Posses and sinkholes: crisis aesthetics in Turkish political cinema

Turkey has taken comprehensive steps towards Africa. In addition to embassies and official civil institutions, many young Africans from various countries on the continent are pursuing undergraduate and graduate education in Turkey, either through scholarships or their own means. These students who complete their education are identified as “cultural ambassadors” in Turkey's foreign policy and emerge as significant elements in Turkey's relations with African countries. Despite the positive relations Turkey has established with African countries in its foreign policy, economic and political turmoil in its domestic policy has had adverse effects on African students studying in different cities in Turkey. Particularly, occasional instances of xenophobia in Turkey are also felt among African students. This situation poses a risk of rapidly losing the gains achieved over many years in relations with African countries. This study examines the impact of anti-immigrant in Turkey on African students studying in the country. Specifically, the reactions of African students studying in Turkey to anti-immigrant in the country, especially through their social media accounts, have been investigated. The study reveals that when the political and economic turmoil in Turkey turns into anti-immigrant, it leads to the emergence of negative views among African students against Turkey, jeopardizing Turkey's Africa policy.

Serbia rebuilds and reforms its health-care system

The study applies the wavelet local multiple correlations to investigate the level of comovements among the tail risks of US and emerging Asian stock markets in both time and frequency domains. Through this empirical investigation, we address the question of how the transmission of tail risk across the concerned stock markets is changing over specific timescales, varying from short term to long term. Empirical results from the multivariate time–frequency correlations show that the comovements of tail risks are distinctively higher during periods of economic and political turmoil in the short term. The multivariate long-term comovements are highly stable and extremely strong which can be taken as evidence of long-term integration. In contrast, the bivariate time–frequency correlations are remarkably weaker in the short term not only during periods of crises but over most of the sample period. The results of the bivariate analysis also highlight the instability of the long-term pairwise correlations of the tail risks, showing that it is susceptible to sudden changes, which indicates that the tail risks of the US and emerging Asian stock markets are actually not completely integrated in the long term. This finding also implies that the tail risks of US and emerging Asian stock markets are nonlinearly connected in the long term.

This study aims to probe the practicality of ethical school leadership amid socio-political and economic turmoil. This was necessitated by the collapse of the Zimbabwean economy in 2000 up until 2009 when they abandoned their currency due to hyperinflation. The downturn of the economy has not been abated to date, and education, together with other social services has been affected tremendously. The objective of this study is to find out the practicality of school leadership amid social, political, and economic turmoil, such as the one prevailing in Zimbabwe. Based on the findings, the study aims to suggest ways of dealing with ethical school leadership in such an environment. A qualitative study was conducted involving two primary and two secondary schools, where four school heads and sixteen teachers constituted the sample. Semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews were conducted. The findings indicated that school heads and teachers are finding it very difficult to practice ethical school leadership in the environment prevailing in Zimbabwe. This paper proposes that ethical leadership be promoted in these schools through engaging the 'reusable past' from their African Indigenous Knowledge and additionally applying a multi-dimensional and multi-sectoral intervention strategy to bring sustainable and practical change.

‘Iran and the West’ charts the relationship between Iran and the West beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries with increased contact with Western rulers eager to secure both economic opportunities and political advantage. In the 18th century, as Europe embarked on Enlightenment and scientific revolution, Iran entered a period of prolonged political and economic turmoil—the collapse of the Safavid state and then the rise of the Qajar dynasty. The Constitutional Revolution of 1906 profoundly altered the political and social direction of the country and laid the foundations for much that was to follow. Twentieth-century politics and the profound effects of the 1979 Islamic Revolution are also described.

In recent years, multi-factor models outperformed traditional models in explaining the cross-sectional variability in asset returns. Therefore, the current study examines the performance of the human capital-based six-factor model in the Brazilian stock market for the period spanning from July 2010 to June 2023. This study takes daily stock price data of non-financial firms and constructs a set of thirty-two portfolios sorted on size, value, profitability, investment, and labor income growth. Moreover, this study includes human capital as an additional factor in the Fama and French five-factor model, thus proposing an augmented six-factor model. We use Fama and Macbeth's (1973) two-step estimation approach for the empirical analysis. Findings indicate that small stock portfolios earn higher returns than big ones. Further, findings reveal that market size, value, profitability, investments, and labor income growth (proxy of human capital) premium significantly explain the time series variability in excess portfolio returns. Furthermore, we find that the Brazilian economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic create identical volatility in the stock markets, which reduces the performance of the six-factor model during an economic crisis and pandemic period. Additionally, we employ the Gibbons, Ross, and Shanken (GRS) test to evaluate the model's performance in sub-sample analysis. Lastly, the findings report important implications for policymakers, investors, and portfolio managers to select appropriate portfolios for investment during economic turmoil.

The 2000s represent a period of unprecedented political and economic turmoil in Zimbabwe's history. This article constitutes an attempt to unpack one aspect of this crisis period: roadside currency trade. Beyond its political dimensions, the Zimbabwe crisis has been accompanied by a highly informal regime of accumulation. While there is a way in which this informality conflates with contemporary analyses of informality, the highly politicised and securitised nature of Zimbabwe's informality exhibits a state–power–accumulation–society complex that poses analytical challenges for more common conceptions of informality. It is argued here that roadside currency trade not only provided a survival enclave for Zimbabwe's urban poor but contributed to the sustenance and reproduction of a schizophrenic, militarised, dictatorial state in the midst of a historically unprecedented crisis. A network of roadside currency trade in the Central Business District (CBD) of Zimbabwe's second-biggest city of Bulawayo, cynically referred to by locals as the ‘World Bank’, is used to provide a glimpse into Zimbabwe's political economy of crisis. An investigation into the ‘World Bank’ shows that, although often ostracised by policy makers, roadside currency trade drew in its wake participants from a wider spectrum of Zimbabwe's society than one would contemplate at face value. At the same time, the study also reveals that cross-border trade was the single most important factor in buttressing this trade, at least in this studied part of the country, and not foreign currency remittances from the diaspora as is commonly assumed.

The lava of change has spilled over South Africa again as apartheid as ended. What sort of social and artistic emerges as it cools? This anthology, containing more than two hundred poems by over fifty poets, spans five distinct historical periods in the contemporary development of South Africa, from the 1960s Durban worker strikes to the dismantling of apartheid in the 1990s. Most of the poems have been written in English, but forty-eight have been translated from Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, and /Xam, a Bushman linguistic group. Inspired by music, by the language of the streets, by the sensual and the erotic, and by social, political, and economic turmoil, these poems showcase a remarkable complexity of literary traditions. They provide a fascinating and moving rendering of South Africa's hybrid language and unique worldview.

Is Bitcoin a hedge, a safe haven or a diversifier for oil price movements? A comparison with gold

Over the decades, the partnership between India and Russia has grown stronger, enabling them to undertake combined efforts for development and engagement in neighbouring regions and beyond. Central Asia, which is a common neighbourhood of both India and Russia, has historically and culturally had close relations with the two countries. Given India's status as a major rising economy and Russia's powerful presence with deep ties to the region, the two countries can work together to deepen engagement with Central Asia. The region has high economic, political, connectivity and cultural potential, and its significance has increased amidst the current international political and economic turmoil. This paper aims to identify the areas of convergence between India and Russia for practical cooperation both at the bilateral and regional levels to further strengthen their ties and contribute to the development of their common neighbourhood. Bilateral cooperation between India and Russia in Central Asia has great potential and is of significant interest. Trilateral cooperation of India and Russia with Central Asian republics has not been extensively researched and could emerge as a new area of interest. The paper explores this phenomenon in the context of economic and educational cooperation among the three sides, which can provide another anchor for regional stability, not only in Central Asia but also in the wider region.

Labor Markets, Inequality and Poverty in Georgia

The new millennium has meant a new start for Peruvian society. After decades of political violence, economic crisis, and an internal war, democracy was restored, and economic growth resumed. The many grassroots organizations that had been established to address the economic and political crisis seem to have lost their initial raison d’être. Still, they have remained in operation to this very day. In this article, we analyze the history and continued presence of two types of urban grassroots organizations: the communal kitchens and the victim-survivor organizations. Our leading question is: what is the present-day rationale sustaining these grassroots organizations that originated as responses to the political and economic turmoil from the previous decades? As we will argue, insight into the values of economic solidarity, participatory democracy, and gender equality is important to better understand the organization’s continuity. They shed light on the organizations’ changing roles and diverging meanings that their members attribute to them. Nowadays, members see the organizations as a platform for self-expression.

Interventions on Europe's political futures

In what ways can erotica chart the story of a nation in transition? What can it reveal about the discontinuities – and uncomfortable parallels – between the periods of political and economic turmoil that characterize modern German history? The rapid modernization of the German Empire in 1871 led to large-scale transformations in the cultural, social, and political spheres. Exploring a rich diversity of erotic visual art – from paintings and photographs, to postcards and graphic folios – this volume reveals the impact of these changes on the erotic interests of the nation. Across diverse forms of artistic production, reception, and circulation,Erotic Art in Modern Germanyargues for the significance and cultural value of erotica. It presents work by both highly regarded and lesser-known artists and examines themes such as legal cultures and the impact of censorship, sexuality and sexual reform, and changing political frameworks, from imperialism to fascism. 10 chapters study diverse topics that engage with philological and ethnographic approaches to erotic art, demonstrate how scientific developments shape erotica, and investigate the ways in which works intersect with debates on gender and sexuality. With its holistic, cross-disciplinary approach-drawing from the fields of anthropology, film theory, Marxism, feminism, and trans- and queer theories – the book complicates simplistic understandings of 'modern' erotica and powerfully underlines its enduring significance as a site of dissent and experimentation.

A man is deep in thought. He is immersed in his book and seemingly unaware of his surroundings. The happy noises of playing children and their laughter, the ebb and flow of the conversations of their parents or caregivers, the shouts of youths kicking a ball, and the exchanges between some grown-ups busily sweeping away yesterdays garbage are all thrown together and fill the place with life. This man has chosen a reading spot on some rather impromptu and makeshift-looking, yet at closer inspection very sturdy and durable wooden structure. His full concentration is devoted to turning the pages. On the cover of his book there appears one single word printed in bold letters. The word is Lenin. Lenin leads us to a time of extreme political and economic turmoil. “ ‘Truth is concrete’— this was the sentence written in big letters over Bertolt Brechts desk in his Danish exile—quoting Lenin quoting Hegel quoting Augustine. In a time of extreme political turbulence it was a constant reminder never to forget the reality around in Europe of the late 1930s.”1 I saw this contemporary reader of Lenin who was fully immersed in his book in El Campo de Cebada in Madrid (Figure 8.1). I came to visit this public urban garden-cum-playground-cum-cultural venue in early spring 2014. Again, it is a time where one is constantly reminded never to forget the reality around, both locally and globally.