Torture,Sex and Military Orientalism

This article revisits the debate about recent American torture practices, particularly the use of discredited anthropological texts to validate long-held Orientalist assumptions about the sexual vulnerability of Muslim males. Such practices are placed in an historical context of older imperial constructions of sexually deviant Muslims as well as of more general forms of gendered and sexual subordination required for war. American torturers intended to produce very particular objects of torture—ones willing and able to confess their ‘true’ orientation in terms of a binary hetero/homo sexual code established in 19th-century Europe. The torturers had the power to confirm through confession and re-enactment their crude assumptions, irrespective of the actual sexualities of those being tortured, with consequences for the transnational and reactionary politics of sexual identity.     

The organizational dimension of budgetary forecasting: Suggestions from revenue forecasting in the states

Officials in the fifty states were asked about: (a) practices and developments in the forecasting of revenues, (b) their perceptions of improvements in forecast accuracy, and (c) perceived improvements in the knowledge which specialists and elected officials have about the economies of their states. Findings suggest that explicit attention should be given to the organizational dimensions of forecasting and not merely to its technical aspects. Organizational processes which promote effective interaction and questioning of underlying assumptions seem to be related to both forecast accuracy and improved knowledge. These processes raise important questions about the relationships between career specialists and elected officials in organizing to think about the future.     

Sexual Violence Against Marginalized Victims: Choice of Victim or Victim of Choice?

Research shows that sex trade workers and homeless populations are at a high risk of severe violence and homicide. Based on a sample of 229 violent sex offenders, we investigate the differences between sexual crimes committed against marginalized (n = 73) and nonmarginalized victims (n = 156). Findings from logistic regression analyses show that offenders who target marginalized victims are more likely to degrade their victim and use a variety of torture methods. However, offenders who target nonmarginalized victims are more likely to use a weapon, and kill the victim by strangulation. Implications for future research are discussed.     

TRADITIONS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

This article explores local government traditions in the UK. This task is an important one for scholars who wish to understand and appreciate the rich cultural complexity of local government organizations. In local government settings, traditions can be used in the study and evaluation of political and managerial practices. They provide lenses through which the routines, structures and processes of management and politics may be viewed. The delineation of multiple traditions heightens the sense that local government is not a unified homogeneous organizational entity, but rather a melange of voices, interests and assumptions about how to organize, prioritize and mobilize action. They can be used to engage practitioners with the idea that different traditions inform political and managerial practices and processes in local councils. The approach embraces the significance of participants' constitutive stories about local government rather than the search for essential truths about the politics and management of the public sector.     

Compassionate conservatives or conservative compassionates? US political parties and bilateral foreign assistance to Africa

Conventional wisdom about US foreign policy towards Africa contains two popular assumptions. First, Democrats are widely considered the party most inclined to care about Africa and the most willing to spend resources on assistance to the continent. Second, the end of the Cold War was widely thought to have led to a gradual disengagement of the US from Africa and reduced American attention toward the continent. This article analyses data on US foreign assistance flows from 1961?–?2000 and finds that neither of these assumptions is true. Rather, we find that the configuration of party control over Congress and the Presidency matters significantly, with aid to Africa substantially reduced when the two branches are in opposition.     

Sexuality,identity and dissidence: new scholarship on sub-Saharan Africa

In this review essay, I consider three recent monographs on sexuality and sexual cultures in Africa. Each of these three books grapple with the “problem orientation” of scholarship on African sexuality, in which sexuality is conceptualised primarily with reference to AIDS, homophobia and violence. The authors move beyond this problem orientation through a common concern investigating the poles of “modernity” vs “tradition”, “global” vs “local” and “authentic” vs “imported” as these concepts are deployed by activists, policymakers, and ordinary people talking about sex. All three authors also engage the question of how and why social changes happen, treating sexual identities and practices as dynamic, emergent phenomena.     

The Special Needs of Victims of Torture or Serious Violence: A Qualitative Research in EU

Abstract

In recent years ongoing wars and serious violations of human rights have driven increasing numbers of people away from their homes, especially in the Middle East and Africa to countries in the European Union to seek asylum. It is estimated that between 5% and 35% of these asylum-seekers and refugees have suffered from torture or serious violence. Studies and practice have shown that an appropriate response to the special needs of victims of torture or serious violence contribute to reduce survivors’ suffering and provide properly international protection. EU legislation recognizes that such vulnerable individuals have special needs, but few of these needs have already been identified and recognized as such. This article reports on a qualitative study carried out in six EU countries - France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta and Portugal - to explore the special needs of victims of torture or serious violence who present among asylum-seekers, during the asylum request procedure, in reception, and throughout rehabilitation and social integration. The study aims to release into the academic community the results of a large policy and practice-oriented study.     

Diagnosing and Explaining the Global Financial Crisis: Central Banks, Epistemic Authority, and Sense Making

This article explores a key facet of the ideational dynamic underlying the politics of the global financial crisis, examining the interpretative and communicative practices through which the two most powerful central banks in the world—the Fed and the ECB—made sense of the events. Drawing on a constructivist neoinstitutional perspective, the study traces and analyzes the diagnoses and causal accounts of the global financial crisis formulated and voiced by these two actors, mapping and examining their evolution from the beginning of the events in the American subprime market in mid-2007 through the peak of the crisis in global financial markets in mid-2009. The analysis assesses the extent to which the two central banks diagnosed and explained the crisis in ways that challenged dominant notions and conceptual assumptions regarding the economic field, particularly the financial realm, or rather in ways that served to ratify them. While in the first stages of the crisis the diagnoses and causal accounts tended to ratify dominant notions and understandings of the financial field, they later evolved as involving a partial, but still significant, reassessment of established truths. These coherent and detailed sense-making plots touched upon some of the most basic attributes of global financial capitalism, carrying with them the potential for helping to open up the political space for a reevaluation of some of its ideational underpinnings.     

Is There a Culture or Religion of Torture? International Support for Brutal Treatment of Suspected Terrorists

Do certain cultures or religions predispose citizens to support the deployment of torture against suspected terrorists? Based on an international survey of 31 different countries, we examine how religion and culture affect respondents' position on torture. We find that at the individual level, the nonreligious are resolutely opposed to torture, and that Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and other faiths are more supportive. Among world cultures, Muslim/African cultures are most opposed to the torture of terrorists, while Confucian, English-speaking, and South Asian cultures are the most supportive of it. We also find that the use of torture has less support in countries that are suffering from terrorism, once religion and culture are considered.     

Management by Measurement? Public Management Practices Amidst Ambiguity

In the public sphere, a management by measurement (MBM) movement can be traced. Practitioners attempt to strengthen the transparency and effectiveness of administrative systems by introducing rational measurement cycles. When issues are managed, ambitions must be stated, options must be assessed, optimal options must be chosen and performance must be monitored and evaluated. This cycle rests upon assumptions that are often untenable. When issues are ambiguous, interpretative spaces exist; when interpretative spaces exist, strict measurement cycles do not work because required conditions and assumptions cannot be met. This article explores the nature of interpretative spaces by identifying three types of public management practice. In this typology of public management, practices differ in terms of the extent to which issues can be classified, as well as the extent to which standards are contested. Management by measurement fits canonical practices where issues are known and standards are shared, it is argued, but is less appropriate for evaluating non-canonical practices and practices-in-transition where such a classification of issues is weak and consensus on standard is absent. MBM focuses on data; the other practices require dialogue in order to manage ambiguity and interpretative spaces.     

On researching ‘Ethnic Conflict’: epistemology,politics, and a Central Asian boundary dispute

Providing a critique of alarmist discussions of the danger of ethnic conflict in Kyrgyzstan, and the positivist epistemological assumptions and research practices that underpin them, this article develops an approach to researching ‘ethnicity’ and ‘ethnic conflict’ through the use of focus groups. Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in southern Kyrgyzstan expressed similar views about the closures of international boundaries, framed in terms of ethnicity. However, this was not an essentialist notion, but rather a concept of authentic ‘Uzbekness’ or ‘Kyrgyzness’ predicated primarily on the performance of endogenous kinship practices and Muslim/Soviet notions of class morality, nuanced by geography. These overlaps and discrepancies provide resources for those wishing to articulate visions of future social formations wider than the range of options currently propagated by ethnic entrepreneurs.     

Immigrant Social Workers and Transnational Practices: The Example of Latin Americans in Switzerland

This article explores how Latin American social workers living in Switzerland develop transnational practices in their professional and civic life. It focuses more particularly on the forms of support that these migrants provide to their societies of origin or to their immigrant compatriots through the activities they carry out either through their job, through their extra-professional commitments, or by combining these two dimensions of their existence. From interviews with 17 Latin American social workers, a typology of four forms of transnational commitment is suggested: local social work and transnational civic activity, professional transnationalism, transnational alternative professional exchanges, and “glocal” social work.     

Assessing the Obama Standard for Interrogations: An Analysis of Army Field Manual 2-22.3

On 22 January 2009, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that banned harsh interrogations and restricted legal methods to those listed in Army Field Manual 2-22.3. However, there remain concerns that the field manual may fail to prevent the continued abuse and torture of detainees. This study reexamines the leading social–psychological explanations for torture at Abu Ghraib to determine whether the manual appears sufficient to prevent future torture. Findings suggest that it has significantly curtailed future risks; however, in order to help ensure that U.S. soldiers’ treatment of foreign detainees is consistently humane, additional steps should be taken.     

Overview of economy-wide nafta models

In the recent debate about the costs and benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), both proponents and opponents used the empirical results of several economic models to support their arguments. Most of the quantitative estimates were provided by computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, which are part of the growing literature known as applied general equilibrium.

The CGE model is a powerful tool that can make important contributions to policy debates. Compared to other approaches, CGE models rest on a relatively more solid theoretical foundation. However, the numerical analysis has to be interpreted properly. Quantitative estimates are highly tentative and contingent on the assumptions of the models. Thus, estimates should not be interpreted as predictions but rather as providing some indication of the direction of the various economic changes induced by a certain policy change.

This paper provides an overview of the CGE approach, and of its application to NAFTA. After outlining how a CGE model works, it reviews some of the quantitative results of CGE models used to assess the impact of NAFTA. The paper is intended for an audience not trained in economics.     

The word and the world: a critique of representationalism in management research

Representationalism is the belief that our knowledge represents the world as it is. The purpose of this paper is to explore the representational epistemology that has historically underlain most management research, and submit it to critical scrutiny. It is argued that we can never show whether our knowledge corresponds to the facts; truth is a property of sentences, not of the world. To talk about an object of study is to talk about a set of beliefs having a place in a language game. Social objects of study, especially, are practices and, as such, are constituted by self-understandings expressed as sets of background distinctions actors share. Our models of social reality, therefore, are internally related to practices so that the particular assumptions underlying a model of knowledge shape the background distinctions embodied in a practice. Concerning management studies, it is argued that far from merely representing organizational reality as it allegedly is, a representational epistemology is closely linked with a particular kind of action, viz. instrumental action, and a particular kind of organization, viz. bureaucratic organization. On the antirepresentational view of knowledge put forward here, it is suggested that our theories are tools for acting in the world rather than mirrors for reflecting it. As tools, questions concerning the purpose served by an inquiry are preferable to questions concerning methodology. The implications of an antirepresentational model of knowledge for management (both as an object of study and as a practice) are explored.     

Human Rights and Antiterrorism: A Positive Legal Duty to Infringe Freedom From Torture?

In law freedom from torture and ill-treatment is “absolute,” meaning that a state cannot infringe the right for purposes that would seem legitimate such as the protection of national security. However, with the growth in international terrorism, particularly suicide violence, should the freedom remain without limitation? This article considers legitimizing torture by reference to the “positive” legal obligation the right imposes on states to prevent harm to individuals by third parties such as terrorists. Assuming such a legal argument could be made out, it is questioned whether adopting such measures of interrogation would in fact outweigh the negative consequences that would inevitably follow from reversing accepted international standards for the protection of, say, detainees from ill-treatment in state custody.     

The IMF in sociological perspective: A tale of organizational slippage

This article examines the origins and evolution of IMF lending practices through the lens of sociological theories about organizations. Organizations founded on multilateral agreements are prone to having unusually ambiguous mandates. With such loose formal bureaucratic moorings, organizations like the IMF tend to be influenced by the dominant ideas and interests in their environments. Sarah Babb is assistant professor of sociology at Boston College. She is author ofManaging Mexico: Economists from Nationalism to Neoliberalism, and co-author with Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas of an article analyzing the historical antecedents of neoliberal reforms in four countries (forthcoming in theAmerican Journal of Sociology). Many thanks to Fred Block for persistently supporting and critiquing several earlier versions of this paper. Thanks also to Jane D’Arista and Laurel Smith-Doerr for clarifying my thinking on a number of points.     

Qualitative comparative analysis vis-à-vis regression

Discussions of Charles C. Ragin’s Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) have not adequately considered the assumptions about causation on which this method depends. Yet in evaluating any method, it is important to ask the question: How many untestable, or hard-to-test, assumptions must be met for us to believe the findings it produces? Advocates of QCA claim that one of its major strengths is that it requires fewer restrictive assumptions than techniques such as regression analysis. Hence, close assessment of the assumptions that are entailed is particularly salient to evaluating QCA. This article addresses these issues by considering three of the most important kinds of assumptions discussed in the context of regression analysis: assumptions about the correct form of the relationship, missing variables, and inferring causation from association. For each assumption, the role of corresponding assumptions in QCA will be explored and illustrated through an analysis of leftparty electoral fortunes in Latin America. Regarding the correct form of causal relationships, QCA in effect builds highly demanding assumptions into measurement procedures. Concerning missing variables, whereas earlier versions of QCA require a strong assumption of no causally relevant missing variables, more recent procedures allow some kinds of missing variables, but build in mutually contradictory statistical assumptions about those variables. Resolving these contradictions essentially converts QCA into an application of regression analysis. Regarding the process of inferring causation from association, QCA makes causal inference on the basis of patterns of association purely by assumption. That is, association is assumed to have a one-to-one relationship with causation. For all three groups of assumptions, QCA is found to require assumptions that, are at least as restrictive as those employed in regression analysis.