‘Red Mobs’, ‘Yuppies’, ‘Lamb Heads’ and Others: Contacts,Informal Networks and Politics in the Czech Republic,Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania

This article addresses the use of contacts and informal networks in the political sphere in post-communist states in East Central and South East Europe. It tests two major hypotheses: (i) informality is functional and mainly a result of transition; and (ii) informality is embedded in the national culture and/or a leftover from communism. These hypotheses are tested on findings from 360 in-depth elite interviews. The article concludes that although informality is largely a response to problems and opportunities caused by transition, the manner in which it is expressed, to quite some extent, reflects the national culture and communist experience.     

Empathy and objectivity in the legal procedure: the case of Swedish prosecutors

The role of empathy, the capacity to read someone else’s emotions, in the legal context has previously been studied in relation to primarily judges’ decision-making, often with a concern for objectivity. Our purpose is to study professional emotion management in the legal process through an analysis of Swedish prosecutors’ use of empathy. An ethnographic data collection took place between 2012 and 2015, including shadowing, observations and interviews with 36 prosecutors from 3 prosecution offices. The analysis shows that during the investigation, empathy helps identify the prerequisites of a crime and deciding if and how to prosecute. When preparing for trial, empathy is used to anticipate the situation in court. During the trial, the empathic process includes management of the emotions of others in order to stage credible testimonies, convince the judge and calm victims. The empathic process is oriented and restricted by the emotive–cognitive judicial frame through which prosecutors are rewarded by emotions of comfort and pride in demonstrating expertise of legal coding. We conclude that empathy is integral to prosecutors’ professional performance, including the requirement to be objective. The study points to the problems with silencing emotions and maintaining a positivist notion of objectivity in the legal system.     

Scientific Method and the Crimes of the Powerful

Over the past six decades researchers interested in the crimes of the powerful have developed a respectable body of literature. Owing to the empirical and theoretical richness of these contributions, the crimes of the powerful sub-field is ready for critical interventions to be made on the plane of scientific method. Moreover, such interventions have become increasingly necessary owing to the disciplinary hegemony of an orthodox empiricist approach which erects a problematic boundary between empirical representations of the crimes of the powerful and theoretical explanation. To aid a critique of this approach, this paper will employ the scientific framework of classical Marxism to decipher the peculiar problems which flow out of the orthodoxy’s method. It will be concluded that while classical Marxism offers a more rigorous framework for penetrating analyses of the crimes of the powerful, orthodox scholars have nevertheless made significant contributions which should also be utilised in future research.     

Nationhood and Scandinavian naturalization politics: varieties of the civic turn

The neighboring countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway represent three very similar societies that differ markedly with respect to naturalization policy. While the general trend of a civic turn has brought about some of Europe’s strictest residence and citizenship requirements in Denmark, it has left the liberal Swedish policy largely untouched and the Norwegian somewhere in between the other two. How might such divergence in otherwise very similar societies be explained? This article investigates the role different conceptions of nationhood have played. It is argued that different conceptions of nationhood have mattered, but that the national differences have less to do with the normative content of nationhood than with how politicians tend to conceive of the integration process that newcomers must commit to in order to develop a strong sense of national belonging.     

Russia and its Western Neighbours: A Comparative Study of the Security Situation in the Black,Baltic and Barents Sea Regions

Abstract

Since Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in 2014, the security situation of Europe’s eastern ‘frontline states’ has undergone significant changes. In and around the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Barents Sea, the scope and scale of military activity has grown, as has the frequency of Russian–Western military encounters. Despite the many similarities between the three regions, and despite the increased risk of negative spillover from one region to another, there are also noteworthy regional differences. As of today, the security challenges appear to be more severe and pressing in the southern and central part of the ‘frontline’ than in the northern.     

Doing couples: Negotiating faith and gender. Ideals and strategies

How do young women and men do their couples when they have a different faith and gender from that of their partner? What kind of stories do they tell and how do they tell them, in order to present their relationships as modern and successful? Which ideals do their stories reflect? And what kinds of strategies do young women and men develop when they do couples?     

Politics of Belonging: A Narrative on Activism in Sweden

Intersectionality is commonly used as an analytical tool to bring to light how various social divisions merge to produce a cohesive set of subordination practices, but not as often how the concept can be used in the study of agency. Discussing politics of belonging through cases of urban justice movement in Sweden, the article focuses on intersectionality as a perspective interlinking different dimensions of power with agency; thus the aim is to highlight analytically the interconnection of agency with subordinating power dimensions, creating a basis for resistance. This is illustrated with examples on movements for social justice, opposing racism, sexism, and class oppression. The article discusses their collective mobilization and claims for public voice. Using one activist's narrative about how the subjectivity denied to citizens can be recaptured, the author demonstrates how reflexive self-awareness becomes connected to politics of belonging, expressing how the personal becomes political.     

An oxcarbazepine-related fatality with an overview of 26 oxcarbazepine postmortem cases

We present an oxcarbazepine-related fatality together with an overview of 26 postmortem cases involving oxcarbazepine observed during the period 2001-2006. The fatality case concerned a 27-year-old woman with epilepsy, who was found dead in her bed. Oxcarbazepine and its active metabolite, 10-hydroxycarbazepine, were the only compounds detected. The concentrations of oxcarbazepine were as follows: femoral blood, 2.9mg/kg; muscle, 1.8mg/kg; liver, 0.9mg/kg; gastric content (300ml), 860mg/kg; and vitreous humour, not detected. The concentrations of 10-hydroxycarbazepine were as follows: femoral blood, 66mg/kg; muscle, 40mg/kg; liver, 62mg/kg; gastric content, 27mg/kg; and vitreous humour, 25mg/kg. The analyses were performed by HPLC-DAD after liquid-liquid extraction. Oxcarbazepine intoxication was regarded as a possible cause of death. For the other 26 cases, the 10-hydroxycarbazepine concentrations ranged from 2.2 to 48mg/kg with a median of 25mg/kg.     

A new system for computer aided dental identification in mass disasters

In recent years, several computer programs for dental identification in mass disasters have been developed. Unfortunately, it may be difficult to get access to such programs. The Norwegian police presently utilizes a text retrieval program, NOVA¹STATUS, for detection work. This program is based on the British STATUS ONE program, and it enables the user to find from a large pool of postmortem dental registration one or several sets containing specific information about one tooth or several teeth. The complete relevant set(s) can be displayed for visual examination and comparison. A coding system for dental information has been developed as well as a system for interrogating the computer. This system and its efficiency have been tested on a simulated small scale disaster where various well-known difficulties in dental identification were included.