Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

In Zambia, Cambodia, Nigeria, Domestic Violence Is Less and Less OK

May 1, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: SYLVIE BOUCHARD/SHUTTERSTOCK)

For all the dastardly, no-good ideas we see spreading today (jihad, jeggings, kamehameha-ing), it's reassuring to learn that some genuinely good ideas seem to be catching on, too. Case in point: the growing rejection of domestic violence around the world. In a study published last week, University of Michigan doctoral student Rachael Pierotti finds that between 2003 and 2008, acceptance of the justifications for domestic violence in 26 different countries—and not just the Luxembourgs and Monacos of the world, but low- and middle-income countries like the Dominican Republic, Zambia, and ... Read More

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Terrorism and Privilege: Tim Wise on the Power of Whiteness

April 18, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Sociological Images, a Pacific Standard partner site. As the nation weeps for the victims of the horrific bombing in Boston, one searches for lessons amid the carnage, and finds few. That violence is unacceptable stands out as one, sure. That hatred—for humanity, for life, or whatever else might have animated the bomber or bombers—is never the source of constructive human action seems like a reasonably close second. But I dare say there is more; a much less obvious and far more uncomfortable lesson, which many are loathe to learn, but ... Read More

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Gun Ownership Neither Increases Nor Decreases the Crime Rate

April 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Editor's Note: This post is a follow-up to Alex Berezow's "The Correlation Between Gun Ownership and Homicide Rate." Controlling and regulating gun ownership is for the purpose of making society safer by reducing the rates of murder and violent crime. Does this premise hold true? That is, do fewer guns per capita correlate with a safer country? Recently, Alex Berezow analyzed the correlation between the number of privately-owned guns per capita in a country and the rate of homicide by firearms. This is a sensible first step to answer the question of whether reducing the number of guns in ... Read More

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The Correlation Between Gun Ownership and Homicide Rate

April 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Editor's Note: Tom Hartsfield has written a follow-up to this post, "Gun Ownership Neither Increases Nor Decreases the Crime Rate." Since the tragedy at Newtown, citizens and lawmakers have been pushing for tighter gun control. Their argument seems rather intuitive: The fewer guns, the safer we are. Popular Science hammered the point home in an article titled "Science Confirms the Obvious: Gun Laws Are Associated With Fewer Gun Deaths." But is it really that simple? According to the article, the authors "created 'legislative strength scores' on a scale of 0 to 28 for each state's ... Read More

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How Safe Can a Marathon Be?

April 16, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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The marathon-as-spectacle is, more than any other sporting event, built on the responsibility and rationality and general non-wickedness of other human beings. You’re at this long, winding, sweeping thing—event really is the best way to put it. It’s a stadium 26.2 miles long. And you’re allowed to be up close to the competitors—cheering them on, handing them water, sneaking onto the course and claiming you've won—at any point. Marathon Day was Boston’s day to not be Boston. That is, the day that all the stereotypes of the city—loud, belligerent, belligerently drunk fans ... Read More

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The Truth About Violence and Gun Policy in the United States

April 16, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Editor's Note: This post was originally published on December 21, 2012. I’ve been reluctant to write about the terrible events at Sandy Hook Elementary school because the wounds are still too fresh for any kind of dispassionate analysis. As a social scientist, however, I’m disappointed by the fear-mongering and selective presentations of the research evidence I’ve read in reports and op-eds about Friday’s awful killing. Such events could help move us toward constructive actions that will result in a safer and more just world—or they could push us toward counter-productive and ... Read More

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Why Do We Hurt Each Other?

April 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Shortly after reports started coming out—from professional journalists and citizen reporters alike—that two explosions had gone off in downtown Boston this afternoon near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the world's oldest annual marathon and one of the most high-profile road-racing events anywhere in the world, my friend and former colleague, Max Fisher, now the foreign affairs blogger for The Washington Post, tweeted out a message from his sister, a runner, that got me thinking. "I have been running long distance events for many years and every time I go by a crowd I get that ... Read More

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A Statistic From Today’s Bomb in Boston

April 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Several videos from today's bombing at the Boston marathon capture the digital clock positioned over the finish line. According to the clock, the first explosion erupts at four hours, nine minutes from the race's start. Why Do We Hurt Each Other? It is certainly too early to distinguish useful information from distraction. But it is worth noting that a finishing time from four to four and a half hours is a common benchmark for marathoners. According to RunTri, a popular marathon training website, the average runner finished last year's Boston course in four hours, 18 ... Read More

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In a Violent Media World, YouTube is an Oasis

February 19, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
A still from Charlie Schmidt's Keyboard Cat, which, at last count, had been viewed nearly 30 million times since it was uploaded in 2007

Concerned that your kids are getting exposed to dangerous amounts of violent imagery on television and in video games? You might want to encourage them to enjoy a very hip source of entertainment in which violent content is refreshingly rare: YouTube. A study recently published in the Journal of Communication finds the popular internet video site is a far more peaceful place than, say, prime-time television. What’s more, the violence that is on the site “is generally less glamorized and less trivialized” than it is in television and movies. “The unregulated ‘Wild West’ of ... Read More

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Edginess Pays for Family Films

September 26, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Family films appear to be getting edgier, and for good reason: those that push the envelope in terms of content tend to do better both critically and commercially. That’s the conclusion of a research team led by psychologist Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California, Davis. It’s a follow-up to a 2009 paper that looked at films in general, and concluded that while violence tends to boost box office performance, sex and nudity do not. The equation is significantly different for family-oriented fare, the researchers write in the journal Empirical Studies of the Arts. Within ... Read More

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