Automatic Encoding of Ambiguous Child Behavior in High and Low Risk for Child Physical Abuse Parents

Recent theory and research suggest that physically abusive parenting behavior might be understood as originating from: 1) greater accessibility of hostile/negative schema, and/or 2) lower accessibility of benign/positive schema. This study examined whether parents at high and low risk for child physical abuse (CPA) differed in the extent to which they spontaneously encoded ambiguous caregiving contexts in negative versus positive terms. Twenty-five high and forty-one low risk for CPA parents were asked to memorize a set of sentences that described ambiguous caregiving situations. After a brief delay, participants were asked to recall the sentences. During recall, cues were given (e.g., negative and positive words) to facilitate recall. According to the cued-recall paradigm, to the extent that recall was facilitated by negative/positive cues, it was inferred that negative/positive meaning was activated when the ambiguous sentences were encoded. Although all parents tended to recall more information in response to negative relative to positive cues, the influence of cue type on recall was greater for high CPA risk parents. That is, high, compared to low, CPA risk parents obtained significantly higher recall difference scores (M = 4.6 versus M = 2.3); with higher recall difference scores indicating greater recall in response to negative relative to positive cues. Present findings are consistent with the proposition that high and low CPA risk parents differ in how they spontaneously encode information in ambiguous caregiving contexts.     

Ethnic Profiling: A Rising Challenge for European Human Rights Law

Ethnic profiling, defined as the use of racial, ethnic or religious background as a determining criterion for the adoption of law enforcement decisions, has been rising significantly in Europe, in particular in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. This article examines whether European human rights law is well equipped to deal with this challenge, and if not, how it should be reformed. Against the widely held assumption that personal data protection legislation is insufficiently protective of 'sensitive' data relating to race or ethnicity, it explains instead why combating ethnic profiling has been made more difficult, rather than less, by an overly protective reading of the requirements of data protection laws. It then discusses the additional measures that European states could take to address more effectively the human rights concerns prompted by the development of ethnic profiling.     

More of the Same? A Dual Case Study Approach to Examining Change Momentum in the Public Sector

Despite the significant amount of change experienced by the public sector, there has been relatively limited empirical examination of how change agendas affect public sector employees in Australia. This article presents a comparative analysis of two Australian public sector organisations that implemented the same positive work change agenda, but experienced very different outcomes. Using a critical realist approach, we draw on a mix of qualitative techniques to suggest that textbook notions of ‘successful change’, which are often derived from large private sector expectations, may fail to capture the complex nature of how public sector change initiatives may unfold. In particular, we demonstrate how political, temporal, contextual, and process factors interact to shift change momentum. Illustrative examples are provided throughout and the findings are discussed in terms of their implications for theory building, for change facilitation, and for future research.     

Counter-mythologising “media freedom”: including the audience in media freedom discourses and a new normative position for the global south

This article argues for a conscious counter-mythologisation of the popularly utilised term “media freedom” within media political and policy discourses. It further argues for a diversion from understanding this term to refer exclusively to the sphere of media production involving the ability or freedoms of media producers to do their work without hindrances to their independence – whether these stem from state actors, media owners or other external forces. The article contends that a free media should theoretically, and in addition, be considered from the perspective of the audience(s) and its respective prospects of access and accessibility to the entirety of the media landscape. Since challenges of meaningful access and accessibility to media communications persist in much of the Global South, the article concludes by suggesting a newly theorised normative approach to the role of the media in a democracy, which is in keeping with socio-political conditions in historically “Othered” regions of the world. Utilising the example of a counter-mythologisation of media freedom, and adopting an audience-centred approach, the article additionally contends that any attempt at formulating new media theory ought to be contextualised within the global crisis of inequality in order for it to be relevant to the majority audience.     

The Disengagement of Indonesian Jihadists: Understanding the Pathways

While much research has been conducted on the radicalization of Muslim militants from Jemaah Islamiyah, its spinoffs, and splinter factions; the historical roots of Indonesian radical movements; and their ideological underpinnings, far less analysis has centered on how and why individual militants may come to disengage from violence. Disengagement is defined as a gradual process through which a member of a terror group, radical movement, gang, or cult comes to reject the use of terror methods in pursuit of their goals. Utilizing original fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2014, with fifty current and former members of Islamist extremist groups in Indonesia, this article will unpack the patterns, pathways, religious considerations, and psychological processes that propel individual militants to turn away from violence.     

Life itself under contract: rent-seeking and biopolitical devolution through partnerships in California’s strawberry industry

Following the legal demise of sharecropping in California’s strawberry industry, shippers and other intermediaries began to forge contractual ‘partnerships’ with former farmworkers and ranch managers, providing financing and market access, while giving these new growers responsibility for hiring labor and paying other expenses. Within an array of contracting arrangements, these operate in the worst of all worlds with many expenses returning to the shipper and little possibility of upside reward. Yet these arrangements are touted in the name of helping former farmworkers become farmers. Building on the literature on contract farming, this contribution discusses the ability to obtain rents as an under-recognized advantage of contracts for shippers, which further compromises the livelihoods of growers, especially those in ‘partnership’ arrangements who are particularly squeezed. This paper then suggests a further advantage to shippers: the ability to devolve biopolitical responsibility to growers. Growers are put in the impossible position of having to produce healthy berries at low cost while protecting human health through enhanced fumigant regulation. Partner-growers who tend to farm in poor ecological conditions are in the worst position to meet these competing imperatives. Shippers, however, are able to take the high road by claiming to move beyond pesticides.     

Canadian multilateral intergovernmental institutions and the limits of institutional innovation

ABSTRACT

In 2003, the premiers of Canada’s ten provinces and three territories established the Council of the Federation (CoF) to strengthen interprovincial cooperation and exercise leadership on national issues. However, the purpose of COF in practice has not been the subject of systematic study. Against the backdrop of its predecessor, the Annual Premiers’ Conference, and the broader institutional and economic forces that contribute more generally to weak institutionalization of Canada’s multilateral intergovernmental forums, this paper considers the functioning of CoF in practice by analysing the nature of the joint positions of premiers expressed in communiqués it has issued to the end of Conservative government rule, 2015. This analysis reveals the spectrum of ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ measures that CoF has undertaken, and the nature of integration of CoF with other multilateral intergovernmental forums. It concludes that CoF is not immune to the underlying forces contributing more generally to the weak institutionalization of multilateral intergovernmental councils.