Legal pluralism and the Shari'a: a comparison of Greece and Turkey

The creation of a national and unified legal system was an important aspect of the rise of the modern state and national citizenship. However, this interpretation of legal rationalization has been challenged by sociologists of law such as Eugene Ehrlich (1862–1922) who claimed that this juridical theory of state‐centred law masked the presence of customary laws outside this formal system. In critical theories of the law, legal pluralism is proposed against the idea of legal sovereignty or legal centralism. In this article we explore the implications of the growth of the Shari'a as an example of legal pluralism. We take Turkey and Greece as two interesting but different examples of legal pluralism and consider the implications of these case studies for debates about liberalism, multiculturalism and citizenship in multi‐faith societies.     

Impact of having a high-risk pregnancy on future postpartum contraceptive method choice

BackgroundTo compare the knowledge and preference of preconceptional contraception to future postpartum contraceptive method choice in high-risk pregnancies.Research questionDoes a high-risk pregnancy condition affect future postpartum contraceptive method choice?MethodWomen hospitalised at the High Risk Pregnancy unit of a tertiary research and training hospital were asked to complete a self-reported questionnaire that included demographic characteristics, presence of unintended pregnancy, contraceptive method of choice before the current pregnancy, plans for contraceptive use following delivery and requests for any contraceptive counselling in the postpartum period.FindingsA total of 655 pregnant women were recruited. The mean age, gravidity and parity of the women were 27.48 ± 6.25 years, 2.81 ± 2.15 and 1.40 ± 1.77, respectively. High-risk pregnancy indications included 207 (31.6%) maternal, 396 (60.5%) foetal and 52 (7.9%) uterine factors. All postpartum contraceptive choices except for combined oral contraceptives (COCs) usage were significantly different from preconceptional contraceptive preferences (p < 0.001). High-risk pregnancy indications, future child bearing, ideal number of children, income and education levels were the most important factors influencing postpartum contraceptive choices. While the leading contraceptive method in the postpartum period was long-acting reversible contraceptive methods (non-hormonal copper intrauterine device Cu-IUD, the levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system (LNG-IUS) (40%), the least preferred method was COCs use (5.2%) and preference of COCs use showed no difference between the preconceptional and postpartum periods (p = 0.202). Overall 73.7% of the women wanted to receive contraceptive counselling before their discharge.ConclusionA high-risk pregnancy condition may change the opinion and preference of contraceptive use, and also seems to affect the awareness of family planning methods.     

Optimal Pricing Strategies for Capacity Leasing Based on Time and Volume Usage in Telecommunication Networks

In this study, we examined optimal pricing strategies for “pay‐per‐time,” “pay‐per‐volume,” and “pay‐per‐both‐time‐and‐volume” based leasing of data networks in a monopoly environment. Conventionally, network capacity distribution includes short‐/long‐term bandwidth and/or usage time leasing. When customers choose connection‐time–based pricing, their rational behavior is to fully utilize the bandwidth capacity within a fixed time period, which may cause the network to burst (or overload). Conversely, when customers choose volume‐based strategies their rational behavior is to send only the minimum bytes necessary (even for time‐fixed tasks for real time applications), causing the quality of the task to decrease, which in turn creates an opportunity cost for the provider. Choosing a pay‐per time and volume hybridized pricing scheme allows customers to take advantage of both pricing strategies while lessening the disadvantages of each, because consumers generally have both time‐ and size‐fixed tasks such as batch data transactions. One of the key contributions of this study is to show that pay‐per both time and volume pricing is a viable and often preferable alternative to the offerings based on only time or volume, and that judicious use of such a pricing policy is profitable to the network provider.     

Similarity and Complementarity of Behavioral Profiles of Friendship Types and Types of Friends: Friendships and Psychosocial Adjustment

This study investigated different types of friendships and the behavioral profiles of different types of friends in relation to individual adjustment. In 102 classes with preadolescents (mean age 11), 737 independent friendship dyads, and in 149 classes with adolescents (mean age 14), 1,102 friendship dyads were identified. At each age group, cluster analyses on the behavioral profiles of the dyads yielded three friendship types, with two types of friends within each friendship type: Socially Withdrawn friendship (Victimized Withdrawn and Prosocial Withdrawn friends), Prosocial friendship (High Prosocial and Less Prosocial friends), and Antisocial friendship (Bullying Antisocial and Antisocial friends). The behavioral profiles of the two friends in Prosocial friendships were marked by similarity and in the other two types by complementarity. Both Victimized Withdrawn and Bullying Antisocial friends were less adjusted than participants without friends while Prosocial friends were more adjusted.     

Emigration and Schooling among Second‐Generation Mexican‐American Children1

In this Research Note, we investigate the prevalence and patterns of second‐generation Mexican‐American children's migration to and return from Mexico during childhood and consider the consequences of this migration for their schooling. Around one in ten second‐generation Mexican‐American children live in Mexico for some of their childhood. Strong patterns of return to the U.S. through childhood argue for their being considered as part of the Mexican‐American second generation even when in Mexico. Their rates of school enrollment in Mexico are much lower than for second‐generation Mexican‐American children remaining in the U.S. and cannot be explained by their weakly negative selection into emigration. We conclude that country of residence is a far more important determinant of schooling outcome than is migrant status in that country.     

Friends in high places: A dyadic perspective on peer status as predictor of friendship quality and the mediating role of empathy and prosocial behavior

Friendships and peer status play important roles in the social landscape of adolescents and are related to developmental outcomes. Yet, how peer status is related to friendship quality and what role social skills play in this association remains unclear. In this study, we use Actor–Partner Interdependence (Mediation) Modeling (Ledermann, Macho, & Kenny, 2011 ) to investigate how two forms of peer status, preference and popularity, are related to positive and negative friendship quality in mid‐adolescence. Results show that adolescents who are friends with more preferred (i.e., likeable) and popular adolescents report higher friendship quality. These partner effects were partially mediated by adolescents’ own prosocial behavior and their friends’ empathy levels. Higher levels of empathy of one's friend and one's own lesser preference for equity explained why adolescents were more satisfied in a friendship with highly preferred (i.e., likeable) adolescents. Interestingly, empathy was not a mediator for the link between friendship quality and popularity. These findings promote a better understanding of the interplay between different levels of social complexity (i.e., individual, dyadic and peer group level) in adolescence.     

Attachment Styles and Self‐Image in Turkish Adolescents

The purpose of this article is to examine the attachment styles and the relation of these styles to the self‐image in Turkish adolescents. The study included 378 adolescents (196 females and 182 males) from high schools with different socioeconomic status (SES) who were administered Relationship Scale Questionnaires and Offer Self‐Image Questionnaires. The findings indicate that adolescents from a low SES had significantly low scores on self‐image scales compared with those from high and middle SES. It was found that secure attachment patterns affect social relationships and superior adjustment aspects of self‐image positively. The results of this study show that attachment patterns play an important role in the development of the self‐image, which is a crucial psychological structure gained in adolescence.     

Fairness decisions in children and early adolescents with and without hearing loss

Although having universal aspects, development of a sense of fairness, a milestone in children's social development, is influenced by social and cultural forces. Yet, it scarcely has been studied in children who are at risk for their social development, let alone in deaf and hard‐of‐hearing (DHH) children, who have limited access to linguistic and social input. This study examined for the first time equity preferences in DHH children compared with hearing counterparts. About 179 children (8–11 years) and early adolescents (12–14 years) played four economic allocation games where they distributed coins between themselves and another child. Participants with and without hearing loss were similar in conditions that entailed non‐costly prosociality or self‐maximization. However, DHH participants showed weaker inequity aversion in more complex conditions: DHH children were more willing to allow other players to receive more coins than themselves, compared with hearing children and to DHH or hearing adolescents, and DHH adolescents were less willing to share resources when it was self‐costly, compared with all other groups. Findings are discussed in light of the tension between norms of social comparison and norms of prosociality, and how they are reflected in developmental trajectories for inequity aversion when access to these norms is limited.     

Does the Refugee Experience Overshadow the Effect of SES? An Examination of Self-Reported Health Among Older Vietnamese Refugees

Is the consistently poorer health of Vietnamese refugees relative to whites due largely to differences in socioeconomic status, demographic characteristics, and health risk behaviors or the residual impact of the trauma of war and resettlement? Using data from a population-based household survey we use multinomial logistic regression to assess the self-rated health and activity limitations of Vietnamese refugees aged 55 and older compared to whites, adjusting for demographics, socioeconomic status, and lifestyle characteristics. Vietnamese refugees report poorer health and are more likely to report activity limitations than whites. While substantial differences in characteristics exist between the two groups, they explain little of the health differentials. Demographic and socioeconomic factors do not explain the health differential between older Vietnamese refugees and whites, although their lifestyle exerts a protective effect. The trauma of war and the stressful context of immigration likely contribute to the poorer health of Vietnamese refugees.     

The politics of engagement between Islam and the secular state: ambivalences of 'civil society'

The paper reveals contemporary transformations of the interaction between Islam and secular states from opposition to engagement. In-depth ethnographic evidence challenges the predominant juxtaposition of Islam against the secular state. Following micro-sites of interaction between the Gülen movement and the state from Turkey to Kazakhstan, my fieldwork revealed a continuum of engagements between them. The paper analyses the engagements ranging from contestation and negotiation to co-operation. The case illustrates the extent to which scholarly interest in opposition and clash has left a wide-ranging variety of state-Islam interaction understudied with regard to civil society. It also reveals the conditions under which effective Islamic horizontal organizations have provided the platforms of vertical engagements with the secular states. The major argument of the paper is that both civil and uncivil outcomes in the Muslim world are primarily shaped by the nature of state-Islam interaction. The evidence suggests that the key to understanding the relationship between Islam and civil society is the state.