Taking Threat Seriously: Prejudice,Principle, and Attitudes Toward Racial Policies

Drawing from group theories of race-related attitudes and electoral politics, we develop and test how anxiety influences the relative weight of prejudice as a determinant of individuals’ support for racial policies. We hypothesize that prejudice will more strongly influence the racial policy preferences of people who are feeling anxious than it will for people who are not. Using an experimental design we manipulate subjects’ levels of threat and find significant treatment effects, as hypothesized. We find that individuals’ racial policy attitudes are partially conditional on their affective states: individuals who feel anxious report less support for racial policies than those individuals who do not feel anxious, even when this threat is stimulated by non-racial content. More broadly, we conclude that affect is central to a better understanding of individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors.     

Traceability and foreign corporate accountability in mineral supply chains

Industrialized economies in the EU depend heavily on imports of minerals. The extraction and parts of the transport and processing of these minerals take place in the Global South and often bear high human rights and environmental risks. A lack of traceability in mineral supply chains makes it particularly difficult to hold companies accountable for negative environmental and social impacts of their operations and those of their suppliers. This paper analyses three mineral supply chains (copper, platinum, and gold) in order to develop propositions about how supply chain-specific characteristics affect traceability and foreign corporate accountability (FCA) in mineral supply chains. The analytical framework focuses on three dimensions: geopolitical dynamics, industry characteristics, and private governance mechanisms. The authors argue that chain-specific characteristics may foster or thwart traceability and FCA in mineral supply chains and thus provides a novel contribution to the debate on traceability and accountability in mineral supply chains.     

The color of child mortality in Brazil, 1950-2000: social progress and persistent racial inequality

Now that racism has been officially recognized in Brazil, and some universities have adopted affirmative-action admission policies, measures of the magnitude of racial inequality and analyses that identify the factors associated with changes in racial disparities over time assume particular relevance to the conduct of public debate. This study uses census data from 1950 to 2000 to estimate the probability of death in the early years of life, a robust indicator of the standard of living among the white and Afro-Brazilian populations. Associated estimates of the average number of years of life expectancy at birth show that the 6.6-year advantage that the white population enjoyed in the 1950s remained virtually unchanged throughout the second half of the twentieth century, despite the significant improvements that accrued to both racial groups. The application of multivariate techniques to samples selected from the 1960, 1980, and 2000 census enumerations further shows that, controlling for key determinants of child survival, the white mortality advantage persisted and even increased somewhat in 2000. The article discusses evidence of continued racial inequality during an era of deep transformation in social structure, with reference to the challenges of skin color classification in a multiracial society and the evolution of debates about color, class, and discrimination in Brazil.     

The Mr. Big technique on trial by jury

Mr. Big is a Canadian undercover police technique used to elicit confessions. Undercover officers befriend the suspect, and gradually draw them into a fictitious criminal organization. Upon meeting the boss of the organization, ‘Mr. Big’, the suspect is pressured to confess. When evidence from the sting operation, including the confession, is presented later in court, it may induce juror moral prejudice towards a defendant. We evaluated how situational and dispositional sting factors (crime task severity, financial incentive, and defendant intelligence) influence mock juror moral prejudice and decision-making in Mr. Big cases. Results from Experiment 1 (N?=?270) showed fewer guilty verdicts in the high incentive conditions. In Experiment 2 (N?=?1,666), high incentive and low defendant intelligence were related to fewer guilty verdicts, more favorable ratings of defendant character, and more skeptical evaluations of confession evidence. Additionally, there were differences between community and student participants on multiple outcomes.     

In the shadows of war and peace: making sense of violence after peace accords

This article addresses an urgent but largely sidelined issue in the study of peace processes: that high levels of violence—usually framed as ‘crime’—are often ubiquitous in societies experiencing peace processes, even after the signing of peace accords. From South Africa to El Salvador, Guatemala to Northern Ireland, rising interpersonal violence has come to characterise the ‘peace’. This violence often takes place in the context of ambitious post-conflict development efforts. The article argues that even the seemingly non-political violence after peace accords is intimately linked to war, as well as the peace process—in both the causes of violence and in the types of violence that perpetrators use. In order to conceptualise post-peace accord violence, the article presents a framework of violence based on the perpetrators of violence and the types of violence (social, economic or political) that occur. This unpacking of post-peace accord violence emphasises the interconnectedness of political and non-political violence, and stresses the importance of security for development.     

Developmental validation of feline, bovine, equine, and cervid quantitative PCR assays

Accurate DNA quantification is essential for optimizing DNA testing and minimizing sample consumption. Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assays have been published for human and canine nuclear DNA, and the need for quantifying other forensically important species was evident. Following the strategy employed for the canine qPCR assay, we developed individual assays to accurately quantify feline, bovine, equine, and cervid nuclear DNA. Each TaqMan-based assay incorporates a genus-specific probe targeting the Melanocortin-1 Receptor gene and includes a piece of synthetic DNA that acts as an internal PCR control for detecting inhibition. Developmental validations were carried out following the revised guidelines of the Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods with modifications necessary for validation of nonhuman qPCR assays. All assays demonstrated the specificity, sensitivity, stability, reproducibility, accuracy, and precision required for forensic casework. The application of these assays to animal forensic DNA analysis has both conserved laboratory resources and improved genotyping results.     

Quantitative assessment of the percent fat in domestic animal bone marrow

Measurement of the amount of fat in femoral bone marrow can provide a quantitative assessment of the nutritional status of an individual animal. An analytical method is presented for quantitating the percent fat in bone marrow from three domestic species: bovine, canine, and equine. In this procedure, fat is extracted from bone marrow using pentane, and the percent fat recovered is determined gravimetrically. Based on analyses from adult animals (normal body condition scores), the average percentage of fat in the bone marrow was >80%. In cases in which animals have been diagnosed as emaciated or exhibit serous atrophy of fat (body scores of 1 or 2), the femoral bone marrow fat was less than 20%. In domestic animals, bone marrow fat analysis can be a useful, quantitative measure that, when used in conjunction with all other data available, can support a diagnosis of starvation or malnutrition.