The Good and Bad of Social Change: Ambivalence Toward Activist Groups

Inherent to any substantive social change is the disruption of the status quo. To the extent that individuals are motivated to preserve the current social system (e.g., Jost & Banaji, British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1–27, 1994), even social change in pursuit of positive goals might evoke ambivalent reactions. Although activist groups might elicit positivity because they are assumed to have positive qualities and they seek positive goals, they might evoke negativity because their actions disrupt the current social system. These experiments examined two different forms of disruption of the status quo. In Experiment 1, a group gaining power elicited greater ambivalence than a group losing power, regardless of the valence of the group’s goal. Importantly, the conditions that evoked ambivalence did not inhibit behavioral support. Experiment 2 found that a new group elicited more ambivalence than an established group when pursuing a positive goal. Consistent with theories emphasizing maintenance of the status quo, these findings demonstrate that attitudes toward activist groups do not derive solely from self-interest.

Reconsidering Peer Influences on Delinquency: Do Less Proximate Contacts Matter?

Much research on adolescent delinquency pivots on the notion of peer influence. The peer effect that is typically employed emphasizes the transmission of behaviors and attitudes between adolescents who are directly linked. In this paper, we argue that to rely solely on those direct social ties to capture peer influence oversimplifies the realities of adolescent society. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to show that indirect peer relations can exercise independent influences on adolescent delinquency. Adolescents actively draw on the examples of friends of friends, and even more distal peers, as they develop their repertoires of action and identity. We argue, however, that this behavior actually reflects adolescents’ ongoing struggle to impress their closest friends and to preserve their social circle. Indeed, the extent to which adolescents are willing to model the behavior of indirect contacts seems to decline as that behavior becomes more dissimilar from that of their close friends. Our findings dovetail with an account of the adolescent as a rational actor who struggles for social acceptance in a complex peer environment which offers conflicting behavioral models.

Dual Arrest and Other Unintended Consequences of Mandatory Arrest in New York City: A Brief Report

In jurisdictions across the United States, the mandated arrest of individuals perpetrating domestic violence crimes termed “mandatory arrest” or “pro-arrest” policies has become a key policy solution to the issue of domestic violence. The purposes of the policies are to standardize the police response to, and increase the number of, arrests stemming from domestic violence incidents by removing or reducing police discretion to arrest. In 1994, the New York state legislature passed the Family Protection and Domestic Violence Intervention Act, which contained provisions enacting a mandatory arrest statute. Using information from 183 callers to a telephone helpline for victims of domestic violence, we describe four unintended consequences of the policy: “unwanted,” “dual,” “retaliatory,” and “no” arrest. Bi- and multivariate analyses are used to identify victim and perpetrator sociodemographic, situational, and legal factors associated with each arrest type. Results are discussed in the context of the effects of mandatory arrest policies and minimizing problems associated with it in the future.

Methodological aspects of the Dutch National Threat Assessment

This paper discusses issues related to measuring organized crime as they have become manifest in the Dutch contribution to the EU Organised Crime Threat Assessment (OCTA). It intends to convey to a wider academic community certain issues of definition, methodology and accountability, understanding the NTA process in terms of the communication of risks in a context of competitive defining institutions.

Child Justice in Canada and the Four Ps: Protection,Prosecution, Prevention,and Participation

This article provides an analysis of the flaws in the Canadian legal system with respect to child rights, in the light of the three Ps set forth by former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler (2004–2006): Protection, Prosecution, and Prevention. Contrary to the general trend of research on “youth” crime which focuses on the visible criminal activities of children and for which they are readily ascribed the status of “young offenders,” I examine whether the legal system is just as swift in giving child victims adequate Protection and Prosecution against their assailants. Six specific child victimization contexts have been identified, which are all characterized by invisibility: in the home, in care, in school and public spaces as well as by corporations and the criminal justice system. I explore why these victimizations are invisible and what legal protection is offered to affected children. Finally, I analyse the extent to which a fourth P, that of Participation, can strengthen the three Ps of Protection, Prosecution and Prevention in fighting crimes committed against children. The contents of this article reflect the author’s opinions only.

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Toward a political economy of post-Fordist punishment

This article suggests some new lines of research in the field of the political economy of punishment and some possible new directions for a critical approach to contemporary social control strategies. The starting point is the transition from a Fordist economy to what can be defined as a post-Fordist system of production. I outline some tendencies in the actual capitalist dynamic (concerning the labour market, the production process, the relations between the workforce and capitalist power and between work and social citizenship), suggesting that a renewed political economy of social control has to deal with them. Two tendencies are assumed to be structural. On the one hand, the tendency of the capitalist system to make the production (and extraction) of surplus-value more and more independent of the effective working time (a tendency toward the reduction of human labour in the productive process). On the other hand, the tendency towards the massive introduction of new technologies: a tendency whose main consequences seem to be the intellectualisation of human labour and the decline of the classic distinction between manual and intellectual labour. I assume that these tendencies give rise to a new productive subject (the multitude), whose characters exceed the actual organisation of work and deepen the contradictions intrinsic to post-Fordist societies. Hence, an analysis of some new social control strategies follows, where I consider actuarialism as a technology for the control of these contradictions

How High-Yield Farming Saves Nature

High-yield farming—more agricultural output per acre of farmland—has been a boon to mankind and to nature. If today’s agricultural efficiency was the same as in the 1950s, the world would need three times the cropland to produce today’s food supply. That would mean that 15-16 million mi² of forest would have been destroyed—all the global forest area available today. Rising population and increased affluence will require a tripling of agricultural efficiency in the next 50 years if we are to protect wildlife at the same time. More investment in agricultural research and education will be required, but this is what produced the previous green revolution.

Brothers’ Keepers?

Relying on rarely analyzed public opinion data from the 1930s and early 1940s, we take issue with the notion popular in contemporary liberal circles that the New Deal era represented a period of expansive commitment to the security and well-being of the poor and politically disenfranchised. At least where the public is concerned—as opposed to the progressive policy makers in the Roosevelt administration—the jobless were regarded with suspicion, immigrants should be forced to “go home,” women belong in the kitchen not on the shop floor. The harsher the economic conditions (by state), the more conservative were the public attitudes. Hence New Deal legislative victories accrued despite rather than because of public support.

Iraq the Vote: Retrospective and Prospective Foreign Policy Judgments on Candidate Choice and Casualty Tolerance

In this article, we model the effect of foreign policy attitudes on both vote choice and casualty tolerance, using survey data collected during the 2004 election. We show that prospective judgments of the likelihood of success in Iraq and retrospective judgments of whether the war in Iraq was right are significant determinants of both vote choice and casualty tolerance. The prospective judgment of success is key in predicting casualty tolerance, while retrospective judgment of whether the war was right takes precedence in determining vote choice. In addition, there is an important interaction between the two variables, so the effect of one is conditional on the value of the other. We believe this is compelling evidence that foreign policy matters, and that it matters in reasonable ways.

A Question of Authority: Religion and Cultural Conflict in the 2004 Election

In this study I adopt a view of cultural conflict that extends beyond the usual set of controversial “moral” issues like abortion and gay rights to include symbolic issues related to patriotism and group affect. Using a set of survey items asking about respondents’ preferences in child-rearing, I create a measure of individuals’ orientations toward authority that proves to be a potent predictor of attitudes on cultural issues, affect toward social groups, party identification, and vote choice. This authority effect persists even in the presence of extensive multivariate controls for demographic and religious variables. I find that both authority measures and religion measures shape political attitudes, suggesting the need for a multi-faceted approach to understanding cultural conflict.