Promoting gender equality? Some development-related uses of ICTs by women

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have created new economic and social opportunities all over the world. Their use, however, continues to be governed by existing power relations whereby women frequently experience relative disadvantage. Amid this inequality are individuals and organisations that are working to use ICTs to further gender equality. These are the issues addressed by the BRIDGE Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and ICTs. The first section of this article consists of extracts from the Overview Report in the Pack. It describes ways in which women have been able to use ICTs to support new forms of information exchange, organisation, and empowerment. The second section, taken from the textbox ‘Telecentres: Some Myths’, describes three assertions which frequently lead to problems in all forms of investment in development-related information exchanges with poor or less powerful groups, not only those relating to telecentres and women.     

ASSESSING FOR ALIENATION AND ACCESS IN CHILD CUSTODY CASES

Alienated children in high-conflict (HC) custody cases differ from nonalienated children in HC custody cases. Efforts to assess and differentiate between the children should focus first, on establishing what differences do exist and then on what psychometrics are of most help in the assessment. Five categories of HC children and areas where HC children are all alike and where alienated and nonalienated children differ are reviewed. Psychometrics appropriate for the tasks of research and evaluation are proposed.     

Tell Me Who is Your Enemy...

The purpose of the article is to show through the analysis of some recent publications, art exhibitions, trials and other types of discourse, who is considered to be “an enemy” in Russia today and how law enforcement and the judiciary respond to so called “threats,” emanating from the constructed enemies. The analysis reveals some dangerous tendencies in the formation of a common identity for people living in Russia. For instance, search for a “national idea,” “traditional roots,” “patriotism,” and “distinctive nature,” aimed at the formation of this common identity and strengthening the state, is implemented in a way, which leads to the exclusion of ‚others’ and thus undermines the possibility to lay the foundation for the multicultural state based on peace, harmony and tolerance. Russia must become a common house for all ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities living in it, and no one representing them should be in a position of the less favored and less protected. National identity in a multinational state can be only a plural identity, providing for the possibility of living in several communities simultaneously.     

‘A Very Uncommon Case’: Representations of the Zong and the British Campaign to Abolish the Slave Trade

This paper examines the representation of the case of the Zong within the British campaign to abolish the slave trade. It traces the ways in which the case produced an iconic narrative for the movement by paying particular attention to Granville Sharp's original accounting of the event, and then to the ways in which the latter was transformed in key abolition propaganda documents. It is argued that the legal implications of the trial fell away as the Zong was appropriated, and mythologised, in its adaptation to the abolitionists' agenda.     

Use and Misuse of Language in Judicial Decision-Making: Russian Experience

In my paper I will analyze decisions of the Russian Constitutional Court and courts of general jurisdiction, in which they interpret ordinary and seemingly unambiguous words and phrases. In a number of cases this interpretation is made in a manner, which is suspect from a linguistic point of view. The analysis shows that there is no consistency in the application by Russian courts of the “plain language” rule and that literal interpretation may be used selectively as a means of legitimizing the decisions made on non-linguistic grounds. Though literal interpretation can be often incompatible with the concept of justice and therefore judges should also take into account other criteria, there are examples of court decisions, in which literal interpretation would have been more appropriate from the perspective of justice, separation of powers and human rights. The article shows how use and misuse of language by judges is employed as a tool in judicial decision-making.     

The social construction of electronic space

Computer‐mediated communication is a phenomenon of post‐industrial society. As a consequence of the interactivity and persistent textual nature of this form of communication, new spaces of sociality are constructed which can be analysed and interpreted with the epistemologies and methodologies utilised in understanding more conventional places. This approach reveals that electronic spaces are constructions firmly tied to the cultural and social experiences of ‘real‐world’ existences. Electronic identities, then, are built from this wide base of experience and ‘real‐world’ identity rather than, as is sometimes claimed, begun afresh. These connections to understood material culture and the prevalence of the typed word in electronic spaces permits a digital archaeology, inspired by material culture studies, which is both revealing of the users of these spaces as well as the wider social constructions of post‐industrial society.     

INCORPORATING ATTACHMENT ASSESSMENT INTO CUSTODY EVALUATIONS: THE CASE OF A 2‐YEAR‐OLD AND HER PARENTS

Attachment with parents is central to a child's development. It is well established that the quality of this attachment in early childhood is a strong predictor of developmental and psychological functioning throughout the life span. One of the primary issues in custody evaluations is assessing the quality of the child's attachment to each parent and the parents' capacity to foster security and to consider what this might mean for short‐ and medium‐term decisions about their care. The nature of attachment measures is summarized, and the combined use of three attachment‐caregiving instruments in a custody evaluation is illustrated through the case of a toddler whose parents were engaged in a high‐conflict divorce. The case study demonstrates how, in addition to standard clinical observations, including a set of attachment‐based instruments with a standardized psychological test battery provided information critical to a recommendation for custody and parent visitation.     

Concentrations of zolpidem and zopiclone in venous blood samples from impaired drivers compared with femoral blood from forensic autopsies

The concentrations of zolpidem and zopiclone were determined in peripheral blood samples in two forensic materials collected over a 10-year period (2001-2010). The z-hypnotics were determined in venous blood from living subjects (impaired drivers) and in femoral blood from deceased persons (forensic autopsies), with the latter classified as intoxication or other causes of death. The z-hypnotics were determined in blood by capillary column gas chromatography (GC) with a nitrogen-phosphorous (N-P) detector after solvent extraction with n-butyl acetate. The analytical limit of quantitation (LOQ) was 0.02mg/L for zopiclone and 0.05mg/L for zolpidem and these have remained unchanged throughout the study. When death was attributed to drug intoxication (N=918), the median concentration of zopiclone in blood was 0.20mg/L compared with 0.06mg/L for other causes of death (N=1215) and 0.07mg/L in traffic offenders (N=691) (p<0.001). Likewise, a higher median concentration (0.30mg/L) was found in intoxication deaths involving zolpidem (N=357) compared with 0.13mg/L for other causes of death (N=397) or 0.19mg/L in impaired drivers (N=837) (p<0.001). Median concentration in blood of both z-hypnotics were appreciably higher in intoxication deaths when no other substances were identified; 0 70mg/L (N=12) for zopiclone and 1.35mg/L (N=12) for zolpidem. The median concentrations of z-hypnotics in blood decreased as the number of co-ingested substances increased for intoxication deaths but not other causes of death. The most prevalent co-ingested substances were ethanol in autopsy cases and diazepam in the motorists. This large compilation of forensic cases should prove useful when toxicologists are required to interpret concentrations of z-hypnotics in blood samples in relation to cause of death.