Towards cosmopolitan citizenship? Women’s rights in divided Turkey

Identity politics and citizenship are often envisaged in dichotomous terms, but cosmopolitan theorists believe commitments to ??thin?? universal values can be generated from divergent ??thick?? positions. Yet, they often gloss over the ways in which the nexus of thick and thin is negotiated in practice??a weak link in the cosmopolitan argument. To understand this nexus better, we turn to women??s rights organizations (WROs) in polarized Turkey to show that women affiliated with rival camps (e.g., pro-religious/pro-secular, Turkish/Kurdish, liberal/leftist) can mobilize over issues like empowerment, violence against women, and education. However, thick readings of these issues inflect upon collaboration. This has spurred pro-religious and Kurdish women to develop strategies that flag their specific concerns. As such, mutual recognition along cosmopolitan lines appears possible??and is reinforced through iterative encounters??but is not necessarily negotiated between equally empowered agents and entails complex processes of contestation and concession-making.     

CALIBRATING MEASURES OF FAMILY ACTIVITIES BETWEEN LARGE- AND SMALL-SCALE DATA SETS

Two studies of working families are combined to demonstrate a strategy for producing reliable estimates from the combination of self-reported (large N) and observational (small N) data. Both studies examine where and how dual-career families spend time at home. The 500 Family Study is sociological and uses self-reported time diary data from a national sample; the CELF study is anthropological and uses observational scan sampling data from a regional sample of 32 families. The data are combined as if they constitute one sample, and an analytic solution for establishing the reliability of the resulting composite estimates of time use is provided. Merging the data sets provides validation for each study, neither of which is without potential methodological weaknesses. The advantages of combining data from the independent data collection methods are discussed, and selected substantive findings on families' activities are highlighted, illustrating similarities and differences between findings in the independent and combined data sets. Results show that working families spend significant time in a small spectrum of home spaces, particularly kitchens and living rooms, with leisure activities prevailing, but mothers, fathers, and children differ in where and how they spend their time. Overall, a template for merging data from different disciplines and methods is provided.     

西方公民社会观适合中国吗?

20世纪90年代以来,公民社会逐渐成为学术研究热点。由于这一问题与当代中国社会政治变迁密切相关,因而引起国内外中国问题专家的广泛关注和讨论。尽管中国出现了社会分化、利益重组以及利益代表的重构,但是公民社会以独立于国家的自治和独立于传统结构如家族、单位或家庭的自治为前提,涉及公民结构及其思维模式的形成等诸多因素,其形成条件在中国才显露征兆,中国现在还没有产生公民社会。把西方语境中的公民社会观援引到中国,可能会出现根本不适用的情况。     

Prozessverbesserung mit Reifegradmodellen

Since the Software Engineering Institute has published the Capability Maturity Model in 1991, maturity models evolved into a commonly used instrument for assessing the state of a specific class of objects and for identifying improvement measures. As process improvement is a core task of business process management and takes top positions on CIO agendas, maturity models are prospering in this domain as well. However, it remains unclear which maturity levels should be aspired for distinct processes or process groups. Numerous companies strive for increasing or even maximizing maturity levels. Some maturity model specifications contain oppositional advice, but lack concrete recommendations. Even academia provides no answers. Against this background, we propose a mathematical optimization model that builds on insights from value-based management in order to analyze general economic relationships of process improvement with maturity models. The guiding effects of these relationships are illustrated using the example of ??CMMI for Services??. We conclude by discussing limitations and by pointing out theoretical as well as managerial implications.     

The Dynamics of Self-employment and Ethnic Business Ownership among Taiwanese in Australia

Taiwan‐born business and skilled migrants who settle in Australia have high unemployment rates despite being well educated and fairly affluent. This phenomenon, commonly found in Australia among new Asian immigrants, has seldom been researched. Using qualitative methodologies, including ethnographic interviews and participant observation, this paper examines economic integration of recent Taiwanese business and skilled migrants in three Australian cities: Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. The results indicate that Taiwanese immigrants find it difficult to secure employment, start profitable businesses, and adapt to the host society. The integration challenges include: lack of fluency in English, different social and cultural milieu, lack of familiarity with Australian business culture and labour relations, complex rules and regulations governing the establishment of business enterprises, small size of the market, high taxes, and lack of willingness to take up work not commensurate with their education and economic background. Policy recommendations to foster early integration of skilled migrants from Taiwan are included.     

The Association of Knowledge with Concern About Global Warming: Trusted Information Sources Shape Public Thinking

During the last decade, a great deal of news media attention has focused on informing the American public about scientific findings on global warming (GW). Has learning this sort of information led the American public to become more concerned about GW? Using data from two surveys of nationally representative samples of American adults, this article shows that the relation between self‐reported knowledge and concern about GW is more complex than what previous research has suggested. Among people who trust scientists to provide reliable information about the environment and among Democrats and Independents, increased knowledge has been associated with increased concern. But among people who are skeptical about scientists and among Republicans more knowledge was generally not associated with greater concern. The association of knowledge with concern among Democrats and Independents who trust scientists was mediated by perceptions of consensus among scientists about GW's existence and by perceptions that humans are a principal cause of GW. Moreover, additional analyses of panel survey data produced findings consistent with the notion that more knowledge yields more concern among Democrats and Independents, but not among Republicans. Thus, when studying the relation of knowledge and concern, it is important to take into account the content of the information that different types of people acquire and choose to rely upon.