Chad F. Emmett

The Heart of the Matter: The Security of Women and the Security of States

Does the security of women influence the security and behavior of states? Existing evidence linking the situation of women to state-level variables such as economic prosperity and growth, health, and corruption is fairly conclusive. Questions remain, however, concerning the degree to which state security and state security-related behavior is linked to the security of women. The women and peace thesis draws upon evolutionary biology/psychology for ultimate causes of this linkage, and sociological theories of social diffusion and psychological theories of social learning for more proximate causal mechanisms. Together, a new data resourcethe WomanStats Databaseand conventional methodology find a robust, positive relationship between the physical security of women and three measures of state security and peacefulness. In addition, a comparison of this proposition to alternative explanations involving level of democracy, level of economic development, and civilizational identity shows that the physical security of women is a better predictor of state security and peacefulness. Although these results are preliminary, it is still possible to conclude that the security of women must not be overlooked in the study of state security, especially given that the research questions to be raised and the policy initiatives to be considered in the promotion of security will differ markedly if the security of women is seriously considered as a significant influence on state security.

The WomanStats Project Database: Advancing an Empirical Research Agenda

This article describes the WomanStats Project Database — a multidisciplinary creation of a central repository for cross-national data and information on women available for use by academics, policy-makers, journalists, and all others. WomanStats is freely accessible online, thus facilitating worldwide scholarship on issues with gendered aspects. WomanStats contains over 260 variables for 174 countries and their attendant subnational divisions (where such information is available) and currently contains over 68,000 individual data points. WomanStats provides nuanced data on the situation and status of women internationally and in so doing facilitates the current trend to disaggregate analyses. This article introduces the dataset, which is now publicly available, describes its creation, discusses its utility, and uses measures of association and mapping to draw attention to theoretically interesting patterns concerning the various dimensions of women’s inequality that are worthy of further exploration. Two of nine variables clusters are introduced — women’s physical security and son preference/sex ratio. The authors confirm the multidimensionality of women’s status and show that the impact of democracy and state wealth vary based on the type of violence against women. Overall, the authors find a high level of violence against women worldwide.

Spatial Succession of Sacred Space in Chicago

Religious landscapes tell much more about a place than just religious adherence. The oftentimes strong correlation between ethnicity and religion means that a religious landscape can also be an ethnic landscape. In urban centers like Chicago, ethnic neighborhoods have long been identified by their central places of worship. The ethnic composition of neighborhoods, however, is not static. As one group moves up and out, another moves in. As a result, places of worship built to accommodate the original ethnic/religious group become places of worship for new residents. In the transition, new and growing groups may choose to share sacred space with the older and declining group. Through spatial succession of sacred space, sharing of sacred space, and converting profane space into sacred space, the ethnic groups of Chicago have created a fascinating and ever-changing religious landscape that tells much about the many different groups who live and worship in the city.

The Siting of Churches and Mosques as an Indicator of Christian–Muslim Relations

The state of relations between Christians and Muslims can be difficult to assess, particularly on a micro scale. Analysing where and why places of worship are located can be an important indicator of the complexities of inter-religious relations. This paper uses examples and case studies from across time and space to demonstrate how changes to the religious landscape can help ascertain degrees of tolerance and intolerance. These changes can come about through such methods as allowing mosques or churches to be built as a sign of tolerance, destroying or converting mosques or churches as a sign of intolerance, building a place of worship adjacent to another place of worship out of either respect or a sense of superiority, and limiting the location in order to keep the minority religious group in its place.

Detecting change in equatorial regions of Brazil using medium resolution satellite imagery

Over the past few years, reconstructed scatterometer imagery has been used for equatorial forest inventory. This paper presents results of a project to monitor large-area changes in the natural Brazilian landscape which is apparent between 1978 and 1996. The 1978 image originates from the Seasat-A scatterometer (SASS), whereas the 1996 image is reconstructed from recent 1996 NASA (NSCAT) imagery.

Pious Merchants as Missionaries and the Diffusion of Religions in Indonesia

For millennia merchants have played a significant role in the diffusion of religion into the Indonesian archipelago. Hindu and Buddhist merchants first introduced new religions. Muslim merchants followed from South and Southwest Asia. Slowly they brought Islam to the coastal trading areas of what is now the world’s largest Islamic country. Christianity came through a more formalized process of colonization with the Portuguese actively spreading Catholicism in the eastern Spice Islands and then the Dutch who mostly sought to restrict missionary activity lest it get in the way of profits. The ways in which these merchants enabled the spread of religions are varied. While accounts of these conversions are limited, it seems as if the locals converted because of perceived economic opportunities, marriage to the newcomers, and an attraction to the liberating ideas they learned from the pious traders. One of the more recent religious groups to enter Indonesia is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Since 1970 a small cadre of officially called and ordained Mormon missionaries has spread the faith, mostly in the large cities of Java. These organized efforts have been augmented by Mormon merchants who have also spread the faith in non-official ways. They include an American couple based in The Philippines which operated a shipping company; USAID workers who befriended local Indonesians; the singing Osmonds; and a wealthy American Mormon who befriended a Muslim cleric and future president Abdurrahman Wahid. The stories of how untrained, undirected, self-motivated Mormons helped to spread a new brand of religion in Indonesia is certainly reflective of how earlier merchants from other religions did the same thing.