When national symbols divide: the case of pan-Catalanism and the Països Catalans

Shared symbols are an essential element in nationalist mobilisation. National symbols provide perhaps the strongest, clearest statement of national identity and are socially constructed. The effectiveness of these symbols will determine the success or failure of a political and cultural project. The effectiveness of cultural and political symbols can be seen through examination of the project of pan-Catalanism, the Països Catalans (the Catalan-speaking countries). This political project is rather unusual in the nationalist literature in being unable to advance beyond an embryonic stage. While cultural affinity can be determined within the Catalan-speaking territories, a wider claim to pan-Catalan political identity has foundered. This article argues that the absence of a shared attachment to national symbols in Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearics and other Catalan-speaking areas, provides the principal explanation why successful nation building has not been achieved.     

Auckland,New Zealand – fair game for central party politics

This paper explores the influence of central party politics in Auckland local government, in New Zealand’s largest city, following the 2010 amalgamation. Political parties have been an accepted and dominant presence in European representative democratic local government, throughout the 20^th century. Not so, however, in New Zealand and Australia, where citizens have ‘flocked to the banner “Keep Politics out of Local Government”. Our analysis of the self-declared party accreditation status of candidates and elected members demonstrates that political affiliation, at least in the main centre Auckland, is on the rise, counter to assumptions that New Zealand local government is largely removed from central politics.     

The Search for “Fred”: An Unusual Vertical Burial Case,

Police witness intelligence stated a murdered adult male “Fred” had been vertically buried in wooded hilly terrain 30 years ago in the Midlands, U.K. Conventional search methods were unsuccessful; therefore, the police requested a geophysical investigation to be undertaken to determine whether “Fred” could be detected. A multiphased geophysical approach was conducted, using bulk ground conductivity and metal detectors, then follow‐up magnetics and ground penetrating radar (GPR) survey profiles on electromagnetic (EM) anomalous areas. A tight grid pattern was used to account for the reduced target size. Relatively high‐resolution EM and GPR techniques were determined optimal for this terrain and sandy soil. Geophysical anomalies were identified and the most promising intrusively investigated, and this was found to be a large boulder and tree roots. Study implications suggest careful multiphase geophysical surveys are best practice and give confidence in cold case searches. This study yielded a no‐body result, effectively saving police time and costs from further investigations.     

Governance landscapes for emerging technologies: The case of cryptocurrencies

Scholars call for “adaptive governance” to balance concern about technology uncertainty with the need for innovation in the governance of emerging technologies. Yet, empirical assessment of such governance systems remains sparse. Do the actors interested in the potential regulation of an emerging technology focus on their own interests and opportunities, or do they think in terms of the collective interest? We focus on the actors who embed such systems from a novel landscape perspective that combines two dimensions of governance: the nature of the regulatory target, and the nature of the process they advocate for governing the target. We present data from over 70 actors in the area of cryptocurrencies for evaluating this new logic.     

Present but not prevalent: identifying the organizational correlates of researcher-practitioner partnerships in U.S. Law Enforcement

ABSTRACT

Federal funding streams, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and policing executives and scholars alike have advocated for more researcher-practitioner partnerships in American law enforcement. While a few studies have explored the growth and prevalence of research partnerships in policing, less attention has been placed on the organizational correlates of such collaborative relationships. Using a nationally representative sample of US law enforcement agencies, the current study investigated participation in what we term ‘rigorous partnerships’ – more formal, long-term relationships between researchers and practitioners with increased opportunity for interactive knowledge exchange. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed, with a specific focus on the barriers and impediments that both parties face for successful collaborative efforts and research translation.     

China's Shanzhai Culture: ‘Grabism’ and the politics of hybridity

This article focuses on the broad spread of shanzhai culture in 2008, exploring the central question: what is it that brings such disparate phenomena together under one label? Shanzhai things have typically emerged from new spaces for participation in production beyond the control of formerly monopolistic authorities. But things are not necessarily shanzhai by birth, for it is also an identity affixed to things by consumers. The shanzhai identity's inherent ambiguity—almost the same but not quite—brings with it a dimension of disruption of authority (cf. Bhabha), but its political standpoints are elusive. Using insights from hybridity theory, this article characterizes shanzhai as a contemporary successor to what Lu Xun termed Grabism: the active reappropriation of economic and cultural authority for diverse local purposes, which have themselves been shaped and redefined by those same authorities.     

Organic impurity profiling of fentanyl samples associated with recent clandestine laboratory methods

Nearly a decade ago, fentanyl reappeared in the United States illicit drug market. In the years since, overdose deaths have continued to rise as well as the amount of fentanyl seized by law enforcement agencies. Research surrounding fentanyl production has been beneficial to regulatory actions and understanding illicit fentanyl production. In 2017, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began collecting seized fentanyl samples from throughout the United States to track purity, adulteration trends, and synthetic impurity profiles for intelligence purposes. The appearance of a specific organic impurity, phenethyl-4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (phenethyl-4-ANPP) indicates a shift in fentanyl production from the traditional Siegfried and Janssen routes to the Gupta-patent route. Through a collaboration between the DEA and the US Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center (DEVCOM CBC), the synthesis of fentanyl was investigated via six synthetic routes, and the impurity profiles were compared to those of seized samples. The synthetic impurity phenethyl-4-ANPP was reliably observed in the Gupta-patent route published in 2013, and its structure was confirmed through isolation and structure elucidation. Organic impurity profiling results for illicit fentanyl samples seized in late 2021 have indicated yet another change in processing with the appearance of the impurity ethyl-4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (ethyl-4-ANPP). Through altering reagents traditionally used in the Gupta-patent route, the formation of this impurity was determined to occur through a modification of the route as originally described in the Gupta patent.