Advancing institutional anomie theory: a microlevel examination connecting culture, institutions, and deviance

Institutional anomie theory (IAT) contends that crime can be explained by an examination of American society, particularly the exaggerated emphasis on economic success inherent in American culture, which has created a "cheating orientation" that permeates structural institutions, including academia. Consistent with its macrosocial perspective, previous tests of IAT have examined IAT variables at the structural level only. The current study tests the robustness of IAT by operationalizing IAT variables at the individual level and looking at a minor form of deviance, student cheating. The author also examines the role statistical modeling has in testing the theory at the microlevel. Undergraduates, 122 American born and 48 international, were surveyed about their cheating behaviors and adherence to economic goal orientations. Results related to the hypothesis that American students, relative to foreign-born students, will have an increased adherence to economic goal orientations that increase cheating behaviors are presented, as are suggestions for future studies.     

Anthropological data in individualization of skeletal remains from a forensic context in Kosovo--a case history

There are many reports relating to victims and mass graves in the former Yugoslavia. They emphasize the importance of creating local skeletal identification standards. In this paper we deal with the first mass grave examined since the Kosovo crisis started and discuss problems regarding the identification process, especially the coincidence of antemortem with postmortem data. Twelve persons out of 39 bodies were identified using interviews with relatives and correspondence of biological data with personal effects and/or documents. Previous pathology was of crucial importance in the identification of three persons.     

The three phases of rock music in the Czech lands

In the Czech lands (included in Czechoslovakia until the end of 1992), rock music has evolved through three phases. In the first phase, lasting until 1968, rock musicians had no ambition to offer social or political commentaries. This began as the era of rock ‘n’ roll, which is to say music being performed for dancing. The second phase began after the Soviet bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, lasting until the end of the communist era in 1989. In this phase, rock musicians (no longer playing rock ‘n’ roll were closely monitored by the authorities and were expected to sing happy songs, submitting their song texts to the authorities for approval in advance of performing them. In spite of this control, some rock groups purposefully sang political texts in the 1970s and 1980s, mocking or criticizing the communists, albeit often cryptically. Finally, in the third phase – since 1989 – having lost their ideological foe, Czech rock groups have for the most part become politically disengaged.     

Civilian Defense Forces,State Capacity,and Government Victory in Counterinsurgency Wars

Given the onset of a violent rebellion by an armed non-state group, how do states re-establish intra-state peace and hence fulfill their basic function as providers of internal security? In this article I argue that one way governments perform this core function is by recruiting non-combatants into local self-defense units called civilian defense forces (CDFs). By providing for local security, leveraging their superior local knowledge, and provoking insurgent reprisals against civilians, CDF units facilitate the influx of tactical intelligence as well as isolate insurgents from non-combatant populations physically as well as politically. Consistent with the argument, statistical analyses of two different cross-national data sets of insurgencies from 1944 to 2006 reveal that a state is 53 percent more likely to vanquish a guerrilla threat if the incumbent deploys CDFs. The analyses also cast doubt on a recent claim in the literature that incumbent force mechanization adversely affects the states’ ability to counter insurgent threats. Given that CDF deployment is a more easily manipulable variable than most other elements of state power, CDFs appear to be an effective instrument of counterinsurgency deserving of further academic and policy attention.     

Semiotics and urban culture: architectural projections of structuralism in a socialist context

The paper studies the relations between architecture, urbanism and structural anthropology, and makes a contribution to the interpretation of how the architects of former Yugoslavia translated structuralism into architectural theory and practice as a means of reading and shaping Yugoslav culture in the context of radical socio-political change. In striving for freedom of opinion, expression, communication and action, and autonomy of scientific and cultural practices, the Yugoslav society through its avant-garde cultural role initiated a shift of focus in urban culture towards semiotics, historicity, dialectics, creativity, criticism and a revival of the humanistic values of traditional culture. From this viewpoint, the paper examines the interests in theory and practice of the most influential Yugoslav architects in the context of structuralism: Mutnjakovi?, Neidhardt, Grabrijan, Bogdanovi? and Delalle. Their theoretical approaches effected a change of functionalist principles and values and advocated the return of values of the old city centre and vernacular architecture, specifically its vitality, symbolism, historical continuity, environmental values and diverse urban forms.     

(The) Erasure – Mass Human Rights Violation and Denial of Responsibility: The Case of Independent Slovenia

The case of the erased residents of Slovenia – when approximately 18,000 people who were mostly of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian ethnicity, were erased from the permanent residence registry of the Republic of Slovenia – represents one of the most severe cases of administrative ethnic/racial discrimination and human rights violations in the post-communist East and Central Europe outside the conflict area. The erasure caused “civil death” of the people who were affected by the measure, depriving them of civil, political, social, and economic rights. In 2007, 4 years after the 2003 Constitutional Court decision, declaring the 1992 erasure an unconstitutional act of the state and requiring the legislator to adopt measures to reinstate the statuses of the erased people, the problem remains unsolved and unaddressed both systemically and individually, and the situation of erasure persists. This article presents the case and analyses of the framework that made the erasure possible in terms of the preparation of the majority of Slovenes to accept and even support the violations and politicians to renounce their political responsibility to those who have lost the right to have rights. This article is based on the insights of the research project Contemporary Citizenship: Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion (2000–2003) led by Vlasta Jalušič. The analysis of the case of erased was published in Jasminka Dedić, Vlasta Jalušič, and Jelka Zorn (eds.), The Erased: Organized Innocence and the Politics of Exclusion, translated from Slovenian by Olga Vuković and Marjana Karer (Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 2003), at . The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewer for the extensive and most helpful comments.

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