A tale of two cities

The authors are respectively parttime professor sociology at the University of Texas (San Antonio) as well as lecturer at the medical faculty of the State University Limburg (section psychiatry) and researcher at the Research and Documentation Centre of the Ministry of Justice, Schedeldoekshaven 100, 2511 EX The Hague, The Netherlands. Dorette Courtar, a mobility programme exchange student at the University of Maastricht and the Stockholm University, assisted in the basic research. We would like to thank Paulina Loennroth and the mayor of Hulst, dr. A.A.L.G.M. Kessen, both connected to the ECAD and Paul Vasseur, Urban Weber, Suzanne Schardt, all connected to the ECDP for their information and comments.     

Characteristics of adolescent incest sexual perpetrators: Preliminary findings

Adolescent incest sexual perpetrators seen at an out-patient clinic were interviewed regarding demographic characteristics and occurrence of deviant and nondeviant sexual behaviors. Results indicate that subjects (1) committed more sexual crimes than they had been arrested for, (2) reported a very early onset of sexual behavior, (3) had additional DSM-III psychiatric disorders, and (4) reported previous sexual victimization. Recommendations for future research are made.     

Civil War and the Social Contract

In this contract-theoretic modelthe government promises a transfer to itspotential opponent in return for notengaging in a civil war. Two causes ofcivil war are identified: (i) imperfectcredibility increases the cost of therequired transfer, and may make itunfeasible; (ii) asymmetric informationfaces the government with the classicefficiency/rent-extraction trade off, andcivil war is used as a screening device.This problem can be solved by creating amixed army. The model determines whether amilitary regime or a redistributive stateprevails in a peaceful equilibrium. Astatistical illustration is presented,using African data.     

Peasant and state in Mozambique

Merle Bowen's study focuses on the evolution of the ‘middle peasantry’ in both colonial and postcolonial Mozambique. In doing so, she successfully challenges long‐standing, if highly problematic, notions that the Mozambican economy consists of a ‘traditional’, subsistence‐oriented peasant sector with only nominal links to ‘modern’ forms of agriculture, the urban areas, and regional and international markets. At the same time, she usefully illuminates continuities in colonial and post‐independence agrarian policies and shows the ways in which the experience of smallholder agricultural co‐operatives under the Portuguese shaped the peasantry's perceptions of, and responses to, collective agriculture under Frelimo. However, the evidence in Bowen's case study does not necessarily sustain her central thesis that the post‐independence state, like its colonial predecessor, was ‘anti‐peasant’. This is one of several criticisms made of Bowen's text.

The State Against the Peasantry: Rural Struggles in Colonial and Postcolonial Mozambique, by Merle L. Bowen, Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2000. Pp.xiv + 256. US$65 (hardback); $19.50 (paperback). ISBN 0 8139 1910 X and 1917 7.