Insurability and Mitigation of Flood Losses in Private Households in Germany

In Germany, flood insurance is provided by private insurers as a supplement to building or contents insurance. This article presents the results of a survey of insurance companies with regard to eligibility conditions for flood insurance changes after August 2002, when a severe flood caused 1.8 billion euro of insured losses in the Elbe and the Danube catchment areas, and the general role of insurance in flood risk management in Germany. Besides insurance coverage, governmental funding and public donations played an important role in loss compensation after the August 2002 flood. Therefore, this article also analyzes flood loss compensation, risk awareness, and mitigation in insured and uninsured private households. Insured households received loss compensation earlier. They also showed slightly better risk awareness and mitigation strategies. Appropriate incentives should be combined with flood insurance in order to strengthen future private flood loss mitigation. However, there is some evidence that the surveyed insurance companies do little to encourage precautionary measures. To overcome this problem, flood hazards and mitigation strategies should be better communicated to both insurance companies and property owners.     

How do private entrepreneurs transform local social capital into economic capital? Four case studies from rural Denmark

Bourdieu's (1986) General Theory of the Economy of Practices assumes that people perpetually transform tangible and intangible forms of capital according to certain ‘laws of conversion’. On this background, and combining sociology and micro-economics, we analyze specific strings of capital conversion in time and space. More specifically, we raise the question: How do private entrepreneurs transform local social capital into economic capital? We combine in-depth interviews with four private entrepreneurs in rural Denmark with Prisoner's Dilemma game theory. Thus each of our cases illustrates one of the outcomes in the PD matrix. In this way we explain why only one of the four entrepreneurs succeeds in capitalizing social capital.     

Mapping heat and traffic stress of urban park vegetation based on satellite imagery - A comparison of Bucharest,Romania and Leipzig,Germany

Urban Ecosystems - Large and comparatively compact European cities such as Bucharest and Leipzig struggle with considerable urban heat island (UHI) effects characterized by heat and drought...     

"If I can't have you, no one can": development of a Relational Entitlement and Proprietariness Scale (REPS)

Relational proprietariness and entitlement have been theoretically related to partner violence following the threat of relationship dissolution. To date, however, no measure has been employed to verify such accounts. A multistage item pool development and refinement strategy was employed, resulting in a 32-item measure with strong construct validity. An online survey administered to 279 students resulted in an interpretable factor structure of sexual proprietariness and entitlement, consisting of social, behavioral, and information control, and a potential factor of face threat reactivity. These factors added unique variance to the prediction of instrumental and expressive aggression, were related to self-esteem and attachment, and were not contaminated by social desirability. Recommendations for bolstering the face threat reactivity factor and future studies are suggested. This measure provides a new tool that contributes to the prediction of intimate partner violence.     

Breaking the Ties That Bind: From Corporate Sustainability to Socially Sustainable Systems

Although the recent push toward sustainability is certainly generally a positive development in business and society, we can see many problems in the execution of the theory of sustainability. Where the triple bottom line calls on companies to weigh effects on stakeholders and the environment alongside profit, in practice in many cases, sustainability has been perverted to represent sustainable profits. In these cases, environmental impact and effects on people are only important insofar as they positively contribute to a firm‘s future profits. It is not only practitioners who have often espoused this misappropriated view of sustainability but also academics have lent credibility to this view. In this work, we start by criticizing the often espoused current view of sustainability and remind academics of their responsibility to adapt a more critical view of this narrow focus. We provide examples that show how the current system of capitalism has resulted in outcomes for people and the environment that are patently unacceptable. Reasons are given as to why there is much hesitation to change the status quo. We then call on academics to reexamine what the role of businesses should be within society, what obligations business and corporations should have in society, and how we can encourage meaningful change that results in a better world for future generations.     

Goal Engagement During the School–Work Transition: Beneficial for All,Particularly for Girls

The school‐to‐work transition presents a substantial regulatory challenge for youth in modern societies. Based on the action‐phase model of developmental regulation, we investigated the effects of goal engagement on transition outcomes in a high‐density longitudinal study of noncollege‐bound German adolescents (N=362). Career‐related goal engagement was important for attaining a desired career goal (i.e., apprenticeship) for girls who generally faced unfavorable employment opportunities. For boys, goal engagement did not predict the attainment of an apprenticeship. Goal engagement was nonetheless beneficial for well‐being, predicting positive affect for both girls and boys. This effect was not mediated by attainment of an apprenticeship. The findings elucidate the role of goal engagement under structural and temporal constraints and suggest possible avenues for intervention.     

Between Integration and Exclusion: Ethnic Minorities at the Polish Eastern Border after the First Decade of Transition

Post-Socialist liberalisation has returned ethnic minorities in Central Eastern Europe to the spotlight. In border regions where inter-ethnic dialogue is burdened by historical conflicts that for over four decades were taboo, various developments now coincide. On the one hand, permeable borders and political transition have resulted in new legal rights for minorities coupled with vastly improved possibilities for contact and communication with their native country. On the other hand, historical antagonisms have re-emerged and are being debated again in the new sociopolitical climate. The eastern enlargement of the European Union is bound to spawn new challenges and threats for inter-ethnic dialogue. Against this background, this article addresses inter-ethnic issues at the Polish eastern border over the last decade. It highlights different forms of the integration and exclusion of minorities in the light of transition and European Union enlargement, taking as examples the Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Belarusian border regions.     

‘The Rotten Banana’ fires back: The story of a Danish discourse of inclusive rurality in the making

The popularity of a particular term – the Rotten Banana – has paralleled the one-sided centralisation of public services since the Danish Municipal Reform of 2007. The Rotten Banana denotes peripheral Denmark, which takes a geographically curved form that resembles a banana, and it symbolises the belief that rural areas are backward and (too) costly. This article shows how the negative connotations of rural areas have come to outweigh the positive ones and to legitimise liberal visions of the ‘sustainable’ welfare state. Whereas previous studies on the perceptions of rural dwellers have focused on the discourses of rurality that produce rural outsiders, this article builds on the work of de Certeau and of Laclau and Mouffe. Based on both quantitative and qualitative data, the study shows how, in Denmark, negative connotations and centralisation have together spurred a new and political mobilisation in many parts of the ‘banana’. Through skilful ‘consumption’, rural dwellers have adapted the alienating liberalist ‘logic of equivalence’ to their own use and produced a ‘logic of difference’, thus challenging the predominant political discourse of rurality. As a result, the Danish Liberal government was forced to introduce a new and more inclusive rural policy in September of 2010 and grant rural dwellers a political voice in parliament.