Coping with Concerns: An Exploratory Comparison of Australian,Colombian, German,and Palestinian Adolescents

Consistent with an emphasis on positive psychology, and on ability rather than deficit, this study of adolescents in 4 communities sought to examine how young people cope with their concerns. Samples of Australian, Colombian, German, and Palestinian students completed the general form of the Adolescent Coping Scale, an 80-item instrument used to measure coping. A comparison of young people's usage of 3 coping styles and 18 coping strategies within these communities indicated that Palestinian youth report greater usage of all but three strategies (namely, physical recreation, relaxation, and tension reduction), and German youth report the least usage of 2/3 of the strategies assessed. Both Palestinian and Colombian youth were noted to utilize more seek to belong, focus on the positive, social action, solving the problem, seeking spiritual support, and worry than were German or Australian adolescents. When the relative usage of coping strategies within national settings was considered, some noticeable differences were apparent. For example it was found that regardless of the national setting young people reported most frequent use of working hard and use of problem solving strategies. When it comes to more culturally determined activities such as physical recreation, the Australian and German students ranked this strategy more highly in their coping repertoires than do the Colombians, and more noticeably, the Palestinian students. For example, although physical recreation is ranked as the second most commonly used strategy for the German sample, it is ranked 16th by the Palestinians. The study demonstrates the importance of identifying coping strategies that are reflective of each community under investigation. Similarity in coping cannot be assumed across different student populations. Consequently caution needs to be exercised when importing coping programs from one community to another.     

China's consumer revolution: The 1990s and beyond

Since 1980 China's economic revolution has enabled more households to allocate labor to market‐related activities to earn more income. In 1992 an even greater surge in market economy growth took place when urban households began abandoning state‐related occupations and took their chances in the marketplace. The increase in consumer spending that followed reflects a new pattern of household spending for the first time in China since 1949: the share of spending for food relative to spending for other categories of goods and services is fast declining. This new trend, already strongly evident among high income‐earning households, is rapidly being replicated by other households as their incomes rise. During the 1990s new consumer patterns have emerged in the cities of the coastal provinces that strongly indicate that a consumer revolution is under way. This revolution has revived traditional gift‐giving between the Chinese people, thus facilitating the strengthening of their social, economic, and political ties and encouraging people to emphasize social and political stability.     

Operationalizing Social Capital: A Strategy to Enhance Communities'"Capacity to Concert"

This article addresses a concern increasingly being voiced in the donor establishment: fifty years of development assistance programs have failed to produce conclusive evidence that they can foster sustainable economic and social development in poor countries. The nature of donor programs is such that it emphasizes economic remedies and orients aid to finite projects. Yet recent evidence suggests that sustained development may be more a continued civic process whereby communities form their capacity to come to their own understandings about public ways of behaving and relating, whereby they develop their capacity to concert . This translates into a practical capability to pinpoint underlying problems, assess alternative approaches, and devise solutions most likely to be sustained. This micro capability may also have important macroeconomic implications in terms of institutional predictability and—through it—in terms of scale economies, transaction costs, transparency, incentive to innovate, and climate to implement public policies. The article suggests an alternative approach to development assistance and offers concrete recommendations to donors.     

EU–China relations in financial governance: cooperation,convergence or competition?

The global financial crisis (GFC) and subsequent Eurozone sovereign debt crisis (ESDC) have made reform of the global financial governance regime a priority for governments around the world. Prior to the crisis, neoliberal policies agreed between the European Union and the USA created a financial governance regime based on the principle of free operation of the market through the norms of market self-regulation, equal access to the market, and stability via institutional supervision. How will global financial governance look like after these crises? And what role can the EU and China play in shaping this regime? This article argues that as a result of the GFC and the ESDC, stability is becoming a second principle of global financial governance, along with the free operation of the market. Meanwhile, European and Chinese views regarding the norms, rules, and decision-making procedures designed to implement those principles do not differ as much as they used to. Thanks to interactions at the bilateral and multilateral levels, the EU and China now have knowledge regarding how the other understands the role and characteristics that financial governance should have. This is leading to convergence in some areas and cooperation in others. Concurrently, there are also areas of competition. Analysing all of these is essential to understand how global financial governance might evolve, given the central role that the EU and China now play in this regime.     

The Preferences of al-Kisāʾī (d. 189/805): Grammar and Meaning in a Canonical Reading of the Qur’an

The Qur’an has been transmitted as both a written text and an oral recital. This has led to the development of a reading tradition that permits numerous different vocalisations to be made upon the basic skeletal text of the established ?Uthmānī codex. Ibn al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429) chose ten early readers whom he felt were most representative of this tradition and whose readings are treated as canonical up until this day. One of these, the Kufan linguist al-Kisā?ī (d. 189/805) has been characterised in the literature as more focused on the grammar of the Qur’an than his reader peers. This article explores al-Kisā?ī’s process of ikhtiyār (preference) when deciding between various possible readings. The sample for analysis consists of Kisā?ī’s tafarrudāt, the approximately fifty cases in which his reading differs from the other nine readers. By comparing his reading with the comments of early scholars of Qur’anic linguistics, especially his near-contemporary al-Farrā? (d. 208/822), it is possible to construct a typology of the suspected principal reasons for al-Kisā?ī’s tafarrudāt. Not only are many of these based on grammatical preferences, but they demonstrate a significant degree of consistency. Furthermore, analysis of a cluster of readings with implications for the interpretation of the sharī?a (divine law and moral code) provides evidence for a subtle exegetical dimension to al-Kisā?ī’s work as a reader-grammarian.