Investigating Not-Knowing: Research Methodology

Phenomenology offers a unique and useful approach to understanding how people experience events or phenomena. The method is particularly instructive in exploring how youth workers experience and make sense of moments of not-knowing in the context of their professional relationships with young people. This chapter provides an introduction to phenomenological research, including its theoretical foundations and procedures. The research methods of this study, including participant recruitment, interview format, data analysis, and presentation, are included, as are the five themes associated with the experience of not knowing what to do: (a) the paralysis of stuckness, (b) features of despair, (c) humiliation and the fear of being found out, (d) questions of vocation and calling, and (e) the transition from not-knowing to knowing.     

以邓小平理论为指导 加强市场经济条件下的民警思想政治建设

在市场经济条件下如何以邓小平理论为指导,加强公安民警思想政治建设,构筑公安民警廉政为公、勤政为民的精神支柱,已成为和平时期确保政治稳定、维护社会安定最为紧迫的问题。文章从社会主义市场经济条件下加强公安民警思想政治建设的重要性和紧迫性;当前存在的影响公安民警思想政治工作的难点和问题;从社会到个人、从领导到基层、从机制到素质、从热心为民到从优待警等三个方面阐述了如何运用邓小平理论加强公安民警的思想政治建设。     

Reassessing the Influence of Criminal History in Federal Criminal Courts

Abstract

Prior sentencing research indicates that defendants with more extensive criminal histories receive more punitive dispositions and that criminal history influences sentencing decisions over and above its influence on the guideline recommended sentence. To date, these additional effects of criminal history have almost exclusively been treated as linear effects. However, there are plausible reasons to expect that criminal history could have curvilinear effects on sentencing outcomes that taper off at higher scores. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential curvilinear effects of defendant criminal history on incarceration, sentence length, and downward departure decisions in federal criminal courts. The findings suggest that criminal history has curvilinear effects on each of these sentencing outcomes. As criminal history category increases, defendants receive more severe sentences, net of other factors, but only up to a certain threshold level, at which point criminal history effects taper off and even reverse.     

Narratives of the EU in Israel/Palestine: narrative “stickiness” and the formation of expectations

ABSTRACT

Analysis of narrative can help identify the expectations actors hold about each other in international relations. This article triangulates a mix of elite interviews, media content analysis and an original Q-sort public opinion methodology to map the presence of narratives about EU relations among young Israelis and Palestinians. Our aim is not to explain the effects of EU public diplomacy in these countries. Instead we aim to identify the narrative “terrain” or conditions that the EU communicates to and with and, drawing on feminist and everyday narrative studies, to examine the role of affect and identity to explain why some narratives are more “sticky” than others in those societies. We find, first, a broad recognition that the EU’s capacity to act in international relations is necessary but limited in the face of greater challenges in the international system, and indeed, within the EU itself. We find, second, little evidence that young people radically reshape the narratives they encounter in their public spheres, but nevertheless some important divisions emerge that pose problems for how EU policymakers can communicate consistently without dismaying some citizens in third countries.