(Un)Worthy: Latina battered immigrants under VAWA and the construction of neoliberal subjects

In the United States recognition as a battered immigrant can lead to legalization and citizenship for abused women when provisions in the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) are applied. To successfully utilize VAWA towards these ends, however, a battered immigrant woman also receives a lesson in cultural restructuring required of citizenship; VAWA establishes the regulations and standards necessary to remake abused immigrants into neoliberal subjects. This essay examines the experiences of undocumented Latina immigrants within the VAWA legal paradigm and explores the ways in which the process artfully crafts the good neoliberal citizen.     

Civilians Versus Police: Mediation Can Help to Bridge the Divide

The increasing frequency of notorious cases of conflicts between police officers and members of the general public (which in New York City has led to incidents of death, battery, and sexual assault) is cause for alarm. At the root of many police-community conflicts are an incomplete understanding of the work of the police, poor communication on the part of the police and the public, or simple misunderstanding. A number of communities, including New York City, are turning to mediation to provide a forum for the potential resolution of complaints made against police by citizens. After a brief survey of the work of such programs nationally, the author focuses on three New York cases in which she served as a mediator, using them to illustrate the pitfalls and special rewards of mediating in this context. The author believes that the mediation process itself can work in a transformative way, improving strained relations between police and the general population.     

Language use in ancestry research and estimation

Recent discussions have revolved around the concept of ancestry and ancestry estimation; however, the associated terminology and its theoretical underpinnings have not been similarly examined. This research evaluates the concepts (e.g., race, ancestry, ethnicity) currently in use, examines if they are consistent with the groups employed to illustrate them (e.g., Black, European, Hispanic), and looks for patterns in language usage. Articles in the Anthropology, Odontology, and General sections of the Journal of Forensic Sciences between 2009 and 2019 were evaluated for ancestry‐related language use. For each article, the concepts, examples, and bibliographic information were recorded, and the relationship between concept and example was examined. These data were cross‐tabulated to evaluate relationships between the variables. Cramer's V was used to assess the strength of association of these relationships. In this sample, ancestry predominates, especially recently The concept used is significantly associated with all variables except publication date and authors’ institution(s). Despite the prevalence of the ancestry concept, racially based terms for individual groups were common. The use of ancestry, over race, in forensic contexts has been suggested to be a primarily linguistic change; these results may support that assertion. Inconsistent language usage leads to a lack of clarity in meaning among researchers and misinterpretation of the data. It is critical to recognize that inconsistencies exist, but also to understand why they exist. These results underscore the long overdue need for the inclusion of diverse perspectives in forensic anthropology, especially in the current conversations surrounding ancestry and ancestry estimation.     

Tourism in Society

This essay starts with a discussion of the scope of tourism as a major force in our contemporary global consumer culture. It also contains information on the development of tourism education in universities and problems students studying tourism often face in the workplace. The main function of the essay is to introduce the articles I have solicited from a number of tourism scholars, which reflect various disciplinary approaches to tourism. They deal with the following topics: sociological studies of tourism and modernism, questions about postmodernism and the role of authenticity in tourism, a historical perspective on the growth of the cruise industry, a case study investigating the role of advertising in tourism and an analysis of the functions of stereotypes in tourism. It is hoped that these essays will induce scholars not working in the area to consider investigating tourism in future research.

Blunders and Blame: How Armed Non-State Actors React to Their Mistakes

Armed non-state actors make mistakes. Why this phenomenon occurs, and how organizations respond to their blunders, has remained understudied. This article draws on interdisciplinary research to examine sources of errors, and offers a public sensitivity argument to explain why groups claim and even apologize for their blunders. The quantitative analysis finds that all armed groups, regardless of ideology and organizational structure, are willing to apologize when there are unintended high casualty rates. A detailed analysis of three Provisional Irish Republican Army incidents reveals that public opinion is sensitive to the nature of the victims, and shows how public condemnation can impact organizational behavior.     

Faith and Development

A consensus now exists that secularization theory can no longer explain the worldwide persistence and spread of modern religious movements, with the exception of western and central Europe as well as intellectuals in general. This essay examines how these new religious forces have taken root in economic development and how that development has been shaped by those same forces. An assessment is made of Max Weber’s famous thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The article concludes with five major observations about religion and development in the modern world.

Justice Sensitivity and Cooperation Dynamics in Repeated Public Good Games

It is frequently observed that despite individual incentives to free ride, humans decide to cooperate with each other to increase social payoffs. In the current research, we address the effects of individual differences in justice sensitivity on cooperation. Using incentivized repeated public good games, we find that individual differences in justice sensitivity—the ease of perceiving, remembering, and reacting to injustice from the perspectives of an observer, beneficiary, or perpetrator, but not victim—substantially predicts cooperation in the absence of a punishment option. In contrast, when costly punishment is allowed for, cooperation becomes strategic as it also aims at avoiding subsequent punishment. If such a sanctioning mechanism is in place, justice sensitivity no longer predicts cooperation. The results regarding the degree of cooperation as reaction to initial non-cooperation of one’s counterparts highlight the role of justice-concerning personality traits for the sufficient provision of public goods, as sanctioning institutions are not always possible, effective, or suitable.