Showing papers on "Cruelty published in 2012"

Zero degrees of empathy : a new theory of human cruelty and kindness

Abstract: In "Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty and Kindness" Simon Baron-Cohen takes fascinating and challenging new look at what exactly makes our behaviour uniquely human. How can we ever explain human cruelty? We have always struggled to understand why some people behave in the most evil way imaginable, while others are completely self-sacrificing. Is it possible that - rather than thinking in terms of 'good' and 'evil' - all of us instead lie somewhere on the empathy spectrum, and our position on that spectrum can be affected by both genes and our environments? Why do some people treat others as objects? Why is empathy our most precious resource? And does a lack of it always mean a negative outcome? From the Nazi concentration camps of World War Two to the playgrounds of today, Simon Baron-Cohen examines empathy, cruelty and understanding in a groundbreaking study of what it means to be human. "Fascinating ...dazzling ...a full-scale assault on what we think it is to be human". ("Sunday Telegraph"). "Highly readable ...this is a valuable book". (Charlotte Moore, "Spectator"). "Important ...humane and immensely sympathetic". (Richard Holloway, "Literary Review"). Simon Baron-Cohen is Professor at Cambridge University in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. He is also the Director of the Autism Research Centre there. He has carried out research into social neuroscience over a 20 year career. His popular science book entitled "The Essential Difference" has been translated in over a dozen languages, and has been widely reviewed.

Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories, and the Culture of Cruelty

Abstract: 1. Youth in the Age of Moral and Political Plagues 2. Memories of Hope and Youth in the Age of Disposability 3. Racialized Memories and Class Identities: Thinking about Youth in Post-9/11 America 4. Beyond America's Culture of Cruelty 5. Youth Fighting Back in the Age of Casino Capitalism

Zero degrees of empathy: A new theory of human cruelty.

Abstract: (2012). Zero degrees of empathy: A new theory of human cruelty. Journal of Child & Adolescent Mental Health: Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 173-175.

Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action

Abstract: Aseem Prakash & Mary Kay Gugerty, eds. Advocacy Organizations and Collective Action Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011Reviewed by Howard A. DoughtyThere has never been a shortage of people who think badly of idealists, understood as people who believe that members of our species should and could behave better than we do, and who are prepared to take steps to encourage the improvement of others. Such sceptics have a great deal of evidence in support of their opinions. In just the last century, we have dropped nuclear bombs on cities of negligible military importance, greatly "improved" biological and chemical warfare, constructed ballistic missiles and airplanes which don't even require pilots in order to rain down destruction and death upon civilians below. We have invented "enhanced interrogation techniques" as a euphemism for torture. In parts of the world slavery is no stain on our historical past, but a living reality today. Meanwhile, the most powerful country on Earth cannot seem to curtail gang warfare on its streets and family violence in its homes. The "war on drugs" is being lost on all fronts, and innumerable Mexicans are paying the price. On every continent racism and misogyny are only two of the ideological pretexts for brutal behaviour. Religion, recently thought to be succumbing to secularism and science, has returned as a major excuse for hatred among and within different systems of theistic belief and ritual worship. We have experimented widely with genocide. We have, in short, a fairly poor track record when it comes to living in obedience to the "Golden Rule."What's more, people dedicated to ambitious political movements intended to remove inequity, injustice and tyranny in the name of what we call "humane" attitudes and actions have frequently failed in their quest, often with disastrous results. It is my opinion that Karl Marx is no more culpable for the Moscow "show trials," the Chinese "cultural revolution" and Pol Pot's massacres in Cambodia than Jesus Christ is to blame for the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch-burnings and imperialist slaughters conducted in the name of Christianity around the world. Nonetheless, no one can deny that people who claimed to be acting in support of Marx's goal of a free and egalitarian "communist" society were guilty of as many and probably more acts of torture and death than any other group of supposed humanists and idealists. Even (or especially) good intentions can lead to worldly hells.Accordingly, many social theorists who have long doubted the claims of those who, by evolution or revolution, would set citizens free from dictatorial regimes, promote economic and social equity, loosen constraints in matters of education or sexual repression, and emancipate subjects from the authority of the state, the church or the private corporation are seeking a method to explain human actions in a more "rational" manner.Now, many social scientists are embracing a model of behavioral analysis that purports to show that even the kindest and gentlest among us are governed by selfish impulses and that organized groups of idealists in major advocacy groups on behalf of the victims of war, poverty, prejudice and plain bad luck are no more praiseworthy than unscrupulous sales representatives and drug dealers-in fact, to them concepts of good and evil have no place in the discussion.Such sceptics are not (always) been (entirely) misanthropes. They do not necessarily enjoy pricking the balloons of quixotic enthusiasts for social change. Very few of them actually relish cruelty and suffering. In fact, most of them share the belief that people should be kinder and gentler than they are. Instead of thinking that we behave badly because our natural goodness is corrupted by social constraints and perverted by fixable social arrangements, the sceptics realistically acknowledge that we have the capacity and even the propensity to behave horribly, and sometimes to repeat horrid behaviour with gusto (it's called "revenge"). …

Animal Cruelty, Antisocial Behaviour, and Aggression: More than a Link

Abstract: List of Tables Foreword P.Arkow Series Editors' Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Historical and Current Conceptualisations of Animal Cruelty Conceptualisations of Antisocial Behaviour The Development of Antisocial Behaviour Theoretical Accounts of Aggressive Behaviour and Animal Cruelty Biological and Individual Difference Risk Factors Environmental Risk Factors Emotional and Cognitive Processes Aetiological Accounts of Animal Cruelty Conclusions and Future Directions References Subject Index

Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future

Abstract: Introduction: Criminalizing Dissent and Punishing the Occupy Movement Protestors 1 Countermemory and the Politics of Loss after 9/11: Violence, the War on Youth, and the Limits of the Social 2 Disturbing the Pleasures: The Depravity of Aesthetics and the "Kill Team" Photos 3 Norway is Closer Than You Think: Extremism and the Crisis of American Politics 4 Disposable Knowledge and Disposable Bodies: Book Burning in Arizona 5 Trickle Down Cruelty and the Politics of Austerity 6 Got Class Warfare? Occupy Wall Street's Challenge to Casino Capitalism 7 Against American-Style Authoritarianism: The Occupy Movement and the Promise of Youth

‘Putting Cruelty First’: Interpreting War Crimes as Human Rights Atrocities in US Policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract: This article contributes to an understanding of the role of agency in a sociology of human rights by examining how a small group of individuals interpreted, defined, and instantiated ‘hard’ human r...

Examining the Relationship Between Childhood Animal Cruelty Motives and Recurrent Adult Violent Crimes Toward Humans

Abstract: Few researchers have studied the predictive ability of childhood animal cruelty motives as they are associated with later recurrent violence toward humans. Based on a sample of 180 inmates at one medium- and one maximum-security prison in a Southern state, the present study examines the relationship among several retrospectively identified motives (fun, out of anger, hate for the animal, and imitation) for childhood animal cruelty and the later commission of violent crimes (murder, rape, assault, and robbery) against humans. Almost two thirds of the inmates reported engaging in childhood animal cruelty for fun, whereas almost one fourth reported being motivated either out of anger or imitation. Only one fifth of the respondents reported they had committed acts of animal cruelty because they hated the animal. Regression analyses revealed that recurrent animal cruelty was the only statistically significant variable in the model. Respondents who had committed recurrent childhood animal cruelty were more likely to have had committed recurrent adult violence toward humans. None of the motives for committing childhood animal cruelty had any effect on later violence against humans.

Non-accidental injuries found in necropsies of domestic cats: a review of 191 cases*:

Abstract: Animal cruelty is defined as a deliberate action that causes pain and suffering to an animal. In Brazil, legislation known as the Environmental Crimes Law states that cruelty toward all animal species is criminal in nature. From 644 domestic cats necropsied between January 1998 and December 2009, 191 (29.66%) presented lesions highly suggestive of animal cruelty. The main necroscopic finding was exogenous carbamate poisoning (75.39%) followed by blunt-force trauma (21.99%). Cats from 7 months to 2 years of age were the most affected (50.79%). In Brazil, violence is a public health problem and there is a high prevalence of domestic violence. Therefore, even if laws provide for animal welfare and protection, animals are common targets for violent acts. Within a context of social violence, cruelty toward animals is an important parameter to be considered, and the non-accidental lesions that were found are evidence of malicious actions.

Cruelty and Empathy, Animals and Race, in Colonial Kenya

Abstract: Colonial Kenya was, by anyone's standards, suffused with violence and cruelty. Africans suffered conquest, the cane, and counterinsurgency. Indians endured their share of bloodied noses at the hands of whites. While the European immigrant community gave better than they received—without admitting cruelty no matter the barbarity of their actions—they too believed themselves living amidst unconscionable cruelty. Mother nature, in her heartless way, oversaw a cruel realm. Leopards seemed to have a particular taste for domestic dogs, often snatching them from front porches or even leaping through open windows for their innocent prey. Settler attempts to raise fowl often failed due to pitiless hawks or other predators. Whites were most repulsed by siafu or army ants. Siafu appeared, seemingly from nowhere, marching in a line a foot wide and yards long, consuming any living thing in their path. Europeans recounted gruesome scenes of animals and even human infants killed and bodies picked clean by marauding siafu. Nothing could be done to civilize nature. Dogs could be kept out of harm's way, and ashes could be spread at the perimeter of a house to divert siafu, but leopards could not change their spots, nor ants their ravenous marches. Other parts of the African scene were potentially more amenable to change. Most whites sincerely felt a responsibility to civilize Africans. But slowly. It had taken Britons two thousand years since the Roman invasions to reach the pinnacle of civilization. Under white tutelage Africans would advance more quickly, although it would still be a centuries-long process. Moreover, too much change too quickly was ineffective, even dangerous. Africans would lose their old morality and social structure without truly imbibing modernity. They would slide

The Predictive Value of Childhood Animal Cruelty Methods on Later Adult Violence: Examining Demographic and Situational Correlates

Abstract: The present study seeks to replicate Tallichet, Hensley, and Singer's research on childhood animal cruelty methods by using a sample of 180 male inmates surveyed at both medium- and maximum-security prisons in a southern state. The purpose of the current study was to first reexamine the relationship between demographic and situational factors and specific methods of childhood animal cruelty. Second, the correlation between an abuser's chosen method(s) of childhood animal cruelty on later recurrent acts of adult violent crimes was reinvestigated. Regression analyses revealed that respondents who engaged in frequent animal cruelty were more likely to have drowned, shot, kicked, or had sex with animals. Those who had grown up in urban areas and those who did not become upset after abusing animals were more likely to have kicked animals. Respondents who covered up their abuse were more likely to have had sex with animals. Sex with animals was the only method of childhood animal cruelty that predicted the later commission of adult violent crimes.

The significance of animal cruelty in child protection investigations

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the frequency with which child protection workers (CPWs) in Ontario, Canada, seek information about animal cruelty during investigations of child maltreatment and the extent to which they consider information about animal cruelty when making decisions about whether intervention is required. The CPWs (N = 78) responded to an online survey about their experiences with animal cruelty during child protection investigations in the previous year. Few CPWs routinely asked questions about animal cruelty during investigations, but those who did ask questions were significantly more likely to report disclosures of animal cruelty by children and caregivers than those who did not ask questions. Many CPWs had directly observed children and caregivers physically harming animals. Almost all respondents indicated that animal cruelty was an important factor to consider when making intervention decisions. The results suggest that CPWs should consider routinely asking children and caregivers questions about animal cruelty and observe the behavior and living conditions of family pets when conducting risk assessments. Future research should determine whether animal cruelty is a reliable indicator of exposure to family violence. KEY WORDS: animal cruelty; child abuse; child protection; domestic violence; risk assessment ********** Data from several surveys of women seeking help from domestic violence shelters indicate that a substantial proportion of adult perpetrators of domestic violence also abuse animals. Results revealed that between 44% and 57% of female pet-owners had partners who harmed or killed family pets (Ascione, 1998; Carlisle-Frank, Frank, & Nielsen, 2004; Faver & Strand, 2003). Furthermore, two studies found that animal cruelty was perpetrated more frequently by the partners of domestic violence victims than by the partners of women from community samples (Ascione et al., 2007; Volant, Johnson, Gullone, & Coleman, 2008). A small group of studies provided evidence that children whose mothers experience domestic violence are significantly more likely to witness pet abuse than children from families in which no domestic violence occurs (Ascione et al., 2007; DeGue & DiLillo, 2009; Volant et al., 2008). Furthermore, children who are exposed to parental domestic violence are more likely to abuse animals than children who are not exposed to domestic violence (Ascione et al., 2007; Baldry, 2003; Currie, 2006; Volant et al., 2008). THE LINK BETWEEN ANIMAL CRUELTY AND CHILD ABUSE Results of recent studies demonstrated that children who had been abused were more likely to engage in animal cruelty than those who had not been abused (for example, Ascione, Friedrich, Heath, & Hayashi, 2003; DeGue & DiLillo, 2009). With respect to caregiver-perpetrated animal cruelty, the results of one study indicated that, among families in which child abuse had been substantiated, parents were the most frequent perpetrators of animal cruelty in cases that involved pain and suffering or the inhumane death of an animal (DeViney, Dickert, & Lockwood, 1983). In another study, one-third of women who had experienced domestic violence and whose partners had abused pets reported that their children had been abused; women whose pets had not been abused by their partners were less likely to report child abuse (Flynn, 2000b). RELEVANCE OF ANIMAL CRUELTY TO CHILD PROTECTION EFFORTS Given the strengthening evidence of a link between animal cruelty and family violence, it has been argued that animal cruelty receives insufficient attention from social service providers (for example, Flynn, 2000a). Some have suggested that social service professionals should routinely ask about animal cruelty when conducting assessments for family violence and that expanded collaboration among animal welfare, child protection, and domestic violence organizations is necessary to identify children who are at risk of abuse and to assist families who wish to remove pets from abusive homes (Arkow, 1996; Ascione, 1998; Baldry, 2003; Bell, 2001; Boat, 1999; Faver & Strand, 2003; Montminy-Danna, 2007; Volant et al. …

Sexual sadism: avoiding its misuse in sexually violent predator evaluations.

Abstract: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), Task Force has recently rejected the proposal to include coercive paraphilia as an official diagnosis, reaffirming that rape is a crime and not a mental disorder. We hope this will discourage what has been the inappropriate practice of giving rapists the made-up diagnosis of paraphilia, NOS, nonconsent, to facilitate their psychiatric commitment under sexually violent predator (SVP) statutes. Losing the paraphilia, NOS, option has tempted some SVP evaluators to overdiagnose sexual sadism, which is an official DSM mental disorder. To prevent this improper application and to clarify those rare instances in which this diagnosis might apply, we present a brief review of the research on sexual sadism; an annotation of its definitions that have been included in the DSM since the Third Edition, published in 1980, and in the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Edition (ICD-10); and a two-step process for making a diagnostic decision. Rape and sexual sadism have in common violence, cruelty, and a callous indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the suffering of the victim, but they differ markedly in motivation. Rapists use violence to enforce the victim's cooperation, to express aggression, or both. In contrast, in sexual sadism, the violence, domination, and infliction of pain and humiliation are a preferred or necessary precondition for sexual arousal. Only a small proportion of rapists qualify for the diagnosis of sexual sadism.

Exploring the Age of Onset and Recurrence of Childhood Animal Cruelty: Can Animal Cruelty Be Learned From Witnessing Others Commit It?

Abstract: Despite recent research, few studies have examined the specific social contexts in which animal cruelty may be learned. Using data collected from 180 inmates at a medium- and maximum-security prison in a southern state, the authors seek to replicate findings from the Hensley and Tallichet study that examined the potential for the onset and recurrence of childhood animal cruelty to become a learned behavior, specifically in terms of demographic characteristics and childhood experiences with witnessing animal abuse. In the current study, those who were younger when they first witnessed animal cruelty initially hurt or killed animals themselves at a younger age. Respondents who had witnessed a family member hurt or kill animals reported engaging in recurrent animal cruelty and were older when they committed their first act of animal cruelty.

Toward Restoring Integrity in "Praetorian Times": The Value of "Putting Cruelty First"

Abstract: This article discusses the historical and cultural conditions that have undermined public life and have brought about a resurgence of corrupt "Praetorian times." An analysis of American regime values, focusing on individualism and the dominance of technical rationality, outlines the pathway to a withered public sphere made worse by the ascendancy of the market-state. Understanding current conditions as Praetorian, as unmasked by the financial meltdown of 2007-2008, suggests that the path toward restoring public integrity begins by focusing on public vices. Doing so may avoid further harm to the fabric of society and institutions, especially great or catastrophic harm, by "putting cruelty first."

Loser Sons: Politics and Authority

Abstract: There are sons who grow up unhappily believing that no matter what they do, they cannot please their fathers Often unable to shed their sense of lifelong failure, either they give up and suffer in a permanent sulk, or they try with all their might to prove they are worth something after all These are the "loser sons," a group of historical men as varied as President George W Bush, Osama bin Laden, and Mohammed Atta Their names quickly illustrate that not only are their problems serious, but they also make serious problems for others, expanding to whole nations When God is conceived and inculcated as an angry and impossible-to-please father, the problems can last for generations In Loser Sons, Avital Ronell draws on current philosophy, literary history, and political events to confront the grim fact that divested boys become terrifying men This would be old news if the problem didn't recur so often with such disastrous consequences Looking beyond our current moment, she interrogates the problems of authority, paternal fantasy, and childhood as they have been explored and exemplified by Franz Kafka, Goethe's Faust, Benjamin Franklin, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lyotard, Hannah Arendt, Alexandre Koj\u00e8ve, and Immanuel Kant Brilliantly weaving these threads into a polyvocal discourse, Ronell shows how, with their arrays of powerful symbols, ideologies of all sorts perpetuate the theme that while childhood represents innocence, adulthood entails responsible cruelty The need for suffering--preferably somebody else's--has become a widespread assumption, not only justifying abuses of authority, but justifying authority itself Shockingly honest, Loser Sons recognizes that focusing on the spectacular catastrophes of modernity might make writer and reader feel they're engaged in something important, while in fact what they are engaged in is still only spectacle To understand the implications of her insights, Ronell addresses them directly to her readers, challenging them to think through their own notions of authority and their responses to it

Evaluating China's draft animal protection law

Abstract: The proposal to introduce a Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Law in the People's Republic of China is an important development in animal protection legislation. This article examines the motivations behind the draft anti-cruelty law and evaluates its ability to protect animals in China. In particular, the article discusses the problems with relying on anti-cruelty laws to protect animals from harm and the recent development of a statutory duty of care towards animals that is now applied in Europe, the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan. In its final form, the China draft law has abandoned the inclusion of a duty of care towards animals and prohibits only overt animal cruelty. This article examines how animal cruelty has been defined by courts in the UK, Australia and Hong Kong and concludes that without the inclusion of a statutory duty of care in China's draft law, the effective protection of China's animals cannot be achieved.

Intolerable Cruelty: Marriage, Law, and Society in Early Twentieth-Century China

Abstract: Part I: Law and the State Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: GMD Legal Exceptionalism: Conceptual Underpinnings of the Republican Civil Code Chapter 3: The Rise of Public Opinion: The Case of GMD Surname Legislation Chapter 4: The Process of Civil Adjudication: Marital Justice and the Republican Civil Court System Part II: Law and Society Chapter 5: Spousal Abuse: Divorce Litigation and the Emergence of Rights Consciousness Chapter 6: Running Away: Cohabitation Litigation and the Reconfiguration of Husband Patriarchy Chapter 7: Bourgeois Affairs: Separation and Support Litigation and Injury to Reputation Chapter 8: Natural Eunuchs: Husband Impotence Annulment Litigation and Legal Opportunism Chapter 9: Conclusion

Psychoanalysis and the Question of Violence: From Masochism to Shame

Abstract: trauma of violence is arguably one of the most crucial questions facing the discipline at this historical moment. This essay will contend that the critical task of historicizing our ideas about violence holds a key to future theory and therapy. Offering a sustained historical emphasis, this essay reveals the extent to which the ideas that we—as citizens and therapists—hold about suffering and violence inflect the culture in which we live, and vice versa. by tracing the historical genealogies of two focal concepts—masochism and shame—and by examining how they play out culturally, psychoanalysis puts itself in an optimal position to rethink the relation of these culturally significant concepts to the problem of cruelty and violence. an approach to violence is here framed within an approach to masochism, precisely because, as we will see, the latter supplanted the former within a historical and cultural context of american shame in the postwar period, a shame tied to the mediated experience of the Holocaust. The historical account presented here builds to a discussion of the remedies, at once psychotherapeutic and social, required for healing in the aftermath of violence and violation. 1 This essay begins the project of examining the production of moral and social consciousness in the american postwar period with special attention to the two decades following the Second World War, a period in which the threshold of shame declined enough to allow the formation of two predominant modes of its expression and analysis, both of which share an interest in reading culture’s stake in internalizing and libidinalizing shame. These modes, coming from complementary, if competing, angles are (1) analytic theory—especially combat psychiatry from the Second World War—as it developed to

‘Go On, Get Out There, And Make It Happen’: Reflections on the First Ten Years of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC)

Abstract: Economic sabotage has been a feature of the more radical parts of the animal rights and liberation movement in the western world for several decades. Rather than just underground, politically motivate actions from disenfranchised activists, economic sabotage should be seen as a selective, well-calculated strategy practised by empowered activists. Using an analysis of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, this piece argues how ‘sabotage’—a repertoire of contentious actions which straddle legality—has more recently been facilitated by the proliferation and use of information communications technologies (Internet, email and mobile telephony). In view of this development, this article seeks to illustrate its role within the direct action domain of the UK animal rights and liberation movement, and examines some of the UK governments responses.

Human Rights, the Right to Have Rights, and Life Beyond the Pale of the Law

Abstract: In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt is famously scathing of the societies established between World Wars I and II to advocate on behalf of refugees and advance the protection of human rights. In Arendt’s view, ‘all societies formed for the protection of the Rights of Man … showed an uncanny similarity in language and composition to that of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals.’ The human rights they invoked were nothing more than ‘the standard slogan of the protectors of the underpriviledged, a kind of additional law, a right of exception necessary for those who had nothing better to fall back upon.’ (1968, 293) In this article I compare the position of exiles now living in or seeking to gain entry to Western states to that of Arendt’s interwar refugees. I argue that for the modern day exile, human rights continue to function inadequately as ‘a kind of additional law … for those who [have] nothing better to fall back upon’. I conclude that contemporary exiles have much in common with Arendt’s interwar refugees, and pose similar dilemmas insofar as the invocation of universal human rights is concerned.

Documenting Acts of Cruelty: The Practice of Violent Criminals Making Visual Records of Their Crimes

Abstract: The substantive focus of this article is a small collection of image-based case studies of significant criminal acts of interpersonal cruelty that are now in the public domain. In all instances those engaged in criminal acts of violence record and document aspects of their own behavior. The case studies range from military personnel and terrorists to examples from popular culture. Self-created images have the potential to serve as evidence of criminal behavior. For the viewing public recorded images are attributed with a “commonsense” evidential documentary potential. The article looks at the documentary method and the rationale behind recorded images serving evidential purposes.

“how does your collar suit me?”: the human animal in the rspca's animal world and band of mercy

Abstract: There is a central contradiction in human relationships with animals: as Erica Fudge notes, “We live with animals, we recognize them, we even name some of them, but at the same time we use them as if they were inanimate, as if they were objects” (8). Such a contradiction is also, of course, present in human interactions, in which power relations allow for the objectification of one human being by another. In an analysis of images and texts produced by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in the nineteenth-century, I want to examine the overlap in representations of animals and humans as subject to objectification and control. One common way of critiquing human treatment of animals within the RSPCA's journals, Animal World and Band of Mercy, was to have humans trade places with animals: having boys fantastically shrunk to the size of the animals they tortured, for example, or imagining the horrors of vivisection when experienced by humans. Such imaginative exercises were meant to defamiliarize animal usage by implying a shared experience of suffering: what was wrong for a human was clearly just as wrong for an animal. However, I argue that some of the images employed by the society suggest the opposite; instead of constructing animal cruelty in a new light, these images instead work to underline the shared proximity of particular humans with animals. In texts that focus specifically upon humans wearing animal bonds – reins, collars, and muzzles – the RSPCA's anti-cruelty discourse both critiqued the tools of bondage and, I suggest, invited the audience to see deep connections between animals and the humans taking their place. Such connections ultimately weaken the force of the animal/human reversal as an animal rights strategy, suggesting as they do that humans themselves often have use value in economies of labor, affect, and are subject to the same power relations that produce an animal as “animal.”

Darwin’s Argument from Evil

Abstract: The position that evolutionary biology makes the problem of evil worse for the theist is hardly new. Indeed, as we shall see, Darwin himself seems to have held it, and its more recent defenders include philosophers, scientists, historians and even theologians (though some of the evangelical Christian theologians who hold this position infer from it not that there is no God, but instead that the theory of evolution is false!). Consider, for example, the following three frequently quoted remarks. According to Bertrand Russell (1997, pp. 79–80), Religion in our day, has accommodated itself to the doctrine of evolution…. We are told that … evolution is the unfolding of an idea which has been in the mind of God throughout. It appears that during those ages … when animals were torturing each other with ferocious horns and agonizing stings, Omnipotence was quietly waiting for the ultimate emergence of man, with his still more exquisite powers of torture and his far more widely diffused cruelty. Why the Creator should have preferred to reach His goal by a process, instead of going straight to it, these modern theologians do not tell us.

Turned Inside Out: Black, White, and Irish in the South

Abstract: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The widely recited claim that the Irish in the South were perhaps more misused than slaves is traceable to William Howard Russell (here, 1855), who wrote: "The labour of ditching, trenching, cleaning the waste lands, and hewing down the forests is generally done by Irish labourers.... Mr. Seal lamented the high prices of this work; but then, as he said, 'It was much better to have Irish to do it, who cost nothing to theplanter if they died, than to use up good field-hands in such severe employment.'" Photograph courtesy of the Collections of the Library of Congress. Noel Ignatiev's How the Irish Became White, a book graced by a pithy name that summarizes its provocative thesis, has generated volumes of response. But relatively tittle of this body of criticism bears on the South, even though Ignatiev expressly invokes the region in one of the most quoted passages of his study: The Irish who emigrated to America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were fleeing caste oppression and a system of landlordism that made the material conditions of the Irish peasant comparable to those of an American slave ... On the rail beds and canals they labored for low wages under dangerous conditions; in the South they were occasionally employed where it did not make sense to risk the life of a slave. As they came to the cities, they were crowded into districts that became centers of crime, vice and disease. (2) Ignatiev's study, like most treatments of the American Irish, focuses largely on the Northeast, with special focus on Philadelphia. It is worth asking if his observations hold up as wee to southern experience. How were the southern Irish identified, in a racial sense, and how did they identify themselves? Did they, in the mode of Ignatiev, "whiten" as well? In a society that came to be seen as rigidly stratified by race, were the Irish in the South commingled in a "common culture of the lowly?" (3) As if in reply, historians Peter D. O'Neill and David Lloyd write, "The Irish, it has been shown, became white in the United States precisely to the extent that both slaves and free Blacks were denied full citizenship, even humanity." And to some extent, this holds for the South, as the case of Charleston's Irish-born bishop and slavery apologist, John England, illustrates. Some southern Irish found themselves supporting the regional racial orders, willingly or not. There is an attendant sense of disappointment that the Irish did not always seek solidarity with the oppressed: as O'Neill and Lloyd put it, "All too often, the query is posed within a somewhat sentimental framework, one shaped by a weak ethical desire that the Irish should have identified with another people who were undergoing dispossession, exploitation or racism--or, indeed, shown solidarity with oppressed people in general." (4) We might call this the Montserrat Problem, in reference to Donald Akenson's If the Irish Ran the World, which observes that Irish slaveholders in Montserrat rivaled any colonial power in cruelty. Even Irish nationalist hero Wolfe Tone dreamed of an Ireland that might become a colonial power in the Sandwich Islands, and instances where the Irish played the colonial game to their favor, or the ends against the middle, are not counterfactual fancy, but are exampled in history. (5) Now, as the whiteness studies paradigm begins to recede, scholars are more interested in framing the discussion in terms of movement and contact. Because the Atlantic slave trade ended (in principle if not in fact) in 1807-1808--a period when Irish immigration was on the rise--it is indeed useful to think about the loops of these currents, and the continuing contact they established. Such a framework for interpretation offers a built-in, if circular, defense: if a moving target is what is described, it shall be very difficult to qualify those relationships except to say that they were changing. …

Legal Terrorism in Domestic Violence - An Indian Outlook

Abstract: Marriage in India is a voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. It is a social association where the husband has the responsibility to take care of and maintain his wife and not to neglect his duties. But in relation to this great institution, the problem of the "dowry" still persists. Women are ill-treated, harassed, killed or divorced for the simple reason that they do not get a dowry or do not get a sufficiently large one. To safeguard the interest of women against the cruelty they face within the four walls of their matrimonial home, the Indian Penal Code 1860 was amended in 1983 and section 498A was added. This deals with "Matrimonial Cruelty" to a woman. Matrimonial Cruelty in India is a cognizable, non-bailable and non-compoundable offence. Notwithstanding that the practice of demanding dowries was made illegal in India over 50 years ago, the (London) Times on 18 January 2012 reported that a study in 2007 concluded that "there is a dowry-related death in India every four hours". Official statistics in India show there were 8,391 dowry-related deaths in 2010, and there may well have been more. Why has leglislation that criminalises these appalling practices failed to stop them?