Predictors of Physical Spousal/Intimate Violence in Chinese American Families

A total of 262 Chinese Americans (133 males and 129 females) were randomly selected from the Los Angeles County telephone directory using Chinese surnames as the identifying marker. A structured telephone interview was administered measuring respondents' gender role beliefs, acculturation, sociodemographic factors, and their victimization experiences with physical aggression by a spouse or intimate partner. Contrary to the feminist literature on domestic violence, gender role beliefs was not related to physical intimate violence. Acculturation, however, significantly predicted severe physical violence experienced during respondents' lifetime. Whether respondents were employed also predicted lifetime minor forms physical violence by a spouse/intimate partner. Findings are discussed in a cultural context, and social work practice and research implications are also highlighted.     

Marriage and the crisis of peasant society in Gujarat,India

ABSTRACT

This contribution takes marriage as the example of a crisis of production and reproduction in rural India. Through the juxtaposition of ethnography separated by six decades, we detail a shift away from land and agriculture as the primary markers of status among the Patidars of central Gujarat, western India, in favour of a hierarchical understanding of international migration. The paper discusses the disconnect between a cultural revolution in favour of migration, and the failure of many to live up to their own cultural standards. More broadly, we reflect on the forces that simultaneously strengthen and dissolve caste inequality in the context of India's uneven growth.     

Green Desert

Inner Mongolia’s Hobq Desert creates an oasis of wealth Located southwest of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region,the Hobq Desert has become in two decades a symbol of the fight against desertification in China and a meeting place for people interested in the subject.The Hobq International Conference Center is the traditional venue of the biennial Hobq     

The Dog That Didn’t Bark: Explaining Change in Germany's Tobacco Control Policy at Home and in the EU

This article revisits the earlier debates on Germany's abysmal record on tobacco control policies, which attributes that record to cultural, institutional, and political barriers. This article shows that Germany has made progress in tobacco control, though its commitment to smoke-free public spaces is lagging. We argue that the explanation for Germany's progress on tobacco control is that EU legislation directly and indirectly influenced public attitudes, raised awareness about the health consequences of smoking among the public and medical establishment, elevated the visibility of medical and health NGOs, and altered the institutional venue of policy making. However, in areas where the EU does not impose legislation, such as second-hand smoke, Germany continues to show more modest progress, owing to its federalised structure of health policy. State governments are in change of smoke-free eateries/drinking establishments and they are more susceptible to pressures from the gastronomy sector and allied tobacco interests.     

The role of individual differences in understanding and predicting workplace safety

While U.S. colleges and universities ponder their mission, vision, values, and virtues, researchers at a large, urban, Catholic, patron-identity university actively engaged in empirical assessments of “who we say we are.” In this themed issue, faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students are a research team engaged in quantitative and qualitative analysis of their school's mission identity and mission-driven activities. Results from several sets of studies around student perceptions and impact of mission are presented and discussed. School administrators and those interested in community engagement impacts on students may find these articles useful and informative.     

The Syrian wars of words: international and local instrumentalisations of the war on terror

Abstract

This article presents a study of the ‘wars of words’ among selected parties involved in the Syrian conflict. Based on a combination of content analysis and critical discourse analysis (CDA), it examines actors’ discourses within the United Nations Security Council (2011–2015), the global arena of confrontation and international legitimisation of armed actions. Here, it investigates their instrumentalisation of the word ‘terrorism’ and the war on terror narrative, and it explores the dynamics of discursive (de)legitimisation of the use of violence in Syria. The article shows how parties instrumentalised this narrative to criminalise their enemies while legitimising their own violent actions. By doing this, the paper also offers a broader reflection on the global narrative on terrorism, and its different reception and instrumentalisation by core and peripheral actors.     

Postdicting arrests for proactive and reactive aggression with the PICTS Proactive and Reactive composite scales

The criminal arrest histories of 262 medium-security male inmates were correlated with the Proactive (P) and Reactive (R) composite scales of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS). As predicted, only scores on the P scale correlated significantly with prior arrests for proactive aggression (robbery, burglary) and only scores on the R scale correlated significantly with prior arrests for reactive aggression (assault, domestic violence) when age, education, race, and marital status were controlled in a series of negative binomial regression analyses. The P and R scales also predicted the total number of arrests received by participants in this sample after these same four demographic measures were controlled. The implications of these results for the construct validity of the PICTS composite scales and for matching offenders to interventions are discussed.