Blogs and the New Politics of Listening

This article examines the new phenomenon of blogging and suggests that, rather than being a new tool for politicians to use in spreading their messages, blogs should be seen as democratic listening posts, enabling us to pick up signals of subjective expression which might inform debate in these more reflexively democratic times. The article suggests that blogs are part of a battle for the soul of the internet and represent an extension of media freedom.     

DIFFERENTIAL COERCION,STREET YOUTH,AND VIOLENT CRIME*

Using a sample of 300 homeless street youths, this study examines differential coercion theory and the role that coercion and the socialpsychological deficits of anger, low self‐control, coercive modeling, coercive ideation, and control imbalances play in the generation of violent crime. Results from cross‐sectional and prospective offending models that examine the individual mediators reveal that coercion has a direct relationship with violent offending as well as a relationship that is mediated by low self‐control, anger, coercive modeling, and coercive ideation. Although control imbalances have a direct relationship with crime, they do not mediate the relationship between coercion and crime. In the cross‐sectional model that contains all the mediators, coercion, low self‐control, anger, coercive modeling, and coercive ideation are associated with crime. In the prospective model that contains all the mediators, only anger, coercive modeling, and coercive ideation remain associated with crime. Results are discussed regarding future theory development and policy implications.     

Race in the Andes: Global Movements and Popular Ontologies

Abstract — Race, long discounted in Andean ethnography as relatively unimportant, is a social fact of great salience in the Andes. This essay introduces the articles in the special issue on race in the Andes with an overview of the interrelated intellectual histories of racism in the Andes, Europe and North America, from colonial proto-racism, to the totalising theories of the 19th century, to the heterogeneous 'neo-racism' found in the Andes today, in which both these earlier ideas and contemporary cultural racisms are at home. It concludes with a discussion of an oppositional ideology found in some indigenous communities, in which race is somatic but not biological in origin.     

Who Will Pay for Better Care?

In launching its review of adult social care in May 2008, the Government acknowledged that this is one of the biggest challenges for the 21^st century. With our ageing population and the increasing expectations of baby boomers, the current system simply isn't fit for the future. But what kind of care system do we want for this and future generations and critically how are we going to pay for it? There are no easy answers but what is certain is that we will all have to pay more for better care. In this article Stephen Burke examines the care crunch     

The Media,the Peace Dividend and ‘Bread and Butter’ Politics

In December 2007, Northern Ireland's newly elected First and Deputy First Ministers, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, were pictured sitting happily together on a read leather sofa at the new IKEA superstore in Belfast. It was an image that served as a powerful symbol of the region's political transformation and economic optimism. Yet, within months of this photo opportunity, global financial crisis and economic recession shattered hopes that a meaningful, economic ‘peace dividend’ would underpin the new political dispensation. This article takes a critical look at the media's role in conflict transformation in Northern Ireland; how they projected new and more positive images of life in the region and chronicled the daily business of ‘bread and butter politics’. However, it also identifies chronic decline among some sections of the regional media, particularly Belfast's daily newspapers, just when they are needed to monitor and debate political decision‐making in a time of austerity.