Crimes of Color: Risk, Profiling, and the Contemporary Racialization of Social Control

In the United States the phenomenon of racial profiling has emerged as an important and controversial issue within political and criminal justice policy debates. For the most part, these debates have assumed a sort of racism at work in order to explain law enforcement's use of criminal profiles largely determined by racial classifications. Accordingly, many have worked to expose this allegedly racist behavior in the hopes that such exposure will bring an end to the practice. This essay argues that racial profiling is embedded in much larger social developments that must be explored in order to understand the role race now plays in the maintenance of social order in contemporary American society.     

EXPENDITURES ON CHILDREN AND VISITATION TIME

In their critique, Garfinkel, McLanahan, and Wallerstein raise concerns about the representativeness of the authors' sample, benchmark approach methodology, and historical review of guidelines, all of which lead them to discount the evidence presented opposing the cliff-model assumption of father expenditures on children, and to laud instead child support guidelines that give little monetary credit or adjustment for visitation. This article presents evidence that (a) this sample is at most little biased, and remains trustworthy for the main implications presented; (b) although only a beginning, the benchmark approach is highly useful and most of the concerns raised about it are ill founded or implausible; and (c) the historical review suggesting that current guidelines assume zero visitation expenses is indeed accurate for the vast majority of states, according to the foremost authority. Thus, notwithstanding the critique, these findings have merit and importance and should be considered by policy makers. The authors also comment on the additional arguments against continuous and generous adjustments for visitation, finding them based on a weak foundation of evidence and reasoning.     

What Is Critical Globalization Studies?

From a critical perspective, precisely what kind of knowledge about globalization is meaningful? The distinctive province of a critical orientation to globalization is coming to be defined by a complex of five interacting components: reflexivity, historicism, decentering, crossovers between social inquiry and other streams of knowledge, and an emphasis on strategic transformations. Critical globalization studies may be employed to identify diverse tendencies in world order, parts of a contradictory whole that coexist, with different logics colliding with one another. These are elements of the old configuration, multilateral globalization ; the contemporary structure, militarized globalization ; and the potential constellation, democratic globalization . The motor of transformation is not only countervailing power but also alternative knowledge, which should be demystifying and enabling.     

Democratization through European integration: The case of minority rights in the Czech Republic and Romania

While scholars have tended to focus on domestic factors as most critical to the consolidation of democracy, the post-communist European Union (EU) candidate states have exhibited a unique confluence of domestic and foreign policies, due to their objective of EU membership. This article assesses and compares the impact of the EU on policy making in two diverse candidate states in their first decade of transition, focusing on minority rights protection as a fundamental requirement of both EU membership and a stable democracy. I find that the EU has played a principal role in the reform process and democratic consolidation of candidate states, even in the controversial field of minority rights. The degree and nature of the EU’s impact, however, has depended in part on the activism of the particular minority, EU interest and pressure, EU Member States’ own domestic policies, and the persistence of racism in society. Dr. Melanie H. Ram is a research associate at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University and Senior Program Officer for the Japan International Cooperation Agency USA Office. She has written extensively on European Union enlargement and democratic consolidation and reform in Central and Southeastern Europe, and is the author most recently of “Harmonizing Laws with the European Union: The Case of Intellectual Property Rights in the Czech Republic” inNorms and Nannies: The Impact of European Organizations on Central and East European States (2002). Earlier versions of this article were presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 30 August–2 September 2001, San Francisco, CA and at “Voice or Exit: Comparative Perspectives on Ethnic Minorities in Twentieth Century Europe,” Humboldt University, Berlin, 14–16 June 2001.