Witnessing an Accidental Shooting at the Police Training Academy

Abstract

After an accidental shooting at a police training academy, outcomes of the class involved (n = 45) were compared with those of several comparison classes (n = 154) immediately and one year later. Results revealed a modest impact, but an increase in PTSD symptomology was observed from academy training to the one-year follow-up. Recruits in the affected class demonstrated more prejudicial attitudes toward women in law enforcement, perhaps because the shooter was a woman. The findings suggest that mistakes made by women within law enforcement may be generalized as stereotypes, and that further research is needed on the psychological impact of becoming a police officer.     

No fats,femmes, or Asians: the utility of critical race theory in examining the role of gay stock stories in the marginalization of gay Asian men

In the last few decades, proponents of critical race theory have uncovered everyday forms of injustice that continue to affect the lives of men and women of color by exposing the subtle forms of racism that exist in the stock stories told by the dominant group as well as the counterstories told by subaltern groups. However, rarely have we examined the stock stories articulated by subaltern groups to marginalize other subaltern groups. In this paper, I consider the stock stories told by gay White men and the counterstories expressed by gay Asian men to examine subtle forms of racism within the gay community. I argue that we need not only to reveal how the stories narrated by the dominant group continue to maintain social inequality, but that we also need to consider how subaltern groups help to maintain social inequality by adapting the language of the dominant group to use against other subaltern groups.     

Performance Evaluation in the Arts and Cultural Sector: A Story of Accounting at Its Margins

In this article, I present a review of financial and management accounting literature on the arts and cultural sector. My objective is to understand to what extent this literature is able to offer a critical perspective on the study of performance evaluation practices in arts and cultural organizations, as it is currently missing in the arts management literature. Adopting a critical perspective means shifting the focus of research from the technicalities of evaluation rules and procedures to their embodiment by the different organizational and societal actors of the arts and cultural sector.     

Nostalgias

Abstract

This paper launches a thought experiment the aim of which is to recover and defend an idea of nostalgia as something other than merely maudlin yearning after the days of yore. Much critical comment on nostalgia, in everyday parlance and in academic debate, begins from the standpoint that the time longed for was never really as it is now, nostalgically, imagined. The force and validity of this jibe is admitted in this paper, but it argues that the concept of nostalgia can be reshaped and turned in quite different less reactive directions. A distinction between Nostalgia and nostalgias is coined in order to introduce a plural and critical version of nostalgic memory. The play of memory in nostalgias is exemplified through a focus on four topoi of experience which are strained, possibly even shattered, by the digitalisation and rationalisation of contemporary culture and society. Nostalgias of and for the body, nature, thought, and modernity itself are explored by comparison to themes of melancholy and utopia which arise in Frankfurt School critical theory as responses to a similarly perceived trauma and triumph of instrumental reason. I argue that ultimately the distinction between nostalgias and Nostalgia cannot be maintained - nostalgias are rather types or tropes of Nostalgia. However, through thinking Nostalgia along the lines of this neologism (nostalgias) we might come to see its dynamic and critical mnemonic potencies. Hence, the paper concludes that nostalgia ought not be simply contemned and dismissed as the conservative freezing of memories and images of a fake past.     

Superficial,not Substantial: The Ambiguity of Public Support for Europe's Security and Defence Policy

Abstract

Surveys such as the European Commission's Eurobarometer regularly reveal high levels of public support for European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). This paper argues, however, that public support for ESDP is only superficial, not substantial. First, there is no homogeneous ‘European’ public support for ESDP. Second, security and defence, as covered by ESDP with its focus on global crisis-management, rank very low among Europeans’ priorities. Third, Europeans are very sceptical about the appropriateness of military means, and hence a core element of ESDP, as a legitimate instrument in international affairs. These reservations are likely to have constraining effects on ESDP's future development. At the same time, there are compelling reasons for the further development of ESDP. Therefore, Europe's political elites should initiate a public diplomacy campaign inside the EU in which the case for Europe's further evolution as a strategic security and defence actor is made. ESDP operations are the most promising starting points as they illustrate both the normative and the ‘realist’ necessities of European engagement in global security affairs.     

Boko Haram and the discourse of mimicry: a critical discourse analysis of media explanations for Boko Haram’s improved video propaganda quality

The Nigeria-based violent non-state actor Boko Haram is increasingly reported on in the news media in relation to the Islamic State, another, more prominent, violent non-state actor. In particular, these comparisons have been drawn within the context of reports on Boko Haram’s recent improvement in video propaganda quality. While the associations with the Islamic State are often warranted, there are broader social consequences when colonial power relations are brought into play. Borrowing an approach from critical discourse analysis, 16 online English-language news articles were read through a postcolonial lens in order to analyse the structural relations of dominance that arise when discussing African non-state actors. The analysis revealed that among the corpus of articles, nine developed a discourse of mimicry, which serves to deny Boko Haram full agency, relegate them to a silenced subaltern status, and ultimately to diminish the sense of threat posed to the dominant geopolitical security paradigm.     

British Muslims and the discourses of dysfunction: community cohesion and counterterrorism in the West Midlands

This article analyses how British discursive representations of Muslims during the last decade were utilised in a local context during the planning stages of a proposed mosque in the West Midlands town of Dudley. Locating the central narratives in dominant national discourses of community cohesion and counterterrorism, this article analyses how correspondents to a local newspaper re-articulated national representations of Muslims as culturally dysfunctional in a local context and used these representations to argue against construction. By critically analysing the local expression of dominant national discourses of threat and blame, in terms of both inherent contradictions and ideological effects, this article highlights the ways in which these discourses worked to exclude Muslims while simultaneously reprimanding them for failing to integrate into a national and local culture that regarded them as inherently ‘other’.     

From a ‘terrorist’ to global icon: a critical decolonial ethical tribute to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela of South Africa

This article examines Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela’s political life and legacy from the perspective of critical decolonial liberation ethics, which privileges a paradigm of peace, humanism and racial harmony and opposes the imperial/colonial/apartheid paradigm of war, racial hatred and separation of races. This system emerged in the 15th century and was driven by the desire to conquer, dispossess, colonise, exploit and segregate people according to race and, alongside imperatives of primitive accumulation, it informed the colonisation of South Africa and the imposition of apartheid. Mandela was a liberation fighter who provided an antidote to the colonial ideology of racial profiling and hierarchisation. What distinguished him from other freedom fighters was his commitment to the cause of human rights as early as the 1960s, long before it attained its status as a constitutive part of global normative order. When Mandela became the first black president of a democratic South Africa, his practical and symbolic overtures to whites and his reconciliatory politics aimed to call them back to a new inclusive humanity. Critical decolonial ethics logically enables a tribute to Mandela that privileges his commitment to a post-racial society and new humanism.     

International news as a reflection of cosmopolitan ideology: Coverage of the Ivorian crisis by CNN and the BBC

Abstract

International news discourse is often framed with ideological underpinnings. Ideology as a system of ideas or beliefs or ways of thinking not only helps, defines and explains, but also makes value judgements about that world (Croteau 2012; Van Dijk 1995). The author 's aim was to find out to what extent international news discourse reflects a cosmopolitanist ideology. The article looks at the extent to which the discourse of international news meets Tomlinson's (1999) postulation that cosmopolitanism should involve an intellectual and aesthetic stance of ‘openness’ towards people, places and different cultures – especially those from different ‘nations’. Using framing theory and critical discourse analysis as the theoretical basis for examining international news, the aim is to determine whether international news encourages or discourages a cosmopolitanist outlook during periods of political crisis. The author argues that Western media reportage on events in Ivory Coast to a large extent reflected a cosmopolitanist outlook.     

Critical terrorism studies: an activist scholar perspective

This thematic analysis examines the applicability of Gustavo Correa's constructs of horizontal and vertical honour with regard to prestige as reflected in 21 statements by Osama Bin Laden (OBL) between 2002 and 2008. The relevance of Correa's theory pivots upon whether the individual is considered as the primary locus of honour, as Correa seemed to imply. There was limited support and substantial disconfirming evidence under this condition. Correa's theory appears more applicable to honour when the Ummah rather than OBL's person is considered as the primary locus of honour, with the individual's prestige a derivative of group membership. Under this condition, supported hypotheses derived from the theory include honour being rooted in divinity; vertical and horizontal aspects of honour being mutually constitutive; vertical honour being established with the creation of the Ummah through rank (insofar as the Ummah is presumed precedent above all non-Muslims), competition (including warfare) and functioning as an ideology hierarchically differentiating Muslims from non-Muslims; horizontal honour being gendered (with domination by non-Muslims situating the Ummah in a feminised position). A notable limitation of the theory is that it does not predict or account for the geospatial reification of group honour, whereby the establishment, defence, violation and exoneration of Islamic honour is discussed in terms of establishment, defence, invasion and forceful expulsion of non-Muslims from Islamic territory. Implications of honour are discussed with regard to the Islamist geospatial dichotomy of Islamic versus non-Islamic territories, efforts to encourage disengagement from terrorism and de-radicalisation within non-Islamic settings, legitimisation of complex phenomena such as jihad or suicide bombing according to frameworks of martyrdom and realistic efforts to win hearts and minds within the Islamic world.