Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: How has racial politics in the United States been affected by the arrival of millions of ?non-white? immigrants during the last four decades? What does political science know about this question? To what extent does our knowledge on this question help those involved in political life come to terms with the country?s evolving racial politics? These are the central questions that preoccupy us in this paper. We argue that recent immigration, numerically dominated by non-European-origin migrants, has the potential to transform the country?s racial politics but that political scientists have not yet invested sufficient resources to discern the precise patterns of political transformation being wrought by this historically momentous intersection. We articulate some of the ways that recent immigrants have made U.S. ?racial? politics more complex, more important, and more challenging than has been appreciated in the past. As such, the relationships between recent immigration and the continuing challenge of democratic incorporation of peoples of color in the United States requires higher priority among political scientists.
We argue that this dramatic shift in the ethno-racial demographic composition of the country has several important implications for U.S. racial politics:

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper uses an n-person public goods experiment with costly retaliation as a way to assess and capture the role of ethnic identifiability in people?s propensity to cooperate or retaliate against each other in ethnically diverse post conflict societies. The experiment is conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina and field sites are selected according to the OSCE survey on educational performance in Bosnian schools and include a range of monoethnic, integrated as well as segregated schools (two-schools under one roof). After conducting game-theoretic analysis given the different parameters of identifiability, social structure and institutions, we derive equilibrium predictions compare them to our experimental results. The experiments are conducted using a double-blind approach and are accompanied by an extended survey of participants, to record demographic information, cultural attitudes, their understanding of the experiment, and further substantive questions on identifiablity as well as preferences for cooperation and retaliation. In addition, we conduct multivariate regression analysis using experimental follow-up surveys, to determine what demographic, attitudinal and personal history characteristics drive the subjects? identifiability, cooperation and retaliation. Through various controls and treatments, the experiment assesses how the structure of society and institutions affects identifiability as well as its role on cooperation or retaliation among members of different ethnic groups. The methodology combines experimental economics with emerging applications of political science field experiments (such as the work of Haburymana, Humphreys, Posner and Weinstein). Using a field experiment to understand how ethnic identifiability relates to incentives for conflict and cooperation, does not only contribute to important theoretical questions across the fields of political economy, behavioral and experimental economics, and political science but also has direct policy implications for how the developed world (the North) can promote post-conflict confidence-building measures that foster trust and encourage the construction of functioning post-conflict states in the developing world (the South).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In social sciences, the questions that we seek an answer to are inevitably shaped and influenced by the current political context of national as well as international developments. ?Policy? has an impact on specifying what we study in political science. But not all policy issues have equivalent impact on determining the substance of research.The most striking example of how public policy needs have shaped research agenda in social sciences is the recent focus on studies that are oriented towards understanding the cultural and institutional dynamics of Islam and its relation to questions related to democracy and democratization. Equally on the rise in the academia is a focus on security studies and terrorism.This type of a shift in our agenda is not possible without adequate financial support for research. The choice of grants and funds allocated for research in the above mentioned fields seems to have increased in the past five years while equally important areas of concern have been unable to have access to financial support to conduct field research. Choice of grants distributed for research is an important indicator of this change.This paper is divided into three parts. The first part of the paper offers a brief survey of the shifts in research preferences of academicians in selected universities in North America following 9/11. The focus will be primarily on the books and articles published in addition to thematic grouping of those studies. The goal is to demonstrate the increasing dominance of security related studies as opposed to scientifically relevant others. The second part of the paper will be concerned with a long-time neglected field in the social sciences as an example to how selective-policy driven research agenda may end up disregarding: that of labor studies. This choice is significant in an era when rising neoliberal policy preferences have become dominant in shaping our collective curiosity and need to know about novel developments in labor organizations. Even though there remain countless questions regarding the current condition of labor and status of alternative labor movements and organizations that operate across the globe, the minimal availability of funding for research that directly problematizes labor may be seen as an indicator of an influence by policy makers and lobbyists that shape up, if not dictate, the research agendas of major institutions across North America. Finally, this paper aims to propose a broader research agenda for the study of labor, labor relations, labor organizations and labor movements by offering scientifically significant and politically relevant questions in ?neoliberal times?. With this aim, the paper ends with a brief comparative analysis of labor movements in Argentina and Turkey, in the post 1980s era with a focus on recuperated factories movement in the former and an analysis of the relative labor quiescence of Revolutionary Labor Unions Confederation (DISK) in the latter.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The purpose of this research was to determine if senior students in the Criminology and Criminal Justice program at the University of Memphis had more knowledge in areas of criminal justice than students in Introduction to Criminal Justice classes. A questionnaire was compiled that contained both opinion questions and knowledge questions relevant to criminal justice. The research tested the hypothesis that a higher percentage of senior than introductory students would correctly answer questions and the hypothesis that the senior students would have a more realistic idea of local and national homicide rates than would the introductory students. The data supported both hypotheses. Although the seniors did demonstrate a better grasp of information than the introductory students, the overall results were disheartening. A large percentage of both sets of students were unable to provide correct answers to basic questions and the homicide estimates given by both sets of students were often extremely unrealistically high or low. The results of the study demonstrate the need to ensure that students at all class levels are better informed.

Publication Type: Presentation
Abstract: In order to promote an actual dialogue regarding commonly identified stakes, this second position paper (in Roundtable 1.R), will address the same ten issues mentioned above and previously defined on the basis of a common agreement between the authors, from a social identity approach (by what we mean social identity theory, self-categorisation theory and their recent developments). Our argument is based on three key tenets. First, the dynamics of social identification shape the ways in which we draw upon social knowledge (social representations) in order to make sense of who we are, the nature of our world and how to act within it. Second, social conflict derives from the way that we interpret the implications of who others are and what they do for our own groups. Third, because of their implications for intra- and inter-group behaviour, the meanings associated with groups will be a focus of contestation. In sum, we argue for an approach to social identity processes which takes social knowledge into account but conversely, we argue for an approach to the creation and use of social knowledge that is rooted in social identity processes.