Never look back: political thought and the abolition of slavery

The campaigns for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, spanning over 40 years, represented one of the major political issues of the late Enlightenment, and drew in people of all backgrounds. The very idea of humanity was at stake and this was an issue of broad-based concern. For the abolitionists, the humanity of black slaves was not in doubt, it was the actions of a society who condoned the practice, active or passive, that they saw as inhuman. Against this backdrop, Enlightenment thinkers were working on theories of justice, rights and humanity which would have an enduring influence on politics, society and academic thought for hundreds of years to come. This article addresses this historical context which, it is argued, is vital in reading, interpreting and applying Enlightenment thought in international relations today. The article presents primary and secondary historical evidence to this end and proposes that Spivak's conceptualization of ‘sanctioned ignorance’ offers much for understanding how it can be that European political thought has been so divorced from the context of slavery, from whence it emerged.     

Chemical composition and structure of the microcrystals formed between silver(I) and gamma-hydroxybutyric acid and gamma-hydroxyvaleric acid

This study examined microcrystals formed by silver with gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) and gamma-hydroxyvaleric acid (GHV), the five-carbon analog of GHB, in the presence of silver, copper, and lanthanide nitrates. Distinct microcrystals formed with silver (+1) and lanthanum (+3) ions but not with the copper (+2) ions. The crystals formed with GHB were distinctly different than those formed with GHV and in all cases, the drug microcrystals were easily distinguishable from reagent crystals. X-ray diffraction analysis provided definitive structure for the microcrystals. The morphological differences between the silver-GHB and silver-GHV crystals were characterized using simple measurements such as size and angles provided by image recognition software. The utility of the test for casework was demonstrated using spiked beverage samples.     

Reviews

Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton University Press) Princeton, New Jersey, 1995

Anne Edwards and Susan Magarey (eds), Women in a Restructuring Australia: Work and Welfare (Allen & Unwin) St Leonards, NSW, 1994.

Tanya Castleman, Margaret Allen, Wendy Bastalich and Patrick Wright, Limited Access: Women's Disadvantage in Higher Education Employment (National Tertiary Education Union) Melbourne, 1995.

Wendy Weeks (in collaboration with women in women services), Women Working Together: Lessons from Feminist Women's Services (Longman Cheshire) Melbourne, 1993.

Shurlee Swain with Renate Howe, Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia (Cambridge University Press) Cambridge, 1995.

Kathleen Barry, The Prostitution of Sexuality (New York University Press) New York, 1995.

Susanne Kappeler, The Will to Violence: The Politics of Personal Behaviour (Spinifex) Melbourne, 1995.

Jill Bavin‐Mizzi, Ravished: Sexual Violence in Victorian Australia (University of New South Wales Press) Sydney, 1995.

Leonore Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (Polity Press) Cambridge, 1995.

Alison Lewis, Subverting Patriarchy: Feminism and Fantasy in the Works of Irmtraud Morgner (Berg) Oxford, 1995.

Adrian Howe, Punish and Critique: Towards a Feminist Analysis of Penality (Routledge) London, 1994.

Susan Joekes and Ann Weston, Women and the New Trade Agenda (UNIFEM) New York, 1994.

Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Routledge) London, 1993.     

The devil is in the detail: deception and consistency over repeated interviews

ABSTRACT

Research indicates that truthful statements typically contain more details than fabricated statements, and that truth tellers are no more consistent than liars over multiple interviews. In this experiment, we examine the impact of (i) multiple interviewers and (ii) reverse order recall on liars’ and truth tellers’ consistency and amount of reported detail over repeated recall attempts. Participants either took part in a mock crime (lying condition) or an innocent event (truth telling condition) which they were subsequently interviewed about in two separate interview phases. Truth tellers provided more details overall, and more reminiscent details than liars. There were no differences between veracity groups for the number of omissions made or repetitions reported. Despite the popular belief that inconsistency is a cue to deception, we found little support for the notion that consistency (or lack of consistency) offers a diagnostic cue to deception. We found little evidence that switching interviewer or recalling in reverse order induced inconsistencies in liars. In fact, due to the number of reminiscent details in truth tellers’ accounts, our findings suggest that accounts provided by liars tend to be slightly more consistent than those provided by truth tellers. Materials for this paper can be found at osf.io/hgvmk/.