Political Awareness and Electoral Campaigns: Maximum Effects for Minimum Citizens?

Revisionists demonstrate campaigns mobilize, educate, activate predispositions, and change minds. Attention has turned from the “minimum effects” thesis to questions about the conditions under which campaigns matter and questions about which types of people are susceptible to campaign effects. Focusing on whether campaign effects are mediated by chronic political awareness, I find that current scholarship on this question is mixed. Some find that campaigns affect the politically unaware most, some find bigger effects among more aware citizens, and some find similar effects across the awareness distribution. Noting the possibility that awareness mediates different types of campaign effects differently (e.g. priming, persuasion, or learning), Zaller’s Receive–Accept-Sample framework is consulted to develop expectations. I test the RAS generated predictions using the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey pre/post panel. The results support the theory that awareness mediates different campaign effects differently.     

The consequences of perpetrating psychological aggression in dating relationships: a descriptive investigation

Psychological aggression is the most prevalent form of aggression in dating relationships, with women perpetrating as much, if not more, psychological aggression than men. Researchers have advocated for an examination of the consequences that follow psychological aggression for the perpetrator, in hopes that this will lead to innovative intervention programs aimed at ameliorating dating violence. The current study investigated the self-reported consequences of having perpetrated psychological aggression against a dating partner among female college students in a current dating relationship (N = 115). Participants endorsed numerous consequences as having followed their perpetration of psychological aggression, including both punishing and potentially reinforcing consequences. Furthermore, findings indicated that for some perpetrators, psychological aggression may function as a method of emotion regulation. Implications of these findings for future research and intervention are discussed.     

Nineteenth‐Century rural England: A case for ‘peasant studies'?

Small‐scale family‐based agricultural production was a common feature of rural England before the First World War. These producers were distinct from capitalist farmers in that labour was not normally employed, and surplus value was therefore not appropriated by the farmer. These people have been largely ignored by historians of rural England on the assumption that they were either numerically insignificant or were unimportant. The first of these assumptions is unsustainable and the second is unsubstantiated. In order to examine these people within a developed capitalist economy, concepts developed by students of the peasantry are likely to be of value, and a plea is made for studies of rural England based on class analyses, and including all of the various groups in the English countryside.     

‘Drunken Tans’: Representations of Sex and Violence in the Anglo-Irish War (1919–21)

War is a highly gendered experience which is both informed by and informs constructions of masculinity and femininity. The dominant depiction of masculine heroes and feminine victims simplifies the complex intersections of militarism, nationalism and gendered roles and identities. Focusing on a case study of the Anglo-Irish War or War of Independence (1919–1921), this paper examines how violence against women, especially sexual violence, was written about and reported in ways which framed representations of Irish and British masculinity and Irish femininity.In addition, by analysing a range of varied sources including newspapers, autobiographical accounts and recorded testimonies, this paper attempts to assess the extent to which violence against women formed a key aspect of military practice in the war. In conclusion, I engage with some of the difficulties faced by researchers today in exploring evidence of gendered violence in specific historical, cultural and militarized contexts.