Dilemmatic human-animal boundaries in Britain and Romania: Post-materialist and materialist dehumanization

Theories of dehumanization generally assume a single clear-cut, value-free and non-dilemmatic boundary between the categories 'human' and 'animal'. The present study highlights the relevance of dilemmas involved in drawing that boundary. In six focus groups carried out in Romania and Britain, 42 participants were challenged to think about dilemmas pertaining to animal and human life. Four themes were identified: rational autonomy, sentience, speciesism and maintaining materialist and post-materialist values. Sentience made animals resemble humans, while humans' rational autonomy made them distinctive. Speciesism underlay the human participants' prioritization of their own interests over those of animals, and a conservative consensus that the existing social system could not change supported this speciesism when it was challenged. Romanian participants appealed to Romania's lack of modernity and British participants to Britain's modernity to justify such conservatism. The findings suggest that the human-animal boundary is not essentialized; rather it seems that such boundary is constructed in a dilemmatic and post hoc way. Implications for theories of dehumanization are discussed.

Rethinking Amnesties: Atrocity, Accountability And Impunity In Post-Conflict Societies.

The notion of accountability that is propagated in transitional justice often appears limited to demands for the prosecution and imprisonment of those who have been involved in serious human rights violations. Amnesties, widely understood as the absence of punishment for wrongdoing, are in turn considered by many scholars and activists as an example par excellence of the kind of Faustian pacts which are made in the name of political expediency in transitions from conflict. Drawing from a range of interdisciplinary literature, as well as research completed by the authors in a number of societies with a violent past, this paper uses amnesties as a case-study to argue for a more rounded interrogation of the notion of accountability in transitional justice. The paper charts the various forms of intersecting accountability which both shape and delimit amnesties at key ‘moments’ concerning their remit, introduction and operation. The paper concludes that the legalistic view of amnesties as equating to impunity and retribution as accountability is inaccurate and misleading. It argues that a broader perspective of accountability speaks directly to the capacity for amnesties to play a more constructive role in post conflict justice and peacemaking.

The application of NMR to study changes in polar metabolite concentrations in beef longissimus dorsi stored for different periods post mortem

In this study data generated by H-1 NMR spectroscopy were combined with chemometrics to analyse beef samples aged over a 21 day period. In particular, the amino acids, of which 12 were identified were found to increase over the ageing period with samples matured for 3 days having notably lower concentrations than carcasses aged for 21 days. This is believed to be a result of increased proteolysis within the muscle. This novel approach of using high resolution NMR spectrometry to analyse beef samples has not previously been reported and these findings demonstrate the potential of this technique linked with HPLC to be used as a suitable method for profiling meat samples.