The Role of Social Networks in Physical and Relational Aggression Among Young Adolescents

Despite the veritable influence of the peer context on the elaboration of adolescent aggression, few studies of relational aggression have directly identified and measured peer groups, limiting our ability to draw formal conclusions about the level and nature of peer influence. The current study used a developmental framework to examine peer group influence on individual levels of physical and relational aggression over a year with 6th and 7th grade students (n = 346, 51 % female). A multilevel network approach was used in which peer groups were identified via social network analysis, and peer group influence was evaluated with hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). HLM analyses indicated that peer group aggression (physical and relational) at time 1 was predictive of individual aggression levels at time 2 after controlling for other peer group characteristics as well as other individual risk and protective factors. Although both forms of aggression were embedded in peer networks, findings suggest that physical aggression is relatively less endemic to peer networks, and is more likely to occur in smaller, predominantly male networks. The current study highlights the importance of understanding the influence of peer group membership on adolescent aggression and points to important implications for prevention.     

Are people who cooperate ‘rational altruists’?

In experimental games, as in natural situations, people are often observed acting to the benefit of others even at considerable cost to themselves. Such behavior is contrary to the assumption of selfish behavior, but it is not necessarily contrary to the assumption of rationality: People cooperating under these circumstances could be ‘rational altruists’ who base their decision on the magnitude of the external benefit, as well as on the costs to themselves. We test that proposition using a prisoners' dilemma experimental paradigm. If it is correct, we should observe higher levels of cooperation as the external benefit in such games increases. But we do not — whether external benefit is measured in terms of number of individuals benefiting from a cooperative choice or the total dollar benefit produced. Cooperation must be explained otherwise.     

Talking Cop: Discourses of Change and Policing Identities

This paper presents empirical and theoretical analysis of the enactment of New Public Management (NPM) within the UK police service. It draws on empirical material gathered in a two-year study that explores the ways in which individual policing professionals have responded to, and received, the NPM discourse. Theoretically informed by a discursive approach to organizational analysis, the paper focuses on the new subject positions promoted within NPM that serve to challenge traditional understandings of policing organization and identities. The paper examines the implications of this for policies that promote community orientated policing (COP) and increased inter-agency partnership. The paper argues that the promotion of a more progressive form of policing, based on community orientation and equality principles, may struggle to gain legitimacy within the current performance regime that legitimizes a competitive masculine subjectivity, with its emphasis on crime fighting.     

Racial mistrust and disposition to deviance among African American,Haitian, and other Caribbean Island adolescent boys

Using survey data from Miami, Florida, this study empirically tests whether racial mistrust is related to a willingness to engage in delinquent behaviors among a sample of African Americans, Haitians, and other Caribbean Island Black adolescent boys residing in Miami, Florida. No significant differences were found among the three groups with respect to their disposition scores. However, when compared to non-Blacks, African Americans and Haitians reported a greater willingness to violate the law. Bivariate analyses suggest a strong relationship between racial mistrust and disposition to deviance for all three ethnic groups. Three findings also held in multivariate analyses controlling for socioeconomic status.     

Reasonable expectation of privacy and third-party consent searches

Reasonable expectation of privacy is discussed in the context of searches conducted without the warrants usually required by the Fourth Amendment but with the consent of a third party, who is not the target of the search. Case law on this issue is neither consistent nor clear-cut. Psychological theory and research clarify this issue by establishing closer correspondence between legal concepts and assumptions and individuals' actual behaviors and social expectations. The key legal components of reasonable expectation of privacy are delineated, with regard to third-party consent: “common authority” areas versus “exclusive use” areas and theassumption of risk doctrine. Next, the psychological theory and research on interpersonal relations and human territorial functioning are reviewed as they relate to the legal components of privacy regulation. Taken together, the legal criticisms of this warrant exception category, and possible discrepancies between the legal assumptions concerning interpersonal and territorial functioning among co-residents and the actual behaviors and expectations suggested by psychological theory and research, raise questions about its validity.     

Reviews

Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton University Press) Princeton, New Jersey, 1995

Anne Edwards and Susan Magarey (eds), Women in a Restructuring Australia: Work and Welfare (Allen & Unwin) St Leonards, NSW, 1994.

Tanya Castleman, Margaret Allen, Wendy Bastalich and Patrick Wright, Limited Access: Women's Disadvantage in Higher Education Employment (National Tertiary Education Union) Melbourne, 1995.

Wendy Weeks (in collaboration with women in women services), Women Working Together: Lessons from Feminist Women's Services (Longman Cheshire) Melbourne, 1993.

Shurlee Swain with Renate Howe, Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia (Cambridge University Press) Cambridge, 1995.

Kathleen Barry, The Prostitution of Sexuality (New York University Press) New York, 1995.

Susanne Kappeler, The Will to Violence: The Politics of Personal Behaviour (Spinifex) Melbourne, 1995.

Jill Bavin‐Mizzi, Ravished: Sexual Violence in Victorian Australia (University of New South Wales Press) Sydney, 1995.

Leonore Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (Polity Press) Cambridge, 1995.

Alison Lewis, Subverting Patriarchy: Feminism and Fantasy in the Works of Irmtraud Morgner (Berg) Oxford, 1995.

Adrian Howe, Punish and Critique: Towards a Feminist Analysis of Penality (Routledge) London, 1994.

Susan Joekes and Ann Weston, Women and the New Trade Agenda (UNIFEM) New York, 1994.

Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Routledge) London, 1993.