Rape Culture and Epistemology

We consider the complex interactions between rape culture and epistemology. A central case study is the consideration of a deferential attitude about the epistemology of sexual assault testimony. According to the deferential attitude, individuals and institutions should decline to act on allegations of sexual assault unless and until they are proven in a formal setting, i.e., a criminal court. We attack this deference from several angles, including the pervasiveness of rape culture in the criminal justice system, the epistemology of testimony and norms connecting knowledge and action, the harms of tacit idealizations away from important contextual factors, and a contextualist semantics for 'knows' ascriptions

Concentrations of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), Polychlorinated Dibenzo-p-dioxins and Furans (PCDD/Fs), and Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) as Functions of Sample Depth in Killer Whale (Orcinus orca) Blubber

Concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) were examined as a function of depth in killer whale (Orcinus orca) blubber samples. Lipid-normalized concentrations of PCBs, PCDD/Fs, and PBDEs did not display significant variation with depth in three distinct blubber layers (outer, central, and inner). Significantly more variation in contaminant concentrations were observed with depth on a wet weight basis for the killer whale sample. The current study indicates that non-invasive microdart biopsy sampling methods commonly used for monitoring contaminants in marine mammals yield representative details on contaminant burdens for chlorinated and brominated aromatic compounds in marine mammal blubber, regardless of the quantity and type of blubber sampled, provided that lipid normalization is performed on resulting analytical determinations

The effect of cobalt60 radiation on squamous cell carcinomas of the nasal planum of the domestic cat

Squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) are caused by high levels of UVB (B fraction of the ultra violet ray) radiation on susceptible animal tissue. Factors that influence the ultra violet radiation (UV) level in different parts of the world are altitude, intensity and duration of sunlight, and thickness of the ozone layer. South Africa’s UV radiation levels are amongst the highest recorded in the world. The UVB energy enters the squamous cell and damages the DNA, which results in the uncontrolled proliferation of the squamous cells. Ultimately this proliferation of the squamous cells leads to the formation of a squamous cell carcinoma. The normal histology of the well-ordered squamous cell tissue changes from its regular pattern to one of disintegration as the carcinoma grows at the expense of the normal tissue. This clinical study examines the results of 75 feline patients with solar-induced SCC of the nasal planum treated with Cobalt 60 radiation. The cats were grouped clinically according to the severity of the SCC from 1-4, least to worst. The cats were sedated and their nasal planums irradiated on a recognised veterinary fractionated protocol of Monday/Wednesday/Friday. The clinical response was judged by the visual reduction in size and the diminishing aggressiveness of the tumour. This response determined the radiation dose and the number of treatments. The cats, age, sex, clinical appearance, number of treatments, radiation dose and survival period were recorded. A photographic record was kept of the patient’s progress before, during, and after treatment and the cats’ subsequent period of monitoring. Environmental compliance by the owners with respect to limiting exposure to solar radiation was also recorded. The cats were monitored for two years after the initial radiation treatment. The results were statistically analysed and showed that there was a correlation between the initial graded appearance of the nasal planum SCC and the period of survival. There was no statistically significant effect on survival of the independent variables of age, sex, and total radiation dose. However the clinical evidence was, that cats presenting with early nasal planum SCCs and treated with a low dose of radiation survived well. Those with more advanced lesions responded less favourably but enjoyed the palliation of pain that the radiation provided. This study has shown that mega-voltage radiation can play a most effective part in the treatment of actinic induced nasal planum squamous cell carcinoma. The challenge is to educate the owners and veterinarians to recognise the condition at an early stage and for veterinarians to have access to mega voltage radiation machines

Reading the Runes: Conflict, Culture and "Evidence" in Law-making in the UK

In public discourse the idea of “evidence-based” law-making implies that expert opinion consists of incontrovertible facts that can be turned into solutions, irrespective of politics. Laws about children are often conceived as if they are especially free from the contamination by politics. This paper will challenge such assumptions, relying on a contemporary historical and ethnographic study to demonstrate how evidence and politics are entangled when you have conflicts over cultural change. I followed one clause about parenting as it made its journey through the Westminster Houses of Parliament to be transformed from a bill into the Children and Families Act 2014, observing the rituals of the chamber and committees, and the more discursive private discussions with civil society, which led to changes to the parliamentary texts. I found a complex web of relationships behind the public performances and underneath these texts and meetings between Ministers, civil servants, Parliamentarians, activists, lawyers, social workers, fathers, mothers and children. Making law is more about negotiating between clashing interests and values and reading the runes than weighing up evidence and planning the future as if it could be predicted

Placing fashion: art, space, display and the building of luxury fashion markets through retail design

This paper explores the performative and affective affordances enshrined in contemporary fashion space. Fashion markets need to be placed in a much more serious conceptual way. Whilst much critical attention has been focused on the geographies of fashion production, it is also important to explore the spaces in which fashion is displayed, consumed, exhibited and performed and thus to understand how fashion markets are ordered, regulated and maintained in space and through time. In order to ‘place’ fashion space within the contemporary city the paper focuses on a set of alliances between art and fashion in the making of current consumption space. It is argued that the collaboration between art and fashion opens up a means to critically explore how representational worlds are brought into being and offers new ways to understand how creative activity can be rooted in (and reflective of) broader social, economic and cultural concerns. Such collisions and collusions represent a key means of making and shaping value and reveal the significance of visuality, singularity and judgement in determining commodity and brand meaning and valu

Not Looking Hard Enough: Masculinity, Emotion, and Prison Research

In her recent article on autoethnography and emotion in prison research, Jewkes suggests that “most prison studies remain surprisingly ungendered texts,” and that—on the whole—the scholars who have written about the emotional dimensions of prison research have been women. This article explores both of these claims. First, it draws attention to areas of prison research in which male researchers have been relatively reflexive about matters of emotion and masculinity, while also highlighting the way that some of the emotional dimensions of prison research can be identified even within the classic studies of prison sociology. Second, it suggests that one of the most striking omissions from most studies of men’s imprisonment is the analysis of “homosocial relations” between men—relations defined by flows of masculine intimacy that are submerged or expressed indirectly. Third, it describes some of the author’s experiences as a man undertaking research with imprisoned men, highlighting the degree to which entwined discourses of masculinity and class shaped the research process.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Sage at http://qix.sagepub.com/content/20/4/426.abstract?rss=1

Ethnographies of Parliament: culture and uncertainty in shallow democracies

This paper considers the challenges, advantages and limits of ethnographical approaches to the study of Parliament. Challenges in the study of political institutions emerge because they can be fast-changing, difficult to gain access to, have starkly contrasting public and private faces and, in the case of national Parliaments, are intimately connected to rest of the nation. Ethnography usually tends to be difficult to plan in advance, but especially so when Parliament is the focus. Research in Parliament requires clear questions but an emergent approach for answering them – working out your assumptions, deciding on the most appropriate methods depending on what wish to find out, and continually reviewing progress. Its great strengths are flexibility, ability to encompass wider historical and cultural practices into the study, getting under the surface and achieving philosophical rigour. Rigour is partly achieved through reflexivity. One implication of this is that not only will each study of Parliament be different, because each is embedded in different histories, cultures, and politics, but the study of the same Parliament will contain variations if a team is involved. Ethnographical research is a social and political process of relating; interpreting texts, events and conversations; and representing the ‘other’ as seen by observers