Surveying rape

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 100-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Rutherford

College campus-based surveys of sexual assault in the United States have generated one of the most high-profile and contentious figures in the history of social science: the ‘1 in 5’ statistic. Referring to the number of women who have experienced either attempted or completed sexual assault since their time in college, ‘1 in 5’ has done significant work in making the prevalence of this experience legible to the public and to policy-makers. Here I examine how sexual assault surveys have participated in structuring the ontology of date/acquaintance rape from the 1980s to today. I review the foundational work of feminist social scientists Diana Russell and Mary Koss, with particular attention to the methodological practices through which the concept of the ‘hidden’ or ‘unacknowledged’ rape victim emerged. I then examine a selection of early 21st-century sexual assault surveys and highlight the ongoing preoccupation with survey methodology in responses to their results. I argue that the survey itself has been a central actor in the ontological politics of sexual assault, and only by closely attending to its performativity can we understand the paradoxical persistence both of critical responses to the ‘1 in 5’ statistic and of its effective deployment in anti-violence policy.

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-234
Author(s):  
Craig Douglas Albert

One of the more interesting aspects of world concern during “Operation Iraqi Freedom” was how to incorporate Iraq’s Kurdish population into an American military strategy. Furthermore, as the war was winding down, and the United States and Iraq began to construct a new Iraqi state, government, and Constitutional regime, the focus shifted on what role would the Kurds play in the new government, or even if they should be included in a government. But for most policy-makers, it was unclear who were the Kurds. How were they different than the other ethnic and religious populations of Iraq and the region generally? What was their history with the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein? The purpose of this paper is to provide answers to these most important questions through the lens of Political Science. As Iraq continues to form its new identity, it is important to understand what constitutes the identity of one of its most prominent ethnic groups, the Kurds. In tracing and describing Kurdish ethnic attributes, it is also important to delineate the history between the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein, how Iraqi identity was constructed in opposition to Kurdish identity (often oppressing it), and to understand the tense relationship between the two, a relationship that is most aptly described as having a history of violence.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Schindler ◽  
Allison Cowan

Almost half of all women and almost a quarter of all men in the United States have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. Treating individuals who have survived sexual assault can pose challenges for psychiatric and medical treatment. The rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are higher with sexual assault, and people with sexual trauma often feel stigmatized and have difficulty presenting for care. This chapter reviews epidemiology and neurobiology of sexual assault as well as the physical and psychological sequelae of sexual assault. Here, the authors review and propose practical treatment recommendations to assist in the treatment of individuals with a history of sexual assault. This review 5 figures, 5 tables, and 53 references. Key Words: posttraumatic stress disorder, rape recovery, sexual assault, treatment recommendations, women’s mental health, rape survivor treatment, rape


Author(s):  
Laura Anderson

Sound design is a relatively recent term, first used to credit Walter Murch’s work on Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). Murch has frequently drawn an analogy between how he perceived his role as decorating the three-dimensional film theater with sound and the work of an interior designer who decorates an architectural space (LoBrutto 1994, p. 92, cited under Key Practitioners: Compilations). Sound design is also a topic of increasing interest within film music scholarship, particularly its history and how it might be analyzed. The history of sound design is inextricably bound up with the history of technology, notably the emergence of Dolby in the 1970s. In his Oxford Bibliographies article “Music and Cinema, Classical Hollywood,” David Neumeyer noted in the introduction that the end of the Classical Hollywood era could be situated c. 1972 when the “contemporary era of sound design began in earnest,” and this particular period is indeed crucial. Yet, this is not to suggest that the history of film sound design is brief; in fact, it has a long history of antecedents that have shaped the role of the sound designer into a somewhat fluid concept. As of the early 21st century, no consensus has been reached on the definition of “sound design” in current research; however, the distinction between sound design as the work of one individual as opposed to a mode of practice is apparent. Furthermore, “sound designer” also has a professional meaning; in the United States the labor union defines the sound designer as a person who designs the sound effects. Some scholars expound this relatively narrow definition of sound design as akin to sound effects editing in the post-production process, whereas others see it as a broad undertaking, concerned with every aspect of the sonic environment. Murch encourages a broader definition of the sound designer as “someone who plans, creates the sound effects and mixes the final soundtrack, and thereby takes responsibility for the sound of a film the way a director of photography takes responsibility for the image” (Murch 1995, p. 246, cited under Key Practitioners: Articles). Sound design can encapsulate all components of film sound, including music, dialogue, sound effects, and voiceovers. This holistic understanding of the term is reflected in a significant interdisciplinary edition that takes the concept of the integrated soundtrack as a central theme (Greene and Kulezic-Wilson 2016, cited under Analyzing Film Sound Design). Sound design can involve conceptualization and practical efforts as well as cooperation with the director, producer, composer, editors, and other creative personnel. Sound designer Randy Thom has highlighted the importance of developing opportunities for the creative use of sound when making a film and has appealed for filmmakers to design their films for sound (Thom 1999, cited under Key Practitioners: Articles). The combination of creativity, technical expertise, and the ability to conceptualize innovative interactions between sound and image inherent in the concept is reflected in the very title of “sound designer,” a label that is not officially recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards. With the growing popularity of the term among some industry professionals, it is becoming common for sound artists to claim the credit “sound designer” in addition to those for recognized roles such as “sound editor” or “re-recording engineer” (Whittington 2007, p. 26, cited under Histories and Definitions of Sound Design). Within film music studies, the concept of sound design is increasingly used as a filter for analysis of a film’s soundscape, and thus publications now address how to analyze more complex film soundtracks. The focus of this article is divided into three broad strands: textbooks that give practical and technical direction for film sound design or aspects of it, literature on the history of sound design and the purview of the sound designer, and publications about and interviews with key practitioners.


Author(s):  
Paul Schor

By telling how the US census classified and divided Americans by race and origin from the founding of the United States to World War II, this book shows how public statistics have been used to create an unequal representation of the nation. From the beginning, the census was a political undertaking, torn between the conflicting demands of the state, political actors, social scientists, businesses, and interest groups. Through the extensive archives of the Bureau of the Census, it traces the interactions that led to the adoption or rejection of changes in the ways different Americans were classified, as well as the changing meaning of seemingly stable categories over time. Census workers and directors by necessity constantly interpreted official categories in the field and in the offices. The difficulties they encountered, the mobilization and resistance of actors, the negotiations with the census, all tell a social history of the relation of the state to the population. Focusing in detail on slaves and their descendants, on racialized groups, and on immigrants, as well as on the troubled imposition of US racial categories upon the population of newly acquired territories, the book demonstrates that census-taking in the United States has been at its core a political undertaking shaped by racial ideologies that reflect its violent history of colonization, enslavement, segregation, and discrimination.


The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justicebrings together researchers who work on crime and criminal justice in the past with an emphasis on the interaction between history and social sciences. Although working on similar subject matters historians and social scientists are often motivated by different intellectual concerns. Historians seek knowledge about crime and criminal justice to better understand the past. In contrast, social scientists draw on past experiences to build sociological, criminological, or socio-legal knowledge. Nevertheless, researchers from both fields have a shared interest in social theory, in the use of social science techniques for analysis, and in a critical outlook in examining perceptions of the past that shape popular myths and justify criminal justice policies in the present. TheHandbookis intended as a guide for both current researchers and newcomers to orient themselves on key aspects of current research from both fields. TheHandbookincludes thirty-four essays covering theory and methods; forms of crime; crime, gender, and ethnicities; cultural representations of crime; the rise of criminology; law enforcement and policing; law, courts, and criminal justice; and punishment and prisons. The essays concentrate on the Atlantic world, particularly Europe and the United States, during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. All of the authors situate their topic within the wider historiography.


Numeracy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Best

William Briggs. 2017. How America Got Its Guns: A History of the Gun Violence Crisis; (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press). Paperback: ISBN 978-0-8263-5813-4. E-book ISBN 978-0-8263-5814-1. Mathematician William Briggs (co-author of the well-regarded Understanding and Using Mathematics) has written a remarkably thorough and evenhanded analysis of gun policy in the United States that draws upon the work of historians, legal scholars, social scientists, and advocates. He gives respectful hearings to claims about the importance of both gun rights and gun control. The breadth of his coverage makes it almost certain that any reader will discover new angles for thinking about gun issues.


Author(s):  
Alejandra Cabello ◽  
Elisa Moncarz ◽  
Raúl Moncarz ◽  
Benjamin Moncarz

<p>Recent collapses of high profile business failures like Enron, Worldcom, Parmlat, and Tyco has been a subject of great debate among regulators, investors, government and academics in the recent past. Enron´s case was the greatest failure in the history of American capitalism and had a major impact on financial markets by causing significant losses to investors. Enron was a company ranked by fortune as the most innovative company in the United States; it exemplified the transition from the production to the knowledge economy. Many lessons can we learn from its collapse. In this paper we present an analysis of the factors that contributed to Enron´s rise and failure, underlying the role that energy deregulation and manipulation of financial stat.</p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 307
Author(s):  
Amanda Sprochi

Vaccines and vaccination in the United States have become topics of dispute in some circles in the last two decades, since Andrew Wakefield published a high-profile and now thoroughly discredited study in Lancet linking vaccines to autism disorder. Tish Davidson’s book, Vaccines: History, Science, and Issues, takes a look at the history of vaccines and vaccinations, their mechanism of action, potential side effects, and development and use. She also documents the anti-vaccine (anti-vaxxer) movement, which began in the eighteenth century and has found renewed adherents in the present day. Davidson’s research is scientific, meticulous, and dispassionate in its coverage of both vaccine proponents and detractors. 


Author(s):  
Michael Schiltz

Japan’s experience with modern capitalism and finance is characterized by a remarkable combination of shocks and adaptation. After being steamrolled by Western institutions and financial technologies, the country attempted to retaliate against this intrusion. However, regaining financial sovereignty proved a protracted process of trial and error. In the 1880s and 1890s, under the auspices of Matsukata Masayoshi, Tokyo seemed to get it right. The establishment of the Bank of Japan and related institutions, on the one hand, and the adoption of the gold standard, on the other, appeared designed to lift Japan out of its peripheral status. In reality, however, they mostly served to emphasize its role as an enabler of the British-led international order. Only in the 1930s, during the worldwide Great Depression, would it break with this role, if only to find that its autonomy had been compromised from the very beginning. Japan’s disastrous loss in World War II drove the country into the arms of the newly arisen global hegemon: the United States. In the early 21st-century, Japan remains a linchpin in the still surviving American-led world order and the corollary “dollar standard.”


Author(s):  
Thomas A. Reinstein

The United States has a rich history of intelligence in the conduct of foreign relations. Since the Revolutionary War, intelligence has been most relevant to U.S. foreign policy in two ways. Intelligence analysis helps to inform policy. Intelligence agencies also have carried out overt action—secret operations—to influence political, military, or economic conditions in foreign states. The American intelligence community has developed over a long period, and major changes to that community have often occurred because of contingent events rather than long-range planning. Throughout their history, American intelligence agencies have used intelligence gained from both human and technological sources to great effect. Often, U.S. intelligence agencies have been forced to rely on technological means of intelligence gathering for lack of human sources. Recent advances in cyberwarfare have made technology even more important to the American intelligence community. At the same time, the relationship between intelligence and national-security–related policymaking has often been dysfunctional. Indeed, though some American policymakers have used intelligence avidly, many others have used it haphazardly or not at all. Bureaucratic fights also have crippled the American intelligence community. Several high-profile intelligence failures tend to dominate the recent history of intelligence and U.S. foreign relations. Some of these failures were due to lack of intelligence or poor analytic tradecraft. Others came because policymakers failed to use the intelligence they had. In some cases, policymakers have also pressured intelligence officers to change their findings to better suit those policymakers’ goals. And presidents have often preferred to use covert action to carry out their preferred policies without paying attention to intelligence analysis. The result has been constant debate about the appropriate role of intelligence in U.S. foreign relations.


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