Book reviews

The following books are reviewed.

The Hammonds: a marriage in history STEWART A. WEAVER, 1999 Stanford: Stanford University Press viii + 349 pp., ISBN 08047 3242 6, hardback, £30 (US$49.50)

Centering Women: gender discourses in Caribbean slave society HILARY McD. BECKLES, 1999 Oxford: James Currey; Kingston: Ian Randle; Princeton: Markus Wiener. xxv + 211 pp., ISBN 976 8123 78 8, £15.95

Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: a sourcebook JANE ROWLANDSON (Ed.), 1998 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xviii + 406 pp., ISBN 0 521 58212 1, hardback, 0 521 58814 4, paperback

Contesting Politics: women in Ireland, north and south YVONNE GALLIGAN, EILIS WARD & RICK WILFORD (Eds), 1999 Boulder: Westview Press. xv + 278 pp., ISBN 0 8133 3417 9, £17.50

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: women on Texas cotton farms, 1900–1940 REBECCA SHARPLESS, 1999 Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. xxiii + 319 pp., ISBN 0 8078 2456 9, hardback, 0 8078 4760 7, paperback, $19.95

Cato's Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion JULIE ELLISON, 1999 Chicago: University of Chicago Press. xi + 229 pp., ISBN 0 226 20595 9, hardback, $28, 0 226 20596 7, paperback, £11.50

Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the powerful women of early Hollywood CARI BEAUCHAMP, 1997 Berkeley: University of California Press. 475 pp., ISBN 0 520 21492 7, paperback, £11.50

Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies: two women's travel narratives of the 1790s DEIRDRE COLEMAN, 1999 London: Leicester University Press. xviii + 247 pp., ISBN 0 7185 0150 0, £17.99

With Women';s Eyes: visitors to the New World, 1775–1918 MARION TINLING, 1999 Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. xvii + 207 pp., ISBN 0 8061 3050 4, £24.50

Broken Silence: voices of Japanese feminism SANDRA BUCKLEY, 1997 Berkeley: University of California Press. xix + 382 pp. ISBN 0 520 08513 2, hardback, 0 520 08514 0, paperback

Conversations in Cold Rooms: women, work and poverty in nineteenth-century Northumberland JANE LONG, 1999 Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Royal Historical Society, Boydell Press. xii +241 pp., ISBN 0 86193 340 4, £40.00

Women in Espionage: a biographical dictionary M.H. MAHONEY, 1993 Santa Barbara: ABC–CLIO. xiii + 253 pp., ISBN 0 87436 743 3, £24.95

In Obedience to Instructions: FANY in the SOE in the Mediterranean MARGARET PAWLEY, 1999 Barnsley: Leo Cooper. xiii + 178 pp., ISBN 0 85052 633 7, £19.95

Enslaved Daughters: colonialism, law and women's rights SUDHIR CHANDRA, 1998 Delhi: Oxford University Press. xi + 249 pp.

English Sexualities, 1700–1800 TIM HITCHCOCK, 1997 Basingstoke: Macmillan. ix + 172 pp., ISBN 0 312 165373–0, hardback, 0 312 16574 9, paperback.

Secret Sexualities: a sourcebook of seventeenth and eighteenth century writing IAN McCORMICK (Ed.), 1997 London: Routledge. ix + 262 pp., ISBN 0 415 13953 8, hardback, £45, 0 415 13954 6, paperback.

Tradition and Liberation: the Hindu tradition in the Indian women's movement CATHERINE A. ROBINSON, 1999 Richmond: Curzon. x + 230 pp., ISBN 0 7007 1143 0.     

The making of Catherine Cookson's autobiography

Catherine Cookson's Our Kate, is undoubtedly one of the most widely read English language autobiographies ever written. It is loved by her fans and has also been drawn on quite frequently by historians seeking details of early-twentieth-century life amongst the very poor, and especially by those concerned with the fate of illegitimate children. The production of this work was complicated and lengthy, however. It took Cookson twelve years to write Our Kate, and she discarded many drafts before settling on the final version of her story and of her depiction of herself. This article explores the process Cookson went through in writing her autobiography and the ways in which she managed ultimately both to create a very distinctive persona and to use it to develop and expound her social, religious and moral values and beliefs in their most authoritative form.     

Feminising Empire? British Women's Activist Networks in Defending and Challenging Empire from 1918 to Decolonisation

ABSTRACT

This article addresses female activism spanning the Empire and creating interconnected networks linking the local and global dimensions of Britain's imperial mission in an era of increasing uncertainty. The transition from empire to commonwealth and, ultimately, independence was marked by anti-colonial challenges from within Britain and in the colonies and threats to empire from international developments post-1918. This era also witnessed a more proactive role for women as both defenders and critics of empire who had an influence on shaping a new discourse of welfare and development, purportedly a ‘feminisation’ of empire. Continuities existed between female activism pre- and post-1918 but also significant differences as the late imperial era witnessed more nuanced and diverse interventions into empire affairs than the ‘maternalist imperial feminism’ of the era before the First World War.     

Political Forgiveness’ Transformative Potentials

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the theoretical and empirical understandings of the role that political forgiveness plays in the post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies. The paper provides a discussion of the complexities of the concept of political forgiveness, and offers empirical examples that demonstrate the different capacities and potentials that political forgiveness has as a mode of social reconciliation and repair the past injustice. It argues that today, with the accumulation of experience in the practice of transitional justice, and the growing importance of human rights regime, considering of forgiveness through the accountability’s lens is very timely and important. After the discussion of the contribution of forgiveness to societal reconstruction in the post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies, the paper focuses on the role of forgiveness as an essential part of justice and solidarity. By scrutinising forgiveness’ links with reconciliation and justice, the paper offers a comprehensive way to assess the nature of preconditions and the role of forgiveness in addressing the past injustice and overcoming divisions in post-conflict societies. Its discussion of empirical findings on the role that forgiveness opens up a debate about risks and costs involved in a policy of forgiveness in newly democratised countries.     

Uneasy Alliances: A Look at the Right-Wing Extremist Movement in Canada

Despite the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's recent concern with the growing threat from right-wing extremists nationwide, we have little contemporary scholarship on the far right movement in Canada and fewer attempts to systematically analyze their ideologies and activities. Drawing on a three-year study involving interviews with Canadian law enforcement officials, community organizations, and right-wing activists, as well as analyses of open source intelligence, this article examines the endogenous factors that facilitate and inhibit the right-wing extremist movement in Canada. Findings suggest that strengths and weaknesses of the groups themselves can be exploited as a means of debilitating them.     

Invited Commentary: Broadening the Evidence for Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Education in the United States

Scientific research has made major contributions to adolescent health by providing insights into factors that influence it and by defining ways to improve it. However, US adolescent sexual and reproductive health policies—particularly sexuality health education policies and programs—have not benefited from the full scope of scientific understanding. From 1998 to 2009, federal funding for sexuality education focused almost exclusively on ineffective and scientifically inaccurate abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) programs. Since 2010, the largest source of federal funding for sexual health education has been the “tier 1” funding of the Office of Adolescent Health’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative. To be eligible for such funds, public and private entities must choose from a list of 35 programs that have been designated as “evidence-based” interventions (EBIs), determined based on their effectiveness at preventing teen pregnancies, reducing sexually transmitted infections, or reducing rates of sexual risk behaviors (i.e., sexual activity, contraceptive use, or number of partners). Although the transition from primarily AOUM to EBI is important progress, this definition of evidence is narrow and ignores factors known to play key roles in adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Important bodies of evidence are not treated as part of the essential evidence base, including research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth; gender; and economic inequalities and health. These bodies of evidence underscore the need for sexual health education to approach adolescent sexuality holistically, to be inclusive of all youth, and to address and mitigate the impact of structural inequities. We provide recommendations to improve US sexual health education and to strengthen the translation of science into programs and policy.     

Assessing the Abu Sayyaf Group's Strategic and Learning Capacities

It remains unclear whether the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) is a well-structured terror organization that poses a strategic threat, or a loosely organized collection of bandits that poses limited risk. Efforts to assess the nature of the organization are complicated by flaws in existing datasets on Violent Non-State Actors (VNSAs). ASG's role in kidnappings serves as a test-case to estimate incongruities among four major datasets on VNSAs. Original data collected at the agent level provides an additional point of comparison and also serves to test the efficacy of ASG's knowledge-dissemination structures, which are key in determining VNSAs' strategic capacities.     

The role of alcohol and victim sexual interest in Spanish students' perceptions of sexual assault

Two studies investigated the effects of information related to rape myths on Spanish college students' perceptions of sexual assault. In Study 1, 92 participants read a vignette about a nonconsensual sexual encounter and rated whether it was a sexual assault and how much the woman was to blame. In the scenario, the man either used physical force or offered alcohol to the woman to overcome her resistance. Rape myth acceptance (RMA) was measured as an individual difference variable. Participants were more convinced that the incident was a sexual assault and blamed the woman less when the man had used force rather than offering her alcohol. In Study 2, 164 college students read a scenario in which the woman rejected a man's sexual advances after having either accepted or turned down his offer of alcohol. In addition, the woman was either portrayed as being sexually attracted to him or there was no mention of her sexual interest. Participants' RMA was again included. High RMA participants blamed the victim more than low RMA participants and were less certain that the incident was a sexual assault, especially when the victim had accepted alcohol and was described as being sexually attracted to the man. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the prevention and legal prosecution of sexual assault.     

Cell free DNA as a component of forensic evidence recovered from touched surfaces

In the course of a criminal investigation, DNA is often recovered from items that have been handled by an individual. Whilst there have been studies investigating the propensity of different individuals to deposit DNA, little is known about the factors involved in the transference of DNA through touch. This investigation seeks to clarify some of the underlying processes involved in DNA transfer, as to better understand the significance of so-called “touch DNA” evidence (tDNA). It was shown that an average yield of 11.5 ng of DNA could be recovered from 1 mL cell-free sweat samples leading to the hypothesis that cell-free nucleic acids (CNAs) of a suitable length for standard DNA profiling are transferred during handling/touching items. A method of standardization of tDNA deposition was developed to overcome the significant sample to sample variability in DNA levels characteristic of tDNA samples. The glass bead method allowed the creation of identical tDNA sample sets, thus permitting direct comparisons to be made in the efficiency of various extraction methods. Extraction methods designed to optimize CNA recovery from touched articles resulted in comparable yields in a general population study, however the methods resulted in a twofold increase in DNA yields from touched items touched by individuals with sweaty hands. These results suggest that the CNA component of touched surfaces should be included to maximize profiling success of tDNA.