The Rate of Cyber Dating Abuse Among Teens and How It Relates to Other Forms of Teen Dating Violence

To date, little research has documented how teens might misuse technology to harass, control, and abuse their dating partners. This study examined the extent of cyber dating abuse—abuse via technology and new media—in youth relationships and how it relates to other forms of teen dating violence. A total of 5,647 youth from ten schools in three northeastern states participated in the survey, of which 3,745 reported currently being in a dating relationship or having been in one during the prior year (52 % were female; 74 % White). Just over a quarter of youth in a current or recent relationship said that they experienced some form of cyber dating abuse victimization in the prior year, with females reporting more cyber dating abuse victimization than males (particularly sexual cyber dating abuse). One out of ten youth said that they had perpetrated cyber dating abuse, with females reporting greater levels of non-sexual cyber dating abuse perpetration than males; by contrast, male youth were significantly more likely to report perpetrating sexual cyber dating abuse. Victims of sexual cyber dating abuse were seven times more likely to have also experienced sexual coercion (55 vs. 8 %) than were non-victims, and perpetrators of sexual cyber dating abuse were 17 times more likely to have also perpetrated sexual coercion (34 vs. 2 %) than were non-perpetrators. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Public employees in political firms: Part A. The patronage era

In part A. The patronage era we explain of the changing organization of public employees from patrons to spoilsmen. (Part B. Civil service and militancy, explains the evolution from spoilsmen to civil servants to militant unionists). Commonly, each transformation has been related only to some failing of its preceding form: patronage ended because of its corruption, civil service began because of its promise to stop corruption, and militancy spread because of the inadequacies of civil service. In contrast to these different explanations of each transformation of government employment, we offer the same explanation for each change: a public choice theory assumption that the new organizational form more efficiently maximized the mixture of votes, power, and income that politicians seek. Thus, when poor immigrants promised votes for insurance from urban hazards and businessmen promised graft in return for accommodations, spoilsmen effected the exchanges.     

TEACHING CONTROVERSIAL TOPICS

This essay, based on a presentation at the 2009 Future of Family Law Education conference at the William Mitchell School of Law, discusses strategies for teaching controversial topics, focused on reproductive rights and related gender issues.     

Who Sets Social Policy in Metropolis? Economic Positioning and Social Reform in Singapore*

Changes in social policy in Singapore reflect not only changing sociopolitical realities and popular attitudes, but also the island state's concerted effort to craft itself as a transnational hub, center for international business, and home-away-from-home for the skilled, moneyed cosmopolitans who drive the contemporary global political economy. Shifts in the de jure and de facto treatment of gays and lesbians provide a stark demonstration of these dynamics. This paper examines why the Singapore government has taken steps toward greater official tolerance of gays and lesbians, despite potential backlash and previous statements about Asian exceptionalism. It also considers how far the transnational environment and forces of globalization are likely to go in diminishing states' sovereignty in setting social policy—and how conversely empowering this diminution may be to certain (but not all) marginalized groups, who may find their appeals to transnational discourses, networks, and less culturally-relative identities increasingly validated as a result.     

Politicizing connectivity: beyond the biopolitics of information technology in international relations

The traditional way of politicizing information technology (IT) in international relations is to raise questions concerning access. Rarely is the question posed of what IT does to people, how becoming connected subjectifies peoples, constituting them as a socius distinguished by properties and capacities of connectivity. Thus does this article address the biopolitics of connectivity; the implication of IT in liberal governance; the evolutionary posthumanism that has inspired faith in the governance properties of IT; and, crucially, the war and violence that are legitimated internationally on account of this faith. Following this critique it asks how to constitute an alternative politics of connectivity. How can we rework the concept of connectivity to conceive of alternative political horizons and possibilities? Exploring questions of the quality and intensity of connectivity, at expense of disciplinarily hegemonic ones of equality and quantity, the article engages with the rhizomatic theory of connectivity as advanced by Deleuze and Guattari.