The social and cultural roots of political violence in Central America

The paper suggests that there are specific features of violence, both personal and organized that have roots in the cultural formation of the Central American peoples. Its focus is on the three neighboring countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador and on the ideological violence of the twentieth century. The paper considers various aspects of the social character of the Spanish Americans of this area, their concepts of manliness, and their religion, as these affect both rich and poor, and contrasts these features with the attitudes of the indigenous Indian community. Having established that political violence is endemic in the region, the paper considers the role of Hispanic culture in shaping this violence. Emphasis is placed on the notion of machismo, which is identified not with pleasure seeking but with defiance of death. The attitudes of the people of this area toward death shape their attitudes toward violence. They are shown to have a fascination with the instruments of death, especially the machete among the lower classes and the gun among the university students. These attitudes are contrasted with the relatively non-violent attitudes of the Indians. The studies cited in this paper show the Indians as less interested in competition and aggression that the Hispanic population. In the last analysis, the violence of the Central American is intensely personal and can be shown to derive from the basic social and cultural fabric of the society.     

Combating intimate partner violence in Africa: Opportunities and challenges in five African countries

Recent research results emerging from Africa show a worrying situation regarding the levels of intimate partner violence (IPV) in various countries in the continent — levels that are quite high and place great financial burden on individuals and governments. This paper explores the magnitude, nature, and risk factors of IPV in five African countries, namely, Morocco, Nigeria, Namibia, Uganda, and Tanzania. The focus of the paper is to explore issues of IPV in these countries by considering the opportunities in each country that could assist in the prevention of violence, and also to identify inherent challenges that may pose threats to efforts in reducing the high IPV prevalence. As there are only limited studies on IPV in developing countries, new insights provided by this paper would afford relevant stakeholders a better understanding of the issue.     

The ‘Emerging Church’ in America: Notes on the interaction of Christianities

The ‘Emerging Church’ is an American-born movement that dates to the late 1990s. It is fundamentally a movement of cultural critique in which the primary interlocutor is the dominant tradition in the United States, conservative Evangelicalism. In this article I address the phenomenon of Emerging Christianity based on historical, literary, and ethnographic analyses of Emerging Church advocates and critics. In particular, I argue that four points of dialogue characterize the status of Emerging in the United States: ‘post-foundational’ theology, ‘ancient-future’ worship, ‘missional’ evangelism, and a general posture of ‘deconversion.’ Ultimately, I present the story of the Emerging Church for its significance to two broad theoretical questions. First, how do new forms of religious identity come into being? And, second, for those working in the ‘anthropology of Christianity’: what happens when Christianities interact? In response to these questions, I stress the Janus-faced quality of Emerging Christianity and its reliance on the categories, narratives, and vocabulary of conservative Evangelicalism in constructing its thoroughgoing cultural critique.     

Writing the Pentecostal history of Africa,Asia and Latin America

This article examines the writing of Pentecostal history and in particular, the biases and presuppositions associated with it. The problem of sources and the neglect of the important role of indigenous (‘native’) workers in the historiography of Pentecostalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America is the main focus. It refutes the idea of an American ‘Jerusalem’ and urges a rewriting of this history from the perspective of those who ‘received’ the Pentecostal missionaries from the West.     

Intimate partner violence among HIV positive pregnant women in South Africa

The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) and associated factors among pregnant HIV-infected women in primary health care facilities in Nkangala and Gert Sibande districts, Mpumalanga, South Africa. Participants were 673 women who were, on average, 28.39 ± 5.73 years old. Data were collected through Audio Computer Assisted Self Interview (ACASI), and analysed using the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Overall, 56.3% reported having experienced either psychological or physical IPV, and 19.6% reported physical IPV. In logistic multivariable regression analyses, higher levels of depressive symptoms and greater perceived stigma were associated with combined physical and psychological IPV. Psychological IPV and physical IPV were also individually associated with greater perceived stigma and higher levels of depressive symptoms. The design and implementation of evidence-informed interventions that can empower and protect HIV-infected pregnant women from IPV is essential to managing their health-related quality of life.     

Theologies from Africa,Asia and Latin America,including Black Theology: a Bibliography

During the last few years the library of the Ecumenical Centre, in line with its worldwide acquisition policy, has added to its collection many works by theologians from Africa, Asia and Latin America. A consultation of several such theologians took place recently in Geneva. Prominent at the Vancouver Assembly were theologians speaking out of their own context. This is therefore an appropriate moment for rendering a service to theological professors and students in the realm of contextual theology. All the titles indicated in the bibliography are available in the library and can be borrowed.     

The roots of violence: converging psychoanalytic explanatory models for power struggles and violence in schools

This paper demonstrates that several psychoanalytic models taken together converge to collectively explain school violence and power struggles better than each does alone. Using my own experience in doing psychoanalytically informed community intervention, I approach the problem of school violence from a combination of Adlerian, Stollerian, dialectical social systems, and Klein-Bion perspectives. This integrated model is then applied to the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado.     

Effects of media violence on viewers' aggression in unconstrained social interaction

This article provides a meta-analytic review of the experimental effects of media violence on viewers' aggression in unstructured social interaction. In the reviewed experiments, children or adolescents were exposed to violent or control presentations and their postexposure behavior was coded for aggression during spontaneous social interaction. Exposure to media violence significantly enhanced viewers' aggressive behavior when the findings were aggregated across studies, but the effect was not uniform across investigations. Only suggestive evidence was obtained concerning moderators of the effect: Marginally stronger relations were obtained in those studies using a cross-section of the normal population of children (vs. emotionally disturbed children) and in those studies conducted in laboratory settings (vs. other contexts).     

Personality disorder and violence: understand violence risk: an introduction to the special section personality disorder and violence

This paper introduces the Special Section on personality disorder and violence. The first paper evaluates the impact of removing the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) as a mandatory element of a major approach to the assessment of violence risk-the HCR-20. The second paper considers violence to self as well as violence to others; it examines the influence of dysfunctional personality traits in a sample of female offenders. The third paper provides a systematic framework for risk formulation, discussing how to bridge the gap between nomothetic research and the individual case. This paper concludes by arguing that there is a need to shift perspective from asking "what?" dysfunctional traits are relevant to future violence to "why?" are particular traits relevant. The "why?" question is particularly germane in the forensic arena where expert testimony must endeavor to provide a causal explanation of risk processes at the level of the individual.     

Exposure to domestic violence and identity development among adolescent university students in South Africa

This study examined the relationship between exposure to domestic violence and identity development in a sample of 108 undergraduate students with an average age of 18.7 yr. from University of Limpopo in South Africa. There were more women (n = 64; 58.7%) in the study than men (n = 45; 41.3%). Participants were classified into high and low domestic violence exposure groups on the basis of a median split in physical violence scores from the Child Exposure to Domestic Violence Scale (CEDV). Exposure was then compared with identity development as measured by the Ochse and Plug Erikson scale. The results indicated a significant mean difference between the two groups on identity development. Furthermore, exposure to domestic violence was significantly associated with lower scores for identity development as represented by subscales measuring trust, autonomy, initiative and other Eriksonian constructs. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.     

Corporate Culture and Sales Force Management in Japan and America

Abstract

Managers' personal values are a key aspect of corporate culture. Sales representatives' agreement with their managers' values (hereafter “value congruence”) can be expected to influence sales performance, satisfaction, and propensity to quit. These propositions are investigated in two countries. One hundred seventy-five sales representatives and 93 sales managers from a Japanese firm and 146 sales representatives and 21 sales managers from a comparable American firm participated in the study. A questionnaire was distributed to the managers and representatives. Value congruence was found to be weakly related to performance, but strongly related to satisfaction and propensity to quit for both cultural groups. The Japanese group was found to be higher in value congruence and propensity to quit, but lower in satisfaction. Suggested are implications for future research and for managers.     

The meaning of observed violence: Real vs. fictional violence and consequent effects on aggression and emotional arousal

Sixty male subjects were either attacked or treated neutrally by a confederate, after which each saw a videotape of two men fighting. Subjects were informed that fight was either real or fictitious or were given no explanation of it. Subjects who had previously been attacked and had observed the fight under a set to perceive it as real were subsequently more punitive in their treatment of the confederate than subjects in all other conditions. The combination of prior attack and observation of real violence also sustained blood pressure (BP) at near the level produced by the attack, whereas BP of attacked subjects in the other conditions declined during the time the fight was observed. Palmar sweat measures revealed that observation of real violence was more arousing than observation of fictitious fighting. The results are discussed in terms of the effects that the reality of observed violence has on emotional arousal.