"For us it is like living in the dark": Ethiopian women's experiences with domestic violence

This article discusses the experiences of domestic violence among Ethiopian refugees and immigrants in the United States. A subset (n=18) of the larger study sample (N=254) participated in three focus groups with Amharic-speaking survivors of domestic violence who were currently in or had left abusive relationships. The research was conducted through a public health department, University, and community agency partnership. Findings show domestic violence as taking place within a context of immigration, acculturation, and rapid changes in family and social structure. Participants expressed a need for language and culture-specific domestic violence support and advocacy as well as education programs regarding U.S. laws and resources.     

Public Sector Growth: Comparing Politicians’ and Administrators’ Spending Preferences

The notion that appointed bureaucrats act as budget maximizers still stands strong within theories attempting to explain the growth in the size of the public sector. This paper reports the results of a case study that included local authority politicians and bureaucrats in 30 Norwegian municipalities and where differences in spending preferences was empirically investigated. Counter to the original theory, bureaucrats seem to be less expansive than their political counterparts. The most expansive were found to be members of political left‐wing parties, the more peripheral politicians and administrators, women, those with lower education and those working in the public sector. Nevertheless, there is some support given to a modified hypothesis that administrators have stronger preferences for ‘slack’ (that is, organizational slack in terms of spending more money on internal administration) than politicians. The data also strongly support the notion that within a specialized sector, both politicians and administrators have similar preferences for higher spending to their specific sector.     

Exploring community protection

This is an attempt to provide conceptual clarity to the community protection component of Pennsylvania’s restorative justice enterprise. After a brief background of the legislative changes to Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system and the theoretical development of restorative justice, data from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are utilized to define and measure what is meant by community protection.     

What were they thinking? An exploration of child sexual offenders’ beliefs using a lexical decision task

Abstract

Cognitive distortions have been afforded a key role in the offending behaviour of child sexual offenders. While the mechanisms underlying cognitive distortions are not fully understood, they are generally thought to reflect entrenched beliefs that distinguish child sexual offenders from other individuals. We investigated this hypothesis using a robust experimental technique called the lexical decision task. Child sexual offenders, offender controls, and non-offender controls completed a lexical decision task in which they responded to words that completed sentences in either an offence-supportive or nonoffence-supportive manner. Contrary to predictions, child sexual offenders did not respond faster to words that were consistent with offence-supportive beliefs, relative to controls. However, they did show accelerated recognition for word stems supporting external locus of control beliefs. These results highlight the need to use cognitive experimental methods to study child sexual offenders’ beliefs, and the importance of investigating potential alternative drivers of cognitive distortions.     

The Logic of the New Pay Systems Revisited–in the Light of Experimental and Behavioral Economics

The article questions the logic of the new pay systems introduced in the public sector in many countries. The pay systems and their goals are consistent when looked upon through the lens of standard economic theory. In addition, we find no contradictions between the goals of the pay systems. However, if findings of experimental economics and behavioral economics are included in the analysis of the pay systems, this is not necessarily the case. Experimental economics and behavioral economics contribute with knowledge which must be taken into account when pay systems are designed.     

The Possibility of Liminal Colonial Subjecthood: Yayutz Bleyh and the Search for Subaltern Histories in the Japanese Empire

ABSTRACT

This article examines whether writing histories of colonial subjects is possible. Traditional colonial histories subsume the colonial subject's individual history under a larger narrative of subjugation, which often does not allow room for people to exist outside the dichotomized role of collaborator/resister. This approach has left a gap in the scholarship for histories of colonial subjects whose lives do not easily fit either category. This article addresses this gap by detailing the life of Yayutz Bleyh, an Atayal woman who became one of the most important participants in the Japanese colonial administration of Aboriginal Affairs in Taiwan. For over six years, the author gathered fragmented pieces of information regarding Yayutz from a multitude of sources – visuals, as well as oral and written materials from inside and outside the colonial archive – in order to sketch the contours of an extraordinary woman and her life. Through the process of filtering these disparate sources, it was the silences regarding certain issues and the discrepancies that emerged among sources that proved to be the most revealing about Yayutz as someone who straddled both the world of the colonizer and the colonized.     

Radio Silence and Radio Deception: Secrecy Insurance for the Pearl Harbor Strike Force

Despite solid documentation that the Japanese Strike Force maintained strict radio silence, recent revisionists have seriously misinterpreted new US archival releases in an effort to 'prove' that US Officials acquired advance knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Using twenty-year-old 'remembrances', long dismissed claims that the British also acquired such 'foreknowledge' have been recently resurrected and supplemented with similar Canadian allegations. Instead of code-breaking, it is now is suggested that such 'foreknowledge' was acquired by tracking the Strike Force by direction finder bearings and 'fixes'. However, these revisionist claims are fraught with a wide range of serious errors that render them baseless. Therefore, their allegations of advance knowledge of the attack and suggestions of a deliberate US failure to warn Hawaiian military officials must be completely disregarded as without any foundation whatsoever.     

The Rickshaw Rollers

正A full-contact women's roller derby league attracts expats and onlookers in the capital By Kirsten JacobsenTwice a week,like clockwork,a crowd slowly gathers around the perimeters of the rink in Beijing's Tuanjiehu Park.Inside,skaters lazily lace up boots,pop in mouth guards,and test knee pads.The latest strategies are discussed and benign insults traded-until