Book Review

Law and Philosophy -     

Mock-juror belief of accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses

In response to lawyers' critiques of earlier staged-crime, mock-jury studies, 16 eyewitnesses to a staged crime were videotaped while being questioned by lawyers in a real courthouse. Accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses were questioned by experienced or inexperienced lawyers for the prosecution and defense. Subsequently, 178 University of Alberta undergraduates served as mock-jurors and attempted to detect the accuracy of the witnesses based on their taped testimony. As in the previous research, the overall rate of belief was quite high (69%), and the subjects believed the testimony of accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses at about the same rate (68% vs. 70%, respectively). Lawyers' experience failed to influence verdict. Confidence of the eyewitness was significantly related to belief of their testimony. The data replicate the previous findings and demonstrate that lack of expertise of the questioners does not account for the failure to detect eyewitness accuracy in this paradigm.The authors wish to thank 36 lawyers and senior law students from the Kingston area who donated their time. The research was supported by a grant to the first author from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.     

The Aral sea environmental crisis: problems and a way forward

A relatively small group of Japanese war veterans has played a major part in creating a favourable image of Burma in Japan. In the early 1950s both Japan and Burma needed a swift agreement on reparations, the Japanese because the export markets and natural resources of South East Asia offered a real opportunity to rebuild the Japanese economy, Burma because economic policy was already faltering and financial aid was needed. The Reparations Agreement between Japan and Burma became the model for ODA agreements with other South East Asian nations and the Japanese committed large sums to Burma, yet the Japanese mercantilist approach was never compatible with the Burmese road to Socialism. Since the imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi, some in Japan have promoted a policy of solidarity towards Burma, while others, including the new Prime Minister, Hatoyama have advocated an approach based on concern for human rights.     

Four forms of ‘offender’ rehabilitation: Towards an interdisciplinary perspective

This paper aims to advance the case for a more fully interdisciplinary understanding of offender rehabilitation, partly as a means of shedding light upon and moving beyond contemporary ‘paradigm conflicts’. It begins with a review of current arguments about what a credible ‘offender’ rehabilitation theory requires and by exploring some aspects of current debates about different theories. It goes on to locate this specific kind of contemporary theory building in the context of historical arguments about and critiques of rehabilitation as a concept and in practice. In the third part of the paper, I explore the nature of the relationship between desistance theories and rehabilitation theories, so as to develop my concluding argument; that is, that debates about psychological rehabilitation have been hampered by a failure to engage fully with debates about at least three other forms of rehabilitation (legal, moral, and social) that emerge as being equally important in the process of desistance from crime.     

The bitter end: apocalypse and conspiracy in white nationalist responses to the Islamic State attacks in Paris

Wilson's article examines how apocalyptic thinking converges with the use of conspiracy theory in white nationalist world-views at a time of crisis. Apocalyptic thinking is, typically, a religious response to secular threats to the faith community that prophesize, or are attendant on, the End. These millenarian outlooks provide communities in crisis a promise of confirmation of the object of their faith, the vanquishing of enemies and, crucially, continuity for the community in a better world to come. In the latter half of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first, apocalypticism and conspiracy theory have tended to coincide. The tendency towards a binary distinction between terms of absolute good and absolute evil, and the revelation of secrets relating to human destiny through prophesy or ‘truth-seeking’ provide a broad transposability between the two interpretative strategies. An increasing amalgamation of political paranoia and eschatology have given rise to what has been termed ‘conspirituality’. Much recent white nationalist rhetoric can be understood as emerging from this discursive position, and Wilson's analysis will demonstrate how one white nationalist community drew on conspiratorial apocalypticism in its response to the multiple attacks by Islamic State in Paris on 13–14 November 2015.     

A strategy for reducing poverty in Kazakhstan

Michael Fergus, a geographer and regional planner based in Norway, has worked as a consultant for the United Nations, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank over the past 25 years. He has worked extensively in Kazakhstan since 1997 and contributed an article on the Aral Sea Environmental Crisis to Asian Affairs, XXX, February 1999. On 22 May 2002 he gave a lecture to the Society on ‘Old and New Kazakhstan: Recreating a National Identity’. The article below is based on his recent work for the Asian Development Bank, preparing a national poverty reduction strategy for Kazakhstan.