Uncivilized Behavior Research Articles

Den gode vilje og de vilde børn: Civiliseringens paradoks i den danske skole

Laura Gilliam: The Good Will and the Wild Children. The Paradox of Civilizing in the Danish School Based on fieldwork in three Danish schools, this article focuses on the school’s project of transforming children into civilized citizens and the consequences this have for teachers’ work with children, and for children’s practices, social categories and construction of identity. It is argued that the civilizing project directed towards the groups regarded as the uncivilized of society: children, lower social classes and ethnic minorities, often results in these groups’ identification with uncivilized behavior. This paradox of civilizing is seen in the three classes, where an extensive focus on learning to be “social” and on adjusting all non-social behavior, make the teachers mark quite a few children as socially problematic, just like making trouble and other rejections of “civilised behaviour” become a relevant factor for the children’s social relationships in school, for their understanding of their own and other social categories and a relevant tool for their agency in school and relation to society. Due to the paradox of civilizing and the institutional logics of school, the children who reject the civilized ideal like this and come to identify against society, are often the gendered and ethnic categories, which the school is most eager to integrate and civilize. Keywords: Civilizing, the Danish school, opposition, ethnic minorities, institutional logics, identity.

“A Belgium of Our Own”: The Sack of Russian Kalisz, August 1914

“A Belgium of Our Own”The Sack of Russian Kalisz, August 1914 Laura Engelstein (bio) The Geneva Convention of 1864 and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 defined international standards for the just conduct of war and the proper treatment of civilians. From the first days of fighting in 1914, the belligerent powers accused one another of ignoring them.1 Press campaigns against “enemy atrocities” were designed to stir patriotic emotion; governments employed commissions and experts to document the enemy’s misdeeds.2 Their findings justified war crimes charges presented at Versailles in 1919. The political motivation behind such claims and the lurid terms in which they were often couched led skeptics at the time and in retrospect to question their foundation.3 Indeed, some of the stories assumed the fantastic proportions of myth, but many documented actual abuses.4 [End Page 441] The pattern began with the German invasion of Belgium on 4 August 1914, followed by the destruction of monuments and cities in Belgium and France, inspiring outrage across Europe. The Germans in return justified their conduct as a response to civilian aggression.5 On the Eastern and Southeastern fronts, the Germans and Austrians faced an opponent with a reputation for what Europeans deemed uncivilized behavior, the anti-Jewish pogroms often cited as prime example. 6 By mid-August 1914, the Germans were already condemning as “Russian atrocities” (Russische Greueltaten) the murder and arson perpetrated by Cossack troops in East Prussia.7 In early October, a group of distinguished German scientists and scholars published an “Appeal to the Civilized World,” denying their nation had disregarded the laws of war, while protesting the “blood of women and children slaughtered by the Russian hordes” in the east.8 One incident at the very start of the war gave Russians the opportunity to position themselves as the moral equivalent of the suffering Belgians and offset their image as the eastern analogue to Germanic barbarity. This incident involved the modest textile town of Kalisz, located on the Prosna River, at the outermost limit of the Kingdom of Poland, not far from the Prussian border. Like all Polish towns and cities, Kalisz contained a mix of cultures. Half of the almost 25,000 residents were Roman Catholic, a third Jewish. These proportions had remained stable for 50 years, despite continuous expansion culminating in a spurt of prosperity after the opening in 1902 of a railway connecting Russia and Prussia through Kalisz and the industrial powerhouse of Łódź.9 In 1897, three-quarters of city residents considered Polish their native tongue (reflecting the degree of Jewish cultural adaptation). About 10 percent were either Russian-speaking Eastern Orthodox or German-speaking Protestants and Catholics. Manufacture was dominated [End Page 442] by Poles, commerce by Jews. The wealthiest residents were mostly Polish, the military and bureaucracy mostly Russian.10 The German sack of Kalisz during the first two weeks of August 1914 became a cause célèbre in the Russian press. The attack was a textbook case of wartime atrocity in two senses. First, in terms of what occurred, German behavior anticipated the excesses soon to follow in Belgium. Second, in terms of how it was represented, the accounts of all interested parties—Russians, Germans, and Poles—used the evidence to convey a political message, shaping the Kalisz story with an eye to public opinion, both at home and abroad. Despite their different perspectives, the versions offered by the victims, both Russians and Poles, share two striking features: on the one hand, the inability of those who experienced the events to determine how exactly the violence began; on the other, the absence, under circumstances in which opportunities for mutual hatred abounded, of the ethnic stereotypes that otherwise pervaded wartime opinion. This omission is all the more noteworthy, as anti-Jewish feeling was hardly confined to the Slavic Eastern front; nor was it necessarily blunted by horror at German aggression. Take, for example, the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916). In a widely read tract, available also in Russian, he bemoaned the damage inflicted on his country by the once-noble German nation, reduced to the level of medieval barbarism, he explained, by the baleful...

Social context of school crisis and the patterns of school violence

The article starts from the idea that crisis in society, especially in instances such as the Macedonian society in the period of transition, conditions the crisis of the school. Symptoms of the latter ar not just the declining quality of teaching but also increased frequency of physical forms of school violence. The concept of violence is complex and its definitions range from 'verbal violence' to 'uncivilized behavior'. School violence occurs always in a certain social context, considered in this article at three levels: 1) the level of Macedonian society; 2) the global level or globalising context and 3) mass communication context (television, internet, computer and video games, cell phones etc.). Various forms of violence occurring in the family, in the social setting (which forms the background to both family and school) and in the school are closely related and mutually dependent. According to J. Dumay, school violence has three forms: 1) exogenous, 2) the violence proper to the school, implying some form of 'school incivility', and 3) anti-school violence aimed at institutions. In such a social context, the school itself with its authoritarian forms of teaching, textbooks related to the 'hidden curriculum', and inadequate organization and management is a source of violence against students. Research data presented in this paper confirm these claims. The findings also indicate that in terms of incidence of school violence Macedonia ranks at the top of European countries. The pressing character of the problem has urged some countries to develop programs for preventing and reducing school violence, as well as models of effectively organized school.

History of Three Mobilizations: A Reexamination of the Chinese Biological Warfare Allegations against the United States in the Korean War

AbstractChinese allegations that the United States used biological weapons against Chinese troops and Korean civilians is one of the most shocking episodes of the Korean War. While the Chinese government repeatedly reprimanded the U.S. government for its uncivilized combat behavior, the U.S. government vigorously issued denials, treating the charges as an extreme propaganda maneuver applied by China in that moment of military crisis, ideological fervor, and political passion. Since then, a huge amount of scholarship has been produced on the allegation.1 None, however, provided a persuasive conclusion on the incident, mainly due to the lack of reliable sources.

The voice of lay experts: Content analysis of traffic accident “talk-backs”

Every year, more than 500 people are killed on the roads in Israel and more than 3000 are seriously injured. The most dominant factor in understanding the chain of events leading to an accident is the human factor, and understanding driver’s perceptions of the issue are necessary for interventions to be effective. Internet “talk-backs” to accident news items were used as an innovative data source in the present content analysis. In contrast to other qualitative techniques, such as focus groups or interviews, the debate is spontaneous and open to a large audience. The aim of this study was to provide structured and in-depth information about road users’ attitudes and beliefs towards road accidents and their prevention. The total number of “talk-backers” during the 4 months analyzed was 2095. The driver’s behavior as the cause of accidents constitutes the most frequently mentioned theme in the “talk-backs”, more than the themes regarding the condition of the vehicle or the road infrastructure. The driver’s behavior theme was further divided into sub-categories such as driving skills, traffic rule violations, aggressive driving and uncivilized behavior. Lay people were also able to suggest prevention strategies, such as policy, enforcement, road infrastructure, and sanctioning. This information may assist policy-makers and safety experts in identifying the appropriate means of intervention, implementation and communication with the public.

Screen Memories

Screen Memories Paula Rabinowitz (bio) Dirty Harry in Marrakech When I was traveling in Morocco during the early 1970s, Mohammed Ali’s picture was plastered everywhere. Along with James Brown, he was claimed as Africa’s native son; most local movie houses were showing films of Ali’s fights and Brown’s concerts. Seeing their faces and names made me feel more at home: the people of Morocco and I shared at least this intimacy. So, one dusty afternoon, my friend and I, tired of the hot glare of the sun, retreated into a dank movie theater, thinking from the billboards of the Ali-Foreman fight that we could catch this mythic match. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Photo from The Museum of Modern Film Stills Archive. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Dirty Harry. Photo from The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. The Exorcist. Photo from The Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive. We made our way to the balcony already jammed with men and women of all ages wearing long jalabas and trilling Berber. The air was smoky and smelled of bread and broiled lamb; the darkness was broken by dozens of cigarette ends glowing randomly. No one stopped talking when the screen lit up with an inspired double feature—The Exorcist and Dirty Harry. I hadn’t seen either film. In Boston, audiences at The Exorcist had fainted at the blasphemous language and imagery. Some theaters had refused to show the movie after [End Page 65] angry patrons had hurled rosaries at the screen. The Archbishop had denounced the film for inciting such uncivilized behavior. This condemnation alone should have sent me directly to see Linda Blair’s head revolve as she spewed vomit and cursed God and her mother, but for many years, during the Vietnam War, I simply could not watch even the mildest violence. Of course this meant that I never went to see any Clint Eastwood movies, especially not the Dirty Harry films glorifying police vigilantism in the sacred city of San Francisco. But now we were on other turf, and the cartography that mapped moviegoing in the States offered little direction here. Both films were dubbed in French with Arabic subtitles, so I could follow quite well. The audience loved both films. Everyone erupted into wild hysteria the moment Linda Blair opened her mouth. No one could stop laughing as she spilled curses and vomit all over her bedroom. What was blasphemy in the Irish Catholic neighborhoods of Boston was just plain slapstick to this highly sophisticated crowd. They liked Dirty Harry even [End Page 66] more; its stylized acting and the locations around that gorgeous city gave the plot a surreal gloss. The guns kept getting bigger, and the audience howled at the absurd vision of this tall, thin white man blowing bad guys away. I loved the films also; they are among my most vivid memories of that foreign place. All movies need audiences whose presence charges the screen with unexpected energy and recuts the film into something completely original. These really bad films looked good here; it took this Marrakech crowd to show me just how funny white people in America were. You see, I didn’t know these movies were comedies. [End Page 67] My Summer Job During the summer of 1976, I ran a program, jointly sponsored by Northeastern University and the City of Boston, to give summer jobs to high-school kids from South Boston and Roxbury. The aim was to get the kids some money and thus keep them off the streets—or rather, since most of the work was street-sweeping and park maintenance, to keep them visibly laboring in the street and so to deny the unemployment figures that for Boston youth were running about 50%. And ideally, of course, to promote interracial harmony. This was the summer of the bicentennial, but it was also the first summer after full-scale busing between these two racially segregated neighborhoods had been enforced. It had been a violent and frightening year...