Books in review

His publications include The Ways Out: Utopian Communal Groups in an Age of Babylonand Gone From the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History.     

The Theory of Differential Oppression: A Developmental-ecological Explanation of Adolescent Problem Behavior

The developmental-ecological perspective provides a means for understanding how the oppression of children occurs within multiple social contexts that interrelate to produce harmful outcomes for children. Because children lack power due to their age, size, and lack of resources, they are easy targets for adult oppression. Children are exposed to different levels and types of oppression that vary depending on their age, level of development, socioeconomic class, race, and the beliefs and perceptions of their parents. According to the theory of differential oppression, oppression leads to adaptive reactions by children: passive acceptance, exercise of illegitimate coercive power, manipulation of one's peers, and retaliation. Reducing the oppressive acts of adults and alleviating the damaging circumstances that characterize the social environment of children is critical to reducing the prevalence of juvenile delinquency and other problem behaviors. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Squaring the circle: domestic welfare,migrants rights,and human rights

Domestic welfare reform and the management of international migration in Britain have been described by David Cameron as ‘two sides of the same coin’. Heightened conditions and sanctions for the benefit-dependent domestic population, both in and out of work, are being harnessed as a means of promoting labour market change and reducing demand for low-skilled migrants – often EU workers, whose own access to benefit is being curtailed. Arguments about the post-national expansion of rights and associated cosmopolitan debate implicitly measure migrants rights against a normative model of citizenship as the yardstick of full social inclusion, but with little attention to how far citizenship itself falls short of this promise. Taking Britain as a case study, this paper considers how the concept of civic stratification can further advance analysis of the link between domestic welfare, migration and human rights in a context of intensifying controls for both migrants and citizens.     

Adopting (in)equality in the UK: the Equality Act 2010 and its impact on charities

This article considers the relationship between the Equality Act 2010 and the Charities Act 2011 (in Scotland, the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005) in the context of adoption by same-sex couples and the complex exceptions to the Equality Act that charities may be able to rely upon in order to continue to discriminate. It concludes that the law is confusing to the point of opacity, to the detriment of those seeking to exercise their rights and those called on to adjudicate conflicts.