Challenges of implementing restorative justice for intimate partner violence: An Islamic perspective

ABSTRACT

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is currently recognized as a critical public health concern and a human rights issue. Not surprisingly, Muslims – a religiously and socio-culturally diverse faith-based populace – are not an exception. To address this complex area of criminal justice and social policy, some scholars advocate implementing restorative justice (RJ) approaches. While RJ approaches have been traditionally used in Islamic cultures for conflict resolutions, to date, few studies have investigated how RJ operates in dealing with IPV in Muslim countries and communities. This article explores how RJ approaches towards IPV operate in some Muslim countries/communities, and offers insights into developing culturally and religiously appropriate ways of implementing RJ in IPV situations among Muslims. Given the prevalence of IPV among Muslims, the question is particularly important and timely. Taking exclusively limited examples of RJ approaches that have been used to mediate IPV cases in Muslim countries and communities, this paper found one significant challenge in the RJ approaches among Muslims: community acceptance of IPV. To reduce IPV in Muslim society, it is necessary to develop treatment models and techniques that meet cultural and religious needs. This paper found that since RJ is not alien to Islamic teachings, RJ approaches can be implemented effectively in dealing with IPV among Muslims by ensuring justice and equity of the abused woman. The findings of this paper will assist policymakers, practitioners, and service providers in providing religiously and culturally appropriate care when addressing IPV issues among Muslims.     

Abused Women in Taiwan Who Seek Religious Support

ABSTRACT

This research explores the types of religious healing that abused women use and surveys their experiences with these practices in Taiwan. Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of abused women, who had been recruited from 12 agencies. The findings show that participants sought religious healing for a variety of reasons, and that they had both positive experiences (e.g., useful religious support) and negative experiences (e.g., encountering deceptive jitongs and spending a large amount of money on services) regardingr the support provided by different religions. This study also found that women who believed in traditional Eastern religions had more negative experiences than women who believed in Western religions.     

Left Behind by Parents in China: Internal Migration and Adolescents’ Well-Being

This study investigates how growing up as a left-behind child due to parents’ labor migration in China is associated with adolescents’ cognitive and socioemotional development, based on data from the China Family Panel Studies. We find that adolescents do worst when both parents are absent in all developmental indicators we examined: short-term and long-term word recall tests, numeracy test, self-concept, and self-expectation of educational attainment. However, the differences between left-behind children and those in rural two-parent families are not statistically significant. Left-behind adolescents do have significantly lower well-being than those in urban two-parent families. These differences can largely be accounted for by father's education, family spending on the adolescent's education, quality of parenting, and the social support available to an adolescent. The gap in Chinese adolescents' development is, thus, not so much related directly to how many parents one grows up with as it is to whether one grows up in a rural or urban environment.     

Violence and political culture in Mozambique

This article is an attempt at developing a lens through which political culture in Mozambique can be analysed, described and interpreted. It is based on the notion of a political teleology that emerged out of the conditions within which the country fought for its independence. The paper argues that violence in a symbolic and physical form played a central role in the constitution of this political teleology by, on the one hand, allowing the liberation movement to produce an account of Mozambican history which both gave legitimacy to its own struggle while at the same time undermining alternative accounts and, on the other, set the scene for the implementation of a national project that came to be primarily concerned with the reproduction of the claim to power of the liberation movement. Forty years of independence in Mozambique offer an ideal time frame to attempt the construction of such a lens.     

Identifying the Drivers of the Exceptionally High Rates of Lethal and Racially Biased Violence by Police in the United States Requires Geographically Resolved Data and Analysis

This essay serves as a response to Hirschfield's (2015) article, “Lethal Policing: Making Sense of American Exceptionalism,” published in the December 2015 issue of this journal.     

Using social support levels to predict sexual identity development among college students who identify as a sexual minority

This study examined the impact of five domains of social support (a campus group for individuals who identify as a sexual minority, family, friends, significant others, and faith communities) on eight aspects of sexual minority identity development (identity uncertainty, internalized homonegativity, identity affirmation, acceptance concerns, identity superiority, concealment motivation, identity centrality, and difficulty in the identity development process). Support from a sexuality-specific campus group was the strongest predictor, followed by support from family members. Supports from friends and significant others had no significant impact on any aspect of sexual minority identity development, while faith community support was not correlated with identity development. Identifying as lesbian, bisexual, or as another sexual minority compared to identifying as gay also impacted sexual minority identity development.     

It is risky business: can social capital reduce risk-taking behaviours among disadvantaged youth?

This study addresses the gap in the research for sound multidimensional assessment of social capital and its relationship with risk-taking behaviour among youths living in disadvantaged communities. Social capital and adolescent risk-taking outcomes were studied cross-sectionally in 1371 secondary students living in two disadvantaged communities within Australia. First, a multidimensional measure of social capital was developed and tested using confirmatory factor analysis. Then, the associations between social capital and a range of youth risk-taking behaviours were examined using structural equation modelling across five-year groups (Grades 7–12). With a few exceptions, higher levels of social capital and belongingness within the school and community were generally associated with decreases in smoking, alcohol and drug consumption, and physical violence. Some outcomes were more strongly associated with family and peer social capital, while others associated more with neighbour and community social capital, indicating that attempts to build social capital need to be targeted across the whole community. This study supports the notion that social capital can be measured empirically and is beneficial in alleviating many of the detrimental health outcomes commonly associated with risk-taking behaviours during adolescence.     

From peaceful marches to violent clashes: a micro-situational analysis

Recent studies point to the relevance of situational factors in the emergence of violence. This paper applies these insights to a systematic analysis of how and why peaceful protest marches transform into violent clashes. It focuses on the micro-situational patterns and emotional dynamics during protests. The exploratory study compares 20 peaceful and violent protests of the Global Justice Movement in the United States and Germany. It employs a triangulation of visual data with document data. The study relies on in-depth qualitative analysis, based on the principles of process tracing. Findings suggest that in those protests where violence emerges, a prior micro-situational pattern is systematically visible. The discussion of exemplary cases shows that two emotional phases precede the outbreak of violence. These phases emerge in a specific temporal danger zone of 1–3 h after the start of a protest. Further, specific triggering moments seem to prompt the outbreak of violence, like the breaking-up of police–protester lines, actors being outnumbered, or falling down. The emotional dynamic between protesters and officers during a protest likewise influences the intensity of violence and how violent situations end. Consequently, the paper suggests that actors need to go through a confrontational micro-situation in a demonstration in order to be able to use violence.     

The gendered contours of North Korean Migration: sexualized bodies and the violence of phenotypical normalization in South Korea

This article examines the gendered and sexualized contours of North Korean experiences in South Korea at a time when nearly 70% of the North Korean emigrants are women. South Korean television shows – e.g. reality programs – and marriage matchmaking organizations seek to portray North Korean women in a ‘positive’ way to the South Korean public, although, as this article will illustrate, these representations are of a very particular, sexualized kind. These representations are sometimes negative, and there is stigma attached to North Korean women, in which South Koreans assume, for example, that they are victims of human trafficking or that they have had relations with Chinese men during their migration. Furthermore, poor nutrition and other forms of structural violence in North Korea have molded North Korean bodies; there are often physical disparities between North and South Koreans. In South Korean society where short height is viewed as undesirable and where idealized, surgical notions of beauty dominate, the violence of gendered phenotypical normalization mark North Korean bodies as smaller, foreign, and strange. Based on ethnographic research in South Korea, this article argues that these gendered contours of North Korean migration amount to a different sort of structural violence in South Korea.