Civil Behavior Research Articles

An Analysis of the Status of Women in the context of the Life of the Holy Prophet( PBUH)

If we study the ancient history with respect to different civilizations, cultures and religions, it is clear that without a doubt human being developed and civilized themselves through those times. But with all that progress and acted civilized behaviour in their societies, there was no respect neither rights for the women none what so ever. When some of these claim to offer some limited freedom, it was never actually given to women, history is the witness of the animalistic behaviour of these so called civilizations and religions, let it be Greeks, Arabs, Christianity or Jews. Islam is the only religion which provides the whole system of life, laws and rights including women. The Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H) showed by his acts and ways that how a woman should be treated and what rights Islam gives them. Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H)He set the examples like his behaviour with his wives and daughter.

‘Unlawful Warfare is Uncivilised’: The International Debate on the Punishment of War Crimes, 1872–19181

The issue of the punishment of war crimes has had a long history of debate in the twentieth and even already in the twenty-first century. Not much, however, is known about the debate on the issue before and during the First World War. This article tries to explore the debate among Western European jurists and publicists on the issue in the period between 1872 and 1918, linking it to the idea of civilised behaviour in wartime, as many jurists and publicists of the time believed that civilised states would in general not violate the laws of war. If that was nevertheless the case these violations were considered to be the consequence of an uncivilised behaviour, which was the more problematic the more the power concerned had been considered a part of the international community of civilised states. Crimes committed by nations that had been considered fully civilised before 1914 were therefore highlighted in the debate, whereas crimes committed in so-called semi-civilised or uncivilised areas of the world were only taken up if specific political or propagandistic reasons made it seem appropriate.

Life Writing and Victorian Culture (review)

Reviewed by: Life Writing and Victorian Culture Francis O'Gorman (bio) David Amigoni , ed. Life Writing and Victorian Culture. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006. xv, 239 pp., illus. ISBN 0-754-63531-7, $99.95. "Life writing" in the Victorian period is now well recognized to comprise a diversity of literary forms. Diaries, obituaries, journals, fictionalized autobiographies, and letters are among the genres recently established alongside the corpus of formal biographies and autobiographies as legitimate topics for scholarly study. David Amigoni's new collection of essays is a decisive confirmation of the current trends in the study of life writing, and will prove, I think, an extremely useful exemplification of developments in this area over the last ten years or so. Modern concerns with gender, sexuality, nationality, and class are prominent. Suspicion of any notion that writing reveals transparently is evident too, and the essayists to different degrees work with the assumption that writing gives impressions, that it is to some degree involved in acts of strategic shaping, that it is always-already involved in some form of ideological contest. Such theoretical postures are, of course, more or less universal in literary study and cultural history now, though their prominence in life writing studies is still noticeable. The language of self-description, most readers now assume, is axiomatically un-innocent, and such assumptions, born chiefly of Barthes, Foucault, and Stephen Greenblatt, but with Oscar Wilde in the background, have made it difficult for readers wholly to believe that expressions of human virtue, wisdom, or decency can be really what they seem. Victorian earnestness has become, under such conditions, pretty much unreadable. Widely accepted here as familiar motivations, conscious or otherwise, for the shaping of life-writing's rhetoric are the matters of arranging one's life for posterity, and of legitimizing it in culturally dominant and approved terms. The languages of class affiliation—understanding class here in no narrow sense—emerge in the foreground as a dominant interpretative category for reading. Martin Hewitt's opening essay returns him to the subject of Samuel Bamford and to the important question of the relationship between diary and autobiography. Exploring the "post-autobiographical" nature of Bamford's diaries, Hewitt's engaging essay is a reminder to historians approaching such documentary sources of issues in the evidential status and rhetorical purposes of diary writing. Alison Booth moves away, rewardingly, from the study of what she calls "individualist models of identity and development" [End Page 105] (41) to consider collective biographies or "prosopographies" before the Dictionary of National Biography (1885–). It is easy to forget that the DNB had a conspicuous tradition behind it of collective representations which, Booth argues, functioned to provide exempla of good citizenship. Her interest is particularly in biographical collections that portrayed literary homes, especially those that preserved the "commonplace middle-class interiors of men and women of letters" (61). Donna Loftus is intrigued by discourses of control in narratives of self-help in the period, and in the creation, as she sees it, of professional identities in middle-class male autobiographies. Male masochism interests Martin Danahay, and he proposes the controversial notion that "Rather than recognize the psychic pain that they were causing themselves, Victorian men would look 'outward' to find compensation for their own inner pain in idealised images of the other" (87). Masochism is not in this respect sexual, but proposed as a defining feature of male self-control in the period. Not all readers will find the theoretical underpinning of this account helpful, but the analysis of matters of self-restraint, of the inner conflicts necessary for civilized behavior, emerge beyond that as a productive frame for debating male identity in the period before Freud produced a notion of self-control as fundamental to human maturation. Trev Lynn Broughton's work on masculinity in the late Victorian period has been of consequence. In her essay on Philip Meadows Taylor's The Story of My Life (1877), she considers autobiographical writing from the Indian civil service, challenging Benita Parry's somewhat off-hand remark that such writing was "self-congratulation couched in flatulent prose" and "preoccupied with rank and advancement" (qtd. 105). Broughton's most interesting argument is to...

Hospitality and its discontents: Beyond bowling alone

According to Georg Simmel, commensality, the act of eating together, is fundamentally about the affirmation of social relations, where sharing food becomes a means of cementing ties. Food operates as a discursive field through which people construct boundaries of similarities and difference, and becomes an extraordinarily versatile vehicle for examining people's ambivalences about modernity, as well as the persistence of class and gender inequality. In my research on people's domestic hospitality, I explored the pleasures and burdens of feeding work in contexts beyond the family. What does food work look like when people invite friends, neighbors, and others into their homes for a meal? Potlucks, dinner parties, and barbecues operate as sites where the oppressive and liberating aspects of food labor come together in interesting ways. Quite simply, people invite folks into their homes and offer them food. They cook for them. These occasions are both pleasurable and problematic, for it is with no small effort that appropriate foods and social arrangements be constructed. The effort of hosting and feeding non-kin is considerable. While the outcomes are often pleasurable, many events provoke difficulties and conflicts, revealing people's fears about close social relations. Indeed, cohesion often involves a certain amount of coercion, manifest through menu, manners, and reciprocity. In my research on people's sociability beyond family meals, I found a consistent undercurrent of discomfort. This cultural tension between civilized behavior and comfort is not new to American culture but it has a particular configuration in contemporary times.

The religio-political strategies of the Russian Orthodox Church as a ‘politics of discourse’*

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 In Germany, where confessional religious instruction is guaranteed by the Constitution (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 7 Section 3), the question has recently given rise to controversy in Brandenburg where the government invoked a clause in the Constitution allowing for exceptions (Article 141) and replaced the subject ‘Religion’ with a religious knowledge subject ‘Lebensgestaltung – Ethik – Religionskunde’. At the moment there is a similar controversy going on in Berlin. 2 Fursenko has often spoken in favour of a subject called ‘History of the World's Religions’, as for example in a radio interview with ‘Ekho Moskvy’ on 30 May 2004 (Larina, 2004 Larina, K. 2004. V gostyakh: Andrei Fursenko (Radio Echo Moskvy, interview, 30 May), http://www.echo.msk.ru/interview/9.html [Google Scholar]). He said that a textbook for this subject would be produced by the end of 2004 (see Privalov, 2004 Privalov, A. 2004. O novom uchebnike i o strasti. Ekspert, 31 May, here quoted from http://www.religare.ru/print9530.htm [Google Scholar]). In June 2005 he was able to announce that the textbook was ready (Zavershena, 2005 Zavershena. 2005. Zavershena rabota nad uchebnikom po istorii mirovykh religii. RIA Novosti, 15 June, http://www.rian.ru/society/religion/20050615/40524491-print.html [Google Scholar]). 3 Yuri Zavel'sky, rector of Moscow Gymnasium No. 1543, holds that only convinced atheists should be allowed to teach the subject ‘The History of Religions’ because only atheists will be sure not to bring their own religious convictions into the discussion (see Lemutkina, 2004 Lemutkina, M. 2004. Kuda povernet istoriya religii v Rossii. Gazeta, 13 May, http://www.gazeta.ru/education/2004/05/13_a_108495.shtml [Google Scholar]). 4 For specific references for all the perspectives described in this paragraph see Willems, 2006 Willems, J. 2006. Religiöse Bildung in Russlands Schulen: Orthodoxie, Nationale Identität und die Positionalität des Faches ‘Grundlagen orthodoxer Kultur’ (OPK), Münster: Lit-Verlag. [Google Scholar], pp. 100 – 14. 5 This Russian (Rossiiskaya or Russkaya) culture will not necessarily turn out to be different from other cultures. It may be that it will involve an interpretation of ‘Russian history as part of universal culture or universal civilisation and/or an autonomous culture/civilisation’ (Scherrer, 2003 Scherrer, J. 2003. Kulturologie: Rußland auf der Suche nach einer zivilisatorischen Identität (Essener Kulturwissenschaftliche Vorträge, vol. 13), Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag. [Google Scholar], p. 103). 6 It is in fact frequently the case that Culturology is now being taught by people who were formerly instructors in Marxism-Leninism or Scientific Atheism (Scherrer, 2003 Scherrer, J. 2003. Kulturologie: Rußland auf der Suche nach einer zivilisatorischen Identität (Essener Kulturwissenschaftliche Vorträge, vol. 13), Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag. [Google Scholar],p. 8). 7 The education minister, Andrei Fursenko, who is in favour of a ‘History of Religions’ course rather than ‘Foundations of Orthodox Culture’, has nevertheless said: ‘Let me repeat, in Russia, or at least in most of Russia, Orthodoxy has naturally played, well, let us say, a very large role, perhaps even the decisive role, in shaping our statehood and culture’ (Larina, 2004 Larina, K. 2004. V gostyakh: Andrei Fursenko (Radio Echo Moskvy, interview, 30 May), http://www.echo.msk.ru/interview/9.html [Google Scholar]). 8 See Kiprian. Valentina Yekimenkova, who trains teachers of Orthodox ethics under the aegis of the ROC, also explains ‘kul'turno’ in theological terms. She defines ‘piety’ (blagochestiye) as ‘habits of human behaviour which are founded in an Orthodox education’. ‘Civilised (kul'turny) behaviour’ is thus an aspect of piety (Yekimenkova, 2001 Yekimenkova, V. M. 2001. Vera istselyayet serdtsa: iz opyta prepodavaniya pravoslavnoi ėtiki uchashchimsya 1 – 10 klassov, Moscow: Kovcheg. [Google Scholar], p. 10, n. 1). 9 The question of how under these circumstances the school system can do justice to the plurality of world-views (and ethnic plurality) in Russia, and indeed the question of how the various claims and standpoints of the religious organisations can be distinguished from the logic of the political process itself, are questions that need to be asked, but they fall outside the frame of reference of this article.

Detachment and Engagement: Israelis’ Everyday Verbal Representations of ‘the Israeli Person’ and the Contest for the Right to Condemn a Collective Identity

This article examines strategies of detachment and engagement in the ongoing struggles over defining a collective sense of ‘Israeli identity’ that take place in contemporary Israeli everyday discourse, and which is intended for insiders alone. The analysis compares material from two different samples of voluntary formulations of ‘how Israelis behave’ offered by anonymous Israelis in domestic public forums: one is a collection of about 300 folkloric aphorisms in a popular newspaper column, and the other includes over 1700 on-line talk-backs to 14 Internet reports about the bad reputation of Israelis abroad. These miscellaneous materials reveal a heated contest for the right to condemn a generalized collective image of ‘an Israeli person’. Mobilizing alternatively two value-paradigms, that of ‘European codes of civilized behaviour’ (an outside perspective) and that of ‘local patriotism’ (an inside perspective), a negative collective image of ‘misbehaved person’ is established, towards which conflicting group-attitudes are formed. Four main strategies are observed in disputing or confirming this negative image: a total personal alienation; patronizing engagement; a variety of denial tactics; and a provocative identification with ‘uncivilizedness’ as an ‘authentic Israeli mindset’.

Sanctity of Human Life in War: Ethics and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

This reflective paper focuses on the moral and ethical difficulties medical care providers meet in applying DSM-IV criteria of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in therapy and in Compensation and Pension Examinations. Providers may be less interested in articulating a philosophy of life or their own ontology than about documenting care for the patient or providing effective management of symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The veteran comes for assessment or therapy after an embodiment of war conflicts. Examiners and therapists spend time in clinical judgments and ethical consideration. Ethical decisions involve the sanctity of human life and the distinction made between acceptable civil and war behavior. Insight into the conflicting values found in the veterans' struggle to cope with the stress of war is needed. The stress of sending young men into harm's way is an ethical issue for veterans and the society which sends them and thereby compromises the sanctity of human life. These ethical components require the doctor and the veteran to articulate their values within ontology or a personal philosophy of life. That exchange contributes to accurate assessment and adequate therapy. Not understanding the importance of personal ontologies in treatment may make the veteran's self-disclosure difficult. Self-disclosure of one's ontology is one side of coping with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The other side is for powerful decision-making groups to disclose to the young recruits the full and honest account of the human cost of war before sending them into harm's way.

Developing Social Capital in the Operating Room

Developing Social Capital in the Operating Room

Humoring Resistance: Laughter and the Excessive Body in Contemporary Latin American Women's Fiction (review)

220 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies y los resultados del presente volumen, habrá que seguir con atención la expansión bibliográfica y cultural de esta colección y de las instituciones que la arropan. Carlos Javier GarcÃ-a Arizona State University Humoring Resistance: Laughter and the Excessive Body in Contemporary Latin American Women's Fiction SUNY Press, 2004 By Dianna C. Niebylski One ofthe most important documents in contemporary feminist cultural theory is Hélène Cixous's "The Laugh of the Medusa." In it Qxous develops rhe proposition that an effective écriture feminine is characterized by the in-your face defiant, resistance, indeed, repudiational laughter. Since it is held as a maxim of social grace never to laugh uproariously, a maxim adhered to in particular by a lady, Cixousian laughter is clearly uncivilized and unfeminine, in ways that it becomes necessary for feminism (or queer action) to endorse as a form of deconstructing social norms that regulate—and repress—inconvenient forms of social behavior. One recalls the cartoon in The New Yorker in the early days of feminism, in which a woman is flashed by the prototypic Man in a Raincoat. Rather than reacting in Freudian hysteria, the woman doubles over, laughing and pointing. The five Spanish American authors examined here—unfortunately, not really Latin American, since Brazil is excluded: Patricia Galváo, Clarice Lispector, Hilda Hilst could profitably have been included—are all notable as examples of women writers who have not only used laughter as an instrument of resisting patriarchal feminine civility as a way of challenging the restrictions of civilized behavior as that civility understands them, but who have also used bodily excess as a basis for provoking that laughter. It is an excess grounded in the display of the body—the ridiculization of the masculine norm and the underscoring of what that norm may find repulsive in the female body; the discovery of hitherto unheeded manifestations and use of the female body; the body as a sociopolitical ground; the body as a site of the grotesqueries deriving from historical forces. The five authors showcased, each with an in-depth chapter, are Laura Esquivel, Ana Lydia Vega, Luisa Valenzuela, ArmonÃ-a Sommers and Alicia Borinsky. Certainly one can think of many other candidates for inclusion (I particularly regretted the absence of Mayra Santos Febres and Ana Maria Shua; the latter is mentioned twice in passing). But what is valuable is precisely the decision not to construct a laundry list of the healthy array of possible inclusions, but rather, via the detailed analysis of judiciously chosen texts, to provide a model for work on other pertinent authors. Moreover, Niebylski opens with a solid introduction in which she surveys issues relating to laughter and the body and demonstrates a sensitivity for the need simply not to apply Cixous or American feminist theory uncritically to Latin American texts. There are few limitations to this intelligent study. I have already noted the absence of Brazilians despite the title; one could also suggest Latina writers; and some mention ofthe lesbian body and laughter suggests itself as useful (e.g., the Uruguayan Cristina Peri Rossi or the Colombian AlbalucÃ-a Angel, both mentioned once in passing). One final note: there has been some interest of late in referring in Latin American cultural studies to the Manual de urbanidad (1869, with many, many reprints) by Manuel Antonio Carrefio (died 1874). What he has to say on laughter, merriment, and similar topics is a necessary intertext for any Latin American cultural production on resistant laughter. David William Foster Arizona State University ...

The Performative State: Semi‑ coloniality and the Tyranny of Images in Modern Thailand*

Previous accounts of the Thai of have been largely ahistorical, presenting the phenomenon as something of a cultural given. This study traces the history of this of power/knowledge and power/prestige and shows that rather than being traditional it took its present form as part of Siam's responses to the encroachment of the Western powers in the nineteenth century. As a modern form of power, the of came Into being as a product of the distinctive character of Siam's semi-colonial relations with the West, Noncolonized Siam did not need to wage a war of independence to expel foreign colonizers. Nevertheless, to preserve national autonomy a new form of local power was called into being, and the of emerges from this strategic mobilization of local power In the service of preserving Siamese independence. The contemporary Thai political system remains authoritarian. To a considerable extent this is a legacy ofthe country's semi-colonial history when, as a strategic response to the challenges that nineteenth century colonialism presented to national autonomy, the absolute monarchy mobilized a new form ofpower to construct a public field of of a civilized Siam. While this regime of images was called into being to placate Western demands for civilized behaviour, it simultaneously realized the potential of the indigenous absolutist state, especially in the sphere ofpublic appearances. In contrast, in the private sphere of everyday life significant disjunctures with public performances of Western-style civilization were often tolerated and

Democracy online: civility, politeness, and the democratic potential of online political discussion groups

The proponents of cyberspace promise that online discourse will increase political participation and pave the road for a democratic utopia. This article explores the potential for civil discourse in cyberspace by examining the level of civility in 287 discussion threads in political newsgroups. While scholars often use civility and politeness interchangeably, this study argues that this conflation ignores the democratic merit of robust and heated discussion. Therefore, civility was defined in a broader sense, by identifying as civil behaviors that enhance democratic conversation. In support of this distinction, the study results revealed that most messages posted on political newsgroups were civil, and further suggested that because the absence of face-to-face communication fostered more heated discussion, cyberspace might actually promote Lyotard’s vision of democratic emancipation through disagreement and anarchy (Lyotard, 1984). Thus, this study supported the internet’s potential to revive the public sphere, provided that greater diversity and volume of discussion is present.

The Battle for Civilized Behavior: Let's Begin with Manners

Perceiving a trend toward declining civility in the society at large, Mr. Burns has come up with a simple plan to help his students learn to behave courteously. AT WHAT POINT do we say our society has reached a crisis in terms of lack of civilized behavior? Some say we are nearing that point or have already reached it. For many adults and children alike, it seems that basic manners, titles of respect, and proper etiquette have become quaint relics of the past. Few would deny that appropriate behavior should be taught at home and that parents are primarily responsible for much of the social behavior of their children. By the same token, few would deny that the media and the culture at large also exert a strong influence on children's sense of which behaviors are appropriate in which situations. Anyone whose channel-surfing lands on The Jerry Springer Show will find it hard to deny that the trend of late has been toward less and less civilized behavior. I think we must face the fact that a growing number of children simply do not have appropriate manners and social skills or proper respect for adults. We must also acknowledge that we are being negligent as a society if we do not strive to develop more appropriate social behaviors in these children. Certainly, we cannot expect from our children what they rarely see. And those of us who work in schools must accept that we can no longer be sure what is being taught at home and what needs to be taught at school. Like it or not, the roles of the family and those of the school are merging. Having worked for the last 181?2 years with students who exhibit problem behaviors, I have seen more and more of them who simply do not know how to behave. Moreover, during the last few years, there have been growing efforts on the part of educators to teach values and character, and there have even been attempts at legislating manners in the schools. For instance, when school began in the fall of 1999 in Louisiana, students in kindergarten through fifth grade were required by law to address teachers as Ma'am or Sir or to use the appropriate titles of Mr., Mrs., Miss, or Ms. There were attempts in other states (Indiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, and Wisconsin) to legislate the use of titles of respect by students, but so far Louisiana is the only state to pass such a law. Based on the premise that good manners result in better discipline and thus improve the climate for learning, supporters of the cause say that we need to teach manners in the schools because no one is doing so in the home. In other words, courtesy is a necessary first step in instilling values in children. Supporters feel that teaching courtesy can do no harm and has the potential of increasing the levels of civility, respect, and discipline in our schools. Some opponents consider the legislated manners approach too militaristic and authoritarian. Others believe manners or morality can't be legislated and that respect must be earned, not mandated. Still others say that the effort represents meddling in areas that are the responsibility of the home or that the solution is a superficial response to much deeper problems facing our society. How I Began Teaching Manners I believe the attempts to legislate manners in our schools have run their course, but I continue to believe that civility in our society is declining and that the roles of family and school are merging. Therefore, in an attempt to develop more appropriate social behaviors in my third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students with behavioral problems, I decided I would request (not require, but strongly request) that they use the terms Ma'am and Sir when addressing adults. I judged this a better approach to teaching manners than trying to fit another separate lesson into our already hectic days. My plan was to gradually teach my students what to say and how to act and then to show them how the use of simple social graces can influence the impressions they make on others. …

THE USES OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POLITENESS

Politeness is a `key word' for historians of eighteenth-century Britain. It implied a distinguishing vision of wider social concerns and less constricted cultural tastes than was attributed to earlier ages. What part it played in identifiable shifts of behaviour is harder to judge. Among people who served the growing commercial and professional needs of the day, its influence seems well attested. More problematic was its impact on plebeian life. Yet even here, there is evidence to suggest some degree of `polishing' in line with contemporary expectations, to the extent that politeness itself ceased to describe social aspirations and became synonymous with basic standards of civil behaviour.

Saving Us From Them

Saving Us From Them

Studying and Measuring Civility: A Framework, Trends and Scale

Four essential questions for the study of civility involve developing a definition of the term, determining its effects, establishing trends, and predicting the consequences of civility. A framework for studying it includes the actors, their gender, situations and settings, occupational role requirements, the cultural imperatives defining civility, and the processes through which it is learned. Objective measures of civility in the United States show its variability and change. Four items in the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS) are combined to form a scale of civility. Correlates of the scale show that civility does not differ by gender, color, or region. It is weakly associated with income but is significantly associated with education, occupation, and health. Age, education, and health provide a predictive model of civility. Anger, an emotional aspect of interpersonal exchange, reveals reactions characteristic of civil behavior: waiting for anger to pass before responding, trying to forget the incident, not thinking of revenge, not walking away from the situation, and not yelling or hitting. Hypotheses are proposed for further study that involves age, marital status, occupation, health, and emotional control.

Le bouddhisme dans la pensée politique du Viêt-Nam traditionnel

Nguyên Thê Anh Buddhism in traditional Vietnamese political thought Vietnam under the Lý and Trân was essentially a Buddhist country. The piety of the dynasties was their source of legitimacy, and, while Buddhism was affirmed as the measure of civilized behaviour for both sovereigns and subjects, it provided means for royal authority to penetrate and incorporate the local political structure. The Trân rulers in particular strove to impose ideological unity on the country under the umbrella of the True Lâm school, their own creation. In the face of the development of social unrest in the fourteenth century, however, Confucian literati started to voice their concern for the maintenance of order and eventually emerged in the fifteenth century as spokesmen for royal authority, definers of public morality and guardians of the court. As a result, institutional Buddhism lost the court patronage it had previously enjoyed, and its political influence declined steadily to its lowest ebb, in the nineteenth century, with the adoption of the Chinese bureaucratic model on a large scale by the Confucian Nguyen court. Restrictions and prohibitions were thus imposed on Buddhist temples, in order to prevent religious deviations (under the form of millenarian movements for example) from becoming too great.

Politeness in the Urban Environment

This article examines the prevalence of politeness or civil behaviors in Paris and a smaller French provincial city (Nantes). Do people entering a large department store hold the door open for the person behind them? With a sample of 880 participants, observed at the entrance of department stores, no significant sex differences were found (for the participant or the person for whom the door could be held). Parisians were significantly less civil than their provincial counterparts, and high-density conditions reduced civil behavior in both settings. In the presence of a polite model (the preceding person holding the door open for the participant), Parisians, but not the provincial sample, are influenced by the preceding situation; the differences between Paris and the provincial city are in this case minimal. Results are considered in terms of social modeling: Being exposed to a polite behavior reactivates the cultural norm of politeness in Parisians.

Civil Leadership in the Academy

Within pluralistic and diverse communities, civility represents a time-honored strategy that allows individuals and groups with little else in common to live together and get along. Opportunities for civic engagement and contribution are often predicated on shared understandings of civil discourse and behavior. Inability to get along can have dire consequences for any community. Establishing a civil climate is a shared responsibility of community members yet some individuals, by virtue of their influence and authority within the community, serve to establish and model behavioral norms and expectations. Civility in the academy, its presence and value, has been questioned and debated in recent years. (See End Note #1) University presidents and other campus leaders recognize civility as a constituent component of effective leadership. Beyond recognition of its importance to effective leadership, there is a need to examine the root sources of incivility, threats to civility, and approaches to establishing and strengthening civil culture in university communities.

Bloody constraint: war and chivalry in Shakespeare

Chivalry, one of Shakespeare's central themes, retains its pertinence and topicality in our rules for international humanitarian law and the conduct of war. Against a background of Medieval and Renaissance sources as well as Shakespeare's historical and dramatic realms, Professor Meron considers the ways in which law, chivalry, morality, conscience, and state necessity are deployed in Shakespeare to promote a society in which soldiers behave humanely and leaders are held to high standards of civilized behavior. In doing so, he illustrates the literary genealogy of such contemporary international humanitarian concerns as the treatment of prisoners and of women and accountability for war crimes. An insightful consideration of modern humanitarian law as seen from the perspectives of both Shakespeare and history, Bloody Constraint will also interest students of Medieval and Renaissance studies.

Developing Community Constitutions at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

How can campuses encourage civil behavior and promote a sense of responsibility among students? At the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, residence life staff have started a program designed to achieve these ends as students create and live by community constitutions.