Showing papers on "Cruelty published in 2016"

Animal abuse and interpersonal violence: the cruelty connection and its implications for veterinary pathology

Abstract: The role of the veterinary forensic pathologist in the investigation of animal abuse or neglect can go beyond documenting the condition of animals presented as evidence. Although animal cruelty is a moral concern and a crime in itself, law enforcement response to such crimes is often enhanced by the recognition that crimes against animals can be both indicators of other ongoing crimes against people and predictors of the potential for interpersonal violence. An understanding of common motives underlying animal cruelty can aid the pathologist in asking appropriate questions. The authors review the forms of pathology evidence commonly seen in various presentations of animal cruelty. Understanding these forms of evidence can help the pathologist describe findings that can be significant for assessing the potential risks the alleged perpetrator may pose to other animals and humans.

Imagining the Unimaginable: Parricide in Early Modern England and Wales, c.1600–c.1760

Abstract: This article explores the ways in which parricide was comprehended in England and Wales, c.1600–1760, and shows that while some parallels exist with modern explanatory models of parricide offenders, they had very different meanings in the early modern context. While both lunacy and the cruelty of parents were understood as possible contexts for parricide, neither were common. The dominant explanation was the gratuitous violence of a selfish individual who lacked compassion and who saw the parent as an obstacle—to an inheritance, riches, marriage, and freedom—to be removed. The article explores these three categories and suggests ways in which this began to change in the mid-eighteenth century.

Sites of Crossing and Death in Punishment: The Parallel Lives, Trade-offs and Equivalencies of the Death Penalty and Life without Parole in the US

Abstract: This article explores continuities and discontinuities between two kinds of death in punishment: of death as punishment and of death as the specified detritus of punishment, life without parole (LWOP). It traces the parallel lives and equivalencies between life and death in penal policy and practice in the US, and attendant narratives of harshness/mildness, and compromises and covenants with pasts and futures. The discourse of death that has sustained the survival of the death penalty in the US has found a home in LWOP. It argues that spectacles and memorialisations of injustice, error and pain circumscribed in the judicial and popular discourse of death as different provide spaces for reflection on dignity and cruelty, spaces in which the loss of life and liberty can be grieved, a subversive politics of mourning (Butler 2004) for those whom punishment had deemed dispensable. As the death penalty is exchanged for LWOP, reform strategies need to reimagine and recapture these spaces for grieving, and understanding the death work of LWOP in US penal politics is crucial to this endeavour.

An Evaluative Review of Theories Related to Animal Cruelty

Abstract: The two dominant theories relating to animal cruelty are critically reviewed. These are (1) the violence graduation hypothesis and (2) the deviance generalization hypothesis. The outcomes indicate very high consistency with the broader antisocial behavior and aggression literature, which is large and very robust. This strongly supports the validity of the animal cruelty theory proposals. Proposals that animal cruelty is one of the earliest indicators of externalizing disorders and that it is a marker of development along a more severe trajectory of antisocial and aggressive behaviors are supported. The implications of these conclusions are discussed.

When Schools Become Dead Zones of the Imagination: A Critical Pedagogy Manifesto

Abstract: Originally printed on Truthout, Tuesday, 13 August 2013 Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. Martin Luther King, Jr If the right-wing billionaires and apostles of corporate power have their way, public schools will become "dead zones of the imagination," reduced to anti-public spaces that wage an assault on critical thinking, civic literacy and historical memory. (1) Since the 1980s, schools have increasingly become testing hubs that de-skill teachers and disempower students. They have also been refigured as punishment centers where low-income and poor minority youth are harshly disciplined under zero tolerance policies in ways that often result in their being arrested and charged with crimes that, on the surface, are as trivial as the punishment is harsh. (2) Under casino capitalism's push to privatize education, public schools have been closed in cities such as, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York to make way for charter schools. Teacher unions have been attacked, public employees denigrated and teachers reduced to technicians working under deplorable and mind-numbing conditions. (3) Corporate school reform is not simply obsessed with measurements that degrade any viable understanding of the connection between schooling and educating critically engaged citizens. The reform movement is also determined to underfund and disinvest resources for public schooling so that public education can be completely divorced from any democratic notion of governance, teaching and learning. In the eyes of billionaire un-reformers and titans of finance such as Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family and Michael Bloomberg, public schools should be transformed, when not privatized, into adjuncts of shopping centers and prisons. (4) Like the dead space of the American mall, the school systems promoted by the un-reformers offer the empty ideological seduction of consumerism as the ultimate form of citizenship and learning. And, adopting the harsh warehousing mentality of prison wardens, the un-reformers endorse and create schools for poor students that punish rather than educate in order to channel disposable populations into the criminal justice system where they can fuel the profits of private prison corporations. The militarization of public schools that Secretary Arnie Duncan so admired and supported while he was the CEO of the Chicago School System was not only a ploy to instill authoritarian discipline practices against students disparagingly labeled as unruly, if not disposable. It was also an attempt to design schools that would break the capacity of students to think critically and render them willing and potential recruits to serve in senseless and deadly wars waged by the American empire. And, if such recruitment efforts failed, then students were quickly put on the conveyor belt of the school-to-prison pipeline. For many poor minority youth in the public schools, prison becomes part of their destiny, just as public schools reinforce their status as second-class citizens. As Michelle Alexander points out, "Instead of schools being a pipeline to opportunity, [they] are feeding our prisons." (5) Market-driven educational reforms, with their obsession with standardization, high-stakes testing, and punitive policies, also mimic a culture of cruelty that neoliberal policies produce in the wider society. They exhibit contempt for teachers and distrust of parents, repress creative teaching, destroy challenging and imaginative programs of study and treat students as mere inputs on an assembly line. Trust, imagination, creativity, and a respect for critical teaching and learning are thrown to the wind in the pursuit of profits and the proliferation of rigid, death-dealing accountability schemes. …

Child protection: a universal concern and a permanent challenge in the field of child and adolescent mental health.

Abstract: For much of history, cruelty to children was viewed as a private rather than a societal concern. An early sign of change occurred in the 1870s, when the pivotal case of Mary Ellen Wilson, a severely abused child in New York City, attracted intensive coverage in influential newspapers such as the New York Times and led to the founding of the first child protection agency. Sociologist Michael King has described the media response to cases of extreme child abuse in terms of a moral agenda, saying, “In this category of agenda it is not individuals, but social systems which are being unjust to children” [1].

The Boundaries of the “We:” Cruelty, Responsibility and Forms of Life

Abstract: This paper establishes a dialogue between the later works of Wittgenstein, those of Cavell and the novels of J. M. Coetzee concerning the problem of violence, authority and the authoritative voice. By drawing on J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians and Diary of a Bad Year, the paper discusses lessons and insights on the nature of violence and the ways in which it can be accepted as “normal.” The term “normalization” is used in order to show how violence and cruelty can become a “form of life” (Ludwig Wittgenstein) that develops according to its own actors, cultural practices and legitimacies (Stanley Cavell and, by implication, Richard Rorty).

Is the Animal Liberation Front morally justified in engaging in violent and illegal activism towards animal farms

Abstract: The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is an activist group, mainly focused on violent and illegal direct action, including destruction of property, the rescuing of animals and the clandestine filming of animal cruelty on animal farms. Here, I engage with three arguments that are often raised against the ALF’s actions, namely these actions are not morally justified because: (a) they are not measures of last resort; (b) they are excessively violent and do not discriminate targets; and (c) they have no reasonable probability of success. I contend that clandestinely filming animal cruelty is morally justified, the destruction of property is not and that rescuing animals is morally justified, if the ALF incorporates some changes as to how this is done.

Putting Cruelty First: Exploring Judith Shklar’s Liberalism of Fear for Animal Ethics

Abstract: This paper critically examines the extent to which the debate about animal ethics can be enriched by an exploration of Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear. Shklar’s form of liberalism proceeds from the conviction that cruelty is the greatest vice. Even though Shklar did not write with animals in mind, her work is, prima facie, promising for theorists who are concerned with animals. A focus on cruelty provides an immediate and readily-understood avenue for liberals to recognize and criticize animal suffering. Putting cruelty first also connects with the way many animal advocates talk about human mistreatment of animals. Shklar’s thinking about cruelty was powerfully shaped by Michel de Montaigne, whose essay “On Cruelty” is explicitly attentive to human cruelty to animals. Nonetheless, we need to be suspicious about how effectively a liberal conception and critique of cruelty designed for humans can be transposed to animals.

Anger, hatred, or just heartlessness? Defining gratuitous violence

Abstract: Violent crime in South Africa is sometimes said to be unusual, because it is perceived to frequently be gratuitous. This article engages with the question of how to define gratuitous violence. If the term gratuitous is understood to mean 'for nothing', gratuitous violence should be understood as violence that is 'low on expressive and instrumental motivations'. Whilst the evidence is that much violence is 'instrumental', violence in South Africa may be unusual but it may be better to articulate this in terms of the concepts both of 'expressive' and gratuitous violence. Gratuitous violence and the apparent cruelty that characterises some acts of instrumental violence also appear to imply that 'empathy deficits' might be a characteristic of many perpetrators of violence.

Animal Protection Law in Australia: Bound by History

Abstract: This chapter examines changing attitudes to the treatment of animals in nineteenth century Britain, tracing the effects of change through to the first British animal protection legislation in 1822, and beyond to the law of the Australian colonies. By the early part of the twentieth century a number of key facets of animal protection regulation were established: the adoption of the generic ‘no unnecessary suffering’ standard in assessing the extent of cruelty to animals allowed; the use of exemptions from the generic prohibition against cruelty; the imposition of duties to provide for the needs of an animal; and the establishment of one of the key institutional actors in the animal protection field, the RSPCA. As well, the Australian colonies faithfully reproduced an understanding of domesticated animals as personal property. Analysis of the development of animal protection law in Queensland provides a “representative sample” of the adoption of animal protection law in the States and Territories more broadly. In Queensland, as in other similar jurisdictions, the question remains whether the present day animal protection regulatory framework amounts, in essence, to a nineteenth century answer to twenty-first century concerns.

Is Domestic Violence a Lesser Crime? Countering the Backlash against Section 498A, IPC

Abstract: Section 498A was introduced in 1983 by the Criminal Law (Second) Amendment Act in the Indian Penal Code. It recognizes cruelty against a married woman by her husband and in-laws as a crime for which it lays down punishment of imprisonment which may extend up to three years and/or fine. Seen as a significant legal provision introduced after extensive pressure from women activists and lawyers besides being discussed in the Parliament during the 1980s, it criminalized violence within homes for the first time and empowered married women who faced violence in the marital house to raise their voice against such abuse. Section 498A puts the onus on the State to remedy the situation of women facing torture in the ‘sacred’ private familial domain. However, over the years it has been seen that domestic violence is being treated as a lesser crime by the police as well as the judiciary who constitute the primary agencies for enforcement and implementation of this law. The state, in fact, is reluctant to take action against the perpetrators of violence. Instead of addressing the existing social realities or expanding the definition of domestic violence to include other forms of crimes against women within homes, less attention is paid to abuse inflicted within the families. Rather, an unreasonable and baseless myth of abuse and misuse of Section 498A has been propagated to underplay the seriousness of the crime committed within the four walls of the house. The state promotes the normative ideals of conjugality and in the process ends up reiterating and reinforcing gender injustice. This results in a scenario where those working with the victims of domestic violence use Section 498A as a strategic and pragmatic tool to bring the husband to the negotiating table to arrive at the samjhauta (compromise). Therefore, instead of punishing the guilty, the legal system is being manipulated to arrive at ‘settlement’ with the accused. One of the fallouts of such an action is lower conviction rate. Instead of making a dent on the patriarchal social order, this legal provision has been used to reiterate existing biases and stereotypes against women. The situation today is that domestic violence is treated as a ‘social crime’ when compared with violence by strangers, even though it is much more severe in nature. Why is wife beating considered as a lesser crime by the state, society and the law? Why is the perpetrator of this crime not held accountable for his actions? Why are different parameters and standards of justice utilized when a woman is abused? Why has the criminal justice system failed to deliver justice to the victims of domestic violence? How effective is the strategy adopted by the women’s movement in India where by a heavy emphasis is placed on the legal reforms to achieve the goal of gender justice? Why has the state failed to see women as independent individual citizens outside the construct of family or kinship? Why could the remedies beyond the law, such as provision of shelter homes or material and economic support for women not be implemented? This study examines these questions while using the secondary data and refers to the multidisciplinary research studies and reports on the issue from the perspectives of the survivors to focus on a ‘bubble up’ approach rather than the ‘top down’ style of understanding the issue of domestic violence.

Zhuangzi’s Ironic Detachment and Political Commitment

Abstract: Paul Gewirtz has suggested that contemporary Chinese society lacks a shared framework. A Rortian might describe this by saying that China lacks a “final vocabulary” of “thick terms” with which to resolve ethical disagreements. I briefly examine the strengths and weaknesses of Confucianism and Legalism as potential sources of such a final vocabulary, but most of this essay focuses on Zhuangzian Daoism. Zhuangzi 莊子 provides many stories and metaphors that can inspire advocates of political pluralism. However, I suggest that Zhuangzi is ultimately an “ironist” in Rorty’s sense. Many intellectuals assume there is something progressive and liberating about broadly ironic stances like relativism and skepticism. Ethically, though, irony is “the night in which all cows are black”: since it regards all positions as equally undermined, an ironic stance cannot be enlisted in support of tolerance or humanitarianism or in opposition to absolutism or cruelty.

"Valour Will Weep": The Ethics of Valor, Anger, and Pity in Shakespeare's Coriolanus

Abstract: Anatomizing Caius Martius Coriolanus illuminates Shakespeare's critique of Rome in the Roman plays: Rome's single-minded privileging of a species of valor that is indistinguishable from wrath; an imperialist urge for conquest implicit in its earliest historical and cultural beginnings; and an underlying cruelty, implacability, and wholehearted devotion to a perverse and frequently contradictory principle of adversity and oppugnancy. Martius seems to fit the mold of Seneca's angry man, and his disposition and conduct betray the destructive and self-destructive nature of Rome; yet he also has the capacity for an attitude that runs contrary to Roman mores in his surprising access to pity, an emotion Seneca and Cicero deem unRoman, weak, and inferior to the virtue of clemency. Martius concedes to unexpected emotional registers and is remarkable for his ability, for a time, to see beyond the Roman customs and conventions that have sculpted, defined, and enclosed him. In a startling incongruity, Martius, Rome's apparently absolute exponent of valor, simultaneously discloses all that is cruelly present and constitutive of Rome and all that is pitilessly absent and lacking from it. In the tragic close Martius suggests the good of a world where "valor will weep." [The Roman people] govern ill the Nations under yoke, Peeling thir Provinces, exhausted all By lust and rapine; first ambitious grown Of triumph that insulting vanity; Then cruel, by thir sports to blood enur'd Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts expos'd, Luxurious by thir wealth, and greedier still[.] --John Milton (1) IT is tempting to picture Caius Martius, like Richard Crookback, being born with teeth. Where Lear and Cordelia would "laugh / At gilded butterflies," Martius junior at play, aping one of his father's moods, would set his pearly whites and mammock "a gilded butterfly." (2) What bloody man is this? Unhae Langis proposes that "The meaning of the tragedy depends on a clear vision of Coriolanus'[s] character." (3) Langis finds that Martius's incontinence emblematizes even as it promotes the constitutional instability of the budding Roman Republic. I wish to suggest that the belligerent Martius is a synecdoche for Rome, the species for the genus, but that he also represents the Roman substance unmasked and in the raw, without the refinement, polish, or veneer of its rhetorical colors and glossy, glozing finish. Anatomizing Martius and seeing what breeds about his heart aid our understanding of the basis for Shakespeare's indictment of Rome in the Roman plays: its triumphant and excessive use of valor or strength and its access to anger rather than magnanimity. For in this play valor is inextricable from anger. As Montaigne averred, "Valor ... cannot be perfected without the assistance of choler." (4) When it comes to the devastation of its enemies, Roman valor guarantees victory through the fury of its military forces. At the same time the unlooked for alteration in Martius's character at the tragedy's close demonstrates an access to pity that Shakespeare's Roman world mostly excludes. Between the poles of vindictive anger and conciliatory pity through which Martius moves, the warrior discloses all that is cruelly present and constitutive of Rome and all that is pitilessly absent and lacking from it. Rome's cruelty and pitilessness are the conditions of its valor and forcefulness and, eventually, its self-destruction. I. "WILL ON": THE ROMAN ETHICS OF VALOR AND ANGER [P]eople with power understand exactly one thing: violence. --Noam Chomsky (5) As a late tragedy and as Shakespeare's final Roman play, Coriolanus occupies a curious place in that series of Shakespearean dramas preoccupied with Roman history: Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus itself. Where Titus Andronicus transports its audience to the twilight years of imperial history and explores the decadence and decay of late Empire, Julius Caesar records the last gasp of the late Republic, the imposition of a triumvirate pricking down its enemies' lives, and the first glimmerings of Caesarism before it blazes forth in Antony and Cleopatra in the sole imperial throne of the cold, politic, laconic, and ruthless Octavian. …

“Imagine”: Radical Love Abides in Cruel Unforgiving Times

Abstract: This essay discusses how, in this current historical conjuncture of cruelty, insensitivity, greed and technological obsessiveness, radical love, and listening can abide in education and in the global society. It engages these issues in three sections. First, the essay describes and explicates the current milieu in terms of the adoration of money, the paradox between the lack of community and the virtual communication obsession. It also delves into what can be considered the central political issue of our time, that of voluntary subservience. That is, why current corporate neoliberalism and microfascism continue despite efforts to contest them. Second, the essay discusses notions of hope from a critical autobiographical context and the ways in which hope is necessary for a pedagogy of radical love and listening. Third, the essay discusses education within the current context described and the ways in which radical hope, listening and love in critical pedagogy can abide in education and society despite the tremendous forces working against such education and thinking. The essay claims finally that commitment and abiding with criticality is radical love.

The legacy of Nico H. Frijda (1927–2015)

Abstract: Nico never stopped wondering about human emotions, and human behaviour generally. In one of our last conversations he wondered aloud about human cruelty: what is the reason for hate, war, and genoc...

Empathy in the Theater of Horror, or Civilizing the Human Heart

Abstract: In our times, and particularly among Europeans, there seems to be a general consensus that people should be treated with dignity. Dignity has become a crucial political concept and a rallying cry that has been able to mobilize large numbers of citizens. The use of what is perceived as humiliating language or practice encounters sharp criticism. Forms of punishment, state-imposed or other, that appear to infringe on human dignity are not accepted by popular opinion. This includes shame sanctions administered by the US legal system, as much as physical and emotional cruelty, not solely but especially when displayed in public. European citizens are appalled by practices in countries such as China, Saudi-Arabia, Iran, or Afghanistan, where executions (abolished in EU member states) are deliberately and intentionally carried out in public in order to attract large groups of spectators. Terrorist Islamic groups that proudly record the decapitation of hostages and invite the world to watch provoke loathing and aversion.

Overcoming Sociological Naïveté in the Animal Rights Movement

Abstract: INTRODUCTIONOn June 27, 2010, Emma Czomobaj stopped her Honda Civic in the left lane of a Quebec highway to assist a group of ducklings, as distracted drivers observed her efforts before returning their gaze to the roadway. Andre Roy, riding his Harley-Davidson with his 16-year-old daughter Jessie, only noticed the illegally parked vehicle at the last moment and could not swerve in time to avoid crashing into the rear of the Civic. Both Roy and his daughter died as a result. In June 2014, a jury convicted Czomobaj of criminal negligence causing death (Cherry 2014). The Crown Prosecutor, Annie-Claude Chasse, commented: "What we hope is that a clear message is sent to the society that we do not stop on the highway for animals. It's not worth it" (The Canadian Press 2014).The tragic incident highlights the inherent tensions embedded in the philosophical debates surrounding the value of human life vis-a-vis nonhuman life. At one end of the continuum, some individuals challenge the legitimacy of speciesism to recognize nonhuman animals as equally deserving of human kindness and compassion. For example, an online reader of The Canadian Press (2014) article suggested that while "she made a mistake in the placement of her stopped vehicle, Emma Czomobaj is a hero, and her intentions were pure. Everyone should stop to protect the innocent." At the other end of the continuum are those who draw clear distinctions between the value of human and nonhuman life: "Bleeding heart liberals sure do know how to minimize a human life. According to them, animals are just as valuable as humans." The latter comment affirms Cherry's (2010: 451) argument that "nonactivists hold a worldview in which humans are superior to animals, a view that shapes their relationships with animals."The current paper examines these competing claims from a sociological perspective by applying Milner's (1994a, 2004) theory of status relations to explain why animal rights activists and those committed to "total liberation" (Pellow and Brehm 2015) face a rather daunting challenge. The main argument highlights the challenges associated with efforts to elevate the status of nonhuman species. The failure to understand these constraints, a classic example of "sociological naivete," limits the efficacy of animal rights campaigns. By the same reasoning, a deeper sociological understanding of the theory of status relations can highlight conditions that might advance the cause of animal rights. The article then draws upon both a national opinion survey and a small-scale survey of university students to offer a preliminary test of the thesis. Although there are clear methodological limits to the data sources, the results from these surveys nevertheless support the main thesis developed.LITERATURE REVIEWThe social scientific research on nonhuman animals has grown considerably over the years, with various journals and monographs aimed at advancing research on human-nonhuman interactions (Irvine 2004; Markovits and Queen 2009; Sable 2013; Serpell 2009; Vitulli 2006), the debates concerning animal cruelty, liberation and rights (Abbate 2015; Flukiger 2008; Merz-Perez and Heide 2004; Upton 2012), the cognitive and emotional capacities of nonhuman animals (Burghardt 2009; Custance and Mayer 2012; Singer 2014), and an assortment of other issues (e.g., Balster et al. 2009; Skitka 2012; Strier 2009). A growing body of sociological literature has focused on animal rights as a social movement (Cherry 2010; Lindblom and Jacobsson 2014), including the ritualistic nature of conversion and participation in the movement (Carmona 2012; Pike 2013).The most significant ideological development in the animal rights movement, however, has been the shift from an "animal welfare" to the "abolitionist" approach. The former stresses the humane treatment of animals, especially the assurances of reasonable protections against cruelty or suffering in the context of the meat industry (Benson and Rollin 2004; Richards et al. …

Predictors of Views about Punishing Animal Abuse

Abstract: The current study used scenarios of animal cruelty based on actual events to explore what factors predict perceptions of punishments for animal cruelty. Five hundred thirty-eight university undergraduates participated in the study. Participants read scenarios based on an actual event of animal cruelty and with information on statutes addressing animal cruelty in their state. Participants were then asked to give ratings for punishment of the animal cruelty perpetrator. A canonical correlation analysis was used to test the multivariate shared relationship between the set of eight predictor variables and the criterion variable set of 15 punishment ratings. The response distributions were highly skewed for seven of the 15 criterion variables, highlighting the strong sentiments participants expressed against animal cruelty. The canonical correlation analysis identified significant criterion variables that were predicted by two of the empirically manipulated predictor variables (Perpetrator Age and Loca...

Theologizing State Crime

Abstract: This article examines a sacralized political economy of state crime, centring Israeli assaults on the occupied Gaza Strip over the last ten years, with a particular focus on the violent attack perpetrated in 2014. Taking the 2006 election of Hamas as a point of departure, the article analyses various manifestations of violence inscribed on the people of Gaza, including killing, injuring, starving, collective punishment, military assaults and other forms of cruelty. Drawing on a settler colonial framework, the article investigates Israel's violence as sacralized state criminality embedded in a local and global political economy of racism and impunity. It argues that Israeli crimes against Gazan Palestinians must be analysed as political technologies of counterinsurgent governmentality embedded in a structure of settler colonial dispossession initiated during the 1948 Nakba.

Telling Tales--Cruelty and Abuse in Schooling in Ireland.

Abstract: The report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Government of Ireland, 2009) - the Ryan Report - shocked Ireland and the wider world with its chilling descriptions of abuse that was systemic, pervasive, chronic, excessive, arbitrary and endemic. Subsequent debate has, rightly, centred on the ‘religious’ arena, highlighting the appalling breach of trust in institutions that were church-run and staffed by members of religious orders. Discussion of broader educational values and perspectives has been limited. Exploring the perspectives of writers on schooling, in autobiography, memoir or through their fiction, can contribute to the educational debates that should arise from the Ryan Report. This article considers the insights of selected writers. A strong authoritarianism tradition within Irish schooling is identified as contributing to cultures of docility and compliance. The relevance of such issues for current practitioners is also discussed.

'Necessary AND Proper' and 'Cruel AND Unusual': Hendiadys in the Constitution

Abstract: Constitutional doctrine is often shaped by the details of the constitutional text. Under the Necessary and Proper Clause, the Supreme Court first considers whether a law is “necessary” and then whether it is “proper.” Some justices have urged the same approach for the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause: first ask if the punishment is “cruel,” then if it is “unusual.” That each clause has two requirements seems obvious, and it is has been the assumption underlying vast amounts of scholarship. That assumption is incorrect.This Article argues that “necessary and proper” and “cruel and unusual” are best read as instances of hendiadys. Hendiadys is a figure of speech in which two terms, separated by a conjunction, work together as a single complex expression. It is found in many languages, including English: e.g., “rise and shine,” “nice and fat,” “cakes and ale,” “open and notorious.” When “cruel and unusual” is read as a hendiadys, the clause does not prohibit punishments that merely happen to be both cruel and unusual. Rather, it prohibits punishments that are unusually cruel, i.e., innovative in their cruelty. If “necessary and proper” is read as a hendiadys, then the terms are not separate requirements for congressional action. The word “necessary” requires a close relationship between a statute and the constitutional power it is carrying into execution, while “proper” instructs us not to interpret “necessary” in its strictest sense. “Proper” also reminds us that the incidental power Congress is exercising must belong to an enumerated power.To read each of these constitutional phrases as a hendiadys, though seemingly novel, actually aligns closely with the early interpretations, including the interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause in McCulloch v. Maryland. The readings offered here solve a number of puzzles, and they better capture the subtlety of these clauses.

The Swedish Swan Lady : Reaction to an Apparent Animal Hoarding Case

Abstract: This study describes media and judicial reaction to the first publicly acknowledged case of animal hoarding in Sweden-a 60-year-old Swedish woman who purportedly "rescued" 150 swans over several years by bringing many back to her one-room apartment. Reports in the press and social media reflected curiosity if not admiration for this woman, who was dubbed the "Swan Lady." Although some condemned her deeds and saw her as guilty of animal cruelty, most commentators were more fascinated by her ability to capture the aggressive and large birds, and bring them to her home. While judicial reaction framed this case as one of animal cruelty, the response was sympathetic and people failed to consider the Swan Lady's mental health when examining her behavior.

Comparing Mao to Stalin

Abstract: The Greek historian Plutarch famously compared over 40 illustrious Greek and Roman men. This article merely compares two tyrants—Stalin and Mao. Whereas Alexander and Caesar, or Demosthenes and Cicero, lived centuries apart, Stalin and Mao were contemporaries. Rather than recalling their uneasy relationship, this study evaluates and compares three aspects of their performance and misdeeds. As Stalin and Mao were responsible for the deaths of more of their own people than the average tyrant, the study first compares their cruelty and argues that Mao was much less cruel and, second, much less efficient and prone to pursue mutually contradictory aims. Third, he proved more faithful to revolutionary ideals. Two periods during their rule, the Great Terror (1937–38) and the Cultural Revolution, are recalled in order to illustrate the points under discussion.

Satire as Tool of Political Cartoons in the Nigerian National Dailies: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract: This work is an analysis of the use of satire as a form of imagery to depict some political issues in cartoons as featured in the Nigerian national dailies. Survey method of research design was adopted as a means of sampling copies of national dailies from which political cartoons were selected, while Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was adopted for the analysis of data gathered. Findings reveal images of corruption, official responsibility, political failure and brutality/cruelty/suffering as the dominant concerns of the cartoons featured by the papers. While the corrupt postures of those who have links with the past government are dominant in the image of corruption portrayed, both those in and out of government are subjected to some satiric expose in respect of official responsibility, failure in politics and brutality/cruelty/suffering. At the end, it is recommended, among others, that more searchlight should be focused on the corrupt tendency of those still in power, and that more research efforts be devoted to the use of political cartoons to encourage citizen participation in national discourse.

Return of the Beast: From Pre-Islamic Ode to Contemporary Novel

Abstract: Can the exile ever return? And if so, how? This question has consumed literature from the times of Gilgamesh. Focusing on works by the Jāhilī poet al-Shanfarā (d. 70/525) and the contemporary Lebanese author Hudā Barakāt, this essay reads the metamorphosis of the exile and the outcast as a critique of tribal identification. I argue that while the moment of exilic departure is confounded and erased, the return (al-ʿawdah) operates as a form of revenge (raiding, haunting, possessing) that emerges from experiences of tawaḥḥush (becoming wild, beastly) and tagharrub (estrangement, alienation). This vengeful return harnesses beastliness and alienation as both destructive and productive forces that dismantle communal rituals of inclusion and exclusion, death and burial, while opening up the human/beast relation to multiple social and political configurations. Drawing on classical and contemporary theoretical frameworks, I examine the function of cruelty in the exile’s transformation and return, reading it as a survival mechanism and aesthetic device.