirus – it is estimated that $6 trillion were lost with the collapse of global stocks within a few days, in March 2020 [9], which should not prevent the major stockholders to benefit from quality health cares.

Disparities in the EU

The availability of intensive cares bed in the EU is dispersed – in addition to ventilators, such a factor may play a key role when saving the lives of severely infected people [10]. Germany has the highest score, with about 120 beds for 100,000 inhabitants. It is followed by Luxemburg – an EU major fiscal haven - and Romania, a former socialist country. The Scandinavian countries, that are renowned for their safety nets and enjoy high incomes per capita, do not appear at the top of the list. UK, a former EU member, is located below the EU average. Figures about health infrastructures should be considered for further analysis to explain how it can be related to health policies, past strategic decisions and, above all, successful outcomes and failures in the on-going campaign against the coronavirus.

Developing countries

The spread of Coronavirus beyond China, Europe and the US is taking place and reaching the developing world, in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Most of the poor people live in developing countries, and their fate may worsen because of coronavirus. A large number of precarious and impoverished people work in the informal sector, they can hardly benefit from safety nets and have limited access to health services – when severely ill, little will be done to assist them. They have to continue to work to pay for food and modest shelters and, as a result, they can hardly be quarantined. In addition, the demand for their goods and services is expected to contract, which will worsen their material conditions. According to recent forecasts, the world economy is expected to shrink by more than $2 trillion (see Figure 3), which will impact on developing countries, reducing further their capacity to address the new situation [11]. Furthermore, even if more aid is being planned to help them, the full mobilization and saturation of health systems in the developed economies could imply that medical aid provided by the rich countries to the poor ones may lack both human and material resources. Also, access to new vaccines that are going to be developed may be rendered difficult because of the lobbying of the large pharma companies, defending their intellectual property rights and market niches, the permanent quest for market dominance, the prohibition of drugs exports by key-countries (India…), and the possible nationalization or, at least, the imposition of state controls on drugs industries [12]. Considering African countries, there is high awareness and some governments seem to take adequate preventive measures on time, with the use of medias and strict controls in airports. In that context, the WHO must also occupy a central position to defend the interests of the developing and poorest countries and secure their access to proper medications and vaccines – it could imply that WHO will be confronted with extreme pressures from the most influential pharma companies and rich countries, which is most likely when the organization is facing funding problems [13].

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Pharma Companies and Power Games

Intellectual property rights

Pharmaceutical companies invest a lot to develop new drugs in a risky environment characterized by complex practices and competition. The protection of their intellectual property rights is well addressed within the frameworks of the WTO and WIPO. Some OECD countries are willing to go beyond existing agreements and offer more protection to their multinational companies when they negotiate free trade agreements with developing countries, where local producers are eager to develop their own generic drugs, copying expiring rights, which raises sensitive questions in terms of social justice and profits. Access to drugs is also perceived as a critical ethical issue for the low-income people in developed and developing countries.

When epidemics prevail, social justice and human rights perspectives become more acute. In difficult contexts, dialogs between governments, international organizations and companies become critical. Emergencies could justify the use of coercive measures, limited in times, and with compensations perhaps when companies are confronted with significant losses. Direct aid to promising pharma SME’s could also be considered, assuming they promote ethical attitudes and social responsibility. In that respect, research works on ethical dilemmas may help understand the factors that explain empathy and generosity [14].

Lobbying and recent developments

In the US, and other countries also, with what President Eisenhower named the military-industrial complex, the large pharma companies represent powerful lobbies. According to McGreal [15], they may even contribute to health crises, causing thousands of victims – and the coronavirus offers unique new opportunities for gaining more profits, with lobbying and racing [16]. Transparency is becoming a critical issue and civil society should play a major role to identify, report and address abuses, putting pressures on political leaders and lawmakers, to avoid the repetition of ‘business as usual’. In the US, such issues have been already raised by politicians.

Controlling the vaccines

Lobbying does mean unique strong ties between those who are elected and the pharma industry – strategic alliances may forge, with long term implications on market shares and profits, access to appropriate medications and the health conditions of the people, in all countries. Such critical implications may explain the permanent quest for global dominance, with the acquisition of firms that have unique expertise and strong potential. These comments can be illustrated by the recent (and failed) US attempt to pay 1 billion USD to acquire a leading lab in Germany that has the capacity to develop a new vaccine [17].

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Final Remarks

The coronavirus crisis raises sensitive questions related to the quality of governance in countries that are seen as models. As illustrated by the work of the RAND corporation, crisis management requires the mobilization of multidisciplinary teams and the use of specific tools, especially for forecasting. What is also surprising is the seemingly lack of strict protocols when the very early signs were detected. Moreover, despite the evidence and access to key-information, in the EU at least, the political leaders of major countries were still hesitant and, for unclear reasons, delayed the imposition of strict measures that could have saved thousands of lives. The final impacts on individuals will have to be analyzed to better understand the importance of social conditions for survival, in developed and developing countries. The lobbying activities of the big pharma companies and the role of powerful states to gain more dominance must be followed and assessed carefully, from ethical and economic perspectives. The future role of WHO must also be clarified to provide better guidance and support coordination between countries – which may require adequate means and more independence.

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Additional Comments – Fighting Covid-19

Paul Jacques Lamotte1

Daniel Linotte’s2 note focuses on economic and social issues. The following comments reflects the views of a MD, with a long experience in countries that have been confronted with severe pandemics.

A number of drugs and products are being tested, including chloroquine-based ones, for preventing COVID-19 infection and curing patients. Without convincing evidence, with rigorous testing and official validation, the use of specific drugs must be restricted or even prohibited. In that context, it is worth noting that the Belgian government officially informed to refrain prescribing hydroxychloroquine to prevent contamination or cure patients not in hospitals. When patients are using the medication, they must be carefully monitored. Strategic stocks of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are being built to be made available when needed and if validated. Considering hospitals, the following recommendations are being made [Sciensano website, March 16, 2020]: “At the time being, the use of investigational or off label medicinal products to treat patients suspected or confirmed COVID-19 should be restricted to hospital use.” In addition, “chloroquine has good in vitro activity against SARS-CoV-2 and seems to reduce the duration of viral shedding. This does not mean that this will be translated in clinical efficacy (many previous experiences were disappointing). Results of ongoing clinical trials are eagerly awaited. This drug has been used for decades (at a total of 25mg/kg within 3 days) for malaria treatment without any monitoring and side effects, including in pregnant women. However, the therapeutic window is quite narrow (cardiotoxicity/arrhythmia), requiring caution for use at higher cumulative dosages. For this reason, we strongly recommend that its use in suspected/confirmed COVID-19 be restricted to hospitalized patients”.

Recent information (see https://epidemio.wiv-isp. be/ID/Pages/2019-nCoV_procedures.aspx) suggests that hydroxychloroquine is more potent than chloroquine in vitro, so that lower dosages (than initially recommended) could be used. This option has been preferred since therapy will be required mostly in older patients and/or in case of severe disease. Since the availability of hydroxychloroquine in sufficient quantity might become a problem, instructions for the chloroquine use will be provided, but caution will be required.

From a more political perspective, it is worth mentioning that, in China, the MD who reported the very first pieces of info about the virus was silenced by the authorities and also died. However, after the initial repressive reactions and delay, the Chinese authorities finally reacted firmly and, considering the sharp fall of new cases and reported deaths, they seem to be able to contain the spread of the virus in the country.

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Student Motivations that Predict the Self-Selection and Choice of Blended Instructional Delivery-Juniper Publishers

Introduction

The COVID19 coronavirus led the World Health Organization (WHO) to identify a global pandemic in 2020 which forced the closure of thousands of schools, colleges and universities across the United States and abroad [1]. As the WHO reports, this is the first time in recorded history where “technology and social media are being used on a massive scale to keep people safe, productive and connected while being physically apart” [1]. This has led colleges and universities across the world to scramble to attempt to complete courses online without face to face community spread in the classroom. This global pandemic [1] has forced instructors to adopt radical approaches to complete their courses online potentially neglecting their own unique outcomes but rethinking how their courses can be implemented in the future. This article offers a glimpse into how self-selection of instructional delivery could assist in delivering courses in the future.

Academic learning within post-secondary institutions has traditionally been face to face (F2F) teaching instruction. The scholarship of teaching and learning has always encouraged and promoted the use of best practices determining what works, what doesn’t and what is promising [2-6]. However, there is no one size fits all, universal method of instruction simply because each instructor is unique in their own delivery [7-9]. Every instructor has their own unique outcomes for their coursework (Singh, 2006) and this certainly varies based on class size [10], lecture versus seminar courses [11-13], basic versus applied courses [11,14] and by discipline [15].

As such, governments, post-secondary institutions and students/ consumers have begun pondering whether online programming is more effective than blended or face to face engagement in the classroom. As such, the timing of this study may not be more appropriate. How do universities and faculty react to a changing online environment and how might students wish to proceed in an online/hybrid environment? What are student motivations for taking blended coursework and furthermore, what might be the most appropriate level of engagement that ensures strong performance outcomes? This case study focuses on approximately three hundred students within seven undergraduate courses at a medium sized liberal arts midwest American university.

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Literature Review

Research indicates that online and blended courses are reliable and valid methods of course delivery [3,5,16,17]. Similar to face to face course instruction, the evidence of the efficacy of online courses is mixed. For each study that suggests online instruction is similar or as effective as traditional classroom instruction [2], there are also studies to the contrary [18]. The reasoning is simplistic. There is a plethora of course deliveries available for instructors from the extremities of traditional F2F instruction to no F2F interaction at all.

A meta-analysis by Zhao & Breslow [19] reported that evidence is mixed in terms of the efficacy of blended versus traditional and online learning deliverables. The lack of comparison groups, low sample sizes and the differentiation of modes of delivery [19-21] impacted the efficacy of the 45 studies examined. The meta-analysis concludes that students who enroll in hybrid learning “performed modestly better” than those enrolled in F2F interactions [21]. However, there is very little research to suggest how student self-selection can impact their chosen instructional delivery. Often instructional delivery is forced on students and they do not have the opportunity to select what might be in their best interests. The purpose of this study is to build on what we know, what we don’t know and what is promising highlighting selfselection within differing/varying intervals of F2F interactions

The Sloan Consortium has adopted a scaled form of online learning delivery based on the percentage of content delivered online [2]. The lowest level of content delivered to students is denoted as web supported delivery; where online instruction is less than 30% online and focuses specifically on online content and internet sourced works. This could range from using selected readings that are available online or within a digital library consortium to the adoption of online readings developed by book publishers. Alternatively, the higher extremes of 80% and above are categorized as online. This categorization could be the implementation of entire textbooks and performance measurement outcomes. Hybrid or blended learning is determined to be within the mid-range of 30%-70%. This is where there is an inclusion of more digital content with an emphasis on some F2F lecture or seminar time (without it being diminished almost entirely).

The motivations for students selecting online and/or blended programs are based primarily on three priorities: convenience, flexibility in programming and managing their educational attainment with their employment [22]. Jaggers [23] reported that 80% of participants who selected online courses in Virginia did so due to time conflicts with employment (50% being full time employment). While many studies point to the need of flexibility of employment [23-25] when selecting courses, very few include volunteerism and/or internships. Often students will be supplementing their educational attainment with volunteer experience and/or internships that also affect their time management and flexibility, yet it is not studied with much rigor. However, there is also the possibility that other demographic variables and motivators may be able to predict why students select online or blended learning environments.

With a sample of nearly 650 undergraduate students, Harris & Martin (2012) reported that students who were older were more likely to enroll in a fully or mostly online course, while those within the 18-22 range are more likely to remain traditional classrooms, likely due to being on-campus already (being part or full time). Older students have been found to be more likely to engage with online materials [26,27], enroll in online courses [28] while also exploring and identifying new content [29]. Chyung [27] found that non-traditional and older students were more active on discussion boards than their younger counterparts, while also boasting more content-based narratives. Studies have also suggested that the older the student, the more likely they consciously examine material leading to better performance [27,30].

There is also a likely correlation that those students who are older are more likely to be employed, have a significant other, dependents and/or employed and less likely to be on campus [22,31,32]. Jaggers [23] reported that 30% of participants who selected online courses in Virginia did so due to child care time conflicts. Therefore, we should not assume that age is the strongest predictor, but rather a significant predictor of determining whether a student considers a traditional, blended or solely online course.

Boysen et al. [33] have reported that nearly half of students can feel victimized by instructor bias, either implicit or explicit. As such, instructor bias can be reduced if course delivery is managed in an online environment rather than face to face. Those who self-identify as visible minorities (whether through sex, gender, race, ethnicity) or who may have language barriers may feel more comfortable taking courses outside the classroom, where there is less likelihood of bias. Ruling out ignorance, prejudice or racism certainly should not be underestimated (via either implicit or explicit bias). The availability of an online course or more blended coursework mitigates this potential bias [34,35]. Conaway and Bethune have reported that White instructors had shown an implicit bias towards African American names more so than instructors of other ethnicities. Therefore, those students who may self-identify of a different sex, gender, race, ethnicity and/or even speak a less prevalent language than English could be more vulnerable to bias. However, as Jagger [23] suggests, those speaking foreign languages may not be as proficient in online environments that are generally in English. Perhaps, a universal design offering easy language translation could reduce these issues (which are already available online). However, it is often difficult to ascertain how prevalent demographic variables are in determining self-selection because it is likely due to unobservable factors which are likely situational and can change based on individual student circumstances.

As Xu & Jaggers [36] suggest it would be useful to compare representative online courses to traditional face to face courses. Xu & Jaggers [37] examined 24,000 students across 23 community colleges in Virginia concluding that students performed “significantly worse in online courses in terms of both course persistence and end of-course grades” (2011:375). This is further corroborated after they examined 34 colleges in Washington State, Xu & Jaggers [36] report that an online format had a significant negative impact on a student’s course persistence and grade attainment (2013: 54). This study hopes to build on their work to control for those motivating factors including influences on a students’ course selection of instructional delivery, employment, volunteerism and educational motivation like one’s field of study and grade expectations/ attainment. Furthermore, this study further accentuates the need to account for “unobservable underlying student self-selection [which] may underestimate any negative [… or positive] impacts of the online format on student course performance” [36].

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Methodology

The participants of this study were chosen from seven traditional undergraduate courses offered within a midwestern American liberal arts university. Three hundred and twenty-two undergraduate students, initially unaware of any instructional self-selection study. enrolled in a typical sixty student maximum face to face 200-level required course in criminology/ criminal justice.

The study sample began with 334 eligible students enrolled in seven criminology courses during both fall and spring semesters. Twenty-two students were removed from the study having dropped or withdrawing from the course throughout the semester. An additional nine students were removed from the study for not having completed the pre-test (n=5) and/or post-test (n=4) survey. Therefore, the sample size for the purpose of analysis was 303 participants.

Each of the seven undergraduate criminology courses were offered over a sixteen-week semester cycle encompassing 34 one-hour blocks of class time. The course was designed with the specific purpose of exploring the nature of crime and theories associated with offending. The course was predicated on utilizing a text that could be offered in both print and online versions. Microsoft power point modules were also used to ensure that additional resources were included in the course to ensure the retention of key concepts, inter-connectivity with the text and any outside resources. Students would be expected to read the required text for the course in addition to supplemental technical reports, peer reviewed articles and online audio-visual clips.

Each course was designed to ensure consistency across performance measurements. Performance measures included three examinations (75% of a final grade) and three assignments worth 10%, 5% and 10% respectfully. The three examinations were proctored in class and were similar in questions and rigor. Examinations were designed for reading comprehension, retention and application of information. Three assignments could easily be related to course materials presented in class and a student’s ability to identify other valid online sources (technical reports and peer reviewed studies) to ensure connectivity and engagement to the text and course content. Assignments were designed with more emphasis on critical thinking and problem solving (associated within experiential and student-centered pedagogical approaches). Rubrics were clearly conceptualized and operationalized within an online environment with drop-box delivery systems.

Ensuring systematic and consistent performance measures were integral to ensure transparency, fairness and equity in grading for all students in these courses. Transparency in grading rubrics and performance measurement objectives would also assist students in their initial choice of selecting instructional delivery; further ensuring that blended or online delivery would be no more or less difficult.

Maintaining systematic and consistent measurements across all seven classes ensured that there would be fewer disparities in how the classes were taught. The study also attempted to alleviate concerns that online courses would require more time to grade engagement measurements. Therefore, no additional instructional time was allocated to an online delivery system that would not be present in a traditional course delivery. While significant time and energy was devoted into developing these instructional methods of delivery, no one group was asked to do more rigorous work than another group. This simplistic approach was adopted to demonstrate that instructors may not need to compromise outcomes when developing new types of instructional delivery that students could select. However, due to the simplicity of the study, there were some obvious limitations. Attendance and participation/ engagement would not be a measurable outcome. Therefore, whether in face to face classes or online, some common engagement techniques were not utilized. Students were offered discussion boards, discussion threads and online video conferencing as levels of peer engagement similar to that of a traditional classroom setting. However. these modes of engagement would not be used as performance measurements. This conflicts with other studies such as Garrison & Anderson [39] that argue engagement is important within online settings. How to cite this article: Michael S.Student Motivations that Predict the Self-Selection and Choice of Blended Instructional DeliveryAnn Soc Sci Manage 0034 Stud. 2020; 5(2): 555659. DOI: 10.19080/ASM.2020.05.555659 Annals of Social Sciences & Management studies Despite the lack of graded engagement, the use of office hours and/ or email for instructor feedback or assistance was still available. This study assumed that offering more immediate instructor feedback (Acton et al. 2005; Hill et al. 2013) was more important than grading engagement as a performance measure.

On the first day of classes, students were asked to choose or self-select into one of four types of instructional delivery methods. This study conceptualized and operationalized four instructional delivery systems as developed by Twigg [40] and the Sloan Consortium [2] into different categories of hybrid/blended instructional delivery: replacement (90:% F2F : 10% Online), supplemental (70% F2F : 30% Online) and two emporium options - 30% F2F : 70% Online and 10% Online : 90% F2F.

In selecting an instructional delivery mode, students were offered four options. Utilizing a replacement model approach, Twigg [40] articulates that some in class time can be replaced rather than supplemented with online or interactive learning activities. Using this model, 90% of the course would be delivered face to face and 10% online. Within this 90:10 option, 10% of course materials and assignment functions would be online with students able to interact with one another in class or through discussion boards. Over a sixteen-week semester with 34 instructional hours, 28 hours would be devoted to face to face lectures, 3 hours devoted to 3 examinations and 3 hours devoted to online learning. These three online classes would be used to replace time in class devoted to written assignments so that students could utilize reliable and valid sources of information to supplement their written work. These classes were designed around both experiential and student-centered learning strategies while also ensuring compliance in reading comprehension and retention of key concepts and themes (Chen et al. 2010; Stelzer et al. 2010).

The second option, designated as a 70:30 blended option, offered students 70% of the course within the classroom and 30% within an online environment. Within this 70:30 supplemental approach (inclusive of 34 instructional hours), 21 hours would be devoted for face to face lectures, 10 hours initially designated as face to face lectures would be substituted by 8 video-based lectures and 2 hours of independent online readings. Three hours were devoted to in class examinations. The 10 digital lecture recordings would be made available through Camtasia software within an online environment. Digital recordings of all instructor criminology/ criminal justice lectures allowed for its simple reintroduction at different intervals without revising content and/ or translation. Therefore, class-based discussions could still be utilized and implemented within an online environment.

Students could select a third option, denoted 30:70, where 30% of the course would be delivered face to face and a larger majority (70%) would be offered within an online delivery environment. The emporium approach [40] offers students a replacement of face to face discussions with more online deliverables including more Camtasia lectures and collaborative peer discussions, if students want to remain engaged. This approach offered students more independence and flexibility outside the classroom. In terms of instructional delivery, 3 hours were devoted to in class examinations, 10 hours were allocated to instructional face to face lectures with 21 hours of original lecture time replaced with 19 hours of digital Camtasia lectures and 2 hours of independent readings.

To offer students even more selection, students were offered the choice of a 10:90 instructional delivery. Similar to a very traditional online delivery, 10% of the course would be delivered face to face and 90% of the course would be instructed within an online environment. This emporium model approach offered students the most discretion and flexibility in their schedule where 3 instructional hours were devoted to examinations, 3 hours for face to face discussions that were pertinent more to assignments and examinations whereas 28 hours of instruction was delivered online. Digital Camtasia lectures and tutorials were utilized to replace all face to face lectures while discussion boards and threads were also utilized as forms of engagement (but were not graded).

Symbolic of Twigg’s [40] modelling, there inherent design of the course was to ensure that students were able to self-select and choose their instructional delivery. As such, the study wanted to ensure that students were generally satisfied with their selection. Therefore, after the completion of the first exam (one month; 8 classes into the course), students could re-select an option that they initially had not chosen. This offered each student more flexibility if they felt the instructional mode they first selected was incorrect. This buffet style approach [40] offered students the ultimate level of discretion of their own learning environment without revising any performance measures. This was also a component of the study to ascertain whether students would revise their original desired instructional method to something more useful for that individual student.

In addition to selecting an instructional delivery model, students were asked to complete a pre-test survey to attain baseline data. A pre-test self-administered questionnaire was explained in class and students were expected to complete the questionnaire and their self-selection of class instruction within two days. The questionnaire included demographic variables associated with age, sex, self-identified race and ethnicity, language preference and motivating factors which were explained previously in the literature review. This pre-test questionnaire was supplemented with validated measurements (attaining additional consent for use of a student number) to ascertain each student’s educational status (based on number of credits attained), a validated grade point average, number of courses the student was enrolled in at the beginning of the semester and their home address to determine their proximity to the University campus.

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Findings

As explained previously, the study sample began with 334 eligible students enrolled in seven 200-level criminology/ criminal justice courses within a liberal arts University in the Midwest United States. Thirty-one students were removed from the study for (i) having dropped or withdrawing from the course or not completing their self-administered surveys. Therefore, 303 students were used for the analysis of this study.

Table 1 below illustrates the self-selection of instructional delivery that each student has chosen. As explained previously, students initially chose their preferred instructional mode within the first few days of the beginning of the course. However, each student was also able to revise this choice at any time between the beginning of the course and the first examination (one month later).

When given the opportunity, a large majority of students initially selected an emporium approach (as explained by Twigg [40]). Nearly half of the seven classes of students (45%) preferred the 70:30 blended option; giving them more flexibility than the 90:10 traditional course (24%) or the more online 30:70 blended (20%) option. One in every ten students selected the almost entirely constructed course where 90% would be instructed online. However, the decisions of students became clear after one month of the course had been completed. Of those 31 students who initially chose the 90:10 option, four students re-selected to the 70:30 option. Of those selecting the 30:70 instructional delivery (61 students), six students revised their decision with one student returning to the most traditional instructional method and five moving to a 70:30 mode of delivery. It was clear that students did appreciate more of an emporium approach (64%) to traditional (25%) or almost solely online (9%) instructional delivery. The ten students who re-selected and/or revised their initial decision all had said in some form that they wanted more opportunities to interact with other students and/or attain more detail in understanding key concepts and themes. It should be noted that the revised selection options were used for further analysis.

In addition to choosing their desired instructional delivery medium, students were asked to complete a short open-ended self-administered questionnaire at the beginning of the course. Responses were relevant to establishing a baseline of data points to understand the profile of the sample. Responses of the variables of interest were coded to generate the appropriate values; as seen below in Table 2.

The profile of the students studied would suggest this is a typical, traditional 200-level undergraduate course where a majority of students are young and progressing to determine their career trajectory. In terms of age, a significant majority (92%) of students who participated in the study were generally 21 or under, Similar to the University demographics, women represented a larger percentage (55%) of the students enrolled in the courses. Students represented in the sample are young, single (94%) and are without children or dependents (96%). Similar to the University’s student body demographics, the majority of students self-identified as White (72%), a large concentration of students self-identified as Black and/or African American (24%). Furthermore, those who identified as Hispanic were approximately 16% of the sample and typical of the student body at the University where this study was conducted. English was the primary language spoken and was not a limitation to this study as all students had a proficiency in English despite 16% of respondents suggesting English was their second language.

The open ended pre-test also encouraged students to explain some of their current and/or situational factors that may be impacting their self-selection of instructional delivery. As denoted within the scholarship of teaching and learning research, students are often employed and/or volunteering outside of the classroom to supplement their career aspirations. Almost eight in ten students in courses reported being employed at the time of being enrolled in the course. A large majority of students (58%) reported working part time while as many as 19% of the students reported working over 20 hours a week in addition to their coursework. A large percentage of students (80%) were not involved with volunteerism and/or internships at the beginning of the course. This is likely due to their workload in and out of the classroom. A further question asked students to report whether time flexibility and/or convenience would impact their decision to self-select into a specific instructional method. Three-quarters of students reported that they agreed (60%) or strongly agreed (17%) that flexibility and convenience would have an impact on their decision. These findings would substantiate the literature as to why students may consider blended or online learning.

In addition to the self–reporting of the students, it was also important to attain other validated measurements. Student consent to the study allowed for the use of their University student number to access other variables of interest (Table 3).

Validated measurements of students were able to supplement the knowledge attained by students while also ensuring more validated measurements focusing on accuracy. As such, it appears that these measurements validated the data that was self-reported by undergraduate students in the study. Consistent with the previous table, the ages of students and credits attained matched to substantiate that students enrolled in the 200-level criminology/ criminal justice courses were typically freshmen (27%) and/or sophomores (60%), thereby not having significant progress towards their degree. This would explain why a low percentage of students may not be as active in volunteerism and/ or internships (as they are still deciding on their career path).

Furthermore, a large majority of students were taking larger numbers of classes simultaneously. Less than 6% of the students were taking courses on a part time basis while a remarkable 94% of students were taking three or more classes (considered full time employment). This is particularly troubling as nearly 8% of the sample were taking the most courses allowed (without permission) at five courses within the same semester. If we consider that nearly 60% of students are also employed part time and another 20% of students are working over 20 hours a week, this could be considerable strain on many students within the sample.

The relative importance of the course was another variable of interest that is often not considered particularly pertinent in the literature. Perhaps students who are more likely to engage in a their designated career path (in this case criminology/ criminal justice) feel that face to face course work might be more ideal versus students who perceive the class as simply an elective (and/ or perhaps a class they simply have to complete their liberal arts degree). A majority (62%) of the students enrolled in the seven courses were utilizing the class as a chosen major or minor of their study while 38% of students were taking the class as an elective and/or general course (not having declared a major or minor in criminology/ criminal justice).

Two variables of interest that are often self-reported and not necessarily validated in the literature were two of the final variables of interest. Preferring precision and accuracy, University Registrar records report that a large percentage of students (74%) were in the grade point average (GPA) range of a B to C. A lesser number of students had an A average (14%) while one in ten students (11%) were considered more high risk (having attained a D, F and/or probationary score). The second variable of interest was meant to assess and test the effect of commuting distance to determine if a longer commute to campus had an impact on self-selection. The University is considered more a of a commuter campus and as such, the student data was supportive of this analogy. Three of four students lived further than 5 miles from campus making the commute particularly more time consuming. This study did not address parking or public transportation. However, it appears that a substantial percentage of students would require time to commute as nearly one in five students commute over 10 miles each way, as per their schedule (which is predominantly two to three times a week) which could be five days a week. It would be expected that the longer the commute, the more likely students may select a more online based course. However, as illustrated above, a majority of students are taking a full-time course load so they may likely need to commute to campus for other courses. This should be considered when considering self-selection.

The following section examines how self-reported and further validated motivating factors predicted a student’s self-selection of blended or hybrid instructional delivery. Due to a lack of variation in responses, several variables were unable to be included in the multivariate analysis. This includes one of the dependent variables (the 90% face to face to 10% online instructional delivery). For this reason, these variables were excluded to ensure a reduced level of error and multicollinearity. With a sample size of 303 students, the data analyses attempted to control error and multicollinearity with a tolerance level of 2 and a variance inflation factor of 4.0 to ensure that data outliers would be removed from the analysis.

Table 4 below examines the predictive power of motivating factors that influence students’ self-selection of rhe most traditional form of instructional delivery where 90% of the course is face to face with 10% of the course within an online environment. This model was found to be statistically significant (.001 with a confidence level of 95% with the p < .05 being significantly different than zero). The motivating factors within the model explained 36% of students selecting a 90:10 more traditional instructional delivery (versus other delivery methods) based on a Nagelkerke R Square. The regression reported a Chisquare of 184.32 and a model -2 Log likelihood of 243.49 (with 10 degrees of freedom).

Findings suggest that while the model was good at predicting a 90:10 delivery of course instruction, only four variables were statistically significant at the .05 level. Those who were older were more likely to take a traditional face to face instructional method than a more blended or online approach. This is an interesting finding as you would expect that the older a student is, the more responsibilities they may have outside of taking courses at the university. However, the limitation of the study is that the range of the students who took this course was from 18 to 37. As such, it may not be representative of students in their mid to late 20s as a large percentage of students were below the median of 20. Students who self-reported as non-White were more likely to take a 90:10 delivery method than students who were White. While race has been considered a variable of interest, it may be difficult to determine why this could be the case in this model.

The two most significant variables in the analysis (based on the Beta values) were those who did not require flexibility/ convenience and students who were enrolled in four or more classes within the same semester. It appears that students who did not require additional flexibility in their schedules were more likely to take a 90:10 deliverable course. This is consistent with some of the research that has been conducted. Furthermore, students who were enrolled in four or more courses within that particular semester (equating to 12 credit hours or more) were more likely to consider a more face to face instructional delivery. While this appears to contradict the idea of flexibility and convenience, this finding could be a result of students having to attend other classes on campus and therefore, simply chose to attend class because they were on campus already. This finding would require further research to substantiate.

The Table below examines the strength of ten motivating factors influencing students’ self-selection of the most prevalent 70:30 instructional delivery. In this mode of instructional delivery, 70% of the course is face to face and 30% of the course is available within an online environment. This model was also found to be statistically significant (.001 with a confidence level of 95% with the p < .05 being significantly different than zero). The motivating factors within the model explained 51% of students selecting a 70:30 instructional delivery based on a Nagelkerke R Square. The regression reported a Chi-square of 244.81 and a model -2 Log likelihood of 314.26 (with 10 degrees of freedom). It should also be noted that three cases/outliers were removed from the analysis to ensure there was no multicollinearity.

The model explained in Table 5 finds that half of the variables of interest are significant when understanding a blended form of instructional delivery (versus other modes of delivery). Findings suggest that there is considerable differentiation as to why students in this sample chose blended learning versus a traditional form of instructional delivery (Table 4). Age remained a significant demographic variable of significance. It appears that the younger the student, the more likely they would enroll in a 70:30 blended instructional delivery of a criminology class. This could be due to a number of other corresponding factors such as comfortability of online environments or different priorities (versus older students). More study would be needed.

Employment, or the more a student works per week was found to be significant in determining if a student selected a 70:30 blended instruction. It also appears that other factors or a complex set of factors is having the most impact on a student’s selection of 70:30 delivery.

The Beta values above would suggest that the three most significant motivating factors was the commuting distance of students, enrollment of fewer than four courses per semester and the need for flexibility/ convenience in their scheduling. These variables of interest have all been found to be significant in other research studies. In this particular study, it would appear that the longer the commute a student has to the University (from their primary listed address), the more likely they would consider enrolling in a 70:30 blended instruction. This would also correspond to the relevance of taking fewer classes and perhaps not being on campus as often, providing them more flexibility and convenience. As we know, most students will select courses on particular days (Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday) rather than five days a week. It also becomes apparent that students who take the course as an elective were more likely to consider the 70:30 blended instruction than those students who enrolled in the course to fulfill their major or minor liberal arts degree requirements. Therefore, with a commuting distance, higher levels of employment per week and convenience, it would not be self-serving if students selected a traditional method especially considering that they are taking fewer classes.

Table 6 illustrates the predictive power of ten motivating factors that influence a student’s selection of a 30:70 blended instructional offering (versus other instructional deliveries). The model was found to be statistically significant at a .001 with a confidence level of 95% (with the probability < .05 being significantly different than zero). The variables of interest within the model explained 52% of students selecting a 30:70 instructional delivery based on a Nagelkerke R Square. The regression reported a Chi-square of 219.65 and a model -2 Log likelihood of 307.24 (with 10 degrees of freedom). It should also be noted that the same three cases/outliers were removed from the analysis to ensure there was no multicollinearity.

The model represented above substantiates the previous model of why students may consider enrolling in a more blended learning environment. Of the 10 variables of interest, seven variables were found to be significant in predicting enrollment in a 30:70 instructional delivery mode (versus other modes). Age remains a constant within the three tables. It appears that the younger the student, the more likely they may consider a blended option. Sex, race and volunteering do not seem to have any impact on student selection of course instruction. Students who reported higher levels of hourly employment (per week) were more likely to consider a 30:70 online instructional deliverable who may obviously require more flexibility and convenience.

It also appears that the number of classes and which classes students are enrolled in becomes a more significant variable as blended instruction applies. Students who were enrolled in three or fewer courses, considered the criminology course as an elective course and also having a lower GPA (corresponding to a C or lower) were more likely to choose the 30:70 option. Might this be due to students simply prioritizing other classes over this particular criminology course? Perhaps students registered for fewer courses equates to a lessening engagement of traditional materials if given the option. Unfortunately, it appears that these findings while being interesting does not explain the complexity surrounding the inter-connectivity of these variables. It also appears that a longer a student commutes to the university (from their primary residence) is also having an impact on their selection of instructional delivery. This variable in combination with taking fewer courses may be driving a student’s selection or preference to stay at home more or working more hours (where university courses are less of a priority).

The findings of these three tables offer some insight in how a student may be motivated to select a particular course instructional delivery. Linear and logistic regressions are often performed with sample sizes over 400 to ensure reduced multicollinearity. While three cases were removed from two analyses, results should be taken cautiously. Several variables were also not included from the sample profile due to a lack of variation in responses. A final anticipated discussion on a student’s motivations to take an almost completely online 90:10 course was also not analyzed due to a low sample size. These findings are conclusive however, it should be noted that due to a low size of this population, results should be taken as exploratory [41-50].

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Implications

As other researchers have maintained, there is certainly a complexity surrounding how students select traditional, blended/ hybrid or online classes. While many of these motivations are often situational and/or circumstantial, this study offers an exploratory view on why students may self- select into one particular instructional delivery over another, if given the opportunity, It appears that age and race are demographic groups which were considered significant and require more research. We know that age could be directly correlated with confidence in computer literacy and/or more traditional face to face methods. However, more study is needed with perhaps more attention explored within what we know about distance learning. This study sought to learn more about commuting and distance education and it appears that a student’s commute to campus (the longer the commute) has an impact on their decision to choose a more blended offering of course instruction. The higher number of hours a student was employed through any given week in a semester was also a significant factor in blended learning instruction versus a lack of it. Flexibility and convenience was found to be a significant predictor of blended learning while also found to impact a more traditional face to face delivery (in a negative correlation). This might suggest that convenience may have more of an impact with blended learning rather than traditional face to face courses which is consistent with the literature. A student’s motivation to take more blended learning could be derived from the necessity of the class itself. It appears that students who enrolled in the class as an elective were more likely to consider more blended (70:30 or 30:70) options. This finding may have more to do with a student’s perception of how important the course is and the priority it is within a student’s liberal arts education within the institution studied. These findings offer a glimpse into self-selecting into an online learning environment. There are few studies that have offered such an insight into selecting one instructional method versus another and as such, more study is needed.

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Social Cohesion and the Anticipated Fall of the Welfare State-Juniper Publishers

Social Cohesion

Social cohesion is not a problem for communities with few members. In these cases, society is defined and kept together by interactions between individuals included in the community. Tönnies [2], differentiated between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft as social groupings1. Gemeinschaft - often translated as community – refers to groupings based on feelings of togetherness and on mutual bonds, which are felt as a goal to be kept up, their members being means for achieving this goal. Gesellschaft – often translated as society – on the other hand, refers to groups that are sustained in order for their members’ individual aims and goals to be achieved. Gemeinschaft may be exemplified by a family or a neighborhood in a pre-modern (rural) society; Gesellschaft typically by a joint-stock company or non-governmental-organisations. Gesellschaft relationships, Tönnies argued, arose in an urban and capitalist setting, characterized by individualism and impersonal monetary connections between people. Social ties were often instrumental and superficial, with self-interest and exploitation increasingly the norm.

One can here draw parallels with the concepts of primary and secondary groups. A primary group is a typically small social group whose members share close, personal, enduring relationships. These groups are marked by members’ concern for one another, and shared activities and culture. This lays the foundation for a normativity which is self-generated and self-reproduced. Examples include family, childhood friends, and highly influential social groups. The concept of the primary group was introduced by Cooley [3]. Although the group initially referred to the first intimate group of a person’s childhood, the classification was later extended to include other intimate relations. Primary groups play an important role in the development of personal identity. A primary group is a group in which one exchanges implicit item, such as love, caring, concern, animosity, support, and such. Relationships formed in primary groups are often long-lasting and goals in themselves. They also are often psychologically comforting to the individuals involved and provide a source of support and encouragement.

People in a secondary group interact on a less personal level than in a primary group, and their relationships are temporary rather than long lasting. Since secondary groups are established to perform functions, people’s roles are more interchangeable. A secondary group is one you have chosen to be a part of. Therefore, there is a base for a common normativity, which guides the actors´ behavior. Secondary groups are based on common interests and activities. Secondary groups are groups in which one exchanges explicit commodities, such as labor for wages, services for payments, and such. Examples of these would be employment, vendor-to-client relationships, and the like. We will approach the problem of social cohesion from a system perspective by regarding the state as a key actor

A state can be seen as one of these associations, which tries to expand its social control over all of society, both geographically and in terms of social structure [4]. The state is encompassing these other primary and secondary groups. A state is specifically a political and geopolitical entity. It is created in order to decide on and perform collective tasks for individuals and organizations within society and is in that sense on a higher level. A nation is a cultural and ethnic entity. The term “nation state” implies that the two coincide, in that a state has chosen to adopt and endorse a specific cultural group as associated with it. “Nation state” formation can take place at different times in different parts of the world. Migdal inserts an additional distinction between society and state. His thinks it is crucial to make a separation of society and state.

A society can be described as a group of people united by a network of social relations with certain permanence and continuity over time. Societies is territorially demarcated and individuals in the community share common institutions and, to a greater or lesser extent, a common culture and tradition. That is what keeps a society together. A society needs its community members and reproduces itself. It can be more simply described as an economic, social and industrial infrastructure.

A community may be a single ethnic group, such as ethnic Swedes or of a nation, such as Sweden. The more homogeneous a society is in terms of communities and ethnic groups, the more stable it is. Generally, the relationship between state and society is not characterized by domination of one over the other, although this might come to pass in certain circumstances. In both totalitarian regimes2 and in welfare states, the state plays a dominant role in holding society together, one with coercive means and the other built on attraction. In fact, both entities influence each other, even where one is weak. The reason for the weakness of these states, for Migdal (1988: 30), lies in the particular structure of their societies.

This leads to the hypothesis that if the structure of society undergoes changes the role of the state also will change. We apply this question to present day challenges and threats faced by the European welfare state system. This requires identifying structural changes in contemporary society and understanding what these structural changes might bring in the future. Before going to tackle these questions, we describe how we understand social cohesion in the present day.

We understand a political system as a one that consists of specialized actors authorized to exert political power. This includes decisions about how the structure of society, laws and public duties. A social system is the patterned series of interrelationships existing between individuals, groups, and institutions and forming a whole. The most typical example of a political system is a state. An economic system can be understood as one that coordinates resources in an organization.

Structure means the organization of the relations between the elements of the system and how these follow different patterns. Social cohesion depends on the way the society succeeds in fulfilling human needs. This means that cohesion depends on how the different systems affect individuals’ lives. The organization of society will determine whether society will stay together.

Typical mechanisms for social cohesion would be religion and political ideologies, backed up to a larger or smaller extent by repressive law depending on the legitimacy of the system. The legitimacy is then related to other factors than the ideology, primarily the economic system and how it contributes to the wellbeing of people. This is more or less a general phenomenon when it comes to social cohesion. Another factor of importance for the legitimation of a state is to what extent the leadership is accepted; in connection with trust in society the prevalence of corruption plays a role [5]. Though, it seems that corruption influences the degree of dissatisfaction of the political leadership and the economic system without necessary threatening social cohesion [6].

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The Welfare State and Social Cohesion

We will in this article deal with social cohesion from a western world perspective relating to post-industrialized societies. Sweden is a prominent example [7]. The welfare state is used to describe a state where a social system in which a government is responsible for the economic and social welfare of its citizens and has policies to provide free health care, money for people without jobs, etc. [8]. The political system is based on the premise that the government (and not the individual, corporations, or the local community) has the responsibility for the well-being of its citizens, by ensuring that a minimum standard of living is within everyone’s reach. This commitment is translated into provision of universal and free education, universal medical care, insurance against disability, sickness, and unemployment, family allowances for income supplement, and old age pensions [9]. All these benefits require a high tax system.

The welfare state model provides citizens with material wellbeing, social security, health and education. It is basically a secular model for society where the state apparatus plays a central role for coordination. The production, distribution and consumption of goods and services are taken care of by private companies. Habermas [10] has described the modern society as a combination of systems and lifeworld complementing each other; systems, with the purpose of providing the individuals with material wealth of different kinds and life-world by telling us who we are and what we want.

What Habermas calls systems is following Max Weber. Systems are fully rationalized. The principles of rationalisation are efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. The point of such rationalisation is to reduce the person to be a part of the “machinery” by which the system does what it does; individual scope of action and decision are minimized: “choices” are strictly limited. By the lifeworld, Habermas means the shared common understandings, including values that develop through face to face contacts over time in various social groups, from families to communities. The lifeworld carries all sorts of assumptions about who we are as people and what we value about ourselves: what we believe, what shocks and offends us, what we aspire to, what we desire, what we are willing to sacrifice to which ends, and so forth.

For Habermas the lifeworld has to be just there, furnishing this sense of who we are and who we value being, but it also requires constant reaffirmation. When we perform the parenthood function, and so forth, we reaffirm to ourselves and each other who we are and what we value. Value-commitments are reaffirmed, and the basis of influence is reestablished. What crucial is that because the lifeworld consists of communicative action—people reaching common understandings on everything from car pools to community action to foreign policy.

Habermas theory is about communicative action. Only communication has the ability to regenerate influence and valuecommitments. The quantitative systems media – economy and politics - money and power, can express influence and valuecommitments, but they cannot generate these qualities—only the communicative action in the life world can do that, according to Habermas. Thus, the crucial point for the legitimacy of the system depends on the lifeworld; it is a one-way direction of the lifeworld making possible the legitimacy of the system. These systems provide norms and imperatives which to a large extent become self-sustained.

Norms are not just a part of normative systems as religion and law, but they also occur in the context of cognitive systems. Norms can be derived from knowledge about a system. It may be the technical knowledge on how to build a house or a bridge. This can include the economic knowledge of how the market looks in a certain respect, etc. It can refer to scientific knowledge about the law of gravity, thermodynamics, photosynthesis, etc. Some of these norms have the character of principles.

In this context the rationality that each system is built around serves as a normative core. Rationality is determined ultimately by the success criteria that each system is built around. What distinguishes the economic system from the social is that norms follow a rationality that is embedded in the system itself. Social systems belong mainly to the life-world, using Habermas´ terminology. They are made up of norms that are created when two or more individuals interact with each other by one or other reason. The norms are created by individuals and are dependent on values and aspirations of those involved in the particular case. In the economic system the norms are given by the fundamental principles that characterize the system. The economic system is purpose-driven by its design. It provides on itself, as we have pointed out, the value premises of operators’ behavior. The market economy provides incentives and drivers for the players’ behavior.

The market economy will benefit certain characteristics of the individuals while – without banning them – are indifferent to other qualities. Since growth is a necessary prerequisite in the capitalist economy, “much” becomes prioritized value compared to “little”. If you have decided to play a specific game certain characteristics become exemplary. It is similarly with the capitalist market economy. It rewards certain human characteristics, and ignores other, which has an impact on the direction of what is produced and thus on what is available for consumption in society. The use value for people is subordinated the exchange value in the economic system. GDP reflects the exchange value, which often not correspond to something positive from a human perspective. For instance, as mistrust is growing in society due to increasing crime, the security industry expanding and become one of the biggest and most profitable industries.

Those who act within the framework of an economic system internalize the norms which the specific economic system’s success criteria offer. It is this fact that underlies the modernization process which the capitalist market economy has brought along and the uniformity of good and evil runs over the capitalist world today. The market economy works as a kind of framework which, once established gives definite structure to the continuing operations by creating a template for the human activity.

Norms are basic components of what we could call systems of action. Through norms our and others’ behavior are synchronized and coordinated and thus forming systems of actions. Norms can be said to be system bound, i.e. formed by the system to which they belong. The political system has its own norms, the economic system like the social system has its norms and the natural, living conditions provided by nature, is subject to its own adherence. Each of these systems has specific conditions and ways of reproducing norms. They play - in varying degrees in form of legislative provisions - a role in the construction and reproduction of society. The construction of society sometimes gives rise to norm conflicts There seems to be a link between inter-system conflicts which are between systems and value conflicts, and between intra-system conflicts within a system and conflicts of interest.

Inter-system conflicts require a value standpoint in relation to incompatible components. This is particularly true when it comes to intersystem conflicts. When one and the same societal activity collide in human practice, conflicts between norms occur. This is the case of wage labor. It is performed by workers and servants of different kind. These can in the wage labor model legitimately from an economic point of view be regarded as commodities which the employer buys to a certain value. At the same time the worker and servant are human beings with their own wishes and needs. This generates social norms which are in contradiction with the economic norms. This structural conflict is what constitutes the conflict between capital and labor in the industrialized societies. The conflict not only shows itself in the labor market. It has also implications for the political system. The modern form of democracy in liberal states is built on the role of balancing the conflict or compensating the workers´ lack of economic power with political ditto. In the short term perspective this gives rise to compromises of different kinds in legislation. In the short term perspective this gives rise to compromises of different kinds in legislation. This is reflected in the whole of the labor law and labor market regulation.

Thus, wage labor plays an important role as a principle for the organization of work. With the principles of the organization of work follow a deep impact on society-building, political groups and economic systems. Wage labor is the socio-economic relationship between a worker and an employer, where the worker sells their labor under a formal or informal employment contract. These transactions usually occur in a labor market where wages are market determined [11]. Sweden was in many ways a pioneering country in the sphere of labor relations in the 1950s and 1960s. “The Swedish model” (which can be defined in a number of ways) did, however, change a lot during the late part of the 20th century´s ideological stalemates and years of economic difficulties [12].

The Scandinavian countries play a key role in the European social harmonization process. Within the social representation at the European level, there is a sort of informal division of labor, with Denmark serving as the point of reference in terms of employment and Sweden as the model for consideration of different retirement systems. European institutions have almost been infatuated with the development of the Scandinavian model. Typical for Swedish labour market until today, in short, is the following:

a) Approximately 80% of the labor force is a member of a union. The employers are highly organized, too. This is a necessary condition for the possibility to regulate through collective agreements.

b) The labor market is relatively homogenous.

c) The right to negotiate is very wide and stipulated through law.

d) Unions with a collective bargaining agreement are privileged.

e) The collective agreement cannot be stretched to apply to all, it is only binding to the agreeing parties and their members (although they do have “normative effect” and are therefore binding to and for employees who are not a member of a trade union).

f) The right to industrial conflict is very wide and strongly centralized. The individual cannot decide by itself to go on strike. That decision is reserved to the organisations.

g) The regulations are similar between the public and the private sector.

h) There are many regulations benefitting the workers and servants, such as the right to employment protection, to vacation 5 weeks each year, to sick benefits, right to parental leave, etc.

i) There is even a right for the trade union representatives to work with trade union activities during paid working hours.

j) There are very few special regulations for smaller companies.

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Anticipated Threats to Social Cohesion

With Habermas we can conclude that whereas primitive societies are integrated via a basic normative consensus, the integration of developed societies comes about via the systemic interconnection of functionally specified domains of action (Habermas 1981: 115). The differentiation of a highly complex market system destroys traditional forms of solidarity without at the same time producing normative orientations capable of securing an organic form of solidarity (Habermas, 1981: 116). In the case of the life-world, the integration of a system is established by a normatively secured or communicatively achieved consensus, in relation to the systems, by a non-normative regulation of individual decisions that extends beyond the actors’ consciousness. This distinction between a social integration of society, which takes effect in action orientations, and a systemic integration, which reaches through and beyond action orientations, calls for a corresponding differentiation in the concept of society itself.

The uncoupling of system integration and social integration means at first only a differentiation between two types of action coordination, one coming about through the consensus of those involved, the other through functional interconnections of action (Habermas, 1981: 186). Social-welfare law and the Welfare state is tailored to domains of action that are first constituted in legal forms of organization and that can be held together only by systemic mechanisms. At the same time, however, socialwelfare law and the welfare state apply to situations embedded in informal lifeworld contexts (Habermas, 1981: 367). With the wage labour model, we can see how the systems de-stabilize and hinder system integration. This creates challenges for the social cohesion of the welfare state. System and life-world come in conflict with each other. However, as long as the systems delivers and provide individuals with material wealth, social cohesion seems to uphold

Technological development as a threat against (welfare) State modelled social cohesion

The conflict between technology and employment reveals the built-in contradiction between wage labor as a form of production and social order. Wage labor rationality of production is that it reduces the need for human labor and thus wage labor will sooner or later to abolish itself as a social order. This conflict cannot simply be solved within the framework of wage labor society [13]. If one accepts the use of technology, wage labor disappears. If you do not accept the use of technology loses wage labor the specific productivity that forms the basis for its existence. Thus, we face a dilemma that wage labor cannot indefinitely survive as a social order without technological development, while at the same time this technological development makes wage labor more and more superfluous.

The development of ICT technology threatens more and more the welfare state model, which has been the foundation for social cohesion in the industrial society. This gives society a limited scope of time. Society is like any other system initiated, expands, becomes stabilized and dies before finally withering away to become replaced by another societal model [14]. This cyclical way of looking at societal development occurs in many disciplines. Some of the most influential work is related to Wallerstein [15], and his theory about World Systems. A strong proponent of this perspective within economic theory is Kondratiev (1892-1938). He spoke about cycles of about 60 years between boom and depression. These business cycles are called Kondratiev waves.

According to Wilenius and Kurki (2012), a new wave is on its way for the years 2010 - 20150, the 6th wave, which the authors call a new wave of 40 years of global change [16]. Within history, the so called Annales School has used similar ideas of recurrent events. Among other things they use the concept of “the history of mentalities.” By mentality, they meant ideas which were not necessarily conscious ones. They are shared within a collective and they change slowly. Perhaps the most prominent member of the Anneles school. Braudel [17], divided historical time into different rhythms (la longue durée). This expression refers to the analysis of trends as a study of continuities and discontinuities where society was regarded as a totality of economic, social and mental patterns1.

It seems as if the world opens up for each, new leap in development, i.e. in the transition from one society system to another, from one wave to the next3. In the transition from the handicraft/agrarian society to the industrial society, the differences between city and countryside were evened out. During the handicraft/agrarian society, the city’s walls determined the frame within which production and purchasing were allowed to take place. After a while, the space became too constricted and via a technological leap, the transformation of primary energy into secondary energy sources, the gulf between city and countryside widened, the city walls were torn down and the flow of trade was set free. In return, the nation State emerged and, thereby, a larger arena for production and trade. We are presently witnessing the latest leap; the nation state weakens through the new information technology, by which boundaries between countries cease being barriers for the peoples´ and companies´ domiciles. The digital technique gives rise to new economic ways which open up the world. Today, this technological leap has made it possible for us to tear down the remaining few walls which hinder humans from interaction across national state boarders.

When the industrial society’s utility curve begins to descend, the prerequisites for politics radically changes. From having been concerned with distribution, the focus will gradually come to rest with crisis management. The politics will acquire the task of trying to conciliate criticisms emerging from people’s negative expectations. Politics will shift from having been distinguished as the art of possibilities to becoming the art of the insufficient. In order to solve an impossible equation, politicians use law to smoothen out social inequalities and calm tensions so that cracks in the market economy – built on the idea of the invisible hand – do not become visible. What happens in this transition?

This is when the legal form of intervention prevails [18]. Intervening legal rules become the hallmark of this phase of the development of society. In this phase legislation on environmental protection, consumer protection, employment protection, work life protection, gender rights, etc. were introduced. The time of dramatic change between an old and overly mature industrial society and the current information society which we are presently experiencing can, for the sake of simplicity, be described as a transition society, what some scholars call a postmodern society4. Within this society, contradictions appear between the old and the new. Tensions arise between people who live with different conceptions of the world depending on where they have mentally localized themselves.

Every system of society describes a type of wave, where the society is born, grows up, matures, only to reach a culmination, die out and finally decompose, leaving only a trace in peoples´ memories. The industrial society reached according to, Castells its culmination in the developed world´s industrial countries, the OECD countries, in the beginning of the 1970s.

Since then, productivity has continued to increase up until recent time in which the financial crisis forebodes a recession, but the benefit of the societal system has subsided long ago. The industrial society can no longer grant us more benefits. It is this circumstance which leads to financial crises and unstable situations in the stock market. There are no sane alternatives. Admittedly, the benefits are unevenly distributed, but the injustice is structurally built and can only be solved if we abandon our present system and find a new way to live, produce and distribute goods and services. This development follows a logic which applies to all systems. They reach a certain potential, at which point they even become counterproductive. Monopolies - state and private – which have grown strong during the large scale phase of industrial society produce negative consumer value today instead of providing us with constantly better products for lower prices. The development for the better which takes place during these circumstances is an effect of the giants, although everything is beginning to be challenged by small and medium sized companies which are driven by the aspiration to find new solutions, whilst the established companies struggle to keep old solutions which give them advantages. Another trend is globalization. Globalization complicates the social cohesion process. Co-responsibility entails that everyone should make a concerted contribution to shaping the society in which we live and to which we aspire. It also involves concepts of justice and social sustainability. That poses problems when economic forces no longer buttress the national political system and tend to weaken the state’s ability successfully to manage inequalities. At the same time, neoliberal globalization invalidates the national area and territorially defined interests. It focuses instead on individuality, as a universal condition, and gives the logics of the market and competition precedence over all others, particularly the logics of solidarity, co-operation and social justice. In these circumstances the question of what is best for Europeans can no longer be posed without considering the general good, which accordingly broadens the concept of welfare and builds a bridge between territorial justice and universal solidarity [19].

The rule of mercantile logic undermines the foundations of social cohesion (or the European social model), destroying one of its essential features – the guarantee of individual and collective rights, for workers and citizens, and fora for consultation and discussion of potential clashes between the logics of competition and citizenship. To ensure that society is capable of guaranteeing the welfare of all its members, social cohesion can, as has been said, adapt and conform to new orders and situations. However, reform of its underlying structures must take account of the historical traditions and principles of citizenship that form the basis of European nations’ cultural identity.

How can the collective capacity to ensure everyone’s wellbeing be reinforced without a balanced forum for dialogue and consultation founded on an essential political principle such as democratic security? Security is necessary to the development and renewal of social cohesion, to give everyone confidence in the future and make people feel they have a role in shaping their own future and that of coming generations. As the high social and societal cost of job insecurity shows, this form of security must be attainable first and foremost in the employment sphere. However, security is not synonymous with rigidity and barriers to job mobility. It is more a matter of social recognition of a right to transition.

In the past 10 years, global trade in goods and services almost doubled—reaching nearly $24 trillion in 2014, up from $13 trillion in 2005. The digital components of these flows have also been increasing. By the end of 2015 the planet will have more than 7 billion mobile subscriptions and more than 3 billion Internet users. Sweden and the rest of the industrialized world are in the forefront for this development.

When we talk about technological development we refer primarily to a transition from mechanics to electronics, from analogue to digital technique, the use of nano-technology for different kinds of inventions, etc. This development is not just a technological development as such it lays as a core technological shift the foundation of a new societal model. This development changes the balance between states and companies.

The London based Campaign group, Global Justice Now, has reported figures showing that 69 of the world’s 100 most powerful economic entities are companies and not countries (News Voice, 2016). Of the world’s 200 top listed economic entities in the world are 153 companies. USA, China, Germany, Japan, France and the UK are the most financially successful, followed by Italy, Brazil and Canada. This situation or trend gives rise to a scary future5. The Neo-liberal political economy has accentuated great benefits for the top 1% of the population with very little trickle down of benefits for the vast majority of citizens in a worldwide perspective. Power elite has never been stronger than today. The top ten most successful companies in the world, which includes Apple, Shell and Walmart, today has a combined profit that is greater than the combined revenues of 180 of the most “poor” countries of the world total of 195 sovereign states. Neo-liberalism stresses an absolutist notion of property and conspires to limit distribution and participation.

It is not only the economic superiority which is a threat for the sovereignty of the states and the ability for the welfare state to operate as a moderator between economy and politics. Technological development is also threat. The ability to collect, process and cross huge amounts of data provides intermediation platforms with a form of power that can challenge states´ sovereign powers in many ways. An intermediation platform is for example a search engine which intermediates between people producing knowledge (web pages) and people seeking knowledge. The most well-known platforms of today are some of the richest private corporations in the World, such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. Other examples include Uber, which offers an Internetbased service (app) for ordering and payment of taxi fares and carpooling trips. Uber was formed in 2009 and 2014, according to the New York Times is valued at SEK 15 billion.

These platforms have access to more data, more skills and more resources than most nation-states and can use them to perform some of the services that were once the prerogative solely for the states. This is particularly striking in probably the most sensitive sovereign domains: defense and security [20]. Intermediation platforms are now powerful political entities and sometimes act like they are political powers that compete with the governments [21]. For example Microsoft is leading a major battle against the US Department of Justice (referens) for access to data stored in Ireland. The intermediation platforms could soon outperform states in providing essential public services, especially in a context of shrinking public budgets.

An illustrative example of how nation-states become subordinated to big corporations is when the European Commission in June 2014 open three in-depth investigations to examine whether decisions by tax authorities in Ireland, The Netherlands and Luxembourg with regard to the corporate income tax to be paid by Apple, Starbucks and Fiat Finance and Trade, respectively, comply with the EU rules on state aid. The European Commission has concluded that Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13 billion to Apple. This is illegal under EU state aid rules, because it allowed Apple to pay substantially less tax than other businesses.

The EU claims that Ireland must now recover the illegal aid by repaying the tax benefits. The role of EU state aid control is to ensure Member States do not give selected companies a better tax treatment than others, via tax rulings or otherwise. More specifically, profits must be allocated between companies in a corporate group, and between different parts of the same company, in a way that reflects economic reality6.

Apple says that the Commission´s case is not about how much Apple pays in taxes, it is about which government collects the money. It will have a profound and harmful effect on investment and job creation in Europe. Today we employ nearly 6,000 people across Ireland, says Apple. The vast majority are still in Cork — including some of the very first employees — now performing a wide variety of functions as part of Apple’s global footprint. Countless multinational companies followed Apple by investing in Cork, and today the local economy is stronger than ever. Both Apple and Ireland will appeal the decision by EU. The outcome will indicate how far the transition has gone in the battle between corporations and nation-states.

Migration as a threat for social Cohesion

It is clear that the European Union recognizes the challenges that it faces in terms of social cohesion (Council of Europe, 2005). It is thus necessary to expand on the issues raised in the report and extending the issues, not least in light of the large migrant inflows into the EU in recent years and the modern technological developments. Social cohesion requires market forces and administrative rules, and trends therein, to be subject to democratic supervision. However, labor flexibility appears to be a response to events beyond national control. The markets are taking on spatial and temporal characteristics different from those of the democratic process, and the administrative authorities struggle to assume their role of guarantor of rights for all (globalization). Even within our modern European societies, social cohesion is still largely defined in relation to the national area that delimits the dual sense of identity – that of the nation and that of the citizen – on which it is based.

National welfare states are by their nature meant to be closed systems [22]. The logic of the welfare state implies the existence of boundaries that distinguish those who are members of a community from those who are not. Yet the welfare state is necessarily at least partially open to its external environment. International trade, the mobility of capital, and especially the migration of labor continuously intrudes on and challenge the endogenous nature of the welfare state. The development of the welfare state may be seen as dialectical between the distributive logic of closure-mutual aid undertaken by members of a community according to socially defined conceptions of need-and the distributive logic of openness-treatment according to one’s performance in the marketplace without regard to membership status or need.

The welfare state requires boundaries because it establishes a principle of distributive justice that departs from the distributive principles of the free market. The principle that-imperfectly governs distribution in the welfare state is that of human need. It does not replace the market principle of distribution according to economic performance, but it significantly alters it by establishing a social minimum and broadening the sphere of collective consumption, while it at the same time supports the necessary circulation of goods in the capitalistic economy and thereby nurtures the market from an economic perspective. The introduction of the Welfare state model is thus not only a question of political charity or distribution policy. It is also built on strong economic incentives.

The welfare state is an inward looking system. This is due in large part to the community sharing social goods on the basis of social ties, bonds values of kinship. The people who decide in the sharing do so based on need. They have to understand feelings of solidarity and closeness that come from collective membership of fellow human communities7. However, the idea of membership suggests that the presence of individual who are non- members are left out of the sharing process. This is what is exploited by the far-right political parties in Europe; Sweden for Swedes and the like. The far-right Finnish party calls itself for the True Finns.

The fundamental political problem in a closed system is determining membership. Being a member implies on is a citizen. The claiming of welfare state benefits thus creates problems for non-members or migrants. Leaving them out of the system is at odds with ideas solidarity and kinship. However, these migrants are not citizens or members of the system. Including them causes friction and separates people into groupings of citizens and noncitizens. Welfare states in order to survive thus encourage an inflow of resources and seek to prevent their outflow. The welfare state is thus an extension of forms of protectionist policies from mercantilist era long gone [23].

These are not the only challenges of the inward looking focus of welfare states. As they are found in a disordered, perilous, and competitive world of limited means, they have to strive to draw resources to come into their borders and fight to prevent their loss. Government-provided social protection measures initially appeared in countries that followed pure mercantilist ideology and policies. The same thinking that was behind trade controls and barriers protectionist tools set up to maintain and grow countries’ wealth push the measures to shield national populations from the disturbances to their living standards driven by global business cycles. With this in mind, the welfare state could be viewed as the application of protectionism by other methods. The welfare State, is thus a closed system. It looks to protect and cater for its own, and its capacity to do that is based on its capacity to build a shelter for its members to block out the outside world. Regrettably, though the welfare state adopts boundedness, and needs it, it is in fact thoroughly connected with the framework of the global sociopolitical and economic system.

The very presence of disparities in benefits amongst member states, inspires migration which in its persistence is a risk to the welfare state. Short term migration is attractive to state policy makers as it reduces the drainage on the nations’ budget. The major partners of the state in altering a laissez-faire immigration strategy into a temporary-worker system are local workers. In the absence of legal hindrances on continued residence after losing their employment, migrants would have strong reasons to stay in the country even if they do not have jobs.

In a strict temporary-worker system, jobless benefits are not a problem. Migrants who are retrenched will not have their work permits renewed at expiry. They will have large motives look for other jobs instead of claiming unemployment benefits. In addition, these workers who have challenges getting jobs would simply return to their home countries as they would be out of work. The challenge with the temporary-worker system from the perspective of host country is that it is inclined to break down. Potential migrants dodge its regulatory methods and look for employers who are prepared to help them.

Jobless migrants decide to stay in the expectation of finding work in future or to enjoy the services granted to the unemployed. Some migrants get proper paperwork and become citizens while others stay continually without legal papers. As this short term migration changes long-term stays, the longing to be rejoined with one’s family becomes too much. Family immigration reduces the differences between migrants and citizens, and tends to remove the fiscal bonuses that short-term migration brings [23].

Borjas (1999) contends that welfare could impact immigration via a few channels. Firstly, nations with more substantial welfare benefits could draw immigrants who otherwise would have not have been attracted. Secondly, the presence of social security benefits may keep immigrants who would have otherwise gone back to their country of origin. Thus the price of selecting one state over another is minimal. This suggests that immigrants who get welfare benefits are likely to choose, and consequently be grouped in states which provide the greatest social benefits.

National welfare states are inherently inward looking by design. The reasoning behind the welfare state requires that restrictions be placed on those who are not members of the community. In the 21st century, it is impossible to exist outside of the globalized environment and all of the interconnectedness this implies. Thus while the welfare state may be a closed system, it cannot avoid trade ties and movement of capital and labour Boundaries are necessary for the welfare states’ existence and they distribution is determined by human need. This however does not supersede the market economy principle of distribution on the basis of economic performance.

In order for the welfare state to operate optimally, it requires community bonds and kinship ties and the sharing of social goods. Sharing implies an implicit agreement to develop some sort of communal bonds in the areas where individuals reside and socialize. This is what is exploited by the far-right political parties in Europe; Sweden for Swedes and the like. The far-right Finnish party calls itself for the True Finns. The fundamental political problem in a closed system is determining membership. Being a member implies on is a citizen. The claiming of welfare state benefits thus creates problems for non-members or migrants. Leaving them out of the system is at odds with ideas solidarity and kinship. However, these migrants are not citizens or members of the system.

Welfare states, in order to survive thus encourage an inflow of resources and seek to prevent their outflow. The welfare state is thus an extension of forms of protectionist policies from mercantilist era long gone [23]. Studies of migration seem to primarily focus on the effect of migration on the home countries. In relation to receiving countries less are known. Political consequences are however obvious. Migration is a feature of social and economic life across many countries, but the profile of migrant populations varies considerably. In part this is because of the variety of sources of migration. In much of Europe, for example, citizens enjoy extensive rights to free movement. In Australia, Canada and New Zealand, managed labor migration plays an important role. Other sources include family and humanitarian migration. Whatever its source, migration has important impacts on our societies, and these can be controversial. The economic impact of migration is no exception.

Germany held regional elections in three states in 2016 and for political analysts, the major talking point was the success of the far-right, anti-immigration party the Alternative for Germany, known as the AfD. The results have been interpreted as a rebuke of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pro-refugee stance, which has seen over one million migrants enter Germany in a year´s time. Merkel’s Christian Democrat party lost in two of the three states where the elections were held. The AfD made significant gains in all three states, particularly in Saxony-Anhalt where it finished second with 24% of the vote. But Germany is not alone. Far-right parties have made significant gains in state and regional elections in Europe since January 2015. The situation is the same for the Scandinavian countries.

From liberal Scandinavia to the southern reaches of the continent in Greece and Italy, far-right parties by their own standards are showing sizeable growth in multiple nations (Business Insider, UK, March 2016). In Denmark, long-standing establishment parties are being squeezed by the emergence of a populist movement fronted by the Danish People’s Party (DPP). In the 2015 general election, the party recorded 21% of the vote to become Denmark’s second-largest party. It was the DDP’s best performance in its history.

If we take a look at Poland, the hard-right Law and Justice party became the first party to govern alone since the restoration of democracy when it swept to a resounding victory in October’s parliamentary elections. The party has since implemented a law allowing it to seize control of the state media broadcasters as well as senior civil service directors. Then there’s Slovakia, where in March’s election 23% of first-time voters backed the neo-Nazi People’s Party Our Slovakia party (L’SNS). For a long time, the prefix “far” denoted distance between parties aggressively-opposed to immigration and the corridors of power. Now, those gaps are being bridged and in a growing number of states right-wing parties are realistic parties of office. Why is this happening? Public mood across Europe is disgruntled right now and there are conditions for populist groups to attract levels of support that years ago they could only dream of. The mass movement of people from the wartorn Middle East into Europe and the greatest refugee crisis since the Second World War has become the single-most dominant political issue across the continent. Traditional parties from the left and right are facing great challenges. Increasing numbers of people are sick of them and trust in politicians in many states is low. It is within this climate of anger and disenchantment that farright parties have been able to grow. This has also been manifested in the Brexit outcome in UK and the Donald Trump election as US president.

So even if migrants according to a report from OECD Migration Policy Debates, May 2014, contribute significantly to labor-market flexibility, notably in Europe, they give rise to political instability. Migrants accounted for 47% of the increase in the workforce in the United States and 70% in Europe over the past ten years and migrants can be said to fill important niches both in fast-growing and declining sectors of the economy. But still, immigration is not regarded as desirable. It does not help that according to the same source, migrants contribute more in taxes and social contributions than they receive in benefits and migrants arrive with skills and contribute to human capital development of receiving countries. Migrants also contribute to technological progress. Still there is a huge resistance against migration among ordinary people.

These circumstances lead to a threat for social cohesion. It has been met with different strategies from the state and the political system [24]. These strategies will probably not prevent immigrants from making claims to move to Europe in the belief that the Welfare state will stay forever. This becomes a vicious circle, the more immigration, the more the Welfare state will have problem to fulfil its function as a guarantee for individuals´ wellbeing. We have already seen a gradually cut in welfare and social rights all over Europe [25,26].

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Anticipation of Given Trends

It is impossible to avoid the consequences of understanding the society without generating concerns for the anticipated future of those social phenomena (Nagan 2016). Indeed, in order to anticipate a projected public and legal order encounters the prospect that description and analysis without a concern for contingent futures misses the point of understanding society and it´s anticipated future. Every form of society is holds the view that it will last forever. The historical process of change is recognized in principle in the past, but not for the future, not so far as concerns its own form of society. The established structures of a particular form of society cannot think of change as anything other than an extension of themselves. The established structures of our form of society are all, in one way or another linked to wage labor. This applies to the state and organizations as well as the leading sciences [13]. Thus, in the dominant perspective the welfare state will be forever. However, if we prolong the anticipated consequences of the contradictions within the welfare state we have brought forward, technological development and immigration, we can anticipate a disruption.

Anticipation is a widespread phenomenon present in and characterizing all types of systems, forcing a re-evaluation of the very idea of science [27]. The present interplay between science and institutions is becoming a major impediment to a further development of science [27]. The traditional, bureaucratic structure adopted by organizations and institutions (e.g. governments) derives from an understanding of systems that precedes the discovery of both complexity and anticipation. Anticipation is not the same as prediction. It is something more complex and sophisticated. Traditional structures work as if problems could be addressed individually and in a piecemeal way, with outputs systematically proportionate to relevant inputs, and without any thorough exploration of possible futures8. The discipline of anticipation is in its early stages of development. In this regard, it is not different from any other discipline (or science for that matter).

The discipline of anticipation is – as we understand it - built on two prerequisites, prolongation of trends in society and pattern recognition. The fruitfulness of the method relates to the relevance of the identified tendencies in society. We have argued for technological development in terms of a shift from analogue to digital, from mechanics to electronics, as being one fundamental trend in contemporary society worthwhile to analyze in the perspective of long-term trends. The other trend has to do with migration, which has turned out to be a growing phenomenon in our time. When it comes to pattern recognition, we have been able to connect the technological development to a trend of an emerging new society, which is built on other preconditions than the industrial society and the nation-state. How this new society will look like is too early to say, even with the theory of anticipation. Prolongation of tendencies helps us only to identify pathological tendencies. A new society will in the cyclical development of society, show itself as a reaction on the old one and can therefore currently only be subject to a contra-factual discussion [28].

In the perspective of social cohesion, the welfare state model is as we have seen threatened in two ways. One has to do with technological development as such. That is when the new digital technique creates business models which do not fit into the classical mode of the industrial system of production characterized by large scale industries composed by blue color workers and white color servants organized in trade unions. These have played an important role both within workplaces and as a political force by being connected to the Social Democratic Party.

The decrease of wage labor work in relation to the technological development has had its effect on the labor unions [29]. That part of the welfare state which has to do with the labor law system and trade unions are more and more challenged. There is an increasing misfit between an old regulation model belonging to the industrial mode of production and a new model which is more individualized and flexible. The technological development is also a sign of development from one societal model to another, from the industrial model to an ICT based model. This gives rise to the other threat against the welfare state model.

For the purpose of this article we confine ourselves in relation to anticipation, to the basic function to extrapolate relevant tendencies in society. Even if one cannot predict what will happen in the future, we can extrapolate from what we know about today’s society to get a rough picture. If the tendencies belong to contradictory systems within inter-system conflicts, there is reason to believe that the extrapolating will anticipate a crash of the system in case. Thus, both the technological development and the migration flow exhibit dilemmas in the long term perspective, i.e. a situation requiring a choice between equally impossible alternatives. Wage labor cannot indefinitely survive as a social order without technological development, while at the same time this technological development makes wage labor more and more superfluous. In relation to migration, the state is faced with the dilemma of either keeping migration beyond own borders or opening the borders completely and then seek alternative solutions for the support of individuals’ wellbeing. Every compromise in between will not be sustainable [30-36].

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Policies Concerning Urban Safety and Urbanization in Istanbul-Juniper Publishers

Introduction

Latterly Istanbul has been changing and ‘developing’ via transformative processes which are still continuing and show no sign of ending. Spatial separation in Istanbul has nurtured social, economic and political inequalities via the city’s vertical segregation approach in which the elite live and work in exclusive office towers, housing blocks and shopping malls that are being constructed at an alarming rate. Istanbul presents a vivid and visually stunning example of how the rich lift themselves above the rest. This article argues that vertical segregation is yet one more strategy employed by elites to force the abandonment of public space.

The emergence of a new pattern of spatial segregation is justified by two developments. The first one is fear of earthquakes, with the second one arising from urban insecurity in Istanbul. This pattern of urban governance diverges significantly from Istanbul’s historical experience, and rests upon new urban developments that have explicitly favoured the urban elites, both directly and indirectly. These raise critical questions about the nature of relations between social groups within the city.

Istanbul’s global financial market share continues to grow to the point where it has become addictive, hence great swathes of the city are being rebuilt in the name of urbanization, rebuilding which is often justified on the grounds of ‘fear of earthquakes’ or ‘security fears’ thus circumventing normal democratic process. Even if the economy is not the main force in this redevelopment, its effect has been to erase much of Istanbul’s history, geography, culture and urban social relationships. Urbanization policies have been enacted without sufficient consultation with local residents; hence the state-citizen relationship must be re-shaped, with the state justifying its sovereignty. The current very one-sided power relationship has the effect of objectifying citizens. In a totally legal fashion, low income groups are being forced out of city centers into urban margins, leaving the centers free for exploitation by the city’s elite. Urbanization policies which have been implemented have not lived up to expectations, indeed, they could be said to have turned back the clock.

Mostly using qualitative data collection techniques and reviews, the literature on the issue of land occupation, migration, crime, urban area, regeneration and the relationship between urban space and crime in Istanbul is very extensive [1-5].

Urban regeneration is instrumentalized in the process of the poor, earthquake risks building stock and improving the conditions of disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Istanbul. The role of hegemonic state institutions in the realization of urban regeneration projects and centralisation of policy making power has been increasing [6]. Resulting in a growing pressure on squatter housing areas and the historic urban centres populated by the urban poor, there has been an increase in the importance of urban areas that have high rent-gaining potential [7-9]. Examining the relations between new economic policy, new urban policy and urban development projects, Sakızoğlu [10] argues that urban renewal plans shaped by the municipality do not include any social mechanisms, measures and programs to prevent the displacement of the low income groups.

These studies contribute to a great extent in our understanding of urban polices in Istanbul. However, the relationship between urban safety and urbanization in Istanbul has not yet been clarified sufficiently. This is because the theoretical designs of these studies are mostly the result of the influence of subjective perceptions of the permanent and transient environment, which may vary in its connection to objective reality. Other criticisms could be attributed to the fact that most studies are qualitative; and they do not give broad vision about crime, disorder, victimization and sense of security in Istanbul as a whole. Relying only on the official perspectives and figure must also be criticised. Because central and local authorities aim is to distract the reality of crime and disorder in order to create land values in Istanbul. In the official perspective, street crime is seen as an outgrowth of neighbourhood conditions. Some of these conditions are demographic, such as low levels of income, home ownership and residential stability.

The studies cited above mainly refer to official crime records and therefore their analysis and testing theories are limited and based on only official figures. Because of reporting and recording failures, official figures mislead the real extend of crime and disorder and lack of sense of security. All crimes committed are not recorded for different reasons and they are called “dark figure”. Dark figure of crime is excluded in these studies and they fail to question the problems behind the official perspectives on crime and security issues in Istanbul. Mystifying street crime and underemphasizing white colour crime and corruption; official crime figures are also criticized on the grounds that they do not represent the reality. It may be questioned that relying on only official figures moves urban regeneration studies from reality to imaginary.

A final criticism in these studies lies in overgeneralization. Istanbul has unique neighbourhood environments in terms of crime, disorder, sense of security, community attachment and sense of belonging. Each area has specific problems in term of crime and disorder. For example, in Beyoğlu or other districts there are some areas where people from all social strata could share the same geographical environment. In these areas, sociospatial division is not as sharp as most studies above propose, and they fail to emphasis this important social reality in Istanbul.

How can we analyse the growth of new urban policies and strategies for urban transformation in the 2000s in Istanbul? What are the main elements of the urban transformation agenda and what are the political, social and economic motivations behind the change in urban policy approach in relation to urban transformation in the 2000s? What are the perspectives, significance and legitimizations linked by the local authorities to the issues of crime prevention and liability, which are among the main objectives of the urban renewal programs?

In order to discuss the above questions, this study will ground “defensible space” theory. The literature on spatial and architectural influences on crime has concentrated primarily on larger design aspects essentially building and street layout. Jacobs [11] first proposed the idea that urban planning could help renew community street life and thereby lower street crime. Many different kinds of physical marks and environmental measures have been linked to crime and deterrence [12]. Newman [12] expanded “defensible space” theory by suggesting that certain designs features, like barricades to block access and split public space into manageable zones, would strengthen a greater protection interest in the community. This, consequently, would lower crime and fear.

Defensible space is a system by which crime can be prevented by developing the opportunities for locals to control and defend their territory against crime, while together eradicating environmental aspects that bring criminals. Newman’s theoretical framework suggests that defensible space is stimulated over three critical factors -territoriality, natural surveillance and image/ milieu – all of which really heavily on environmental arrangement in order to function effectively as crime prevention tools. The concept accommodates elements of a theory of crime as well as a set urban design principles. Newman states that defensible space is a model that can inhibit crime in residential environment. These environments might be specific building, projects or entire neighbourhood.

This article considers urbanization policies and practices in Istanbul, utilizing data gathered within the ‘Istanbul Urban Safety Project’ [13]. Work on the project included the identification of a range of models from the west in terms of urbanization policy and practice, which would seem to be different from those employed in Istanbul. The latter is apparently based on addressing issues concerning the fabric of deprived areas of Istanbul and regions where there is a high risk of earthquake, together with security fears. However, once administrative and political impacts are factored in, it would seem any aim of benefiting the whole community from urbanization turns into servicing the financial demands of an identifiable elite found in the highest echelons of society. Furthermore, another important problem is that community involvement in any urbanization development proposal is undervalued or overlooked completely; as if urbanization is a process which purely involves the physical refurbishment of buildings. It is actually a process which can tear apart the social fabric and social relationships; a rent that may result in the appearance of new socio-economic and socio-cultural problems.

This article evaluates relationships between views on security at neighbourhood level and across Istanbul in general, based on responses to the survey questionnaire. At both levels, a relationship was determined between the ability of buildings to withstand earthquakes together with standards of cleanliness in the neighbourhood, and the presence of derelict property, street children and glue sniffers. Another important result showed the relationship between criminalization, together with the mystification of crime, and views on security. The effect of policies on criminalization and the mystification of crime were shown to be higher in the household survey than in its workplace equivalent.

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Method

Data presented in this article was collected by the International Strategic Research Organization as part of the four year, 2008 - 2012, Istanbul Urban Safety Project. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used in the study. Quantitative methods included a large questionnaire survey administered to two samples: households and workplaces; together with analysis of secondary data. The qualitative dimension comprised semi-structured, openended interviews with a number of senior officials involved in urban safety in Istanbul. Almost 100 such interviews were carried out with Istanbul MPs, neighbourhood leaders, representatives of the Governor’s office, senior personnel in Istanbul’s citywide and district education authorities, officials from the police and judiciary, academics from Istanbul-based universities, heads of primary and secondary schools, local residents and representatives of the chambers of commerce and manufacture. This stage was seen as the establishment of relationships between a wide range of stakeholders in urban safety in Istanbul, together with the facilitation of dialogue and coordination between public and private organizations.

With regard to the questionnaire survey, the samples were prepared using baseline data from the Turkish Statistical Institute and it was planned to apply multi-level, stratified group techniques. However, it transpired that this would necessitate extremely large samples, the administration and management of which would have been beyond the scope of the project, hence the decision was taken to utilize probability sampling. Random sampling was deemed inappropriate for a city the size of Istanbul in which each district and neighbourhood may contain a wide range of social and physical conditions. In the event, baseline data led to a representative sample of 3140 households and 2000 workplaces.

Much time was devoted to questionnaire design prior to a pilot. Each question was subjected to repeated, detailed examination in the context of dependent, independent and control variables. The questionnaire was piloted in the following European districts of Istanbul: Bakırköy, Sarıyer, Beşiktaş; and on the Asian side of the city in Üsküdar, Ümraniye and Kadıköy. The piloting involved 200 questionnaires administered to 100 households and 100 workplaces. Following the pilot, 3140 questionnaires were distributed to households of which 2231 (71.1%) were returned fully completed. The response rate for the 2000 workplace questionnaires was even higher with 1811 (80.6%) being returned fully completed. Questionnaire data was analysed with SPSS software.

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Result

On urban security, physical and social disorder, views from questionnaire responses reveal significant results. The household survey asked a question about the perceived effectiveness of local planning regulations in the context of security. Respondents were given a choice of responses and answered as follows: ‘very effective’ was chosen by 14.1%; ‘effective’ by 39.8%; ‘ineffective’ by 40.7%; ‘very ineffective’ by 5.4%. Another question on the issue of derelict property in the neighbourhood produced the responses: ‘a very serious problem’ chosen by 22%; ‘a serious problem’ by 39.6%; ‘not a problem’ by 29.1%; ‘not a serious problem’ by 9.3%.

Respondents to the questionnaire were also asked to rate the severity of certain problems in the neighbourhoods in which they lived. These problems included the issue of street children which was seen to be ‘a very serious problem’ by 19.0%; ‘a serious problem’ by 50.0%; ‘not a problem’ by 24.6%; ‘not a serious problem’ by 6.4%. Crime in the area in which they resided was perceived as ‘a very serious problem’ by 18.3%; ‘a serious problem’ by 49.6%; ‘not a problem’ by 25.4%; ‘not a serious problem’ by 6.7%. However, in response to the question ‘What do you think about the problem of crime in Istanbul in general?’ it was seen to be ‘a very serious problem’ by 65.1%; ‘a serious problem’ by 32.9%; ‘not a problem’ by 1.8%; ‘not a serious problem’ by 0.2%. As can be clearly seen from these results, crime was seen to be less of a problem at neighbourhood level than across the city as a whole. This difference could arise from policies on criminalization and the mystification of crime.

Another question was designed to measure the extent to which respondents felt safe in their own neighbourhoods. Answers were: ‘I never feel safe’ chosen by 2.3%; ‘I sometimes feel safe’ by 27.7%; ‘I feel safe’ by 63.6%; ‘I feel very safe’ by 6.5%. It should be borne in mind that such high levels of safety may well indicate that buildings in the neighbourhood concerned are in good physical condition and that strong social relationships are in existence.

19.4% of respondents thought the biggest security problem for Istanbul as a whole was terrorist incidents, closely followed by 17.8% who chose public order as being most important. Close behind that group were the 17.3% for whom the most serious problem was glue sniffers and street children. Other problems chosen were: traffic by 11.9%; migration by 11.5%; mafia and gunfights by 10.8%; community incidents by 10%. At neighbourhood level it would seem the difference between perceptions of terrorism and those of glue sniffers and street children can be reduced to a mere 2%.

For the householders, top of the list of issues which caused them anxiety was security. Results showed 28.9% chose this option. This was followed by the 25.1% who cited earthquake fear as their biggest worry.

Workplace respondents to the questionnaire produced similar results to the householders in answer to the question ‘What do you think about the level of crime in Istanbul in general?’ Choices from given responses were as follows: ‘it is a very serious problem’ was chosen by 62.5%; ‘it is a serious problem’ by 32.6%; ‘not a problem’ by 4.5%; ‘not a serious problem’ by 0.4%.

Workplace respondents chose public order (20.7%) as the largest security problem in Istanbul. This was followed by 17.6% who chose traffic as the biggest problem and then terrorism chosen by 17.5%; migration by 15.4%; mafia and gunfights by 11.9%; glue sniffers and street children by 10.1%; community incidents by 5.8%. As can be seen, there are differences between these results and those produced by the same question in the survey of households. The latter gave terrorism, public order and glue sniffers and street children as the top three security issues in that order; whereas the workplace respondents opted for public order, traffic and terrorism. It is also noticeable that the workplace respondents viewed the issue of glue sniffers and street children as less serious than did their household counterparts. In response to what workplace participants saw, from their own experience, as the biggest problems in the area in which they lived: 40.8% chose security, followed by 26.6% with fear of earthquakes.

Workplace respondents were also asked to comment on the problem of street vendors and responded as follows: ‘a very serious problem’ chosen by 13.5%; ‘a serious problem’ by 39.3%; ‘not a problem’ by 40.4%; ‘not a serious problem’ by 6.8%. In response to a similar enquiry regarding beggars: ‘a very serious problem’ was chosen by 19.3%; ‘a serious problem’ by 40.6%; ‘not a problem’ by 43.5%; ‘not a serious problem’ by 6.6%.

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Discussion

In terms of urbanization and urban security in Istanbul, according to the results of qualitative research in this study, people actually resident in Istanbul with its convenient lifestyle and environmental conditions, do not themselves feel safe, which would seem to be a huge issue for the police alone to handle. Rapid urbanization combined with a wide range of social problems, together with actually living amongst neglected, vacant or abandoned buildings, are all factors contributing to the negativity of views on security. Furthermore, weaknesses in street lighting, police presence and city planning can be seen to have had an impact on the community’s rising anxiety over security.

There is a need for approaches which include gathering the views of individuals and the community on what they see as threats to the physical and structural environment, classifying the data thus gathered, carrying out risk analysis and designing on the basis of all this, with security always in mind. As Newman [12] proposed, it should be noted that environmental design has been used as a successful preventative measure in many cities around the world, a concept which needs debate as to its application in Istanbul.

The community dimension plays an important role in urban security. Social and spatial segregation is an important characteristic of cities. Urban planning regulations must take into account social differences and structural differentiations. These regulations, whilst initially drafted by the authorities, must be presented to community groups and will show what form of relationship exists between the two sides [14]. Urban planning must be carried out in accordance with recognized physical and social characteristics, and urban social groupings should also be given consideration.

Urbanization should be defined as finding sustainable solution’s to a city’s economic, physical, social and environmental issues along with resolving problems peculiar to that city, the whole to be achieved in a context of integrated vision and action [15].

In the fieldwork, experts emphasized the importance of reducing the fear of earthquakes, and stressed that this could only be achieved when that fear was publicly acknowledged to exist. They also discussed the fact that TOKI’s (Toplu Konut Idaresi) urban change programs are more often sited on publicly owned land rather than land which has housed shanty towns. However, in terms of earthquake risk, even private individuals building with permission on their own land cannot remove that risk entirely. The experts pointed out that urbanization has not been confined to private land, it has also taken place on the sites of former shanty towns, and there has even been significant construction on sites deemed at serious risk of earthquake.

A multi-dimensional approach to urbanization is essential. During field work for this study, we encountered the full gamut of views on which elements comprise urban change, including large numbers who mentioned the need for better architectural standards; for all work involving residents to be based on good, sound data; for better, higher quality education; that there be more and better opportunities for economic activity; that feelings of alienation be removed; public services become more effective; the crime rate drops. As can be seen from the aforementioned strategies, there are some positive aspects to safety in the context of urbanization. However, large socio-economic change such as wanting to return to a ‘pure environment’, or reduce crime and fear of crime, would just seem to lead to an increase in security problems. In regions where regeneration projects have been carried out, they have stated their aims to include: improved architectural standards; evaluation of population in the area; development leading to identification of weak points; provision of appropriate leisure facilities and social activities for local residents; creation of effective communication systems; addressing weaknesses in public services such as schools and hospitals; an increase in all forms of productivity.

Despite the fact that Turkey’s shanty towns could be seen as high risk areas, if only in terms of physical structural safety, it has to be said that they are not the cause of any major anxiety. Within this study, meetings were held with academics that had carried out field work in shanty towns in the 1990s, without exception they painted a picture of neighbourhoods in which security had a strictly limited importance. One important result of our research is that public authorities and the academic community must accept that Turkey’s shanty towns are very different to their equivalent ghettoes in the west, and this difference should be considered as part of any regeneration process.

As it was explained above ‘defensible space’ proposes that people need to feel a sense of ownership towards the space they occupy, and this can be nurtured through practical awareness raising [12]. Interestingly, residents in shanty towns display exactly this sense of ownership. It should be borne in mind that work has shown the necessity for consideration of regional characteristics and the ability to see things from the perspective of local residents. Despite the presence of so many risk factors, security problems did not emanate from the shanty towns, whereas overlooking social, cultural and economic issues inherent in any urban change project will lead to serious security problems. Academics with whom we met during the fieldwork emphasized the fact that moving people from a rundown district to a better area is hardly ever part of the solution to the problem. All urban change projects in general, and those involving rehousing in particular, must not just focus on physical refurbishment but must also aim to improve social, economic, demographic and cultural structures at the same time.

People living in a city should not feel themselves far removed from its life and culture, simply using the city as a place to live. One of the most important and necessary processes within social integration is that of city-dwellers finding common ground in shared values, opinions and activities. At the same time, it has to be agreed that relationships even with like-minded people, and certainly with extended family members and neighbours, can wax and wane and this has also to be accommodated within the fabric of any district. Indeed, for an individual to spend his/her entire life surrounded by like-minded people may not be such a good idea.

Data gathered from our field work showed that cities with an understanding of compatriotism do not undervalue its importance in the context of both social control and mutual support; it may also be an indicator of other issues. Academics who have an interest in this subject, all stated that whilst shanty towns may seem places of high risk with poor structural standards, it is clear that such areas are actually low risk in terms of security due to the strong sense of mutual support and other forms of social control. However, there can be negative aspects to basing your entire social life in the city on relationships with compatriots; city dwellers must identify with the city in which they live. For this change to take place requires highly detailed research followed by the implementation of appropriate strategies. Experts in the field believe this issue has not been treated seriously and will lead to significant increases in the crime rate over the years ahead. There has also been work to show that crime rates rise significantly in areas in which people are temporarily rehoused, whilst awaiting demolition and rebuild of their original homes.

Academics who have carried out research on this subject have stated that not enough attention is paid to the aftermath of an urban change initiative, when it could take up to ten years for people rehoused to establish relationships in their neighbourhood. People who move to a new neighbourhood within an urban change project leave behind the neighbours they may have known for years, and find themselves living in an apartment building surrounded by strangers with whom they must work out a way to live in harmony. Close links with neighbours which have lasted for years are all too often overlooked within urban change projects, and there are also inherent threats to be considered when people suddenly find themselves living in totally unfamiliar surroundings. Indeed, this situation is one of the sources of many problems within city life, a list headed by crime.

In terms of the effect of the physical fabric on security, experts involved in this study emphasised the fact that the physical condition of buildings has an effect on security and security fears, and they propose that urban change projects should pay greater attention to environmental design for security, and should involve people throughout the neighbourhood in design development. They also stressed the importance of design which gave opportunities for people to see and get to know one another. It would seem clear that individuals living in the same huge apartment buildings, where other residents remain strangers, feel themselves and their families to be unsafe. Furthermore, experts also mention the fact that in such circumstances people knowing each other is one element in crime prevention. Regeneration projects have been carried out which have resulted in apartment complexes with 300-400 people in each building, a total of 2000 or more in one complex, all forced to share many aspects of their lives. It should be borne in mind that such projects result in innate risks far higher than those present in shanty towns, where there are usually strong neighbour relationships.

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Conclusion

This study greatly expands what is known about urbanization, urban regeneration, crime and urban policies in Istanbul. One of the significant of this study is that “household” and “work place” surveys were carried out separately in order to see the differences between responses from these different two categories. In terms of crime concern and sense of security, studies have not yet been clarified the differences between respondents from households and workplaces. Employing qualitative and quantitative methods, this study examines resident perceptions of territorial functioning and physical incivilities.

This study presents a more comprehensive and integrated framework for understanding specific features in urban security, physical and social disorder and urbanization. Thus, the theoretical framework is organized around two dimensions: 1-Neigbourhood level; 2. Istanbul as a whole. This classification shows the effects of the policies on criminalization and the mystification of crime, and it was found that crime was seen to be less of a problem at neighbourhood level than across Istanbul as a whole. Showing the difference between real problems and imaginary concerns about crime in Istanbul, this is one of the significant results of this study. This study is unique among others carried out in Istanbul and contributes to the existing literature by offering a new sociological perspective.

With a population of 15 million, Istanbul, Turkey’s economic, cultural, and historical heart and its largest city experienced a dramatic economic, socio-political restructuring in the post- 1980’s with the neoliberal policies put in effect. The prospect of maximizing land prices and rentals became a considerable element reshaping the attitude of municipalities, construction firms and development agencies [16]. A Highly irregular, piecemeal, and speculative transformation of Istanbul has resulted in heightened social-spatial differentiations and fragmentation resulting from the changing economic, demographic and employment structures in the city. In the absence of the strategic plans and programs; the marked dynamics, ad hoc solutions of different actors, urban coalitions, informalities, political balances between different government layers have been shaping urban policies (Turel et al. 2006) [10]. Investing on urban land is regarded more beneficial than investing on industrial production and urban renewal proposals are justified mainly by fear of crime, disorder and crime prevention. Turkun [8] points out that people living in squatter housing areas were regarded “invaders”. These areas were said to be the main cause of rising urban crime and political extremism. A new political elite consensus proposes that the immigrant squatter areas as well as the older ex-industrial areas inhabited by the urban poor urgently needed re-development. As a result, centralised urban policies and practices pave the way for excluding certain groups, mobilising the deprived groups and also putting pressure on the intellectuals and people with alternative political views. The criticisms of these parties are also regarded as oppositions to the overall project of economic development and as threats to their political power [17].

Contemporary urban governance is more than “the growing power of capital and the increasing inadequacy of liberaldemocratic political structures as a means to check that power” (Purcell 2002) [17]. The state is the main actor, shaping the whole operation, trying to find ways to contain resistance or mobilisations against its urban agenda, using the urban property market as a machine for growth [17].

We have witnessed Istanbul, at the hands of the government, being reshaped and reorganized, with social values that have evolved over many years being removed and replaced with a new order. A whole new system of capital and production labour has been established. Whether the pretext is fear of earthquakes, criminalization or the need to deal with areas of deprivation, it would seem to lead to two basic conclusions. Firstly, urbanization policies are not matters for debate, being purely designed to ensure high rates of income; secondly, whole new templates for authority-order have been constructed (Tan 2013; İngin & İslam 2013) [18-20].

It would seem that the administration in Istanbul classifies residential areas as ‘at risk’ without apparent consultation, and thus opens them up for regeneration and the attendant financial speculation. Financial gain from such urban change does not accrue to the residents, but rather to those who could be said to be already economically advantaged. Indeed, urban change programs are not carried out for the benefit of residents of the area concerned, instead the construction of luxury apartments, business districts, offices, hotels and shopping malls only benefits the already wealthy capital investors. The majority of urbanization projects force residents into a kind of limbo, in which they transfer their property ownership to capital investors cheaply and then have to move away. Istanbul heads the list of places in Turkey where decision makers claim to be working to create safer, more sustainable places to live, and where identifying exactly who is benefitting financially is practically impossible. It would seem that urbanization is trying to solve all the economic, social and environmental problems inherent in sustainable urban living at the same time and by pitting one against another [21].

The discussions above show that there is a relationship between city planning and political power [22]. According to Lefebvre the government and other powerful elites bring themselves into existence through space. To be able to attain and continue to hold sovereign powers the government, or leading elites, continually intervene spatially. To ensure the continuity of existing capitalist relationships of exploitation and domination, it is imperative that planning results in people of different classes and different ethnic identities becoming alienated from one another. Peoples’ everyday experiences take place in a given space and when people are forced apart, they differentiate and become strangers to each other [22].

In Istanbul the government has implemented policies leading to decomposition and differentiation. In terms of urban decomposition, consider gated communities and shanty towns. Today this could not only be seen as spatial segregation, but could also qualify as a government management technique. When people find themselves experiencing or witnessing armed conflict in shared spaces, and capitalist exploitative relationships can continue, there must be planning. In Istanbul spatial segregation would seem to be very deep-rooted and there is a need to increase the number of shared spaces in which people of different social classes, ethnic and gender identities can meet and interact [23- 30].

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Terror and Terrorism in Haruki Murakami’s IQ84: A Critical Analysis-Juniper Publishers

Theory

Terror and Terrorism1

Footnotes

11This part of the essay has been published in a journal in India in 2017.

This section will discuss terror and terrorism. Terror has been defined as,

This section will discuss terror and terrorism. Terror has been defined as,

a. a state of intense fear.

b. one that inspires fear: SCOURGE.

i. a frightening aspect .

ii. a cause of anxiety: WORRY.

iii. an appalling person or thing; especially: BRAT.

c. Reign of terror.

d. violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands [1].

The definition of terror that can be seen above aligns it to fear and violence. Many discourses be they academic or otherwise relate terror to terrorism. Thus, in order to understand terror, we must understand terrorism because they are intertwined.

According to Muhammad Kamal,

For some time now, many scholars have been engaged with understanding and defining terrorism. This engagement is reflected in the considerable amount of literature produced by them on this topic. Although this body of literature discloses important aspects of terrorism, none of it discusses directly the ‘essence’ of terrorism. The definitions provided are based on the writers’ political discourse rather than their philosophical apprehension of terrorism. They think of terrorism as an act of threatening to destroy an intended target for a political end ([2]: p. 1).

He goes on to describe and present the ideas of those scholars and also the Marxist definition of terrorism and in the end of his definition of terrorism he states that the term was first used to “describe the radical and violent political attitude of the Jacobins during the French revolution and its aftermath” ([2]: p. 2). Kamal argues that terrorism is not a post-modern political fact. However, since 9/11 the world has tried to understand and know what terrorism means. The stress has been on the cultural production of the act. The cultural production becomes the pivotal point of discourse on terrorism by some individuals ([2]: p. 3).

Sudha Setty [3] states that the United Nations has tried to define terrorism since the 1960’s. However not all nations in the world agree with the definition provided by the United Nations. This is due to the fact that there are freedom struggles, acts against colonialism carried out by natives that have been subjugated. These acts cannot be labeled as terrorist acts because they are a feat that are carried out in the name of freedom and equality.

Alan B Krueger [4] states that although many people blame terrorism on lack of education and poverty there is not enough concrete proof to determine this ([4]: p. 2). Krueger argues that, most terrorists are not motivated by their own material gain. How could one account for an excess of volunteers or suicide missions if that were the case? Instead terrorists are motivated by political goals that they believe are furthered by their actions. The West is often a target – not because it is rich, but because it is influential and because terrorism has a greater chance of succeeding when it is perpetrated against a democracy than autocracy ([4]: p. 4). Krueger states that the economy is disrupted because terrorists seek to spread fear ([4]: p. 8). Although Krueger argues that terrorism is difficult to define, he states that it is a premeditated, politically motivated violence. The goal of terrorism is to spread fear ([4]: pp. 14-15). There is a relevancy to the communities from which terrorists arise as well as their views. It does not occur in a vacuum ([4]: p. 23). Terrorists are motivated by a goal. They are willing to die for the cause that they believe in ([4]: p. 48). Krueger informs us that, “88 percent of the time, terrorist attacks occur in the perpetrators’ own country of origin” ([4]: p. 71).

Ashis Nandy [5] defines terrorism as such: Existing theoretical and empirical work stresses two differentiate of contemporary terrorism. First, terrorism is primarily a psychological weapon: ‘its purpose to instill fear in an attempt to reach specific objectives’. Second, terrorism is ‘essentially indiscriminate’ and its choice of victims as arbitrary or random. The lack of discrimination helps to spread fear, for if no one in particular is the target, no one can be safe ([5]: p. 24). Nandy comments on the subject of terrorism in South Asia. He argues that modern terrorism and counter terrorism have become consumer fodder for the middle class. It is possible to sell it, advertise it and purchase it as a “political spectacle and as a commodity through the TV, the newspapers, the radio and commercial films” ([5]: p. 23). He argues that it cannot survive without publicity and flourishes due to media exposure ([5]: p. 23). From the discussions above we can conclude that terror and terrorism are synonymous. Terror is a state that occurs after terrorism takes place most of the time. This idea of terror and terrorism can be detected in IQ84. The acts of terrorism in the novel will be discussed in a later section.

George Orwell’s & Gorman Beuchamp [6] in his essay Of Man’s Last Disobedience: Zamiatin’s We and Orwel’s in Comparative Literature Studies [6] states that, the twentieth century has seen the emergence of a distinctive literary subgenre, the dystopian novel. In two of these in particular-Eugene Zamiatin’s We and George Orwell’s 1984-the central conflict of the individual’s rebellion against the State reenacts the Christian myth of man ‘s first disobedience, Adam’s against God. An Adam-like Protagonist for the love of an Eve defies the godlike State by asserting his instinctual freedom and falls from the new Eden, in a fictional manifestation of the psychic conflict that Freud posited between the individual and society [6].

Orwell’s 1984 can be seen as a novel that renacts the past. It is a rereading of the Bible and the fact of creation. It speaks against religion. It advocates atheist ideas and the idea of a Utopia for men only. The way of thought that 1984 postulates is that this world is better off without women because it was a woman - Eve - that made man fall from heaven. Beauchamp proves Orwell’s idea in his essay. According to him, The dystopian novel, to warn against such a totalitarian tomorrow, posits the existence of utopia: a world where Eros is reserved for the State alone, where Adam will have no Eve, where Eden will be inescapable, where the Fall will be as unimaginable as freedom. Utopia’s dawning will signal an end to man’s disobedience, and paradise, alas, will be regained [6] might be a dystopian novel. However, it does not prophesize the end of the world, the ultimate prophecy that can be seen in this novel is the annihilation of women and mankind living in a world that is recreated in the memory of “pre-fall”, before man fell due to Eve’s mistake. Without death 1984 postulates, man will regain his paradise in this world by killing womankind. The dystopia in this futuristic novel is the death of woman.

Harold Bloom [7] in the Introduction to his book, Bloom’s Modern Critical Appreciation’s: 1984 Updated Edition states this about Orwell’s 1984, There is an equivocal irony to reading, and writing, about George Orwell in 1986. I have just reread 1984, Animal Farm, and many of the essays for the first time in some years, and I find myself lost in an interplay of many contending reactions, moral and aesthetic. Orwell, aesthetically considered, is a far better essayist than a novelist...The book remains momentous; perhaps it always will be so. But there is nothing intrinsic to the book that will determine its future importance. It’s very genre will be established by political, social, economic events. Is it satire or science fiction or dystopia or counter manifesto? Last week I read newspaper accounts of two recent speeches, perorations delivered by President Reagan and by Norman Podhoretz, each favorably citing Orwell. The President, awarding medals to Senator Barry Goldwater and Helen Hayes, among others, saw them as exemplars of Orwell’s belief in freedom and individual dignity, while the sage Podhoretz allowed himself to observe that Orwell would have become a neoconservative had he but survived until this moment. Perhaps irony, however equivocal, is inadequate to represent so curious a posthumous fate as has come to the author of Homage to Catalonia, a man who went to Barcelona to fight for the Party of Marxist Unity and the Anarcho-Syndicalists ([7]: p.1).

In his essay Bloom advocates the idea that 1984 is not an important text. It is merely a manifesto against a democratic government by a man who postulated Marxit ideas. Orwell’s idea of freedom that resonates in the novel is total freedom from law and order. Orwell’s 1984 states, “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength” (Orwell, 1949: p. 2). Thus, he advocates war rather than peace, slavery and lack of knowledge. This novel goes against humanity and religiosity. This is the future that Orwell invisons in 1949, and this future is placed in 1984. This is Orwell’s prophecy for the future generation since he has lived through two world wars, thus his novel shows that he is disillusioned by politics and mankind as well as humanity.

Haruki Murakami’s IQ84-BOOK I

Murakami’s IQ84 resonates Orwell’s 1984. Orwell’s novel as discussed above shows the vision of a man who is dejected and has lost all hope in humanity. Murakami extends the idea that Orwell postulated in 1949 in the new millennium, after the 9/11 attacks, and he publishes his book in 2010, 9 years after 9/11. This novel shows how humanity has changed across the world, not only in America but also in Japan. In the new millenium the world has ceased to have borders and so has anarchy. Whatever inhumane acts that are performed in any part of the world, there is another part that performs similar acts sometimes in the name of justice and peace [8].

The cold war might have ended, the USSR dismantled and Russia is no longer a superpower, but a poor struggling new democratic state which is no longer on the American conscience. Murakami proves through his novel that the world has become more chaotic than it ever was. Via his novel Murakami uses powerful metaphors and his books that are surreal sell across the globe and are read worldwide. This proves that metaphors are a very powerful tool, more powerful than the reality that we live in as has been discussed by Homi K. Bhabha in Nation and Narration (1990).

Murakami vis-a-vis his fiction dismantles Orwell’s ideas. While Orwell writes about the future Murakami writes about the recent past. In an interview Murakami states “First, there was George Orwell’s 1984, a novel about the near future... I wanted to write something that was the opposite of that, a novel on the recent past that shows how things could have been,” [9]. He postulates the idea of how events could have been in the past. IQ84 suggests to us another Utopia, a haven that is imagined and yearned for by a Japanese author. A haven far different from that prophesied by a white man who is disillusioned by humanity and the world because of the two world wars that he has lived through. This is due to the fact that the Japanese too, were actively involved in the war and suffered a Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings that destroyed their country and people. They had to recreate themselves under the scrutiny of the West and the world and become one of the largest and most successful economic power in the world within 40 years after World War II ended.

IQ84 – Book I begin with the present where the main character Aomame is in a taxi and there is classical music on the radio. This reminds her of the past, the years after World War I in 1926. She mules on the death of Japan’s Taisho Emperor in 1926 and the deterioration of democracy and modernism. The connection between music and history as introduced by Murakami is significant. Music is well known to be a cure for the soul. Thus, Japan cured its soul via music after the World War I years, as did the rest of the world. The novel alternates the chapters between two characters, a woman named Aomame and a man named Tengo. The major themes that can be seen in the novel are cults and abuse, loss, sex, love and murder. This novel is a post 9/11 novel that tries to make sense of the post 9/11 world as is evident through its themes.

According to Murakami,

“To me, 9/11 does not feel like an incident that took place in the real world. Somewhere, there must be a world in which this didn’t happen,” he said. “I am always doubtful about whether this world that I am in now is the real one. Somewhere in me, I feel there is a world that may not have been this way” [9].

Murakami via his text takes advantage of the post 9/11 situation. Referring to Ashis Nandy who argues that modern terrorism has become consumer fodder for the middle class. If we look at contemporary fiction readers, most of them are middle class. Thus, writers like Murakami feed the hunger of middle-class readers across the world that want to read about terrorism since 9/11 was an original act which was novel. Never in the history of man had this happened, and it took a mastermind to plan it. Looking back at the news footages, 9/11 as seen through the television screen was real life Hollywood in action. As Nandy says, the subject of terrorism can be sold via media ([5]: p.23). Now, it can be sold faster than before through social media, i.e. Facebook, Tweeter and most Internet search engines. The world has turned into a simulacrum due to the advancements in technology. After 9/11 especially it seems that the world is no longer real or believable. Book 1 ends with a reminiscence of the past. Tengo is thinking of Aomame during her student years in Britain listening to a literature lecture on Charles Dicken’s novel. The text mentioned is Charles Dicken’s Martin Chuzzlewit, a British classic. Murakami reflects on the decadence of London, in the 19 century, where the Industrial Revolution has taken over the lives of the Londoners. It can be deduced that the novel is about revolution. In this text the revolution that can be seen is the revolution of the mind and a revolution that began after 9/11. Mankind began to make sense of life after 9/11 and what terrorism and war meant, especially in Japan where the country had suffered a disaster as bad as the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. There can be no better race than the Japanese to make sense of the disaster of 9/11 since they had a suffered a worse fate in 1945. However, 9/11 did not happen due to a war that was being fought. It was a statement against economic imperialism and military colonialism. The American symbol of freedom the Statue of Liberty was left intact, while the twin towers, pentagon was destroyed by the plane crashes and another plane tried to attack America’s political symbol, the White House. The perpetrators were not against freedom although their act triggered other wars like the ‘War Against Terrorism’ that President Bush declared in 2001 as a crusade which eventually lead to the Arab Spring, that triggered the many terrorist attacks that have occurred in Europe and across the world today since then [10].

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Conclusion

This has been a reading of Haruki Murakami’s IQ84 (2009). It has looked at George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 and compared it to Murakami’s IQ84. It has discussed the influence of Orwell on Murakani’s fiction. Murakami has tried to make sense of war and terrorism in his fiction. He has also taken advantage of the post 9/11 cult fiction readers and produced a masterpiece. The idea of terrorism might have evolved, but the ending takes us back to Dicken’s London, most probably where it all started with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the technological boom of that time which has influenced the world ever since. Without technology a tragedy like 9/11 could never have happened the way it did, and the event could never have been used as consumer fodder to feed the hunger of middle class consumers who crave for action while reading in their armchairs at home or in their offices. 9/11 has taught us that terrorism and war still sell and are marketable, via the fiction that has been produced on the two subjects..

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Validating the Addiction Severity Index (ASI-6) on Offender Re-Arrest-Juniper Publishers

Introduction

The ability of any offender to self-correct and/or rehabilitate oneself with the stigma of an arrest, conviction and/or incarceration is difficult. Most offenders will cycle through the system like an assembly line (Packer, 1968) with barriers for reintegration either improperly prioritized or left untreated [1]. Each States’ correctional system operate differently and as such the processes and outcomes of intake personnel as well as probation and parole officers (and their caseloads) vary widely. Offenders will often have so many barriers to reintegration that they may not self-report and/or probation/ parole or case managers may be unable to determine the best course/ pathway to reduce future offending. This study sheds more light on the intake process and the Addiction Severity Index, version 6 ASI-6). The ASI-6 should be considered a risk assessment tool which can identify and prioritize offender risks and needs assisting practitioners on how to profile or classify offenders at the highest risk of reoffending. As probation/ parole officers face escalating caseloads, the ASI-6 could assist in determining how to prioritize/ classify those at higher risk, what interventions are the most important, while also ascertaining appropriate time, supervision and resource allocation. Many practitioners that work with offenders often see more failure than success and could easily buy in to Robert Martinson’s “nothing works” (1974). However, it should be noted that we do know what works, what does not and what is promising [1]. Utilizing data, statistics and analytics is not a new idea in assisting those within the criminal justice system. Comparing success and failure might be easier if we consider using American’s favorite pastime, baseball as an analogy. The movie Moneyball [2] was inspired by a book written by Michael Lewis in [3] that articulates the need and use for analytics in baseball. Moneyball [2] credited Bill James as a pioneer for baseball analytics, which James coined as Sabermetrics; Society for American Baseball Research [4]. Sabermetrics was designed to develop quantitative measurement to baseball games and players to determine how to use resources appropriately to generate wins [4].

The use of analytics and resource allocation was slow to be implemented within baseball as the 2012 movie Moneyball reflected. However, today, every Major League Baseball (MLB) team utilizes analytics for a variety of ways to determine matchups and scenarios based on odds [4]. Multivariate analysis operates in the same fashion using odds and prediction. Perhaps in the not so distant future, correctional data analytics will predict the best scenario fits for practitioners and the typology of offenders to ensure success over failure. Moneyball explains resource allocation [3]. Success for any baseball player at the homefield plate is a base hit, when compiled is a batting average. Consider that there is no player in MLB history with over 100 at bats any given year has ever hit .500 batting average. Excellent players who hit a 300-batting average over a lifetime fail seven times out of ten to get a base hit. Failure is more a part of the game of baseball than success. Major league hitters would not likely subscribe to nothing works. Why should probation/ parole officers or other criminal justice practitioners be any different than baseball players? Accepting failure should not be an option. Addiction Severity Index (ASI-6) The Addiction Severity Index (ASI) was first introduced in the United States as a clinical tool to assess the incidence and prevalence of substance use and co-occurring impairments (McLellan et al, 1980). The validity, reliability and consistency of the ASI have been reported in hundreds of studies [5] and the ASI’s celebrity status led to it being translated into different languages and adopted by other European countries [6].

The European Union’s cost A-6 program revised the ASI by modifying composite scoring to develop a more specific European version [7,8]. McLellan et al. (2002:211) suggest that “the ASI has been shown to be reliable and valid among substance abusers applying for treatment”. Cacciola et al. [9,10] also report that the ASI has been shown to be a reliable and valid clinical instrument while also being utilized in a wide variety of clinical populations and treatment settings. Other scholarly research argues that the ASI has also been a reliable predictor in assisting different demographics of peoples [8]. This tool has been generally utilized to target different inpatient, outpatient and residential settings (Makela, 2004) and thus required a sixth edition for modification of language and query based items inquiring more about a participant’s cognitive processing Cacciola et al. [9,10] found that the ASI was also a good predictor of antisocial behavior. Another study by Cacciola and his colleagues found that the ASI was a good predictor for clients with co-occurring psychopathology (2001), widening the scale of its usage. Lesieur & Blume [11] found the ASI could assist in the prediction of pathological compulsive gambling patterns. While this study used a modified ASI, the participants were found to have reduced their intake of alcohol and other drug use in addition to gambling. Participants were also found to have improved legal, family/social, and psychological functioning Lesieur & Blume [11]. These versions of the ASI were initially designed to identify risk levels of alcohol and other drug abuse and subsequent domains associated with substance use [12] however, there are few, if any, studies that utilize this tool to predict future criminality. The primary purpose of the ASI was to determine a participant’s level of risk and/or needs to best prioritize process and/or outcomes-based treatment. This is consistent with the works of Andrews et al. [13,14] as they assert that identifying risk, determining needs and appropriate responses (based on evidence-based research) is fundamental in assisting offenders reintegrate back into their communities. Andrews et al. [13,14] are similar to other researchers in the field promoting the use of statistics and analytics in determine success versus failure for offender criminal desistence. Andrews et al. [13,14] also recognize the discretion of practitioners in the field (override) to determine what may work best with any given person taking into account the situations and context that may exist in their rehabilitation [15]. Therefore, it could be argued that the ASI has been utilized to ascertain participant clinical options, similar to Andrews et al. RNR model [15]. The ASI could operate to assist probation/ parole/ case managers in resource allocation in the same way it has been utilized as an administrative tool in determining resource allocation for therapy [12,16,17].

Offender desistence from crime

Why do offenders fail at desistence from crime? Perhaps one significant reason is that probation and parole officers have historically been over-burdened with larger caseloads due to an influx of offenders cycling and reintegrating to their communities’ post – incarceration [18]. Effective classification has been shown to reduce reoffending by as much as 30% [13,14]. Caseloads once thought to be maxed out at 80 per probation/ parole officer are becoming less manageable with agents expected to do more intensive supervision [19]. The incarceration of approximately 2.3 million people in jails and prisons across the United States [20] has only added more stress on the community based correctional system. Almost everyone, approximately 98% of people, admitted to correctional facilities will return to their communities at some point [18,21]. About seven million offenders were under some form of adult correctional system supervision equating to one in every thirty-five adults in the United States [22]. Nearly 3% of all adult residents in America were on probation or parole and/ or incarcerated in jail or prison [22]. Beck (2006) suggests that nearly nine million people will be released any given year from jails across the United States. The simple solution is obviously to have a less punitive criminal justice system however this solution is likely generations away from fruition. Therefore, immediate solutions need to be implemented to simply sustain the institutional and community based system’s operation at a local level to assist probation/ parole agents to best profile the offenders in their care while allocating resources with lesser waste to the system and potentially to each offender. The use of the Addiction Severity Index, version 6 (ASI-6) should assist intake facilitators and probation/parole officers in better determining the risk needs and assessment of offenders to better ascertain levels of direct and indirect supervision, outcomes and resource allocation. As explained previously, developing typologies and profiling of offenders can determine future success and/or failure (Ericson, 2007) [23,24].

Utilizing statistics and analytics to develop typologies or profiles of offenders is the next step in assisting offenders while also increasing success. However, as in the MLB baseball analogy explained previously, institutional change requires buy in. Rothstein et al. [25] reported that probation and/or parole officer’s discretion have become such institutional practice that they are synonymous with the generation of success and failure outcomes. These institutional measurements could more likely that not be attributed to the decision making of the officer and not the empirical or observable measurement of the offender [23,26]. Hannah-Moffit et al. [24] suggests that the use of discretion can even further insulate probation and parole officers from utilizing more empirical instruments as an institutional practice.

Profiling offenders using the ASI-6

The Addiction Severity Index was designed to assess seven problem areas typically found among those people who are using or abusing alcohol and other drug abuse [12]. Utilizing 118 indepth questions, intake screeners would be expected to assess intake participants in seven core areas: one’s

(i) Medical condition;

(ii) Employment and support;

(iii) Incidences and prevalence of alcohol use and

(iv) Drug use;

(v) Legal status;

(vi) Family relations;

(vii) Psychological/psychiatric status.

It should be noted that all of the seven core areas have been indirectly or directly related to criminal reoffending [1,21]. Questions utilize different intervals to determine the frequency and duration of the topical areas which include last occurrence, monthly, over six months and lifetime prevalence. Domain questions document a measurable and calculated type, duration, and frequency of problems. This is followed by Likert based questions to determine how these issues impact the respondent. The ASI was designed to take approximately 45 to 60 minutes in a semi-structured interview administered by a trained intake clinician, who is expected to spend another 10 to 20 minutes scoring each participant’s responses [12]. Within each domain area, a composite score is derived from several of the questions that were asked by the interviewer. The composite scores are considered measures of problem severity, with higher scores indicating greater problem severity. The clinical aim of the ASI is to identify treatment needs within each domain [27,28]. Obviously, the higher the risk and need of any of the offender’s seven domains the higher the anticipated likelihood of future re-arrest.

Re-arrest was utilized as the recidivism variable because it is the most commonly and effectively used measurement [29-31]. Re-arrest, for the purpose of this study, refers to any arrest for a misdemeanor or felony charge. The most recent national study on reoffending is a sample population of approximately 404,000 offenders released in 23 States in 2005. DuRose et al. [29] found that four of ten offenders (43.4%) would be re-arrested within their first year of release. This number of offenders re-arrested continues to escalate to 67.8% after a three-year follow-up and furthermore to 76.6% of offenders re-arrested after five years. While the re-arrest rates varied by the type of offender, the glaring issue is that nearly three quarters of those on probation or parole will be re-arrested in five years (2014:2). As stated above, this could be viewed as a significant failure of the system but if it was baseball, we may want to reverse how we approach rehabilitation and reintegration. Over half (56.5%) of offenders were successful in not being re-arrested of a new crime in the first year after release from custody. However, these numbers begin to drop over a three and five year interval suggesting that more resources are necessary either in the first year of working with probation/ parole agents and/or a continuum of care of services and resources to sustain their success from desisting from crime. Therefore, success is possible, we simply need to learn more about the barriers that offenders face, rather than simply the recidivism outcomes [32].

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Methodology of the Current Study

This study utilizes data collected from a federally funded Access to Recovery site within the Midwest United States. Access to Recovery (ATR) was a grantee voucher program for substance abuse clinical treatment and recovery support services [33]. Probation and parole officers would recommend offenders for this program due almost entirely of an influx of services available. While the criteria for the program was to reduce alcohol and other drug abuse which should reduce criminal activity [34], not every offender had a significant substance abuse issue. Inclusion criteria for offender participation in this Access to Recovery site study were:

a) adults aged 18 or older;

b) residents of the ATR site city,

c) a need for alcohol and/or drug treatment; and

d) agreement to sign informed consent.

Die to the pronounced amount of resources offered in the ATR program, there was heavy demand for any and all services the ATR program provided. However, due to a lack of ATR funding and resources, not every offender was offered this opportunity and as many as eight hundred offenders were wait listed for the program at any given time. Upon acceptance into the program (prior to their release from jail or prison), offenders would receive a referral to a clinic with an intake specialist within a 24-48 hour period. Probationers and parolees would further be assessed and screened at an intake clinic using the Addiction Severity Index, version 6 (ASI-6) prior to being provided a list of recommended alcohol and drug abuse treatment providers that offenders could select from. The ASI-6 and its seven composite scores were provided to social service case managers, treatment clinicians and probation and parole officers [33]. Overall, 434 offenders met the criteria over the first year of the site’s operation and were used for this analysis. The total number of possible jail and prison released offenders who tried to access the program was 456 that year however, records and documentation of 22 offenders who participated in the program were illegible and removed from the analysis. This study utilized a one group one shot treatment design. This design involved the exposure of a group of offenders to a wide variety of treatment and rehabilitative programs which was further followed by a measurement of criminal desistence. This varies significantly from a true experimental design in that there was no control group in which to make comparisons. Additionally, there was no random selection of offenders as every offender who wished to participate in the program was included in the analysis. As such, these limitations should be taken into account when considering the findings [1,35].

To assess reoffending, a conceptualized version of re-arrest was utilized at various one, three- and five-year intervals. As explained previously, of all recidivism variables collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2014), re-arrest is considered the most widely accepted measurement. Re-arrest refers to any arrest for a misdemeanor or felony charge. A triangulation of sources was necessary to ensure the validity and reliability of re-arrest. The first and least reliable data source was the selfreported behavior of probationers and parolees. This was either validated or often invalidated through three additional layers of data points. The first and second validation measures were from access to police records from the City Law Enforcement agency and the local County Sheriff’s Office where the offender was to reside. Names, aliases, dates of birth and addresses were used as identifiers. The third validation measure was the State’s probation/ parole database system which included case notes and contact information for offenders under community supervision. This re-arrest data was merged with ASI-6 data points to complete more sophisticated analysis. The following section shares the risks and needs associated with the seven ASI-6 domains, the classification of offenders based on risk and furthermore why the ASI-6 is a reliable and valid clinical tool to predict interval levels of offender re-arrest.

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Study Findings

The first section of the study findings provides a glimpse into the sample population’s risks and needs initially reported by offenders within an intake session. The ASI-6 was used to assess offender’s histories, frequencies, and consequences based on seven core domains: (i) drug and (ii) alcohol use:, (iii) medical, (iv) employment, (v) legal, (vi) social and family and (vii) psychological functioning. Furthermore, offenders were classified into levels of severity to determine risk levels (that practitioners could use as cut off points). This section will then examine reoffending, reoffending patterns and why the ASI is a good predictor of short-term intervals of re-arrest over one, three- and five-year periods (similar to the Bureau of Justice Statistics as compiled by [29]. Table 1 accentuates the risks and needs that offenders reported thought the Addiction Severity Index, version 6 ASI-6). This table offers a glimpse into the profile of the sample (without including the demographics). Demographic data for the study was excluded so that it does not jeopardize the statistical significance of the validation of the ASI-6 while also providing a baseline conservative measure for its predictability. If demographic variables were included, we know that there is a statistically significant relationship criminal offending has with sex, age, race and ethnicity [21]. Eight in ten offenders (82%) reported the drug use domain was an area of need, while 18% reported no existing problems. However, 74% of offenders identified alcohol as an area of need. Therefore, this profile of the sample would suggest there are many offenders with co-occurring substance use (either currently or historically). The most prevalent of each of the seven ASI-6 domains was employment or the lack of it. Nearly every offender, 98% reported this as an area of need. As such, this domain seemed to be a well expressed and significant barrier to reintegration. Surprisingly, only 77% of offenders reported the legal domain as an area of concern. To reiterate, this domain was captured through intake interviews and there was the possibility for offenders to be less truthful about their criminal history. Nearly two in ten offenders were not as honest within the ASI-6 which does indicate the ASI-6 obvious limitation: self-reporting. This is also why generating rapport between intake assessors and offenders are vital for determining risk [24]. A majority of offenders also reported the need for social and/or family support assistance (69%), psychological or mental health assistance (60%) and/or a reported medical need (45%). The ASI-6 risk/ needs assessment should provide case managers, clinicians and probation/parole officers an opportunity to profile an offender to determine priority, supervision and resource allocation. However, this was at the discretion of each case manager, treatment clinician and/or probation/parole officer so it is difficult to ascertain if these needs were met.

It needs to be noted that there is significant co-occurring risks and needs associated with the offenders represented in the sample. To no probation or parole officer’s surprise, offenders will often have many risks and needs that need to be met [24]. Therefore, a follow-up to examining prevalence is to ascertain which of the seven domains are the most severe to appropriately determine a course of action. The literature often focuses on taking a holistic approach to rehabilitation which only reinforces the findings of these study participants. However, where does a probation/ parole officer, case manager or clinician begin? What is the level of resource allocation that each offender needs and what risks are so severe they require immediate intervention versus needs which can wait. This is often the dilemma faced by practitioners assisting offenders in determining the appropriate levels of action. A higher composite ASI-6 score within each domain would indicate a greater risk and/or need for treatment or intervention. The scores in Table 2 below were generated to attain a better profile of the sample for probation/parole officers to determine and/or classify offenders based on risk. To better understand the level of severity offenders may face, Table 2 outlines how problematic each of the domains were ranging from an aggregate score from not at all a problem (zero) to an immediate threat to one’s safety (one). Each domain has its own aggregate score based on scaled variables of interest (as mentioned previously were high in face validity and reliability).Attaining a score of .01 to .24 would reflect a low area of need and .25 to .49 would indicate a moderate concern, Those offenders scoring between .50 to .74 could be categorized as an escalated or high level of need. Those offenders scoring .75 and above would be categorized as requiring an immediate assistance due to its severity. As Table 2 indicates, there was a relatively good variation within each of domains as to make certain inferences about the sample. However, what becomes more obvious is the association. between prevalence of risk as reported by offenders (Table 1) and the severity of the risk, which is analyzed through the use of the ASi-6 metrics. Employment is one of the most significant contributors to reoffending (citation). It is obvious that employment is the most significant barrier facing offenders. In terms of prevalence of the problem (98% reported in Table 1) as well as those scoring high (10%) and severe (84%) risk on the ASI-6 metrics. Probation/parole agents, case managers and clinicians should all be identifying this risk/need as the number one priority for this sample, above all other factors/ domains. Interestingly enough, medical risk and needs were found to be one of the least likely needs in terms of prevalence (Table 1 45% reported) but of those 45% who reported medical issues, there was significant variation in the risks associated with medical treatment. As such, practitioners may want to consider more indepth referrals to determine what every individual may be facing. The problem may be that due to a lack of universal health care, this will be difficult to attain. One in ten offenders reported an immediate medical need 24-48 hours having been released from custody. This is problematic considering that inmates often attain health care within their facilities.

While 60% of offenders reported a psychological risk/need, nearly one –third (17.5%) reported a high or severe need. This might be correlating with research that indicates that mental health, and/or the diagnosis of mental health is on the rise and offenders are not immune. There is also a connection of mental illness with medical care, alcohol and drug abuse and unemployment [21]. Gainful employment could offer benefits that pay for medicalization and/or mental health medications whereas, if one does not have gainful employment, research indicates that people will self-medicate with alcohol or illicit drugs because they may not be able to afford medication [22]. The legal domain, already considered problematic in terms of self-reporting (Table 1) identified a wide variation of legal issues either historically or outstanding. It should be noted that no offenders participating in the program had pending charges upon immediate release from custody and entrance into the Access to Recovery (ATR) program. Therefore, offenders still feel that the terms and conditions of probation/ parole placed on them are problematic and require more assistance. Therefore, practitioners may want to reassure offenders the expectations of probation/ parole and/or their treatment goals. This domain very likely highlights the difference between those offenders who were on probation (21%) and those on parole (79%). Although the Access To Recovery (ATR) program was meant to serve those with alcohol and drug abuse issues which most offenders did say were prevalent, offenders reported lower and more moderate metrics of drug abuse risk, Based on the ASI-6 metrics, it could be recommended that drug treatment, while potentially effective should be considered a secondary need for the sample population. However, this may contradict various practitioners who believe they may recognize one need over which creates a divide in the best course of action to assist the offender. One practitioner may recommend more intensive treatment which requires 4 hours each day while another practitioner may be recommending an alternative course of action for those 4 hours each day (i.e., employment or vocational training). For this reason, it is important to ensure that risks/needs are prioritized so offenders can be classified and assisted with their own potential needs.

Of those reporting a social or family need (69%), a very high percentage felt this was a low or moderate issue that may require assistance or resources. This could be due to lengthier stays of incarceration which has led to a breakdown of the family unit and/or a lessening of trust. These are all issues that may be prevalent in other domains as well. Subsequently, it is still integral to utilize a holistic approach [36]. As explained previously, data markers were triangulated and validated from official police, court and correctional sources in addition to the self-reporting of offenders to measure re-arrest. The triangulation of four data sources determined that 29.5% (128) of offenders in the Access To Recovery program were re-arrested while completing their rehabilitation/ treatment within their first year of release. This percentage mirrors the national American averages which suggest that within the first six months of the 1994 national recidivism study that 30% of offenders were re-arrested for a misdemeanor or felony [30]. This is a slightly lower number than the findings by DuRose et al. [29] of 43.4% of offenders were re-arrested in 23 States.

As seen in Table 3, within a three year follow up period, 52% (or 228) ATR offenders were re-arrested. This prevalence is substantially lower than the Bureau of Justice Statistics averages of 67.5% over the national studies done in 1983 and 1994 [20]. This percentage is also dramatically lower than 2005 recent estimates of 67.8% [29], This might suggest that the sample is irregular or perhaps that offenders who participated in this program simply had lower rates of re-arrest due to factors that are unable to be substantiated as a result of a lack of a comparison group or experimental design). Within the fifth year of follow-up, 59% (256) of offenders were re-arrested for a misdemeanor or felony. For the purpose of internal validity, it should be noted that no offenders or cases were removed for experimental mortality. In year five, ATR offenders were far less likely to be re-arrested than the reported 76.6% of State offenders released in 2005 [29]. While Access to Recovery offenders deviated from the national statistics at the third and fifth interval of follow-up, it is difficult to attribute this solely to the program (as there was no local or regional comparison group). Three logistic regression analyses were used to determine the predictability of the ASI-6 when predicting rearrest over one, three- and five-year follow-up time periods upon completion of the Access to Recovery (ATR) program. To reduce the likelihood of multi-collinearity for each of the regression models, this study ensured the removal of any case outliers with over a 2.0 residual tolerance and Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) over 4. As such, 11, 12 and 8 cases were removed from each of the three logistic multivariate models.

Table 4 illustrates the predictive power of the seven ASI-6 domains on offender re-arrest after one year of release. This model was found to be statistically significant (.001 with a confidence level of 95% with the p < .05 being significantly different than zero). The domains within the model explain 43% of re-arrest after one year. This number is based on the average of two variances utilized for the analysis. The well-respected Nagelkerke R Square was reported at .500 and the Cox and Snell R Square was .351. The average between the two, to remain conservative was 43%. The regression reported a Chi-square of 187.92 and a model -2 Log likelihood of 338.53. In addition to the model being significant, each of the domains were also found to be significant using a 95% confidence interval. Validating the Addiction Severity Index (ASI- 6) on Offender Re-Arrest The findings of the regression analysis suggest that the metrics associated with those at higher risk within the ASI corresponded to higher Beta values in predicting re-arrest one-year post-release from incarceration. The legal domain had the most impact of each of the seven dimensions of the ASI-6. This was somewhat predictable if we consider that the twenty seven questions pertinent to one’s legal status consist of: criminal justice system admission referral, probation/ parole status, previous criminal records (including arrest, conviction and incarceration), as well as cognitive coping of these issues to determine coping mechanisms and/or assistance that needs to be provided. Therefore, practitioners could offer more direction and guidance to offenders to potentially better equip newly released offenders of the expectations of the various persons they will work with, so they do not violate the terms and conditions of their probation/ parole. Again, this domain simply highlights the difference between those offenders who were on probation (21%) and those on parole (79%).

Employment, or the lack of employment opportunities remains a significant barrier for offenders. Those reporting higher levels of risk were also more likely to be re-arrested within the first year of their release from custody. We recognize that employment is one of the best predictors of recidivism and it appears that offenders recognized this as well as they self-reported significant levels of need and risk. Those offenders who were identified at high risk using the ASI-6 were more likely to be re-arrested within the last one year upon release. Despite the low percentages of those offenders reporting mental health or psychological issues present, those who scored within the high and severe classifications of the domain were found more likely to be arrested. Therefore, it may be appropriate to assist offenders in identifying the appropriate levels of resources to assist them in identifying the appropriate level of diagnosis, treatment and medication supply. Something unusual is occurring within the ASI metrics of the alcohol and drug use variables and re-arrest. While offenders identified both to be areas of concern within the ASI-6 domain, a large percentage of the sample did not appear to be at a higher or severe risk for alcohol or drug use (based on their composite scoring). That said, it still appears, based on the data, that those who scored with a higher and severe risk of alcohol or drugs were more likely to be re-arrested. However, for this particular variable, it might be recommended to examine how they may have scored on particular elements of both alcohol and drug use. The drug-crime nexus (Tonry, 1987) is obviously prevalent and statistically significant in this model but far more complex. Despite being enrolled in an ATR substance abuse desistence program, alcohol and drug use remains a prevalent risk factor.

This regression analysis not only indicates that many of the risks/ need’s offenders identified are warranted, but it also validates the use of the ASI-6 as a good predictor of re-arrest one year after an offender leaves custody. All domains appear to be significant and as such if used appropriately, those scoring at high or severe risk of the ASI-6 will be more likely to be rearrested, with the exception of alcohol and drug use (which appears to be a strong determinant based on significant bodies of research). The second model in (Table 5) suggests that the ASI- 6 was a much better predictor of re-arrest within a three-year follow-up. This model, like the last was found to be statistically significant (.001 with a confidence level of 95% with the p < .05 being significantly different than zero). The variance explained within this model increased from the previous one-year followup. The first model predicted 43% of future offender re-arrest. This model predicts approximately 58% of re-arrest, a significant increase. This number is based on the average of two variances utilized for the analysis. The Nagelkerke R Square was reported at .662 and the Cox and Snell R Square was .496. The regression reported a Chi-square of 297.16 and a model -2 Log likelihood of 303.410. Eerily similar to the first logistic regression all domains of the ASI-6 remained statistically significant in predicting rearrest over a three-year follow-up upon release. Employment remains a strong determinant of re-arrest but it becomes the most significant predictor over a three year period. Therefore, it should be argued, that based on the sample and the level of risk associated with offender self-reporting, employment should be a crucial barrier that these offenders should have attained assistance for, In addition to employment, mental health and an offender’s legal domain remained significant predictors of rearrest (Table 6). Alcohol and drug use domains also remained statistically significant but again, similar to the first model, were less of a predictor than other factors.

Those offenders scoring high on the ASI-6 for medical assistance and need were also found to be more likely to be rearrested at either the one and/or three-year intervals. That said, there may be a connection between long standing chronic issues of alcohol/ drug use and its physiological consequences [37]. Social and informal family supports remained a statistically significant variable. Those reporting higher levels of risk associated with family supports over the first and third year of release were also more likely to be re-arrested. The disintegration of a family dynamic could be a critical component when discussing successful rehabilitation and trust [38]. In the fifth year of followup, the ASI-6 continues to be an excellent predictor of re-arrest. This model, like the last two regression models, was found to be statistically significant (.001 with a confidence level of 95% with the p < .05 being significantly different than zero) [40-41].The variance explained within this model was similar to the previous model predicting approximately 55.7% of re-arrest over a five year follow-up. This number is a conservative average of the Nagelkerke R Square at .639 and the Cox and Snell R Square at .474. The regression reported a Chi-square of 278.964 and a model -2 Log likelihood of 308.593. All three regression analyses had seven degrees of freedom. Therefore, even in its most conservative prediction model, not taking into account demographic data, its predictive power could be nearly 64% over a five-year period since an offender had taken their original ASI-6 intake. It could be argued that the ASI is a very good predictor of immediate (one year), short term (three year) and long term (five year) re-arrest [42-45].

Validating the Addiction Severity Index (ASI-6) on Offender Re-Arrest Similar to the logistic regression models on one- and three-year re-arrest, this study’s findings suggest that the ASI- 6 can predict re-arrest at a greater strength over a longitudinal basis. Employment remains the most significant predictor of re-arrest over a five-year follow-up however, as the Beta values suggest, alcohol and drug abuse become a better predictor of long-term re-arrest than an offender’s ASI-6 metrics of legal or psychological needs. As such, it appears that anecdotally speaking, many of the barriers that were once identified at initial intake for offenders have not been adequately dealt with and as a result, an offender’s likelihood to desist from crime is decreasing. Therefore, it appears that if these needs and risks do not get the proper attention, intervention and/or treatment result in future re-arrest [46-52]. Therefore, allocating the appropriate resources based on the ASI-6 domain metrics measuring composite high and severe risk scores were more valuable in assessing future re-arrest. The higher an offender scored on their composite seven domains, the more likely they will be re-arrested for a crime over one, threeand five-year intervals.

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Implications

After being released from jail and/or prison, offenders were offered the opportunity to enroll in a federally funded (SAMHSA) Access to Recovery (ATR) alcohol and other drug abuse treatment program. Findings of the study could support that the ATR program was somewhat successful as their rates of re-arrest were lower than other national studies [29]. However, further investigation into intake information, using the Addiction Severity Index, version 6 (ASI-6) reveals that those who score highly on composite scores within each of the seven domains are also more likely to be re-arrested over one, three and/or five year periods upon release. Overall, the purpose of this study was the evaluation of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI version 6) in predicting the re-arrest of 434 offenders over one, three- and five-year intervals. Based on the findings of the logistic regression models, the ASI- 6 was able to predict anywhere from 43%, 58% and 56% of rearrest within first, third and fifth year of an offender’s release from custody (respectfully) [53-59]. The predictive variance explained of this magnitude suggests that the use of the ASI-6 as a clinical tool is a very good predictor of both short term and long-term re-arrest. Also consider that the study’s findings did not include additional demographic information (sex, age, race, ethnicity, marital status) as predictive variables. All of these variables we know are highly correlated or related to criminal reoffending [1,37-38]. This study removed those variables in an attempt to understand the true predictive power of the ASI-6. The ASI-6 which uses similar conceptualization and operationalization techniques as developed through the RNR approach by Andrews et al. [13,14]. Ensuring quality intake assessment is integral to attaining baseline data on offenders that could assist them in desisting from future criminal activity. While this study certainly has limitations including but not limited to a lack of random selection, a comparison group and interval level markers of the ASI-6, it highlights the need for statistics and analytics rather than practitioner discretion in decision making. Utilizing risk assessment within intake assessments has become a normative approach to doing community based corrections however, it often does not differentiate between the levels of severity of risks and needs each offender has. As practitioners and clinicians can attest, offenders often have many deficits and as a result, a strength based holistic approach to rehabilitation is what is offered to offenders. While taking a holistic approach to rehabilitation is wise, targeting risk and need and prioritizing those over others allows for practitioners to target areas of immediate concern [54- 61]. Using the ASI-6 to identify offenders who score high or severe on any one of the seven domains would go a long way in placing priority on at-risk factors such as employment, legal expectations for terms and conditions, psychological/ medical assistance as well as alcohol and other drug use. While this particular Access to Recovery (ATR) site indicates some preliminary success in curbing re-arrest (as compared to other national studies of State correctional studies), the data should offer modest hope of success when intake assessment is utilized to target an offender’s risks and needs. While offenders were re-arrested at a lower rate than other national studies, there is also the limitation of a lack of random selection, comparison groups and interval based ASI- 6 measurements [62-67]. The unfortunate reality is that many programs are able to undertake rigorous experimental designs and/or analysis without substantial funding [68-73]. As such, while this study has its limitations, it provides a modest and conservative validation of the Addiction Severity Index, version 6 (ASI-6) as a logistical instrument that can be used to identify both success and failure.

Consider the previous analogy of a Major League Baseball hitter who has a lifetime .300 batting average. Do we consider them failures? We may often fail more than we succeed but using that same premise, should we accept offender failure without using potential analytics that are available? Major League Baseball took a long time to adjust to sabermetrics [3] from the longevity of using the discretion experienced scouts and executives [74-76]. No one can argue that baseball was transformed for the better. Perhaps the correctional system will embrace the implementation of more metrics and risk assessment tools to find more success rather than failure. As viewed through the lense of the movie Moneyball [2], analytics will require institutional change. The rise of analytics may take time to be implemented, but once it has been, it will be a game changer [77].

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Pursuing the Homeownership Dream in Shanghai: The Significance of House and Home in Migrant Families’ Quest for Middle Class-Juniper Publishers

Introduction

In today’s China, most urban couples are pursuing the homeownership dream: the country’s homeownership rate has, in fact, remained stable at 90% since 2012 (Peking University Institute of Social Sciences, 2017). Between 1998, when the central government announced the end of welfare housing, and by the time of the 2005 census, China had become the largest home owning society in the world D Davis [1]. Starting from Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, private real estate has been an important engine for the country’s economic growth and a symbol of status and financial success for the general population. In this new environment of privatization and individual property rights, every Chinese household had permission to dream of home ownership and to view their homes as their own private space where they could display family and individual prestige D Davis [2]. Furthermore, homeownership was soon aligned with ideas of class-consciousness and mediated through the mass consumption of visual and material culture: newspapers, magazines, catalogues, television and the internet are all part of the global marketplace where people shop for houses, furnishings, and ideas and values of family life [3]. Historically, the construction of the home as an expressive form has been associated with the consolidation and formation of the middle-class identity. The house and its interior decoration elements are, in fact, used as a form of self-presentation, a way to codify an image of oneself to others through the appropriation of the material environment [3]. In contemporary China, house and decoration choices play an important role both in constructing individual or family identity and in stating a household’s social status. In the case of middle-class migrant families, purchasing a home in the city is seen as necessary for achieving a full urbanization of the individual and of the family. This is because home ownership confers a sense of stability and belonging to the new urban environment, at the same time enabling the migrants to express a personal image of respectability and success.

The present article advances a new framework for analyzing the social mobility of domestic migrants, which centers on home owning and on the process of the “house” becoming a “home”. I arAbstract gue that home owning affects and reflects migrant families’1 quest for securing middle-class belonging and social status in Shanghai. Building on previous work that focuses on rural to urban migration and class formation among urban Chinese youth, the present research study shows that, in contemporary China, the house stands at the center of a hierarchy of privileges in middle-class consolidation processes, especially for the aspiring middle-class rural migrant social group. This study contributes to research that studies rural to urban migration in China by looking at a social group that has been widely overlooked, i.e. aspiring middle-class migrants with rural origins, and to research that examines class distinction by placing homeownership at the center of class-related hierarchies of privilege. I argue that house, as well as ideas of home, is key in middle-class consolidation and reproduction processes, as it is the principal asset that confers class-related legitimation and power, and that it is able to provide both inter-class and intra-class distinction.

As a theoretical basis to support my argument, I avail myself of the Bourdieusian approach, which provides an effective definition of class and social mobility based on the relational aspects of class membership, as well as the concepts of distinction and class symbolic boundaries, both of which are key to understanding class-related dynamics in contemporary China. According to Bourdieu, social class refers to the position of individuals in a given social space, a system of objective determinations related to the socalled “class habitus”, or socially constructed dispositions which are class-specific [4]. When determining class identity, a central element is class difference awareness: what differentiates one class from another are the economic and symbolic boundaries between different social classes. Such boundaries are essential as they provide each social class with specific elements of “distinction” [4]. In this analysis, for instance, aspiring middle-class migrant families aim to secure a place in the middle class by keeping economic and symbolic distance from the urban working class or, more particularly, from other rural migrants to the cities. When analyzing class differences, income and wealth alone are not enough to determine class identity and membership. Therefore, Bourdieu identifies four different types of capital that are sources of power and socially valued as important elements of class distinction: economic capital (income and wealth), cultural capital (education, language and taste), symbolic capital (status and consumption patterns) and social capital (networks) [4]. The research question that lies at the basis of this study is: “What are the significance and implications of home owning for aspiring middle-class migrant families?” My efforts to answer this question were guided by two key concepts: social distinction and capital convertibility. Social distinction is essential for individuals to secure middle-class status belonging and derives from the presence of strong symbolic boundaries that discern and separate the middle class from the lower classes. My data shows that one of the strongest assets that middle-class families need to obtain in order to achieve their social distinction is a house. A house is not only linked to economic capital; most of all it allows for conversion into other forms of capital [4]: symbolic (i.e. status), social (creation of strong networks based on class belonging) and cultural (allows middle-class youth to attend quality schools).

So far, much of the literature on migrants and housing in contemporary China has dealt with the challenge’s migrants face in the new urban environment. Numerous studies have investigated the hùkǒu system2 and its inequalities [5-7]. Other studies have looked at migrants’ experiences from a psychological point of view, highlighting migrants’ struggles in recreating their social identity in a new urban context [7-10]. Other relevant studies have focused on housing policies for migrants [11-13], migrants’ accommodation issues, housing preferences and consumption patterns, and the channels used by migrants to find a house [12,14,15]. There has also been considerable treatment of the Chinese housing market, as well as of the social implications of owning a house in contemporary Chinese society [1,2]. Separate studies [3,16-19] have dealt with the middle class in China and what it means to belong to the middle class in contemporary Chinese society. Other scholars have analyzed the rise of the middle class and its social as well as political implications [16]. Other studies have looked at the Chinese middle class in relation to housing. L. Tomba [20] has analyzed Chinese neighborhood planning as a way for the Chinese government to achieve social clustering and engineering. Enclosed residential neighborhoods are, in fact, a means for the government to promote ideas of social distinction as well as to encourage the pursuit of a higher sùzhì or “quality” by the middle-class residents, who serve the purpose of setting a social example for the general population. The ideas of sùzhì and social distinction, also in relation to the Chinese middle class, have been dealt with extensively [21-25]. Lastly, L Zhang [15] has extensively investigated the new homeownership and living revolution that has hit middle-class professionals and entrepreneurs in search of their own private paradise in Chinese society, which is now dominated by consumerism. The author has also looked at how housing is the key to achieving both material comfort and social distinction for Chinese families. However, there are no studies so far that have placed house and home owning at the center of migrant families’ social advancement and middle-class pursuit in an urban setting. The present study will address this lacuna. As for methodology, this study is the result of qualitative field research conducted in Shanghai from September 2015 to June 2016, where I held repeated in-depth interviews and participant observation with the members of eleven aspiring-middle families (including extended family members). Although I do not go into the qualitative and ethnographic methodological details in this article, I wish to hereby provide an overview as for data collection and qualitative methods applied. The main research method used to analyze the data was grounded theory, which provides a methodology that allows the concerns of the social participants to emerge in context [26] and is thus useful for research of a social nature. In order to answer my research questions, I used a variety of data collection strategies, which I adapted throughout the ten months of fieldwork in order to obtain data which were significant, personal and relevant for this study. Along with face-to-face formal interviews, I used other more informal means of data collection, such as guided conversations in informal settings, e-mail exchanges, video-calls and voice-messages. The selection of such a varied range of data collection approaches mainly derived from the personal rapport I built up with the participant families, who expressed a desire to share personal experiences and thoughts with me through more informal means of communication as well. During my formal faceto- face interview meetings, I relied on semi-structured interviews, participant observation and a memo, and I have recorded these interviews both in oral form on a recording device and in written form in my fieldwork diary. To analyze my data, I transcribed and summarized all of the audio-recordings and field notes and then grouped the data into core categories, common categories and lower level concepts. This process allowed me to organize my findings in preparation for theory building and to identify the core themes which would constitute the heart of the findings in this present article.

In line with the major categories identified during the data categorization process, this article is organized around three key dimensions to how home owning can affect a family’s pursuit and/or affirmation of class identity. The first dimension is entitlement to property, which indicates the family’s social status and class status in multiple ways, especially when it aspires to a middle- class reproduction of the household. The second dimension is symbolic consumption, or the idea that the symbolic nature of the material environment (specifically, the house and home décor choices) enables the family members to demonstrate their social status and affirm middle-class identity through consumption patterns and lifestyle. The third dimension is network reinforcement (in particular, at the household level), where the house is seen as a means of ensuring a stable middle-class reproduction of the family in the long run, as well as of reinforcing family networks. Home owning, in fact, can affect family dynamics and, consequently, a nuclear family’s journey towards securing middle-class belonging and the ability to sustain reproduction. These three dimensions, property, home-related consumption and networks represent the three essential components of a dwelling: the house (property), the home (chosen decorative elements) and the family (kinship networks). This study examines the aforementioned three dimensions in turn, also incorporating interview extracts within the narration in order to give voice to the participants’ experiences and aspirations.

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Entitlement to Property: The Status of Renters and Homeowners

“Purchasing a house in this city seems like an unreachable goal for many Chinese families, especially for those who do not possess a local hùkǒu. Non-local residents are cut off from the bank loan system and, although economic means can seem like a sensible solution to the problem, Shanghai’s sky-high real estate prices are a huge obstacle for most migrant families like ours.” This observation by Mrs Mao confirms that in order to succeed in the home owning middle-class urban dream migrant families must possess enough economic capital to afford such a costly investment. A small minority of my aspiring middle-class participants owned a house (three migrant households), and all of those who did not constantly complained about the prices of Shanghai’s housing market, which also requires migrant purchasers to have worked in the city for a total of five years. Mrs Mao went on to explain that: “The amount of pressure that this situation puts on the shoulders of migrant families is huge. Due to hùkǒu-related regulations, the only possible way for middle-class migrants to buy a house is by obtaining a salary increase, or by patiently waiting to have saved enough money to buy a family home.”

In fact, a salary increase and/or a job promotion are a stepping- stone to a higher social status, which also implies the creation of new and more prestigious – and therefore powerful – networks, which can come in handy in the process of house purchasing. It goes without saying that for working-class, lower-status migrants it is nearly impossible to afford housing in Shanghai; therefore, middle-class families and individuals try to avoid falling back to a lower status at all costs. An owned home can affect a family’s class and social status in many ways. First, an owned home facilitates a family’s urbanization process, as a house is a very important step in the quest to securing belonging to the Chinese middle class and to a fully urbanized life with strong social networks. Home owning is, therefore, closely connected not only with status and class but also with an individual’s or a family’s sense of belonging to the city by creating roots. A home is essential for the formation of a sense of belonging; however, as Mrs Liang stated, “it is only after you introduce your own style and design that you can call a home your home”. This feeling of freedom of making changes to a home so that it fully reflects a family’s own style is often only possible for homeowners, as opposed to renters.

An owned home also confers a sense of stability. In contemporary China, renting a house, as opposed to owning one, is generally felt to be a much less stable and desirable option. Furthermore, if it is true that the house is an external projection of the Self and, therefore, it reflects the individual’s identity [3], a rented home reflects the image of a temporary resident. The concepts of temporariness and permanence, which are linked to renting and owning, respectively, are also closely connected to a family’s class position, as well as to social reproduction and advancement towards the desired standard of the middle class. For a migrant family, a permanent home is of great importance for the reproduction of its middle- class status, since owning an urban home can also affect the future of the family’s children, mainly in terms of education and prestige, and provide a secure foothold in the city. On the other hand, renters do not enjoy the same social stability as owners do: they live in a precarious present (let alone their future prospects or the social reproduction and advancement of the family) and are perceived as temporary residents, or even outsiders. An owned house further affects a family’s social status and networks as it allows families to be considered as “local”, which is fundamental for the acquisition of social status and prestige: the local “Shanghainese”, in fact, are perceived as being of a higher quality than non-local citizens. The label “外地人” (wàidìrén) can be associated with ideas of rootlessness, temporariness and out of placeness, unlike the “上海人” (Shànghǎirén), who are perceived as having a natural right to claim a sense of belonging to the city [9] Mrs Ye explained: “As far as middle-class migrants are concerned, the difference between 外地人 (wàidìrén) and 当地人 (dāngdìrén), i.e. ‘the local residents’, is still present. However, these two groups are not fixed and immutable. The Shànghǎirén group can be divided into at least three categories: wàidìrén, who have lived in Shanghai for years; second generation Shànghǎirén (born and raised in Shanghai, but born from wàidì parents); and 老上海人 (lǎo Shànghǎirén), those who belong to ancient Shanghainese families.” Purchasing a house is a very important step towards being viewed as a Shanghai resident, as an individual or a family who belongs to the city of Shanghai. My respondents were aspiring middle class and most of them were highly educated: “We are not any different from the local middle class in terms of quality. But until we show them, we belong here, we will always be labeled as wàidìrén,” Mr Deng concluded.

It is clear that a shift of the home from one’s rural hometown to Shanghai is beneficial to the families because it affects a family’s sense of belonging and upward mobility, while temporariness is an enemy of social development and status. However, both individual/ family identity and place identity are complex and dynamic concepts, multiple and unfixed, as well as relational [9, 27]. This is why integration and permanence are very important for the formation of a family’s urban identity, since permanence facilitates the process of network creation. For temporary residents, not only is this process harder to achieve, but the networks around them are also a reflection of their own precarious lives, and therefore such networks contribute less to the social advancement of the family [23]. Apart from establishing a sense of belonging, owning property can also boost an individual’s sense of confidence, not only because s/he can identify with a valuable asset, but also because such a purchase implies economic success and personal achievement. All these feelings are closely connected with concepts of face and respectability. By contrast, renters feel the constant pressure of not being able to purchase a family home and experience this pressure as a personal failure toward the family. This is especially the case among men since in Chinese families it is the male members who traditionally bear the responsibility of providing for a family home. Renters feel a huge amount of pressure, especially when they are thinking about starting a family or already have small kids, as house and education are closely connected in China.

In China, the purchase of a house usually occurs during key transitional moments in life. In fact, individuals mainly buy houses concurrently with the following life events: marriage, birth of the first child, and a child starting school (in China, you can send your child only to the neighborhood school; therefore, it is a normal practice to move to a neighborhood that is known for having a good school). The social norm of buying a home shortly before or after marriage is so strong that a couple getting married without first buying a home is said to have a “naked marriage” (裸婚, luòhūn). As purchasing a house corresponds to certain life events, friends’ and families’ expectations are also an important element to consider when analyzing the issue from the perspective of social status. Not satisfying the expectation of having the means to purchase housing for one’s family may cause an individual to lose face, while satisfying such expectations can lead to an increase in social status. The story of one of the families (the Shi family) I visited casts light on how expectations can affect an individual’s rep utation among the family. “My husband, originally from rural Anhui, was not able to meet my parents’ expectations of purchasing a house after the wedding. Eventually, my parents ‘solved the situation’ by securing a house for us in Shanghai, while my husband put in a considerable amount of money for the complete renovation of the property. In spite of his financial efforts, my family never fully accepted the fact that he was not able to purchase a home for his new family, and he is seen by them as low in quality, 素质低 (sùzhì dī), and with no sense of ‘face’ and responsibility.”

This event clearly affected Mr Shi’s relationship with his family and extended family.

Another important advantage that home owning provides relates to hùkǒu. Many consumers who do not have a hùkǒu household registration in the city wish to buy a home so they can obtain more hùkǒu-related rights, such as their child being allowed to attend a public school and eventually take the university entrance exams locally, or to receive heavily subsidized healthcare. Owning a house is even more important for migrants with rural origins who are struggling to secure middle-class belonging and are facing the fear of falling back into disadvantaged class groups: a house, in fact, confers many social and financial advantages, all of which contribute to gaining face, status and security. Therefore, renters have far more disadvantages than homeowners and feel all the pressure of not being able to secure a stable and prestigious future for their family.

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Symbolic Consumption

Status, house and home

Homeownership and status

“In contemporary China, greeting a friend with questions such as: ‘Have you bought a house yet?’ is not an uncommon practice, which also demonstrates how housing is nowadays considered one of the primary assets in judging an individual’s well-being, especially that of Chinese men. Purchasing property is also closely connected with marriage, due to the principle that one of the main conditions for marriage is the man’s wealth – the principal reflection of which is housing.” As the words of Mr Tong suggest, in Chinese culture the house carries great symbolic meaning. Home ownership is, first and foremost, a clear status indicator, and therefore non-homeowners are often perceived to be part of the lower class, as opposed to the aspired middle class. The main reason for purchasing property may not be the same for everyone, but my fieldwork with migrant families in Shanghai clearly shows that Chinese people purchase housing to satisfy three main purposes: 必需品 (bìxūpǐn), necessity, 面子 (miànzi), face (symbolic), and投资方式 (tóuzī fāngshì), investment (economic), with these purposes reflecting and producing class status.

In one of our conversations, Mr Liang told me:

“Individuals who purchase housing for necessity are often referred to as 刚需族 (gāngxū zú) or ‘group of people who buy a house for mere necessity’. This group sees home owning as a need: it is a way to secure one’s foothold in the city and gain a ‘feeling of safety’, 安全感 (ānquán gǎn).”

As Mrs Tong explained, face is a further purpose that purchasing a house can help to satisfy.

“A saying in China goes: ‘because one needs face in death one endures wrongs in life’ (死要面子活受罪, sǐ yào miànzi huó shòu zuì). This means that Chinese people cannot let others look down on them up to the point of often lowering the quality of their own life. In Chinese culture, it is essential to gain others’ respect, to have others say to you that ‘you have face’ (有面子, yǒu miànzi)”. Individual identity is often projected onto material objects and possessions: you are who you are because of what you have. The image created of oneself may be more important than the real Self. As famous actor and director Feng Xiaogang once noted, in China many residential neighborhoods and buildings have foreign names, such as “California waterfront”, or they use words such as “exotic notable community”, “French garden” and “Mediterranean style”, but it is hard to imagine there would be a “Suzhou” neighborhood in Western countries3 . He was pointing out that many Chinese real estate agents and developers use foreign names to appeal to Chinese consumers’ “face” psychology and give them face, “给面子” (gěi miànzi). The director’ s words depict a realistic image of the housing market in contemporary China, showing how ideas of status are strongly connected to ideas of home and house, which perfectly align with the popular saying: “No purchase of house, no purchase of face”, “买房子就是买面子” (mǎi fángzi jiùshì mǎi miànzi). As previously stated, there are certain possessions that confer more status on individuals than others. Clearly, in contemporary Chinese society the house is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, means for the creation of a respectable image of oneself.

As mentioned above, in China a house carries a lot of meaning, so that Mrs Mao admitted:

“When looking for a wife, if future parents-in-law ask the man if he owns a house, if he answers yes or no the impression of him is not the same. When moving to the city, renting a house instead of owning it clearly affects other people’s perception of that individual. When asked if one owns a house in the center or in the suburbs of the city, the answer will affect that individual’s status and reflect on their ‘face’.” Nowadays, housing prices are sky-high, but individuals and families still want to purchase a house, and they want a house that is “respectable”, although they are already living in one.

Real estate is also a preferred channel of investment: whoever does not own a house wants to purchase one, and whoever owns one wants to purchase more. A house is a very powerful possession: the number of houses and the location of one’s own property contribute to the individuals’ social status. Furthermore, as Mr Mao explained: “Chinese consumers have very few places to invest their money, so most people invest in a house, which is the most valuable family asset and worth much more than income alone.” A house, therefore, can directly affect a family’s economic and symbolic capital, both of which are elements that define middle- class identity and status. The acquisition of status is especially important for migrant families who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, as it is a means to secure a place in the urban middle class.

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Home-décor and Status

The analysis has focused until now on how owning property together with the location of the property can affect an individual’s or a family’s social image. However, the concept of face is also connected to interior decoration and to the choice of furniture, both of which contribute to a family’s social status. If it is true that a house is the material projection of a family’s image and status, this is also true for the objects that are inside the home: “When a guest walks into a home, what s/he sees is the image that the family wishes to convey to others,” Mrs Wang explained. Interior decoration is, in fact, a public display of personal belongings: it affects social relations and establishes relations with an ideal outside world. A home’s decorative elements represent an important insight into a family’s identity, indicating social aspiration, material comfort and lineage. Such elements also serve the important purpose of class consolidation, in that domestic objects are indicators of social distinction. Material identity is, in Chinese society, as important as personal identity.

The importance of interior decoration and its connection to status is a somewhat recent idea in Chinese society. It was only following Deng Xiaoping’s privatization reforms that houses and homes started to provide an important insight into a Chinese family’s status and social position [2]. Families learned that housing and home decoration played a pivotal role in defining their social identity; however, the way they display their family prestige has changed widely over the years. From the beginning of Deng Xiaoping’s era through the 1980s, the general attitude towards home decoration was that of modesty. Home decoration details such as curtains or parquet floors were often avoided, considered as extravagant. However, by the 1990s men and women started to use their homes to display their social status, financial success and cultural sophistication. Furthermore, home decoration magazines started to circulate, bookstores devoted entire sections to interior decoration, and even the government devoted an evening show to home renovation. Great importance was given to good taste, which families had the chance to display in their homes [2]. In the light of all these changes, new landscapes of living emerged. If home buyers in the 1980s focused almost entirely on the house as a physical space, today urban residents look for more: a green neighborhood, cultural taste and new lifestyle aspirations. These new emerging concepts of living are another consequence of private home ownership: a domestic space, apart from displaying a family’s social status and wealth, is also an indicator of cultural refinement and life orientation [2]. Within Chinese homes, more specifically those of my participants, it is possible to identify certain key decorative elements that are perceived as prestigious. These elements are usually either of high economic value or else they belong to traditional Chinese culture. In my many visits to migrants’ homes, I had numerous opportunities to see their choices for decoration and their taste in ornamental objects. Chinese families often display their most precious belongings together with family portraits, in order to convey an idea of a well-off and happy family. Such objects include traditional Chinese artifacts or even renowned foreign brands. Mrs Tong told me: “Nowadays, even furniture can ‘have face’ and may affect the image that the family conveys and how the family is perceived by others. It is common to find the label ‘有面 子的家具’ (yǒu miànzi de jiājù), or ‘furniture which has face’, for what Chinese see as ‘respectable’ furniture, and it is common to find virtual enquiries on Baidu along the lines of: ‘Does this piece of furniture ‘have face’’?” This question, though, is difficult to answer because the qualities of the items that are necessary for a product to have face are subject to change.

“In traditional Chinese homes, the most precious element was wood”, explained Mrs Mao. In Chinese home decoration, the prevalent type of wood used is mahogany, 红木 (hóngmù) in Chinese, or other dark-colored types of wood. In contemporary homes, “ 实木家具” (shímù jiājù), real wood furniture, is still considered very precious and is often labeled as a premium kind of “furniture which has face”. In my participants’ homes, wood was by far the most dominant furnishing. All homes had wooden floors and most pieces of furniture were made of dark wood. The best sofas are also made of dark brown leather to match the color of the furniture.

When entering the families’ homes, in addition to furniture, three other items struck my attention as important face-giving items: crystal lamps, precious tea sets and huge flat-screen TVs. “Most homes have yellow or pink crystal lamps, colors that have auspicious meanings in the traditional Feng Shui philosophy”, Mrs Mao went on explaining. Furthermore, lighting is an important element in Chinese home decoration theories, as it is able to affect the mood of the family and even other aspects of the residents’ lives, such as their careers (TK Collins 1999). According to the theory of the Five Elements, yellow is associated with the element of 土 (tǔ), soil, which produces gold. Therefore, yellow lamps are believed to irradiate the home with wealth and good fortune. Pink and purple are also very popular due to the expression “招桃花” (zhāo táohuā), where “peach blossoms” refer to marriage. Each family has its own style, classical or modern, but crystal was a favorite material for lamps because the glittering and sparkly nature of crystal brightens up the domestic space, irradiating it with light and good fortune. Crystal is also known as “Feng Shui stone”: each type of crystal represents a different frequency of energy and produces different magnetic fields. Therefore, in Chinese homes, lamps are often quite noticeable, and they are a piece of decoration that is usually proudly showed to the guests by whoever is in charge of the home tour.

Tea sets are a further important element in Chinese homes, as they refer to China’s traditional culture and are a symbol of respect, 尊敬 (zūnjìng), of the country’s ancient traditions. For five thousand years, tea culture has been the symbol of Oriental civilization, and it has always been deeply rooted in Chinese culture [28]. During Chinese traditional festivals, tea is served to family and guests as a symbol of blessing, longevity and gratitude. Tea sets are the closest “partner” of tea and symbolize respect for traditional culture, family and harmony. The quality of tea and tea sets are also closely linked to perceptions of a family’s status and respectability. However, the most important item in an ideal Chinese living room is the television set: the bigger the set, the better it is for a family’s “face”. The TV is one of the forms of entertainment for visiting family and guests, and therefore it is often at the center of attention: as guests walk into the living room, the eyes go straight to the huge, flat-screen television. Therefore, choosing a fashionable and expensive TV is important for the image of the family, conveying the impression of wealth and economic power. This new way of living, which combines families, culture and status, informs emerging ideas about lifestyle today in China and highlights the importance of the home in the process of upward mobility of both individuals and families. In short, home décor directly affects a family’s identity, class and social status as well as its networks.

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Network Reinforcement: Family Reunifications and Reunions

The effects the migration processes have on the characteristics and dynamics of family structure, and on the family’s class and status, are multiple and intertwined. Family becomes a central element within migratory networks and chains and plays a decisive role all the way from the start up to the integration of the family in the new context [29]. Migrants are widely affected by what surrounds them, not only on a macro-social level (economic, political and social contexts), but even more on the household level and in migratory situations; the place of destination often acquires a predominant role compared to the place of origin. This is true for China’s rural-to-urban migrants especially, because moving to the city is the only way for individuals and families to achieve middle-class belonging. This fact explains why my participants were so strongly oriented towards embracing an urban identity and arranging their lives according to middle-class scripts of family life. The new urban context represents a priceless source of social advancement opportunities, which the original rural setting, as well as migrants’ original rural identity, cannot provide. However, the process of adaptation to the new urban social scripts implies challenges and adjustment, both of which can be better overcome with the aid of a strong and present kinship network. Extended family, especially the parents of the couple, often plays a very important role in the nuclear family’s dynamics. It is common for family reunification in the city to occur when the couple’s first child is born. As Mr Mao explained: “Elderly parents are usually actively involved in the nuclear family life, from the wedding to the raising of the grandchildren. In Chinese families, it is common for grandparents to take care of the grandchildren while parents focus on work. When the elderly parents do not live in the same house as the couple, the couple usually goes to their house for meals. This way, the couple can focus more on their work.” Therefore, a reunification and urbanization of the household is highly desirable as a way of providing accommodation for grandparents and the care for children that helps to secure the reproduction of the middle-class nuclear family. The fact that the whole family often plans to reside in the same house, or at least in a way that the parents live very close to the nuclear family’s apartment, will often affect housing choices and the purchasing power of the nuclear family. If the house-hunting plan succeeds, the result will be an increase in the social status and in the family’s social advancement in the long run. The Wang family, for example, is looking to purchase a house that would suit the whole household in view of the birth of the couple’s first child. However, housing prices are impeding the realization of this goal in the short term. In such situations of family reunification, purchasing property is preferable to renting, not only in order to start climbing the property ladder for reasons of stability and a sense of belonging, but also for reasons of reputation. It can be argued that reunification is possible even in a rented home, but in China the perception of the nuclear family by the extended family is completely different with an owned home. Furthermore, as my interviews as well as informal conversations confirm, the “renting solution” is often criticized by the extended family and seen as a far from ideal solution, put into practice only because of the lack of a better alternative. Mrs Wang stated: “Achieving a full family urbanization by stably residing in an owned home in the city is a source of great pride and miànzi for the rural extended family, who views such an achievement as an important family accomplishment.”

Another way owning a home in the city can affect a nuclear family’s social status within an extended kinship network is by permitting the family to host extended family reunions, for example Chinese traditional festivals.

Many migrants return home infrequently, typically once a year during the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival. Processes of separation and reunion are pivotal to Chinese household and family dynamics, especially during calendrical festivals, such as the Chinese New Year [30]. Most times it is the migrant family that goes back to the village, but families with stable properties in the city often become hosts of New Year’s celebrations, an event which is a great source of pride. Such processes of separation and reunion discursively construct identification with a certain place, which in this case means the formation of a sense of social belonging in the city of Shanghai [30]. This is why such rituals and celebrations represent a very strong statement for the family, highlighting the fact that the nuclear family has successfully reached an urbanization of its identity and is on the right path for securing a social reproduction of the family status, and possibly of the extended family as well. The frequency of family reunions depends on multiple factors, among which are social class and economic conditions. Being able to host extended family members in one’s own home is also a way to facilitate family reunions and reinforce the family network, as confirmed by Mrs Shi:

“This year, we finally achieved our family’s homeownership goals and purchased an apartment in the Minhang district. This achievement means a lot to our family and extended family, not only because it has brought us a great sense of security, but also because it has brought our family closer. My husband’s parents and relatives live in a village in Anhui province, while my parents moved to Shanghai with us many years ago. The fact that our extended families live in two different places makes things a little complicated during Chinese traditional festivals, when families are expected to be together and celebrate under the same roof. Up to this year, we have always alternated, spending one Spring Festival in Shanghai and one in Anhui. However, my mother has been having health issues for many years and it is not ideal for her to be away from home for long periods of time. Therefore, when we go to Anhui, my parents are alone in Shanghai. My husband and I have been thinking of having his family over to stay at our place during New Year’s celebrations, but they never seemed to take our rented home too seriously and preferred to celebrate in their family home in the village. But now that we are homeowners, they have suddenly decided to spend the holidays in Shanghai. I was really happy and so were my parents: for the first time our families were reunited, and we spent one of the best Spring Festivals I can remember. ”What emerges from Mrs Shi’s story is that homeownership can have the power of making a family stronger and closer: her husband’s family finally acknowledged her and her husband’s status in the city, as well as their new urban identity and belonging. Furthermore, as seen in the previous chapter, migration can lead to an increase in social status and create a gap in miànzi with the left-behind family. An owned property in the city allows migrants to make a stronger statement in terms of difference in status and personal success, and it represents a stepping-stone to possible social advancement for the entire household. These interviews confirm that we are facing a different generation of migration: today, migration is an accepted path to a better life. It seems that many migrants are driven less by poverty and more by opportunity. Migrants also have looser ties to home and come and go according to personal schedule, not according to farming or lunar calendars. They are more ambitious and less content and there is a much stronger focus on career. Hùkǒu still remains important, especially once children are born, but many migrants agree today that there are other means to obtaining a better status, for example, by earning more money and purchasing a house. Increasing status, belonging to a strong middle class and achieving a stable life in the city are some of the main goals for these migrant families, and home owning is a very important step in achieving these goals.

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Discussion and Conclusion

“What is the significance of house and home for aspiring middle- class migrant families?” was the main research question behind this research. The answer is that housing stands at the center of contemporary Chinese society’s hierarchy of privileges, representing the nucleus around which middle-class consolidation and reproduction processes revolve. In the words of the families who took part in this project, the purchase of a family home brings class-related legitimation and power, which secures homeowners a strong place within the widely heterogeneous Chinese middle class. The subjects of this research all belong to the first genera tion of a new middle class in China, a situation which makes both their collective and individual identities extremely uncertain: their identity, in fact, is not firmly rooted in a long, ongoing process of class continuity passed on from generation to generation [31]. The heterogeneity of the Chinese middle class [17,18], as well as the precariousness of middle-class membership, is cause for the need to create strong symbolic boundaries to demarcate both intra-class and inter-class differences [4]. My analysis of the heterogeneity of the middle class, as evident also among my participant families, suggests that homeownership is a crucial factor in the production of class distinction. In fact, the two major categories of “homeowners” and “renters” among the Chinese middle class, which were described during my fieldwork interviews as respectively “exclusive” and “common”, seem to interact in an interdependent symbolic relationship that contributes to determining meanings of class identity [4]. The result of this interaction is that homeownership is primary within processes of middle-class consolidation and reproduction owing to the fact that homeowners are entitled to invaluable social privileges to which renters do not have access, as shown in the preceding analysis. Furthermore, what allows aspiring middle-class individuals to secure distinction within such a precarious class group is the possibility of enjoying inclusions and exclusions that can limit or promote social mobility [20]. For the Chinese middle class, I argue that the strongest asset that allows for the most significant inclusions is the house. Indeed, as I have demonstrated throughout the article, the distinction and privileges that come with homeownership are narrow and exclusive [1]. This approach to understanding class membership and identity, which centers on the symbolic construction of inter-class and intra-class boundaries, provides insight into the relational aspects of class, as class is “something that in fact happens”. Using Bourdieu’s words, “class is not something given but something to be done”. This is why aspiring middle-class migrant families work so hard day by day to build their future and to secure their place within the uncertain world of the Chinese middle class. For aspiring middle-class migrants, homeownership is key to securing urban belonging. Individuals and families with rural backgrounds met in Shanghai believe that purchasing a house is the principal way of gaining a sense of security in the city, both personal and in terms of social class, and of laying the foundations for a middle-class reproduction of the family. Middle-class membership is based on multiple factors, not on income alone: economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital all contribute to determine middle-class belonging [4]. The strongest asset that encompasses all of these species of capital is housing, which is why migrants use housing strategies to secure an urban middle-class identity. Homeownership brings together status, social class and networks, affecting middle-class migrants’ urban experiences.

My analysis of class and status enhancement strategies suggest that access to housing has become a major discriminant between social actors and that it often determines social status more than income alone does. Housing is, therefore, a crucial element in class reproduction, and homeownership is a very powerful means of achieving social distinction, thus explaining the decision to place housing at the center of class reproduction analysis in contemporary Chinese society. This article has specifically investigated how middle-class identity can be affirmed through property, consumption and networks, which correspond to the essential components of a dwelling: house, home and family. An owned home can benefit a family’s class and social status because it facilitates the urbanization of its identity and conveys an idea of permanence and stability to the Self and others, thereby benefiting the family’s middle-class reproduction. A house also allows the family to be perceived by other Shanghai residents as “local” as opposed to outsiders, thereby strengthening its urban networks. An owned home provides the family, especially its male members, with a sense of security and achievement in fulfilling their responsibilities towards the family. A house also provides many hùkǒu-related rights. All these advantages that homeownership bring are evidently even more meaningful for wàidìrén with rural origins, who are struggling to secure a place in the city and in the new Chinese middle class. The significance of home owning is also particularly relevant for the members of this specific social group: they are educated and relatively well off, but they struggle because of social and institutional dynamics which cause them to worry about losing their newly acquired social status.

The brand of the home and the home décor are also an important part of a family’s statement about its social status. Consumption and lifestyle are seen by families as a means of enjoying and securing middle-class identity and social distinction. When speaking of décor in China, the most prestigious elements are those which demonstrate the possession of high economic or cultural capital, important elements in the status discourse and in middle-class belonging. Therefore, home décor can affect the sense of Self and the social relationships which are formed or cultivated starting from the home. Class identity can also be negotiated and affirmed through social networks. An owned home can benefit the nuclear family’s ability to negotiate and build social relationships in ways that help it sustain and build a middle-class identity. Many times, processes of migration involve the extended family, especially the nuclear family’s parents, who represent a very valuable asset within a household’s inter-generational dynamics. Furthermore, residing in a family-owned property in the city is perceived by kin and by social interlocutors as an important family achievement. Owing to ideas about status and personal realization, an owned home is able to attract the extended family to the city, instead of the nuclear family to the village. Being able to host celebratory dinners during traditional Chinese festivals further reinforces the family statement that it belongs to the urban middle class, which brings pride to the entire household while enabling it to elide village contacts and concentrate on urban ones instead.

In short, house, home and class status are closely connected and play an essential role in the strategies and experiences of aspiring middle-class migrant families, who perceive homeownership as the principal way of securing urban and middle-class belonging. Furthermore, owning a home plays a pivotal role in the process of adaptation to the city, shaping both the individual’s and family’s class identity and strategies for middle-class reproduction of the family in the long run. This article contributes to the literature on rural to urban migration in China by giving voice to a social group that has until now been widely overlooked: middle- class migrants with rural origins. China’s contemporary social and economic relations have produced new social groups that are struggling to determine their identity [31]. However, the majority of relevant studies on rural to urban migration have focused their research on working-class migrants (农民工, nóngmíngōng), for the most part excluding middle-class migrants from the mosaic of the internal migration literature [9,14,24,31]. This evident gap in the China-related ethnographic literature on rural to urban migration has caused an elision of an important topic: housing aspirations among migrants.

Indeed, relevant studies that have dealt with working-class migrants have merely looked at accommodation strategies and challenges e.g. [12] due to the precarious economic conditions of the subjects. Therefore, the only literature that has investigated housing aspirations in contemporary Chinese society is the one that examines the Chinese urban middle class. It goes without saying that, although similarities exist between the urban middle class and the middle class with rural origins, homeownership for aspiring middle-class migrants with rural origins acquires different shades of meaning due to their disadvantaged background. Nevertheless, relevant literature on the Chinese middle class has associated ideas of class identity with middle class consumption patterns. As Tomba [20] clearly explained, although there are factors of individuality in class identity and formation processes, the middle class in China “appears to shape their status around a new set of collective interests”, especially in relation to consumption and knowledge resources. When looking at the Chinese middle class, Zhang Li [15] also placed the focus of her analysis on consumption, dealing extensively with the interests of the middle class as homeowners. Further studies, such as those by D Davis [1], D Goodman [17] & Y Miao [18], have also provided exhaustive analyses on the Chinese middle class by attempting categorizations and definitions as well as by analyzing middle class consumption and homeownership patterns. The present study has integrated the two bodies of literature (rural to urban migration and middle-class studies) in order to share the perspectives of the social group comprised of middle-class migrants with rural origins within middle-class reproduction dynamics. Therefore, this article has provided a new framework for analyzing distinction and middle-class reproduction, while also contributing to a second body of literature that studies migration and urbanization dynamics in China. Ultimately, homeownership legitimates middle- class membership and brings power and privileges to the families who can achieve this dream. House and home, therefore, are key to accessing the privileges that promote social mobility and advancement and are central to middle-class identity consolidation and reproduction processes [32-34].

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The Silent Takeover of Power by the Far-Right-Juniper Publishers

The Silent Takeover of Power by the Far-Right

Within a timeframe of fewer than ten years, the world has witnessed a significant shift from progressive governments towards the far-right across Europe and several other Western societies [1-2]. Amongst the countries who have made this move, three, in particular, call our attention: Brazil, Italy and the US. The common feature among them is the fact that their respective emerging leaders have brought to the surface quite similar political discourses. Whilst Donald Trump has hailed ‘America First’, in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro has fostered the motto ‘Pátria Amada Brasil’ (Brazil, beloved nation), whereas, in Italy, Matteo Salvini defends ‘Prima gli italiani’ (First the Italians) [3-5]. More than catchy political slogans, these three analogous discourses reveal a particular world view advocated by the respective political leaders centred mostly on strong nationalistic values. In line with that, these discourses also convey the embedded message of the inauguration of a completely different and contrasting political agenda in comparison to their predecessors. Instead of welcoming and integrationist external policies, their focus has rather shifted primarily inwards. The discourses embed a binary perspective centered on ‘us’ and ‘them’, where nationalistic ideals have become predominant above everything else, whereas the needs and demands of the less privileged became secondary or simply disregarded. See, for example, Donald Trump’s implementation of stricter immigration policies that have caused the separation of young children from their parents [6]. In Brazil, the election of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, rather than uniting an already divided country, has deepened such divisionism [7]. As for Italy, Matteo Salvini had promised to deport at least half a million ‘illegal’ immigrants claiming that it was meant to tackle the core of the country’s social problems [8- 9]. Additionally, it is also relevant to highlight that these political discourses have emerged in the context of the so-called post-truth era, where one of its major characteristics is that critical thinking and standpoints challenging the ideas advocated by far-right political leaders are often framed as ‘fake news’. Indeed, in this regard, there are numerous examples where Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro have claimed that certain criticisms to their policies were simply ‘fake news’ and, consequently, delegitimised them [10-11]. Furthermore, this ideology has also fueled the approach to turn political adversaries into enemies, since they do not share similar world views. However, what is usually absent from the debates regarding the recent emergence to power of far-right leaders in several Western societies, is the fact that many people did not notice them arising. Not the civil society, not opinion makers or political analysts, and neither the mainstream political elite in many countries.

Not long ago, these three political leaders were practically outsider figures in their respective countries, whereas nowadays they are either influential voices or the ones setting the tone of the political debate and agenda. Within that, it is not difficult to recall that not many people foresaw the real chances of Donald Trump winning the US presidency in 2016 or even the nomination within the Republican Party [12]. In Brazil, it was not that different from the US on this aspect. Although Jair Bolsonaro had served as a congressman for twenty-seven years, initially, his candidacy did not enjoy widespread credibility [7]. Similar to Brazil and the US, in Italy, there were also voices claiming that, most probably, Matteo Salvini would not become such a powerful and influential political figure [13]. Nonetheless, political predictions can always be deceiving, and even electoral projections based on opinion polls are subjected to mistakes or inaccuracy once the ballot boxes are actually opened and the votes counted. But the important fact is that this similar phenomenon of emerging far-right political figures in the three countries reveals that, in fact, society did not fully realize (or gave real credit to the possibility of) their successful endeavor. Indeed, here lays the core issue. Failing to foresee the efficacy of their discourse in establishing strong bonds with voters’ expectations or their views of the current political scenario, has proved crucial. Whilst the traditional major players had the mainstream media spotlights directed towards them and, consequently, attracting people’s attention, the three aforementioned politicians were making their move to overtake their opponents in the key moment in the electoral race. Moreover, since Barack Obama’s successful election in 2008, it should not be new to most political contenders that the internet and social media platforms can play an important and decisive role in the fate of election campaigns [14]. Within that, different from their opponents, the three political leaders (Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Matteo Salvini) have strongly explored, respectively, the full potential of Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook to leverage their campaign, spreading the word about their political views and connecting with voters.

However, it cannot be taken out of the equation that the occurrence of certain controversial events might have influenced voters’ mindset in regard to both Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro campaigns and leading towards their successful election [15]. Eventually, in the absence of these events (i.e. allegedly external influence in the US election and mass dissemination of fake news via WhatsApp in Brazil), the final result could have been considerably different in both countries. The problem is that we will never know and, consequently, we have to deal with the concrete facts rather than with the suppositions. Thus, dealing with the concrete fact that these leaders have been democratically elected, it becomes clear that the rise of far-right political discourse in Western societies might have comprised a phenomenon not fully acknowledged by many people. It also leaves an important hint to progressive political forces across different societies, meaning that underestimating improbable outsider or emerging political figures might not be a good strategy. Therefore, the silent takeover of power by the far-right political leaders in Brazil, Italy, and the US has been characterised, first, by major progressive political forces failing to see them coming. In other words, ignoring the possibility of their victory has represented a big strategic mistake. Second, similar to what Barack Obama successfully achieved in the past, the far-right candidates have been able not only to notice but also to explore the wide array of communication possibilities granted by social media platforms in order to shorten the distance between themselves and the voters to convey their discourse. Finally, the current geopolitical scenario is increasingly challenging and complex. They encompass events such as, for instance, the global financial crisis caused by Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy in September 2008, the end of the supercycle of commodities that had boosted the growth of emerging economies, and other global social phenomena such as human displacement and mass immigration in Europe [17-20]. The three political leaders seem to have managed to navigate better in this changing world than their opponents. Most probably, not because they had better solutions to face such challenges, but mainly due to their capacity to articulate discourses that have captured voters’ disappointments and converted them into their nationalistic slogans as the solution for voters’ anxieties and uncertainties concerning the future.

Nonetheless, one of the major problems with the enactment of this world view is the fact that it increasingly fosters the lifting of strong borders (sometimes even physical and not only based on restrictive laws) as the sole and prime solution to tackle global issues, whereas integration, solidarity and diplomatic dialogue are left behind [21]. As a consequence, we are witnessing not only the silent takeover of power by the far right but also the emergence of increasingly divided societies where the discourse ‘us’ versus ‘them’ is becoming prevalent. Furthermore, in a strongly binary world, as have been fostered by many political leaders, very little room (if any) is left for diversity to flourish, for greater cooperation, mutual understanding, acceptance and constructive debates.

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