Rethinking Kurdish geopolitical space: the politics of image,insecurity and gender

Global publics and local actors are increasingly saturated with variegated still and moving images. The important role played by images in world politics, however, remains understudied in the International Relations (IR) discipline. This article argues that the Kurdish geopolitical space is increasingly tied to a new regional and global imagination, which emanates from verbal–visual meaning-making strategies such as narrative reconstructions and pictorial representations (for example illustrations, pictograms, or photographs). The article’s investigation illustrates how the construction of new Kurdish geopolitical imagination became increasingly regionalized and internationalized during the war against the so-called Islamic State (IS), particularly after the Kobane siege in Syria in late 2014. It shows how the war between the Syrian Kurdish forces and the IS involved gendered and aesthetic signification for the global and regional audiences. Such strategies of meaning-making served as vital venues for gendering and making the threat of the IS and its “distant war” proximate, familiar and urgent for otherwise disinterested western audiences. These verbal–visual strategies vitally acted as a transmission belt between individual, state and systemic levels, turning the struggle against the IS into a globalized cultural-symbolic war. The article employs critical visual semiotics and critical discourse analysis to investigate the regional and global politics of image and offers three empirical cases to illustrate its argument: the narratives of the Kobane siege; the cartoon depicting a “Kurdish homeland” and globally circulated Kurdish female fighter photographs.     

Placing School Victimization in a Global Context

ABSTRACT

Although often considered to be safe havens, schoolhouses have a darker side: they are places where students are victimized. Research in the United States shows that students are victimized by various forms of misconduct, ranging from property-related crime (e.g., theft, destruction) to violent behavior (e.g., assault, homicide) in schools. Notably, international studies reveal that school victimization is a serious concern across the globe. In this context, the present study provides an overview of the extent and nature of school victimization from international perspective. Special attention is given to bullying, a form of victimization found across the globe. Important school-based prevention efforts developed outside the United States are discussed. Finally, this study raises awareness to another type of serious victimization—terrorist attacks—that are on the rise, particularly among nations located in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa.     

Neighbourhood Ethnic Diversity,Child Health Outcomes and Women’s Empowerment

Much of the existing literature suggests that ethnic diversity undermines economic development. However, there are also ways in which local ethnic diversity might be beneficial, and we show that in the case of Ethiopian child health, the benefits of diversity can outweigh the costs. We find that children in relatively diverse communities are better nourished and more likely to receive a full set of vaccinations. There is some evidence that one explanation for this effect is that women in relatively diverse communities are better informed about health issues and more empowered in making healthcare decisions.     

Contextualizing multiculturalism

Multiculturalist critics of liberalism have condemned difference-blind liberal laws as generally insufficient for addressing contemporary questions of justice. Some academic studies have interpreted every contemporary challenge to laws in effect for the general public, whether these laws are liberal or not, as a conflict between liberalism and the demand for group-differentiated rights. This conceptual and normative challenge to liberalism rests on an insufficient number of case analyses of generally poor quality. Critics often fail to differentiate between the concrete terms of political conflict over the public expression of cultural difference and the conceptual and/or normative conflict over underlying principles, in this case difference-blind liberalism versus liberal-multiculturalism. A close empirical analysis of an actual political conflict shows that the tenets of difference-blind liberalism can indeed be marshaled to defend cultural difference. In this article, I challenge the common tendency of the liberal-multiculturalists to present difference-blind liberalism as the “sick man” of western political theory. The argument has five parts. I underscore in the first three sections some conceptual, methodological, and normative problems arising from liberal-multiculturalism itself. In the last two sections I analyze in detail two actual political conflicts over a public expression of difference—the headscarf affairs in France and in Turkey—which suggest that it is state-nationalism rather than difference-blind liberalism that underlies intolerance of cultural diversity.     

Macro economic model study depending on simple ratios for environmental order plans in regional planning

Preparation of environmental order plans at map scales of 1/100,000 or 1/50,000 becomes compulsory for every province in Turkey after 2006. These plans can also be referred as regional plans or sub regional plans. In regional planning studies including ＂environmental order plans＂, existence and accuracy of numeric data and correct use of these data are vital factors to the success of regional plans. There are two main variables used in regional planning studies. These are Gross Domestic Product （GDP） values and employment values of various sectors. The success of the plans heavily depends on the success of correct determination and projection of these regional economic values. The use of economic data in regional planning studies is the main subject of this article.     

A serious medicolegal problem after surgery: gossypiboma

After surgery, the most common foreign bodies retained in the abdominal cavity are the surgical sponges. The aim of the present study was to emphasize the importance of gossypiboma, which is a serious and medicolegal problem. The records of 12 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of gossypiboma after abdominal surgery at Dicle University Hospital were retrospectively reviewed between January 1994 and December 2009. Eight of the 12 patients were females, and 4 were males. Previously, 7 patients had been operated on electively, and 5 had undergone operations on an emergency basis. Abdominal ultrasonography clearly demonstrated gossypibomas in 5 patients, and computed tomography demonstrated a more precise image of retained surgical sponges in 3 patients. One patient died because of ventricular fibrillation; the other 11 patients were discharged in good health. To eliminate the risk of gossypibomas, all sponges should be counted at least twice (once preoperatively and once postoperatively); use of small sponges should be avoided during laparotomy, and only sponges with radiopaque markers should be used. The surgeon should explore the abdomen before closure. In cases in which the sponge count is uncertain, an abdominal x-ray should be performed before closure.     

Strategic Misspecification in Regression Models

Common regression models are often structurally inconsistent with strategic interaction. We demonstrate that this "strategic misspecification" is really an issue of structural (or functional form) misspecification. The misspecification can be equivalently written as a form of omitted variable bias, where the omitted variables are nonlinear terms arising from the players' expected utility calculations and often from data aggregation. We characterize the extent of the specification error in terms of model parameters and the data and show that typical regressions models can at times give exactly the opposite inferences versus the true strategic data-generating process. Researchers are recommended to pay closer attention to their theoretical models, the implications of those models concerning their statistical models, and vice versa.