The Watch Tower movement was a millennial social movement which was popular in Nyasaland, Southern and Northern Rhodesia, and the Belgian Congo, and in parts of the countries bordering these territories, between the two world wars. It derived its doctrine initially from the writings of Charles Russell, the founder of one of the largest sects of the twentieth century, the Jehovah's Witnesses. The African Watch Tower however was largely independent of the Jehovah's Witnesses, although this body attempted to establish its control in central Africa, and its ideology and organisation changed and developed in accordance with local conditions. While some similarities in the conditions of rapid urbanisation which surrounded the origins of the Jehovah's Witnesses in America, and the Watch Tower in Africa, may be discerned, its political and historical role was a very different one. Spread by labour migrants moving between employment centres and from the village to the urban compound, the Watch Tower contributed to the new forms of association which enabled workers to protest against their conditions of employment, and assisted in spreading a pan-Africanist consciousness which was a significant current in the development of anti-colonial nationalism. It was not only an urban movement, but also selectively influenced the countryside, where external factors and the nature of local social organisations were favourable. It spread rapidly, in a wide variety of forms, and with little formality regarding who was or was not a member, but retained a central core of ideas and an organisational structure, which allows the movement to be treated as a unity.

This Master thesis deals with the topic of the German minority in the village Lenora. As the life in Lenora was very closely connected to the local glassworks, the thesis provides a brief history of glass in the Bohemian Forest and the glassworks in Lenora as well as the historical context in the country dating from the establishment of Czechoslovakia and the analysis of the life in Lenora. The thesis also describes the situation after the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia because many Germans stayed in Lenora even after the expulsion due to their employment in the glassworks. In addition to the history of Germans in Lenora, interviews with several contemporary witnesses were made. After the expulsion, the population in Lenora changed significantly, which was the reason for dedicating one chapter to the topic of remigration. The last chapter informs about the current state of affairs concentrating on the society Heimatkreis Prachatitz administered by Germans who lived in the district of Prachatice.

Esse trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a ação das Testemunhas de Jeová, seita religiosa milenarista norte-americana, em São Paulo, entre os anos de 1930 e 1954. Em meio aos governos de Vargas e Dutra, à Segunda Guerra Mundial e ao início da Guerra Fria, a \"Sociedade Torre de Vigia de Bíblias e Tratados\" - nome jurídico adotado pelas Testemunhas de Jeová no Brasil - teve suas publicações confiscadas, membros presos e seu registro de atividades proscrito no país entre 1940 e 1947. Sob alegações diversas e contraditórias, as Testemunhas de Jeová foram acusadas de propagandear o nazismo, o fascismo, o anarquismo e o comunismo, em vista de proclames como a não prestação de serviço militar obrigatório, não saudação de símbolos nacionais, não transfusão de sangue e de seu proselitismo anticlerical, feito de porta em porta pelas ruas da cidade. Acreditando-se \"missionários pioneiros\" em meio a uma realidade supersticiosa católica, as Testemunhas de Jeová reeditaram no Brasil, a partir da década de 20, o mesmo discurso utilizado pelos puritanos ingleses que colonizaram a América no século XVII: tratavam-se do \"povo eleito\" de Deus na Terra que se dizia em combate com organizações \"satânicas\" e \"obscurantistas\", como a Igreja Católica. A despeito do estreitamento das relações entre Brasil e Estados Unidos no final dos anos 30, de nossa definitiva entrada na Segunda Guerra Mundial ao lado dos Aliados, e da cooperação verificada entre os dois países no período pós-guerra na luta contra o comunismo, as Testemunhas de Jeová, uma organização religiosa norteamericana, foram perseguidas no país, talvez por também reeditarem no Brasil a retórica mítica de construção dos Estados Unidos, de sua defesa de liberdade de culto e do sistema democrático de governo - em oposição ao Catolicismo e ao subdesenvolvimento brasileiros. Neste sentido, buscamos perceber até que ponto a perseguição policial e judicial empreendida contra essa organização religiosa, que contava com menos de 1000 adeptos até 1947, encontrava eco no estreitamento de interesses entre a Igreja Católica e o Estado brasileiros. / This study focuses on the action of the Jehovah\'s Witnesses, a North American millenary religious sect, in São Paulo, between 1930 and 1954. During Vargas and Dutra\'s governments, the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, the Watchtower Society (\"Sociedade Torre de Vigia de Bíblias e Tratados\") - juridical name adopted in Brazil by the Jehovah\'s Witnesses - publications had been confiscated, its members had been arrested and the registry of activities had been exiled from the country between 1940 and 1947. Under various and contradictory claims, the Jehovah\'s Witnesses had been charged with advertising the nazism, fascism, anarchism and communism, based on the lack of rendering obligatory military service, lack of salutation of the national symbols, lack of blood transfusion and anticlergy proselytism, made everywhere in the city. Believing that they were the \"first missionaries\" on a superstitious Catholic reality, the Jehovah\'s Witnesses reissued in Brazil, from the twenties on, the same speech that was used by the English Puritan who settled America on the 17th century: they were the \"elected people\" by God on Earth and told they were here to struggle with the \"devilish\" and \"obscurantist\" organizations, such as the Catholic Church. Despite the narrowing between Brazilian and American relationship at the end of the thirties, our real entrance at the Second World War with the Allied and the checked help between both countries at the post-war period against the Communism, the Jehovah\'s Witnesses, a North American organization, had been chased in the country, maybe because they also reissued in Brazil the mythical rhetorical of the USA construction, in the defense of cult freedom and democratic system - different from the Brazilian Catholicism and undergrown. Based on these, we intend to see at which extent the judicial and political chasing against this religious organization, which had less than followers until 1947, found the echo on the benefits narrowing between the Catholic Church and the Brazilian states.

A growing body of research suggests that cross-examination may be detrimental to the accuracy of children�s event reports. The primary goal of the present research was to investigate three specific ways in which the negative effect of cross-examination could be reduced. Experiment 1 examined the effect of reducing the delay between the collection of the primary evidence and cross-examination. Five- and 6-year-old children (N = 76) took part in a staged event and were interviewed 1 to 2 days later. In this interview, children were asked to recall everything they could remember about the event. Children were then asked specific yes/no questions. Next, either 1 to 3 days or 8 months later, all children were interviewed for a second time in a cross-examination format. The 8-month delay was equivalent to the average delay experienced by children in New Zealand courts (Lash, 1995). The aim of the cross-examination interview was to talk the children out of their original responses, irrespective of the accuracy of their original account. Cross-examination questioning had a significant negative effect on the accuracy of children�s reports, regardless of timing. That is, children cross-examined soon after the memory event performed no better than those who were cross-examined after an 8-month delay. Furthermore, one week after cross-examination, children were interviewed again. The purpose of this interview was to establish whether children actually believed the responses they had given during cross-examination. During this interview, many children reversed what they had said during cross-examination, indicating that the responses they had given during cross-examination were due primarily to compliance to authority. Given the finding that compliance to authority played a significant role in children�s cross-examination performance in Experiment 1, Experiment 2 addressed whether a pre-interview intervention aimed to decrease compliance would reduce the negative impact of cross-examination. Five- and 6-year-old children (n = 59) and 9- and 10-year-old children (n = 62) participated in the same staged event and were interviewed for their primary evidence as in Experiment 1. Prior to the cross-examination interview, however, some children were warned that the interviewer might ask some questions which were tricky and that it was okay to tell her that she was wrong. Warning children prior to the cross-examination interview did not reduce the negative impact of cross-examination for either age group, even when the warning was delivered by the cross-examining interviewer. Experiment 3 addressed whether a more intensive pre-interview intervention could reduce the negative impact of cross-examination. Using the same experimental procedures as Experiment 2, half of the 5- and 6-year-old children (n = 77) and 9- and 10-year-old children (n = 87) received a practice and feedback session with cross-examination type questions prior to the target interview. While cross-examination still resulted in a decrease in children�s accuracy, children in the preparation condition performed significantly better than the control children. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the negative effect of cross-examination is highly robust and that compliance appears to be the underlying mechanism responsible for this. A practice and feedback session targeting the factors that contribute to compliance reduced, but did not eliminate, the negative effect of this questioning style. Therefore, children�s accuracy may be facilitated to some extent by cross-examination preparation prior to testifying.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Comparative Literature Department, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka hur bra vi är på att bedöma ålder på omaskerade och maskerade ansikten. Syftet var även att undersöka om det fanns systematiska fel som är förknippade med åldersbedömning av maskerade ansikten. Totalt fick 60 försöksdeltagare, samtliga ungdomar, skatta åldern på 60 fotografier av 30 maskerade och 30 omaskerade män.  Fotografierna var indelade i två åldersgrupper, yngre och äldre, och samtliga stimulipersoner förekom i både den maskerade och den omaskerade varianten. Resultaten visade att försöksdeltagarna var bättre på att skatta åldern på omaskerade ansikten än på maskerade. Inga skillnader i systematiska fel fans mellan maskerade och omaskerade ansikten. Bilder av unga ansikten skattades med högre precision än bilder av äldre ansikten. / The purpose of this study was to investigate how well we are at age estimations of masked and unmasked faces. The purpose was also to investigate if there were any biases that effected age estimations of masked faces. A total of 60 participants, all juveniles, estimated the age of 60 photographs of 30 masked and 30 unmasked men. The photographs were divided into two age groups, younger and older, and all of the men, who served as stimuli, were represented in both conditions. The results showed that the participants were better at estimating the age of unmasked than masked faces. There were no differences in biases between masked and unmasked faces. Photographs of young faces were estimated with greater precision than older faces.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Psychology, August 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

When accidents occur, citizens often are the real first responders. This has been acknowledged and studied from an international perspective, particularly in relation to large crises and disasters, but remains relatively unstudied from a Swedish perspective. This thesis takes its point of departure from people who have been emergency callers or witnesses to traffic accidents, studying their actions and interactions at the scene of an accident in terms of boundaries, positioning and emergence. The aim of this thesis is to study how people’s actions in a specific situation are affected by their interactions with both real and imagined others and how their actions are affected by the spatial context. The thesis consists of four individual studies that relate differently to the main aim of the thesis. The first study focuses on first responders’ options to act in a place that simultaneously is the workplace of emergency personnel: the incident site. This study shows how first responders’ options to act are governed in large part by their interaction with emergency personnel and their boundary practices at the incident site. In this study, we apply theories of boundary practices from Nippert-Eng and the concept of boundary work from Gieryn to explain how emergency personnel control their place of work through boundary practices and through that process control those first responders who are present at the site. In other words, people’s actions at the incident site are affected by both the social and the spatial context. The second study focuses on a limited selection of first responders: those who have placed emergency calls. Through interviews with callers and transcriptions of their emergency calls, this study explores how the callers frame their decision to stop and place the call through different presentations of self. These presentations are constructed through moral positioning, in which the callers position themselves and their actions in relation to both real and imagined others. Thus, the callers also construct normative accounts of what is considered a “preferable” and “non-preferable” way to act at the scene of an accident. The third study takes its point of departure from theories and previous research on emergence because they have been used by disaster sociologists to explain how citizens are the real first responders to crises and disasters. Through the concepts of emergent behavior and emergent norms, papers in this research field have argued that people in these situations act according to “new and not-yet-institutionalized behavior guidelines”. In this study, I argue that emergence, in other words, citizens as the real first responders, is also present in everyday emergencies. Through the narratives of citizen first responders, I explore how they frame their actions through different normative narratives. These normative narratives are not necessarily emergent, however. Rather, the interviewees use past experience and presentations of self to justify their actions at the scene of an accident. The fourth study is an ethnographic reflection of the researcher’s place-bounded identity in a field study that revolves around several different places. Rather than focusing on a story of first responders, this study focuses on the researcher’s, i.e., my own, story from the scene of an accident, the fire truck and the fire station. What I have been able to study through these different studies are stories of actions rather than “actual” actions or behaviors. In these stories, it becomes clear that first responders relate to both a social and spatial context as they provide accounts of their actions at the scene of an accident. They relate to a social context because they frame their actions through their interactions with different actors and position themselves in relation to those actors—and in relation to a spatial context. That is, they perform their actions in a place that is someone else’s place of work, with jurisdictional claims of both legitimacy and control. In summary, this thesis contributes a deeper knowledge of how citizen first responders interpret, understand and tell the story of their actions at the scene of an accident. The contribution considers the fact that citizen first responders are something of a “blind spot”, not only in the field of emergency research but also for emergency personnel who do not always acknowledge the experience of first responders at the scene of accidents.

During a crime event, witnesses may have to judge the veracity of a suspect. I hypothesized that, because performing this task is cognitively demanding, (a) it would impair subsequent memory for details about the suspect and (b) judging veracity while motivated to do so as accurately as possible would exaggerate this effect. These predictions were supported. Additionally, witnesses who judged veracity reported increased certainty about the accuracy of their description and message and their identification of the suspect compared to control witnesses, and they also said they had a better view of the suspect and paid more attention to him. Motivation further inflated some of these testimony-relevant judgments. Moreover, compared to control witnesses, motivated witnesses who judged veracity reported a greater willingness to testify and a clearer image of the suspect in their memory. / Department of Psychological Science