Challenges in Development and Implementation of Health‐Risk‐Based Soil Quality Guidelines: Turkey's Experience

Management of contaminated sites is a critical environmental issue around the world due to the human health risk involved for many sites and scarcity of funding. Moreover, clean‐up costs of all contaminated sites to their background levels with existing engineering technologies may be financially infeasible and demand extended periods of operation time. Given these constraints, to achieve optimal utilization of available funds and prioritization of contaminated sites that need immediate attention, health‐risk‐based soil quality guidelines should be preferred over the traditional soil quality standards. For these reasons, traditional soil quality standards are being replaced by health‐risk‐based ones in many countries and in Turkey as well. The need for health‐risk‐based guidelines is clear, but developing these guidelines and implementation of them in contaminated site management is not a straightforward process. The goal of this study is to highlight the problems that are encountered at various stages of the development process of risk‐based soil quality guidelines for Turkey and how they are dealt with. Utilization of different definitions and methodologies at different countries, existence of inconsistent risk assessment tools, difficulties in accessing relevant documents and reports, and lack of specific data required for Turkey are among these problems. We believe that Turkey's experience may help other countries that are planning to develop health‐risk‐based guidelines achieve their goals in a more efficient manner.     

Le faux problème de l'indéfinition de la religion: les origines du ‘problème’ et ses enjeux actuels

When one refuses to participate in shallow debates on the definition of religion, which define in general tactics of declassing the beliefs of others or of under-classing our own beliefs, one recognizes that beyond the emerging patchworked spiritual diversification which emerges in today's advanced industrial societies there is a unified religious dogma. The idea that spirituality will be contradictory to religion does not constitute a pertinent concrete distinction, but occupies a place in this new religious dogma that presents itself as spiritual.     

Drinking Motives,Alcohol Use,and Sexual Attraction in Youth

Sexual minority youth were found to be more likely to drink alcohol during weekdays compared to heterosexual youth. Drinking during weekdays was associated with consuming alcohol as a coping strategy. Sexual minority youth also more frequently consumed alcohol to eliminate personal worries (coping) and to not be excluded by their peers (conformity). Sexual orientation–related alcohol problems should be addressed at an early stage. Such efforts are likely to be effective if insecurities and stress related to sexual orientation are addressed as well.     

Coparenting in Stepfamilies: A Cluster Analysis

The aim of this study was to identify types of coparenting in stepfamilies based on observational data and to examine whether these types differed regarding marital satisfaction and child adjustment. Forty-five couples attended two videotaped discussion tasks on topics of agreement and disagreement regarding coparenting issues. An exploratory cluster analysis identified three main types of coparenting in stepfamilies: (1) Cooperative coparenting (n = 19), (2) Complementing coparenting (n = 16), and (3) Conflictual coparenting (n = 10). The Complementing coparenting type appeared as a new type of coparenting that had not been described in earlier studies and that might be specific to coparenting between non-biological parents. Comparison between the three clusters showed no differences for marital satisfaction and child adjustment. Each cluster is illustrated by a family case to provide a better understanding of coparenting dynamics in stepfamilies.     

Recession,austerity and gender: A comparison of eight European labour markets

The collapse in GDP brought about by the global economic crisis in 2008 affected female employment less than male employment, whereas austerity has been particularly harsh on women, a gendered impact described in the literature as “he‐cession to sh(e)‐austerity”. This article analyses gendered trends in the labour markets of eight European countries, decomposing quarterly changes in labour participation of women and men and in employment by sector. The “he‐cession to sh(e)‐austerity” scenario is not observed in all countries. Other channels through which austerity policies can jeopardize gender equality and women's rights are identified with reference to a typology of such policies.     

Worlds of (in)difference: a visual essay on globalisation and sustainability

The ubiquitously used term ‘globalisation’ seems inadequate to designate a group of interrelated but often conflicting processes of interconnectedness of such an unseen complexity and magnitude.

Unsurprisingly scholars, as well as political actors, and communities are at odds with respect to gauging the nature and impact of globalisation and its effects on national and ethnic cultures and on humanity as a whole. Closely connected to the problematic of the global is the equally overwhelming concept of sustainability. Both phenomena can be visualised in numerous ways: through documenting current problematic situations or processes, by depicting possible solutions or promising developments. Alternatively – or in addition – these potential threats or encouraging signs can be expressed in a more metaphorical manner. Photography may help to empirically investigate and lay bare the presumed homogenisation, hybridisation or differentiation of space as a result of cultural, political, economic and technologically spurred forms of globalisation. Photography may help to detect the local articulations of both globalisation and sustainability.

The photographic part of this visual essay is a personal account of some of the challenges of globalisation and sustainability as observed (and projected) in the everyday of cities around the globe as inspired by current debates and theorisations of this phenomenon. The paired photographs address only a few of the many distinct but often interrelated domains of globalisation and aspects of sustainable development that merit our attention. They almost all hint at the more problematic aspects of events and situations that seem to contradict rather than support the widely acclaimed strive towards a more balanced contemporary and future society.     

Labour supply effects of a cash-for-care subsidy

From 1999, all parents in Norway with children aged one to three, who did not attend publicly subsidised daycare, became eligible for a cash-for-care (CFC) subsidy. One effect of the CFC-subsidy was to increase in the relative price of external child care. This article analyses whether the CFC-subsidy has led to a reduction in the labour supply of mothers. A framework for evaluating policy reforms when reforms are equally and nation-wide accessible is put forward. The results show that the CFC-subsidy has reduced womens labour supply. The results are sustained after controlling for contemporaneous macroeconomic shocks, using a triple difference approach.The author thanks Hege Torp, Erling Barth and Harald Dale-Olsen at The Institute for Social Research, as well as participants at the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE) conference in Bilbao in June 2002, participants at the Lunch-seminar at Statistics Norway, and two anonymous referees for valuable comments. The work is financed by the Norwegian Research Council, grant #137230/530. The financial support is gratefully acknowledged.Responsible editor: Deborah Cobb-Clark.     

Socio-economic status and life satisfaction in Turkey

The relationship between one's objective living conditions and his/her subjective well-being is a problematic one. This paper discusses the results of a survey conducted in Turkey to explore the impacts of socio-economic status on satisfaction with various domains of life, and satisfaction of basic, and social and psychological needs. The results from the univariate, bivariate analyses and the multiple discriminant analysis indicate that socio-economic status is a strong determining factor in satisfaction with life domains and satisfaction of needs.     

A pilot study in the use of the quality of life interview schedule

The purpose of this study was to refine the Quality of Life Interview Schedule (QUOLIS¢) approach to measuring the quality of life of developmentally handicapped adults who are unable to complete a written questionnaire or a verbal interview. Emphasis was placed on the evaluation of intra- and inter-rater agreement. Ten interviews were conducted. Informants were primarily parents and residential counselors. The results indicate that the QUOLIS¢ approach is generally acceptable to informants, the rating scales are sensitive, and the majority of scores have substantial to almost perfect correlations of intra- and inter-rater agreement.     

The Compensating Income Variation of Social Capital

There is a small but growing literature on the determinants of social capital. Most of these studies use a measure of trust to define social capital empirically. In this paper we use three different measures of social capital: the size of the individual’s social network, the extent of their social safety net and membership of unions or associations. A second contribution to the literature is that we analyze what social capital contributes to our well-being. Based on this, we calculate the compensating income variation of social capital. We find differences in social capital when we differentiate according to individual characteristics such as education, age, place of residence, household composition and health. Household income generally has a statistically significant effect. We find a significant effect of social capital on␣life␣satisfaction. Consequently, the compensating income variation of social capital is substantial. Thanks to Tijl Woortman for his research assistance.