The Turkish Version of Vendetta

Tezcan brings up two suggestion incidents, the first being one based on Özgen’s narration: In the black Sea region a man was shot dead. His widow buried her husband in the garden of the house. Every morning she put a piaster on the grave for her son to find. When the child found the coin she would say: “Your dead father provides this pocket money for you so that you will, one day, take his revenge”.

The second incident is based on Velidedeoğlu, who in turn had received the information from the attorney of the province of Rize at the time: Fourty years ago [in 1929] a man was killed. The killer, after completing fifteen years of prison sentence, escaped the city. The posthumous child of the dead man grew up listening to bitter lullabies and funeral songs chanted by the mourning mother. Ten years after his release from the jail, the murderer got homesick and intended to make a visit disguised with a beard and on board a ship. The compatriots of the widow away from the city learned about this and notified her. The woman then said to her son: “Son, your day has come! Execute your duty!” The lad took a gun and shot the man right on the harbour.

Politics, Promises, and Partisanship? An Analysis of President Obama's Economic Stimulus Plan at the Congressional District Level

This research focuses on President Obama’s signature economic plan adopted in February 2009—the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Using data available from Recovery.gov, the analysis refines prior efforts to test the thesis that partisanship has played a central role in the distribution of funds across congressional districts by distinguishing between total spending on infrastructure and non-infrastructure programs as of the end of the second quarter of 2010.

Further, this research examines not only political and demographic factors relative to the locus of stimulus fund expenditures but also the expected and actual employment impact of ARRA by district. The analysis provides little evidence for the partisan theory of stimulus spending. Rather, the results accentuate the demographic characteristics of the districts that have thus far received stimulus money and putatively benefitted from the most jobs, in some ways counter to what the White House may have intended due to the complexities of fiscal federalism.

Love Affair Gone Bad Leads to Violence: The Gonzalez-Angulo Story

The case of Ana Maria Gonzalez-Angulo, a woman who was convicted of poisoning her lover George Blumenchein, demonstrates how crime is intertwined with gender roles. While men’s violent crimes are often connected with money, women’s violent crimes are usually aimed at people who reside in their domestic sphere. Gonzalez-Angulo’s crime fits this pattern. She did not poison her former lover for want of money, but instead appears to have assaulted him in anger as she had recently learned that Blumenchein would not be leaving his live-in girlfriend for her. Her all encompassing anger was at least partially fueled by her failure to meet cultural dictates for marriage and children. Despite widespread changes, marriage to a successful male is the culminating event in a whole host of cultural narratives, and Gonzalez-Angulo could not have escaped the pressure to achieve this goal.

Download PDF

Equal Access to Elective Offices: A Challenge for Italian Democracy

Italy moves in that way from the 63rd to the 34th place in the women’s representation world ranking, drawn up periodically by Ipu (Inter parliamentary Union). It is a novelty of no small matter, especially considering the number of women in Parliament in past terms. In fact, in the past parliamentary term, women in the Chamber of Deputies were about 136 and 61 in the Senate, and, respectively, 21.6% and 19% of the total number of representatives.

The achievement of 20% in the national parliament represented a great result compared to the past, even fairly recent. Previous parliamentary terms experienced a female incidence significantly lower: in the XII legislature women were about 12% of the total, in the XIII and XIV parliamentary term the women representation goes further, at about 10% for then registering a small increase in the XV legislature with 109 women in the Chamber of Deputies and 45 in the Senate, respectively 17.3% and 14% of the delegates.

Global Civil-society Movements: What the World Social Forum Can do to Change the Worlds Situation

Today’s civil society, the post-ideological era of the late capitalist universal system of globalization, still denies basic human rights to a large majority of the world’s population and thus requires a pragmatic, post-ideological approach to social reality. Not all social problems can be attributed to capitalism and global economic agencies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is a fact, however, that the global accumulation of capital in certain relations has adverse effects, including “alienation,” or estrangement of producers from their products. Yet, this does not negate the fact that many of the world’s people are still deprived of opportunities to accumulate the capital necessary for economic growth and development, as well as cyber technology, and so they are unable to enjoy the possible benefits of participating in liberal democracy. Because of this, many talented, motivated, and educated people in developing societies migrate to the West, even though their own native countries gravely need them.

Download PDF

The Piety of Common Sense and the Common Sense of Piety: A Sensible Reaction to the Idea of Same-Sex Marriage

The potential effects on society of same-sex marriage are considered in light of Giambattista Vico’s New Science and its critique of modernity. As a universal foundation of human being as well as society, marriage should be preserved from radical changes that incite the disintegration of society and the redefinition of human being.

Those who would have us ignore sex and gender differences seek an abstraction of human being that is characteristic of modern reason’s aggressive assault upon nature. Pre-rational foundations of reason are recalled in order to temper our thinking and to recognize and appreciate the imaginative and sensible foundations of human being and society, including marriage. To abandon these is the essence of impiety for Vico, rendering us into a re-animalization of man in which desires rule untempered by reason, but with reason as their servant. The abstract re-conceptualization of life levels us to a new and vicious barbarism.

Religion and Tourism in Trinidad

Religious tourism is increasingly becoming an area of noteworthy study in the field of tourism studies. Although visitors have frequented religious sites for centuries, in what would be termed pilgrimages, the area of religious studies attempts to incorporate not only these visitors, but others who fall within the realm of the “new” cultural tourist: one who is seeking an enlightening, educating and enriching experience in a setting quite outside of their everyday existence. The Caribbean as a tourist destination has not been typically associated with religious tourism, but this is beginning to change (especially in the realm of Cuban tourism). This paper looks at the inception of a religious tourism thrust on the island of Trinidad (one half of the nation of Trinidad and Tobago).

Download PDF

Violent Behavior of the Youth in the Illicit Drug Market of US during the Natural Disasters

Violence is the inevitable part of the open air, street-based illicit drug market. The intensity of the violence may vary depending upon the type of illicit drug sold. Mostly youngsters emerging from the socially and economically deprived localities of the USA are indulging in these kinds of conflicts that spur violence. Conflicts often take place to gain control over the customer's, business, for territorial domination, and to gain reputation. Violence is particularly high during or after the natural disasters. Series of violent events draw more people into the conflict, spreading it further into sporadic, cycle of violent incidents. Efforts to offer legal and psychological supports may change the scenario over a period of time.

Download PDF

Political Science for whom?: Knowledge in the Online Era

If the Arab Spring taught us anything, it was that the Internet has become an important mean of the dissemination of ideas, creation of interest groups, mobilization of people, and changing public opinion. Although some will insist that the Arab Spring was not a social media phenomenon but a grassroots movement, we cannot ignore the power of unhampered information presented by the millions of users during the revolution. Images posted on Flickr or Face book and videos uploaded on YouTube were being seen by the world without the framing bias and “coloring” from traditional media outlets.

Download PDF

The Crimes of the Powerful are Under the Investigative Radars

We know a great deal about the crimes of the powerless in comparison to what we know about the crimes of the powerful. The former crimes are, for example, catalogued in statistics collected annually by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States and by similar agencies in other developed nations.

We also know that the data gathered are widely dispersed by the mass media. In contrast, the latter crimes are neither calculated by governmental agencies nor are they routinely reported on in the mass media. Even though most criminologists are well aware that the average person is increasingly at greater risk for and more likely to experience harm and injury from the latter criminals than the former criminals, the asymmetrical relationship continues between our knowledge of the crimes of the powerful and our knowledge of the crimes of the powerless for a myriad of related reasons.

Download PDF

Political Science for whom?: Knowledge in the Online Era

If the Arab Spring taught us anything, it was that the Internet has become an important mean of the dissemination of ideas, creation of interest groups, mobilization of people, and changing public opinion. Although some will insist that the Arab Spring was not a social media phenomenon but a grassroots movement, we cannot ignore the power of unhampered information presented by the millions of users during the revolution. Images posted on Flickr or Face book and videos uploaded on YouTube were being seen by the world without the framing bias and “coloring” from traditional media outlets.

Download PDF

Poverty, Crime and Economic Polarization in America

Every day I read about the increasing income inequality in the United States. This very morning I saw an article written by Hope Yen of the Associated Press, which stated, “worker’s wages and salaries are growing at the lowest rate relative to corporate profits in U.S. history.” Yen’s article helped to shed light on a statistic released just last week by the U.S. department of agricultural, which reported that 20% of all American households made use of food stamps. Yen asserts that a significant number of food stamp recipients are low-wage workers with some college. Though her article focuses on young working people, I can’t help but draw a link to the large majority of poor women in America’s prison system. I caught a glimpse into the lives of some of these women while reading Piper Kerman’s best selling memoir, Orange is the New Black.

Download PDF

Environmental Flows, Political Dams

In 2005, a group of water resource experts issued a statement cajoling decision-makers to privilege the needs of nature in their water management strategies. In effect, their Brisbane Declaration popularized the idea of environmental flows, a concept that focuses attention on the quantity, quality and timing of water required to sustain a dependent ecosystem.

In this essay I ask how well this concept has held up against the political pressures of popularity. To this end, I examine the various meanings inscribed on the concept of environmental flows as it has traveled across time and space. My findings uncover a few observations regarding the need for greater attentiveness to concept management. The findings also reveal a few surprising revelations about the forces at work behind conceptual alteration and the prospects of militating against these forces in our current global condition of heightened economic anxiety.

Epistemological Aspects of Social Research for the Qualitative Upgrading of Rational Systems in the Areas of Social Policy. The Greek Example

The present article attempts to explore new possibilities for an effective social policy and rationalization of social services through the revision of the epistemological aspects of social research, which can assist this approach. In this context, the article analyzes the use of knowledge that contributes to reframing research activity aiming at extracting data that are more extensive in content and specifically related to (a) the organization, management and scientific strategic planning of social policy bodies (b) the elaboration of research programs and up-to-date data processing (c) their use in decision and policy-making at a national or regional level and (d) the revised perception of social research and the effectiveness of its applications. The reference point of this paper is Greece.

Download PDF

State Autonomy, Nationality Question and Self-Determination in India- Response of the State

The key concepts in this paper are ‘state autonomy’, ‘self-determination’ and ‘nationality’. This section will, therefore, make an attempt at conceptualizing the aforesaid terms. As far as the concept of ‘nationality’ is concerned, it may be observed that although ‘nationality’ is commonly understood as a derivative of ‘nation’, it can describe a different phenomenon. 

In Central Europe, the difference between the words ‘national’ and ‘nationality’ developed into a very significant distinction, viz., between the ‘nation-state’ on the one hand and the ‘state of nationalities’ on the other. The first stood for one-nation state and the second for multi-national state. This became a hotly debated issue between the leading nation and national minorities in the successor states of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires.