A. Reviews: general

AN EARLY ISLAMIC FAMILY FROM OMAN: AL‐'AWTABI'S ACCOUNT OF THE MUHALLABIDS. By MARTIN HINDS. (Journal of Semitic Studies Monographs, 17.) Manchester, University of Manchester, 1991. vi, 97pp. £25.00.

THE ORIGINS OF WESTERN ECONOMIC DOMINANCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: MERCANTILISM AND THE ISLAMIC ECONOMY IN ALEPPO, 1600–1750. By BRUCE MASTERS. (New York University Studies in Near Eastern Civilisation, 12.) New York and London, New York University Press, 1988. xviii, 240 pp.

MOROCCO IN THE REIGN OF MAWLAY SULAYM#afAN. By MOHAMED EL MANSOUR. Cambridgeshire, MENAS Press, 1990. 248 pp. + bibliography.

THE BALKAN CITY 1400–1900. By NIKOLAI TODOROV. Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 1983. xxvii, 641pp.

SOVIET POLICIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST: FROM WORLD WAR II TO GORBACHEV. By GALIA GOLAN. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990. viii, 319 pp. £27.50

THE SUPERPOWERS AND THE SYRIAN‐ISRAELI CONFLICT. By HELENA COBBAN. (The Washington Papers.) New York, Praeger (with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.), 1991. xxii, 182 pp. Map, tables, foreword by Robert G. Neumann. $19.95

LITTLE COMMON GROUND: ARAB AGRICULTURE AND JEWISH SETTLEMENT IN PALESTINE, 1920–1948. By CHARLES S. KAMEN. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991. xi, 327pp. $39.95.

CITIZENS APART: A PORTRAIT OF THE PALESTINIANS IN ISRAEL. By AMINA MINNS & NADIA HIJAB. (Society and Culture in the Modern Middle East.) London & New York, I.B. Tauris, 1990. xiii, 210pp. £19.95.

THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABS IN ISRAEL. By DAVID KRETZMER. (Westview Special Studies on the Middle East.) Boulder, San Francisco & Oxford, Westview Press, 1990. xii, 197pp. £13.50.

WAS THE RED FLAG FLYING THERE? MARXIST POLITICS AND THE ARAB‐ISRAELI CONFLICT IN EGYPT AND ISRAEL, 1948–1965. By JOEL BEININ. London, I.B. Tauris, 1990. xix, 317pp. £29.95.

EGYPT AND THE CRISIS OF ISLAM. By ZAHIA RAGHEB DAJANI. New York, Peter Lang, 1990. ix, 255pp.

WAR AND PEACE IN THE GULF: DOMESTIC POLITICS AND REGIONAL RELATIONS INTO THE 1990s. By ANOUSHIRAVAN EHTESHAMI and GERD NONNEMAN (with a contribution by CHARLES TRIPP). Reading, Garnet Publishing, 1991. 287pp. £30.00.

SUDAN: HISTORY, IDENTITY, IDEOLOGY. Edited by HERVÉ BLEUCHOT, CHRISTIAN DELMET and DEREK HOPWOOD. (St Antony's Middle East Monographs, 25.) Reading, Ithaca Press, 1991. xvi, 298 pp. £25.00.

TRIBES, GOVERNMENT AND HISTORY IN YEMEN. By PAUL DRESCH. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1989. xxix, 440pp. 14 bw. plates.

SOCOTRA: ISLAND OF TRANQUILLITY. By BRIAN DOE. London, Immel Publishing, 1992. 236pp. £50.00

AN OVERVIEW OF MODERN ARABIC LITERATURE. By PIERRE CACHIA. (Islamic Surveys.) Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1990. viii, 241pp. £30.00 (hb).

THE ARABIAN ORAL HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC AND LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS. By SAAD A. SOWAYAN. (Semitica Viva, 6.) Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 1992. xii, 323pp. DM88.‐

ARABCARD. By ADRIAN BROCKETT, OWEN TAYLOR and IAN CLARK. Durham, University of Durham, Centre for Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies, 1991. (Version reviewed: 3.2). Base Package (3 diskettes): £50.

ISLAM IN EUROPEAN THOUGHT. By ALBERT HOURANI. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.     

Asia-Pacific news

This column provides a country by country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications' industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia-Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.     

Asia-Pacific news

This column provides a country by country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications' industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.     

An Underappreciated Dimension of Human Trafficking: Battered and Trafficked Women and Public Policy

Both domestic violence and trafficking in humans pose serious problems worldwide. However, there are differences in the ways in which battered immigrant women and trafficked immigrant women are responded to by governmental agencies in Greece and in the USA. Trafficking in humans has been securitized, that is, framed as an issue linked to international security risk. As such, countries that do not take legal action to stop human trafficking could face US sanctions such as loss of United States military and economic assistance. Under significant international pressure, Greece, since 2002, passed a law that criminalized trafficking in humans and took necessary steps for providing protection and assistance to trafficked victims. Nevertheless, domestic violence and battered women remain silent in Greek society, and the availability of services to victims of domestic violence has eroded. We argue that, due to different issue framing of victims of trafficking and battered women, the connection of trafficking in humans to national security fosters different legal protection outcomes. The comparison of battered immigrant women and trafficked victims between Greece and the USA reveals significant differences in protection of battered immigrant women in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) area. This article elucidates why there are public policy differences within OECD states that all grant a priority to prevention of human trafficking.     

Comparison of methods to determine sex by evaluating the greater sciatic notch: Visual, angular and geometric morphometrics

Sex estimation is the first step for biological profile reconstruction of an unknown skeleton (archaeological or contemporary) and consequently for positive identification of skeletal remains recovered from forensic settings. Several tools have been developed using different osseous structures. With the intention to provide an objective method comparison, we reported the analysis of three different methods (visual, metric and geometric morphometrics) for sex assessment of the greater sciatic notch. One hundred and thirty pelvic bones (45.4% females and 54.6% males) from the National Autonomous University of Mexico Skeletal Collection pertaining to the contemporary Mexican population were analyzed. We used the ROC-analysis to test between desired false positive thresholds (1-specificity) and expected true positive rates (sensitivity) in order to predict the best approach to sex assessment. The comparison of the area under the ROC-curves shows significant differences among visual and metric methods. At the same time, the analysis suggested that higher morphological variation among the sexes is independent of the methodological approach. The results indicate that the metric (angle), with a high percent of indeterminate cases (34.6%), and visual, with 26.2% of the cases allocated as intermediate cases, were poorly accurate; we cannot recommend these techniques for sexing an unknown specimen. On the other hand, the geometric morphometrics approach improves sex estimation in 82.3% of correctly classified individuals with more than 95% of posterior probability. In addition to the method comparison, the major sexual variation of the greater sciatic notch was determined to be located on its posterior border.