Testing the Use of Pigs as Human Proxies in Decomposition Studies

Pigs are a common human analogue in taphonomic study, yet data comparing the trajectory of decomposition between the two groups are lacking. This study compared decomposition rate and gross tissue change in 17 pigs and 22 human remains placed in the Forensic Investigation Research Station in western Colorado between 2012 and 2015. Accumulated degree days (ADD) were used to assess the number of thermal units required to reach a given total body score (TBS) (1) which was used as the measure of decomposition. A comparison of slopes in linear mixed effects model indicated that decomposition rates significantly differed between human donors and pig remains χ²₍₁₎ = 5.662, p = 0.017. Neither the pig nor the human trajectory compared well to the TBS model. Thus, (i) pigs are not an adequate proxy for human decomposition studies, and (ii) in the semiarid environment of western Colorado, there is a need to develop a regional decomposition model.     

Broken Hearts and Battered Lives: Adverse and Abusive Life Histories and Externalized Responses to Anger as Pathways to Illicit Drug Use Among Incarcerated Women

Most incarcerated women suffer from adverse and abusive life histories, including adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), such as sexual, physical, emotional abuse, and neglect, and intimate partner violence (IPV). In addition, many have difficulties regulating their anger expression and most participate in illicit drug use. Although many have offered explanations for these relationships, the current study is among the first to utilize an integrated feminist pathways and general strain theory (GST) approach to explain them. Using data from a stratified random sample of all incarcerated women in Oklahoma (N?=?441), we explore the linkages between ACEs, IPV, the externalized expression of anger, and heavy illicit drug use. Our findings indicate that childhood physical and sexual abuse are significantly associated with externalized responses to anger. However, the effects of childhood adversities, particularly sexual abuse, on heavy illicit drug use are mediated by externalized responses to anger suggesting that anger plays a significant role in women’s pathways to illicit drug use. In contrast, and somewhat surprisingly, being a victim of IPV was negatively related to externalized responses to anger and not significantly related to illicit drug use. Implications for the importance of utilizing an integrated feminist pathways and GST approach in future research are offered.     

A Perspective on Errors,Bias, and Interpretation in the Forensic Sciences and Direction for Continuing Advancement*

Abstract: The forensic sciences are under review more so than ever before. Such review is necessary and healthy and should be a continuous process. It identifies areas for improvement in quality practices and services. The issues surrounding error, i.e., measurement error, human error, contextual bias, and confirmatory bias, and interpretation are discussed. Infrastructure is already in place to support reliability. However, more definition and clarity of terms and interpretation would facilitate communication and understanding. Material improvement across the disciplines should be sought through national programs in education and training, focused on science, the scientific method, statistics, and ethics. To provide direction for advancing the forensic sciences a list of recommendations ranging from further documentation to new research and validation to education and to accreditation is provided for consideration. The list is a starting point for discussion that could foster further thought and input in developing an overarching strategic plan for enhancing the forensic sciences.     

A Hard Culture? Religion and Politics in Turn-of-the-Century Australian History

The idea that Australia developed a uniquely "hard" political culture after 1788 — a culture that prized the rational and made short shift of religion — has had plenty of currency over the years. This idea has been challenged in recent scholarship, along with the broader notion that Western society became secularised during the twentieth century. Set against the backdrop of a wider challenge to the "secularisation narrative", this article explores the work of several historians dealing with the relationship between religion and Australian politics at the turn of the twentieth century. These historians, who include Al Gabay, Frank Bongiorno, Bruce Scates, and Judith Brett, are creating "softer" understandings of Australian political history. As a consequence, I suggest, their work has implications for the way we think about the relationship between the religious and secular Left, as well as for the way we think about Australian masculinities and culture more generally.     

sex,work, meat: the feminist politics of veganism

Since the publication of The Sexual Politics of Meat in 1990, activist and writer Carol J. Adams (2000 [1990]) has put forth a feminist defence of veganism based on the argument that meat consumption and violence against animals are structurally related to violence against women, and especially to pornography and prostitution. Adams’ work has been influential in the growing fields of animal studies and posthumanism, where her research is frequently cited as the prime example of vegan feminism. However, her particular radical feminist framework, including her anti-pornography and anti-prostitution arguments, are rarely acknowledged or critiqued. This article challenges the premises of Adams’ argument, demonstrating that her version of vegan feminism is based upon an unsubstantiated comparison between violence against women and violence against other-than-human animals, and on the silencing and exclusion of sex workers as subjects. The article contests the limited reading of Adams, and of feminism, offered in some key works in animal studies and posthumanism, at the same time that it recognises the need to challenge the anthropocentrism evident in much feminist theory. By way of alternative approaches to the sexual politics of veganism, the article highlights the interventions of artist and activist Mirha-Soleil Ross, proposing that her situated and embodied commitment to animal rights brings sex worker agency into the story, while resisting simple comparisons among different forms of violence. The concerns raised by Ross overlap in compelling ways with recent research in performance studies and labour history, bringing the question of work and workers, animal and human, to the fore. These studies point towards a potentially more useful framework than that of Adams for understanding the human violence suffered by different species, including those destined to be eaten by people.