Reconstructing the past in a post-Ottoman village: Turkishness in a transnational context

This study analyzes transformations of historiography and identity discourses by focusing on the Memory House of Ali R?za Efendi (the father of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) as a “site of historical consciousness” which was reconstructed in the western part of the Republic of Macedonia. The House, referred to by the villagers as the “Memory House of Atatürk,” was opened in 2014 in a Muslim village, Kocac?k, with the support of the Turkish state. Through material and textual representations of Atatürk’s life, the House speaks to the Turkishness and Turkish presence in the Balkans. The Turkishness, however, is imagined through the neo-Ottoman and Islamic prisms. The House thus becomes the locus of alternative interpretations of the past, and, consequently, narratives of Muslims’ identity and origin in the region. Moreover, as it is reconstructed at the nexus of the local and the transnational, the House is also called a symbol of the “politics of brotherhood” between Macedonia and Turkey. In this way, the institution embodies the reconstruction of the past not only at the local and national levels, but also at the international level.     

This time it’s different: lithium extraction,cultural politics and development in Bolivia

As governments throughout Latin America have increased their dependence on resource extraction, the debate around extraction-based development has been reinvigorated. This article argues that, despite historical failures and recurrent conflicts associated with extraction-based development, the way in which development is experienced and conceptualised at the subnational level demonstrates why extraction continues to be perceived as a legitimate means for development. These findings show that, as resource extraction continues to play a critical role in the overall development transition of Latin America, the process must be understood and theorised in relation to the experiences and expectations of actors at multiple scales.     

Gender Differences in Anxiety Trajectories from Middle to Late Adolescence

Although developmental trajectories of anxiety symptomatology have begun to be explored, most research has focused on total anxiety symptom scores during childhood and early adolescence, using racially/ethnically homogenous samples. Understanding the heterogeneous courses of anxiety disorder symptoms during middle to late adolescence has the potential to clarify developmental risk models of anxiety and to inform prevention programs. Therefore, this study specifically examined gender differences in developmental trajectories of anxiety disorder symptoms (generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder) from middle to late adolescence in a diverse community sample (N?=?1000; 57?% female; 65?% White), assessed annually over 2 years. Latent growth curve modeling revealed that girls exhibited a slight linear decrease in generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and social anxiety disorder symptoms, whereas boys exhibited a stable course. These models suggested that one trajectory was appropriate for panic disorder symptoms in both girls and boys. Growth mixture models indicated the presence of four latent generalized anxiety disorder symptom trajectory classes: low increasing, moderate decreasing slightly, high decreasing, and very high decreasing rapidly. Growth mixture models also suggested the presence of five latent social anxiety disorder symptom trajectory classes: a low stable trajectory class and four classes that were qualitatively similar to the latent generalized anxiety disorder trajectories. For both generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety disorder symptoms, girls were significantly more likely than boys to be in trajectory classes characterized by moderate or high initial symptoms that subsequently decreased over time. These findings provide novel information regarding the developmental course of anxiety disorder symptoms in adolescents.     

Feminism and the Technological Age

Abstract

Feminism advocates for the inclusion of women within the modern economy, but this has implicated feminism in a hyper-capitalist and instrumental mode of organising social life. Feminism has helped to legitimise the ubiquitous reach of this regime into all areas of social life, even parenting. Feminism can learn from Heidegger's proposition that in questioning modern technology we may open up a way of coming into a free relationship with it—to be open to the divinity of living beings and things. Jessica Benjamin's account of the relationship between the mother and her infant in terms of intersubjectivity seems to fit Heidegger's proposition for it highlights a dynamic and receptive exchange between two unique living beings. The question for feminism at this time is: how can it own its complicity with modern technology while opening up its distinctive contribution to finding a way of coming into a free relationship with it?     

Gender Categorization of Perfumes: The Difference between Odour Perception and Commercial Classification

The odour perception of perfumes is claimed to be associated with gender. Although a gender-sensitive research approach is desirable when the gender variable is in focus, a deeper analysis of this association is uncommon. In this study, 18 participants (aged 20–30 years) gender categorized 12 perfumes. A gender-sensitive approach was applied to the analysis of the gender associations when sniffing perfumes, in order to examine how the participants' gender categorizations correspond to the commercial classifications of the 12 perfumes. The results demonstrate that the participants' gender associations of the perfumes constitute a scale reflecting the perfumes' odour qualities, where only the perfumes perceived as extremely feminine or masculine were categorized in the same way as the commercial classifications. It is therefore argued that the gender dichotomy of femininity and masculinity does not correspond to the perceived gender associations of perfumes in the present study.     

Equality versus difference and gender versus class in Danish women's history

The articulated goals of feminist research and politics in Denmark have been changing during the last twenty years, from “liberation” to “equality” and now perhaps to “difference”. Open theoretical debates on these changes have been rare in the Danish context, but the need for such debates has been made topical by the latest theoretical and political discourses in Denmark on equality and difference, gender and class. The American feminist historian Joan W. Scott has shown the detrimental effects to feminist research and politics of constructing the concepts of equality and difference as binary oppositions. She argues that women's equality with men could be claimed on the basis of sameness/ similarity as well as on the basis of difference. The same detrimental effects occur, however, when sameness/similarity and difference, gender and class, are constructed dichotomously. The history of the women's movements in Denmark around the turn of the century shows that some women have tried to avoid such dichotomies. Other women have contributed to them, however, and their arguments have been sustained by the hegemonic discourses of the time. Women's history research is part of competing discourses on gender. It may have political impact on the gender relations of today. Therefore, an important purpose of feminist history is to expose the way dichotomous discourses act against feminist goals, and to avoid making such discourses part of one's own theoretical framework.     

Assessing the property value impacts of the dispersed subsidy housing program in Denver

This study tests the hypothesis that the acquisition of existing property by the public housing authority and its subsequent rehabilitation and occupancy by subsidized tenants significantly reduced the property values of surrounding single‐family homes in Denver during the 1990s. This assessment examined pre‐ and post‐occupancy sales, while controlling for the idiosyncratic neighborhood, local public service, and zoning characteristics of the areas in order to identify which sorts of neighborhoods, if any, experienced declining property values as a result of proximity to dispersed housing tenants. The analyses revealed that proximity to a subsidized housing site generally had an independent, positive effect on single‐family home sales prices. The most notable exception to this pattern occurred in neighborhoods more than 20 percent of whose residents were black. Proximity to dispersed public housing sites in these neighborhoods resulted in slower growth in home sales prices in an other‐wise booming housing market and suggest a threshold within “vulnerable” neighborhoods whereby any potential gains associated with rehabilitating existing units are offset by the increased concentration of poor residents. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The challenge of DDR in Northern Uganda: The Lord's Resistance Army

Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have been fighting in northern Uganda for the past two decades in conflict which has devastated the region. The group is notorious for abducting children and young people. Over 20,000 have been taken since the war began and turned into soldiers and rebel ‘wives’. This is the context of Uganda's informal disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme. Rather than being an organised process set up to help consolidate peace at the end of war, it has largely been a necessary response to a flow of escaping former abductees, taking place within an on-going conflict. In 2006, the government of South Sudan began mediating peace talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government. Although the talks have yet to deliver, they have focused attention on managing an end to the conflict, including a formal programme of DDR to deal with those rebels remaining in the bush.

Based on primary research – undertaken in Gulu, Kitgum, Kira and Apac Districts of northern Uganda in August and September 2005 and March 2006 – this paper lays out the problems that have marred earlier attempts to reintegrate former LRA combatants – and looks at the challenges that lie ahead.