Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study has taken a stock of the study of knowledge in the West since the Enlightenment and has found that knowledge of the scholars has mostly been divorced from moral responsibility in external sphere. We found the manifestation of this type of motivated study of knowledge as an organized activity during the era of European expansion. As a result, historians, geographers and anthropologists had become involved as accomplices of colonial/imperial powers. The origin and evolution of the discipline of International Relations (IR) have similarly been influenced by the motivated study of knowledge as well. This parochial study of knowledge reached its zenith during the Cold War period, however. As a result, the expertise of scholars in IR has mostly been construed as a danger or dangerous knowledge in this paper. Since the Western states have been the dominant powers vis-à-vis those of the rest, this nexus has mostly been discovered in the West. As a remedy, this paper has put forward some policy suggestions in the study of IR in the post-Cold War era.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Social learning models offer one explanation for the relationship between parental violence and delinquency. These accounts suggest that children and youth learn from their parents that violence is an appropriate means to solve problems, address conflict, and achieve goals. We suggest that other, complimentary learning process also occur when children are exposed to parental violence. In this analysis, we focus on perceptions of danger. Fear of physical pain is a primary component of evaluations of dangerousness. We hypothesize that abused children learn that they can tolerate and heal from physical pain. As a result, they devalue one of the common costs associated with offending and aggressive behavior: the possibility of physical pain. In other words, compared to other youth, abused children are less likely to believe that they will be physically harmed if they engage in criminal and violent actions. Preliminary findings from a sample of homeless youth reveal significant relationships between parental physical abuse, evaluations of dangerousness and offending. Initial results also highlight important differences between males and females in these relationships.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: While viewing international conflict as dyadic is useful for theorizing about and modeling conflict processes, the influence of domestic politics and domestic power struggles matter as well. States facing internal challengers while also threatened externally may behave differently than those dealing simply with foreign challengers. Multi-level war bargaining creates potentially dangerous situations that should increase the risk for conflict onset and continuation at both the domestic and international levels. Incentives for employing deterrent force against one or both challengers encourage conflict onset, while barriers to commitments between challengers and adversaries encourages conflict duration. The strategic behavior of the actors involved in these types of situations pressure leaders to engage in high stakes behavior that could lead to greater violence due to increased uncertainty, incentives for using force, and barriers to peaceful settlements. This paper tests if crises involving multi-level war bargaining are more prone to conflict onset and duration than bargaining situations dealing largely with two competitors as part of a larger project aimed at understanding this complex multi-actor bargaining environment.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper will reflect on the discursive aftermath of two pieces of British legislation: the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act, which banned the ownership of four breeds of fighting dog; and the 2005 Act which banned the hunting of animals with dogs in England and Wales.

The Acts’ subsequent histories have been similar. Each has been ignored by large numbers of people; there is enthusiastic support for repeal in each case; neither has been zealously policed. There are also differences, which were brought to light in early 2007. After the annual Boxing Day hunts had taken place, without an arrest, the pro-hunt lobby won a vote for repeal in a radio programme. A few days on, a girl was mauled to death by an apparently illegally owned dog, and in the aftermath fourteen dogs, all apparently used for fighting, were impounded in police raids.

The resulting media reporting displayed, and sometimes analysed, obvious contrasts of gender and power, urban and rural, and class. The paper will argue that the real importance of these issues in a world which is subject to rapid urbanisation, in which most sport is corporatised rather than owned by enthusiast-participants, and in which the boundaries of the human and animal are continually being pushed, through the preparation of the body for sport, and through the assault on essential notions of the human which emerge from biotechnologies dedicated to human medical improvement. In the snarl of the dangerous dog we see one of the futures of humanity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: I have argued elsewhere that institutions in the sense of formal organizations can be understood to be moral agents, and therefore bearers of duties, in international relations. Identifying both the internal features that allow an institution to qualify as a moral agent and the external conditions that are conducive to its discharging particular duties is of critical importance. Only then can one effectively consider how duties might be distributed in international relations and how blame might be apportioned if these responsibilities are unmet. However, even more daunting than determining which institutions in international relations can be assigned responsibilities and burdened with blame (and in what circumstances) is the task of responding to the ?delinquent? institution once it has been blamed for a particular act of omission or commission. Especially problematic is judging how (and if) an institution can be ?punished? in a way that does not punish its constituents as individuals. The central aim of this paper is to address this question by exploring the coherence of punishing ?delinquent? states through, for example, extracting reparations, imposing sanctions, and resorting to military intervention. An ancillary aim of this paper will be to question the implications of the ?delinquent? state having a democratic form of government for both identifying the relevant moral agent in questions of accountability (i.e., is it the government or the state as a whole that is to be held to account?) and distinguishing between individual and institutional responsibility.