COORDINATING EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE NETHERLANDS: A HOLISTIC QUANTITATIVE APPROACH TO THE ANALYSIS OF ICT‐RELATED AND OTHER WORK‐LIFE BALANCE STRATEGIES

Due to women's increased participation in the labour force, more and more family‐households are now juggling paid labour and care‐giving in space and time and do so in many different ways. Much research and policy about how households try to establish a satisfactory work‐life balance singles out particular coping strategies, such as telecommuting or the mobilizing of informal help by relatives or friends. While insightful, foregrounding single strategies may oversimplify the complex reality of everyday life, in which people often skilfully weave together multiple coping strategies. As well, advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have further diversified the arsenal of possible coping strategies, but the academic literature has yet to verify whether ICT usage complements or substitutes the adoption of other coping strategies. Adopting a holistic quantitative approach this study assesses which combinations of coping strategies prevail and which role ICTs play in this regard among one‐ and dual‐earner households in the Utrecht–Amersfoort–Hilversum area of the Netherlands. We also examine systematic variations in strategy combination by socio‐demographics, ICT possession, affordability and skills, social network factors, employment and commute factors, spatial factors, lifestyle orientation and other factors. We identify several distinct combinations of strategies and find that ICT‐related strategies are frequently adopted by highly educated employed parents in the Netherlands attempting to achieve a satisfying work‐life balance and tend to complement other types of strategies. Which combinations of strategies have been adopted depends most strongly on the presence of young children, but also on employment factors and characteristics of the environment surrounding the dwelling and main workplace.     

Motifs in The Arabian Nights and in Ancient and Medieval European Literature: A Comparison

This paper is a contribution to the ongoing debate about the origins of parallel motifs in The Arabian Nights and in ancient and medieval popular and learned literature about exotic lands of the East. This preliminary survey focuses on seven related motifs: the magnetic mountain, the congealed sea, flying griffins, automata and genies, the mysterious walled city, the living island, and the underground river. This paper is intended as a contribution toward a motif-Index of The Arabian Nights in order to facilitate further comparative study of the motifs involved.     

Missionaries,Evangelical Identity,and the Religious Ecology of Early Nineteenth‐Century South Carolina and the British Caribbean

This article examines a critical question that fraught contemporaries throughout the Atlantic system in the early nineteenth century: could slavery be ameliorated and, thus, by implication, could slaves be ‘improved’? Despite strong eighteenth‐century connections through trade and as provincial outposts of the British Empire, South Carolina and the British Caribbean differed markedly on this issue by the early 1800s. But the reasons for this divergence cannot be adequately explained by the effects of the American Revolution. South Carolina slaveholders believed that slavery could be ameliorated through the adoption of evangelicalism. West Indian proprietors, however, believed that the introduction of evangelical religion among their slaves would only incite them to rebel. Thus, evangelical missionaries were often crucial figures in defining the character of slaveholding societies in South Carolina and the West Indies. These missionaries illustrated South Carolinians' paternalistic, benevolent sense of a permanent slave society, while itinerants in the West Indies described a violent, lawless, and temporary society beyond the pale of British standards of civility and humanitarianism.     

Grandpa's ethnology

Hans Fischer. Gabsongkeg ‘71: Verwandtschaft, Siedlung und Landbesitz in einem Dorf in Neuguinea. München: Kommissionsverlag Klaus Renner, 1975. v + 484 pp. Illustrations, figures, maps, and bibliography.

Eike Haberland and Siegfried Seyfarth. Die Yimar am Oberen Korowori (Neuguinea). Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1974. xiv +441 pp. Figures, illustrations, and bibliography. DM 98.     

Migrants and the diffusion of low marital fertility in Belgium

Although the diffusion of fertility behavior between different social strata in historical communities has received considerable attention in recent studies, the relationship between the diffusion of fertility behavior and the diffusion of people (migration) during the nineteenth century remains largely underexplored. Evidence from population registers compiled in the Historical Database of the Liège Region, covering the period of 1812 to 1900, reveals that migrant couples in Sart, Belgium, from 1850 to 1874 and from 1875 to 1899 had a reduced risk of conception. The incorporation of geographical mobility, as well as the migrant status of both husbands and wives, into this fertility research sheds light not only on the spread of ideas and behaviors but also on the possible reasons why the ideas and behaviors of immigrants might have been similar to, or different from, those of a native-born population.     

Hazor - a city state between the major powers

The problem of the identity of the conqueror of Hazor is discussed against the background of the basic political constellations in South Syria and North Canaan in the 13th century. The Biblical references to Hazor in Joshua and in Judges are critically examined. This is followed by a survey of the results of excavations in Hazor up to the present (Dec.1999). The thesis that Hazor was destroyed around 1230 B.C. is questioned in the light of the recent debate on the Mycenaean IIIB ware dating. The final destruction of Hazor is seen as one of the aftermaths of the battle of Kadesh, when Ramses II directed his first campaign at Upper Galilee to subdue his rebellious vassals.