Current perceptions of marital rape: some good and not-so-good news

The current study extends previous research on marital rape and acceptance of general rape myths by comparing the perceptions of undergraduate college students (n = 85) to those of college alumni/ae (n = 44) who graduated from the same university three decades earlier. Participants read a hypothetical rape scenario that depicted the perpetrator as either the victim's husband or neighbor and completed three measures of different aspects of rape myth acceptance. Results indicated that although participants reported fairly low levels of support for different aspects of rape myths, certain rape myths were more strongly endorsed than were others. Furthermore, rape myth acceptance was stronger for marital rape than for acquaintance rape and for undergraduates than for college alumni/ae. Practical and theoretical implications of this study are discussed.     

新型农村合作医疗框架中政府角色的理性定位

基于农村合作医疗的公共利益属性,政府参与农村合作医疗建设是其必须承担的义务,这也是被实践证明的事实。20世纪50年代,政府以"引导者"身份号召建立农村合作医疗制度;21世纪初,政府以"主导者"身份全面参与新型农村合作医疗制度建设。今后,若要实现新型农村合作医疗可持续发展,必须对政府准确定位。随着社会建设理念的强化以及政府职能转变的深化,以法律形式将政府定位为"指导者",并以此身份参与新型农村合作医疗制度建设,是新型农村合作医疗持续、健康、稳步发展的关键。     

Analytical survey of restorative resins by SEM/EDS and XRF: databases for forensic purposes

Frequently in forensic cases, unknown substances must be identified. Automated databases can ease the burden of comparison as materials may be compared against many known standards in a relatively short period of time. It has been shown that dental resins can be named according to brand or brand group even in conditions as harsh as cremation. Databases are already in use for many materials, but no such database exists for dental resins. Thus, two databases were generated. One utilized a laboratory-based method, scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), in conjunction with the Spectral Library Identification and Classification Explorer (SLICE) software. The other was based on portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF). The ability to perform database comparison with portable instrumentation can thus be brought directly to the field. Both the SLICE and XRF databases were evaluated by testing unknown resins. EDS is a well-established technique and the SLICE program was demonstrated to be a good tool for unknown resin identification. Portable XRF is a relatively new instrument in this regard and its databases have been constructed mostly for metal alloy comparison and environmental soil testing. However, by creation of a custom spectral library, it was possible to distinguish resin brand and bone and tooth from other substances.     

关于犯罪现场勘查课程考核方式的思考

考核是教学的有机组成部分,考试的目的在于促进学生的学习,巩固他们所学知识,提高他们学以致用的能力。犯罪现场勘查学作为一门实践性很强的学科,其考核的方式对学生知识和能力的培养起着十分重要的意义,探讨当前犯罪现场勘查课程的考核方式并提出改革对策,有助于培养符合公安实战需要的合格人才。     

Conceptualizing “Everyday Humanitarianism”: Ethics,Affects, and Practices of Contemporary Global Helping

ABSTRACT

Humanitarianism has become increasingly widespread in our public life— from celebrity culture to Twitter messaging and from Christmas shopping to concert-going. This Special Issue introduces the concept of “Everyday Humanitarianism” for understanding an expanded series of practices in the lives of citizens that purport to make a difference outside the traditional boundaries of professional humanitarian activity. The term can also refer to the quotidian practices of humanitarian workers as they negotiate within the boundaries of formal structures. Everyday humanitarianism can be found in shopping malls and international organizations alike, and the struggles over its ethics and politics are consistent. Key questions arise: What does helping look like in the age of market-driven, digital media-based action? What are the implications of such practices for the ethics and politics of contemporary compassion? The contributions to this Special Issue examine everyday humanitarianism and provide unconventional, interdisciplinary approaches to understanding selected aspects of this civic and organizational benevolence.     

The Role of Forms of Traumatic Exposure in Relational and Physical Aggression Perpetrated by Incarcerated Men and Women

The relationship between history of trauma and violence is well studied. However, the relationship between trauma and relational aggression is not. And yet relational aggression is of considerable relevance to the criminal justice system. This study was designed to extend the literature on trauma and violence by including a measure of relational aggression and testing for sex differences. The sample was comprised of incarcerated men (N = 125) and women (N = 141). Data were collected from inmate interviews and inmate completion of a battery of instruments. Regression analyses revealed that of three types of trauma, only a history of interpersonal nonsexual trauma predicted the perpetration of both relational aggression and physical aggression while incarcerated, although no sex differences emerged. Results provide guidance for intervention efforts.     

vulnerable writing as a feminist methodological practice

This article discusses the possibility for vulnerable writing within feminist methodological approaches to research. Drawing upon a project that involved difficulties and tensions in conducting transnational research, including the documenting and telling of a partial narrative of an individual who set herself on fire, the article discusses what it might mean to focus more explicitly on explicating and recognising vulnerability in writing. In providing examples from working with a situated, localised analysis that engages feminist, postcolonial and queer theoretical approaches to attend to the particular and everyday, I address some of the hesitations and uncertainties in undertaking research and producing knowledge, and concerns with forms of reflexive practice. At the heart of the discussion is the question of a vulnerable ethics, of how it is possible for feminist methods to represent the lives of others, especially when stories fail in the telling, both in providing adequate explanations and in the ways that trauma and suffering can remain incommunicable. Included in this are concerns as to how we as researchers are affected within the production of research. As a form of receptivity and wounding, the article argues for vulnerable writing that challenges feminist methods to remain open and receptive to what will always resist sense-making, while continuing to respond to the demand that we do justice to the lives of others.     

The Personal Is Political Yet Again: Bringing Struggles between Gender Equality and Gendered Next of Kin onto the Feminist Agenda

In spite of feminist criticism of the welfare state, Norwegian society is frequently perceived as gender-equal. As a truism of public discourse, gender equality affirms a neoliberal understanding of individuals as able to act independently and to freely choose their course in life. This article disrupts that truism with an analysis of a transitional process that occurred to a seemingly free and gender-equal married woman whose everyday life took an unexpected turn at the age of 50 when her husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Using an abductive method, we construct a narrative with this woman as the main character. We then use the narrative as an optical device for scrutinizing encounters between the notions “free and gender-equal woman” and “gendered next of kin”, analysing the situated becoming of gender and understanding the encounters’ potential for agency and resistance. The inquiry brings a pattern of gendered encounters into being, demonstrating how a seemingly free and gender-equal woman’s strength and independence become subordinating weaknesses in encounters with the welfare state. This paradox raises questions about the politics of everyday life in a presumably gender-equal society, brings new struggles onto the feminist agenda, and demands that the personal becomes political yet again.     

Sustaining Life: Rethinking Modes of Agency in Vulnerability

ABSTRACT

This article discusses ambivalence in the meaning and attribution of agency, and the role it plays in understanding vulnerability as a concept and condition that is specific to individual bodies. This involves examining agency as an embodied resource that vulnerability might draw upon when bodies endure conditions of uncertainty, detention and exile. The documenting of a partial narrative of an individual who set his body on fire provides an analytic lens through which to investigate the complexity and contextual specificities of vulnerability. The article argues that working with a single modality of agency resulting from a certain slippage between meanings of agency, political agency and resistance, might result in foreclosing alternative forms of living and sustaining lives. Agency is considered more expansively as a capacity for action that is necessarily mediated through situated capabilities, struggles and desires. The article argues for the need to analyse concepts held within a ‘grammar of vulnerability’ in order to discuss modalities of agency that capture both activities of resistance, but also other, often unseen, investments in sensory, affective and physical labours required for everyday activities in which individuals sustain their lives.     

Schools of democracy: how trade union membership impacts political participation in Africa’s emerging democracies

Trade unions in Africa have become increasingly vocal in calling attention to the widening socio-economic inequalities that have accompanied global market integration across the continent. This article argues that, in their quest to challenge neoliberal policies, labour movements have contributed to processes of democratization in Africa by acting as instruments of political socialization for their members. Using survey data from respondents in 18 African countries, this article demonstrates an empirical relationship between trade union membership and political participation. The article finds that membership in a labour organization increases one’s propensity to participate in a range of political activities. Specifically, labour movements encourage participation by forging “participatory spillover effects”, which mobilize unionists across different arenas of the political landscape. Finally, the article finds that the effect of union membership on political participation is stronger in countries where unions maintain independence from ruling parties. This research contributes to literature on political participation across Africa and furthers our understanding of the role of labour movements in bottom-up processes of democratization on the continent.