Katrina Honeyman (1950–2011): an appreciation

This appreciation of Katrina Honeyman (1950–2011), whose name is known to many for her historical research on gender, business, fashion and industrialisation, is written by a friend and former colleague. It focuses on Katrina's academic record, her enthusiasm for the football team Arsenal, and her warmth and generosity as a colleague, tutor and friend.     

The Age–Crime Curve in Adolescence and Early Adulthood is Not Due to Age Differences in Economic Status

One of the most consistent findings in developmental criminology is the “age–crime curve”—the observation that criminal behavior increases in adolescence and decreases in adulthood. Recently, Brown and Males (Justice Policy J 8:1–30, 2011) conducted an analysis of aggregate arrest, poverty, and population data from California and concluded that the widely-observed adolescent peak in rates of offending is not a consequence of developmental factors, but rather an artifact of age differences in economic status. Youngsters, they argue, offend more than adults because they are poorer than adults. The present study challenges Brown and Males’ proposition by analyzing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97; N = 8,984; 51 % female; 26 % Black, 21 % Hispanic, 52 % non-Black, non-Hispanic; ages 12–18 at Wave 1), which collected measures of criminal behavior and economic status at multiple time points. Consistent with scores of other studies, we find that criminal offending peaks in adolescence, even after controlling for variation in economic status. Our findings both counter Brown and Males’ claim that the age–crime curve is illusory and underscore the danger of drawing inferences about individual behavior from analysis of aggregated data.     

Stockholm Syndrome: Radical Islam and the European Response

This paper argues that too restrictive an understanding has governed both academic and popular analysis of the social, cultural, and political conflicts between the Western European majorities and their Islamic minorities. These conflicts are typically viewed through the prisms of majority racism and/or minority economic disadvantage. While such social facts are undoubtedly important, I argue that the ideology of radical Islamism must be taken seriously in any analysis of the problem. Thus, I do two things in this essay. I outline the elements in twentieth-century radical Islamic writings that relate to the relationship between (broadly understood) Islamic and Western civilization; I also offer an overview of the now long-lived situation of culture war in Western Europe that supports my argument that Islamic cultural pathology, more than European racism, is the chief causal factor. This is intended as a warning that “clash of civilization” and “Islamo-fascism” models, usually disparaged in the academy, must be taken quite seriously.     

Power and Conflict in the Swiss Political Elite: An Aggregation of Existing Network Analyses

Since Kriesi's (1980) pioneering work no study has attempted to provide an overall picture of power configuration among the Swiss political elite. To fill this gap we aggregate recent network analyses carried out in various policy domains. Based on meta-hypotheses regarding the likely effects of the contextual changes that have taken place during the last thirty years, we compare the structure of the Swiss political elite existing in the 1970s to that of the last decade with respect to reputational power, collaboration and conflict. Our results suggest that important transformations have indeed occurred. Thus, both political parties and some specific state bodies could increase their power, whereas most interest groups have lost some. While the internationalization of politics has overall had the expected effects with respect to the power structure and to conflict among political parties, it did not lead to the hypothesized, new conflict among interest groups.     

Indonesian Men's Contrasting Perceptions of How to Deal with Local Violence

This paper reports on data from a 2009–2010 project on masculinity and violence, part of which was conducted in Indonesia. The data here come from semi-structured interviews with 86 men in five cities, with minor reference to survey findings. Using a Foucauldian interpretive framework, we focus primarily on how these Indonesian men view police intervention in comparison to resolving the problem of violence within their community through mediation. The issue here is that while community mediation approaches are regarded positively, at present, it only seems to be religious leaders who are trusted to resolve conflicts effectively through this approach. Suspicion of mediation interventions and other measures that are tied to the authority of the state means that the promise of service-oriented policing reforms may not be effectively implemented.