Psychopathy and Culpability: How Responsible Is the Psychopath for Criminal Wrongdoing?

Recent research into the psychological and neurobiological underpinnings of psychopathy has raised the question of whether, or to what degree, psychopaths should be considered morally and criminally responsible for their actions. In this article, we review the current empirical literature on psychopathy, focusing particularly on deficits in moral reasoning, and consider several potential conclusions that could be drawn based on this evidence. Our analysis of the empirical evidence on psychopathy suggests that while psychopaths do not meet the criteria for full criminal responsibility, they nonetheless retain some criminal responsibility. We conclude, by introducing the notion of rights as correlative, that even if psychopaths were to be fully nonresponsible, imposing some form of civil commitment would still be warranted.     

Returning to Beijing

I had been home for Christmas and was just back in Beijing,where I had spent all of the previous year.That year had been one of the best in my life,and though I had been here before and always had a soft spot for Beijing,the city had now taken up a strong place in my heart.Going back home had been a strange experience of being home and away from home simultaneously.     

Ideology and Interests in the Political Marketplace

I develop a statistical method to measure the ideology of candidates and political action committees (PACs) using contribution data. The method recovers ideal points for incumbents that strongly correlate with ideological measures recovered from voting records, while simultaneously recovering positions for PACs, unsuccessful challengers, and open‐seat candidates. As the candidate ideal points are estimated independently of voting records, they represent a useful new resource for testing models of legislative behavior. By incorporating nonideological covariates known to influence PAC contributions, the method also shows promise as a platform for furthering our understanding of PAC contribution behavior.     

Elite mobilities: the semiotic landscapes of luxury and privilege

Tourism is immensely powerful in (re)organising large-scale inequalities and privileges. In the rapid expansion of ‘luxury tourism’ we find a wing of this truly global culture industry openly committed to the symbolic production of elite status, distinction and privilege. Our visual essay here offers a series of multimodal, multi-voiced statements arising from a research project that explores and critiques the lavish semiotic economies and strict interactional orders of these ‘new’ elite mobilities. Mimicking the fleeting encounters of super-elite travellers themselves, we undertook a series of ethnographically grounded but patently frugal sorties into five different spaces (or modes) of luxury travel. Drawing on our own fieldwork material and quoting the visual rhetoric of advertisers, we trace the normative production of an ostensibly enclavic landscape that imagines (or re-imagines) limitless aspirations and unbounded pleasures for all consumer-citizens regardless of their power or wealth.     

Employees without a Cause: The Motivational Effects of Prosocial Impact in Public Service

ABSTRACT

Public service employees often lack opportunities to see the prosocial impact of their jobs—how their efforts make a difference in other people's lives. Drawing on recent job design theory and research, I tested the hypothesis that the motivation of public service employees can be enhanced by connecting them to their prosocial impact. In a longitudinal quasi-experiment, a group of fundraising callers serving a public university met a fellowship student who benefited from the funds raised by the organization. A full month later, these callers increased significantly in the number of pledges and the amount of donation money that they obtained, whereas callers in a control group did not change on these measures. I discuss the implications of these results for theory, research, and practice related to work motivation in public service.     

The Struggle for Reform in Iran

Since the election of the reformist President Muhammad Khatami in 1997, the conflict between the reformers and the religious conservatives has intensified. The reformers command the majority in the city councils and, more importantly, in parliament, but they have been unable to carry through their proclaimed agenda for social and political reforms. This is mostly because the conservatives, who control most of the institutions of power like the army, the security forces, and the judiciary, have blocked the reforms. They have banned most of the pro-reform newspapers, jailed newspaper editors, journalists, and secular intellectuals. They have even harassed and jailed parliamentarians. Khatami's government, however, has succeeded in improving Iran's relations with the West, Russia, China, and the Persian Gulf states. In Iran a central issue is how to increase the constitutional powers of the popularly elected president and curb the almost unlimited authority of the non-elected supreme leader.