The dynamic of family structures in seventeenth-century Moldavia. Adoption and godparenthood

This study analyzes aspects related to family structure and kinship (in particularly, to relations between parents and children, but other types than the blood relations) and the influences they had on seventeenth-century Moldavian society. In the first part, the focus is on the practice of adoption that is mainly mentioned in documents through the expression taking into one's soul and has as its main purpose ensuring posterity and implicitly transmitting patrimony. This analysis is based on juridical disposition and diverse types of documents conserved referring to this practice, trying to outline the importance of this gesture in Early Modern Moldavian society and the nature of the reasons which caused the individual to choose this lineage manner. Also, for a better understanding of the role and the amount of the patrimony inherited by the adopted children in the destiny of a family and its social implications, the method of comparing the adoption in contrast with other spiritual kinships, especially with baptismal sponsorship, has been used.     

Introduction: negotiating the promotion of democracy

ABSTRACT

This article makes the case for why we should turn to studying democracy promotion negotiation, outlines the research questions guiding this special issue, identifies overarching findings and summarizes the individual contributions. After outlining the rationale for more attention to the issue of negotiation, which we understand as a specific form of interaction between external and local actors in democracy promotion, we outline three basic assumptions informing our research: (1) Democracy promotion is an international practice that is necessarily accompanied by processes of negotiation. (2) These negotiation processes, in turn, have an impact upon the practice and outcome of democracy promotion. (3) For external democracy promotion to be mutually owned and effective, genuine negotiations between ‘promoters’ and ‘local actors’ are indispensable; the term ‘genuine’ here being understood as including a substantial exchange on diverging values and interests. The article, then, introduces the three research questions for this agenda, concerning the issues on the negotiation table, the parameters shaping negotiation processes, and the results of democracy promotion negotiation. We conclude by presenting an overview of the overarching findings of the special issue as well as with brief summaries of the individual contributions.     

Alignment Cooperation and Regional Security Architecture in the Indo-Pacific

ABSTRACT

Although the US-led system of formal alliances remains the main pillar of the regional security architecture in Asia, alignment cooperation – centred on the Indo-Pacific maritime conceptualisation of the region – has been on the rise. This includes informal bilateral and minilateral agreements for security collaboration between regional and extra-regional US treaty allies or close security partners, notably Japan, Australia, India, the United Kingdom and France. While the various alignments complement and address the deficiencies of the formal US-led alliances, the functional and informal characteristics of alignments allow countries to pursue security cooperation both in conjunction with the United States and independently of it. This leads to a more fluid security architecture that increasingly reflects the diversity of emerging regional ‘architects’, among which Japan is assuming a leading role, as much as the region’s array of new security challenges.     

Discrimination between human and animal DNA: application of a duplex polymerase chain reaction to forensic identification

Identification of a report's species is one of the basic analyses in forensic laboratories. The authors report the case of 6 bone fragments recovered in a wooded area, which were not attributable to 1 animal species on the basis of morphologic examination. The aim of this study was to develop a duplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to discriminate human and animal origin of bone fragments. The method is based on the PCR amplification of cytochrome b and a 16S ribosomal mitochondrial DNA fragment, which has never been tested up to now. Our protocol combines a single-round PCR with direct visualization of amplicons in agarose gel, without sequencing analysis of the PCR products. The presence of a single band (359 bp) indicates a nonhuman origin of the sample, whereas 2 bands (157 and 359 bp) indicate a human biologic sample.This method revealed to be useful for forensic purposes because the 16S ribosomal mitochondrial DNA is a small human-specific fragment that is easily amplifiable even with degraded DNA from biologic materials such as old bones.     

Sexual dimorphism of the scapula and the clavicle in a contemporary Greek population: applications in forensic identification

Sex estimation is the grounds for an accurate identification of unknown human skeletal elements. The need for reliable methods distinguishing males from females based upon various skeletal elements is evident in cases of commingled, eroded and/or missing remains. The aim of this work lays on establishing criteria for sex estimation from the scapula and the clavicle in modern Greeks. A total of 147 left scapulae and 147 clavicles (66 females and 81 males) were used in the study. Eight and six measurements were taken on the scapula and clavicle respectively and data were subjected to principal components analysis (PCA) and discriminant function analysis (DFA). Posterior probabilities for the classification of each individual are also calculated. Statistical analysis was carried out using the software PAST (Paleontological Statistics) and SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 18. The results supported the existence of pronounced sexual dimorphism, which was mainly attributed to size differences among the two groups. Univariate and multivariate methods of statistical classification showed high accuracy for all scapular and most clavicular measurements, verifying their value as sex indicators in the under study population. We recommend the use of this method for sex assessment from the scapula and the clavicle in cases exhibiting over 95% probability of correct classification. This is regardless of the overall high degree of accuracy reported here, as the method of choice in forensic contexts should always be case-driven.     

Theory of Custom,Dogmatics of Custom,Policy of Custom: On the Threefold Approach of Polish‐Russian Legal Realism

Proceeding from the insights of Petra?ycki, Polish‐Russian legal realists (PRRs) distinguished legal theory, legal dogmatics, and legal policy. Legal theory describes legal phenomena in a value‐free way and formulates causal laws concerning those phenomena. Legal dogmatics and legal policy are, by contrast, value‐laden sciences involving the subject's—i.e., the scientist's—own attitudes toward existing or imagined phenomena: Dogmatics evaluates behaviors based on the subject's adoption of given normative sources (NSs) as binding, while legal policy evaluates the effects produced by given NSs based on causal laws and on the subject's goals (for Petra?ycki, these goals come down to that of fostering love, or benevolence). PRRs then conceptualize custom as a representation of people behaving in a certain way (R_c): We have a custom on the threefold condition that (a) R_c is believed true by a given X, (b) R_c causes the existence of a given normative psychical experience (NPE) in X, and (c) X expressly refers to—or would refer—to R_c in justifying an NPE. PRRs use the term customary law to refer to legal experiences (i.e., NPEs involving a sense of entitlement) caused and justified by an R_c. From a theoretical perspective, both the subject's adoption of custom as a binding NS and its truth are irrelevant. It is only the presence of a customary NPE in the X under study that matters. From a dogmatic perspective, by contrast, what matters is (a) whether the dogmatician—qua subject—adopts custom as a binding NS, (b) whether it is true that people behave in a given way b_w, and (c) whether b_w resembles the behavior that is deontically qualified in the norm under dogmatic evaluation. Finally, from a legal‐political viewpoint, PRRs hold that customary law in modern societies, owing to its conservative nature, should be eradicated for the goal of removing inequalities and fostering benevolence.     

A Break?

Since the financial crisis of 2008 we have seen a rise in suicides across the world. Greece for example in 2011 saw a sustained increase in suicides of 35.7%. In this article I draw our attention to well-publicized suicides that took place in Greece. I focus on the suicide notes left behind. The suicide notes, I suggest, can be read as offering us a critique of the anxious times in which we find ourselves. They are offering us a critique in two senses: (a) a critique of the way we are being governed (through austerity memorandums and a neoliberal logic); and (b) a critique of the affirmative ways of responding towards the financial crisis (through occupations, demonstrations etc.). Consequently these suicide notes can be read as a demand for having a break from this neoliberal logic and organization of life and asking us to re-imagine our social and political realm. In arguing thus, the article draws on Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Wendy Brown and others.     

The Issue of Age Estimation in a Modern Skeletal Population: Are Even the More Modern Current Aging Methods Satisfactory for the Elderly?,

The main idea behind age assessment in adults is related to the analysis of the physiological degeneration of particular skeletal structures with age. The main issues with these procedures are due to the fact that they have not been tested on different modern populations and in different taphonomic contexts and that they tend to underestimate the age of older individuals. The purpose of this study was to test the applicability and the reliability of these methods on a contemporary population of skeletal remains of 145 elderly individuals of known sex and age. The results show that, due to taphonomic influences, some skeletal sites showed a lower survival. Therefore, the methods with the highest percentage of applicability were Lovejoy (89.6%) and Rougé‐Maillart (81.3%), followed by Suchey‐Brooks (59.3%), and those with the lowest percentage of applicability were Beauthier (26.2%) and Iscan (22.7%). In addition, this research has shown how for older adults the study of both acetabulum and auricular surface may be more reliable for aging. This is also in accordance with the fact that auricular surface and the acetabulum are the areas more frequently surviving taphonomic insult.     

The Status of Forensic Anthropology in Europe and South Africa: Results of the 2016 FASE Questionnaire on Forensic Anthropology

One of the goals of the Forensic Anthropology Society of Europe (FASE) is to map the existing education and practice opportunities in the field of forensic anthropology in order to support the development of the discipline and to optimize the training courses provided by the Society. To address this goal, an online questionnaire was sent to European and South African practitioners of forensic anthropology and related disciplines in 2016. The results of the questionnaire showed that the status and roles of forensic anthropologists vary depending on the national legal systems, education, and employment status of the practitioners. Despite the fact that the expertise of forensic anthropologists has been increasingly requested in a variety of investigations and the spectrum of tasks has become broader, including identification of living persons, specialized education in forensic anthropology is still restricted to a few graduate and postgraduate programs in European countries and to annual FASE courses.