The Role of Violent Media Preference in Cumulative Developmental Risk for Violence and General Aggression

The impact of exposure to violence in the media on the long-term development and short-term expression of aggressive behavior has been well documented. However, gaps in this literature remain, and in particular the role of violent media exposure in shaping violent and other serious antisocial behavior has not been investigated. Further, studies of violent media effects typically have not sampled from populations with confirmed histories of violent and/or nonviolent antisocial behavior. In this study, we analyzed data on 820 youth, including 390 juvenile delinquents and 430 high school students, to examine the relation of violent media use to involvement in violence and general aggression. Using criterion scores developed through cross-informant modeling of data from self, parent/guardian, and teacher/staff reports, we observed that childhood and adolescent violent media preferences contributed significantly to the prediction of violence and general aggression from cumulative risk totals. Findings represent a new and important direction for research on the role of violent media use in the broader matrix of risk factors for youth violence.

Estimating policy positions of local parties in elections with multi-vote ballots

This paper investigates the potential for estimating policy positions from electoral results in elections with multiple votes. When voters can spread their votes across multiple party lists in open list elections, they are more likely to select candidates from parties with similar policy positions. The electoral results can therefore be exploited to infer parties’ preferences based on the structure of vote combinations. The proposed data provide a valuable tool for analysing party behaviour in circumstances where ordinary methods for estimating policy positions fail, most importantly in electoral contexts with local competitors. Applying an ideal point model for count data, party preferences are estimated for a German municipality.     

Heirloom rice in Ifugao: an ‘anti-commodity’ in the process of commodification

We analyse the marketing of ‘heirloom rices’ produced in the Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon, the Philippines, as the commodification of a historical ‘anti-commodity’. We contend that, historically, rice was produced for social, cultural and spiritual purposes but not primarily for sale or trade. The Ifugaos were able to sustain terraced wet-rice cultivation within a system of ‘escape agriculture’ because they were protected from Spanish interference by the friction of terrain and distance. ‘Heirloom rice’ is a boundary concept that enables social entrepreneurs to commodify traditional landraces. We analyse the implications for local rice production and conservation efforts.     

The “brand” of the Catholic Church in England and Wales: Challenges and opportunities for communications

This paper considers the concept of “brand” in relation to religious organisations and, in particular, the Catholic Church in England and Wales. It explores the application of marketing and branding concepts to the Church and reports on perceptions of the Church's brand and identity. The findings show that the Catholic Church in England and Wales has very strong brand equity and high levels of brand loyalty among its members, although conventional marketing language should be avoided due to the sensitivities involved. The findings suggest that the Church could usefully be regarded as a “brand community,” akin in many key respects to brand communities in the commercial sphere. It recommends that Church communications could be enhanced by leveraging the brand more effectively as within a true “brand community” for the purpose of encouraging brand loyalty and energising Church members.     

Urban trust in Kenya and Tanzania: Cooperation in the provision of public goods

Literature connecting ethnic diversity with public goods provision has found public goods to be poorly and unevenly supplied in ethnically heterogeneous communities. Scrutinising this hypothesis, the study contrasts an ethnically homogenous community in Kenya with an ethnically heterogeneous one in Tanzania, documenting levels of trust and cooperation in public goods provision. Interviews and focus groups with market-sellers of Mwanza (Tanzania) and Kisumu (Kenya) reveal how the two professionally similar populations differ starkly in the way they participate in public goods, and in an opposite direction to that which would be predicted by the current literature on ethnicity. On the topic of the organisation of security and cleaning within markets in Mwanza, ethnically heterogeneous market-sellers' sense of solidarity facilitates a greater degree of seller-on-seller trust. In Kisumu, in contrast, with participants reflective of the dominant Luo ethnicity, the lack of state provision of public services has seen a feeble and individualistic response. The findings demonstrate how ethnic distribution matters less for public goods provision than commitments amongst citizens themselves and between citizens and local authorities.     

Varieties of Joint Decision Making: The Second Federal Reform

Germany recently experienced another federal reform, shortly after a previous modification to the German federal system. Has the second federal reform brought substantial change instead of the gradual change that literature on joint decision making would lead us to expect? This article analyses the reform in three stages: agenda setting, negotiation, and ratification; and suggests that at best the new restrictions upon public debt brought about by the second federal reform can be seen as a substantial change, but only if actors comply with them. Furthermore, this note argues that varieties of joint decision making can be identified in German constitutional policy, as they can in German public policy and EU policies. Patterns of joint decision making vary, depending on agenda setting and negotiations, so that the article argues for a differentiated view of joint decision making, the joint decision trap and exits from the joint decision trap.     

Investigating the awareness of virtual and augmented realities as a criminal justice response to the plight of awaiting-trial inmates in Ebonyi State,Nigeria

Crime, Law and Social Change - Despite the reforms in the Nigerian Criminal Justice System (NCJS), the treatment of inmates still falls below standard, with the vast majority of them on awaiting...     

Indigeneity,Ethnicity, and the State: Australia,Fiji, and New Zealand

This article draws on the politics of indigeneity to distinguish the claims of first occupancy from simple ethnic identity politics, illustrating that relative political marginalization in Australasia is not so much a function of minority status but of indigeneity itself. The politics of indigeneity's aim is to create political space for self-determination and a particular indigenous share in the sovereign authority of the nation-state itself. The Australasian states are compared with Fiji to demonstrate that the significance of historical constraints on political authority transcend the withdrawal of a colonial power and the restoration of collective indigenous majority population status.