Adolescents’ Engagement in Ethnic Harassment: Prejudiced Beliefs in Social Networks and Classroom Ethnic Diversity

Research on ethnic victimization to date has done little to identify the reasons why adolescents victimize their peers due to their ethnic background. To address this limitation, we examined: (1) the extent to which prejudiced attitudes within adolescents’ close and larger social networks determine their engagement in ethnic harassment, and (2) the extent to which classroom ethnic diversity plays a role in any such link. Our sample included 902 Swedish adolescents (M _age ?=?14.40, SD?=?.95; 50.3% girls). We found that Swedish adolescents who held negative attitudes toward immigrants or who were surrounded by prejudiced peers were more likely to be involved in ethnic harassment, particularly in classrooms with high ethnic diversity. Adolescents in classrooms with a high anti-immigrant climate were more likely to harass their immigrant peers. These findings suggest that prejudiced beliefs in youth social networks put young people at risk of engaging in ethnic harassment, particularly in ethnically diverse classrooms.     

Does Trade Liberalization Cause a Long Run Economic Growth in Turkey

Based on ‘endogenous’ growth theory, the paper examines the effect of trade liberalization on long-run income per capita and economic growth in Turkey. Although the presumption must be that free trade has a beneficial effect on long run growth, counter examples can also be found. This controversy increases the importance of empirical work in this area. Using the most recent data we employ multivariate cointegration analysis to test the long run relationship among the variables in hand. In a multivariate context, the effect of determinants such as increasing returns to scale, investment in human and physical capital are also included in both theoretical and empirical works. Our causality evidence between the long run growth and a number of indicators of trade liberalizations confirms the predictions of the ‘new growth theory’. However, the overall effect of the possible breaks and/or policy change and unsustainability in the 1990s looks contradictory and deserves further investigation.     

On the borders of the Turkish and Iranian nation-states: the story of Ferzende and Besra

Following the First World War, empires were replaced with nation-states for good and the map of the Middle East was redrawn. Traced back to the final decades of the nineteenth century, Kurdish nationalism did not result in a nation-state in the modern Middle East. Therefore, the Kurds inhabiting the borderlands of the four nation-states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria came to be perceived as ‘trouble’ by these nation-states. Through the use of a wide array of published and unpublished Kurdish, Turkish, Persian and French archival documents, memoirs and oral and written literary pieces, this article unearths the role of a Kurdish tribal chief by the name of Ferzende in Mount Ararat Revolt in the late 1920s and early 1930s against the Turkish and Iranian nation-states. An exceptional contribution of this study is its exploration of the petition submitted to the Iranian Parliament by Ferzende's wife Besra. This study thus is a fresh contribution to the study of social history of the Middle East from the margins.     

Neuerungen im Zusammenhang mit der Volksanwaltschaft

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Civil and civic death in the new authoritarianisms: punishment of dissidents through juridical destruction,ethical ruin,and necropolitics in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Since the Turkish government’s recent turn to authoritarianism, tens of thousands of public dissidents and government critics have been subjected to dismissals and revocation of civic rights via emergency decrees. The victims call this process ‘civil death’. We aim to understand the logic behind this form of punishment in Turkey by examining the differential genealogy of civil death in the work of Hannah Arendt, Bertrand Ogilvie, Giorgio Agamben, and Achille Mbembe. We demonstrate that a later form of civil death was used by totalitarian regimes in a process leading to the reduction of targeted individuals as ‘superfluous’ and as ‘living corpses’ in concentration camps. In these contexts, death became an instrument of biopolitical and necropolitical powers. We propose that although contemporary punishment of public dissidents in Turkey shares some similarities with these forms of civil death, it may more fittingly be identified as civic death. We argue that while civil death is based on the classical political right of the sovereign to ‘make die’ after first reducing targeted individuals to little more than living corpses, civic death is linked to the power of the sovereign to ‘let die’ through the exclusion of public dissidents from economic, social, and political life.     

Die Verankerung von Selbstverwaltung und Sozialpartnerschaft in der Bundesverfassung

Die Verankerung der Selbstverwaltung im B-VG ist in der medialen Öffentlichkeit auf heftige Kritik gestoßen. Im Folgenden zeigt ein Mitglied jener Expertengruppe, die diese Novelle vorbereitete, dass damit im Prinzip nur bestehende Judikatur kodifiziert sowie eine systematische Regelung statt verstreuter Verfassungsbestimmungen (in Vorbereitung einer noch nicht abgeschlossenen Verfassungsrechtsbereinigung) geschaffen wurde. Neu ist ein gesetzesergänzendes Verordnungsrecht der Selbstverwaltungskörper. Neu ist auch die verfassungsrechtliche Verankerung der Sozialpartnerschaft, die sich aber im Rahmen des durch EU-Recht Vorgegebenen hält und gegenüber der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung offen bleibt.     

Die Zukunft der Verfassung

Aus Anlass des 90. Geburtstages des B-VG unternimmt es der Beitrag, in mittel- und langfristiger Perspektive zukünftige Herausforderungen für die ?sterreichische Bundesverfassung zu identifizieren. Ausgangspunkt ist eine Gegenüberstellung der ?nderungsh?ufigkeit und detailreichen Regelungsdichte der Bundesverfassung im Vergleich zu einer insbesondere in der Rechtsprechung immer bedeutender werdenden, im Verfassungstext selbst aber kaum verankerten verfassungsrechtlichen Grundordnung. Mittelfristig identifiziert der Verfasser die Bundesstaatsreform als unverzichtbare Herausforderung; weniger Gewicht wird demgegenüber der Notwendigkeit einer Grundrechtsreform beigemessen. L?ngerfristig sind insbesondere überwachungsstaat, Gentechnologie und Migration und Multikulturalismus die zentralen Herausforderungen an die Verfassung. Freilich nicht nur an die nationale sondern an die ?sterreichische Verfassung im europ?ischen Verfassungsverbund.