The Representation of the Female Body in the Multimedia Works of Regina José Galindo

The female body is central to the performance art, poetry and blog site interventions of Guatemalan Regina José Galindo. While Galindo is best known for her performance work, this article compares the hereto overlooked, distinctive and often shocking representations of the female body across her multimedia outputs. We first consider the ways in which, in all three media, Galindo presents an ‘excessive’, carnivalised, grotesque and abject female body. Second, we analyse representations of the female body that has been subjected to violence at a private and public level. In so doing, we show how Galindo not only contests hegemonic visions of gender and (national) identity but also challenges the viewer/reader to engage with, rather than look away from, the violence to which women are subjected in patriarchal society.     

Land conflict and Mayangna territorial rights in Nicaragua's Bosawás reserve

Abstract— This paper examines conflicts over land and resources in Nicaragua's Bosawás rainforest reserve between Mestizos and Mayangna Indian people. Mestizos are people of mixed Indian and European descent who speak Spanish and do not consider themselves to be Indians. Bosawás is one of the last refuges of the Mayangna indigenous group and is also the largest area of protected tropical rainforest in Central America. The Mayangna village of Sikilta, in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region, is used to illustrate the nature of land conflicts in the region. Such conflicts–between economic development and conservation, between livelihoods and conservation, and between peasant livelihoods and indigenous territorial rights–are symptomatic of rainforest areas in other parts of the world. Land conflicts in Bosawás are examined within the broader economic, political and institutional context. Potential solutions to land conflict in Sikilta are explored. The paper illustrates the complexities surrounding the demarcation and upholding of indigenous land rights. It highlights the institutional complexities and weaknesses which have allowed Sikilta's land problem to go unresolved. It is argued that until national problems of unequal access to land and unsustainable forms of forest use are addressed, communities like Sikilta will continue to suffer invasion of their land.     

Parties as Procedural Coalitions in Congress: An Examination of Differing Career Tracks

We examine the degree to which parties act as procedural coalitions in Congress by testing predictions from the party cartel theory (Cox and McCubbins 1993, 1994, 2002). We gain leverage on the question of party influence in Congress by focusing on three types of House members: reelection seekers, higher‐office seekers, and retiring members. We argue that retiring House members are no longer susceptible to party pressure, making them the perfect means (when compared to higher‐office seekers and reelection seekers) to determine the existence of party influence. Results from a pooled, cross‐sectional analysis of the 94th through 105th Congresses (1975–98) suggest that party influence is indeed present in Congress, especially where the party cartel theory predicts: on procedural, rather than final‐passage, votes. Moreover, we find that procedural party influence is almost exclusively the domain of the majority party. This latter finding is especially important because most prior studies have been limited to investigating interparty influence only.     

Why Juvenile Courts Should Address Family Violence: Promising Practices to Improve Intervention Outcomes

The prevalence of domestic violence in juvenile court cases justifies modifying our interventions to reflect this unfortunate reality. This article focuses primarily on juvenile victimization of parents and the model programs emerging in juvenile courts to address it. Part I examines family violence's prevalence in the juvenile court caseloads, despite its lack of consideration in most dispositions. Part II begins with a comparative analysis of the drug court trend and discusses the trend's applicability for specialized family violence applications in the Juvenile Court. The King County (Wash.) Juvenile Court's Step‐Up Program is introduced, which directly addresses family violence with intervention programs for youth perpetrators and abused parents, followed by the Santa Clara County (Calif.) Juvenile Court's Family Violence program, shown as a model worthy of replication. Part III details the process by which the Travis County (Texas) Juvenile Court is implementing a program similar to these models. Part IV concludes that juvenile courts must address family violence as an overt or underlying issue in many cases and must identify and address the danger to our troubled youths, whether offender or victim. I argue that the domestic violence community's treatment expertise must inform our juvenile courts' interventions with violent, often insular, families. In Travis County, we are committed to learning as much as possible about youth resilience–to identify and treat battered and battering teens to prevent the inter‐generational cycle from repeating itself while making our homes, communities, and schools safe.     

CRIMINOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE: PERIOD AND COHORT EFFECTS IN SCHOLARSHIP

Period and cohort effects are explored in regard to criminological knowledge. Hypotheses are inspired by biographies and by research in the sociology of knowledge, based on Karl Mannheim's essay on generations, Maurice Halbwachs' partly conflicting arguments about the presentist orientation of collective memory and newer ideas about the institutional context of knowledge production. The data set results from content analysis of 1, 390 articles in leading American sociology, criminology, and law and society journals from 1951 to 1993, supplemented by information on the authors' "academic age." Results show that cohort membership has some effect and periods have considerable impact on topic, type of theory examined and data used by criminologists. These effects are interpreted against the background of post-World War II history: dominant ideological currents of different eras, historic events, changing academic institutions, and the ebb and flow of influential schools. Multivariate analyses indicate that period effects are largely but not fully explained by shifts in research funding and by the emergence of specialized fields with their own institutions.     

The Impact of Party and Ideology on Roll‐Call Voting in State Legislatures

To assess the relative impact of party and ideology on legislative behavior, I utilize survey‐based measures of legislator ideology to examine voting in five state legislatures. The results suggest that, although party and ideology both influence voting, the impact of party is greater. The magnitude of this impact varies, however, from chamber to chamber. The activity of parties in the electoral arena explains part of this variance, with more active parties having more influence. Thus, research on legislative behavior should focus on the context surrounding the decision‐making process in order for us to understand the influences on voting.