Gang Membership,Gun Carrying,and Employment: Applying Routine Activities Theory to Explain Violent Victimization Among Inner City,Minority Youth Living in Extreme Poverty∗

Conceptual inconsistencies in routine activities theory are illustrated by demonstrating how gang membership, gun carrying, and employment can be categorized as both risk and protective factors in a high‐poverty context. Two waves of longitudinal data from a high‐poverty sample of African American youth were used to examine the determinants of victimization risk. Bivariate analyses indicated that gang membership, gun carrying, and employment status are significant risk factors for violent victimization, but these effects were mediated by measures of lifestyles (e.g., demographic and family factors, deviant lifestyles) included as controls in the full multivariate model. In other words, the strong positive relationship between gang membership and gun carrying found in previous studies may be due to model misspecification and/or the lack of research on high‐poverty samples of inner city youth from the Deep South. Additional logistic regression analyses also indicate that the number of hours employed per week (but not employment status) is a risk factor for violent victimization. Finally, the theoretical implications of these findings for routine activities theory are discussed.     

Comparison of feature selection and data fusion of Fourier transform infrared and Raman spectroscopy for identifying watercolor ink

The identification of different kinds of watercolor inks is an important work in the field of forensic science. Four different kinds of watercolor ink Spectroscopy data fusion strategies (Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy) combined with a non-linear classification model (Extreme Learning Machine) were used to identify the brand of watercolor inks. The study chose Competitive Adaptive Reweighted Sampling (CARS), Random Frog (RF), Variable Combination Population Analysis-Genetic Algorithm (VCPA-GA), and Variable Combination Population Analysis-Iteratively Retains Informative Variables (VCPA-IRIV) to extract characteristic variables for mid-level data fusion. The Cuckoo Search (CS) algorithm is used to optimize the extreme learning machine classification model. The results showed that the classification capacity of the mid-level fusion spectra model was more satisfactory than that of single Infrared spectroscopy or Raman spectroscopy. The CS-ELM models based on infrared spectroscopy used to recognize the watercolor ink according to brands (ZHENCAI, DELI, CHENGUANG, and STAEDTLER) obtained an accuracy of 66.67% in the test set using all spectral datasets. The accuracy of CS-ELM models based on Raman spectroscopy was 67.39%. The characteristic wavelength selection algorithms effectively improved the accuracy of the CS-ELM models. The classification accuracy of the mid-level spectroscopy fusion model combined with the VCPA-IRIV algorithm was 100%. The data fusion method increased effectively spectral information. The method could satisfactorily identify different brands of watercolor inks and support the preservation of artifacts, paintings, and forensic document examination.     

网络治理理论视角下我国社会泄愤类极端事件的治理对策--以公交车纵火案为例

随着社会转型的深化,社会泄愤类极端事件在我国不断发生。社会泄愤类极端事件的产生既有制度不完善、机制不健全、法治弱化、道德下滑等规则缺陷的原因,也有涉案者在心理方面的个人原因。社会泄愤类极端事件的发生造成严重社会危害,必须高度重视。为了更好地治理这类社会问题,政府、企业和社会等多元主体要协同建立治理网络,重建良好的信任基础和沟通协调机制,重建民主、法治、道德等规则,更好地维护社会公平正义,降低社会伤害事件的频次及危害。     

网络民族主义概念辨析

自上世纪90年代后期在虚拟网络空间中诞生并发展以来,网络民族主义受到各方面的关注,目前存在将网络民族主义等同于狭隘的极端民族主义,认为网络民族主义是传统民族主义在网络中的表现,网络民族主义是网络时代背景下脱胎于旧有民族主义的全新社会思潮,网络民族主义是网络与民族主义的有机融合等观点。目前网络民族主义正逐步趋于理性化,它依托互联网的传播特征,对传统民族主义、爱国主义,甚至极端民族主义、民粹主义等思想进行有机整合,并具有区别于传统媒体下思想的鲜明特色。     

The end of the millennium or the countdown

In the millennial countdown the time remaining is already past, and the maximal utopia of life gives way to the minimal utopia of survival. This is the paradox of the achieved utopia which puts an end to the utopian dimension. It creates an impossible situation, in the sense that it exhausts historical possibilities.     

Interpreting “Cumulative Extremism”: Six Proposals for Enhancing Conceptual Clarity

The concept of “cumulative extremism”—described in 2006 by Roger Eatwell as “the way in which one form of extremism can feed off and magnify other forms [of extremism],” has recently gained considerable traction in academic, policy, and practitioner discourses about extremism. Yet in spite of the growing usage of the term, particularly in analyses of the dynamic between extreme Islamist and extreme Right-Wing or anti-Muslim protest groups, there has to date been scant interrogation of the concept itself or of its application. In this article, we make a series of six proposals as to how we might enhance the conceptual clarity of these conversations about “cumulative extremism.” Our aim in doing so is to increase the likelihood that the concept might become a useful addition to the debates on extremism rather than becoming, to borrow a term from John Horgan—something of an “explanatory fiction”—an idea that appears to enable us to explain a great deal, but whose explanatory value is largely lost because there is insufficient scrutiny of the claims that it is used to make and whose liberal application becomes increasingly conducive to poor science.     

The sublime and the cultures of the extreme: An exploration

Abstract

The article traces the relationship between the concept of the traditional sublime and the contemporary cultures of the extreme and their fascination with unlimitation. It is asked to what degree the aesthetic category of the sublime, generally defined as a ‘formlessness’, can assist in exploring and making sense of the cultures of the extreme. The cultures of the extreme are analysed by means of three tropes, namely the ecstasy of speed, the immersion into immediacy, and the shrinking of the natural landscape. By utilising these three tropes or hermeneutical tools, the author attempts to show how these events typify the contemporary obsession with extremes, and can indeed be likened to a pseudo-sublime or kitsch sublime.     

社会排斥与社会融合:泄愤型个人极端暴力犯罪的社会学思考

近年来,泄愤型个人极端暴力犯罪成为当前和今后一个时期影响我国治安秩序和社会稳定最突出的问题之一,学术界对泄愤型个人极端暴力犯罪的研究多是从心理学和犯罪学等微观角度来进行,较少考察社会因素对犯罪主体的重要影响,鉴于这一情况,应着重探讨泄愤型个人极端暴力犯罪的宏观社会背景,从社会排斥理论出发,分析泄愤型个人极端暴力犯罪的发生机理,进而从社会融合理论的角度提出化解泄愤型个人极端暴力犯罪的路径,实现对受社会排斥的社会群体的融合,确保社会长治久安.     

拉美民众意识形态极化趋势及其影响

拉美国家近年来政局不稳的一个重要原因在于民众的意识形态出现了极化的趋势。本文分析了2012—2019年间“美洲晴雨表”中18个拉美国家的数据,发现自2014年以来,持极端意识形态的民众尤其是持极左观点的民众比重出现了显著上升,这主要是受到经济发展形势和各国执政党意识形态两个因素的交互影响。宏观上,以极左民众比重上升为特征的极化趋势主要是受到整个区域经济持续低迷和右翼政府的紧缩性经济政策影响。微观上,本文通过回归分析发现,民众对国家经济形势的判断与其所在国执政党的意识形态共同影响着其极化方向。在右翼执政的国家,民众对国家经济形势的评价越负面,其持极左观点的概率越高,持极右观点的概率越低;在左翼执政的国家,民众对国家经济形势的评价越负面,其持极左观点的概率越低,持极右观点的概率越高。最后,本文讨论了民众意识形态极化对拉美国家政局稳定的影响。本文发现,拉美极端民众尤其是极左民众参加抗议游行的概率显著高于温和民众。这意味着一国的极端民众比重越高,其发生大规模示威游行的概率越高。     

The French secular hypocrisy: the extreme right,the Republic and the battle for hegemony

ABSTRACT

The success of the extreme right in France in the past two decades has not been limited to its electoral rise. A more long-lasting victory has taken place in the ideological field, where the discourse of the extreme right now occupies a prominent place in the mainstream liberal democratic agenda. Increasingly, its ideas are seen in the media and in the platforms of mainstream parties as ‘common sense’ or at least acceptable. The growing acceptance of this ‘common sense’ is the result of very carefully crafted strategies put in place by extreme-right thinkers since the 1980s. For over three decades now, in order to change perceptions and renew extreme right-wing ideology, New Right think tanks such as the French GRECE believed it was necessary to borrow the tactics of the left and, more specifically, the Gramscian concept of hegemony: cultural power must precede political power. With the use of contemporary examples, Mondon's article demonstrates the continuing impact these ideas have had on the Front national and French politics and society, and how this change originated in the association of populist rhetoric with the neo-racist stigmatization of the Other.