Cross-cultural issues in illness and wellness: Implications for depression

This paper addresses cultural factors in illness and wellness, using depression as a specific context. The issue of cultural relativism and commensurability of diagnosis and evaluation of outcomes across cultures is discussed. The concepts underlying traditional systems of healing are compared to those of Western orthodox medicine.     

Therapeutic Forgiveness: Developing a Model for Empowering Victims of Sexual Abuse

Forgiveness is increasingly popular in therapy as a way to facilitate healing, but there are definitional discrepancies and confusion regarding the degree to which it is conceptualized as either an interpersonal/relational or an independent/self-enhancing process. In this article forgiveness is conceptualized as an interpersonal process linked to apology or contrition on the part of the offender. Yet it is also independent. A model is described that was developed for the benefit of abuse victims whose offenders will not or cannot apologize. Using the model, victims can accomplish for themselves what would be accomplished for them through an apology.     

Iwi community justice panels reduce harm from re-offending

ABSTRACT

The effect of iwi community justice panels is assessed using data from seven years of implementation. Panel participants of 1013 are compared to a control group drawn from 73,000 offenders charged with similar offences and propensity-matched by age, gender, ethnicity, offending history and location. The dependent measure is re-harm from offending calculated using the NZ Crime Harm Index. Panel participants did not reduce their rate of offending compared to matched controls. However, there is a significant reduction in harm from post-panel offending, on average by 26.9 ± 21.05 equivalised prison days. The relative reduction is 22.25% of the harm committed by matched controls. Iwi panels are an effective alternative justice resolution. Panel participants are found to re-offend with minor offences and thus any focus on rates of offending would miss the complexity of the restorative justice process that reduces the harm of re-offending.     

Child Rights Practice among the Indigenous Communities in Bangladesh

The objective of this article was to explore the practice of child rights among the indigenous communities of Bangladesh. We used a mixed method approach to collect data from four ethnic communities in the Bandarban District of the Chittagong Division in Bangladesh. We questioned children, parents, community members, local leaders, and service providers of those communities on a number of child rights issues, for example, child education, child labor, child recreation and culture, parents' guidance to children for capacity development, and access to child rights at home and in the community according to Convention on the Rights of the Child treaty. The results showed that while the community was aware of child rights, financial vulnerability and a lack of social support meant that these rights could not be upheld in practice. The paper urges improvement of social support, including income generation activities for indigenous communities.     

北极原住民自治研究——以加拿大因纽特人为例

结合政治学的有关理论和社会学的实证方法,围绕加拿大因纽特人的自治省——努纳武特省的建立过程、自治模式、自治实践三个方面展开,可以探讨北极原住民的自治运动。努纳武特自治政府是以非暴力的、谈判协商、团结合作、通过民主投票的方式而建立的;其权限是有完全的行政权,部分的司法权以及在联邦政府议院规范下的部分的立法权,这是加拿大多元文化政策的重大成就。但在运作过程中,问题依然严峻：政治架构上的水土不服,经济发展的先天不足,社会生活的分崩离析,传统文化的传承江河日下,这些影响了因纽特人自治运动的健康发展。     

恢复性司法的中国化契机及本土资源检省

恢复性司法是在寻求抚慰、宽容、和解中,通过对话与合作实现和伸张正义。它以新的视角来审视和检讨传统报复性司法,强调司法程序的多元化参与,促进犯罪人回归社会,缓解犯罪人再社会化困难的问题,并最大限度地彰显社会正义,促进司法和谐。尽管有不同的尝试和一定的本土资源,并且在试验中取得了一些成功,但恢复性司法在中国的发展还是面临着本土化的困境。我们要把恢复性司法作为一个崭新的课题予以研究,在尊重和修复价值的人文关怀下提炼和建构恢复性司法的原则和限度,增强它与我国司法管理模式所根植的文化和制度背景的兼容性。     

Why Interculturalidad is not Interculturality

Interculturality is a notion that has come to dominate the debate on cultural diversity among supranational bodies such as the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in recent years. The EU goes so far as to identify interculturality as a key cultural and linguistic characteristic of a union which, it argues, acts as an inspiration to other parts of the world. At the same time, the very notion of interculturality is a core component of indigenous movements in the Andean region of Latin America in their struggles for decolonization. Every bit as contingent as any other concept, it is apparent that several translations of interculturality are simultaneously in play. Through interviews with students and teachers in a course on interculturality run by indigenous alliances, my aim in this essay is to study how the notion is translated in the sociopolitical context of the Andes. With reference points drawn from the works of Walter Mignolo and the concept of delinking, I will engage in a discussion about the potential for interculturality to break out of the prison-house of colonial vocabulary – modernization, progress and salvation – that lingers on in official memory. Engagement in such an interchange of experiences, memories and significations provides not only recognition of other forms of subjectivity, knowledge systems and visions of the future, but also a possible contribution to an understanding of how any attempt to invoke a universal reach for interculturality, as in the case of the EU and UNESCO, risks echoing the imperial order that the notion in another context attempts to overcome.     

Indigenous identity, ‘authenticity’ and the structural violence of settler colonialism

In many ways, the structural violence of settler colonialism continues to dominate the lived experience of Indigenous populations, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in contemporary Australia. One aspect of this structural violence concerns the regulation of Indigenous identity, today perpetuated through state monitoring of the ‘authenticity’ of Aboriginal people. This article argues that the contest over Indigenous identity perpetuates a form of symbolic political violence against Indigenous people. It considers the ways in which structural violence against Indigenous identity has featured in Australia's settler colonial regime and examines the particular violence faced by urban-dwelling Aboriginal people, who endure much contemporary scrutiny of the ‘authenticity’ of their Indigeneity. As a case study, the article examines the symbolic violence associated with a particular legal case in Australia and, in light of this analysis, concludes that settler colonies could make a decolonising gesture by legislating for the protection of Indigenous identity.     

Bridging identity divides in current rural social mobilisation

The shift from a corporatist citizenship regime to a neoliberal one has adversely affected Latin American rural communities and led to widespread social mobilisation and organisation in the countryside. The struggle of such marginalised communities has been often framed by stressing their indigenous collective identity over the previously prevalent class-based peasant identity. This article focuses on the role of identity and the negotiation of different identities in the struggle of two rural organisations in Northwest Argentina for securing land tenure and improving their standards of living. Argentinean society, in contrast to some other Latin American societies, is often imagined as ‘white,’ but in recent decades many peasant, or campesino, communities have rediscovered or reaffirmed their indigenous origin. This article therefore deconstructs rural collective identities in Argentina and analyses how class and ethnic identities are negotiated in struggles of grassroots social organisations in the countryside of this predominantly urban country.