Feminism, Science Wars, and the Twilight of Positivism

When we began theorizing our experiences during the women's movement ... we knew our task would be a difficult though exciting one. But I doubt in our wildest dreams we ever imagined we would have to reinvent both science and theorizing itself to make sense of women's social experience.     

Police shooting as a method of self-harming: A review of the evidence for ‘suicide by cop’ in England and Wales between 1998 and 2001

There is increasing evidence that some individuals actively seek to bring about their own deaths by provoking armed police officers to shoot them. The current paper examines 22 police shooting incidents, nine fatal, between 1998 and 2001, to assess the likelihood of suicidal motivation in each of these cases. All 22 individuals shot were male, 18 were white, three black and one Asian and ages ranged from 18 to 51. Around half of the shootings examined have some evidence indicating a suicidal motive in those shot, with further indications of irrational behaviour in a number of the other cases. This has clear implications for the choice of police strategy in responding to such incidents and an imperative to develop ‘less lethal’ options to minimise the risk to such vulnerable populations.     

Al Qaeda Versus Big Brother: Anxiety About Government Monitoring and Support for Domestic Counterterrorism Policies

Explanatory models of attitudes toward U.S. domestic counterterrorism policy routinely incorporate individual concern over terrorism, but uniformly disregard concern about the government??s use of domestic surveillance. Indeed, one of the most prominent works of this kind explicitly argues that ordinary Americans will not perceive that government monitoring targets people like themselves and thus domestic surveillance programs will not generate anxiety. We question this assumption on theoretical and historical grounds. Our research uses a unique probability sample survey to demonstrate that significant portions of ordinary Americans feel anxious about domestic government monitoring. Moreover, the results show that anxiety about government monitoring negatively relates to attitudes toward domestic counterterrorism policies. Although never included in previous models, and even plainly dismissed as irrelevant, felt anxiety about government monitoring importantly predicts attitudes about domestic counterterrorism policies.     

The economic theory of regulation and trucking deregulation: Shifting to the state level

Federal deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980 created a general gain in economic welfare at the expense of the monopoly rents of powerful interests, leading some scholars to ponder the limitations of the economic theory of regulation. However, analyzing only the federal changes excludes evidence from the significant intrastate sector of the trucking industry, regulation of which remains largely unchanged from that prior to 1980. This paper argues that after a decade of clear federal policy success, truckers continue to capture most state regulators, sustaining monopoly rents in what would otherwise be an inherently competitive industry. Using data from the fifty states, we demonstrate the extent to which the economic theory is in fact consistent with trucking industry evidence.