Escalation and Mindfulness

Escalation of conflict, the use of progressively more contentious tactics, is not always intended. It may occur when parties become preoccupied with ideas or feelings that impair their ability to comprehend the situation and focus on the conflict issues. Action springing from such preoccupation can initiate a set of feedback loops that are self-amplifying. In this article, I suggest that by raising their present moment awareness through formal meditation and informal day-to-day mindfulness practice, parties may reduce preoccupation and thereby amplification. Drawing on Friedrich Glasl's stages of escalation and Magorah Maruyama's work on change-amplifying feedback loops, this article examines how mindfulness might contribute to a greater awareness of psychological and systemic factors that predispose disputants to escalation of their conflict.     

Italian population data for D1S1656, D3S1358, D8S1132, D10S2325, VWA, FES/FPS, and F13A01.

Allele frequencies for seven STRs loci were obtained from a sample of 215 unrelated healthy Italian individuals.     

The Use of Incarceration in the United States

The past two decades have produceda profound increase in imprisonment in theUnited States, resulting in a prison populationof two million and expenditures of over $35billion annually on corrections, while otherimportant government services are underfunded. Imprisonment is highest for minority maleslargely because of the War on Drugs, which hasalso dramatically increased the incarcerationof women and created nearly 1.5 millionchildren having a parent incarcerated. Inresponse to this trend, the American Society ofCriminology (ASC) directed the ASC NationalPolicy Committee (NPC) to draft a policy paperon the incarceration issue. This articleexplains the main ideas, themes, andrecommendations of the full policy paper. Itanalyzes the sources and effects of theincreased use of imprisonment, drawingattention to the negative effects of excessiveincarceration. The paper and itsrecommendations reflect a concern that the ASCneeds to set a research agenda that isindependent of the federal government andconventional wisdom. The NPC hopes this paperwill stimulate a healthy and much overduedebate on the role of the ASC in public policyin general, and the merits of widespreadincarceration in particular.     

Perceived justice of ecological policy and proenvironmental commitments

A model was outlined (i) to explain readiness to proenvironmental commitments and decisions in everyday life by six categories of predictor variables, including justice appraisals of pollution control, basic rights, appraisals of pollution, of pollution causation, of the efficacy of pollution control measures, and of ecological responsibility, and (ii) to generate hypotheses on the relationships between the predictor variables. Model variables were assessed by a questionnaire study (N=518) referring to the problem of air pollution. Proenvironmental commitments and decisions could be well predicted by morally relevant appraisals, especially by justice appraisals (e.g., approving proenvirommental laws, taxes, and subsidies, rejecting the justice of the current environmental policy and of mere appeals), whereas predictors representing self-protective motivations remained insignificant. Justice appraisals are in line with the “causation principle of justice”: Those who caused the pollution are made responsible for its reduction and should pay the costs for the pollution control. Results demonstrate that justice appraisals are essential determinants of people's ecologically relevant emotions, cognitions, and engagements. Moreover, they reveal that the responsibility for pollution control is not left with state and economy but is also regarded as a matter that concerns the citizens.     

Injustice in harm and loss

The major topics of this overview article are as follow: (i) A distinction is made between justice and deservedness. Suffered harm and loss may be judged undeserved with respect to the victim's prior behavior, prior life, and personality without the implication that a victimizer is identified who acted unjustly. (ii) The perception of injustice is outlined as a subjective construction that has two major components: The subject selects and applies one of several rules or principles of justice applicable to the case and the subject is attributing responsibility to an agent or agency who is not the victim himself or herself. It is argued that in every case there are several options for the selection of a rule of justice and for the attribution of responsibility. (iii) Several so-called risk factors of critical life events as unforeseeability, uncontrollability of events, and nonnormativeness of events are reinterpreted as factors relevant in the subjective construction of injustice. (iv) Several coping strategies reported in the literature on critical life events such as palliative comparisons, self-blame, or search for meaning are interpreted as efforts to avoid feelings of injustice. (v) On the basis of empirical data a closer look is taken on self-blame which, psychologically, is a heterogeneous construct. The effects of self-blame depend on its function: When used strategically as a means to avoid feelings of uncontrollability of one's fate or to reduce feelings of hostility toward a victimizer, it may have adaptive functions. When imposed by the subjective view of the facts it may result in feelings of guilt, shame, or anger about an avoidable mistake, feelings that are not adaptive but rather add to the negative balance caused by the primary loss or harm. (vi) Concerning search for meaning, a distinction is proposed between (a) grasping the meaning in the sense of understanding motives, goals, and reasons of the victimizer and (b) discovering and construing some gains in the consequences of a victimization, gains which may be material, social, experiential, self- and personality-related, or developmental. While finding meaning of the second kind improves the loss-gain balance and tends to reduce the perceived injustice the first kind of grasping meaning may sometimes result in intensifying feelings of injustice, especially when motives, goals, and reasons of the victimizer are considered as selfish, malevolent, or uncaring. The article ends with a discussion of the ambivalence of a victim's status which establishes some entitlements for compensation and care but also bears the risk of secondary victimization by negative social reactions.     

The African Information Society: rhetoric and practice

ABSTRACT

In the last few years Africa has seen an enormous activity in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) related conferences and initiatives on behalf of international and donor institutions. These initiatives became increasingly coloured by the rhetoric of an emerging global information society and the need for an African answer to these developments. With regard to this information society two documents hold particular relevance: the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa's, (ECA's) Africa's Information Society Initiative (AISI): An Action Framework to Build Africa's Information and Communication Infrastructure and the ITUs African Green Paper. This article sets out to question these policies and implementation initiatives, and their rhetoric and practice.     

Immigration,intermarriage and the changing face of Europe in the post war period

In this article we compare the propensity to intermarry of various migrant groups and their children who settled in Germany, France, England, Belgium and the Netherlands in the post-war period, using a wide range of available statistical data. We try to explain different intermarriage patterns within the framework of Alba and Nee's assimilation theory and pay special attention to the role of religion, colour and colonial background. We therefore compare colonial with non colonial migrants and within these categories between groups with ‘European’ (Christian) and non-European (Islam, Hinduism) religions. First of all, religion appears to be an important variable. Migrants whose faith has no tradition in Western Europe intermarry at a much lower rate than those whose religious backgrounds correspond with those that are common in the country of settlement. The rate of ethnic endogamous marriages in Western Europe are highest in Hindu and Muslim communities, often regardless if they came as guest workers or colonial migrants. Whereas differences in religion diminish the propensity to intermarry, colour or ‘racial’ differences on the other hand seem to be less important. This is largely explained by the pre-migration socialisation. Furthermore, the paper argues that the attention to institutions, as rightly advocated by Richard Alba and Victor Nee, needs a more refined and layered elaboration. Institutions, often as barriers to intermarriage, do not only emanate from the receiving society, but also—be it less formalized—within migrant communities. Especially religions and family systems, but also organized nationalist feelings, can have a profound influence on how migrants think about endogamy. Finally, strong pressures to assimilate, often through institutionalized forms of discrimination and stigmatization, not only produce isolation and frustrate assimilation (with resulting low intermarriage rates), but can also stimulate assimilation by 'passing' mechanisms. These factors, together with a more comparative perspective, are not completely ignored in the new assimilation theory, but—as this study of Western European intermarriage patterns stresses—deserve to be included more systematically in historical and social scientist analyses.     

The political economy of international environmental agreements: a survey

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of the formation of international environmental agreements. The survey covers theoretical modelling approaches and empirical studies including experimental work. Central to our survey is the question how the political process impacts different stages of agreement formation and stability. We distinguish the rules defined during pre-negotiations that govern negotiations, ratification and implementation. Strategic delegation and lobbying are directly relevant during the negotiation and ratification phases. Implementation, the choice of policy instruments at the national level, will also be impacted by lobbying and indirectly influence negotiations. We find that the basic theoretical framework for the analysis of international environmental agreements is largely unrelated to empirical approaches. Furthermore, we observe that models of the political process of agreement formation, like for example sequential game models, are yet to be developed.     

Reflections on a coy field: Methodology,criticism and careerism

This essay works on the assumption that while scholars are historicizing (unevenly) and giving academic standing to the study of queer materials, especially in the humanities and social sciences, the status of these same disciplines is in question, at least in the North American university. The first section examines problematic positionings of the ‘critical object’ for queer study and theorizing. The second profiles that critique against two influential commentaries on the ‘transnational university’ and the place of the humanities, Bill Readings's melancholic assessment of ‘the university in ruins’ and John Guillory's pragmatic conclusion that curricula in the humanities generate ‘cultural capital’.