Ganzheitliche Bewegungen, Transzendenzerfahrung und die Entdifferenzierung von Kultur und Religion in Europa

Ausgehend von der Beobachtung einer religiösen Resakralisierung beschäftigt sich der Beitrag mit der vermeintlichen Sonderrolle Europas. Europa gilt manchen als (letzte) Bastion der Säkularisierung — mithin eine Ausnahme auf globaler Ebene. Dagegen will der Aufsatz zeigen, dass die Entwicklung in Europa sehr große Ähnlichkeiten mit den religiösen Phänomenen hat, die auf weltweiter Ebene zunehmen. Es handelt sich um pfingstlerische, charismatische Bewegungen, die sich durch einen Antiinstitutionalismus und eine starke Erfahrungsorientierung auszeichnen. Diese Erfahrungsorientierung ist auch in der alternativen Religiosität ausgeprägt, die in Europa eine starke Verbreitung gefunden hat. Sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb Europas finden sich also Bewegungen, die das pflegen, was man im Anschluss an Schütz und Luckmann als Erfahrungen großer Transzendenz bezeichnen kann. Sie sind Teil eines Prozesses der Subjektivierung und Betonung der Ganzheitlichkeit, die strukturell zu einer Entdifferenzierung von Kultur und Religion führen.     

Venirepersons’s Attitudes Toward the Insanity Defense: Developing,Refining, and Validating a Scale

Given the prevalence and predictive strength of negative attitudes toward the insanity defense, we conducted three studies with 426 venirepersons to develop an understanding and a measure of public attitudes toward the insanity defense. In these studies, we developed, iteratively refined, and cross-validated the insanity defense attitude-revised (IDA-R) scale. The results suggest that IDAs are underpinned by ones degree of (a) orientation toward strict liability, and (b) concern about perceived injustice and danger associated with the defense. The IDA-R assesses these two-dimensions with good internal consistency, convergent and divergent validity, and predictive utility. The IDA-Rs predictive utility generalizes across jurisdictions and manipulation of case facts. Theoretical and practical implications for research and for identifying impartial jurors at voir dire are discussed.     

Rape trials and jurors' decisions

Recently, many writers have argued that equal protection for victims of rape is not presently offered in the courts since the outcomes of rape trials are frequently influenced by certain victim, defendant, and rape case characteristics. By systematically manipulating the factors of defendant and victim race, victim physical attractiveness, victim sexual experience, strength of evidence presented, and type of rape committed in a legal rape case, the present study sought to examine the effects of these factors on jurors' verdicts. Data collected from a sample of 896 citizens serving as mock jurors for the rape case indicated that these extraevidential factors had significant effects. Furthermore, it was found that the factors did not act independently as a number of significant interactions were identified. These interactions suggested that the impact of extraevidential factors on jurors' decisions is far more complex than what some writers and law reformers have thought. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of discriminatory treatment of plaintiffs and defendants in rape cases and the role of juror selection in introducing fairness in rape trials.     

Reviews

Hillel Ticktin, Origins of the Crisis in the USSR. Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1992. ix + 192 pp., $45.00 h/b, $19.95 p/b. Walter D. Connor, The Accidental Proletariat: Workers, Politics, and Crisis in Gorbachev's Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991, xvi + 375 pp., £25.00. $39.50.

Archie Brown, ed., New Thinking in Soviet Politics. London: Macmillan, 1992, xii + 115 pp., £30.00 h/b, £9.99 p/b.

Vadim Bakatin, Osvobozhdenie ot illyuzii. Kemerovo: Kemerovskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1992, 183 pp.

Robert T. Huber & Donald R. Kelley, eds., Perestroika‐Era Politics: The New Legislature and Gorbachev's Political Reforms. New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1991, viii + 246 pp., £39.95.

Gavin Peebles. A Short History of Socialist Money. London and Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991, xiii + 170 pp., £30.00 h/b, £11.95 p/b.

Vitalii A. Naishul’, The Supreme and Last Stage of Socialism, Centre for Research into Communist Economies, New Series 2, 1991, 48 pp., £3.50.

Anders Aslund, ed., Market Socialism or the Restoration of Capitalism? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, x + 215 pp., $49.50, £30.00.

Anthony Jones & William Moskoff, Ko‐ops: The Rebirth of Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991, xvii+ 153 pp., £20.00 h/b, £9.50 p/b.

Marshall I. Goldman, What Went Wrong with Perestroika. London: W. W. Norton & Company Ltd, 1991, 258 pp., £12.95.

Leah A. Haus, Globalizing Gatt: The Soviet Union's Successor States, Eastern European and the International Trading System. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1992, x + 141 pp., $38.95 h/b, $10.95 p/b.

Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., Erik P. Hoffman, Robbin F. Laird, eds, Soviet Foreign Policy: Classic and Contemporary Issues. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991, xviii + 857 pp., DM 178 h/b, DM 98 p/b. Also published as Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., Erik P. Hofmann, Robbin F. Laird, eds, Classic Issues in Soviet Foreign Policy: From Lenin to Brezhnev. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991, xvi + 349 pp., DM 48 p/b; and Frederic J. Fleron, Jr. Erik P. Hoffmann, Robbin F. Laird, eds, Contemporary Issues in Soviet Foreign Policy: From Brezhnev to Gorbachev. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991, xviii+ 521 pp., DM 54 p/b.

Steven Kull, Burying Lenin. The Revolution in Soviet Ideology & Foreign Policy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992. xvi + 219 pp., £10.95 p/b.

Lowell Dittmer, Sino‐Soviet Normalisation and Its International Implications, 1945–1990. Seattle, WA, and London: University of Washington Press, 1992, vii + 373 pp., $35.00.

Haim Shemesh, Soviet‐Iraqi Relations, 1986–1988: In the Shadow of the Iraq‐Iran Conflict. London: Lynne Rienner Publisher, 1992, x + 285 pp., £31.95.

Larry E. Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press (Distributed in UK by Open University Press), 1991, xv + 215 pp., £18.50.

Beatrice Farnsworth & Lynne Viola, eds, Russian Peasant Women, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, 304 pp., £13.50 p/b.

George Sanford, ed. and transl., Democratization in Poland, 1988–90. London: Macmillan, 1992, xv + 203 pp., £40.00.

Tania Konn, ed., Soviet Studies Guide. London: Bowker‐Saur, 1992, xvi + 237 pp., £39.00 h/b.     

Youth Worker Professional Development Participation,Preferences, and Agency Support

Using a Web-based survey, this study examined youth workers' professional development participation, preferences, and levels of agency support and the relationships between these variables and youth worker characteristics. Results revealed a positive relationship between participation in professional development opportunities and youth workers' self-reported job competency but also indicated low levels of agency support for participation in continuing education. Though perceptions of critical training topics varied among program staff from different geographic areas, most youth workers reported similar training experiences and interests regardless of their individual characteristics. Collaborative approaches to training and professional development may result in increased exposure to a broad range of professional development opportunities and significantly enhance the quality of youth programming.     

African–American Parents’ Racial and Ethnic Socialization and Adolescent Academic Grades: Teasing Out the Role of Gender

This study examined the relationship of racial and ethnic socialization and academic achievement in a sample of 218 African American adolescents (grades 9–12; 52% girls) attending a public high school in the northeastern United States. Researchers were particularly interested in whether adolescent gender moderated the relationship between racial and ethnic socialization and academic grades. Results indicated that aspects of ethnic socialization, African American cultural values and African American heritage were linked to adolescent grades. Additionally, adolescent gender was found to moderate the association between these socialization variables and grades. The findings also suggest that socialization provided by paternal caregivers around African American cultural values and African American heritage may have differential effects for academic grades than the socialization messages provided by maternal caregivers. Information generated from this study broadens the understanding of socialization factors that can facilitate positive academic outcomes in African American youth and has practical implications for parents and educators.

Nonkilling 101 — Is a nonkilling society possible?

ABSTRACT

Following the definition presented by Paige, nonkilling refers to the absence of killing, threats to kill, and conditions conducive to killing in human society. How can education contribute to bringing about such societies? As the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) called upon the global community to ‘significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere’ by 2030, a growing need exists to understand the educational measures and transformations relevant to building societies where human killing is greatly reduced and eventually absent. Just as scholars, practitioners and policy-makers in other areas have had to rethink their impact in contributing to this global goal, in 2015 the “Vasa Statement on Education for Killing-Free Societies” was adopted, proposing concrete recommendations. The articles put together in this special issue of the Journal of Peace Education provide grounds to sustain the crucial role of education in curving the global epidemic of lethal violence.