Willingness to Have Unprotected Sex

Little is known about people's willingness to engage in sex without protection from unwanted pregnancy. This study surveyed 1,497 women and men at 75 clinics and physician offices across California after their reproductive health care visits in late 2007 and early 2008. When asked if they would have sex without contraception, 30% said definitively that yes, they would have unprotected sex, and 20% indicated they would “sometimes” or “maybe” engage in unprotected sex. In multivariate models, compared to non-Latino White respondents, Latinos who responded to the survey in English were 52% more likely and African Americans were 75% more likely to report willingness to have unprotected intercourse. Wanting a child within the next three years was associated with increased willingness to have unprotected sex. Age, gender, parity, and relationship status were not significant in multivariate models. A considerable proportion of women and men may be willing to have unprotected sex, even with access to subsidized contraceptive services and even when recently counseled about birth control. The dominant behavioral models of contraceptive use need to acknowledge the widespread likelihood of occasional unprotected sex, even among people motivated to usually use contraceptives. Findings underscore the need to make contraceptive methods accessible, easy to use, and even pleasurable.     

‘Whose side are you on?’ Dilemmas in conducting feminist ethnographic research with young women

Drawing on two recently completed ethnographic studies of young women in the West Midlands, this paper explores a series of issues about the application of feminist principles and practice to such research. One study analysed young women's friendships, mainly through participant observation in school, supplemented by participation at a youth club. The other explored the likely success of the former Conservative Government's ‘Health of the Nation's’ targets for aspects of young women's health, through extended attendance at two youth clubs, supplemented by ‘shadowing’ informants at school. Both studies also used interviews, diaries and other data sources. Driven by the researchers' desire to ‘give a voice’ to their informants, this paper reviews power relationships in the production of knowledge; issues about self-presentation; securing access to and winning the trust of the young women; and their resolution of some of the ethical dilemmas which confronted the researchers in the course of their fieldwork.     

Editor's introduction: ethics in visual research

This essay addresses a group of contemporary artworks which qualify as photography and painting at the same time. Because these works lack medium-specificity, several theorists refer to them as ‘pictures’. Analysis of this concept's etymological origin and of the art-historical context in which it appeared indeed reveals the concept's usefulness for discussing this particular group of artworks. However, merely defining them as ‘pictures’ would imply that important and interesting effects of the combination of photography and painting in these works are ignored, if not negated. This is why the authors coin the term ‘multi-mediating picture’ as a preferable concept in this context. As such it not only refers to the clearly discernible multiplication of media in these works, but it also indicates the layered and delayed perception that results from this multiplication. The authors demonstrate the suitability of their concept through a case-study of two photographs by Louise Lawler. Their analysis is geared to processes of appropriation involving both other media and images made by other artists.     

Gendering the Bone: The Politics of Memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina1

This article explores and intervenes in the deadlock produced by the identifications of bodily remains resulting from genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Every day, in that country, bodily remains are exhumed, counted, reassociated, managed and consecrated as ethnic remains. This is done through the strategic collaboration of forensic science; multiculturalist post‐conflict management, with its politics of reconciliation; and religious ritual — an uncouth alliance between the scientist, the bureaucrat and the priest. In doing so, the scientist, the bureaucrat and the priest assume the perspective of the perpetrator of the crime. For it is in the fantasy of the perpetrator that the executed person is an ethnic other. The article intervenes by posing the question: what different praxis could deactivate the reification of bones as ethnic victims, would stop the prolongation of the injurious gaze of the perpetrator and would return the bones to common use through which we can contemplate hope after genocide? In other words, what is the politics that will enable us to be hopeful subjects in relation to these bones? Drawing on cultural production in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the article both challenges and goes beyond current mainstream political choices. Thus, it identifies and strengthens hopeful politics in cultural‐as‐political practices that productively bear witness to the precariousness of life. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is mainly women artists who harness traumatic events and the loss of the past and present in order to announce a more hopeful politics. What this hopeful politics after genocide is, through what praxis is it enacted, and by which subjects are the main concerns of this article.     

Racist dreams and municipal budgets: women representing a culturally racist party in local politics

The welfare and migration regime of Sweden are undergoing substantial changes, as neo-liberal restructuring is rapidly increasing inequalities, and multicultural policies are in retreat as neo-assimilationist policies are growing. In 2014, the Sweden Democrats, a party conceptualised as culturally racist, was re-elected with 13% of the votes, with a presence in almost all municipalities. While scholarship on this and similar parties has expanded, the role that gender and gender equality has for the culturally racist articulation of their agenda remains unexplored. The experience of women organised in the Sweden Democrats is the focus of this article, the experience of these women engaged in local politics, working to include the Sweden Democrats' culturally racist agenda at the municipality level. The article draws upon in-depths interviews with women activists of the Sweden Democrats. Central to the article is an analysis of forms of inclusion and normalisation of the Sweden Democrats' worldviews but also of the forms of resistance towards their presence at the municipality level. Unlike mainstream research, which downplays the cultural racism of extreme right-wing parties, and rarely employ a gendered analysis, we see (cultural) racism and anti-feminism as central for their agenda.     

Battling the Eighth Stage: Incrimination of Genocide Denial in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Denial is considered to be the eighth and the final stage of genocide. Facing this issue, many European Union countries have opted to incriminate genocide denial. Furthermore, with the aim of harmonising national legislations, Framework Decision No. 2008/913/JHA was adopted in 2008, obliging the Member States to incriminate “publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes”. Genocide and other crimes denial is still present in Bosnia and Herzegovina, even though the rulings of the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, have shown that genocide was committed over Bosnian Muslims, in July 1995 in Srebrenica and its surrounding areas, as well as other numerous crimes against humanity and war crimes across entire Bosnia and Herzegovina. From 2007 there have been a number of attempts to incriminate genocide denial at the state level in Bosnia, but all of them were unsuccessful due to the opposition by representatives of Republika Srpska. Finally, in 2014, the genocide denial was incriminated in the Criminal Code of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an act of encouraging “national, racial and religious hatred, rift and intolerance”.     

From the Selimović Case to the Srebrenica Commission: The Fight to Recognize the Srebrenica Genocide

Abstract

The Srebrenica Commission was formed by the Republika Srpska government to investigate the events that occurred in and around Srebrenica in July 1995. The Commission was formed by a decision of the Human Rights Chamber (HRC) of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In its report, the Commission consisting of mainly Serb officials concluded that crimes were committed in Srebrenica, citing the Krsti? Case at International Court of the Former Yugoslavia. It also provided locations of mass graves where the Bosnian Serb Army hid remains of victims from Srebrenica. The paper aims to research the Selimovi? et al. case at the HRC and its implications, including clarifying how truthful and correct was the Commission on locations of mass graves.     

Paths of Memory: Srebrenica Genocide Exhibits at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,DC

Abstract

After the horrors of the Holocaust the world said “Never Again”. The promise that echoed for decades was broken during the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995) and its culmination on 11 July 1995 in Srebrenica, a UN designated safe area, when Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladi? captured the town and killed over 8000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys. The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice ruled the massacre in Srebrenica as genocide. In 2005, an exhibit of Bosnian photographer Tarik Samarah's work about the Srebrenica genocide opened at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (the Museum). A few years later the Srebrenica genocide was included in the special exhibition “From Memory to Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide”. This article examines the installation and importance of both of the Srebrenica genocide exhibits at the Museum. It shows that the inclusion of the Srebrenica genocide at the Museum bears witness to the importance of genocide prevention, education and memorialization. It highlights the purpose of the Museum and the decision to expand its educational program to include post-Holocaust genocide cases. The conclusion emphasizes that the presence of the Srebrenica genocide is directly contributing to the importance of “keeping the memory alive” with regard to the Holocaust and genocide studies in general.     

Applying Islamic Norms in Europe: The Example of Bosnian Muslims

Abstract

Is Islamic law still valid in Europe? This paper argues “yes”—though not in the form of hard “law” but rather in the form of soft “norms” which are not state-sanctioned, but still carry heavy significance for practicing Muslims. The paper examines cases where Islamic moral, ethical and in some cases legal norms can be applied in a secular country without clashing with state laws. It further demonstrates that, based on fatawa issued by Islamic scholars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Islamic norms may still apply for Muslims living in secular European states, although they are not legally binding. This may be illustrated by classifying norms into religious (God's commandment to fast, pray, give alms), moral–ethical (consumption of alcohol, dressing properly) and Islamic legal norms (marriage, divorce, inheritance). The conclusion is that a vast majority of these norms can be adhered to by Muslims either within the scope of guaranteed religious freedoms in civil society or may otherwise be applied without clashing with secular civil laws.