Academic freedom and international standards in higher education: Contestation in journalism and political science at Moscow State University

Recently two new departments, the School of Broadcast Journalism and the Department of Political Science, were created at Moscow State University while leaving the two traditional departments that engendered them intact. The result has been a contestation over academic freedom, standards, and the very definition of both disciplines at Russia’s premier university. The new departments are both closely associated with United Russia, the dominant political party in Russian politics and the political movement designed to promote the priorities and policies of Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin. This paper examines the self-definition of each of the four departments by means of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with faculty and content-analytic examination of curricular materials, including syllabi and assigned readings. We conclude that the newer departments are somewhat more attuned to certain aspects of the international standards of both disciplines, but demonstrate little adherence to key ethical and pedagogical norms, leaving them more susceptible to political influence.     

An examination of types of delinquency through path analysis

Relationships between father's occupation, delinquent peer association, tendency to neutralize, and self-reported delinquency are explored in a path model. Self-reported delinquency are categorized into Minor, Predatory, and Aggressive delinquency. The effect of this division is analyzed among Mexican Americans and Anglo college students (N=694). The structure of the resulting path models remained similar across these subsamples, although there was some variation in the strength of the relationships. The effect of father's occupation was minimal. The strongest relationships were between neutralization and delinquency, controlling for delinquent peers and for father's occupation, which decreased as the seriousness of the delinquency increased. Additionally, neutralization was more strongly related to delinquency among Anglos than among Mexican Americans, explaining 39% of the variation in delinquency among Anglos, but only 28% among Mexican Americans. Association with delinquent peers, however, was more strongly related to delinquency among Mexican Americans.Received his Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University. Current interests are social gerontology, adolescent behavior, and medical sociology.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. Current interests are adolescent behavior, human development, and the sociology of sport.     

Climate action versus inaction: balancing the costs for Gulf energy exporters

ABSTRACT

Climate change poses a strategic dilemma for oil-exporting states of the Gulf. By sapping global demand for crude oil, climate action threatens the economic rents that underpin their governance and regime legitimacy. However, the Gulf states are also among the countries most exposed to physical risks of a warming climate and thus would benefit most from reducing ongoing accumulations of carbon in the atmosphere and associated adaptation costs. In other words, the political and economic risks of climate action run counter to the physical and environmental risks. These bifurcated interests differentiate the Gulf producers from oil exporters in more temperate regions, which would experience milder short-run damage—or even benefits—from a warming climate. A successful economic diversification strategy could address both physical and economic risks but would require structural changes in rentier governance.     

The incidence of drugs in drivers killed in Australian road traffic crashes

The incidence of alcohol and drugs in fatally injured drivers were determined in three Australian states; Victoria (VIC), New South Wales (NSW) and Western Australia (WA) for the period of 1990-1999. A total of 3398 driver fatalities were investigated which included 2609 car drivers, 650 motorcyclists and 139 truck drivers. Alcohol at or over 0.05 g/100ml (%) was present in 29.1% of all drivers. The highest prevalence was in car drivers (30.3%) and the lowest in truckers (8.6%). WA had the highest rate of alcohol presence of the three states (35.8%). Almost 10% of the cases involved both alcohol and drugs. Drugs (other than alcohol) were present in 26.7% of cases and psychotropic drugs in 23.5%. These drugs comprised cannabis (13.5%), opioids (4.9%), stimulants (4.1%), benzodiazepines (4.1%) and other psychotropic drugs (2.7%). 8.5% of all drivers tested positive for Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and the balance of cannabis positive drivers were positive to only the 11-nor-Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carboxylic acid (carboxy-THC) metabolite. The range of THC blood concentrations in drivers was 0.1-228 ng/ml, with a median of 9 ng/ml. Opioids consisted mainly of morphine (n=84), codeine (n=89) and methadone (n=33), while stimulants consisted mainly of methamphetamine (n=51), MDMA (n=6), cocaine (n=5), and the ephedrines (n=61). The prevalence of drugs increased over the decade, particularly cannabis and opioids, while alcohol decreased. Cannabis had a larger prevalence in motorcyclists (22.2%), whereas stimulants had a much larger presence in truckers (23%).     

A Critical Appraisal of the Statecraft Interpretation

This article subjects the Statecraft interpretation to critical assessment. It argues that, while Bulpitt has provided a parsimonious and stimulating contribution to our understanding of British politics, his work needs to be developed. More specifically, although the Statecraft thesis evolved out of Bulpitt’s concerns with the methodology of political science, a neglect of ontological and epistemological questions has led it to propound explanations which are both reductionist and insensitive to empirical criticism. The article concludes by suggesting ways in which the Statecraft interpretation can be developed to take account of these weaknesses.     

Re-imagining the Global Colour Line: The Bolt Case and the Politics of Whiteness

This paper revisits the controversy generated by a series of publications in 2009 by prominent Australian journalist Andrew Bolt. The overall argument is that the controversy generated by the Bolt case contributed to a reimagining of a twenty-first century version of the global colour line. Bolt's articles rested on a “racial grammar of whiteness” that enabled him simultaneously to assert and mask the hegemonic naturalness of whiteness. A racial grammar of whiteness mediates what people take to be the norm in representations and writings about the natures, roles and attributes of whites and non-whites in social situations and the social relations appropriate to them. It enables such views to be presented as just so much common-sense. Demonstrating this racial grammar at work is important because his articles appeared to echo an earlier era's narratives about race, power and privilege that were themselves informed by the global colour line, and which culminated in the now defunct White Australia Policy. The paper explores how those echoes were given substance within Bolt's articles and the subsequent court case about them, and how this contributed to a reimagining of the global colour line.     

Participatory community analysis: identifying and addressing challenges to Ethiopian smallholder livelihoods

In 2012, Africa RISING conducted participatory community analysis (PCA) as the first phase of a participatory development approach in the Ethiopian highlands. The PCA identified trends, constraints, and opportunities – and shed light upon how farmers perceive livelihoods to be changing. Inputs, diseases, pests, soil fertility, post-harvest management, and fodder shortages were seen as challenges, while off-farm income has become increasingly important. Gender differences in livestock and crop preferences for food security and income sources were observed. PCA established development priorities in a way that researchers may have approached differently or missed, providing research development priorities for Africa RISING scientists.     

Low‐trust bureaucracy: Understanding the Mexican bureaucratic experience

Latin American bureaucracies are notorious for their inefficiency and opacity, yet there is very little empirical research done on what exactly constitutes the “bureaucratic experience” for citizens and what the costs of bureaucratic dysfunction are. To improve our understanding of this topic, 5 cases of Mexican citizens' encounters with public bureaucracies are used to develop the notion of “low‐trust bureaucracy”: public organisations in which access to services is unreliable and the levels of control towards both citizens and bureaucrats are excessive. This bottom‐up analysis of administrative practices contributes to our understanding of the ineffectiveness of government programmes and services, but also of how bureaucracies in developing countries amplify social inequality rather than function as a social equaliser. Furthermore, this article adds new insights to the existing understanding of administrative burdens as a result of either political tactics or mere benign neglect. The data presented here suggest that structural and intractable characteristics of the broader administrative context, such as authoritarian legacies, can produce behavioural patterns that shift bureaucratic attention away from a fair and efficient service provision.     

The Representation of ‘Baby-Farmers’ in the Scottish City, 1867–1908

This article explores the manner in which women who provided paid childcare in Scotland were represented and collectively labelled with the pejorative term ‘baby-farmer’ across a forty-year period. It seeks to link the figure of the ‘baby-farmer’ to a wider sphere of discourses and moral frameworks than previously attempted, drawing parallels with other women engaged in processes of semi-public exchange. In so doing the article suggests a more complex articulation of gendered and spatial identity. In particular it asserts that the portrayal of these women was inextricably linked to wider conceptions of the Scottish city and that these pre-existing notions of urban space were integral to the representation of gender.