The Science of Religious Beliefs

Why have humans, throughout history and across cultures, shown a strong tendency to believe in the existence of superhuman intentional agents and attached this belief to notions of morality, misfortune, and the creation of the world? The answer emerging from the cognitive science of religion appears to be that explicit beliefs are informed and constrained by the natural and cross-culturally recurrent operation of implicit cognitive systems. Successful god concepts resonate with the expectations of these implicit systems but also have attention-demanding and inferentially-rich properties that allow their integration into various areas of human concern. Theological concepts may deviate from these natural cognitive moorings but require special cultural scaffolding, such as Whitehouse's two Modes of Religiosity, to do so and constitute additions to, rather than replacements of the religious beliefs supported by implicit cognitive systems.

Issue salience in regional and national party manifestoes in the UK

The study reveals the salience of particular issues in the manifestos of the main British parties for the 1997 and 2003 UK general elections, as well as the 2003 Scottish and Welsh elections, using the method introduced by the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) and a modified list of issue categories to reflect the division of government competences between the central and regional governments. Ideological and social base of a party, as well as the delimitation of government competences, are found to be important determinants of issue salience. A more consensual institutional design of the regional government in Scotland and Wales seems to have conditioned larger differences among the issue profiles of parties competing in regional elections, in comparison with general elections. With the institutionalisation of devolution, however, we observe an increase in the similarity of the issue profiles of the same parties in general and in Scottish and Welsh elections, as well as among different parties competing in the same regional elections. © 2005 Taylor & Francis.

ARTICLE: Property and the Definition of Slavery

Currently there is no clear understanding of the meaning of ‘slavery’ in modern international law. While generally it is accepted that the
authoritative definition of slavery is provided by Article 1 of the Slavery Convention 1926, in recent times slavery has been understood in such a wide variety of ways that effectively it is a meaningless term. This paper reflects on this interpretation problem and aims to redress this balance by reclaiming the core meaning of the legal definition. It applies property law perspectives to explain the conception of ownership invoked by Article 1, to argue that it remains relevant and to explore how it might be applied in identifying modern cases of slavery.

Older people and legal advice – the need for joined up and creative approaches

This paper reports the findings from research conducted with older people in Northern
Ireland which investigated whether their needs for legal information and advice were
being met. One of the unique aspects of the research involved investigating the
potential of the internet as a possible source for advising older people in relation to
legal problems. The findings suggest that online legal information may frequently assist
older people in identifying potential answers to their legal questions, but may not be an
adequate substitute for personal communication and advice. The research also
highlights the need for professionals to work together to meet the needs of older
persons for legal advice and to safeguard their interests. Such ‘joined up’ approaches
are particularly important, for example at the point of dementia diagnosis, where
information sharing between health and social care professionals may significantly
promote the legal and welfare interests of older people at a vulnerable point in their
lives. This paper therefore turns to work by university-based legal clinics in the United
States, such as the Elder Law Clinic at Pennsylvania State University, where social
work or healthcare professionals, lawyers and law students collaborate to support older
people in their search for resolution of legal problems.

Developing a social work curriculum on political conflict – Findings from an IASSW funded project

This paper presents the findings from an innovative project funded by the
International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and undertaken by
an international team of academics investigating the development of a global
curriculum for social work in the context of political conflict. Coupled alongside
the emerging research and literature on the subject, our small-scale survey
findings indicate support for the need for social work educators to address
political conflict more systematically within social work curricula at both
undergraduate and post-qualifying levels of social work education. The paper
illuminates the opportunities for creative pedagogy whilst also examining the
threats and challenges permeating the realisation of such initiatives. In this way,
the implementation of a proposed curriculum for political conflict is given meaning within the context of IASSW’s Global Standards for social work education. Given the exploratory nature of this project, the authors do conclude that further research is warranted in regard to potential curriculum development and suggest using a comparative case study approach with more in-depth qualitative methods as a way to address this.

Celtic nationalism and supranationalism: comparing Scottish and Northern Ireland party responses to Europe

This article explores how stateless nationalist parties in the ‘Celtic periphery’ of Scotland and Northern Ireland have used Europe to advance their territorial projects. Despite vastly different historical, political and social contexts, the Scottish National Party and Northern Ireland's Social Democratic and Labour Party have both advanced a pro-European, social democratic discourse that emphasises the importance of Europe as a framework for constitutional reform and shared sovereignty. However, in recent years the parties have diverged on Europe. While the SDLP has continued its principled commitment to further integration, the SNP has articulated an increased criticism of the supranational project. This divergence in party attitudes reveals the extent to which the pro-European dimension of Celtic nationalism is ideological or opportunistic.

The Challenge of Consociation in Northern Ireland

This article assesses the role played by the principle of consociational government in promoting Northern Ireland's peace agreement. It reviews the central concept of consociation as it has evolved in recent comparative studies of the politics of divided societies. It describes the stages by which this concept moved to the centre of the political agenda in Northern Ireland, resting on contributions by policy-makers, academics, journalists and others. It reviews the difficult history of efforts to translate this principle into practice, contrasting the failed attempt to promote this formula in 1973 with the much more successful experiment in 1998. Using the classical literature on consociation, an effort is made to explain the difference between these outcomes, a difference with implications for Northern Ireland's future stability.

Does Affirmative Action Work? Evidence from the Operation of Fair Employment Legislation in Northern Ireland

An affirmative action programme, established by the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act 1989, has been an important attempt to ensure ‘fair participation’ in employment for both Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland since 1990. The programme includes detailed monitoring of the community background of employees and requires employers to undertake remedial action where fair participation is not evident. Agreements were concluded between the regulatory agency and many employers specifying what affirmative action measures were required. Based on the annual monitoring returns submitted between 1990 and 2005, this article evaluates the effectiveness of the affirmative action programme in promoting fair employment participation using fixed effects models. The analysis shows that there has been a general shift towards workforce integration in Northern Ireland but the increase of under-represented groups in agreement concerns is greater than in concerns with no agreement. The success of agreements, however, is limited to certain industrial sectors and medium-sized enterprises.

The Terror that Underpins the “Peace”: The Political Economy of Colombia's Paramilitary Demobilization Process

Studies on terrorism have traditionally focused on non-state actors who direct violence against liberal states. These studies also tend to focus on political motivations and, therefore, have neglected the economic functions of terrorism. This article challenges the divorce of the political and economic spheres by highlighting how states can use terrorism to realise interconnected political and economic goals. To demonstrate this, we take the case of the paramilitary demobilisation process in Colombia and show how it relates to the US-Colombian free trade agreement. We argue that the demobilisation process fulfils a dual role. First, the process aims to improve the image of the Colombian government required to pass the controversial free trade agreement through US Congress to protect large amounts of US investment in the country. Second, the demobilisation process serves to mask clear continuities in paramilitary terror that serve mutually supportive political and economic functions for US investment in Colombia.

Victims and Transitional Justice: Voice, Agency and Blame

This article explores the construction of victimhood in transitional societies. Drawn from fieldwork in a dozen jurisdictions as well as elements of criminological, feminist, sociological, philosophical and postcolonial literature, the article focuses in particular on how victimhood is interpreted and acted upon in transitional contexts. It explores the ways in which victims’ voice and agency are realised, impeded or in some cases co-opted in transitional justice. It also examines the role of blame in the construction of victimhood. In particular, it focuses upon the ways in which the importance of blame may render victimhood contingent upon ‘blamelessness’, encourage hierarchies between deserving and undeserving victims and require the reification of blameworthy perpetrators. The article concludes by suggesting that the increased voice and agency associated with the deployment of rights discourses by victims comes at a price – a willingness to acknowledge the rights and humanity of the ‘other’ and to be subject to the same respectful critical inquiry as other social and political actors in a post-conflict society.

Green Political Theory

Ecologism or green political theory is the most recent of schools of political thinking. On the one hand, it focuses on issues that are extremely old in politics and philosophical inquiry – such as the relationship between the human and nonhuman worlds, the moral status of animals, what is the ‘good life’, and the ethical and political regulation of technological innovation. Yet on the other, it is also characterised as dealing with some specifically contemporary issues such as the economic and political implications of climate change, peak oil, overconsumption, resource competition and conflicts, and rising levels of global and national inequalities. It is also an extremely broad school of political thought covering a wide variety of concerns, contains a number of distinct sub-schools of green thought (here sharing a similarity with other political ideologies) and combines normative and empirical scientific elements in a unique manner making it distinctive from other political ideologies.

Big Society as Big Government: Cameron's Governmentality Agenda

Cameron’s flagship policy of the ‘Big Society’ rests on a society/government dichotomy, diagnosing a ‘broken society’ caused by ‘big government’ having assumed the role communities once played. The remedy is greater social responsibility and the ‘Big Society’. This article argues that the dichotomy is
deceptive. We aim to show that the Big Society is big government, as it employs techniques for managing the conduct of individuals and communities such that the mentality of government, far from being removed or reduced, is bettered and made more efficient. To illustrate this, we explore two major initiatives: the National Citizen Service and the Community Resilience programme. These
projects demonstrate how practices of informing and guiding the conduct of individuals both produce agents and normalise certain values, resulting in the population being better known and controlled. Thus, far from lessening government and empowering people, the Big Society extends governmentality
throughout the social body.

General practitioners’ management of the long-term sick role

In this paper, we use qualitative research techniques to examine the role of general practitioners in the management of the long-term sickness absence. In order to uncover the perspectives of all the main agents affected by the actions of general practitioners, a case study approach focussing on one particular employment sector, the public health service, is adopted. The role of family physicians is viewed from the perspectives of health service managers, occupational health physicians, employees / patients, and general practitioners. Our argument is theoretically framed by Talcott Parsons’s model of the medical contribution to the sick role, along with subsequent conceptualisations of the social role and position of physicians. Sixty one semi-structured interviews and three focus group interviews were conducted in three Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland between 2010 and 2012. There was a consensus among respondents that general practitioners put far more weight on the preferences and needs of their patients than they did on the requirements of employing organisations. This was explained by respondents in terms of the propinquity and longevity of relationships between doctors and their patients, and by the ideology of holistic care and patient advocacy that general practitioners viewed as providing the foundations of their approach to patients. The approach of general practitioners was viewed negatively by managers and occupational health physicians, and more positively by general practitioners and patients. However, there is some evidence that general practitioners would be prepared to forfeit their role as validators of sick leave. Given the imperatives of both state and capital to reduce the financial burden of long-term sickness, this preparedness puts into doubt the continued role of general practitioners as gatekeepers to legitimate long-term sickness absence.