Development of the severity of violence against women scales

In response to the need for more sensitive assessment instruments, scales were developed applicable to the evaluation of male violence against women. Two versions of the Severity of Violence Against Women Scale (SVAWS) were developed. On 10-point scales, college females (N = 707) rated how serious, aggressive, abusive, violent, and threatening it would be if a man carried out each of 46 acts with a woman. The mean of each act across ratings was calculated and submitted to factor analysis. Nine factors represented symbolic violence: threats of mild, moderate, and serious violence; actual mild, minor, moderate, and serious violence; and sexual violence. Community women (N = 208) rated the acts on seriousness, aggressiveness, and abusiveness. All factors were unidimensional. Second-order factor analysis confirmed the existence of two broader dimensions representing physically threatening acts and actual violence. Ratings of the amount of physical and emotional harm provided the weightings for future research with student (SVAWS-S) and adult (SVAWS) samples.     

Editorial

Jane Marshall is undertaking MSc research at the London School of Economics.     

The learning process of the Local Capacities for Peace Project

If aid is found to support a war effort, should aid agencies and practitioners continue to give it? The resounding answer given by aid workers all over the world is that the needs of suffering people are too important to ignore and, further, that there can be no justification for not assisting suffering people. But how can one provide aid in the context of conflict without exacerbating the conflict? The Local Capacities for Peace Project (LCPP) was formed in 1994 to learn how aid and conflict interact in order to help aid workers find a way to address human needs without feeding conflict. This paper will discuss how the learning process of the LCPP was designed, the results gained at each step, and how the results were fed back to the participating organisations.     

Brexit in its Worldwide Aspect: An Opportunity to be Grasped

Abstract

The article looks at the implications of Brexit for Britain and its place in the world. It considers how effective Britain can be in utilising its diplomacy, its trade links, and the application of soft power to secure its interests post-Brexit. The article concludes with an assessment of the possible role of the Commonwealth in assisting Britain going forward. However, in order for positive outcomes to be achieved both in regard to the Commonwealth and Brexit more generally, Britain must persuade its international partners of the merits of the new forms of cooperation being suggested, but also for the people of Britain to shape proactively the future direction of the country.     

What effect did the mob have on Chicago neighborhoods? Explicating the relationship between racket subcultures and informal social control

This paper examines the relationship between racket subcultures and informal social control. Specifically, this paper examines the influence of traditional organized crime on informal social control in community areas while controlling for satisfaction with the police, tolerance of deviance, neighborhood and organizational ties, and neighborhood attachment. The data used in this analysis comes from the Community Survey of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. They were obtained from the Inter University Consortium of Political and Social Science Research. Ordered logistic regression was used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that racket areas reported higher levels of informal social control when compared to similar non racket areas in the city of Chicago. These findings have important implications for the study of deviance. Not only do they suggest that criminals can play an important role in controlling street crime, the findings also support differential social organization theory.