Cultural diversity and social order: Rethinking the role of community policing

One of the difficulties confronting anyone interested in community policing is understanding just what the term community refers to. For criminologists and police practitioners alike this presents a danger. Being less than specific about the use of this key term often serves to conceal cultural diversity and tame ideological differences between the police and the public's interest in social order. Rather than attempting to impose a definitive image of community, this article focuses on everyday strategies of interaction that, while promoting social order, also effectively eclipse the necessity of confronting the very plurality of values that any form of community involvement must consider. What becomes clear from this perspective is that many of the difficulties that beset community policing programs can be seen to take root in problems inherent in the practical achievement of community life itself.     

Cultural Challenges to Biotechnology: Native American Genetic Resources and the Concept of Cultural Harm

This article examines the intercultural context of issues related to genetic research on Native peoples. In particular, the article probes the disconnect between Western and indigenous concepts of property, ownership, and privacy, and examines the harms to Native peoples that may arise from unauthorized uses of blood and tissue samples or the information derived from such samples. The article concludes that existing legal and ethical frameworks are inadequate to address Native peoples' rights to their genetic resources and suggests an intercultural framework for accommodation based on theories of intergroup equality and fundamental human rights.     

The Metropolitan Opera in the American Century: Opera Singers,Europe, and Cultural Politics

Dressing Room 10 on the 40th Street side of the Metropolitan Opera House is the most unprepossessing chamber. All but airless, it has a decor which is garishly drab and furniture which is barely serviceable…. Yet over the years, this dismal room with its many mirrors has been the silent witness to scenes of hope, triumph, and despair. Here the great singers of the world, the soon-to-be great, and the not-quite great wait before their debuts, trembling in every nerve, straining toward the moment when they an sweep on stage to the triumph that sometimes comes, and more often does not …. Through Room 10 this year have paraded that trio of great European divas: The Italian Renata Tebaldi, Victoria de los Angeles of Spain, and Birgit Nilsson, who was born and trained in Sweden. Joining them, for the first time at the Metropolitan, came two Americans of equal rank, Eileen Farrell and Leontyne Price. (Newsweek, Feb. 13, 1961, 63)     

Access, accountability and authority: Corruption and the democratic process

Democratic systems face the challenge of sustainingtheir political authority while simultaneouslyproviding access to the political system for theircitizens, and ensuring existence of mechanisms for theformal and political accountability of those inoffice. The connections between these threecomponents, and between them and corruption, arecomplex. The paper suggests ways in whichaccountability may undermine authority through theblurring of distinctions between formal and politicalaccountability, by ham-stringing politicalinstitutions, by creating incentives for corruptpractices, and by politicising accusations ofcorruption. Access can be similarly destabilising andcorrupting, where trust is low and compliance withrules weak; and a basic problem with securing highlevels of trust is that the materials from which suchtrust is manufactured are often the very things whichaccountability mechanisms regard as corrupt – localnetworks, clientelism, and personal loyalties andfriendships. In democratising states, attackingthese elements can eradicate rather than enhance thebasis for well-regulated access.Different democratic systems have evolved differentways of balancing these three components. Theparticular institutional form the balance takes willhave a major impact on the types of corruption thesystem will face, and on the solutions which areappropriate. However, the tendency in internationalcircles is for one highly idiosyncratic understandingof this balance to hold sway, with potentiallydestabilising consequences when applied to theanalysis of corruption, especially in democratisingstates. The paper concludes that attempts to reduce corruptionand increase accountability by increasingparticipation and access are flawed. Access mayincrease the risk of corruption, while accountabilityremains a classic public good on which free-ridingwill be widespread. Corruption control in democracieswill not be solved by more democracy – indeed, itmight need less.     

Family,kin, and the quest for community: A study of three social networks in early-modern Italy

The article probes seventeenth-century occupational and marriage data from three parishes in the Savoyard domains for isomorphisms with processes of collective mobilization. Analyzed as directed graphs, networks of marriage alliance display widely differing patterns in standard graph measurements and Regular Equivalence blockmodelling across the three parishes. Channeling flows of material and symbolic exchange conducive to different forms of political action, these network variations are in turn the outcome of unbalanced access by local kin groupings to vital resources.     

Family,kin, and the quest for community: A study of three social networks in early-modern Italy

The article probes seventeenth-century occupational and marriage data from three parishes in the Savoyard domains for isomorphisms with processes of collective mobilization. Analyzed as directed graphs, networks of marriage alliance display widely differing patterns in standard graph measurements and Regular Equivalence blockmodelling across the three parishes. Channeling flows of material and symbolic exchange conducive to different forms of political action, these network variations are in turn the outcome of unbalanced access by local kin groupings to vital resources.     

CARICOM,the CSME,and absolute sovereignty: lessons learnt on the road towards regional integration

As a regional bloc, the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) provides an opportunity for all of its Member States to benefit from regional integration and to better withstand the effects of globalisation. This article examines two recent cases involving Guyana that were litigated before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) (the 2009 “TCL Case” and 2014 “Rudisa Case”) and discusses several important issues borne out during the cases, whereas also highlighting potential or emergent issues which may emanate from these cases in the future. These cases are analysed with a view to highlighting the important role of the CCJ in interpreting the RTC.     

Native American Identity and the Limits of Cultural Defence

This article concerns itself with the phenomenon of the cultural defence as it exhibits itself in the US juridical context. Recent socio-legal discussions about this phenomenon reveal three prevalent positions: the illegality of cultural defence on constitutional grounds, the necessity of cultural defence as a matter of discretionary justice, and the intermediary position of working cultural defence into a legal doctrine. By problematizing the operative concept of culture, the author suggests that the idea of cultural defence should be understood in terms of foreignness. This suggestion is supported on the basis of the phenomenological theory of the alien (xenology). In order to illustrate the juridical limits of the cultural defence I examine the history of constructing the Native American as a cultural legal subject. Hence the question that primes this examination: is there a possibility of the traditional cultural defence for the American Indians? After a provisional answer that there is no such possibility, I conclude with the discussion of hospitality as a way to an ethically necessary and legally acceptable idea of culture.     

Law and the Protection of Cultural Communities: the Case of Native American Fishing Rights

This essay explores the Salish peoples' quest for protection of traditional culture through the legal protection of traditional fishing practices. Through a history of political confrontation, the politically symbolic and culturally significant issue of fishing rights came before the courts. In one case, the courts came to recognize the cultural import of traditional fishing and made provisions for enhanced fishing opportunities based on treaty rights. Paradoxically, implementation of the decision exacerbated internal divisions in Salish society and the integrity of the cultural community continues to disintegrate at an accelerated pace.     

Is race-based medicine good for us?: African American approaches to race, biomedicine, and equality

This article presents a preliminary framework for exploring the intersection of science and racial politics in the public debate about race-based pharmaceuticals, especially among African Americans. It examines the influence of three political approaches to race consciousness on evaluations of racial medicine and offers an alternative critique.     

Conjugal Violence in Korean American Families: A Residue of the Cultural Tradition

The study explored the incidence of spouse abuse in Korean American families and interrelations between conjugal violence, marital power structure, stress, and socioeconomic and cultural factors. Rate of conjugal violence in these families is higher than those for other Asian American families. Data were collected from 256 families selected at random. In male dominant couples, rate of severe violence, wife beating, was four times higher than that of egalitarian couples. Husbands who experienced higher levels of stress had a greater rate of assaulting their wives. Wives in egalitarian and female dominant couples experienced a lower amount of stress and shared more decision-making power than did those in the male dominant couples. The longer the couples had been in the United States and the more American education they had received, the more egalitarian and female-dominant marital relations they tended to have. The residual influence of the traditional culture, in which they lived prior to immigration, is a factor suggesting why men were more abusive than women. Cultural differences associated with conjugal violence and needs for services are discussed.