A Dutch Sodom and Gomorrah: Degenerates,moralists and authority in Yerseke, 1870–1914

In 1870, the Dutch state privatized several oyster banks in Zeeland waters. This measure brought about a rapid capitalization of the oyster industry. The Zeeland town of Yerseke soon became the national centre of oyster farming and trade. Initially, oyster farming was quite successful. Yerseke turned into an affluent country town which attracted hundreds of migrants. When by the mid-1880s serious problems assailed the oyster industry, a large number of people left the town, although newcomers were continually arriving. In the wake of these developments the community's social organization changed drastically and social control withered. Fights, drunkenness and theft were part and parcel of everday life. In the course of the 1890s, this social disorganization was checked by the civilizing missions of churches and the disciplining offensives of the local authorities and police. Perhaps even more important was the increasing social integration of the village community. The present article aims to uncover the dynamics and interrelations of these processes.     

Researcher–practitioner partnerships and crime analysis: a case study in action research

This paper describes a recent researcher–practitioner partnership designed to address the challenges faced by law enforcement agencies when implementing crime control and prevention strategies. Using an action research methodology, the project embedded a group of trained students within the law enforcement community to assist with local crime problems and supplement existing crime analysis and research capabilities in six agency units. Results of this case study offer several implications for future researcher–practitioner partnerships focused on crime analysis and present an enhanced set of metrics for evaluating success.     

Truth and Politics: Thinking About Evidence‐Based Policy in the Age Of Spin

Evidence‐based policy and the contemporary politics of spin are said to characterise contemporary politics and policy. The paper asks firstly what sense is to be made of this coincidence, and then documents this coincidence. It then asks how credible is the conception of ‘evidence’ espoused by advocates of evidence‐based policy when it is conventionally represented as an ‘objective’ counter to ideology, spin or opinion? It points to major problems with the conventional understandings of ‘evidence’. It is suggested that while the evidence‐based policy literature relies on the associations ‘evidence’ is presumed to have with ‘sensory data’, this is neither the case nor all that defensible. The paper reprises arguments advanced by Henry Mayer and Hannah Arendt that the relationship of politics to the empirical was and is a far more complex relationship than is conventionally understood to be the case.     

The Afterlives of Global Capital

ABSTRACT

Decay and decomposition have long been important to the histories of capitalist development but what are the particular forms that characterize the relationship between “waste” and value in post-2008 financialization? I argue that financialization is characterized by the organized conversion of distress into forms of financial value. To make this argument I lay particular emphasis on the rehabilitation of “toxic” assets through the practices of asset management in Ireland's National Asset Management Agency. I extend this argument by foregrounding political interventions staged around post-crisis housing, a critical strategy which seeks a certain point of confrontation between the abstract and the visceral. This strategy identifies the “afterlives of global capital” as sites that could incubate imaginative work designed to challenge finance in key ways. This provokes questions about financialized value: do we now locate value in forms of financial integrity or in decay, decomposition and detritus?     

Reexamining the correlates of adolescent violent victimization: the importance of exposure, guardianship, and target characteristics

The present study examines the relative contributions of various theoretical constructs to violent victimization by operationalizing multiple measures of exposure to motivated offenders, guardianship, and target characteristics. Using a nationally representative sample of American adolescents, we conducted principal components factor analysis and logistic regression analysis to examine whether such measures do in fact represent empirically distinct constructs and if they are each correlated with violent victimization risk. Findings suggest that both nondelinquent and delinquent routine activities which expose adolescents to motivated offenders increase risk of victimization. In terms of guardianship, parental attachment appears to protect adolescents from victimization, although direct parental control actually increases risk. Finally, only one of four target characteristics-psychological vulnerability-was significantly associated with violent victimization risk. We discuss the implications for theory and future research in light of the findings.