Social Institutions,Theory Development,and the Promise of Comparative Criminological Research

This paper highlights the ways in which recent comparative criminological research has begun to advance theory development by directing systematic attention to the role of institutional structure. The overarching thesis is that sensitivity to the institutional context in recent criminological studies, especially those conducted in Asia, has paved the way for the productive elaboration of two highly influential theories: Routine Activities Theory and the General Theory of Crime (or self-control theory). Such theoretical elaboration promises to enhance the explanatory power of these theories by placing individual behavior in a multilevel, institutional context. The paper also outlines a transformed variant of self-control theory that posits two distinctive forms of self-control, which are likely to have differential impacts on criminal offending depending on features of the institutional structure of societies.     

Practical reason and the ontology of statutes

Conclusion A common working assumption of theories of statutory interpretation is that the object of interpretation is uncontroversial. It is assumed that dispute only centers on the epistemics of interpretation. The assumption is unsound. Theories of statutory interpretation are importantly different from other sorts of theories. The subject matter of other sorts of theories can be identified uncontroversially. In the case of statutory interpretation, the object of interpretation is controversial. What counts as the object of interpretation therefore needs specification. Without the required specification, criteria of evidence and warrant justifying an interpretation are not well-defined.An adequate theory of statutory interpreation must contain both epistemic and ontological components. It must provide criteria for treating information as evidence relevant to, and standards for, interpreting a statute. Providing such criteria in turn requires also giving an account of the object of interpretation — what a statute consists in. Practical reason theories fail to provide acceptable criteria and standards for interpreting a statute. These accounts therefore fail to supply an adequate epistemic components for a theory of statutory interpretation. As to the ontological component, things are less clear. I have argued in sections II and III that this component is partly a matter of substantive political theory. Although practical reason theorists fail to offer a substantive political theory for defining the proper object of interpretation, their accounts are in principle ontologically unobjectionable. At most, practical reason accounts are incomplete. Of course, practical reason accounts might still be defective for other reasons. They may invoke a defective substantive political theory. Or the constraints imposed on properties of a statute or relations between them may not in fact affectuate the goals set by the theory. Such failings would be normative, not metaphysical. Since practical reason accounts are epistemically inadequate and ontologically incomplete, legal theorists should find the accounts less attractive than they do, even putting aside the normative soundness of the accounts.I thank Barry Adler, John Harrison, George Rutherglen, William Stuntz and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. I am particularly grateful to Larry Alexander for discussions and comments on previous drafts of this article. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Longitudinal investigation of the relationship among maternal victimization, depressive symptoms, social support, and children's behavior and development

This article is a longitudinal investigation of the relationships between maternal victimization, maternal functioning, and children's behavior and development. Participants include 203 mother-child dyads from a low-income population recruited from pediatric primary care clinics. Data are collected when children are 4 and 8 years of age. Child outcomes are evaluated using maternal, teacher, and child self-report and objective measures of cognitive and academic functioning. Maternal victimization history is associated with maternal depressive symptoms, low levels of maternal social support, child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, and low levels of child socialization. Child behavior problems identified at age 4 are enduring and persist to age 8. The effects of maternal victimization history on both internalizing behavior problems and socialization are mediated by maternal depressive symptoms. The effects of maternal depressive symptoms on externalizing behavior problems, socialization, and anger are mediated by maternal social support. Clinical implications of findings are discussed.     

The intersubjective space–time of a Zulu choir/HIV support group in global perspective

This article draws from anthropology, conversation analysis, ethnomusicology, semiotics, and phenomenology, using the concept of intersubjectivity to model how the micro-organization of musical communication can be integral in social processes of support, identity maintenance, and activism amid structural inequality. This is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Durban, South Africa, with a Zulu gospel choir that functioned as a support group, activist organization, and performance troupe. Three distinct aspects (or levels) of intersubjectivity are discussed. The organization of these levels in music making is outlined through fine-grained discussion of how people with HIV coordinate bodies and voices in space as they make music together for each other and for international audiences. This article contributes to the further development of a musical semiotics, discussing how overlapping conceptualizations of intersubjectivity in multiple disciplines may be synthesized to analyze the performance of coordinated sonic action.