REFUSING TO BLAME THE VICTIM FOR THE AFTERMATH OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

This note addresses the decision of Nicholson v. Williams and the significant impact it will have on the rights of domestic violence victims. Victims are faced with unique challenges with regards to protecting their children from witnessing domestic violence. The Nicholson decision recognizes that the dynamics of domestic violence require special consideration in "failure to protect" cases and that removal from the home is not necessarily the best alternative for the well-being of the children. This note attempts to explain that the abuser, not the victim, is responsible for the effects that domestic violence has on the children who witness it and that it is important to keep the victim and children united to cope with the effects of domestic violence.     

Bibliography

Historians of the Atlantic slave trade have argued that the inhabitants of the Gold Coast of West Africa participated in a system of cultural and material exchange during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that resulted in the diffusion and syncretism of ideas and practices. This position presumes that the cultures of the Gold Coast were transformed by centuries of contact with the peoples of the Atlantic Rim. Despite the intensive commercial contact between Europeans and Africans during this period, the exchange of medical ideas, healing practices, and medical material cultures was limited by both the disease environment of West Africa and by the cultural chauvinism of surgeons and healers. This article will demonstrate the necessity of investigating local and particular changes to cultures before conjecturing about the larger outcomes of trans-Atlantic exchange.     

The Torturer's Dilemma: A Theoretical Analysis of the Societal Consequences of Torturing Terrorist Suspects

Terrorism today is one of the main threats to Western civilization. Almost as dire a threat is the fight against terrorism itself. A broad spectrum of antiterrorism measures may significantly change the nature of society by destroying those forms of cooperative activity that underlie Western culture. This threat becomes obvious with an analysis of mathematical models of human moral behavior.     

Illusory Transition? Elite Reconstitution in Kazakhstan, 1989 – 2002

Changes in elite composition during the post-Soviet transition in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe have received significant scholarly attention, but corollary developments in other former ‘Communist’ countries, including Kazakhstan, have attracted much less scrutiny, or have been attributed to organic features of Central Asian society. We examine the trajectory of the Kazakhstan elite in the light of three key perspectives on elite transformation: the first claims that the country has reverted to traditional clan social structures, the second proposes the conquest of power by a nascent ‘acquisition class’, and the third argues that the Soviet-era elite was largely successful in maintaining power during the economic reorganisation. We find that Kazakhstan's experience most closely matches the third explanation.     

Internal Migration Trends in Soviet and Post-Soviet European Russia

This article compares Soviet with post-Soviet migration trends. It uses a livelihood studies approach to explore what types of Russians migrate and their motivations for so doing. It concludes that today labour migration is the most significant type of internal migration. The norm is temporary migration by individuals, which may be either short-term or long-term, but in either case it is characterised by frequent visits home and often, it seems, by failure and permanent return.