Discovering a sense of well-being through the revival of Islam: profiles of Kazakh imams in Western Mongolia

Throughout Central Asia, the end of communism has been marked by a significant change in the management and influence of local mosques. In many rural areas, small underground mosques operated by informally trained, elderly moldas have been supplanted by newly constructed mosques led by younger, foreign-educated local imams and financed by governmental and private donations from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. From several perspectives, this ‘revival’ of Islam is characterized in a way that implies that increased religiosity and piety is somewhat problematic. In this essay, based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in Western Mongolia, we argue that such an approach prevents an understanding of how religious changes are enhancing the social and material well-being of certain actors. We explore the utility of the concept of well-being by focusing on the everyday lives of Kazakh imams in Western Mongolia. Approximately 100,000 ethnic Kazakhs live in the Western Mongolian province of Bayan-Ölgii, where they comprise about 80% of the population. Although a significant portion of the population has been migrating to Kazakhstan in the post-socialist period, the Kazakhs who choose to remain in Mongolia have experienced a significant increase in religious freedom. In this context, the new cohort of imams is playing an important mediating role as members of the local population reinterpret and renegotiate their identity as Muslims. In addition to finding spiritual well-being through their knowledge of Islam, these imams are acquiring social status and economic security from their local roles as religious leaders and through their transnational connections with a broader Muslim community.     

Non-Tracing Cases of Culpable Ignorance

Recent writers on negligence and culpable ignorance have argued that there are two kinds of culpable ignorance: tracing cases, in which the agent’s ignorance traces back to some culpable act or omission of hers in the past that led to the current act, which therefore arguably inherits the culpability of that earlier failure; and non-tracing cases, in which there is no such earlier failure, so the agent’s current state of ignorance must be culpable in its own right. An unusual but intriguing justification for blaming agents in non-tracing cases is provided by Attributionism, which holds that we are as blameworthy for our non-voluntary emotional reactions, spontaneous attitudes, and the ensuing patterns of awareness as we are for our voluntary actions. The Attributionist explanation for why some non-tracing cases involve culpability is an appealing one, even though it has limited scope. After providing a deeper account of why we should take the Attributionist position seriously, I use recent psychological research to argue for a new account of the conditions under which agents are culpable for straightforward instances of blameworthy acts. That account is extended to blameworthiness for non-voluntary responses. I conclude that even when the agent’s failure to notice arises from a nonvoluntary objectionable attitude, very few such cases are ones in which Attributionism implies that the agent is blameworthy for her act.     

Examining the relationship between school suspensions/expulsions and felonies

This paper examines the suspensions and expulsions of students. Using individual student pupil (rather than incident) data, this research examines whether these rates are driven by a few high-volume offenders and whether high-volume offenders become felons. This study uses the number of students at three levels of violations: 0 offenses, 1–3 offenses, and four or more offenses. The authors also examined the relationship between the three groups of violators and committing a felony as a juvenile. The number of offenses per student ranged from 0 to 31. Findings indicated that those with 0 school infractions had no felonies, while the other two groups of violators 1–3 and four or more had a similar numbers of felonies. Implications for developmental models of delinquency are discussed.     

Book reviews

D. Leebart (ed.), The Future of Software, The MIT Press, 1995. Hardcover, £19.95, 300 pp, ISBN 0‐262‐12184‐0

David Bainbridge, Software Copyright Law, 2nd edn, Butterworths, 1994. Softcover £35.00, 272 + xvi pp. ISBN 0‐406‐04841‐X

Andrew Christie, Integrated Circuits and Their Contents: International Protection, Sweet & Maxwell, 1995. Hardcover, £85.00. ISBN 0‐421‐48380‐6

S. White, S. Bate and T. Johnson, Satellite Communications in Europe: Law & Regulation, 2nd edn, FT Tax and Law, 1996. Hardcover, £135.00 xlvi + 456 pp. ISBN 0‐752‐002119‐8

A. Valente, Legal Knowledge Engineering: a Modelling Approach. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, Volume 30, IOS Press, 1995. Softcover, £52.00, 227 pp. ISBN 90‐5199‐23‐0

Professor Christopher Arnold, Outsourcing Contracts, Pearson Professional, 1995. 114 pp.     

The Effects of Pregnancy Experience on Contraceptive Practice

Retrospective reports of contraceptive use on two occasions of intercourse (separated by 2 years on average) were used to examine change in contraceptive practice as a function of intervening pregnancy experience in a randomly selected biracial (Black, White) sample of 466 female adolescents. Although all groups of adolescents regardless of pregnancy experience improved their contraceptive use, adolescents experiencing an unplanned pregnancy or pregnancy scare appeared to improve relatively more. However, differences between groups could be explained by the differential passage of time, and this was true among both Black and White adolescents. Specifically, ever-pregnant adolescents had been sexually active the longest and showed the most improvement; never-pregnant adolescents who had never had a pregnancy scare had been sexually active the shortest period and showed the least improvement, while adolescents experiencing a pregnancy scare were intermediate on both variables. These findings suggest that prior research may have drawn faulty conclusions about the effects of pregnancy experience on subsequent contraceptive behavior, and that future research on these topics may need to pay greater attention to the passage of time as an important substantive and methodological factor in its own right.     

A survey of background levels of explosives and related compounds in the environment

In this paper, swabbings from various public areas in 28 different cities throughout the United States were collected. A wide variety of objects were tested, ranging from park benches and telephones to sign posts and mailboxes. Inorganic anions and cations common in low explosives were detected simultaneously using capillary zone electrophoresis. Organic high explosives including nitroaromatics, nitramines, and nitrate esters were detected using gas chromatography with a pulsed-discharge electron capture detector. Confirmation of selected results was performed by ion chromatography and negative ion chemical ionization GC/MS. In general the results provide two major conclusions: (i) with the exception of nitrate, most low explosive oxidizers are rare in the environment; (ii) no organic explosives or significant interferences to these explosives were detected.     

Do you get what you pay for? Type of counsel and its effect on criminal court outcomes

Although the Sixth Amendment of the constitution guarantees assistance of counsel to indigent criminal defendants, questions exist about the quality of this representation. Critics assert that ‘you get what you pay for’ and that public defenders are less effective than privately retained counsel regarding criminal justice outcomes. Some research, however, reveals that public defenders are as effective as privately retained counsel because of their working relationships with prosecutors and judges, the so-called courtroom workgroup. The current study tested the assertion that ‘you get what you pay for’ by examining the effect of type of counsel (public defenders versus private attorneys) on four different case processing outcomes for a large mid-western jurisdiction. Results generally show that type of counsel has no significant direct effect. Tests for interaction, however, suggest that for some defendants, type of counsel interacts with other key variables to influence certain outcomes.