Population density in countries of the world, retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population on October 25, 2007.
I have today completed my first assignment in demographics, a mostly empirical exercise in explaining global patterns of fertility, population growth and life expectancy through levels of socio-economic development, reflecting the theory of demographic transition. In this specific exercise, I looked at the relationship between population development and the degree of female schooling, urbanization and national income (GNP/capita). Surprising at first sight, but in line with much prominent research, I found female schooling to be most strongly related to suppressing population growth and increasing life expectancy.
My colleague Matthias just recently alerted me to this post, in which blogger Andrew Binstock discusses Dijkstra’s three golden rules for successful scientific research … and of course, as so often when natural scientists sit down and ponder about science, he discredits the social sciences as not being scientific at all … . While I really wish this controversy could be resolved once and for all, it probably will not be anytime soon – and maybe it can serve the social sciences as a constant reminder about the importance of empirical research and the scientific method.
Aside from overall welfare, equity, that is, the distribution of welfare amongst the population is a key concern of public policy. Recently, much of the debate has centered around the impact of global economic integration, increased competition and the transition to postindustrial and service-based economies in some of the world’s advanced nations on patterns of distribution in many societies. Many contributions have taken a rather critical stance, arguing that we are in an era of growing social inequality within and between societies. Respective empirical investigations have conventionally analyzed variables of income distribution to support this claim. In a recent article, Ruut Veenhoven (2005), a renowned scholar in the field of happiness research, has called this pessimistic view into question. He argues, that analyzing the dispersion of self-rated happiness in advanced societies instead of material wealth, one finds no support for a U-turn towards greater inequality – rather the opposite: in terms of subjective well-being we are doing better all the time.
In this essay for my third-year class “Social Inequality”, I briefly summarize Veenhoven’s argument and move on to critically review his work. Reflections on the concept and measurability of happiness are offered and some political implications are discussed.
Please find below the complete essay available for download.
In this semester’s transdisciplinary University Studies Course (USC) on “War and Culture” war movies were among the most frequently analyzed cultural texts. The class was held by communication scientist Prof. Dr. Clemens Schwender and historian Prof. Dr. Brendan Dooley at Jacobs University Bremen.
Ever since my participation in the summer university program Deutsche SchülerAkademie, where I attended a cultural studies class in 2002, the scientific exploration of popular texts, such as movies has been one of my key interests.
Social scientific research on popular texts, it appears to me, is curiously scarce, in contrast to a wide and methodologically well developed body of mass communication research, focusing largely on news media.
I have consequently decided to write my course assignment on the 2001 Disney pictures movie “Pearl Harbor”.
While I have discussed some of the methodological complications of empirical research on popular texts, the essay remains a largely critical, even journalistic exploration of the movie only hinting at a framework for a more systematic inquiry.
Working on the topic has further incited my interest in the analysis of popular texts. I am hoping to learn much more about possibilities for well-developed empirical research in popular culture and about the perspectives of the cultural studies in my graduate studies. An attempt to integrate these two things – the cultural studies perspective and sound empirical tests – is something I could imagine to be a very rewarding and fruitful enterprise.
Please find below the complete essay available for download.
