Chapter 10. Central American Survivors of Political Violence

Abstract

Despite compelling, well-documented findings on the levels of stress and trauma among Central American refugees, this group continues to be underserved. A host of issues contributes to this underservice, ranging from macro-level imposed obstacles, such as citizenship and health insurance as determining factors for accessing social and health services, to institutional factors that impede service utilization, such as an insufficient number of translators or a cumbersome and confusing bureaucracy. This chapter adopts a human rights framework as a strategy for working with groups of Central Americans who have experienced political violence. The ongoing effects of political violence on Central Americans, as they relate to mental and physical health problems, are reviewed and a case vignette is used to illustrate how political violence affects individuals and how macro-level forces and institutions create barriers to access and use of health care and social services. Treatment approaches for helping survivors of political violence in the context of a human rights framework are suggested.     

Why Theater? Sociological Reflections on Art and Freedom, and the Politics of Small Things

In this paper using reflections on a dramatic moment in the life of the author’s ethnographic study of theater in Poland as a starting point, the relationship between art and politics is analyzed. The relationship between two central propositions is explored, leading to a conclusion: (1) Cultural freedom is a definitive characteristic of modern social life and (2) the freedom constituted by culture as the arts and sciences opens up public space for alternative social and political practices, and thus: cultural freedom is a base for political freedom. Applying these propositions to a study of theater in Poland, it is shown that art constitutes cultural freedom through its relative autonomy, and the politics of small things results. Societies are transformed.     

以美国校园暴力防控为视角解读环境设计预防犯罪

环境设计预防犯罪（CPTED）的目标是减少犯罪机会,构建一个更安全和更宜居的环境,最终达到环境让生活更美好的目的。CPTED通过它的五个核心策略一自然监督、入口控制、领域强化、开展活动和地方保养来实现其目标。拟以美国预防校园暴力的CPTED设计为视角,具体解读CPTED的实际应用。     

Economic Evaluations,Economic Freedom,and Democratic Satisfaction in Africa

This article assesses the relationship between democratic satisfaction and micro and macroeconomic factors in Africa. Studies have shown that economic factors represent a cornerstone of the democratic process. However, research has rarely accounted for the effect of economic freedom on satisfaction with democracy, and its conditional role on the effect of citizens’ economic evaluations, particularly in the context of Africa where democracy is still developing. Using various rounds of the Afrobarometer, the article analyses the link between citizens’ evaluations of the economy and economic freedom with their satisfaction with democracy in 32 African countries between 2002 and 2013. First, the findings show that the openness of the economic context and positive economic evaluations are associated with an increase in democratic satisfaction. Second, economic freedom and economic evaluations appear to have a conditional association with democratic satisfaction. In fact, positive economic evaluations are a less important factor for democratic satisfaction in contexts that have a freer economy.     

Violence and Urban Order in Nairobi, Kenya and Lagos, Nigeria

This article examines the interaction between politics and informal institutions of order in two of Africa’s most violent and crime-ridden cities, Nairobi, Kenya and Lagos, Nigeria. In both cities, governments have failed to provide basic public services and security to citizens, especially to those who reside in informal settlements or slums. A variety of informal institutions, including ethnic militia and block-level vigilante groups, fulfill security and enforcement roles in these relatively ungoverned urban spaces. This article examines the differences in the character and organization of these “specialists in violence,” and it argues that these differences are often integrally linked to the political strategies and aims of elites. The article makes two primary contributions to existing understandings of informal order in violent cities in the developing world. First, I find that organizations seemingly organically linked to local communities, such as ethnic militia, are strongly influenced by national-level political struggles. Violent organizations can gain a foothold and degree of legitimacy by appealing to traditional loyalties, including ethnicity, but organizations with these advantages are also attractive targets for cooptation by political actors. Secondly, both direct state repression and electoral use of militia lead to more predatory forms of interaction between these groups and local communities.     

Collective capabilities, culture, and Amartya Sen’sDevelopment as Freedom

Conclusion Sen showed his usual wisdom and astute judgement in keeping his argument carefully focused and, therefore, elegant and compelling. Nonetheless, the understanding and pursuit of “development as freedom” must go beyond the arguments he lays out. As the global political economy moves with ever greater determination toward the implantation of more thoroughly marketized economic relations, analysts must correspondingly focus more closely on how to prevent market-based power inequalities from undermining “development as freedom.” Centralization of power over the cultural flows that shape preferences is a more subtle form of “unfreedom” than those which Sen highlights, but no less powerful for being subtle. Institutional strategies for facilitating collective capabilities are as important to the expansion of freedom as sustaining formal electoral institutions. Indeed, without possibilities for collective mobilization formal elections too easily become a hollow farce. Sen’s capability approach provides an invaluable analytical and philosophical foundation for those interested in pursuing development as freedom, but it is a foundation that must be built on, not just admired. Peter Evans is professor in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley. His current research interests focus on globalization and global governance institutions, and their effects on ordinary citizens. He has written numerous articles and books on subjects ranging from globalization, the role of the state in industrial development, and urban environmental issues. A current project supported by the Russell Sage Foundation examines possibilities for constructing North-South links between labor movements as a strategy for increasing the bargaining power of labor movements in the global South.     

Perceptions of Harm,Criminality, and Law Enforcement Response: Comparing Violence by Men Against Women and Violence by Women Against Men

The authors compare third-party evaluations of male violence against women and female violence against men with regard to perceived injury severity, criminal labeling, and recommending police contact. They determine if victim–offender gender directly influences third-party perceptions of injury, and test whether injury mediates victim–offender gender effects on assessments. Injury perception mediated but could not fully explain differences in labeling. Differences in police contact support remained significant after taking injury perceptions into account. Male and female respondents differed in injury evaluations in acts with male victims or female perpetrators, but not in injury rating of male perpetrator or female victim violence. Findings suggest gender stereotypes directly and indirectly influence third-party observers of violence, shaping assessments of injury and ability or willingness to criminalize violence.     

War,Violence and the Making of the Stalinist State: A Tillyian Analysis

Abstract

Defining the state as ‘organised violence’, based on the emergence of the modern European national state system, Charles Tilly identified four essential war-driven, state-building activities: ‘war-making’; ‘state-making’; ‘protection’ of elite ‘clients’; and ‘extraction’ of resources. Drawing on Tilly's primary categories of analysis, this essay considers the ways in which war, or the threat of war, real or imagined, shaped the Soviet state, particularly in its Stalinist manifestation. This essay argues that Tilly's warfare-state paradigm, judiciously deployed, brings into high relief facets of Soviet state-making that few other paradigms do.     

Evaluating Freedom of Information Laws: Objectives,Approaches, and Practical Considerations

Freedom of information (FOI) laws aim to improve the public’s opportunities to access official information from public authorities and hence to increase the level of transparency. Thus, it is important to know whether and to what degree the effects intended by establishing FOI laws are achieved and how their implementation could be improved. In order to answer these questions, FOI laws have to be evaluated. Unfortunately, attempts to evaluate FOI laws are still in their infancy. To promote sound evaluation, this article aims to provide guidance on how comprehensive FOI law evaluations might be designed and conducted.     

解析校园女生群体暴力

伴随着校园暴力这个老生常谈的话题,女生群体性暴力行为频现校园,且有愈演愈烈的趋势。本文通过对大量案例的分析总结,对女生群体性暴力行为的类型、特点作了分析,并试图以青春期危机论、嫉妒心理论和模仿论来论证导致这一行为的原因,期望能为探索防治校园暴力及女生群体暴力行为之对策提供一些有益的参考。