Suchergebnisse

Racist violence that occurred in Liverpool in 1919 is analyzed in this article, & it is argued that three main themes can be identified in media, policing, & political debates that followed. These are fears of sexual relations between different "races," competition for employment, & questions relating to citizenship occasioned by a scheme of assisted repatriation introduced to remove black migrant workers from the "mother country." The article argues that the issue of "racial" difference between the communities involved in the disorders should not be treated as a straightforward variable in its own right. Instead recognition of the articulation between racialized discourse & other factors, such as sexual relations, is central to a full understanding of the events. Adapted from the source document.

In August 2011, severe social unrest came to several English cities for about 30 years. For five consecutive days and nights young adults fought street battles with the police and numerous shops were plundered; between 13,000-15,000 people participated, five were killed. The official policy reacted predominantly with a mixture of criminalization and depoliticization: Prime Minister Cameron characterized the riots as as 'criminality, pure and simple'. Adapted from the source document.

Why are some parts of India -- such as the recently riot-stricken state of Gujarat -- plagued by communal violence while other parts are not? Ashutosh Varshney's new book finds an answer in civil society. 2 Maps; 1 Photograph. Adapted from the source document.

The findings of two presidential commissions have dominated the understanding of the Black urban riots of the 1960s & correspondingly the general understanding of the causes of political violence. The Kerner & Eisenhower commissions each explained the causes of the riots in terms of the social science orthodoxy of the time. The riots were seen as violent responses by a community that had experienced persistent & continual frustration as a result of economic deprivation wrought by white racism. The deprivation-frustration-aggression model of violence was superimposed as a causal explanation of the riots & social science, & the popular media extolled this as the definitive understanding of the riots. Yet over the past 30 years this model has not explained empirical findings & has fallen from grace, especially among political scientists. Our research shows that even within the context of the commission reports there was evidence of other, but less politically palatable, explanations. In addition, there was the overarching issue of the occurrence of violence in democracies. Riots, like terrorism, more commonly occur within democracies than in nondemocratic governmental systems. We suggest that viewed in this context, the Black urban riots are not a deviant occurrence but part of a common syndrome of violence in democracies. These riots, like others that preceded them, need to be viewed within the historical framework of the role of political violence in democracies & most specifically how democracies respond to political violence. Adapted from the source document.

"In When Riot Cops Are Not Enough, sociologist and activist Mike King examines the policing, and broader political repression, of the Occupy Oakland movement during the fall of 2011 through the spring of 2012. King's active and daily participation in that movement, from its inception through its demise, provides a unique insider perspective to illustrate how the Oakland police and city administrators lost the ability to effectively control the movement. Drawn from King's intensive field work, the book focuses on the physical, legal, political, and ideological dimensions of repression--in the streets, in courtrooms, in the media, in city hall, and within the movement itself--When Riot Cops Are Not Enough highlights the central role of political legitimacy, both for mass movements seeking to create social change, as well as for governmental forces seeking to control such movements. Although Occupy Oakland was different from other Occupy sites in many respects, King shows how the contradictions it illuminated within both social movement and police strategies provide deep insights into the nature of protest policing generally, and a clear map to understanding the full range of social control techniques used in North America in the twenty-first century"--

One distinguishing feature of mainstream social science is its growing regard for model building and formal hypothesis testing. In South Asian studies this is most evident in accounts of ethnic riots or communal violence. This paper examines a model of votes and violence proposed by Steven Wilkinson. We first examine how well the model performs against a data set that we have assembled on the twenty worst incidents of communal violence in India since 1950. The Wilkinson model is consistent with some important key facts in our data set, most notably in terms of levels of urbanization and "percentage Muslims" in riot-affected towns and cities. However, proximity to national or state elections is not found to be a strong driver of prolonged ethnic rioting. Nor is it the case that India's worst instances of communal violence occurred mainly where there was direct electoral competition between less than 3.5 effective political parties, the other main predictive variable in the Wilkinson model. We then discuss the limitations more broadly of attempts to explain and even predict ethnic violence within the framework of a quantitative model. We pay attention to time inconsistencies, principal-agent problems, religiosity and the homogenization of riot events, and omitted variables (notably, memory work and ideological fervour). We conclude with some general remarks on the search for order in social science. (Pac Aff/GIGA)

"This book is the essential guide for understanding how state power and politics are contested and exercised on social media. It brings together contributions by social media scholars who explore the connection of social media with revolutions, uprising, protests, power and counter-power, hacktivism, the state, policing and surveillance. It shows how collective action and state power are related and conflict as two dialectical sides of social media power, and how power and counter-power are distributed in this dialectic. Theoretically focused and empirically rigorous research considers the two-sided contradictory nature of power in relation to social media and politics. Chapters cover social media in the context of phenomena such as contemporary revolutions in Egypt and other countries, populism 2.0, anti-austerity protests, the fascist movement in Greece's crisis, Anonymous and police surveillance"--

PO polls conducted at the time of the important elections for the upper & lower houses in Italy, Germany & Japan furnish valuable data about electoral behavior in these countries. In Italy, results show that the new & controversial electoral law sponsored by the Christian Democrats did not move or even reach the great mass of the people, that the Nenni Socialists are the party with the highest % of people who feel that co-existence between East & West is possible, etc. In West Germany, polls show an increasing feeling of econ well-being & a concomitant increase in the belief in the values of a free econ, a correlation between the riots in East Germany & increasing sentiment for the Christian Democrats, etc. In Japan, the Hatoyama liberal forces seemed to have a good opportunity for increasing their strength & decreasing the power of the Yoshida forces. Hatoyma was personally more popular as a possible Premier than was Yoshida, & Yoshida's dissolution of the Diet was unpopular. K. Geiger.

An introduction to a special journal issue (see related abstracts in SA 40:5) presenting a twenty-year retrospective on the Sept 1971 rebellion at the Attica (NY) Correctional Facility, from the perspectives of lawyers, academics, & former & current prisoners. The contributors were specifically asked to assess prisoner struggles since 1971 in Canada & GB, as well as in the US, & to address the plight of women & political prisoners. The analyses help to broaden understanding of important changes in penal repression & prisoner resistance. Contributors also explore various aspects of the "war on crime.". 20 References. S. Millett

The assumption that we can punish constructively has been shaken, due to the series of recent destructive riots. When today's prison is compared with one of 1811 tremendous changes are noted, yet we are assailed with doubts 'as to whether we have been going too far or even in the right direction in the treatment of the delinquent and the criminal.' Have we relied too much on the mere relaxation of discipline? If the prison is to be an asset something must replace punishment; if we want to get rid of punishment we must put something equally effective in its place. If punishment is regarded a technique through which men can become better it may be an effective tool. This depends on a firm acceptance of the principle along with all the understanding that various disciplines can supply. If a prison in its execution of punishment is careless it can make bad men worse. But it can discipline and educate men for democratic living. H. M. Trice.