The Changing Character of Disaster Victimhood: Evidence from Japan’s “Great Earthquakes”

ABSTRACT

Japan is periodically wracked by “Great Earthquakes” (daijishin) – seismic events so destructive that they leave massive amounts of textual and graphic evidence, much of it produced by people who did not experience the events directly. Using this cache of information, it is possible to see how the idea of the “disaster victim” has changed over time and circumstance. My paper traces this role across five Great Earthquakes that spanned roughly 150 years (1855–2011), a period convergent with modern Japan. I will argue that the sense of who and what has been victimized by the shaking of the earth – who has suffered, what weight to attach to their loss, what actions to take and emotions to feel regarding their situation – has changed regularly, and surprisingly, over this rather short period. There is, in other words, no common Japanese experience of victimhood, even in the context of one disaster type over a relatively short historical period. The article is one contribution to an as-yet unexamined history and comparative study of the modern role of disaster victim.     

World History in 60 Seconds: How Bank Imperial Re-Edited Russian Binary Logic

Contemporary Russian culture's biggest problem is not westernisation, popification or rampant social impoverishment, but the stubborn aversion to counting past three. There is some sort of sick fascination with binary oppositions. Ever since the destruction of pagan worship 1000 years ago, the Holy dialectical triad has damned Russian culture. All attempts at modernisation are stifled by grandiose plans based on binary models of cultural dynamism that, after an initial expulsion of energy, eventually stagnate and spoil more than they transform. Moreover, there is little opportunity for multiple modes of analysis since most studies privilege the same destructive dialectics that they seek to examine. Everything is locked into a violent oppositional mentality that suffocates change, and only leads to new and improved methods of oppression and social degradation. All of Russia's other problems stem from this mathematical myopia. Within the relatively new field of Kulturology (Russian Cultural Studies) and the relatively forgotten field of Russian Philosophy (not philosophy in Russia) there have been few attempts to explore moments of interconnection. Subsequently, Kulturology is presented as a natural progression of a dialectical continuum that is necessarily oppositional. There is a common assumption that scholars study texts by using specific critical strategies within disciplinary limits and not the other way round. That is, they do not explore or question their discipline through the study of tactical texts. The intention of this paper is not to contrast Kulturology to Russian Philosophy and Cultural Studies so as to come up with a more refined product, but to examine the relationship between their central epistemological concerns. Rather than applying them either singularly or coextensively in order to analyse a particular text, I will attempt to consider Kulturology and Russian Philosophy through the text of a contemporary Russian-made advertising campaign. Curiously, the commercial text and the critical disciplines share key discursive concerns that point to a shared contemporary cognitive logic. Their arithmetical articulation of the cognitive logic of the dynamics of Russian culture, structures of interpretation and the construction of cultural history are the excessive focus of this paper.     

Forensic Identification of Blood in the Presence of Contaminations Using Raman Microspectroscopy Coupled with Advanced Statistics: Effect of Sand,Dust, and Soil

Body fluid traces recovered at crime scenes are among the most common and important types of forensic evidence. However, the ability to characterize a biological stain at a crime scene nondestructively has not yet been demonstrated. Here, we expand the Raman spectroscopic approach for the identification of dry traces of pure body fluids to address the problem of heterogeneous contamination, which can impair the performance of conventional methods. The concept of multidimensional Raman signatures was utilized for the identification of blood in dry traces contaminated with sand, dust, and soil. Multiple Raman spectra were acquired from the samples via automatic scanning, and the contribution of blood was evaluated through the fitting quality using spectroscopic signature components. The spatial mapping technique allowed for detection of “hot spots” dominated by blood contribution. The proposed method has great potential for blood identification in highly contaminated samples.     

New ‘Mass Line’ Campaign

The Communist Party of China(CPC)recently began a new training campaign for Party members and cadres as part of a multi-pronged approach designed to confront a number of challenges facing China today.The purpose of the campaign is to reassert and deepen the Party’s values and connection with the Chinese masses,and to establish in the clearest of terms the professional and ethical requirements of service.     

Afghanistan reconstruction in regional perspective

The reconstruction of Afghanistan is in part dependent upon the reintegration of Afghanistan into the international community. Reintegration, in turn, is dependent upon Afghanistan's trans-border infrastructure of communication, trade, transport, water, power and investment. Accordingly, increased regional economic cooperation is a key element of Afghanistan's reconstruction. This article analyses regional economic cooperation in the South and Central Asian region in terms of logic, institutions, actors, and expectations. The article argues in favour of inclusiveness to enlarge the number of beneficiaries of economic benefits of regional economic cooperation while avoiding the pitfalls of risky strategies of faulty collective action.     

The decisive impact of tax administration practices on firms’ corruption Experience and Perceptions: Evidence from Europe and Central Asia

Two competing conceptualizations of corruption in the literature view it either as efficient or burdensome from firms’ perspective. Using data on the prevalence and the nature of firms’ interactions with tax authorities in twenty-eight Eastern European and Central Asian (ECA) countries, this paper contributes to evaluation of competing ideas in the literature about firms’ experience of corruption in tax administration. Special emphasis is given to examination of taxation-related determinants of corruption prevalence (frequency and magnitude of bribery), as well as the effect of the interaction with tax authorities on perception of tax and overall corruption. Regardless of country context, it appears that perceived corruption in tax administration and actual experiences with bribery during interactions with tax officials more than anything else affect the overall perceptions of corruption, thereby supporting the conceptualization of corruption in tax administration as burdensome, rather than efficient.     

Parents,Peers, Perceived Risk of Harm,and the Neighborhood: Contextualizing Key Influences on Adolescent Substance Use

Recent research has affirmed the need to examine contextual influences on adolescent substance use in a multilevel framework. This study examined the role of neighborhood opportunities for substance use in promoting adolescent substance use. Data came from two components of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods: the Longitudinal Cohort Study, consisting of interviews with youth and their primary caregivers across three waves of data with an average span of 4.5 years; and a Community Survey of neighborhood residents. Analysis used an Item-Response Theory-based statistical approach on 6556 substance use item responses from 1639 youth (49.0 % female) within 80 neighborhoods to assess the extent to which neighborhood opportunities for substance use had direct and indirect effects on adolescent substance use. Neither direct nor mediated effects of neighborhood opportunities for substance use on adolescent substance use were detected. But, analyses revealed moderating effects such that higher levels of neighborhood opportunities for substance use: (1) amplified the detrimental effects of parental substance use and peer substance use on youth substance use; and (2) attenuated the protective effect of adolescents’ perceived harm of substance use on adolescent substance use. The results suggest that the ways in which neighborhood characteristics impact adolescent behavior are nuanced. Rather than impact individual-level outcomes directly, neighborhood context may be particularly relevant by conditioning the effects of salient individual-level risk and protective factors for substance use.