‘There’s just places ya’ don’t wanna go’: the segregating impact of hate crime against Native Americans

Between 1999 and 2001, I interviewed or surveyed nearly 300 Native Americans in seven states, in an effort to uncover insights into the prevalence, dynamics, and local contexts of hate crime as experienced by Native Americans living in remote, rural reservations. One of the predominant themes that emerged revolved around one of the most damaging effects of the ongoing racial harassment and violence that threatens them on a daily basis. What I have observed is that hate crime has become an institutionalized mechanism for establishing boundaries, both social and physical. It reinforces historical patterns of withdrawal and isolation, in short, segregation. Through violence, the threat of violence, or even through the malevolent gaze, Native Americans are daily reminded that there are places in which they are not welcome. For too many American Indians, the perception, if not the reality of ‘what’s out there’ has its intended effect of keeping people in their place.     

Roads diverged: An examination of violent and nonviolent pathways in the aftermath of the Bosnian war*

Despite renewed interest among criminologists in war and genocide, still understudied are the implications of mass violence for human development and behavior over the life course. By drawing on detailed life history data gathered from 55 male Bosnian refugees and nationals, in this work, I examine the shared beginnings of men who experienced the Bosnian war and genocide (1992–1995) in their youth, as well as examine their divergent pathways over time and across two distinct postwar contexts. My findings reveal that violent pathways are shaped by the confluence of social–psychological mechanisms (e.g., the normalization of violence) and exogenous risk factors (e.g., family disruption and loss of male role models). Compared with nonviolent men, who emphasize themes of catharsis and resilience, and the emulation of prosocial models of masculinity, violent men's narratives are distinguished by themes of persecution and exile, the emulation of violent role models, and contextual barriers to attaining valued masculine identities. Beyond the experience of war, these findings have implications for understanding how early experiences of chronic violence and community disruption shape turning points and cultural frames over the life course, and they indicate that studies of violent pathways should grant greater primacy to the social–historical context and the meaning individuals ascribe to their experiences.     

Explaining the race/ethnicity–violence relationship: Neighborhood context and social psychological processes

Blacks and Latinos have higher levels of offending than Whites for violent crimes. Researchers have examined a range of explanations that primarily focus on race and have only begun to consider how macro contexts influence individual levels of violence. This study contributes to this literature by including both race and ethnicity, and by examining the role of social psychological processes in mediating the impact of neighborhood contexts on violence. Using the Add Health data, I demonstrate the importance of the neighborhood context, socioeconomic status, and social psychological processes in explaining the relationship between race, ethnicity and violence. Having witnessed and been victimized by violence is by far the most important social psychological process in explaining this relationship.     

Legal Consciousness of Undocumented Latinos: Fear and Stigma as Barriers to Claims‐Making for First‐ and 1.5‐Generation Immigrants

This article examines the legal consciousness and incorporation experiences of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Although this population may be disaggregated along several axes, one central distinction among them is their age at migration. Those who migrated as adults live out their daily lives in different social contexts than those who migrated as children. Therefore, although all undocumented immigrants are legally banned, their identities, sense of belonging, and interpretation of their status vary. Based on ethnographic observations and in‐depth interviews of Latino undocumented immigrants from 2001 to 2010, I examine how illegality is experienced differently by social position. The findings suggest that the role of life‐stage at migration and work‐versus‐school contexts importantly inform immigrants' legal consciousness. Fear predominates in the legal consciousness of first‐generation undocumented immigrants, while the legal consciousness of the 1.5 generation is more heavily infused with stigma. Fear and stigma are both barriers to claims‐making, but they may affect undocumented immigrants' potential for collective mobilization in different ways.     

From the Field to the Courthouse: Should Social Science Research Be Privileged?

Social scientists need clarification about the extent to which the confidential aspects of their research are protected from compulsory disclosure in legal proceedings, and the extent to which they ought to be. Investigating the nature of social science research with an emphasis on researcher-participant relationships in ethnographic practice, I conclude that a qualified privilege would confer three major benefits on social science researchers: confidence that the government will not unnecessarily interfere with research, facilitation of improved researcher-participant relationships, and increased accuracy, thoroughness, and reliability of research data. I also discuss the development of privilege and confidentiality issues in practical research contexts through an examination of two criminal cases in which social science researchers refused to divulge the confidential information obtained in the course of research. Finally, I discuss the possible formulations of a scholarly research privilege. This is especially important because courts have cast social scientists as members of the larger community of academic or scholarly researchers with respect to these issues. Potential sources of protection include state journalist protection laws, federal common law, and federal statutory law. Evaluation of these sources and the case law to which they correspond suggests that developing common law privileges in state and federal jurisprudence is the most promising means of affording the confidential aspects of social science research legal protection. As researchers continue to press privilege     

THE ROLE OF PUBLIC SOCIAL CONTROL IN URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF VICTIMIZATION RISK*

This study introduces public social control into multilevel victimization research by investigating its impact on household and personal victimization risk for residents across 60 urban neighborhoods. Public social control refers to the ability of neighborhoods to secure external resources necessary for the reduction of crime and victimization. I find that living in neighborhoods with high levels of public social control reduces an individual's likelihood of victimization, especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Given the important role that residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods can play in securing public social control, this contingent finding suggests that disadvantaged neighborhoods can be politically viable contexts.     

Trust in the clouds

The “cloud” is not new, and its roots go back to the original plans for computing from the 1950s. Now that computing is moving back to the original cloud-based models that were envisioned more than 60 years ago, with it, consumers are realizing the increases in security and safety that accompany the move to centralized servers. Yet the perception of “trust” in this context is often still formed by views that people have from their use of computers over the past two decades, which is localized in nature (“if I can see it, I can control it”). This view is based on perception more than fact. Our paper discusses different views of trust in other contexts (such as banking and travel) and concludes that users of cloud computing should recast their view of trust in a similar way that consumers of banking and travel have changed their perceptions of trust in the last 100 years.     

A plurality of total institutions: towards a comparative penology

Data were collected in five countries, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Canada and France between 1996 and 2003. This was used to compare and assess prison social climates. A taxonomy of social climates based on different configurations of institutional and personalized trust is proposed. Relationships between, on the one hand, assessments of the social climate by inmates and staff, and, on the other hand, the overall stability of prison as a social institution are explored. It is argued that criteria for assessment do not have an absolute character; they depend on the external context, values and norms shared by inmates. Prison reforms might destabilize the situation if they fail to take into account mutual expectations of staff and inmates. This article is written as the significantly revisited and updated version of a section in the book ([21], pp. 138–150). Previously published materials are reprinted with a kind permission of Ashgate Publishing Ltd. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for a number of very helpful comments and suggestions. The author also thanks Sheryl Curtis, Theresa Heath-Rodgers and Anamika Twyman-Ghoshal for helpful suggestions in editing. However, remaining inaccuracies and mistakes are only my own.     

Caricaturing “traitors”: Communal reactions to indigenous collaboration in Japanese-occupied Korea

Under foreign rule, indigenous collaborators pose a serious challenge that betrays the trust and faith of their compatriots with whom they have long shared experiences. This being the case, the question arises concerning how the occupied define “betrayal” and execute their sense of morality and justice against those considered as switching allegiance from being their fellow nationals to being considered as outsiders. For this analysis, I investigate the practice of the Korean news media under Japanese colonial rule, developing the concept of verbal caricature. I find that the indigenous media create outrageous verbal images of collaborators: (1) sinners, (2) pawns, and (3) criminals. By exploring the media's social justice under political constraint, this project contributes to the accumulation of knowledge on the unique practices of deviance-making, prompting a dialog between the two isolated research realms – social deviance and foreign occupation.     

LEVELS AND PREDICTORS OF RECIDIVISM: THE MALTA EXPERIENCE*

Research on recidivism has been confined primarily to a few highly industrialized Western nations (e.g., United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia) in which the data and resources needed for such research are readily available. The restriction of recidivism research to such a small number of nations begs the question: Do these results reflect patterns of offending and products of the criminal justice systems unique to these nations, or do they describe patterns of recidivism across a much wider range of social and cultural contexts? In this study I extend the scope of recidivism research by examining levels and patterns of recidivism in the Republic of Malta, a small Mediterranean island that differs considerably from the typical context in which recidivism is studied. Specifically, I examine the likelihood of recidivism among persons released from Malta's only prison between 1976 and 1994. In addition, I examine factors shown in previous research to be strong predictors of recidivism to assess their value as predictors of recidivism among Maltese prisoners. Proportional hazards regression models reveal that levels and predictors of recidivism in Malta approximate those observed in societies that are socially and culturally quite different. The findings suggest that the role of social institutions in reintegrating offenders into society may be more complex than commonly believed.     

INCORPORATING ROUTINE ACTIVITIES,ACTIVITY SPACES,AND SITUATIONAL DEFINITIONS INTO THE SOCIAL SCHEMATIC THEORY OF CRIME

Simons and Burt's (2011) social schematic theory (SST) of crime posits that adverse social factors are associated with offending because they promote a set of social schemas (i.e., a criminogenic knowledge structure) that elevates the probability of situational definitions favorable to crime. This study extends the SST model by incorporating the role of contexts for action. Furthermore, the study advances tests of the SST by incorporating a measure of criminogenic situational definitions to assess whether such definitions mediate the effects of schemas and contexts on crime. Structural equation models using 10 years of panel data from 582 African American youth provided strong support for the expanded theory. The results suggest that childhood and adolescent social adversity fosters a criminogenic knowledge structure as well as selection into criminogenic activity spaces and risky activities, all of which increase the likelihood of offending largely through situational definitions. Additionally, evidence shows that the criminogenic knowledge structure interacts with settings to amplify the likelihood of situational definitions favorable to crime.     

Show Me Your Hands! Police and Public Perceptions of Violent Interpersonal Cues

Psychology has recently begun to examine human interpersonal social predictors of violence. One area yet unexamined is potential differences between law enforcement officers and non-police in their perception of aggressive interpersonal social cues. Using a sample of 129 police officers and 178 non-police individuals, a direct comparison was made about perceptions of interpersonal social behaviors associated with imminent violence. It was revealed that both samples generally shared similar perceptions, with a few exceptions. Police officers were more sensitive than other individuals are to each of the behavioral cues. The police sample also perceived the behavior of placing one’s hands in one’s pockets as more threatening than did the non-police sample.     

Evaluating Legality: Toward a Cultural Approach to the Study of Law and Social Change

The role of law in social change has been a subject of many academic debates. However, not much attention has been given to the contradictory ways in which activists for social change justify or criticize the use of law. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 social justice activists, I analyze the ways in which activists evaluate the role of law in social change. I find that activists invoke three distinct schemas of evaluation: instrumental, political, and cultural. The instrumental schema emphasizes change in the allocation of concrete resources; the political schema views change as the empowerment of marginalized communities; and the cultural schema emphasizes the transformation of assumptions that are shared by all members of society. Each schema provides activists with a particular order of justification that enables them to justify or to criticize the role of law in social change. While the multiplicity of schemas sustains the commonsense notion of law as a means for social change, it also accounts for possible changes in this notion.     

Equity,relative deprivation,and the value consensus paradox

This paper addresses the question of why respondents, when asked to specify an income they would be willing to accept as just, settle for an amount that, in most case, does not deviate strongly from what they actually receive. The phenomenon is illustrated by data from West Germany. It is argued that relative deprivation theory must be extended to incorporate processes of social hierarchy perception because inasmuch as this perception is contorted it creates illusory justice evaluations. Empirical evidence of misperceiving social distributions is given by social grading studies based on large German samples. The structural causes of the distributional misperceptions are discussed, one of these causes being the value consensus paradox, i.e., the paradox that, in a stratified society, value consensus will produce different social perceptions.     

Organized crime: A social network approach

This article applies the anthropological approach of social networktheory to the study of organized crime in its local, domestic and transnational contexts. It argues that a social network approach transcends existing criminological paradigms like organizational, patron-client and enterprise theories in that it emphasizes a common supposition held by each paradigm – that human relationships form the basis for organized criminal activity. By understanding the dynamics behind these relationships and the networks they create, one can subsequently gain a clearer picture of organized criminalactivity across time, space and culture.     

“Because That’s What Justice Is to Us”: Exploring the Racialized Collateral Consequences of New Parochialism

Renewed interest in communities as spaces for criminal opportunity has generated numerous studies of neighborhood social dynamics and crime. Most of this research is rooted in social disorganization theory, which examines neighborhood structural characteristics that facilitate effective social control. While many studies tout the benefits of community-based controls, the potential externalities of these efforts remain underexplored. In the modern neoliberal context, where policing strategies stress community involvement and often focus on vaguely-defined problems like “quality of life” or “incivilities” and where police have considerable enforcement discretion, the unintended consequences of community-based controls are important to document. I use the ethnographic case study of Gardner Village to explore the potential collateral consequences of one form of collective social control: new parochialism. Applying a critical lens to the social disorganization literature, I argue that when embedded in particular structural contexts, new parochialism contributes to the reproduction of inequality and undermines community-building processes.     

Moral Objectivity and Reasonable Agreement: Can Realism Be Reconciled with Kantian Constructivism?

Abstract. In this paper I analyze the tension between realism and antirealism at the basis of Kantian constructivism. This tension generates a conflictive account of the source of the validity of social norms. On the one hand, the claim to moral objectivity characteristic of Kantian moral theories makes the validity of norms depend on realist assumptions concerning the existence of shared fundamental interests among all rational human beings. I illustrate this claim through a comparison of the approaches of Rawls, Habermas and Scanlon. On the other hand, however, objections to moral realism motivate many Kantian constructivists to endorse the antirealist claim that reasonable agreement is the source of the validity of social norms. After analyzing the difficulties in the latter strategy, I try to show how a balance between the realist and antirealist elements of Kantian constructivism can be reached by drawing a sharper distinction between the justice and the legitimacy of social norms.     

The Shared History: Unknotting Fictive Kinship and Legal Process

This article looks in detail at a form of kinship that is contingently crafted and mobilized to achieve specific purposes. On the basis of ethnographic material collected among local actors within bodies that regulate kidney transplants in Israel, the objective of this article is to expand the sociolegal definition of fictive kinship. I use transplant relatedness to refer to the set of formal and informal norms that grow out of social and medico-legal practices in the field of kidney donations and sales; however, the form of fictive kinship that appears in this specific field tells us something broader about kinship as it is constructed and performed in legal processes more generally. The configuration of fictive kinship that is examined is the shared history ( historia meshoutefet ). I argue that in the present case, the shared history alters social and legal deep-seated understandings of kinship and ultimately makes the distinctions between allegedly real and pseudo-kinship collapse.     

Changing Definitions of Risk and Responsibility in French Political Scandals

In the 1990s in France, a large number of political scandals developed and many political actors were prosecuted. This process of making politicians responsible related, in particular, to the rise of 'new risks' regarding public health and security. In this paper, I analyse the diffusion and the crystallization of discourses linking public risk and political responsibility. First, I point to some of the social and cognitive bases in which the recent uses of the notions of risk and responsibility are rooted. Second, I focus on the mechanisms through which the notions were mobilized and invested with new definitions in the course of the scandal hearings. Third, I explore some of the effects of the changes which occurred during the 1990s: new perception frames in terms of risk and responsibility are consolidated and are progressively appropriated by social actors located in various professional spheres.