SOURCES OF INFORMAL SOCIAL CONTROL IN CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOODS*

Why do youth in structurally disadvantaged neighborhoods experience lower levels of informal social control? To answer this question, we examined multilevel data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. Using hierarchical regression, we found that (1) neighborhood attachment and satisfaction with police contributed significantly to neighborhood levels of informal social control; and (2) neighborhood attachment and satisfaction with police mediated a substantial portion of the association between informal social control and neighborhood levels of concentrated disadvantage and immigrant concentration.     

论非正式金融与正式金融的关系

非正式金融、正式金融与违法金融有着不同的界定。非正式金融与正式金融在一国的金融体系中起着同等重要的作用,二者之间存在着竞争、互补及转化的关系。因此,我们应该正确、辩证地看待非正式金融在经济中的作用,为其提供制度保障和服务体系,促进其健康发展。     

The target strikes back: explaining countersanctions and Russia’s strategy of differentiated retaliation

This article analyzes Russia’s retaliatory food embargo, explaining why the Russian government banned some imports from the West but refrained from banning a range of equally plausible others. I argue that Moscow was following a strategy of differentiated retaliation when selecting which imports to embargo. The countersanctions were not designed to mete out equal punishment on all members of the sanctioning coalition. Rather, Russia purposefully crafted the policy to inflict greater economic damage on some states than others. Utilizing an original data-set on all agricultural and food products that Russia imports, I demonstrate that, ceteris paribus, imports of sizeable commercial value to countries the Kremlin has long viewed as the mainstays of anti-Russian policies were far more likely to have been banned. In contrast, the evidence shows that Moscow stayed its hand in dealing with Europe’s major powers. This analysis both illuminates the policy objectives being pursued by a leading actor in world politics, as well as lays the groundwork for theoretically understanding the geostrategic, political, and economic drivers of countersanctions.     

Commonwealth Diplomacy and the End of Apartheid

This article recounts the struggle that those fighting for an end to apartheid in South Africa faced and the role that the Commonwealth played in that struggle. The author recounts the contribution of the Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke administrations in Australia in bringing down the apartheid regime but stresses that these leaders chose the Commonwealth as their primary vehicle for change. In the author’s view, the fight against apartheid was, arguably, the finest achievement of the modern Commonwealth.     

Perception of risks associated with economic sanctions: the case of Russian manufacturing

This paper is focused on assessing the risk factors for Russian manufacturing firms posed by sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU, US, and other countries in 2014. While there is an extensive literature assessing the successes and failures of international sanctions on the economies of both those imposing and targeted by sanctions on a macroeconomic level, we are more interested in trying to understand the corporate response – i.e. which firms evaluate the introduction and increasing scale of economic sanctions as a threat to their corporate strategy, and their possible reactions aimed at adjusting to a changing environment due to the geopolitical shock. Our research, based on a recent survey of manufacturing companies, provides evidence that over the last decade Russian manufacturing firms have become much more integrated into the global economy than is commonly assumed, through foreign direct investment, foreign trade (including imports of both technological equipment and raw materials and components), international partnerships, and by extensively supplying foreign companies that operate in Russia. Considering the self-selection effect of the top-performing firms in terms of foreign trade, we can state that sanctions could prove most harmful not only for the targeted firms, but for the entire population of better-performing and globalized firms involved in foreign trade with the EU and Ukraine. Thus, the impact of the sanctions on the prospects of the Russian manufacturing sector may be very strong over the medium-to-long term.     

FIFA/IOC‐Sanctioned Development and the Imminence of Erotic Space

Based on ethnographic research conducted since April 2014, this paper will examine the intersection between mega‐event security apparatuses, event‐led urbanism, and local geographies of desire. We argue that urban sanitisation strategies (particularly those derived from a constellation of foreign interests) threaten local geographies of desire but remain dependent upon erotic space and subjectivities in (trans)national exchange and everyday economic salvation. The erasure of sexual diversity is a case with which to examine the impact of FIFA/IOC‐sanctioned urban renewal, and the manner in which local bodies (particularly those deemed sexually ‘deviant’) are repeatedly forced to circumvent these globally determined processes of development.     

A study in contrasts

In this personal view of a 'second generation' psychoanalyst in Vienna, private life events are counterposed to political and social developments in Austria over the last twenty-five years, leading up to the phenomenon of Jörg Haider and the recent formation of the new Austrian government including his Freedom Party (FPÖ). In particular, de Mendelssohn discusses the resurgence of openly antisemitic utterances and racist electoral platforms, both against the larger background of historical precedents and against the smaller one of a psychoanalytic study group set up to enquire into the unconscious motives and fantasies involved in this resurgence. Although the emergence of public prejudice is an alarming sign, de Mendelssohn points to mitigating factors. On the one hand there is the possibility of seeing Austria as a 'test case' for similar, often more actively violent eruptions in other European countries, one in which coping strategies may be developed while there is still time. Here he sees the EU sanctions against Austria as fully justified. On the other hand there is an active and younger generation and a solid history of civil protest that may help strengthen Austria's rather weak democratic traditions. As an analogue to Freud's individual psychoanalysis, in which the 'return of the repressed' is seen as a painful experience but necessary for insight and growth, the resurgence of quasi-racist politics in Austria may be seen as a necessary result of long years of being more or less taboo, with the hope that there can be a 'working through' of inter-generational dislocation and social amnesia.     

Collecting on their investments,one woman at a time: Economic partnerships among Caribbean immigrant women in the United States

ABSTRACT

This article treats rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) from a constructive cultural perspective. The female-based African-Jamaican tradition of paadna (partnership) is examined within the theoretical scope of womanist (Black feminist) thought, a seminal discourse intersecting both the African diaspora and women's studies. Across the multiple scholarly approaches within women's and African diaspora studies, academic theory acquires cogency through legitimate correspondences with tangible liberating practices and traditions that can be documented and interrogated for conceptual insights. The practice of economic partnering is one such tradition that substantiates the ethical directives and imperatives of womanist theory and practice. A womanist reading of paadnas is proposed, not because the participants have any self-conscious commitment to feminism/womanism, but because of the institution's efficacy in enhancing the socioeconomic standing of Black families through a relatively small-scale capital enterprise. Through paadna networks, Jamaican women have transplanted a flexible self-help tradition to America that is arguably one of the most reliable sources of social and economic mobility among groups of African descent in the United States.     

我国刑事二审发回重审制度的实然分析与规范设计

刑事二审发回重审制度在一定程度上实现了上级法院对下级法院的监督且有利于发现事实真相,但它在理论和实践中也出现了很多问题。通过对发回重审立法规定的合理性和实践成效及问题进行实然分析,将揭示出我国发回重审制度在实现其实体性补救和程序性制裁功能时所体现出的缺陷。在此基础上提出修改建议,完善该制度就具有十分重要的意义。