Pampered or pariah: does animal type influence the interaction between animal attitude and empathy?

ABSTRACT

Research into the interaction between deliberate harm of animals and potential risk for human directed violence has burgeoned in the past two decades. In light of an underlying premise that attitudes are predictive of behaviour, a number of researchers have examined demographic and personality variables that affect attitudes to, and by extrapolation behaviours towards, animals. One particularly active topic of research in this area is the potential relation between human-directed empathy and attitudes to animals, with researchers consistently finding that those with higher human-directed empathy scores tend to hold more pro-animal welfare attitudes. The current study adds to this literature by evaluating the effect of different animal types (Pet, Pest or Profit) in this overall animal attitude/human-directed empathy relationship with a large (n?=?1606), community-based, Australian sample. As anticipated, attitudes towards animals in the Pet category were significantly more pro-welfare than for either Pest or Profit animals and women indicated more pro-welfare attitudes across all three than men. The strength and significance of the relation between human-directed empathy and attitudes to animals varied across Pet, Pest and Profit animal categories and affective vs cognitive empathy. The strongest correlation was found between Pet and the Empathic Concern subscale of the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The implications of these differences for the previously observed link between attitudes to animals and empathy, humane education and future research directions are discussed.     

Economic Growth,Regime Insecurity,and Military Strategy: Explaining the Rise of Noncombat Operations in China

Abstract

Although China's armed forces have yet to complete its ambitious modernization program, its military strategy has begun to emphasize the ability to conduct noncombat operations such as disaster relief and peacekeeping in addition to traditional war fighting. This new component of China's military strategy is best explained by an unexpected relationship between economic growth and regime security. Although growth is key to the legitimacy of leaders in developing countries, it also creates new sources of domestic unrest and increases the vulnerability of the economy to external shocks, both of which, if unchecked, can harm future growth. As a result, developing countries such as China may use their armed forces to maintain political stability and provide services that the state lacks, such as emergency disaster relief. These conclusions are based on original data from China.     

MYANMAR'S ‘PIVOT’ TOWARD THE SHIBBOLETH OF ‘DEMOCRACY’

The recent reforms in Myanmar were not brought about by Western sanctions or some contingent event, but rather planned well in advance,. For there is more continuity than change in Myanmar's political system, which is dominated by the practitioners of national power-the army and the bureaucracy. Of course there are new actors, principally Aung San Suu Kyi and the party she leads, the NLD. Yet the reality remains: state security has to be maintained. Rebalancing with ASEAN, India and now the West is helpful in terms of independence vis a vis China. This is not an invitation to the West to attempt to subvert the existing order.     

The end of apartheid as part of ‘the end of history'?

This article undertakes a critical assessment of Francis Fukuyama's interpretation of the end of apartheid. It is argued that Fukuyama's analysis, which rests on linking economic growth to democracy, falls short in the depth of its empirical analysis and fails to establish the necessary causal connection. The appeal of Fukuyama's approach is therefore explained in terms of its ideological context and function.     

Feature reviews

Portraits of Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro: Nothing Can Stop the Course of History. Edited by Jeffrey M Elliott and Mervyn M Dymally. New York: Pathfinder Press. 1986. 258pp. £5.75pb

Fidel and Religion: Castro Talks on Revolution and Religion with Frei Betto. Frei Betto. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1987. 314pp. $19.95hb

Fidel: A Critical Portrait. Tad Szulc. London: Century Hutchinson. 1987. 585pp. £14.95hb. New York: William Morrow. 1986. 703pp. $19.95hb

Castro. Peter Bourne. London: Macmillan. 1986. 332pp. £14.95hb

Kwame Nkrumah and African liberation

The Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic History of the Castro Years. Wayne S Smith. New York: W W Norton. 1987. 308pp. $19.95hb

The Rise and Fall of Kwame Nkrumah: A Study of Personal Rule in Africa. Henry L Bretton. London: Pall Mall Press. 1967. 232pp. n/p

Black Star: A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah. Basil Davidson. London: Allen Lane. 1973. 225pp. n/p

Ghana's First Republic 1960–1966. Trevor Jones. London: Methuen. 1976. 366pp. £3.95pb

The likelihood of coups.

The Likelihood of Coups. Rosemary H T O'Kane. Aldershot, England: Avebury. 1987. 162pp. £18.50hb

The Iran‐Contra Affair

The Iran‐Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era. Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott and Jane Hunter. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press. 1987. 313pp. $11.00pb

The Tower Commission Report: The Full Text of the President's Special Review Board. John Tower, Edmund Muskie and Brent Scowcroft. New York: Bantam Books and Times Books (distributed in the UK by. Transworld). 1987. 550pp. £4.95pb

Perspectives on terrorism

Terrorism, Ideology and Revolution: The Origins of Modern Political Violence. Edited by Noel O'Sullivan. Brighton, England: Harvester. 1986. 224pp. n/p

Terrorism and the Liberal State. Paul Wilkinson. London: Macmillan Educational. 1986. 322pp. £20.00hb/£7.95pb

Terrorism: How the West Can Win. Edited by Benjamin Netanyahu. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. 1986. 239pp. £14.95hb

Terrorism and International Order. Lawrence Freedman, Christopher Hill, Adam Roberts, RJ Vincent, Paul Wilkinson and Philip Windsor. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul for Royal Institute for International Affairs. 1986. 111pp. £5.95pb

Holy Terror: The Inside Story of Islamic Terrorism. Amir Taheri. London: Century Hutchinson. 1987. 301pp. £12.95hb

Invisible Annies: Terrorism into the 1990s. Stephan Segaller. London: Michael Joseph. 1986. 311pp. £15.95hb

Food, famine and future prospects for Africa

World Hunger: Twelve Myths. Frances Moore Lappé and J Collins. New York: Grove Press for Food First. 1986. 208pp. $7.95pb

World Recession and the Food Crisis in Africa. Edited by Peter Lawrence. London: James Currey/African Review of Political Economy. 1986. 314pp. £25.00hb/£9.95pb

Food in Sub‐Saharan Africa. Edited by Art Hansen and Delia E McMillan London: Frances Pinter. 1986. 410pp. £30.00hb

Drought and Aid in the Sahel: A Decade of Development Cooperation. Carolyn M Somerville. Boulder, Colorado: Westview. 1986. 306pp. n/p

Rural Vulnerability to Famine in Ethiopia, 1958–77. Mesfin Wolde Mariam. London: Intermediate Technology Publications. 1986. 191pp. £7.95pb

The Ethiopian Famine. Kurt Jansson, Michael Harris and Angela Penrose London: Zed. 1987. 196pp. £25.95hb/£6.95pb

South African history

South Africa: A Modern History. T R H Davenport. London: Macmillan. 1987 (third edition). 692pp. £45.00hb/£16.95pb.

History of Southern Africa. J D Omer‐Cooper. London: James Currey. 1987. 298pp. £25.00hb/£9.95pb

Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa: Politics and Popular Movements in the Transkei and Eastern Cape 1890–1930. William Beinart and Colin Bundy. London: James Currey. 1987. 326pp. £25.00hb/£9.95pb

Rural Transformations in Industrialising South Africa: The Southern Highveld to 1914. Timothy J Keegan. London: Macmillan. 1987. 302pp. £29.50hb

Our common environmental future

Environment and Development. Peter Bartelmus. London: Allen and Unwin, 1986. 96pp. £5.95pb

Our Common Future. The World Commission on Environment and Development Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1987. 383pp. £5.95pb

Learning from China? Development and Environment in Third World Countries. Edited by Bernhard Glaeser. London: Allen and Unwin. 1987. 282pp. £30.00hb     

Differentiating sexual violence: A comparison of sexual homicide and rape

Abstract

The present study sought to identify consistent patterns in the actions of sexually violent offenders to determine whether sexual homicide and rape reflect different behavioral emphasis of a single thematic model of sexual assault. Crime scene behaviors of 74 (37 sexual homicides and 37 rapes) solved cases of sexual assaults were compared, and results of a multi-dimensional analysis revealed three thematic styles of interacting with the victim during a sexual assault (Exploit, Control, and Violent). Further analysis indicated that offender–victim interactions in sexual homicide and rape are predominantly distinguished by the degree of violence, such that behaviors associated with each type of offense were found to occur in two discrete areas along a single continuum. Findings are discussed in terms of producing a general framework for understanding sexual violent interactions.     

Deconstructing Crime and Nature or, What Does Post Humanism Have to Do With Criminology?

The aim of this paper is to extend some of the theoretical concerns that Marcus Felson (2006) opens up in Crime and Nature by considering the contribution of post humanist political ecology to the construction of crime and nature that he proposes. Post humanism problematises dichotomous understandings of nature and culture as well as related binaries that follow from that division, suggesting that dominant assumptions about nature and the non human undermine antiracist and feminist efforts. While Felson (2006) takes steps towards troubling the nature/culture binary, he fails to question the constructed character of crime and crime prevention, thereby leaving unarticulated a critical problematisation of the exclusionary logics that underlie dominant practices and ways of thinking as race, sex, class and species fundamentally determine the nature of criminological knowledge. Abstracting crime from social context produces a partial analysis as spaces are reduced to their supposed propensity for criminal activity and some spaces are produced as always already criminal. Without examining and understanding how power relations intersect in the context of crime it is difficult to alter those relations to promote social justice.