Were They Pushed Or Did They Jump?: Individual Decision Mechanisms In Education

Politics & Social Sciences

Gambetta, Diego

Philosophy

Routledge

This book explores the factors which govern the range of educational decisions confronting individuals between compulsory school education and university. The data on which it draws come from two surveys conducted in north-west Italy, one of unemployed young people and one of high-school pupils. The author is in effect testing the two fundamental and opposed paradigms of explanation which are generally applied in the sociology of education; one which holds that the individual agents are essentially passive, being either constrained by lack of alternatives or pushed by causal factors of which they are unaware; and the other in which they are regarded as capable of purposive action, of weighing the available alternatives with respect to some future rewards.

Were They Pushed or Did They Jump?: Individual Decision Mechanisms in Education (Studies in Rationality and Social Change)

Cambridge University Press

In a society where trust is in short supply and democracy weak, the Mafia sells protection, a guarantee of safe conduct for parties to commercial transactions. Drawing on the confessions of eight Mafiosi, Diego Gambetta develops an elegant analysis of the economic and political role of the Sicilian Mafia.

The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection

Business & Money

Economics

Harvard University Press

In a society where trust is in short supply and democracy weak, the Mafia sells protection, a guarantee of safe conduct for parties to commercial transactions. Drawing on the confessions of eight Mafiosi, Diego Gambetta develops an elegant analysis of the economic and political role of the Sicilian Mafia.

A groundbreaking investigation into why so many Islamic radicals are engineers
The violent actions of a few extremists can alter the course of history, yet there persists a yawning gap between the potential impact of these individuals and what we understand about them. In Engineers of Jihad, Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog uncover two unexpected facts, which they imaginatively leverage to narrow that gap: they find that a disproportionate share of Islamist radicals come from an engineering background, and that Islamist and right-wing extremism have more in common than either does with left-wing extremism, in which engineers are absent while social scientists and humanities students are prominent.
Searching for an explanation, they tackle four general questions about extremism: Under which socioeconomic conditions do people join extremist groups? Does the profile of extremists reflect how they self-select into extremism or how groups recruit them? Does ideology matter in sorting who joins which group? Lastly, is there a mindset susceptible to certain types of extremism?
Using rigorous methods and several new datasets, they explain the link between educational discipline and type of radicalism by looking at two key factors: the social mobility (or lack thereof) for engineers in the Muslim world, and a particular mindset seeking order and hierarchy that is found more frequently among engineers. Engineers' presence in some extremist groups and not others, the authors argue, is a proxy for individual traits that may account for the much larger question of selective recruitment to radical activism.
Opening up markedly new perspectives on the motivations of political violence, Engineers of Jihad yields unexpected answers about the nature and emergence of extremism.

Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education

Hertog, Steffen

Social Sciences

Princeton University Press

How do criminals communicate with each other? Unlike the rest of us, people planning crimes can't freely advertise their goods and services, nor can they rely on formal institutions to settle disputes and certify quality. They face uniquely intense dilemmas as they grapple with the basic problems of whom to trust, how to make themselves trusted, and how to handle information without being detected by rivals or police. In this book, one of the world's leading scholars of the mafia ranges from ancient Rome to the gangs of modern Japan, from the prisons of Western countries to terrorist and pedophile rings, to explain how despite these constraints, many criminals successfully stay in business.
 Diego Gambetta shows that as villains balance the lure of criminal reward against the fear of dire punishment, they are inspired to unexpected feats of subtlety and ingenuity in communication. He uncovers the logic of the often bizarre ways in which inveterate and occasional criminals solve their dilemmas, such as why the tattoos and scars etched on a criminal's body function as lines on a professional résumé, why inmates resort to violence to establish their position in the prison pecking order, and why mobsters are partial to nicknames and imitate the behavior they see in mafia movies. Even deliberate self-harm and the disclosure of their crimes are strategically employed by criminals to convey important messages.
 By deciphering how criminals signal to each other in a lawless universe, this gruesomely entertaining and incisive book provides a quantum leap in our ability to make sense of their actions.

Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate

Like few other decisions in life, educational choices must be made by virtually everyone growing up in industrial societies. The consequences of these choices for individual lives are momentous, yet decisions about schooling can be treacherous. They are made during the teen years, at a time when personal preferences are unstable and there is little past experience to draw upon; once made, they are not easy to change. Diego Gambetta offers a refined exploration of the mechanisms that influence educational decisions between compulsory school and college. Gambetta tests two fundamental and opposed explanations, which he applies to the study of educational and other personal choices. One approach holds that individuals are essentially passive, either constrained by a lack of alternatives or pushed by factors they are unaware of. The other approach regards individuals as capable of purposive action, able to weigh the available alternatives against the prospect of possible future rewards. Applying sophisticated statistical models to two surveys conducted in northwest Italy. Gambetta provides an integrated assessment of the specific effects of a variety of factors on educational decisionmaking: family economic and cultural capital, previous academic achievements, labor market prospects, and personal aspirations. From this analysis emerges a subtler, more realistic approach to individual decisionmaking that brushes aside either extreme. The author concludes that rational adaptation is the predominant operating mechanism in making choices, but that it generates different effects depending on class-related values and personal preferences.

Westview Press

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Books by Gambetta, Diego

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gambetta, Diego. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Were They Pushed Or Did They Jump?: Individual Decision Mechanisms In Education

Were They Pushed Or Did They Jump?: Individual Decision Mechanisms In Education

Were They Pushed or Did They Jump?: Individual Decision Mechanisms in Education (Studies in Rationality and Social Change)

Were They Pushed or Did They Jump?: Individual Decision Mechanisms in Education (Studies in Rationality and Social Change)

The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection

The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection

Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education

Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate

Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education

Were They Pushed Or Did They Jump?: Individual Decision Mechanisms In Education