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The paper considers the phenomenon of Big Data through the work of Hannah Arendt on technology and on thinking. By exploring the nuance to Arendt’s critique of technology, and its relation to the social and political spheres of human activity, the paper presents a case for considering the richness of Arendt’s thought for approaching moral questions of Big Data. The paper argues that the nuances of Arendt’s writing contribute a sceptical, yet also hopeful lens to the moral potential of Big Data. The scepticism is due to the potential of big data to reduce humans to a calculable, and thus manipulatable entity. Such warnings are rife throughout Arendt’s oeuvre. The hope is found in the unique way that Arendt conceives of thinking, as having a conversation with oneself, unencumbered by ideological, or fixed accounts of how things are, in a manner which challenges preconceived notions of the self and world. If thinking can be aided by Big Data, then there is hope for Big Data to contribute to the project of natality that characterises Arendt’s understanding of social progress. Ultimately, the paper contends that Arendt’s definition of what constitutes thinking is the mediator to make sense of the morally ambivalence surrounding Big Data. By focussing on Arendt’s account of the moral value of thinking, the paper provides an evaluative framework for interrogating uses of Big Data.

This study sought to measure the impacts of five parasitic diseases on (1) mortality and natality, (2) school attendance and academic performance of children, (3) labor productivity on a rural plantation, and in an urban light‐manufacturing plant — all in St. Lucia, West Indies.

An understanding of the deep, intertwined roots of faith, family, nationalism, and capitalism within the United States is essential as we stand at the precipice of unprecedented global crises – climate change, economic inequality, and violence. Being raised in a devout, Evangelical Christian household provided unique insight into the political and cultural landscape of the Appalachian coal fields, where my extended family – who face persistent poverty, environmental pollution, and nonexistent support services – only expect relief from the crucible of life through death. Reflecting on the longstanding influence of the Protestant ethic (Weber, 2001/1930) and the consequences of widespread austerity-based policies (Piketty, 2014), I trace my experiences as being an insider/outsider within rural Appalachia and academia as a microcosm of the world that lies ahead, where global crises come home and local crises become planetary. Strategies to address impending global challenges demand analysis and action which extends beyond nations and national interests toward a planetary-level analysis. Specifically, planetary sociology brings a sociological analysis of the nuance and complexity of the “political, economic, organizational, and social” worlds into analysis with the, often ignored, natural worlds (Dahms, 2017). Thus, reflecting on the interconnected and interdependent levels of analysis – personal, familial, communal, national, and global – through the power of personal narratives serve as a beginning of planetary solutions.

The pursuit of innovation depends on creativity as a competency, yet creativity-especially in organizational settings — is difficult to understand, let alone manage. By consulting works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (art), Martin Heidegger (philosophy), and Hannah Arendt (political science), this article offers a composite account of creativity that suggests the aggressive pursuit of creativity in an organizational setting should include an expenditure of effort by leaders to create a social environment where participants can reflect upon and accept their own inner creativity, known as natality, as well as the creativity of others as a collective response to aspects of a reality we ordinarily overlook.

Life in Slovakia, as in most European countries, was formed under the strong influence of Christianity. It influenced the standards of society and determined general behaviour, relationships among people, and especially family life. Christianity emphasised long-term low mobility, resulting in a strong traditionalism that persists in many spheres of life today.

The paper deals with the child benefits system in the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic and Sweden.

The authors describe the systems as the key baseline for subsequent qualitative and quantitative comparison. An essential element is the quantitative comparison of child benefits using their statistically stationarised values.

The Czech and Slovak systems provide a comparable rate of coverage as the Swedish system regarding the payment of both types of benefits, i.e. child benefits and tax allowances, for the first and second child; however, from the third child, the individual differences are considerable. Albeit the concepts of Czech and Slovak systems are framed by the same historical origins and conceptual approach, they differ significantly, with Slovakia providing the lowest aggregate level of child benefits.

The paper provides insight into the child benefit systems in the respective countries. These systems are at the centre of attention of policymakers who are attempting to maintain birth rates and reduce child poverty. The Czech Republic has the lowest level of at-risk-of-poverty rates for persons under 16 years of age, while natality rates are comparable.

The fact that Mexican immigrants are healthier than their US-born co-ethnics has been well established. The subsequent observation that this health advantage diminishes over time and with increased acculturation is confirmed by only limited research and is severely compromised by several methodological shortcomings. Our analysis directly tests the acculturation hypothesis by investigating childhood health at an early age; specifically, we explore the relationships between birth-weight, primary language spoken, maternal nativity, and stature for age (SFA) among a sample of respondents to the NHANES III Youth survey data. Results indicate that a substantially large portion of the health advantages transferred from mother to child among the Mexican-born are due to birth-weight advantages. After controlling for health advantages conferred at birth among the foreign-born, language differences fully account for nativity differences between Mexican- and US-born mothers, suggesting an additional protective effect of Spanish-language maintenance and lending evidence to the hypothesis that language-based acculturation erodes health among Mexican Americans.

On Justification: Economies of Worth (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991/2006) was a synthetic and comprehensive parsing of common goods, goods that could and had to be justified in public. In response to Bourdieu’s critical sociology, they rather provided a robust and disciplined sociology of critique, the situated requirements of justification. They refused power and violence as integral to the operability of justification. They emphasized the ways in which conventions of worth afforded coordination, not their constitution of or by domination. They refused to make either capitalism, or the state, into primary motors of social order. Indeed, they refused social sphere, structure, or group as the ground of the good. They emphasized the cognitive capacities of agents. There was no passion, no desire, no bodily affect in these justified worlds. There wasn’t even any account of production of value, of children, or of money. And while they recognized the metaphysical aspect of the good and even used Christianity as a template for one of their cités, they rigorously excluded religion. The theory was designed to analyze moments of controversy, not quiescence or quietude. In his subsequent work, Boltanski aimed to address these absences. In this essay, we examine how Boltanski sought to restore love, violence, religion, production, and institution across five texts: Love and Justice as Competences (1990/2012), The New Spirit of Capitalism, co-authored with Eve Chiapello (1999/2007), The Foetal Condition: A Sociology of Engendering and Abortion (2004/2013), On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation (2009/2011), and La «Collection», Une Forme Neuve du Capitalisme – La Mise en Valeur Economique du Passé et ses Effets (2014) co-authored with Arnaud Esquerre.