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This chapter sets out to establish the experiences of Germany's prostitutes during the first half of the twentieth century. It begins by examining the myths surrounding the prostitute woman during this time, and recasts her position in German society. It seeks to answer the following questions: Who was she? Where did she come from? What type of family did she come from? Why did she enter the sex trade? What did she think of her work? Did her life experiences differ from those of her non‐prostitute peers? In posing these questions, the chapter asks whether current interpretations of prostitutes' social position at this time, both before and after they entered the sex trade, are appropriate or accurate.

This chapter explores the factors that affect how people living in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, gain access to social capital. It studies two measures of social capital, namely the variety of different positions to which people have access and the access to occupations in the position generator. It briefly describes the social and economic background of Mongolia and looks at the diversity and influence of social resources in the country.

This chapter explores the extent to which a diverse population is supported in housing with care settings and examines the potential for social exclusion and isolation. Mixed tenure is explored as a scheme for encouraging diversity, as are features such as ‘pepperpotting’ and ‘tenure blind’ that have been employed in these settings. It identifies several challenges to supporting diversity, including a lack of clear information about the nature of such communities, tensions between residents from different socio-economic backgrounds, and a lack of tolerance of different styles. It examines the age-segregated nature of most housing and care environments and the implications of this for the concept of community. It identifies a range of other factors important to diversity such as the siting of community facilities, the availability of inclusive activities, and accessible design.

This chapter illustrates the socio-economic background of South Munster. Cork city was the vibrant heart of the highly commercialized south Munster region. The second largest city of Ireland had successfully established itself as a key port for provisions in the north Atlantic trade network. The driving force behind this process of commercialization was a combination of improving landlords and an interwoven stratum of merchants, shippers and agricultural middlemen. Consecutively, the rapid expansion of market capitalism created strong internal trade links between Cork city and the surrounding agricultural districts. An important result of commercialization was the tripartite division of rural society into predominantly Protestant upper class gentry of landowners, a largely Catholic middling order of farmers and cattlemen. It is exactly this type of advanced economic region, centred on a cosmopolitan city, which is associated with the emergence of radical republicanism in Ireland in the 1790s.

This chapter sheds light on several key aspects of terrorism and insurgency that have remained remarkably constant over time. Indeed, a comparison of today’s terrorists and insurgents with their predecessors shows that very little has changed in the demographics, socio-economic backgrounds, education, and recruitment, that have always driven men and women into these realms of political violence.

Chapter 3 draws from secondary materials and literature to review the history and evolution of social health insurance in contemporary China (since 1949), providing the historical background and the economic context of China’s social health insurance expansion in the 2000s. It shows that throughout the history of contemporary China, social welfare was never considered a basic social right for citizens. Despite dramatic changes in the coverage and generosity of social health insurance across different developmental periods, the stratification of Chinese social health insurance is persistent and was reinforced during the social health insurance expansion between 1999 and 2011. Moreover, the economic transition and the diversification of regional economies in China constitute the economic context, in which the Chinese central and local leaders’ motivations for and differential responses to social health insurance expansion take shape.

This chapter locates madrasas within the broader socio-political landscape of India. It focuses on three trends— marginalization of Muslims in India, growth of right wing Hindu movement, and the rise of a particular form of Islamic reformism amongst Muslims and its impact on women. It goes on to focus on Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat where the author conducted her fieldwork.

This chapter discusses the development of reference budgets in Belgium. It confirms how reference budgets offer a monetary benchmark, which illustrates the minimum costs of goods and services that individuals and families should have at their disposal in order to adequately participate in society. It also clarifies the standard adequate social participation and reference budgets that are designed for pre-defined “model families.” The chapter looks into the approach of the study, which is grounded in the theories of human need and the deliberations of experts and researchers who are guided by official guidelines and scientific literature. It discloses how focus groups are used to help establish the acceptability of the reference budgets, which comprises of people from different socio-economic backgrounds.

This chapter addresses the activities of a band of rebels headed by Joseph Cody and James Corcoran, who successfully operated in south Carlow and western Wexford between 1798 and 1804. It is argued here that this group is reflective of several further key aspects of post-1798 resistance. Most significantly, the support the group received from the local population demonstrates the extent of the widespread animosity towards the state that existed in southern Leinster. In turn, this disaffection is not primarily attributable to an atavistic desire on the part of local peasants to support ‘social bandits’. Instead, it resulted from efforts by the United Irishmen to politicize the region from 1797 on. An additional central role was played by the counter-revolutionary ‘white terror’, which persisted in much of south Leinster through 1801. This phenomenon, which had both political and sectarian aspects, ultimately crippled Dublin Castle's efforts at reconciliation with the defeated rebels.

By itself, cognitive variability would be an interesting curio, but no more. What makes it important is the potential it offers for adapting to task and situational demands. Realizing this potential, however, requires wise choices among the available alternatives. If children know two strategies—one faster, the other more accurate—they will benefit only if they choose the faster strategy when speed is most important and choose the more accurate when accuracy is. Choosing randomly will yield worse performance than always using the approach that on average yields the best outcome. Thus, the higher the quality of choices among alternative approaches, the greater the benefits of cognitive variability. How well do children choose? The conclusions of developmental psychologists have tended to emphasize the negative. Those interested in metacognition have focused on findings that children who have been taught new strategies often do not use them when they later are free to choose (e.g, Ghatala, Levin, Pressley, & Goodwin, 1986; Keeney, Cannizo, & Flavell, 1967; Paris & Lindauer, 1982; Williams & Goulet, 1975). Those interested in decision making have focused on situations in which children choose alternatives with lower expected values over ones with higher values (Byrnes & McClenny, 1994; Klayman, 1985). Those interested in planning have focused on situations in which children who have heard the virtues of planning extolled nonetheless fail to plan (Friedman, Scholnick, & Cocking, 1987). Those interested in scientific reasoning have emphasized cases in which children who have discovered advanced experimentation strategies nonetheless continue to choose less advanced ones (Kuhn, Amsel, & O’Laughlin 1988). These and related findings have led to generally negative conclusions about children’s ability to choose wisely among alternative ways of thinking. To cite two examples: . . . Children do not monitor well and often fail to make appropriate executive decisions.

No one doubts that immense variability exists at the neural level. Even when the identical stimulus is presented repeatedly within a single experimental session, the response of an individual neuron varies from trial to trial. Similarly, with lowlevel cognitive processes such as association, there is no disagreement concerning the existence of competing units. Models of associative memory, both symbolic (e.g., Gillilund & Shiffrin, 1984) and subsymbolic (e.g., Seidenberg & McClelland, 1990), are predicated on the assumptions that stimuli have multiple associations and that these varying associations influence the way in which we remember. Higher level cognition, however, has been treated differently. Many models are universalist: Everyone is depicted as proceeding in the same way when relevant stimuli are presented. Other models are comparative; they hypothesize different ways of thinking among groups defined on the basis of such characteristics as age, expertise, or aptitudes, but hypothesize a single consistent kind of reasoning within each group. Thus, 8-year-olds might be depicted as performing in one way and 5-year-olds in another, experts in one way and novices in another, people with high spatial ability in one way and those with low spatial ability in another, and so on. The finest differentiations that are typically made within these comparative approaches examine individual differences within people of a single age; for example, reflective 8-year-olds are described as taking a long time but answering accurately on the Matching Familar Figures Test, and impulsive 8-year-olds are described as answering more quickly but less accurately (Kogan, 1983). The main purpose of this chapter is to summarize the rapidly growing body of research suggesting that variability is actually a pervasive reality in high-level, as well as low-level, cognition. To place this work in context, however, it seems useful first to briefly consider some prominent examples of universalist and comparative models of cognition and then to consider why they might be proposed and widely accepted even if thinking is far more variable than they depict it as being. A great deal of cognitive research has been devoted to identifying the processing approach that people use on a particular task. This universalist approach has led to many influential models and theories.