Happy Marriages: Civilizing Domestic Life in Costa Rica, 1850–1950

Eugenia S. Rodríguez, History, University of Costa Rica

Research Grant, 1999, 2000

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The purpose of this research project is to analyze the main divorce tendencies in Costa Rica between 1800 and 1950, and to what extent ideals of and attitudes toward marriage, divorce, gender relationships, and domestic violence were modified.

During the colonial period and while the General Law of 1841 was in force (until 1887), only Christian marriage and church-approved or ecclesiastical divorce were legal. For the Catholic Church, marriage is a sacrament, a sacred undissolvable religious contract. Ecclesiastical divorce did not authorize dissolving the bond of matrimony, just separation without cohabiting. By the end of the nineteenth century, with the approval of civil marriage, separation, and divorce in the Civil Code of 1888, there is a secularization of the concept of marriage, conceived as a secular, civil, and temporary contract. As a result, couples that had infelicitous relationships had a legal instrument to dissolve their marriage, and the church lost its exclusive right to regulate the marital institution and sexual and domestic morality.

Regarding the grounds for civil divorce, the following remained: women’s adultery, one spouse’s attempt to kill the other, extreme cruelty, and felony. However, in comparison to the grounds for ecclesiastical divorce established in the Code of 1841, the Civil Code of 1888 added as cause for divorce a “husband’s scandalous concubinage.” Unlike female adultery, masculine adultery was not legally penalized. Therefore, even when it was demonstrated that the husband had been unfaithful, this was not sufficient ground for divorce. It had to be proven beyond doubt that the husband lived with his concubine, being a cause of public scandal, moral misconduct, and family disintegration. The Penal Code of 1941 eliminated female adultery as a felony and reduced sanctions for murders of passion. Finally, the Family Code (1974) introduced no-fault divorce and equality of spouses with respect to adultery as grounds for civil divorce.

In addition, the 1932 law introduced some further changes in the grounds for civil divorce. Although extreme cruelty was still considered grounds for divorce, the law eliminated felonies and added the husband’s attempt to prostitute his wife. Considering extreme cruelty but not serious offenses as grounds for divorce is the result of changes both in jurisprudence and of the fact that gender relationships and domestic violence were perceived as justifications to file for divorce. However, in all of the civil and penal codes, including the present one, a patriarchal gap has remained, since extreme cruelty and domestic violence are considered crimes similar to “injuries.”

It is obvious that there are not enough records to allow us to know with certainty how many couples were unhappy and to what extent they opted for separation. However, the evidence found in the 273 spousal-conflict complaints and in the 1,239 cases of ecclesiastical and civil divorce for the 1800–1950 period strongly suggests that, faced with an unhappy relationship that did not fulfill the expectations of a marriage for love and companionship, couples tended to opt more often to file for divorce to legally dissolve the bond of matrimony.

From 1800 to 1950, there was an increase in divorce suits in the 1840s. 62.2 percent of the total of divorce suits filed during this period—of which couples from San Jose filed 55.5 percent. In the whole Central Valley, the greatest number of cases was reported for the 1830–1850 period, especially in the five years between 1845 and 1850. This ascending rate of divorce took place within the larger expansion of the civil legal apparatus, which made it possible for women to have a legal instrument to denounce their husband’s abuses or to file for divorce. As a result, there was a visible and public sanction of marital conduct, a larger assimilation of the ideal of a loving and harmonious marriage, and an increase in suits due to spousal conflicts and divorce (Rodríguez 2000, 111–153).

Between 1851 and 1889, divorce suits kept ascending, the 1870s being the decade with the largest number of divorces.

Between 1851 and 1889, divorce suits kept ascending, the 1870s being the decade with the largest number of divorces, 40.2 percent out of a total of 281 suits for ecclesiastical divorce. Moreover, the increase in suits practically doubled between the 1860s (fifty-six suits) and the 1870s (131 suits). This upward trend is also corroborated in relation to the number of marriages and divorces filed. In fact, this ratio shifts from one divorce for each 16,104 marriages in the 1860s to one divorce for every 81.7 marriages during the 1870s. 

On the other hand, during the 1890–1950 period, there is a dramatic increase in civil divorce suits (98.9 percent out of 923 cases) and a dramatic decrease in ecclesiastical divorce suits (1.1 percent, only ten cases for the 1890–1919 period). This change may be explained, in part, by the serious conflict between the church and the state because of the anticlergy reform, which made it more difficult to present these suits. It could also have been influenced by Monsignor Thiel’s more aggressive policy for spreading the Catholic doctrine, the impact of the 1888 civil marriage, separation, and divorce reforms, and the Church’s propaganda and persecution campaigns against divorce. On the other hand, we find an increase in civil divorces, especially in the 1930s and 1940s (from 24.2 percent to 44.1 percent out of a total of 127 divorces by sentencing by repeal between 1900 and 1950).

Finally, this research questions some historical myths about gender relationships and domestic violence. These myths are: 1) that violence was considered a “natural” part of marriage relationships rather than a practice constructed and transformed historically and in everyday life; 2) that extreme cruelty of wife beating was always accepted by society; 3) that domestic violence was an exclusive practice of men from popular sectors; and 4) that wives were passive victims of patriarchal dominance incapable of resisting and impugning male dominance.

It is argued that the concept of domestic violence was constructed and transformed historically. The ecclesiastical and civil authorities allowed husbands to “correct” their wives with moderate violence if they would not submit. So, it was accepted as a “natural” condition of marriage and in the best interests of the family that wives had to endure verbal, emotional, economic, material and sexual abuse from their husbands. However, since the first half of the nineteenth century, such notions suffered a gradual reconceptualization by legally punishing the extreme cruelty exerted by husbands over their wives and the effects of violence, like injuries causing temporary or permanent physical incapacity to work. So, society has gradually sanctioned domestic violence more stringently. Nevertheless, recent studies have shown that the penal system and the existing regulations in the Penal Code of 1971 still underestimate violence against women, by emphasizing on physical violence. As a result, it could be stated that, as in the past, today a spouse’s abuse is still associated with “serious offenses.” Such restricted definition of domestic violence does not include the infliction of emotional, psychological, sexual and economic/material damage. Thus, most of the main kind of abuse and domestic violence are considered a “natural condition” of marriage.

Let ‘Em Rot: Understanding Public Punitiveness and Forgiveness Toward Offenders

Shadd Maruna, Criminology, Northwestern University

Research Grant, 2003, 2004

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The University of Cambridge Public Opinion Project (UCPOP) is an investigation into individual variation in punitive attitudes towards offenders. We are interested in the psychosocial characteristics of individuals who hold highly punitive attitudes (e.g., support for the death penalty, corporal punishment, and longer prison sentences) and those who decidedly do not. The purpose of the project is to better understand the nature and source of these differences in punitive views. In doing so, it is hoped that this study might contribute towards humanizing the “punitive public” and lifting the conversation around crime and public opinion beyond the stereotypes that plague all sides of the debate (e.g., notions of “authoritarian, ignorant cowboys” in favor of the death penalty and “bleeding-heart elites” in opposition).

The aim ultimately is to transcend the usual predictors of punitiveness and explore the "psychological functions" of these attitudes from the perspective of the "whole person."

We argue that understanding the nature of individual punitiveness requires an exploration into individuals’ self-identities, worldviews, and personal biographies (see Gaubatz, 1995; Hochschild, 1981). In particular, a hermeneutic enquiry into punitiveness and identity may be useful for untangling people’s conscious contradictions and internal inconsistencies regarding attitudes towards crime and punishment that may be contributing to discrepancies in survey-based studies of the phenomena. This study, then, explicitly seeks to complement and supplement the considerable theoretical work in the sociology of punishment (e.g., Garland, 2001) and the wealth of survey research on punitive attitudes based on public opinion polling (e.g., Hough & Roberts, 1998). The aim ultimately is to transcend the usual predictors of punitiveness and explore the “psychological functions” of these attitudes from the perspective of the “whole person.”

This project consists of three separate parts. The first step is a brief survey of households in the UK that serves the dual purpose of testing some basic correlates of punitive attitudes and identifying these two samples of individuals who can be studied more in depth. Next, two small samples (one consisting of individuals holding strongly punitive views and the other of strongly nonpunitive respondents) will be interviewed in depth in order to generate grounded hypotheses regarding the psychology behind these attitudes. Finally, these hypotheses will be “tested” with larger samples of both “types” using a mixed nomothetic-idiographic strategy that will allow for the development of quantitative indices derived from qualitative information (see Maruna, 2001).

Bibliography

1. Garland, David (2001). The Culture of Control. Chicago: University of Chicago.

2. Gaubatz, Kathyrn Taylor (1995). Crime In The Public Mind. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

3. Hochschild, Jennifer L. (1981). What's Fair? American Beliefs about Distributive Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

4. Hough, Mike and Julian Roberts (1998). Attitudes to Punishment: Findings from the British Crime Survey. London: Home Office.

5. Maruna, Shadd (2001). Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Books.

The Violent Life of Bruna Veríssimo: An Experimental Ethnographic Biography of a Homeless Brazilian Youth

Tobias Hecht, Social Anthropology

Research Grant, 2001, 2002

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Interpretations of trauma tend to revolve around incidents that have a clear beginning, middle, and end—rape, torture, imprisonment, and combat, for instance—even if such experiences can reverberate indefinitely in the lives of survivors; yet, what if violence is not so much an event but one of the few constant features in a life? What, for instance, do the relentlessly violent and violated lives of Brazilian street children tell us about the societies—and the larger world—in which these young people live? How would violence look from the vantage point of a child? And just how might one go about uncovering that vantage point? This project has aimed to investigate these questions through experimental techniques of research, observation, ethnographic engagement, and writing.

Bruna Veríssimo is one of the few surviving, healthy members of a generation of street children I came to know while conducting ethnographic research in the Brazilian city of Recife in the early 1990s. She began living in the street at the age of nine, where she supported herself through begging and prostitution. Despite never having attended school, Veríssimo taught herself to read and write by studying street signs and culling the trash for newspapers, magazines and books.

Females and those assuming a female identity appear far more adept in the context of Brazilian street life of surviving conflict, if not of avoiding it.

Following a chance encounter with her on a return visit to Recife in 1999, by which time she was twenty-three, I taught her to keep an ethnographic notebook and to conduct ethnographic interviews. We ultimately worked together intensively for six months during 1999 and four months during 2002, studying both her life story, the violence that devastated her generation, and the social world in which, precariously, she lives.

Born biologically male, Veríssimo assumed a transgendered identity from the age of nine, living as a transvestite. One of the principal findings of the research concerns the interface of violence and notions of gender. Females and those assuming a female identity appear far more adept in the context of Brazilian street life of surviving conflict, if not of avoiding it. Other findings concern methods of researching violence over the long run, in particular the usefulness of multiple, complementary, and collaborative forms of ethnographic engagement.

The first published piece resulting from this research is a chapter in a book, Minor Omissions: Children in Latin American History and Society (ed. by T. Hecht). A book manuscript is currently under review and an essay for another edited book is being written.

Constitutional Design: Many Architects, No Buildings

Donald L. Horowitz, Political Science, Duke University

Research Grant, 1997, 1999

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This study concerns constitutional design for severely divided societies—the political institutions apt for peaceful coexistence or interethnic accommodation of groups with a history of antipathy that must nevertheless live together in the same state. There are two main constitutional prescriptions for such societies. One, consociational democracy, relies on an elaborate set of elite agreements and guarantees of proportional quotas and group vetoes, to prevent majority domination of the minority. The other, the incentives view, aims to institutionalize reasons for politicians to behave moderately and accommodate the interests of groups other than their own. Both prescriptions have their adherents, but neither can point to many cases of adoption of coherent packages of their recommended prescriptions, with accompanying benign effects.

The study funded by the Foundation centers on the issue of adoptability. In the face of various obstacles, can either prescription be adopted in a sufficiently strong dose to do what its proponents claim for it? The research design selects cases in which the usual obstacles to the adoption of coherent packages are missing because the choice of institutions has been given over to external actors not subject to the standard constraints: Fiji (a constitutional commission chaired by a foreigner), Northern Ireland (the U.K. and Irish governments), Indonesia (a small group of foreign-trained experts), Bosnia (representatives of the international community), and Cyprus (the U.N.).

So incoherence is not incompatible with ethnic conciliation, but serious attention to the coherent package problem is still by no means amiss.

The findings are that coherent adoptions are possible but highly unusual, even when conditions should be favorable for them. Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement is a good example, but it was not configured by the two outside powers but by insiders in conditions so exceptional as to be sui generis. And its results thus far have been disappointing. In Fiji, Bosnia, and Indonesia, external dominance of the process did not last very long: insiders eventually took it over and negotiated compromises that had strong elements of incoherence to them. (In Cyprus, the U.N.’s consociational plan was rejected.)

In spite of the incoherent character of some of the constitutional packages adopted, benign results followed in certain cases. In Fiji, a multiethnic coalition won an election conducted under a conciliatory electoral system, despite the fact that its conciliatory features had been watered down. In Indonesia, a rather haphazard, incremental, multiyear constitutional process has produced what may turn out to be a durable democracy. But in Bosnia, international actors managed to select an electoral system that hurt the prospects of the most multiethnic Bosnian party. So incoherence is not incompatible with ethnic conciliation, but serious attention to the coherent package problem is still by no means amiss.

Bibliography

1. Horowitz, D. L. Constitutional Design: Proposals Versus Processes, in Andrew Reynolds, editor, The Architecture of Democracy: Constitutional Design, Conflict Management, and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 15-36.

2. Horowitz, D. L. Domesticating Foreign Ideas in the Adoption of New Institutions: Evidence from Fiji and Indonesia, in John D. Montgomery and Nathan Glazer, editors, Sovereignty Under Challenge (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2002), pp. 197-220.

3. Horowitz, D. L. Explaining the Northern Ireland Agreement: The Sources of an Unlikely Constitutional Consensus, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 32, no. 2 (April 2002), pp. 193-220.

The Psychological Sequelae of Political Torture in South Africa

Ashraf Kagee, Psychology, University of Pennsylvania

Research Grant, 2002

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Most research on persons subjected to physical torture for political reasons has framed this experience as traumatic, with the sequelae approximating the diagnostic criteria of posttraumatic stress disorder. However, responses to checklists, questionnaires, and structured interview schedules may reflect the effect of demand characteristics more than the actual concerns of respondents.

In the first phase of the study I conducted semistructured qualitative interviews with twenty South Africans who were detained for political reasons during the apartheid era. The interviews were transcribed and analysed with the assistance of the Atlas.ti 4.5 program. Results showed that the major concerns expressed by the sample were somatic problems, economic marginalization, nonclinical emotional distress, and dissatisfaction with the present political dispensation in South Africa. Respondents also expressed concerns that reflected symptoms of traumatization, but these were not salient in comparison with the other themes that emerged. The data suggests that a model of trauma and the diagnostic category of posttraumatic stress disorder may be less appropriate than suggested by most of the literature in accounting for the concerns of many South African former political detainees.

The data obtained from this study permits a critique of the hegemony of the psychiatric model of traumatization in conceptualizing the needs of this population, and suggests an alternate perspective that is broader and more inclusive than a psychiatric paradigm. It also discusses the research and possible clinical implications of the results in terms of addressing the needs of former detainees in South Africa.

The data obtained from this study permits a critique of the hegemony of the psychiatric model of traumatization in conceptualizing the needs of this population, and suggests an alternate perspective that is broader and more inclusive than a psychiatric paradigm.

In the second phase of the study the factor structure of former detainees’ current distress associated with having been abused in detention was determined. The qualitative interview data from Phase 1 of the study were used to form the items of the South African Former Detainees’ Distress Scale. In Stage 2 the scale was administered to 148 participants and these data were factor analyzed using principal components analysis with a varimax rotation. Four factors emerged from the analysis: Somatic Problems/ Discontent, Emotional Distress, Lack of Acknowledgement, and Despondency. These factors are discussed in the context of social developments in present day South Africa.

The data suggests that South African former detainees do not experience posttraumatic stress symptoms as a salient feature of their lives. Instead, their concerns are related to the somatic symptoms they continue to experience, the fact that they are not given appropriate recognition for their role in the anti-apartheid struggle by the South African government and society, and the fact that the majority of former detainees have remained poor and unemployed, despite the sacrifices they have made for the country. Psychiatric symptoms related to posttraumatic stress disorder appear to be of secondary concern to most participants.

The Effect of Publicized Life Sentences, Death Sentences, and Executions on Homicide

Steven Stack, Criminal Justice, Wayne State University

Research Grant, 1998

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The present study addressed several neglected issues in research on the death penalty and homicide:

Publicized Life Sentences vs. Executions. Research on the social control of homicide has focused almost exclusively on executions to the neglect of life sentences as a possible form of social control. The present study weighed the relative importance of publicized life sentences against publicized executions in the control of homicide. The results of a multiple regression analysis found no evidence of a reduction in homicide following a widely publicized life sentence story. In contrast, a widely publicized execution story was associated with a dip of 3.3 homicides for Whites (but not African Americans). Publicized executions, by providing severe enough punishment, may be preferable to life sentences in efforts to control lethal violence.

Publicized Executions: Abolitionist States. A second contribution was to test two alternative theoretical explanations for dips in homicide after a publicized execution. Publicized executions may reduce homicide through deterrence or through validation of societal norms against killing and their promotion of precautionary behavior (descriptions of the horrific crimes of offenders may remind persons that they are in danger, and some may avoid dangerous people for a while). The present paper contributes to the literature by exploring the impact of publicized executions in abolitionist states. A multivariate time series analysis determined that publicized executions were unrelated to homicide in abolitionist states. The results are consistent with the view that publicized executions may reduce homicide mainly through deterrence and not other processes from the theoretical literature.

Publicized executions, by providing severe enough punishment, may be preferable to life sentences in efforts to control lethal violence.

Critique of Previous Research. A third major contribution was to explain the many discrepancies in the findings on publicized executions and homicide. There have been considerable differences in the methodology used in these studies, which might help to explain their mixed findings. The present study analyzed 385 findings contained in twenty-five research studies published between 1935 and 2000. The results of a multiple logistic regression analysis determined that studies that assume execution stories will impact homicide rates for a period of more than thirty days were 95 percent less likely to report a homicide dip than studies assuming an effect period of thirty days or fewer. Studies based on the period after 1975, an era of declining celerity or speed of execution (swift punishments are a key assumption in deterrence theory), were 58 percet less likely to report a homicide drop than their counterparts. Studies based on analyses with an uncorrected problem of statistical multicollinearity were 97 percent less likely to report homicide dips than their counterparts. The model correctly predicted 91 percent of the 385 findings. It is suggested that researchers need to build a stronger consensus on methodological issues in order to reach a firmer conclusion on the impact of publicized executions on homicide.

Methodology. Homicide data were taken from the US Public Health Service’s annual Mortality Tapes. There were 164,199 homicides in this data set. Daily counts for each of the 2,922 days in the study period were obtained. Data on highly publicized life sentence and execution stories were taken from standard databases including the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, the New York Times Index, and Facts on File. A total of seventeen executions and fifteen life sentences met the criteria for being highly publicized stories. Controls are incorporated into the relevant statistical models for factors related to homicide and include holidays and temporal factors such as day of the week and season.

Bibliography

1. Stack, S. 2001. "Publicized Executions and the Incidence of Homicide: Methodological Sources of Contradictory Findings." In DuPont-Morales, Toni and Michael Hooper (eds), Handbook of Criminal Justice Administration, New York: Marcel Decker, pp. 355-369.

Postcolonial Aspirations and Intimacies of Violence Among Gebusi of the Nomad Area, Papua New Guinea
and
The Role of Culture in the Early Evolution of Human Violence

Bruce M. Knauft, History, Emory University

Research Grant, 1993, 1998

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My HFG-supported research has included (1) analysis of information concerning homicide among the Gebusi—a rainforest people of Papua New Guinea who have had one of the highest rates of homicide yet documented; (2) comparative understanding of Gebusi violence in relation to simple human societies and in relation to human evolution more generally; and (3) field research concerning dramatic changes in the rate of Gebusi violence and killing in recent years.

The first dimension of my HFG-supported research considered the striking fact that though the Gebusi rate of killing was historically higher than that in Europe during World War II, this violence was seen as acceptable and appropriate. Gebusi killings typically took place after someone died of natural causes. In this circumstance, another Gebusi within the community was typically accused of having used sorcery to send lethal sickness. The person accused of sorcery was him- or herself considered to be a murderer. Frequently he or she was executed with the support of the general community, that is, in retribution for the life of the person they had allegedly killed by sending sickness. Despite the fact that few if any Gebusi actually attempted to practice sorcery in fact, the belief that they did led to a very high rate of killing. Most of these killings were of older persons and/or those perceived as irritable and antagonistic to others in the community. Because the size of communities was small, however, the killing of one or more members over the course of several years was not perceived by Gebusi to be a particularly great problem even though, statistically, this resulted in an extraordinarily high rate of homicide when figured on a per capita basis per annum.

Cases of sorcery were seldom avenged or were brought to the police by Gebusi themselves for conflict resolution; traditional patterns of sorcery inquest and divination were largely defunct.

The second dimension of my HFG research viewed patterns of Gebusi killing comparatively against those in other simple societies. Simple human societies often have a statistically high rate of killing though these deaths are often individualistic and infrequently constitute collective armed conflict such as warfare. The general tenor of social life in many such simple societies is one of friendly harmony most of the time despite occasional killings that may actually be quite high when calculated as a homicide rate per capita per year. This helps explain the apparent paradox by which the simplest human societies observed by researchers have often seemed socially harmonious despite the fact that they may have a statistical rate of killing comparable to that of more complex societies that practice frequent or virulent warfare.

The third dimension of my HFG-funded research considered dramatic changes in Gebusi homicide and violence between the early 1980s and the late 1990s. By the latter period, most Gebusi in my communities of study had been converted to Christianity, participated in market activity, and lived near the local government station and its airstrip. Beliefs in sorcery were now part of a Christian cosmology in which God was deemed responsible for taking action against evil persons such as sorcerers. Cases of sorcery were seldom avenged or were brought to the police by Gebusi themselves for conflict resolution; traditional patterns of sorcery inquest and divination were largely defunct.

Correspondingly, the homicide rate had dropped precipitously—to virtually zero during the 1990s. This dramatic change illustrates how changes in cultural norms, values, and social conditions can have a powerful impact on the rate of human violence. This finding lends credence to the notion that human violence is a solvable problem and is not an intrinsic or preordained feature of humanity.

Molecular Genetics of Aggressive Behavior in Drosophila Melanogaster

Charalambos P. Kyriacou, Genetics, University of Leicester

Research Grant, 2002

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Aggressive behavior has been extensively studied, both in vertebrate and nonvertebrate model organisms. Remarkably, these studies indicate common elements that underlie socially mediated changes in behavior. For example, chemical messengers such as serotonin have been implicated in aggression in mammals and crabs. It is rather surprising then, that the fruit fly, Drosophila, has not been used to explore the molecular genetics of aggression, despite the fact that this type of behavior has been documented in flies. We have been attempting to find out which genes and proteins get “turned on” in flies when they behave aggressively to each other.

We can then take these candidate aggressive genes and, using various techniques, express them at high levels in a fly to see if it becomes more aggressive.

As most of the aggressive interactions in fruit flies occur during defense of a resource such as food, territory, or a mate, we have studied male-male aggressive encounters on a patch of food. We have found that fruit fly males can be extremely aggressive with each other, or, at the other extreme, barely notice each other at all. As these flies are genetically identical, we can ask the question, “which genes have been turned on in the very aggressive flies, compared to those that are more ‘mellow’ and nonaggressive?.” To answer this question, we have made use of a relatively new technology called microarray analysis, which allows us to study the expression of all of the fly’s thirteen thousand genes at once. Thus we take very aggressive and very “mellow” flies, mash up their heads, extract the working copy of every one of their genes, the RNA, and, using the microarray, measure which genes show relatively high or low levels of RNA in the two types of animals. In this way we obtain a gene profile of the aggressive and the nonaggressive flies. We can then take these candidate aggressive genes and, using various techniques, express them at high levels in a fly to see if it becomes more aggressive. We can even modify this procedure and overexpress these candidate “aggro” genes in specific regions of the brain, thereby mapping brain structures with behavior. Because it appears that vertebrates and insects may share many of the genetic elements for aggression, our findings with the fruit fly model shall be of fundamental interest to those working on human aggression.

Characteristics and Determinants of Global Homicide Crime Waves, 1946 to 1998

Gary LaFree, Sociology, University of New Mexico

Research Grant, 1999

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Difficulties in comparing political and legal systems have long hampered our efforts to estimate cross-national violent crime rates. Adding the requirement that such studies examine trends over time makes the task even more complex. In this research project, we used World Health Organization records to collect the most comprehensive set of annual homicide victimization data that has ever been assembled. In the main part of our analysis, it was possible to examine annual data for some forty nations for a fifty-year time period. This unique data base has provided answers to a variety of questions about trends in homicide across nations.

First, we were able to use these data to determine how common violent crime “booms” and “busts” have been since World War II. We defined crime booms as crime rates that increase rapidly and exhibit a positive sustained change in direction. Based on our definition, we found that twelve of the nations in our sample of thirty-four nations (or 35.5 percent) had experienced crime booms since World War II. These findings contradict both those who argue that booms in violent crime have been rare or nonexistent in the postwar period and also those that argue that violent crime booms have been nearly universal. In support of modernization perspectives, we also found that 70 percent of the industrializing nations in our sample qualified as having crime booms, but less than 21 percent of industrialized nations did.

Our results provide little support for the argument that there has been a growing rift in homicide rates between industrializing and highly industrialized nations. However, we also find that convergence in national homicide rates is far from universal.

Second, we were also able to use the data to examine whether violent crime rates for the nations of the world are getting more similar or less similar over time. Some researchers have argued that crime rates for all nations of the world will gradually converge as individual nations go through similar globalization processes while others contend that instead there will be growing divergence between crime rates in industrializing nations and the industrial elite but convergence in crime rates within both groups. We use econometric methods to test for convergence and divergence in homicide victimization rates for thirty-five nations from 1956 to 1998. Our results provide little support for the argument that there has been a growing rift in homicide rates between industrializing and highly industrialized nations. However, we also find that convergence in national homicide rates is far from universal. In fact, nearly all of the cases of homicide convergence we could identify took place among nations of the European Union. Thus, it appears that modern examples of crime convergence are limited mostly to nations that are geographically and culturally proximate. A paper reporting these results is currently under review.

And finally, we are in the process of using the global homicide database to examine a series of related questions: Is there evidence that male and female rates of homicide victimization are getting more similar over time? How has the global transition to democracy affected homicide victimization rates? And do nations with higher levels of social capital experience lower rates of homicide victimization?

Bibliography

1. 2002. Declining Violent Crime Rates in the 1990s: Predicting Crime Booms and Busts. Criminology 25:145-168.

Nationalism and Violence in Two Post-Soviet Republics: Azerbaijan and Moldova

David D. Laitin, Political Science, University of Chicago

Research Grant, 1997, 1998

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The goal of my HFG grant was to account for variation in the degree of violence in the critical moment of state breakdown in the former Soviet Union. At this moment, as in the case of many imperial breakdowns, the level of ethnic violence increased markedly compared to the era of Soviet hegemony. My previous research examining ethnic identification in four republics (Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan) was inadequate to account for variations in violence, since all of them were peaceful. The HFG grant allowed me to replicate the research techniques used in my earlier studies to include two cases where there was significant secessionist violence in the new republics (Moldova and Azerbaijan). Two theories were tested to account for the variation in cases. The oft-cited theory of Donald Horowitz emphasizes psychological mechanisms affecting self-esteem; the greater the challenge to ethnic self-esteem, the more likely the violence. An alternative theory by James Fearon and Pieter van Houten, based on Rogers Brubaker’s “triadic configuration,” is also tested. This theory relies on a commitment logic, and hypothesizes secessionist violence where minority groups get clear signals of support, should they try to secede, from a national homeland.

These findings are important because they tell us that the quality of ethnic relations is less important than previously thought in accounting for violence; and that interventions by neighboring states (or rump groups within them) are often the culprits for civil war violence.

The newly collected data did not support the predictions that would follow from Horowitz’s theory. Ethnic relations in Moldova and Azerbaijan were no more challenging to self-esteem than in the peaceful republics. The commitment theory, however, was consistent with the data and the historical record. In Moldova a rump-Soviet army unit and in Azerbaijan a strong militia from Armenia gave unqualified support to secessionists, thereby emboldening them. Meanwhile, Russia gave only mixed signals to the Russian minorities in the four peaceful republics. These findings are important because they tell us that the quality of ethnic relations is less important than previously thought in accounting for violence; and that interventions by neighboring states (or rump groups within them) are often the culprits for civil war violence. The research findings were published in Comparative Political Studies (Laitin 2001) as “Secessionist Rebellion in the Former Soviet Union.” The research materials were also the basis for a doctoral dissertation by Alena Guboglo at Moscow State University.