Defenders of Freedom or Perpetrators and Facilitators of Crimes? Beyond Progressive Retreatism in the Trump Era

ABSTRACT

Heavily influenced by broad definitions of crime developed by a few pioneering critical criminologists, the main objective of this article is to provide evidence showing that the current Trump administration is a regime that commits crimes of the powerful and facilitates some types of interpersonal violence in private places. Special attention is devoted to direct and in-direct state-perpetrated violent crimes against women.     

Gender-Based Violence Prevention Workshops: An Experimental Evaluation of Efficacy

Gender-based violence has become an increasingly visible and salient public problem. In the Fall of 2015, the University of Connecticut’s Violence Against Women Prevention Program (VAWPP) implemented interactive workshops in first-year experience (FYE) classes to reduce rape myth acceptance, improve knowledge and understanding of the University’s affirmative consent policy, and increase confidence in interpreting cues related to sexual consent. This randomized experimental design tested whether these outcomes were realized as a result of the workshops. In almost all instances, the workshops substantially and statistically significantly decreased students’ rape myth acceptance, increased their knowledge and understanding of consent, and improved their confidence in cue interpretation.     

Women’s experiences of peacebuilding in violence-affected communities in Kenya

Despite the attention to gender and conflict in empirical positivist peace research, and the interest in local agency in recent peacebuilding literature, women’s understandings and lived experiences of peacebuilding are not necessarily well accounted for. This article, drawing on interviews, focus groups and observation research with 57 female victims/survivors of post-election violence in Kenya, provides an ethnographic study of women’s largely informal peacebuilding activities, ranging from mediation and dialogue to economic empowerment. It analyses women’s constructions and ways of making sense of being peacebuilders, demonstrating that, while participants employed dominant gender frames, they exerted considerable transformative agency in their communities. It argues that their ‘gendered responsibility for peace’ at community level is simultaneously empowering and disempowering. The research aims to increase understanding of the gendered nature of peacebuilding and the ways in which women exercise peacebuilding agency through a focus on their own voices and lived experiences.     

Exploring the Overlap between Victimization and Offending among Women in Sex Work

Abstract

This study examines reported victimization and reported offending of women involved in sex work in the United States in order to identify demographic and behavioral overlap between women who presented to the justice system as victims and offenders, and between women identified as trafficked persons or as prostitutes. Results indicate significant offending and victimization experiences among women in the sex industry. Among women who presented both victimization and offending (victim-offenders)—compared to those who were exclusively victims or exclusively offenders and those without such experiences—substance abuse problems, injuries, and multiple arrests were proportionally higher. Distinctive behavioral differences between trafficked women and prostitutes were not evident. Policy implications for the justice system are discussed.     

Protecting Victims of Domestic Violence in Caribbean Communities

SUMMARY

A decade after the courts in many English-speaking Caribbean jurisdictions were granted the power to issue restraining orders to victims of domestic violence, battered women have not experienced the full benefits of such policy. Using the experiences of battered women in the English-speaking Caribbean state of Barbados, this study argues that there are significant challenges for victims, caused by cultural, social and economic factors that have not been appropriately addressed by domestic violence legislation. Marginalized by the court and legal system in the English-speaking Caribbean, many battered women seek out alternatives to the legal system for coping with domestic violence. Therefore when they migrate to countries like the United States where more accommodations are made for victims of domestic violence, they are unlikely to engage with the legal system and make their suffering known. Women might also be silenced by fears of violating immigration laws in the United States as well as risking personal loss due to the severe punishment of their partners when indicted by the legal system.     

The case of the ‘other India’ and Indian ir scholarship

ir scholarship in India has focused on the borders, territory and sovereignty of the Indian state, overlooking the rich complexity of interior border formation between colonial and independent India. The paper argues that the study of the princely states under the British paramountcy (1858–1947), neglected so far, is valuable to ir scholarship on three grounds. First, in mapping colonial India’s engagement with the outside world, the focus has been solely on British India. The princes were equally participative and perceptive of the outside world. Second, the princely states represent yet another challenge to the Westphalian notion of sovereignty, demonstrating the limited capacity of European categories to understand the ‘non-West’. Third, incorporating the paramountcy system in the genealogy of sovereignty of the Indian subcontinent offers a fresh account of border construction inside the state.     

Trafficking of Ethiopian women to Europe – making choices,taking risks,and implications

ABSTRACT

This piece focuses on the Ethiopian women victims of trafficking – the agency of these women in the whole trafficking process, and issues of choice – ‘trying a chance’, or just taking a risk to get out of poverty or difficult social circumstances, considering that they are lured, tricked, coerced, or even forced into the hands of traffickers by a wide range of circumstances and people, including family and friends. Traffickers target girls with economic, social, and family problems. Most of the trafficking of women and girls from Ethiopia is carried out through the use of service ‘agencies’ and human smugglers who facilitate the process of migration through a number of routes. Many of those who use the ‘desert route’ often begin from Sudan to North Africa from where they cross to Europe. The data for this contribution were generated in a study – ‘Captured in Flight: Experiences of violence among African women in Sweden’ – funded by the Swedish crime prevention agency (Brottsoffermyndgheten). The research for the project has been carried out in Sweden, but the women whose case studies are presented here have been in the Middle East, Turkey, Italy, Finland, and Greece before coming to Sweden.     

Why do men rape? Understanding the determinants of rapes in India

Abstract

The study examines the determinants of rapes in India using state-level data for the time period 2001–2015. The panel model analysis indicates that there is no impact of education and economic growth, pointing towards a larger role of social and cultural factors in this context. The effect of deterrence variables (such as the number of police stations) is non-existent, possibly pointing towards the incompetency of the police force. Social attitude towards women emerged as the most robust predictor of the extent of rapes in India. We argue that the fundamental problem lies in the misogyny deeply rooted in the Indian society.     

Passing on the history of ‘comfort women’: the experiences of a women’s museum in Japan

This article explores the activities and experiences of a women’s peace museum in Japan which especially tries to pass on the history of Japan’s military sexual slavery, or the ‘comfort women’ issue. The system of Japan’s military sexual slavery had not been written as a part of history until courageous survivors testified and documentary evidence was unearthed in the 1990s. With few material exhibits of sexual violence, testimonies play a significant role in the exhibitions. Panels displaying the testimony of both survivors and former soldiers try to represent the person as a whole, situating sexual enslavement or crimes as part of their overall life, rather than extracting the harsh experience in an isolated way. The concrete and detailed activities of this privately run museum show the challenges faced by museums dealing with the dark history of their own country.     

Still a new democracy? Individual-level effects of social trust on political trust in South Korea

The social capital theory holds that there is a positive relationship between social and political trust; however, despite the prominence of this postulation, this relationship has often been disputed among political scientists. While recent studies on advanced democracies have shown a strong positive relationship between social and political trust, studies on East Asian democracies, which previously showed a weak or negative relation, remain scant, separating these countries into their own category of new democracies. The motivation of this study is based on the importance of revisiting the relationship between social and political trust using recent data from one such country—South Korea—to determine the nature of this previously studied negative or weak relationship. The results of this study indicate that generalized social trust in South Korea is positively associated with political trust. This result is in line with recent findings in advanced democracies. While this positive relationship is consistent and significant across models, a greater portion of political trust is explained by economic and political performance, including factors such as the economy, corruption, inequality, and the welfare system, making institutional performance a critical predictor of political trust.     

Shining light into dark shadows of violence and learned helplessness: peace education in South Korean schools

The paper illustrates how a culture of violence is perpetuated and reproduced in South Korea through schooling and argues that peace education could help transform a culture of violence to a culture of peace. Critical ethnographic methods and a framework of peace education were applied to a sample of secondary schools in South Korea to argue that a disturbing culture of violence and learned helplessness were present; this comprises themes of direct and indirect violence through iljin (a group of students who are considered key perpetrators of school violence); a colonized false ideology and resistance to social justice. More positively, findings are also used to generate possibilities for pedagogical change based on peace education – an approach that proves useful both as an analytical frame for examining peace-violence relations in education and society and as an essential pedagogy for progressing towards peace in South Korean schools.     

(Trans)regionalism and South–South cooperation: Afrasia instead of Eurafrique?

The paper engages critically with the increasing importance of South–South cooperation and the shift from African–European to African–Asian interaction. It argues that South–South cooperation is too often framed in a spatial logics of regional integration and transregional cooperation and thus reproduces spatial understandings that are characteristic for African–European relations but misplaced in the context of African–Asian relations. Moreover, it analyses perceptions about the difference of European and Asian cooperation partners amongst political and societal elites in Kenya and Tanzania, arguing that instead of a shift from African–European to Afrasian spaces of interaction, the two mutually coexist and fulfil complementary functions.     

Do land reforms have adverse impacts on the livelihoods of poor land users? Evidence from the Nkoranza South Municipality,Ghana

Poverty reduction is the overarching goal of most development interventions in the developing world. From 2004, Ghana has been implementing a land reform policy/programme that seeks to improve tenure security and reduce poverty. The present study uses qualitative methods to analyse the extent to which land reforms are enabling or inhibiting poor land users in Ghana to exit poverty and improve their living standards. The study finds that Ghana’s land reform system redefines customary land governance resulting in a breakdown of the trusteeship ethos of the chieftaincy institution, increasing land sales, insecurity of land tenure for the poor and disappearing commons. These factors subsequently have adverse impacts on the ability of poor people to meet their livelihood needs. The study concludes that, for land reforms to work proactively for the poor, they must be pursued as part of broader, holistic and integrated development initiatives.     

Collapse at the WTO: a Cancun post‐mortem

This article offers an analysis of the collapse of the WTO talks in Cancun in September 2003. It argues that the collapse of the talks should not be regarded as a victory for the developing world, as many have suggested. Rather, the collapse should be seen as the inevitable result of deep‐seated tensions within the wto 's institutional framework, both in terms of the processes that underlie its working and the substance of its agreements. The article argues that these imbalances, if not corrected, will heighten the alienation of developing countries and work to the detriment of the legitimacy and survival of the wto.     

Women’s human rights education trainers in Turkey: situated empowerment for social change

This article presents evidence of the links between human rights education and social change by analyzing the long-term effects on 88 trainers engaged in a non-formal adult training program sponsored by a women’s human rights group in Turkey, Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways. In this article, I show the transformative impacts of carrying out human rights education on the trainers themselves: in their identity; knowledge, skills, and attitudes; and behaviors in their family and in the workplace. This article extends the treatment of an emerging question within social change theory – that of the long-term influence on activists brought about by their very engagement in these activities. At the same time, because the activists are trainers associated with a human rights education program that infuses critical pedagogy with a feminist perspective, this qualitative case study provides the opportunity to explore ‘situated empowerment’ on trainers in both their personal and professional domains. The article concludes that further studies of human rights educators engaged as long-term trainers will further enrich the social change literature and the treatment of activists.