Prosecuting Domestic Violence without Victim Participation

This article explores the evidential challenges victim withdrawal presents in domestic violence cases. More specifically it examines innovative measures taken in the United States to overcome problems of proof typically associated with domestic violence prosecutions. These evidentiary initiatives have facilitated a shift towards so–called 'victimless' prosecution in the context of domestic violence which dispenses with victim participation. Drawing upon a 'freedom model' of criminal justice, this article examines whether recent developments in the United States might be emulated as a means of addressing the high rate of attrition in domestic violence cases in England and Wales.     

Consequences and dilemmas in therapeutic relationships with families resulting from mandatory reporting legislation

Mandatory reporting legislation has been adopted in every state to insure the protection of children from maltreatment. These statutes have become a significant factor in the lives of mental health professionals who work with children and families. Thirty psychotherapists who had made a recent report of child maltreatment on a client in treatment were interviewed about their experiences with reporting and the consequences of reporting for therapeutic relationships. Several potentially problematic consequences and dilemmas were identified by the therapists, including immediate and long-term effects on the therapeutic alliance and course of therapy, and conflicts of interest in working with children and families.     

From Resettled Refugees to Humanitarian Actors: Refugee Diaspora Organizations and Everyday Humanitarianism

ABSTRACT

This article describes the everyday humanitarianism of refugees resettled in Australia who form small voluntary organizations to help “their people” displaced elsewhere in the world. The people involved in refugee diaspora organizations (RDOs) are animated by forces that reflect their distinct history, positionality, and relationship to the “suffering others” they help. What the everyday humanitarianism of RDOs suggests is that we live in a world of many-humanitarianisms, where there are different possibilities to care and connect to strangers in need. While “humanitarianism” has become synonymous with a set of dominant practices and actors, there is need for other actors – including refugee diaspora humanitarians – to be given space within both humanitarianism discourse and practice.     

Networks and problem recognition: advancing the Multiple Streams Approach

This paper responds to recent calls for more theoretically driven advancements of the Multiple Streams Approach (MSA). It does so by bringing networks theorizing into dialogue with the MSA; highlighting the inclusionary and exclusionary power of networks for determining problem frames and issue recognition. Subsequently, the paper argues that the addition of networks provides a clearer articulation of the role of institutions in steering problem stream processes, which have often been neglected within the MSA at the expense of a focus on agency. The paper puts forward two propositions. The first is that an issue is more likely to be recognised as a problem if it is considered compatible with the ‘appreciative system’ of the network's dominant coalition. The second proposition is that the more organisations a network consists of and the more varied these organisations are, the more likely it is that the dominant coalition alters a condition’s category if there are changes in the problem stream. These propositions are explored through a comparative analysis of recognition of quality of life as a problem in two local level transport sector networks in the UK. Support for these propositions in the findings suggest that the introduction of networks into the MSA can reduce ambiguity and therefore fortuity in relation to problem recognition; second, that the power of the policy entrepreneur can be facilitated or constrained by the institutional context; and third, that comparing multiple issues and their interactions is important for further advancement of the MSA.     

Experiencing Globalization: Active Teaching and Learning in International Political Economy

This article explores the teaching and learning challenges for the discipline of international studies (IS) that arise from the contemporary social, economic, and political changes usually labeled "globalization." The focus is upon the challenge posed to IS by a transformation in the nature of the relationship of teachers and students to the subject matter that they study: that is, teachers and students increasingly experience and contribute to globalization in the course of their daily lives as they simultaneously teach and learn about it. Significantly for the study of globalization in IS, pedagogical debates surrounding active teaching and learning highlight the potential for strategies that actively engage students' interests and everyday experiences with the subject itself. On this basis, the article outlines some potential routes into the active teaching and learning of globalization in the field of international political economy, illustrating these with examples from classroom activities and exercises.     

States as laboratories: The politics of social welfare policies in India

ABSTRACT

This article examines the role of India’s states in shaping the implementation and framing of social policy within India’s federal system. Since the 2000s, the central government has overseen a substantial expansion of social welfare policies partly through a new push toward rights-based social provision. Yet, it is India’s states that are both responsible for an increasing proportion of total public expenditure on social welfare provision as well as determining the nature and effectiveness of that provision across space. Drawing on a comparative research program across pairs of Indian states, three critical factors explaining how state-level political environments shape social policy are identified: the role of policy legacies in shaping policy frames; the role of social coalitions underpinning political party competition; and the role of political leaders in strengthening state capacity to achieve program goals.     

Listening to color: a set of propositions on pain as feminist aesthetic

This performative text asks whether it is possible to imagine an antisocial feminist aesthetic that does not invoke the wounded body. Its form – numbered propositions that engage with critical theory, literature, and memoir – riffs on that of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, a key interlocutor for this question of aestheticizing embodied pain. How does Nelson’s genealogy of blue model a methodology for a “queer genealogy of femininity,” to borrow Jack Halberstam’s term? How does looking at color in this way offer an approach to narrating trauma, one that displaces the primacy of the visual? Turning to the work of Christina Crosby, Toni Morrison, Fred Moten, and José Esteban Muñoz, as well as drawing upon the author’s experience as a volunteer for a peer listening hotline, this essay considers the implications of “listening to color” for minoritarian knowledge formations and feminist praxis.