Secret Things and the Confinement of Walls

This article explores the under-examined issue of sexual abuse of children by women. It asks what are the conditions under which such things become knowable or when are they rendered unthinkable? The private sphere, marked by domestic walls, has been identified as the space most influenced and shaped by women. Its walls symbolise shelter and protection, and they are associated with the safety of all within. At the same time, however, the walls which constitute the private also enable a space within which women's actions can take place with limited oversight by others. Walls foster secrecy and what happens within can include elements of transgression. The sexual abuse of children by women—either their own or those entrusted into their care by others—is one such transgression. This article analyses a series of case studies derived from different historical sources in order to highlight how walls and the understandings of privacy that they support help to perpetuate a widespread belief that women can be unquestioningly trusted in their relations with children.     

Negotiating normative premises in democracy promotion: Venezuela and the Inter-American Democratic Charter

ABSTRACT

This article analyses negotiations on democracy promotion by looking at the case of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. It argues that Venezuela contested the concept of representative democracy during the Charter negotiations, advancing the notion of “participatory and protagonist democracy” and that, even if it was unsuccessful in its demands, the country contributed to deepening the debate on the concept of democracy, on which there is far from worldwide consensus. The article suggests that the main drivers of the negotiation process and the final agreement were domestic political changes in Venezuela, specific features of the negotiations, and the structural position of Venezuela in the field of democracy promotion in the global and regional contexts, which were, at the time, favourable to a compromising attitude to conclusion of the Charter, even if not to the concept of democracy.     

The Anti-Axial Age

Karl Jaspers famously characterized the period from the beginning of the eighth to the end of the third century before Christ as an “Axial Age” in which intellectual freedom and creativity blossomed as never before. This article argues that it was followed, five hundred years later, by an “Anti-Axial Age”, which devised a novel formula for intellectual and political repression. Its essence was the state’s capture of the millenial narrative, which had first been developed as religious doctrine within Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Involving the two great classical empires of Western Eurasia, Persia and Rome, and then empowering the expansion of Islam, the Anti-Axial Age left an ideological legacy that continues to haunt the contemporary world.     

Dermestes maculatus (Coleoptera: Dermestidae) development under fluoxetine effect using two drug administration models

Fluoxetine is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, commonly used for the treatment of a variety of psychopathological conditions. As such, fluoxetine may be expected to appear in clinical and forensic cases. Dermestes maculatus De Geer (Coleoptera: Dermestidae) has been recognized as a relevant component of the insect fauna associated with decomposing human and animal remains. Experiments were conducted to study the effect of fluoxetine on developing D. maculatus using two‐drug administration models: a non‐living animal model (pork muscle) and a living one (Sus scrofa L. pigs). We assessed the duration of immature stages and total life cycle, as well as morphological parameters (body length, cephalic width, and weight). The effect of fluoxetine was studied at an overdose concentration: In the non‐living animal model the drug was mixed with macerated pork muscle (2000 mg/kg) and in the living animal model, pigs were given the drug orally (833 mg/kg). A control was used for each model. Daily observations were performed from the beginning to the end of the experiments. GC‐MS was used for drug detection and quantification. There were no statistically significant differences in the duration of immature stages, life cycle, larval mortality, morphological parameters, or sex ratio, between treatment and control, regardless of the drug administration model. Given that fluoxetine had no detectable effect on the development of D. maculatus, detection of this drug in forensic situations would not compromise the accuracy of PMI estimations.     

Police Perceptions of Irrational Unstable Behaviours and Use of Force

Police identification of people experiencing mental illness is usually based on either the person having an official contact history with police or through observing behavioural indicators commonly associated with mental illness during an encounter. Police have voiced concerns with their ability to identify and respond to people experiencing mental illness in a timely way and report that they commonly resort to more coercive tactical options to resolve encounters. The present study employed a mixed method design to examine 286 police use of force incidents to investigate the association between force used on and by offenders displaying irrational-unstable behavioural characteristics. The irrational-unstable offenders were two times more likely to be perceived by police to have an apparent mental disorder and almost four times more likely to have a known mental health history; one in six had an official record of contact with mental health services. There were few differences in police and offender use of force, considering force as both a categorical and a continuous variable, while incident-level comparisons suggested that police force was generally proportional to offender resistance. Implications are discussed in terms of the need to redress limitations with the traditional police approach style.