ADOLESCENT VIOLENT VICTIMIZATION AND PRECOCIOUS UNION FORMATION*

This article bridges scholarship in criminology and family sociology by extending arguments about “precocious exits” from adolescence to consider early union formation as a salient outcome of violent victimization for youths. Research indicates that early union formation is associated with several negative outcomes; yet the absence of attention to union formation as a consequence of violent victimization is noteworthy. We address this gap by drawing on life course theory and data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the effect of violent victimization (“street” violence) on the timing of first coresidential union formation—differentiating between marriage and cohabitation—in young adulthood. Estimates from Cox proportional hazard models show that adolescent victims of street violence experience higher rates of first union formation, especially marriage, early in the transition to adulthood; however, this effect declines with age, as such unions become more normative. Importantly, the effect of violent victimization on first union timing is robust to controls for nonviolent delinquency, substance abuse, and violent perpetration. We conclude by discussing directions for future research on the association between violent victimization and coresidential unions with an eye toward the implications of such early union formation for desistance.     

SAME SEX,DIFFERENT RIGHTS: AMENDING U.S. IMMIGRATION LAW TO RECOGNIZE SAME‐SEX PARTNERS OF REFUGEES AND ASYLEES

Overcoming a long history of anti‐gay sentiment preserved in federal immigration law, the United States has made admirable advances during the past two decades in the protection it affords gay immigrants. Despite this promising progress, and in contrast to the practices of all other industrialized democracies, the United States remains firm in its refusal to federally recognize any form of same‐sex partnership, a decision which bears directly on those relationships considered valid for immigration purposes. The Uniting American Families Act (UAFA) represents the closest any proposed legislation has come to successfully granting immigration rights to gay immigrants. However, through its restrictive provisions, the UAFA fails to fully account for the needs of refugees, asylees, and their same‐sex partners. This Note argues that, while the UAFA is a step in the right direction, it does not go far enough to protect gay refugees and asylees. It further proposes that legislation be enacted which provides this unique segment of the immigrant population the opportunity to share their lives together, free from fear of persecution. It advocates for the use of the conjugal partner provision set out in Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act as a template for changes to U.S. immigration law, thereby expanding the category of relationships viewed as valid for the purpose of immigration.     

AFGHANISTAN: DISCERNING CHINA’S WESTWARD MARCH

This article discerns the shifts in China's engagement with its Western neighbour, Afghanistan. Beijing's approach has gradually shifted from dis-interest to a careful re-calibration of strategy indicating Afghanistan's growing eminence in its strategic calculus. This transposition – dating back to the 1980's – it is argued has been accentuated as the ‘West’ weans itself away from the Afghan theatre. This article demonstrates that Beijing's chequered history of engagement with Kabul has been historically underpinned by its engagement with a plethora of actors identified with ‘political Islam’ who in turn are patronized by its allies in Rawalpindi. Its deepening footprint in contemporary Afghanistan while continuing to be coloured by the prism of Rawalpindi, is informed by a growing sense of unease regarding the perceived adverse imprint that developments across China's Western borders are likely to leave on its domestic security and growing economic interests in the region.     

Partnership in Love and in Business

This article ponders the influences ofthe dichotomous nature of our understanding law andto questions that starting point on different levels oflegal thinking.The purpose of law is to make rules for our socialbehaviour but there are no specific images of humanbeings behind law. When there are no defined images,subconscious cultural images shape our thinkingsometimes even without our realizing it, and withoutserious discussion. The division between family andthe market has to do with gender divisions as well aswith the division between family and contract law. Thelogic and human image behind these two branches of lawis different.Even if we may behave differently in differentsituations we do not become altogether differentkinds of human beings with different values when wechange surroundings. Thus, we might instead develop asa starting point human co-operation law where familyand business partnerships are seen as specialbranches. The starting point of this co-operation lawwould be many-sided and pluralistic human beings, who would be atthe same time loving and egotistic, communal andindividual, feminine and masculine. Such human beingsmay be regarded as multicoloured instead of white orblack.     

Ijtihad into philosophy: Islam as cultural heritage in post-Stalinist Daghestan

Starting in 1960, authors of various Daghestani nationalities initiated a re-evaluation of the role of Islam in the history of Daghestan. An important historical personality to draw upon was Muhammad al-Quduqi, a Daghestani Islamic legal scholar of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Quduqi was known for his sympathies towards ijtihad (Islamic legal reasoning by analogy) and for his call to replace customary law by Islamic law. This article studies how Quduqi was brought back into Soviet discourse in 1960, and how his advocacy for ijtihad was subsequently interpreted in Marxist terms as a quest for philosophy, rationalism and progress, with secularizing terms drawn from the discourse of Daghestani Jadids of the 1920s and 1930s. A comparison is then made with Soviet Tatarstan, where Marxist historians constructed a similar autochthonous trajectory of Tatar-Islamic progress and enlightenment. In both cases, Islamic concepts were taken out of context and used for the construction of a secularized national Muslim cultural heritage (miras) that would prepare the ground for socialism – with the difference that in Daghestan, this Muslim Mirasism was multi-ethnic in character.     

中国农村早婚比例的客观统计与分析--与《改革以来中国农村婚姻家庭的新变化》商榷

<改革以来中国农村婚姻家庭的新变化>一书认为早婚现象严重、晚婚比例低是河南潢川农村男性户主婚龄分布的两大特点,51.3%的男性户主没有达到法定结婚年龄就结婚等.这一结论有些危言耸听.书中用80年代的标准来衡量不同成婚年代的人的情况,且调查问卷设计也有问题.应以成婚年代为纬,结婚年龄为经做成表格,方能准确地获得不同时期婚龄分布的情况,也才能从表格上清晰地看到早婚以及晚婚的情况.     

Strengthening the inner circle: the marriage networks of elite families in Joseon Korea

ABSTRACT

Socioeconomic homogamy is a prominent process for reproducing the social structure in preindustrial societies including East Asian countries. Although Joseon Korea was a centralized bureaucratic state under a king, the stratification system was unique by its ambiguity such that the previlege of an upper class was not officially confirmed. Since the social status was rather conferred by the reputation of the family, the quality of marriage relation was important for a man to be ranked as a central official. In this paper, we investigate patterns of social homogamy among elite families in the early Joseon Korea through empirical evidence of the relationship between official rank and spousal family background. We created a novel dataset by compiling the marriage network and official rank information of 14,508 individuals from the jokbos (族譜, genealogy) of 15 elite families and conduct an ordinal logit regression analysis to investigate whether spousal family background increases the probability of an individual being promoted in the bureaucracy. We find that the socio-political power of affinal kin has a greater effect on promotions than the descent and meritocratic effects. Particularly, the empirical evidence shows that marrying into a queen consort’s family increased the likelihood of an individual being ranked in a high position, which was beneficial for retaining the political power of him and the family. The study shows that marriage as a means of managing the socio-political inner circle of elite families, shaping the elites’ socio-political inner circle, built on the marriage network around a queen consort’s family to benefit the royal authority and the elite group.