The world's natural freshwater resources available for human use are more scarce than is generally assumed. This statement has already become a cliche, yet the truth it reveals is getting more apparent every day, just as is the case with other global problems which require solutions above and beyond the parochial and short term interests of individual nation states. Water scarcity has two important aspects, both with political connotations at different levels, with worldwide maldistribution of economic and natural resources being at the core of the problem.

The last two decades of the twentieth century have witnessed new methods of domination by the core of the capitalist world economy over its periphery. On matters concerning international organization of capital accumulation the core makes use of international institutions such as the G7, the IMF and the World Bank, and the GATT on a larger scale than ever before. In the present study, we will discuss the history of world agriculture and food production in the twentieth century in an attempt to explain how the current structure of metropolitan domination in these sectors has been shaped in the post-war era. We will, then, investigate the transformations that Turkish agriculture and food production have been undergoing during this period.

Living groups are an important subject in sociology, demography, economics, social medicine, and anthropology. In many studies, households are chosen as the most suitable unit of investigation, though other choices also have their advantages and limitations (Yanagisako, 1984 pp. 161-205). The household is preferred in the present study, because it enables us to present new information that has been collected by the Turkish census and to discuss its implications for understanding living arrangements during the life course.

Can a new generation of countries emerge and establish themselves as major exporters of manufactures on the basis neo-liberal economic policies and thus replicate the outstanding performance of the first generation Asian and Latin American newly industrialized countries (NICs)? The article seeks to answer this question on the basis of a case-study, Turkey, a country which has managed to undertake a significant switch from import-substitution to export-orientation under an essentially neo-liberal reform package. The central argument may be summarized as follows. Neo-liberal reforms, when combined with a number of favourable “external conditions”, are quite successful in terms of engineering a shift of the existing productive capacity from import-substitution towards exports. Yet, such policies, on the whole, are less successful in terms of generating the level of investment necessary to sustain rapid growth in manufactured exports over time and also to achieve a steady process of export deepening. A sustained breakthrough in manufactured export growth cannot be realized by trade liberalization and exchange rate policy alone. Macroeconomic management and strategic industrial policy are likely to play a key role, particularly following the initial and comparatively easy phase of export-substitution.

During the middle and later decades of the nineteenth century successive generations of Ottoman statesmen made a sustained effort to transform the traditional-style Islamic empire, responsibility for which they had inherited, into a modern state. The difficulties they faced were enormous and, as is well known, ultimately proved insurmountable, so that what was left of the their territories finally disintegrated in the decade following the revolution of 1908. However, if there was one problem above all others to which could be ascribed the failure in turn of the Tanzimat, Hamidian, and Young Turk reformers, it was the financial weakness of the central government. Partly because of the inadequate tax base provided by an overwhelmingly agricultural economy, partly because of an inadequate administrative machine (especially in respect of tax collection and the control of expenditure), and partly because of the high level of military expenditure necessitated by constant external and internal threats to its integrity, the nineteenth century Ottoman state never had enough money, and from this one overwhelming fact derived a host of other woes.