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More than just a study of legal history, Shifting the Blame looks at the "abuse excuse" defense as an indicator of broad social change in cultural understandings of victimization, responsibility, and womanhood. The introduction of victimization as an exculpatory condition within the context of a criminal defense tells the story of a society that has accepted victimization as a new way of explaining and excusing misbehavior.

Through case law analysis, the book documents the initial development of the strategy in three different types of cases in the 1970s - "rotten social background", brainwashing, and battered women's self-defense cases. Since its initial acceptance in battered women's cases in the early 1980s, the use of the strategy has expanded to a variety of offenders in different types of relationships arguing different defenses. In lively, readable prose, Westervelt examines each form of expansion, revealing that while the expansion of the strategy has been fairly extensive, it has also been limited in some important ways. Her research shows readers that only certain types of "victims," particularly victims of physical abuse, have successfully used this defense. Shifting the Blame exposes the ways in which the acceptance of this new defense strategy illuminates a cultural shift in understandings of individual responsibility and shows how the law plays a role in defining who can be an acceptable victim.

Saundra D. Westervelt is an assistant professor in the Sociology Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Since World War II, the corporate tax burden has, overall, decreased enormously as a percentage of the government's total revenue. Until now, however, no explanation of this phenomenon has accounted for the periodic reforms—such as the dramatic 1986 Tax Reform Act—which significantly increase some corporate taxes.

Remarkably accessible and rich in historical evidence, Shifting the Burden is the most compelling explanation to date of how our nation's tax policy is formulated. Cathie J. Martin shows how presidents' cultivation of allies within the business community and struggles within that community itself combine to shape tax policy.

In this volume, Stephanie W. Cawthon and Carrie Lou Garberoglio discuss the individual and systemic factors that both facilitate and inhibit the attainment of postsecondary education, training, and career goals for deaf individuals. Real-life examples and current research are combined in this consideration of the interactions between individuals and the many layers of the overall system in which they navigate.
               In addition to using a systems theory approach, the authors employ resiliency models that emphasize how deaf individuals persist through the transition process amidst the barriers that reside within larger educational and social systems. Employment, independent living, and community involvement are a few of the postsecondary outcomes that are covered. Shifting the Dialog, Shifting the Culture addresses critical issues that influence how deaf individuals reach their postsecondary goals and is designed for a diverse audience that includes professionals who work (or are training to work) with deaf individuals, policy makers, as well as federal and state personnel.