Thesis advisor: Lynda Lytle Holmstrom / Rape is a socially constructed behavior used in patriarchal societies to devalue women and ensure male supremacy. Being socially constructed means that the definition of rape can change. This thesis addresses the question of whether an established institution—television—can promote a more progressive definition of rape and help delegitimize it. It uses a feminist content analysis to examine the main themes on 14 episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) aired from 2012-2015. It is qualitative and inductive in nature, approached from a grounded theory perspective. The data demonstrate that SVU does, to some extent, present a more progressive view of rape instead of perpetuating the common stereotypes of rape. Essentially, SVU represents a new variety of definitions of rape that are reflective of white, privileged, heterosexual and young women's experiences in the United States. Race, class, sexual orientation and identity are barely taken into account even though many social inequalities based on them characterize American life. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology.

Cette thèse rend compte de la crise de 1989 en Mauritanie, de ses ressorts lointains et complexes, et du processus inabouti de sortie négociée d’un conflit longtemps recouvert du voile du déni et du silence. Au-delà d’une simple histoire événementielle, elle se propose de considérer les raisons, pour parler comme George Mosse, de la « brutalisation » de la société mauritanienne, la signification dont cette violence et son exacerbation était porteuse et la « politique de réconciliation » initiée par les gouvernements successifs après la chute du président Ould Taya en août 2005. Ce travail, qui est donc une écriture de l’histoire du passé violent et de ses voies d’extrication en Mauritanie, a supposé de notre part de répondre à deux impératifs : premièrement, comprendre le sens des événements, le comment et le pourquoi. Autrement dit, travailler, tout en les interrogeant, à la restitution objective des faits. Deuxièmement, évoquer ce qu’a été la politique de l’Etat mauritanien pour faire face à son histoire problématique, faite de tensions ethniques et sociales, et trouver une issue à la crise. / Cette thèse rend compte de la crise de 1989 en Mauritanie, de ses ressorts lointains et complexes, et du processus inabouti de sortie négociée d’un conflit longtemps recouvert du voile du déni et du silence. Au-delà d’une simple histoire événementielle, elle se propose de considérer les raisons, pour parler comme George Mosse, de la « brutalisation » de la société mauritanienne, la signification dont cette violence et son exacerbation était porteuse et la « politique de réconciliation » initiée par les gouvernements successifs après la chute du président Ould Taya en août 2005. Ce travail, qui est donc une écriture de l’histoire du passé violent et de ses voies d’extrication en Mauritanie, a supposé de notre part de répondre à deux impératifs : premièrement, comprendre le sens des événements, le comment et le pourquoi. Autrement dit, travailler, tout en les interrogeant, à la restitution objective des faits. Deuxièmement, évoquer ce qu’a été la politique de l’Etat mauritanien pour faire face à son histoire problématique, faite de tensions ethniques et sociales, et trouver une issue à la crise.

The aim of this thesis is to provide an information about victimology, its history, on what issues this field of study focuses and what knowledge it provides. Then it is about analysis of whether and how it is possible to use this knowledge for the field of crime prevention and whether it is possible to take more effective preventive measures oriented at the crime victims and what they are. This thesis is divided to introduction, conclusion and six chapters. For introducing the topic into a wider context, the first chapter deals with criminology as the overarching theme of victimology and crime prevention. The second chapter focuses on the criminality, what role victims have in it and what are the possibilities of its control. It defines a concept of crime and its basic characteristics. There is a description of the deference between actual, registered and latent criminality, and what mostly causes its latency. The third chapter provides detailed interpretation of the victimology. The history of this field is briefly described. The principal victimological concepts are defined here, such as victimity, victimization and also crime victims, their typology and differences from the injured party. There are also mentioned the victimology studies and their significance. In conclusion of this chapter...

Forskning om brottsoffer är i Sverige en relativt ny disciplin. Statistik från Brottsförebyggande Rådet visar en kontinuerlig ökning av misshandelsbrott sedan 1975, framför allt en ökning av våldets grovhet och feghet. Den största offergruppen utgörs av män. De våldsdrabbade patienterna möter sjuksköterskan framför allt på akutmottagningarna. Sjuksköterskan står i en maktposition till patienten och denna makt ska användas på ett för patienten positivt sätt. Genom att vara införstådd med att de unga männen kan befinna sig i en krisreaktion kan sjuksköterskan bättre förstå patientens reaktioner och lidande. Syftet med uppsatsen är att beskriva unga mäns levda erfarenheter av att ha blivit utsatta för gatuvåld. Preciserade frågeställningar är: Vad är innebörden i den våldsdrabbade personens tankar och känslor som traumat medfört? Vad är innebörden i den våldsdrabbade personens upplevelser av sig själv och omgivningen efter traumat? Uppsatsen är en litteraturbaserad studie med kvalitativ grund. Tretton unga män berättar i två biografier och en intervjustudie om deras upplevelser där alla blivit utsatta för misshandel av en eller flera gärningsmän. Resultatet visar att de vanligaste känsloyttringarna i männens berättelser är rädsla, ilska, ångest och oro, samt känslan av att vara frånvarande. Dessa känslor tog sig uttryck i olika livsinskränkande handlingar. Männen talade också om att de upplevde att de inte blev bekräftade i sitt lidande och att de ibland möttes av attityder från omgivningen som att de efter misshandeln förväntades klara sig på egen hand. Resultatet diskuteras utifrån kristerorin beskriven av Lagerbäck, Erikssons lidandeteori samt Wiklunds teori om vårdrelationen. Dessutom ligger fokus i diskussionen på rådande fördomar i samhället om män, våld och offerskap. Genom att skaffa sig bättre förståelse av de våldsdrabbade männens lidande kan sjuksköterskan bättre bemöta och vårda patienten. / Program: Sjuksköterskeutbildning

Child maltreatment is a prevalent and pernicious problem in the United States. In 2013, nearly 680,000 children were found to be victims of maltreatment, with actual instances of maltreatment likely significantly higher. Exposure to maltreatment has negative short and long-term impacts on child wellbeing and development. Poverty and single parenthood have long been shown to be primary determinants in the etiology of child maltreatment. Changes in family structure over the last 50 years have resulted in dramatic declines in the number of children who grow up in a two parent married household. Indeed, recent research indicates that large numbers of children will experience living with a single mother as well as experiencing multiple parental relationships throughout their childhoods. At the same time that non-marital relationships have become increasingly common, ideas about the role of fathers in parenting have changed as well. Traditional normative views of fathers as breadwinners have given way to an increased focus on the ways in which father involvement in parenting can influence positive child development. In contrast, research on child maltreatment has largely left the possible role of fathers in protecting against child maltreatment unaddressed. To date, little research has investigated the ways in which mothers’ relationship transitions, as opposed to static measures of marital status, might be associated with the risk for child maltreatment or how fathers’ involvement in parenting may buffer the risk for maternal child maltreatment.

The erotic triangle, in which two men compete for a desired woman, is a foundational archetype of Western culture. This dissertation, through its three separately-published articles, examines how this cultural archetype is manifested in law and legal structures, and the relationship between law’s erotic triangulations, gender inequality, and third-party responsibility. Each of the three articles of this dissertation focuses on a different manifestation of third-party responsibility, and each offers its own self-contained argument. At the same time, the “graphic schema” of the erotic triangle analytically enriches each of them. The erotic triangle is a “sensitive register […] for delineating relationships of power and meaning,” and using it in this context illuminates the shifting ways gender, power, and legal responsibility circulate in these male-female-male legal structures. Together, the articles suggest that law both replicates and reproduces erotic triangulations in ways that contribute to gender inequality, but also that it may be an important site for their renegotiation. The first article, A New Tortious Interference with Contractual Relations: Gender and Erotic Triangles in Lumley v. Gye, explores how the tort of interference with contractual relations was created out of a factual scenario involving an erotic triangle (two rival opera-house managers competing for the services of a renowned chanteuse). The court converted past regulations of erotic triangles (in particular, criminal conversation, which allowed a husband to bring an action against a man for sexual interference with his wife) into a new cause of action, one which removed a triangulated woman’s responsibility for breaching a contract, and instead assigned responsibility to the man who induced her to breach. While this first iteration involves the removal of responsibility from a triangulated woman, the second article, Home Rules, involves an inversion of this responsibility allocation: here responsibility is removed from a usually male wrongdoer and instead imposed upon a triangulated woman. Home Rules examines how, through a series of ordinances, local governments are imposing responsibility on female heads of household for the wrongful actions of their typically male household members. In so doing, local governments disrupt kinship structures and assert the state’s dominance over the family and intimate life. The third article, Triangulating Rape, evidences a more positive shift in responsibility. It traces the transformation of rape law as a progression from a tradition of erotic triangulation to a subversion thereof. Unlike the historical rape law triangle, in which rape is legally constructed as a wrong that one male does to another through the body of a woman; and unlike the criminal rape law triangle, in which rape is legally constructed as a wrong that one man does to the state through the body of a woman; civil actions in which women bring claims against both perpetrators of sexual assault and the third-party entities that facilitate or fail to prevent those assaults allow harmed women to assert their own subjectivity and climb out of their traditionally passive role in the erotic triangle. In so doing, this reconfigured triangulation ultimately challenges the gender status quo that produces sexual harms, and suggests that subverting the usual functioning of triangulated patterns may hold promise as a tool of social change.

O presente trabalho pretende ser uma contribuição aos estudos que se dedicam a compreensão da figura da vítima e seu lugar em nosso arranjo social contemporâneo. Investigando a trajetória e experiências de um grupo de familiares de vítimas da violência armada, especialmente policial, formado no Estado de São Paulo a partir dos Crimes de Maio de 2006, a centralidade da vítima e seus discursos foram sociologicamente analisados. Nos interstícios de nosso recente regime democrático, permeada por práticas autoritárias dos agentes dos órgãos encarregados de garantir a lei e a ordem, encontrarmos as Mães de Maio, atores que em suas narrativas exteriorizam as experiências de uma violência institucional caracterizada pelo silêncio e pela impunidade. Iniciamos nosso percurso versando sobre alguns dos processos e atores históricos que tornaram possível a centralidade da figura da vítima em nosso arranjo contemporâneo, qualificando a compreensão relativa aos significados de sua presença e discursos no Brasil. Seguimos realizando discussões sobre os Crimes de Maio de 2006 e suas condições de possibilidades para depois retratar as experiências dos familiares das vítimas da violência armada em suas peregrinações pelo ordenamento jurídico brasileiro. A tese se encerra através de algumas considerações acerca dos impactos da emergência da figura da vítima nas interpretações acerca do fenômeno violência e na produção da teoria social contemporânea / The present study is intended to be a contribution to studies that are dedicated to understanding the figure of the victim and its place in our social arrangement contemporary. Investigating the history and experience of a group of family members of the victims of armed violence, especially police, formed in the State of Sao Paulo from the Crimes of May 2006, the centrality of the victim and their speeches were sociologically analyzed. In the interstices of our recent democratic regime, permeated by authoritarian practices of agents of the bodies responsible for ensuring law and order, find the Mothers May, actors that their narratives externalize the experiences of an institutional violence characterized by silence and impunity. We started our journey dealing about some of the processes and historical actors that made possible the centrality of the figure of the victim in our contemporary arrangement, qualifying the understanding concerning the meanings of their presence and speeches in Brazil. We continue holding discussions on the Crimes of May 2006 and its conditions of possibility for after portraying the experiences of family members of the victims of armed violence in their pilgrimages by Brazilian legal system. The thesis concludes with some considerations about the impacts of the emergence of the figure of the victim in interpretations about violence phenomenon and in the production of contemporary social theory

This dissertation argues that Pacific literature is haunted by a form of ecological aggression known as nuclear colonialism. The Pacific is the region of the world where Western nations tested most of their nuclear and thermonuclear weapons – an extreme form of colonial occupation that will impact both the land and the people for hundreds of thousands of years. This study analyzes Pacific works published post World War II, from Māori poet Hone Tuwhare’s 1964 collection of poetry to riMajel oral performer Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s 2017 videoart, focusing in particular on the francophone works of writers identifying as Kanak, Mā’ohi, and Ni-Vanuatu. Through a series of close-readings of this multilingual and transnational corpus, it argues that nuclear colonialism functions as a leitmotiv informing both the politics and the poetics of this anticolonial corpus, despite the fact that nuclear violence is often denounced in between the lines, through oblique and diffuse references mirroring the ubiquity of radioactivity itself.

Landmines have inflicted an insurmountable amount of physical and psychological harm, inhibiting social and economic development far after the conflict has ended. In an effort to create a world free of the weapon, a campaign to ban landmines was launched by non-governmental organizations. The Mine Ban Convention entered into force in 1999, requiring nation-states to immediately ban the use, production and transfer of anti-personnel landmines (APLs), destroy stockpiles within four years and remove landmines already planted within ten years. This study examines the level of legal compliance with the Mine Ban Convention. An empirical analysis is conducted using a data base constructed from reports published by the Landmine Monitor. This study finds that the treaty is a successful work in progress with a majority of Parties in compliance; 44 million stockpiled APLs have been destroyed and eleven states have completed mine clearance. 170 million stockpiled APLs and countless emplaced mines remain, indicating the world is still far from the goal of a mine-free world. / by Jacqueline C. Perez. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Contrasting approaches to explaining the social-cognitive contributors to bullying in schools have stressed the importance of a child‘s social goals in determining whether he or she will bully. In spite of this, the social goals of bullies and victims have not been adequately investigated in empirical research. This thesis aimed to address this issue by investigating the social goals associated with bullying/victimisation, determining whether these goals were able to predict bullying/victimisation even after other social processing biases and theory of mind had been taken into account, and considering the influence social goals have on children‘s response to provocation. In a series of six studies, 583 children from Primary schools in the UK completed several measures aimed at assessing their engagement in behaviours related to bullying and being victimised, their social goals (both as general interpersonal goals and also specific to hypothetical social scenarios), and other social-cognitive factors (including theory of mind). Although the pattern of results across studies was not always uniform, there was a general trend for bullying in boys to be associated with situation-specific goals that protected their physical dominance within their peer group, while bullying in girls was better predicted by an overall concern for maintaining an image of popularity. Interestingly, victimisation in boys was predicted by an inappropriate concern for others‘ feelings in certain scenarios, while victimisation in girls was associated with a low level of concern for behaving prosocially. Importantly, these kinds of social goals remained predictive of bullying and victimisation even after controlling for variance accounted for by theory of mind and other social information processing biases. Finally, social goals were found to mediate the relationship between bullying/victimisation and aggressive/submissive response strategies. Findings are discussed in relation to the existing literature as well as to their potential impact on intervention strategies.