Child physical abuse: prevalence, characteristics, predictors, and beliefs about parent-child violence in South Asian, Middle Eastern, East Asian, and Latina women in the United States

The present study examined the prevalence, characteristics, beliefs, and demographic predictors of parent-child physical violence among South Asian, Middle Eastern, East Asian, and Latina women in the United States. Two hundred fifty-one college-educated women from a middle to high SES (South Asian/Middle Eastern, n = 93; East Asian,n = 72; Latina,n = 86) completed a self-report survey on childhood experiences and beliefs regarding physical abuse. Seventy-three percent of the South Asian and Middle Eastern sample, 65% of the East Asian sample, and 78% of the Latina sample reported experiencing at least one type of physical abuse. Significant differences in characteristics and perpetrators of abuse were found across groups. Demographic factors did not predict physical abuse. Experiencing physical abuse was the only predictor for acceptance of physical discipline and as a parental privilege or right across groups. Implications of alternate cultural models of family violence based on beliefs and exposure to violence are discussed.     

Deportation, Detention and Medical Intervention

In the UK the foreign national prisoners who have breached immigration rules suffer deprivations from which the ordinary citizens are exempt. Their subjection to prison regimes often on pain of deportation leads to psychological illnesses that cause them long term damage. The deportation regime that arises by default under the Border and Immigration Act 2007 has made it difficult to avoid prison for the breach of immigration rules. The research published by NACRO shows that it can lead to trauma because there is duress accompanied by an uncertainty of fate. The decision by the Court of Appeal in R (Medical Justice) v Secretary of State for the Home Office (2011) has brought this issue of deporting ill patients into the limelight. There are expert reports that reveal that those foreign nationals who are refused permission to stay are at risk from psychiatric illnesses when they are detained. The findings are that the mental illnesses are particularly severe in the most vulnerable prisoners who develop symptoms of long term mental disease. It is critical for the medical professionals to consider their involvement at an early stage when they will be able to supervise and diagnose illness before there is damage. This is particularly the case as the NHS treatment is denied to prisoners who are foreign nationals which is makes it necessary to implement a strategy with local agencies to prevent the onset of debilitating illnesses.     

Postcolonial Nation-Making: Warfare,Jihad, Subjectivity,and Compassion in the Region of Kashmir

This is a review essay on Body of Victim, Body of Warrior: Refugee Families and the Making of Kashmiri Jihadists by Cabeiri Debergh Robinson and Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India: From Warfare to Welfare? by Mona Bhan. This review contains a succinct overview of the two books, followed by a discussion of the emergent subjectivities and incorporation of humanitarianism into militarism and jihad in the region of Kashmir.     

Accountability in Governance Networks: An Assessment of Public,Private, and Nonprofit Emergency Management Practices Following Hurricane Katrina

What is the most effective framework for analyzing complex accountability challenges within governing networks? Recognizing the multiscale and intersector (public, private, and nonprofit) characteristics of these networks, an accountability model is advanced organized around democratic (elected representatives, citizens, and the legal system), market (owners and consumers), as well as administrative (bureaucratic, professional and collaborative) relationships. This concept draws from 2005 events following Hurricane Katrina. Multiple failures of governing networks to plan for and respond to Katrina include a breakdown in democratic, market, and administrative accountability as well as a pervasive confusion over trade‐offs between accountability types emerging from crises. This essay offers several useful recommendations for emergency management planners as well as for those who teach and research.     

the reinvention of feminism in Pakistan

This article argues that there has been a significant turn in the discourse of feminist politics in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The author suggests that the rise of a new feminism – rooted in Islamic discourse, non-confrontational, privatized and personalized, whose objective is to ‘empower’ women within Islam – is not a post-9/11 development but rather a result of unresolved debates on the issue of religion within the progressive women's movement. It has been due to the accommodation of religion-based feminist arguments by the stronger secular feminist movement of the 1980s that paved the way for its own marginalization by giving feminist legitimacy to such voices. The author argues that the second wave of feminism may have become diluted in its effectiveness and support due to discriminatory religious laws, dictatorship, NGO-ization, fragmentation, co-option by the state and political parties in the same way as the global women's movement has. Yet it has been the internal inconsistency of the political strategies as well as the personal, Muslim identities of secular feminists that have allowed Islamic feminists to redefine the feminist agenda in Pakistan. This article voices the larger concern over the rise of a new generation of Islamic revivalist feminists who seek to rationalize all women's rights within the religious framework and render secular feminism irrelevant while framing the debate on women's rights exclusively around Islamic history, culture and tradition. The danger is that a debate such as this will be premised on a polarized ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ Muslim woman, such that women who abide by the liberal interpretation of theology will be pitted against those who follow a strict and literal interpretist mode and associate themselves with male religio-political discourse. This is only likely to produce a new, radicalized, religio-political feminism dominating Pakistan's political future.     

ASIAN WAR MACHINES

ABSTRACT

The South Asian security landscape is increasingly dominated by a complex four-way dynamic between India, Pakistan, China, and the United States. The stresses and strains of the relationships between these states directly affect the prospects for peace and prosperity for almost half of humanity. This article describes some of the military contours of this landscape, with a focus on strategic postures, weapon acquisitions, and the role of nuclear weapons. It maps the India–Pakistan arms race over the past decade, the economic constraints on the two states, the role of China and the United States as weapons suppliers, and the risk and consequences for nuclear war. The authors then look at India's relationship with China, which is marked by both cooperation and competition, and the rise of China as a close military, political, and economic ally of Pakistan. While the United States has had long-standing cooperative relationships with both India and Pakistan, these relationships have been undergoing major shifts over the last two decades. U.S. concerns about China's increasing military and economic power have also intensified over this period as well. Of particular significance has been the effort to create a U.S.–India strategic partnership to balance and contain a rising China, which may become a central feature of the emerging global order. This article also offers a brief overview of what is publicly known about the nuclear arsenals of the four countries, ongoing production of weapons-usable fissile materials in Pakistan and India, as well as the race to build longer-range missiles.     

Climate mitigation policies and actions: access and allocation issues

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - As part of the Special Issue on Access and Allocation, this paper explores how reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions...     

Aboriginal oral testimony,hearsay rule and the reception theory of admissibility

Aboriginal peoples title claims are presumed upon spatial and time connections to the lands of their ancestors. In making their submissions, litigants have to circumvent the rule against hearsay and rely upon oral narratives to substantiate their claims of customary ties to land. The obstacles they face is that evidence based on informal anecdotes can cause problems in common law courts, which have long been dependent on textual evidence for probative value. In many Native cultures the idea of time is cyclical, while in the Judeo-Christian calendar time is linear. There is also the fact that oral narratives cannot be viewed in the abstract and the histories are closely linked to inter-generational continuity. The perspective of a narrator is relevant as the sources are often repositories of observation, knowledge and personal belief rather than clear factual understanding of the issue involved. This paper argues for the receptive theory of oral evidence to be adopted in common law courts, which would lead to a fair hearing of Aboriginal claims to land title in Australian and Canadian courts. The paper will distinguish the courts’ current approach to oral testimony submitted by aboriginal people and raise the possibility of an integrated approach based on the recourse to ‘episteme’, which is the appreciation derived from synthesis that accepts that several methodologies may exist and interact at the same time by being parts of various knowledge systems.     

Employer Liability,Risk Assessment,and Fault Principle

The UK Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (ERRA), section 69 has ensured that claims can only succeed on the civil burden of proof (balance of probabilities) that the employer has been negligent. The act also impacts on environmental liability and its “green purposes” are set out in chapter 24, part 1, which compel the employer to take measures in accordance with the Kyoto Protocol and encourage biodiversity. The broader framework of tort liability in this area of employer/employee relationship needs exploration to determine if such a policy-based approach is likely to make much difference given the tendency of courts to regard a breach of a worker-protective statute as evidence of fault. It is an important question for industry in common law jurisdictions because employers are likely to estimate their liabilities based on cost/benefit ratio in the work-place and invest in a safer premises under a fault-based system.