Portuguese Journal of Social Science - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2014

The happiness economics literature shows that, contrary to what happens in the long run, subjective well-being (SWB) and income evolve together in the short term. The aim of the present article is to examine whether this result holds in Europe, and in particular in Portugal, during the 2000s. The empirical study is based on the European Social Survey (ESS) micro-data, merged with Eurostat macroeconomic data (rate of change in gross domestic product (GDP), unemployment and inflation). Following the literature, our hypothesis is that self-reported well-being increases in expansionary periods and decreases in recessive ones. Results show that, while the association between well-being and macroeconomic fluctuations are as expected from 2002 to 2008, this is no longer the case when the 2010 data is included in the regression models. In fact, well-being increased in ten out of fifteen European countries after the 2008 crisis. Further examination of the Portuguese data shows that people of all age, education levels, health condition and employment status declared to be happier in 2010 when compared to 2008. Such a puzzling result may be explained by expectations and adaptation processes as well as by an increased awareness, possibly prompted by the crisis, that not only income but also social relationships count in life. Our results thus broadly confirm happiness economics findings: well-being is not exclusively linked with income.

The audit, evaluation and regulation of education systems is becoming the rule in Europe, strongly increasing demand for data production and even considered by some as a major policy-development in itself. Data production and its use produce changes in the governing of the education and training systems throughout Europe, contributing to the Europeanization of the national educational systems and to the empowerment of some international organizations, like the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In the moment that European and global goals around quantified goals related to education are being drawn, there are some warnings regarding excessive focus on measurable results and thus the risk of losing sight of what is truly important in education and promotion of educational success. Early School Leaving (ESL) is the indicator used by Eurostat to measure school dropout and by the European Union to establish targets for education policies. It is an indicator that holds as reference the schooling-level certification and, as such, a measure of school achievement based on a comprehensive perspective of educational/training activities, including informal and non-formal learning.

Organizational structures in the cultural and creative sectors are being challenged by deep changes in the economic, cultural and governance frameworks in which they operate. These changes force them to assume increasingly differentiated strategies to face the challenges that thus emerge. This phenomenon increases the complexity of the analysis of the art worlds and it also brings new challenges to the conception of public policies for these sectors. This is particularly visible in the field of the performing arts; we see that happening when we observe the evolution of organizational structures, the economic and social behaviour of these agents, the professional paths and individual careers, as well as when we witness the indecisions and dilemmas in contemporary public policies in those fields.

Drawing on recent debates of sociology and economics of the arts and culture and departing from a typology previously suggested elsewhere by the authors to analyse theatrical structures, this article offers an empirical standpoint towards five dimensions of theatre groups work: organizational structure, artistic work, art world commitment, economic structure and geographical scope. Focusing on empirical research conducted with theatre groups in the Lisbon area, this study applies and operationalizes an analytical typology concerning the work of theatre groups and their structural organization in order to extract conclusions that may inform public policy decisions. Some reflections on todays crisis and the importance of public support for the performing arts are put forth.

The European Union is a transnational space, composed of national communities that are culturally and socially heterogeneous. In this context, all of these communities are invented and reinvented permanently as different cultural places within a global space. It is a process where heritage and museology acquires a prominent place in the cultural diversity affirmation inside Europe.

Although considered an example of political administrative centralism, Portugal is also, like other European countries, divided into regions. These regions, devoid of political power, remain in the minds of local leaders as cultural representations. In this article, I intend to analyse these leaders’ discourses and claims regarding the Leiria region. They use the cultural heritage as a resource to build discourses about regional identity.

The aim of this article is to acknowledge the implications of addressing the visual representation of the body from a critical and realistic discursive perspective. Besides allowing the identification of the mechanisms for the artist’s name and work-recognition this perspective has allowed the study of body representation as language and as a common system of meanings, not just giving attention to the forms of connection between the image and speech or written text, but also to the rules, practices and social relations that produced and governed them. Also it has permitted interrogation of and reflection on the relation between two important categories used in the analysis of self-representation, that is, the relation between ‘artist’s identity’ and ‘work’s identity’ in the cases of Helena Almeida and Jorge Molder, whose works are characterized and recognized by the specific use of the artists body figures.

The concept of reflexivity has become increasingly important in sociology, in close articulation with the analysis of social change. Scholars such as Beck, Giddens and Lash are key references in this regard, as they place the increase of reflexive processes at the heart of social transformation. This connection between social change and reflexivity has been evoked frequently in the sociological literature of the last decades, especially by authors studying reflexive modernization and individualization. The aim of this article is to discuss these approaches and their main implications for the study of personal reflexivity. It is argued that although the mentioned authors assign an important role to reflexivity, they lack the theoretical and operational grounds necessary to take the different dimensions of the concept into account. The tendency to simplify the past; the overlap between reflexivity and social change; the weak importance given to structure; the ambiguous nature of agenty dynamics; and the absence of a solid empirical grounding are discussed as factors that weaken their contributions.

A Esquerda Radical em Portugal e na Europa: Marxismo, Mainstream ou Marginalidade? / The Radical Left in Portugal and Europe: Marxism, Mainstream or Marginal?, Luke March and André Freire (2012) Vila do Conde: Quidnovi, 288 pp., ISBN 9789895549399, p/bk, Є13.99

The Routledge Handbook on Civil-Military Relations, Thomas C. Bruneau and Florina Cristiana Matei (eds) (2013) Routledge, London, 374 pp., ISBN: 9780415782739, h/bk, £140.

The Age of Dualization: The Changing Face of Inequality in Deindustrializing Societies, Patrick Emmenegger, Silja Häusermann, Bruno Palier and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser (2012) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 339 pp., ISBN: 9780199797899, p/bk, £27.50.