A: Reviews: general

PALESTINIAN PEASANTS AND OTTOMAN OFFICIALS: RURAL ADMINISTRATION AROUND SIXTEENTH‐CENTURY JERUSALEM. By Amy Singer. (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization.) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

THE PASHA'S PEASANTS: LAND, SOCIETY, AND ECONOMY IN LOWER EGYPT, 1740–1858. By Kenneth M. Cuno. (Cambridge Middle East Library, 27.) Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. 295 pp., tables, appendices, index. £35.00 (hb).

SOCIALISM AND NATIONALISM IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. Edited by Mete Tunçay and Erik Jan Zürcher. London & New York, British Academic Press, in association with the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. 222 pp. £39.50.

INSIDE THE ARAB WORLD. By Michael Field. London, John Murray, 1994. 439 pp., maps. £25.

STRUGGLE AND SURVIVAL IN THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST. Edited by Edmund Burke III. London & New York, I. B. Taurís, 1993. xi, 393 pp. £14.95 (pb).

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SYRIA UNDER ASAD. By Volker Perthes. London & New York, I. B. Tauris, 1995. 298 pp. £39.50.

THE ARAB MINORITY IN ISRAEL 1967–1991: POLITICAL ASPECTS. By Jacob M. Landau. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993.

THE ARAB MINORITY IN ISRAEL'S ECONOMY: PATTERNS OF ETHNIC INEQUALITY. By Noah Lewin‐Epstein and Moshe Semyonov. (Social Inequality Series.) Oxford, Westview Press, 1993.

THE HEALTH CARE OF THE ARABS IN ISRAEL. By Nira Reiss. (Westview Special Studies on the Middle East.) Oxford, Westview Press, 1991.

THE GULF: ENERGY AND GLOBAL SECURITY. By Charles F. Doran and Stephen W. Buck. London, Lynne Rienner, 1991. 228 pp. £27.50.

IRAN AND THE COLD WAR: THE AZERBAIJAN CRISIS OF 1946. By Louise Fawcett. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. 181 pp. £32.50.

THE GULF CONFLICT, 1990–1991: DIPLOMACY AND WAR IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER. By Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh. London, Faber & Faber, 1994. xlv, 504 pp.

IRAN AND IRAQ: THE THREAT FROM THE NORTHERN GULF. By Anthony H. Cordesman. Oxford, Westview Press, 1994. x, 378 pp. £45.50 (hb), £16.95 (pb).

THE UNITED NATIONS, IRAN, AND IRAQ: HOW PEACEMAKING CHANGED. By Cameron R. Hume. Buckingham, Open University Press, 1994. xi, 269 pp. £27.50.

THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH PETROLEUM COMPANY. Volume 2: THE ANGLO‐IRANIAN YEARS 1928–1954. By J. H. Bamberg. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994. 639 pp. 55 tables, 5 maps, 20 graphs and diagrams, 88 illustrations, 3 appendices, index. £55.00 (hb).

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC TRENDS IN CENTRAL ASIA. Edited by Shirin Akiner. London, British Academic Press, 1994. ix, 205 pp.

FAITH AND FREEDOM: WOMEN'S HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD. Edited by Mahnaz Afkhami. London, I. B. Tauris, 1995. xi, 244 pp: £12.95 (pb).

DECIPHERING THE SIGNS OF GOD: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO ISLAM. By Annemarie Schimmel. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1994. 317 pp. £39.50.

BEYOND FAITH AND INFIDELITY: THE SUFI POETRY AND TEACHINGS OF MAHMUD SHABISTARI. By Leonard Lewisohn. (Curzon Sufi Series.) Richmond, Curzon Press, 1995. 344 pp. £14.99.

GIVING VOICE TO STONES: PLACE AND IDENTITY IN PALESTINIAN LITERATURE. By Barbara McKean Parmenter. Austin, University of Texas Press, 1994. ix, 117 pp. One map.

GENIZAH RESEARCH AFTER 90 YEARS: THE CASE OF JUDAEO‐ARABIC: PAPERS READ AT THE THIRD CONGRESS OF THE SOCIETY FOR JUDAEO‐ARABIC STUDIES. Edited by Joshua Blau and Stefan C. Reif. (University of Cambridge Oriental Publications, 47.) Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1992. 1 illustration, 3 indexes, xiv, 176 pp. $54.95.

ARABIC SOCIOLINGUISTICS: ISSUES AND PERSPECTIVES. Edited by Yasir Suleiman. Richmond, Curzon Press, 1994. xv, 273 pp.

DIE MAMLUKISCHE ARCHITEKTUR IN ÄGYPTEN UND SYRIEN. By Michael Meinecke. (Abhandlung des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Kairos, Islamische Reihe, Band 5.) Gluckstadt, Verlag J. J. Augustin GmbH, 1994. 2 vols., 819 pp. 142 pis., 153 plans.     

A cognitive model of firearms policing

The performance of police firearms teams must be efficient and accurate—anything else could result in the death of the officers or those they are tasked with protecting. However, there are a wide range of cognitive factors that impact the way in which these officers perform, many of which are not taken into account while planning tactical operations or during the investigations that follow. This paper considers the role of these cognitive factors in firearms policing, looking at their impacts on officer actions/reactions and the ways in which these effects may be counteracted. Author’s Note: Dr. Kavanagh is a psychology consultant specializing in the psychology of high risk policing operations. Her areas of interest include public order, hostage negotiation, and body recovery work; her primary focus is on the psychological components of the police use of firearms. She works with a number of police forces throughout the UK and provides training to officers and command staff on the psychological aspects of their role.     

Progress Toward the Determination of Correct Classification Rates in Fire Debris Analysis,,

Principal components analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA) were used to develop a multistep classification procedure for determining the presence of ignitable liquid residue in fire debris and assigning any ignitable liquid residue present into the classes defined under the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) E 1618‐10 standard method. A multistep classification procedure was tested by cross‐validation based on model data sets comprised of the time‐averaged mass spectra (also referred to as total ion spectra) of commercial ignitable liquids and pyrolysis products from common building materials and household furnishings (referred to simply as substrates). Fire debris samples from laboratory‐scale and field test burns were also used to test the model. The optimal model's true‐positive rate was 81.3% for cross‐validation samples and 70.9% for fire debris samples. The false‐positive rate was 9.9% for cross‐validation samples and 8.9% for fire debris samples.     

Detecting deception in suspects: verbal cues as a function of interview strategy

Research on deception has consistently shown that people are poor at detecting deception, partly due to lack of consistent cues to deception. This research focuses on eliciting verbal cues to deception when questioning suspects who deny crime and how such cues differ due to type of questioning. An experiment examined verbal differences between innocent and guilty mock suspects (N=96) as a function of veracity and interview style (Free recall, Probes, or Free recall plus Probes). Guilty (vs innocent) suspects omitted more crime-relevant information and their statements were more likely to contradict the evidence, showing that statement–evidence inconsistency was a cue to deception. This cue to deception was more pronounced when the interview contained probes. Lie-catchers (N=192) obtained an accuracy rate higher than chance (61.5%) for detecting deceptive denials. Implications for further research on verbal cues to deception are discussed.     

The Self-Administered Interview: a means of improving children's eyewitness performance?

Abstract

In order to obtain the most informative and correct statements, witnesses should be heard as soon as possible after the incident. However, this is not always possible. This experimental study investigated whether completing a Self-Administered Interview form (SAI) immediately after a critical event could enhance children's witness performance at a later stage. Children (N = 194, age 11–12) reported their memory of an event in a structured SAI, an open SAI, or did not report their memory (control). Two weeks later, the children were interviewed about the event. Before the interview, half of the children were subjected to social influence from a co-witness. Children's free recall of the event was enhanced by the SAI. More precisely, children in the SAI-Structured condition reported more details about the event than children in the SAI-Open condition and the control condition, without a loss of accuracy. The SAI manipulation did not, however, reduce children's vulnerability to social influence. The results suggest that the use of a SAI might prove a simple and yet effective way of increasing the quality of statements from child witnesses in some situations.     

Alcohol intoxicated eyewitnesses' memory of intimate partner violence

Alcohol affects memory in many, and mostly negative, ways. This is a problem in legal contexts as many witnesses are alcohol intoxicated when taking part of the critical event. However, research is sparse regarding how, and under what circumstances, the reports of alcohol intoxicated witnesses differ from those of sober witnesses. This study investigated whether alcohol intoxicated and sober eyewitnesses differ regarding completeness, accuracy, and type of information reported, as well as whether gender influenced these variables. Eighty-seven healthy men (n = 44) and women (n = 43) received either an alcoholic beverage (0.7 g/kg) or a control (juice) in a laboratory setting before viewing a film picturing intimate partner violence. Ten minutes after viewing the film, they were interviewed. Reports by alcohol intoxicated women were less complete, but as accurate, as sober women's. In contrast, intoxicated and sober men did not differ regarding completeness or accuracy. Furthermore, compared with sober women, intoxicated women reported fewer actions but no difference was found between the groups regarding reported objects. At this moderate dose, alcohol affected women's reports more than men's, which may be because alcohol affects attention and memory consolidation more clearly at a lower dose for women than for men.