Dog training as a violence prevention tool for at-risk adolescents

Abstract

Humane education programs often target at-risk children and seek to teach empathy and gentleness with animals, but few of these have been assessed. This prospective, longitudinal study examined the effects of “Teaching Love and Compassion” (TLC), a humane education program employing educational group discussions and dog training for seventh-grade, inner city youth in Los Angeles, California. The TLC program is offered to groups of 10 to 12 students during their three-week vacation at the year-round school. Students for the experimental and control groups were selected from the pool of those scoring below the 25th percentile in reading and mathematics. The study, conducted over a two-year period, assessed four successive sessions, comprising an experimental group of 41 children and a control group of 42 children. In morning sessions, the experimental group had discussions focusing on interpersonal issues and conflict management. In the afternoons they were taught the proper care and obedience training of shelter dogs. Pre-, post-, and follow-up tests, specially developed to accommodate the children's reading ability and scheduling constraints, were given to both the experimental and control groups to assess their knowledge of animal care, conflict management skills, attitudes toward self and others, and fear of dogs. Members of the experimental group increased their understanding of pet care and the needs of animals and retained this information more than did the control group for all four TLC sessions, both at post-testing (F=58.4, p=0.0001) and follow-up testing (F=18.9, p=0.0001). At post-testing, the experimental group showed a trend toward a decreased fear of dogs (F=3.6, p=0.062), that was significant at follow-up testing (F=4.2, p=0.019). For these children who are exposed to daily violence and aggression to people and animals, these modest changes were associated with the three-week intervention.     

Political competition,relative deprivation,and perceived threat: a research note on anti-Christian violence in India

A preliminary subnational statistical analysis of violence against Christians in contemporary India, this article suggests that whereas the data provide very little support for simple, demographic explanations of this violence, they do more robustly support theories emphasizing the relative status of ethnic and religious minorities (vis-à-vis majorities) and the perception, among Hindus, that Christians (and other minorities) represent a threat to their numerical, political and economic strength.     

Understanding and addressing religion among people with mental illness

This article reviews recent advances in the domain of psychiatry and religion that highlight the double‐edged capacity of religion to enhance or damage health and well‐being, particularly among psychiatric patients. A large body of research challenges stereotyped views of religion as merely a defense or passive way of coping, and indicates that many people look to religion as a vital resource which serves a variety of adaptive functions, such as self‐regulation, attachment, emotional comfort, meaning, and spirituality. There is, however, a darker side to religious life. Researchers and theorists have identified and begun to study problematic aspects of religiousness, including religiously‐based violence and religious struggles within oneself, with others, and with the divine. Religious problems can be understood as a by‐product of psychiatric illness (secondary), a source of psychiatric illness (primary), or both (complex). This growing body of knowledge underscores the need to attend more fully to the potentially constructive and destructive roles of religion in psychiatric diagnosis, assessment, and treatment. In fact, initial evaluative studies of the impact of spiritually integrated treatments among a range of psychiatric populations have shown promising results. The article concludes with a set of recommendations to advance future research and practice, including the need for additional psychiatric studies of people from diverse cultures and religious traditions.     

Sex,violence and nationalism

This article is a commentary on Joane Nagel’s “Masculinity and nationalism”, which discusses differing cultural conceptualizations of gender and masculinity, critically interrogating essentialist conceptualizations of maleness, and – in the most empirical and engaged section of the article – relates conceptualizations of maleness to war. This commentary elaborates on and develops Nagel’s analysis by introducing new empirical examples and through its emphasis on symbolism, metaphor and kinship imagery in portraying nations in a gendered manner. It is also pointed out that nations at peace project different gender relations to nations at war.     

Day-night variation in aggressive behavior among psychiatric inpatients

Self-directed aggressive behaviors of human beings show a 24h pattern. The aim of this study was to evaluate if violence of psychiatric inpatients against one another and hospital staff varies over the 24h. The clock time occurrence of 334 episodes of assault behaviors by 119 psychiatric inpatients (78 males and 41 females, mean age 34.8 ± 11.3 years) committed during a 5-year span in the psychiatric unit of the university-based hospital of Ferrara, Italy, was evaluated. The clock time of each event was categorized by hour during the 24h and into one of four 6h intervals for analysis of temporal variation by cosinor and χ² tests, respectively. A significant 24h variation, characterized by an early afternoon peak, was detected irrespective of gender and number (single vs. repeated) of episodes committed. Changes during the 24h in ward activity, patient contact, and endogenous circadian rhythms are likely to contribute to the observed 24h pattern, although further study is needed to confirm our findings and to define causal factors. (Chronobiology International, 18(3), 503-511, 2001)     

Rhetoric of Exclusion and Racist Violence in a Catalan Secondary School

Drawing on ethnographic research in a secondary school in Catalonia, Spain, this article analyzes the relationship between racist violence against students of African origin and racist ideologies held by students, described as a rhetoric of exclusion. I argue for a more detailed and painstaking characterization of students' ethnic discourses as a means of understanding the diversity of these discourses and their connection to intergroup relations.     

The Gender of the Joke: Intimacy and Marginality in Murri Humour

ABSTRACT

Murri Aboriginal humour performances are expressive events in which bodily experiences of policing and agency are discursively commented on in ways that expose Australia's naturalised rationalisations of indigenous governance. Drawing on the ‘out-of-the-way’ position of an indigenous minority encapsulated in the body of the nation-state and the Murri body's intimate ‘out-of-the-way’ folds and crannies, Murri humour delimits and mocks the marginal location Murri people are imagined to spatially and morally occupy within Australia. This work examines how gendered humour renders the Murri individual and social body legible to and for a Murri audience. Such humour performances engage the local and the global, the modern and the traditional, and the hegemonic and the counter-hegemonic in ways that link intimacy, bodies and embodiments to these macro-processes. Unraveling such binaries produces a nuanced analysis in which embodied social actions and sly social critique are captured as they are experienced and expressed through humour.     

Doctors that Harm,Doctors that Heal: Reimagining Medicine in Post-Conflict Aceh,Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the fears and desires that conflict survivors invest in biomedicine in post-conflict Aceh, Indonesia. After examining common criticisms of Acehnese doctors, I go on to discuss the practise of Acehnese medical travel to Malaysia and the desirable depictions of biomedicine that are generated through cross-border clinical encounters. Building on Pinto [2004. Development Without Institutions: Ersatz Medicine and the Politics of Everyday Life in Rural North India. Cultural Anthropology, 19(3):337–364], I argue that in the post-conflict period, biomedicine acts as both a site of terror and ‘point of imagination and longing’ that guides my interlocutors' understandings of the changing world around them. The article brings debates about medicine and violence into dialogue with a body of post-conflict ethnography, showing how popular imaginaries of biomedicine can shape the process of post-conflict world building.     

Intergroup conflicts among chimpanzees in Taï National Park: lethal violence and the female perspective

Intercommunity aggression in chimpanzees and primitive warfare in humans possess striking similarities, such as the common occurrence of large male coalitions, systematic control of territory boundaries, and lethal attacks on isolated individuals from neighboring groups. However, an important apparent contrast is the absence of recurrent peaceful interactions between neighboring groups of chimpanzees. We observed a remarkable range of behavior in intergroup encounters among three habituated communities of chimpanzees in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire. Lethal attacks are documented in these study groups for the first time, as well as year‐long exchanges of parous adult females and peaceful intergroup visits of mothers with infants. Demographic factors, including group size and number of adult males, are shown to affect the nature of intergroup interactions in ways not considered previously. A reconsideration of the difference in intergroup interactions between eastern and western chimpanzees is proposed including a more important consideration of the female's perspective. The inclusion of the new complexities in intergroup interactions in chimpanzees allows new parallels to be drawn with the evolution of primitive warfare in humans. Am. J. Primatol. 70:519–532, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.