The poor in Singapore: issues and options

This article examines the changing patterns of poverty in Singapore. As Singapore's population ages, the poor increasingly includes the elderly. It appears that ascribed factors, such as gender and race, have significant influence on financial security at old age. As the population ages, the adequacy of existing anti-poverty policy is challenged.     

BritCrits: Subversion and submission,past, present and future

This article explores some of the intellectual influences which have shaped the development of Critical Legal Studies in Britain and the contexts in which these influences made themselves felt. It then considers which influences might or should steer Critical Legal Studies in the future. In terms of the past, specific attention is given to the influence of Marxism, Freud and Lacan, feminism, Foucault and Derrida, and recent genres of history-writing. As to the future, the question is asked whether Critical Legal Studies will engage constructively with recent developments in the life sciences and the philosophy of science, and, more generally, whether it will be able to surpass its established mooring in the philosophy of history. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Urban Change and Policing: Mass Private Property Re-considered

This article examines a key explanation for the growth of private policing in North America and Western Europe - the influential mass private property thesis (Shearing and Stenning 1981). The discussion of private policing in Western Europe still tends to be heavily influenced by theories developed in the North American context, theories which may be problematic in the contrasting legal, social and economic contexts of Western European nations. The development of more Eurocentric theories has to date been inhibited by the relative paucity of empirical data on the rise of private policing in European countries. Recent research in Britain (Jones and Newburn 1998b) has begun to address this problem, and to map out some important contrasts with the North American experience. By considering these contrasts, it is possible to identify some key areas for future research on private policing in European countries and thus provide a more contextually-grounded series of explanations for what is happening to policing.Joseph Rowntree Foundation Professor of Urban Social Policy     

Interdisciplinary problem-solving: Next steps in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a 7.6-million-hectare region in the Central Rocky Mountains of the United States, is used to illustrate both the challenges and means to improve problem solving in the natural resources arena. The challenges in this world-famous region are contextual (rapid change, growth, pluralism, complexity, state/federal conflicts, and lack of a common perspective), institutional (multiple organizations with overlapping authority and control and disparate mandates, uneven leadership, lack of creativity in problem solving, and resistance to change), and human (diverse perspectives and values and epistemological limitations). To overcome these challenges, an interdisciplinary method that integrates knowledge to improve policy making is briefly described. It provides a framework with a comprehensive set of categories to use in investigating and analyzing problems and inventing alternatives for substantive, process, and structural improvements. Five programs or interventions, all of which are based on this method, are suggested to address the challenges facing Greater Yellowstone: (1) workshops for capacity building, (2) leadership, staff development, and student internships, (3) case analyses and appraisals for policy learning, (4) problem-solving exercises and decision seminars, and (5) prototyping exercises to improve interdisciplinary and interagency coordination. These are described, examples given, and benefits outlined.     

Mixed-Sex Settings and the Perception of Competence

This study examines the association of self-perceptions with sixth to eighth graders' exposure to mixed-sex and dating contexts. It contrasts two hypotheses: the stress hypothesis, which suggests that the transition to romantic relationships will be associated with declines in self-esteem, especially for girls, and the leisure hypothesis, which suggests that movement into a desired role in an emotionally positive social context will be associated with positive emotions and higher self-esteem. Results indicate that adolescents experience mixed-sex settings positively, and that comfort with the other sex (for girls) and more time spent with the other sex (for boys) are predictive of more positive self-perceptions. Activity diary data suggest that these differences are due to differences in the emotional climate of same- and mixed-sex settings, rather than to the activities adolescents engage in with same- and mixed-sex groups. Dating boys who are less interested in dating experience lower self-esteem. Results are discussed in light of the transitional nature of mixed-sex relationships in early adolescence and the preparatory role played by same-sex friendships.     

A validation study for the extraction and analysis of DNA from human nail material and its application to forensic casework.

A validation study was conducted to demonstrate that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) could be successfully extracted from human nail material and analyzed using short tandem repeat (STR) profiling and/or mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing. This study involved the development of a DNA extraction protocol that includes a cleaning procedure designed to remove external contaminants (e.g., biological, chemical). This protocol was used to test human nail material that had been soaked in whole blood from a second donor and coated with gold-palladium to simulate scanning electron microscopic analysis. The results showed no indication of a mixture and were consistent with that of the nail donor. Fresh human nail material usually yielded both STR profiles and mtDNA sequence information; however, aged human nail material (approximately eight years old) yielded only mtDNA sequence information. Upon completion of the validation study, the extraction protocol was used for the analysis of a torn fingernail fragment recovered from the scene of a violent homicide in 1983. A partial STR profile and mtDNA sequence information indicated that the fingernail fragment was excluded as originating from the suspect and was, in fact, consistent with originating from one of the victims.     

Not All are Aboard: Decolonizing Exodus in Joon-ho Bong’s Snowpiercer

This article interprets Joon-ho Bong’s Snowpiercer (2013) as a political allegory. First, we compare Bong’s film to Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), two contemporaneous films about ecological crises. We argue that Snowpiercer exposes the limits of technocratic environmentalisms that obscure the links between ecological degradation, capitalist development, and colonial domination. Second, we put Bong’s film into conversation with autonomist Marxist and postcolonial accounts of social domination and transformation. We argue that Snowpiercer is about whether or not contemporary political economy has rendered the emancipatory strategies of recent centuries obsolete. Framed this way, the film proposes that global order is still capitalist and colonialist, but that Left projects must surpass state socialism and anti-colonial nationalism. What we call Bong’s “decolonial exodus” is the demand for a real alternative to both the ideology that there is no alternative to the existing order and the pseudo-alternative of authoritarian populism.