Cows and the sharīʿah in the Abéché Customary Court (Eastern Chad)

Author(s):  
Judith Scheele

The records of the sharīʿah court in Abéché in eastern Chad span the twentieth century. While the legal notion of property used by the court is Islamic and thus not seen to be problematic, the content of the property relations is fluid, and difficult to fix over time. In an inherently mobile society, and one that has long been open to trans-regional exchange, this is done through reliance on guarantors and witnesses. Property thus emerges as an inherently relational and unstable category; and while in Western legal systems, legal philosophers agonise about the individual ‘state of mind’ that defines property transactions, these questions are here a matter of public opinion. Suretyship and the preponderance of property as a precondition for moral personhood might hide a nuanced approach to the notion of ‘authority’, giving us insights into the peculiar functioning of the Chadian state (and similar political formations elsewhere).

Legal Studies ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Burns

England and Scotland have very different legal systems in relation to succession generally and intestacy in particular. Nevertheless, they have faced similar problems and tensions when attempting to reform the law of intestacy. This article considers the basic division of an intestate estate between spouses and children (and other issue). It is argued that prior to the twentieth century intestacy law in both jurisdictions was underpinned by a dynastic model in which the estate was preserved for successive generations. However, in the twentieth century the interests of the spouse became the primary focus of intestacy distribution. Recommendations (by law commissions in both jurisdictions) for further reform of the law are marked by a further intensification of the rights of the spouse (potentially leading to a further decline in the entitlement of children and issue). The Commissions have not only jettisoned dynastic intestacy, but also the earlier framing of intestacy rules based on the examination of wills and the ‘presumed intention’ of the intestate. Instead, the Commissions have preferred to formulate rules which are generally supported by empirical evidence such as public opinion surveys; and tempered by the aims of simplicity and administrative efficiency. This article contends that in order to create a division of assets reflecting acceptable standards, the aim of modern intestacy legislation ought to be the distribution of assets to those classes of family members who are likely to be the most economically vulnerable (such as aged spouses, minors and disabled adults). In any event, the ageing population and the needs of surviving aged spouses are likely to have a significant impact upon the framing of intestacy law in the future.


2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (04) ◽  
pp. 782-787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian F. Harrison ◽  
Melissa R. Michelson

ABSTRACTPublic opinion tends to be stable. Once formed, attitudes are persistent and endure over time at both the individual and the aggregate levels. Attitudes toward marriage equality, however, have changed rapidly in recent years. This article posits that this is partly due to people learning that other members of their in-groups are supporters; they then alter their own opinions to be consistent with those of other in-group members. The authors tested this theory using a set of randomized survey experiments that shared identities as fans of professional football. When fans learn—sometimes unexpectedly—that other fans or athletes are supporters of marriage equality, they are motivated to agree in order to further normalize their membership in those sports-fan groups.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Weerkamp-Bartholomeus

Introduction: ReAttach is a trans-diagnostic tailored intervention based on a conceptualization model. The intervention includes arousal-regulation, multiple sensory processing, conceptualization, affective mentalization and associative memory formation (active learning). Autism Spectrum Disorder is a clinical diagnosis for a heterogeneous group of individuals who experience pervasive neurodevelopmental problems including perceiving the world in a fragmented way: the pre-conceptual state of mind. Tailored ReAttach sessions support individuals with ASD to develop a coherent sense of the self and the world.Objective: The aim of this article is to describe how a to tailor a ReAttach session to the individual state of mind of individuals with ASD.Method: ReAttach-C.A.T. is a Computer Adaptive Tool, built to assist therapists to map the individual state of mind before the start of ReAttach sessions. The instrument is in its early stage of development.Results: A group of 52 patients with complex developmental challenges were interviewed by their ReAttach therapist, using the inclusive ReAttach-C.A.T. Mapping the individual state of mind in co-creation with the individual with ASD, makes sense and is helpful for a variety of reasons. It also sheds a new light on the Forms of Vitality of the co-creators.


1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Erikson

One of the richest data sources for the study of public opinion is the Survey Research Center's panel study conducted in the late 1950s. Because the SRC interviewed its national panel of Americans three times over a four-year period, the SRC panel data allows the analysis of changes in survey responses over time. The most remarkable discovery from the SRC panel was that panelists changed their reported opinions on policy issues with considerable frequency when asked the same policy questions in different years. Moreover, the amount of observed change in the individual responses varied little with the time interval between responses. That is, the correlations between responses to the same issue item in 1956 and 1958 or in 1958 and 1960 (two years apart) were almost as low as the correlations to the same issue item in 1956 and 1960 (four years apart).


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaolan Wang ◽  
Yang Feng ◽  
Rodney Chan ◽  
Gilbert P. Compo ◽  
Laura C. Slivinski ◽  
...  

<p>Preliminary results obtained from tracking cyclones in the ensemble-average and individual members of the NOAA-CIRES-DOE Twentieth Century Reanalysis version 3 (20CRv3) ensemble for the period 1836-2015 will be presented. Comparison with tracking in the 20CRv2c ensemble-average series will also be shown.</p><p>The results indicate that the 20CRv3 is an improvement in representing cyclone climate and variability compared to previous versions (20CRv2c or 20CRv2). However, as in previous versions, the 20CRv3 ensemble-average fields are too smooth to use for tracking cyclones and studying cyclone climate, especially for the period before 1960 for the NH and for the entire reanalysis period for the SH, and that there are still temporal inhomogeneity issues in the 20CRv3, especially in the SH and in the early period for the NH, due to the increases over time of observations available for assimilation. The improvements arise from the use of a higher model resolution and the assimilation of more observations. They include that the 20CRv3 ensemble shows cyclones of higher intensities and a higher number of deep cyclones (center pressure ≤ 960 hPa) in the Northern Hemisphere than the 20CRv2c counterpart. Historical trends of cyclone activity and their uncertainties will be discussed based on the results of tracking the individual members of the 20CRv3 ensemble, with the temporal inhomogeneity issues being taken into account.  </p>


1999 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Magnusson

A description of two cases from my time as a school psychologist in the middle of the 1950s forms the background to the following question: Has anything important happened since then in psychological research to help us to a better understanding of how and why individuals think, feel, act, and react as they do in real life and how they develop over time? The studies serve as a background for some general propositions about the nature of the phenomena that concerns us in developmental research, for a summary description of the developments in psychological research over the last 40 years as I see them, and for some suggestions about future directions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Kozma ◽  
E. Molnár ◽  
K. Czimre ◽  
J. Pénzes

Abstract In our days, energy issues belong to the most important problems facing the Earth and the solution may be expected partly from decreasing the amount of the energy used and partly from the increased utilisation of renewable energy resources. A substantial part of energy consumption is related to buildings and includes, inter alia, the use for cooling/heating, lighting and cooking purposes. In the view of the above, special attention has been paid to minimising the energy consumption of buildings since the late 1980s. Within the framework of that, the passive house was created, a building in which the thermal comfort can be achieved solely by postheating or postcooling of the fresh air mass without a need for recirculated air. The aim of the paper is to study the changes in the construction of passive houses over time. In addition, the differences between the geographical locations and the observable peculiarities with regard to the individual building types are also presented.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Jens Bonnemann

In ethics, when discussing problems of justice and a just social existence one question arises obviously: What is the normal case of the relation between I and you we start from? In moral philosophy, each position includes basic socio-anthropological convictions in that we understand the other, for example, primarily as competitor in the fight for essential resources or as a partner in communication. Thus, it is not the human being as isolated individual, or as specimen of the human species or socialised member of a historical society what needs to be understood. Instead, the individual in its relation to the other or others has been studied in phenomenology and the philosophy of dialogue of the twentieth century. In the following essay I focus on Martin Buber’s and Jean-Paul Sartre’s theories of intersubjectivity which I use in order to explore the meaning of recognition and disrespect for an individual. They offer a valuable contribution to questions of practical philosophy and the socio-philosophical diagnosis of our time.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher James Hopwood ◽  
Ted Schwaba ◽  
Wiebke Bleidorn

Personal concerns about climate change and the environment are a powerful motivator of sustainable behavior. People’s level of concern varies as a function of a variety of social and individual factors. Using data from 58,748 participants from a nationally representative German sample, we tested preregistered hypotheses about factors that impact concerns about the environment over time. We found that environmental concerns increased modestly from 2009-2017 in the German population. However, individuals in middle adulthood tended to be more concerned and showed more consistent increases in concern over time than younger or older people. Consistent with previous research, Big Five personality traits were correlated with environmental concerns. We present novel evidence that increases in concern were related to increases in the personality traits neuroticism and openness to experience. Indeed, changes in openness explained roughly 50% of the variance in changes in environmental concerns. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the individual level factors associated with changes in environmental concerns over time, towards the promotion of more sustainable behavior at the individual level.


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