Documents found
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3241.More information
Victimology, the study of the victim, emerged in the second half of the 20th century as a branch of criminology. Until then criminology was exclusively focused on crime and its perpetrators. But since most crimes are committed against a victim/target the study of the latter offered a holistic approach. It also offered the prospect of transforming the static criminological theories into dynamic theories incorporating the interactions between victim and victimizer and the situational dynamics in confrontational victimizations. The beginnings of Victimology were purely theoretical focusing on the victims of specific crimes, their role and their eventual contribution to the genesis of the crime.In the 1970's the micro approach that characterized early Victimology was eclipsed by a macro approach aimed at assessing the volume of victimization, particularly hidden and unreported victimization. Victimization surveys became quite popular and were carried out regionally, nationally and transnationally. They allowed researchers to collect a vast amount of data on crime victims and yielded some very interesting as well as some unexpected findings. The last decades of the 20th century witnessed a major transformation in Victimology. The Victimology of the act gave way to a Victimology of action. The ideological transformation of victimology from the study of the victim into the art of helping victims, the over-identification with crime victims, and the missionary zeal with which the 'interests' of those victims are defended and pursued are quite manifest in victimology conferences and symposia.The missionary zeal exhibited by many victimologists on behalf and in the interest of crime victims is fraught with danger. First, it is jeopardizing the quality of scholarship and the scholarly stance of the discipline of victimology. As a result, victimology is increasingly being regarded as a humanitarian and ideological movement rather than a scientific discipline. Secondly, missionary zeal and partisan stance are moving criminal law and the criminal justice system into a punitive, retributive direction. There is also a third danger. Since the victim lobby has chosen to focus on traditional crimes rather than white-collar crime or acts of abuse of power, there has been a distinct shift of focus in research to the former type at the expense of the latter. Victims of white-collar crime, corporate crime and abuse of power have once again been relegated to the shadow. More serious still is yet another danger. In the diligent quest for victims' rights there seems to be a manifest or latent willingness to sacrifice offenders' rights. A false contest is thus created between the rights of both groups.So where is victimology heading ? Science and partisanship are incompatible. Once researchers take sides or become advocates they lose their neutrality, their objectivity and their credibility. This is a fundamental principle that should be seriously considered by those well-intentioned criminologists and victimologists who have adopted the cause of crime victims and who claim to speak on their behalf.The future of victimology will thus depend on its ability to return back to its original scientific mission, to shed its ideological mantle and to resume its role as a scholarly discipline and as an integral part of criminology. It is the need to separate research from action and science from activism that dictates that victimology be separated from victim policy. To restore its neutrality and to regain and maintain its scientific integrity victimology will have to detach itself from politics and ideology.
Keywords: Victimologie, victimologie activiste, victimisation, enquêtes de victimisation, victimisation confrontationnelle, victime catalyseuse, victime récidiviste, Victimology, activist victimology, victimization, victim surveys, confrontational victimization, victim precipitation, recidivist victim, Victimología, victimología activista, victimización, encuestas de victimización, victimización confrontacional, víctima catalizadora, víctima reincidente
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3244.More information
This paper explores the direct and indirect involvement of top businessmen in Vancouver municipal politics from 1886 to 1914. It emphasizes the divergent political aims and roles of large and small entrepreneurs. In Vancouver, unlike Winnipeg, small businessmen rather than the business élite controlled municipal politics. The Vancouver business élite's direct participation in civic politics and indirect influence over municipal decision making were both circumscribed after the initial city-founding period by several factors: business pressures mounted as Vancouver's economy became regionally based, forcing top businessmen to devote their undivided attention to business affairs; limited legislative benefits were to be derived by leading businessmen from formal participation in the day-to-day administration of local government; and voters' deference to business élite views declined once the city's institutional structure had been organized. A government reform movement, aimed at reasserting élite influence in civic politics, was less successful in Vancouver than in many other American and Canadian centres because Vancouver's underlying economic, social and political conditions made reform less necessary.
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3245.More information
The emergence of movie palaces is traced for St. Catherine Street in Montreal, Yonge Street in Toronto, and Granville Street in Vancouver. Beginning in 1896, film shows were included in a range of urban amusement places. When dedicated movie theatres opened by 1906, they were quickly built throughout the city before the downtown "theatre districts" became well defined. Not until about 1920 were first-run vaudeville-movie palaces at the top of a spatial hierarchy of urban film-going, lasting into the 1950s. After outlining the formation of movie palace film-going, the paper notes how the downtown theatres were next to each city's major department store. A theoretical analysis of how amusement and consumption make "being downtown" significant in everyday urban life follows. A review of the social uses of electric lighting and urban amusements finds that movie palace marquees become a symbol for the organization of downtown crowds and consumers into attentive mass audiences. A brief account of the decline of the movie palace, from the 1970s to 2000, concludes by reviewing the outcomes of replacement by multiplex theatres, demolition, or preservation.
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3246.More information
Between 1925 and 1950 most Canadian cities experienced a taxi war during which fares and drivers' incomes plummeted. These wars had their origin in the low barriers to entry into the industry, as it became clear in the late 1920's that motor cabs did not need private concessions, special-built cabs, telephone switchboards and taximeters to make a profit. The older firms that had made these investments were able by 1950 to persuade the larger Canadian cities — including Winnipeg and Vancouver, the two featured here — to introduce the present regulatory regime. The imposition of uniform fares, of taximeters, of minimum wages, of liability insurance, as well as limits on entry into the industry (through the medallion system) ended the taxi wars. The industry thereafter operated in a less chaotic, more ethical way. Yet the new regime also reduced the industry's flexibility, making it less helpful in moving the urban masses.
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3247.
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3248.More information
One of the most striking reactions to the Renaissance codification of literary Italian was the development of dialects as “alternative” literary languages with their own distinct canons. During the seventeenth century, Naples, the undisputed centre of this experimentation, produced a remarkable corpus of original masterpieces by Giambattista Basile, Giulio Cesare Cortese, and others; translations into Neapolitan of Italian and Latin classics, old and new; and linguistic treatises and paratextual materials in praise of Neapolitan. What did this activity mean? How and why did these authors assert their alterity by constructing an ideal poetic community through their Neapolitan works? How did the questioning of the idea of a monolithic literary language relate to a wider interrogation of the traditional system of genres and of the concept itself of literary property? This essay explores these questions by onsidering the role of the supporting materials of paratexts and translations in the construction and legitimization of the Neapolitan corpus.
Keywords: Italy – Naples, Italian literature – 17th century, Italian language – dialects, dialect literature, Baroque literature, translations
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3249.More information
AbstractABSTRACTEthnie power. Concept. Power Locations and Practices against thé State in African Modem/ty. Comparative Analysis of Mourides (Sénégal) and Luba (Congo-Zaïre)The many sided African crisis is above ail a crisis of the modem and exogenous State in so far as it conveys the individualisation process. When analysed from the point of view of endogenous practices and rationality. it reveals formalised practices and a local political culture. With colonisation these two elements, built one on the other. have promoted and reinforced the ethnie power. its organisational structures and practices. as a counter-power opposing the State in post-colonial society. The case studies of Mouride (Senegal) and Luba (Congo-Kinshasa) ethnie power show that the weberian model of the modem State is not a panacea and that the paradigm of "State-civil society" and its current conceptualisation both inhibate attempts to develop new approaches of the State as well as political and historical realities of Africa into a universal and global perspective.Key words : Biaya. ethnicity. counter-power, modem State, civil society. Mourides. Luba