Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A long-lived debate within criminology concerns juvenile delinquents and their peer relations. The social ability model, represented by, for example, Sutherland’s theory of differential associations, argues that delinquents are to be conceived of as people with normal social capabilities. The social inability model, represented by, for example, Hirschi’s control theory, contends that delinquents lack social capabilities and are unable to engage in meaningful relationships with others. The paper assesses the plausibility of these competing conceptions of juvenile delinquents and their peer relations by using explicit and elaborate social network theory in the form of Granovetter’s theory of the strength of weak ties. The implications of this theory for the competing criminological theories are analyzed theoretically, an analysis resulting in a number of hypotheses. The hypotheses are tested empirically using a data set containing information on relations among delinquents in the form of co-offending, covering all persons under the age of 20 who were suspected of criminal offences in the Swedish city of Borlänge during a three year period. The results of the empirical analyses clearly support the social ability model.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Many feminist theorists have argued that technological change leads to deskilling of jobs thus providing women an opportunity to fill these positions. However, most theorists have not discussed whether the life cycle of technology has an effect on the employment of women. This paper primarily aims to examine whether we can utilize the life cycle model approach, specifically, the technology and skill-training life cycles, to throw additional light on labor and job queue theory as given by Reskin and Roos. I illustrate how computer technology has a life cycle; and that the majority of women tend to employ those programming languages at work that are in the later stages of the life cycle because programming languages that have developed at the later stage of the software technology life cycle are more deskilled. This sets the stage for occupational decline leading to a re-ranking of occupations in job queues, and facilitating the entry of women in low-tiered and less skilled jobs in the software industry.
Along with these technology cycles, a skill training cycle also evolves as the level of demand and standardization of skill changes. In the early stages of the technology, training is provided on the job or highly specialized institutes whereas in the later stages it becomes highly dispersed. Employing this model, I illustrate that the labor queue has changed as women are able to get computer training in community colleges and for-profit private institutes. One consequence is that this reinforces gender segregation as women are unable to compete with men in the labor force as they do not have an engineering degree.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: In this paper I define three different types of theory about theory based on scholarship about James Madison. The theories about theory suggest different ways in which theory affects the "real world." A "content based theory" suggests that politicians accept and use ideas from specific political theorists. A "nature of theory itself" argument, by contrast, suggests that it is the act of theorizing that produces the effect. Attention to Madison scholarship reveals two different kinds of nature of theory itself arguments. A "pure" nature of theory itself argument suggests that theory and theorizing almost inevitably has a certain effect on those who do it and the politics which results when political leaders theorize. An "affiliated" nature of theory itself argument is much more circumscribed. Its only claim is that an individual politician's theoretical bent has affected that individual in a particular way. I stress that the demonstration of each kind of argument depends on different kinds of evidence and that while any of these arguments may be made poorly or well, the amount and type of evidence required to demonstrate a pure nature of theory itself claim is so extensive, that such arguments have remained suggestive.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study will analyze the core assumptions of both Clash of Civilization Theory articulated by Samuel Huntington and that of Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics. Unlike Wendt, Huntington does not attempt to build a theory of

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The work of Ernesto Laclau is one of the strongest theoretical attempts of drawing the full consequences of the impossibility of maintaining Marxist ontological notions such as the 'determination of the economy in the lastvinstance' and the idea of a separation of the social in distinct levels, i.e. the economy, the political and the ideological. With theoretical departure in deconstruction, the concept 'discourse' is introduced in order to signify temporary stabilisations and relative totalisations. However, the full development of the theoretical potentials seems to be limited by some of the implicit assumptions in the Marxist/ Gramscian point of departure. First, the focus on the problem of political transformations has led to an ontological privileging of antagonism and 'the political' more generally. Second, the heritage from the Gramscian problematic of creating a 'national-popular will' has led to neglecting the 'external' relations of nation-states. The two problems are not necessarily linked, but often they do reinforce each other. The aim of this paper is to ask how the the questions from 'beyond' the nation state can be put in fruitful ways. The claim is that in order to so one must also solve some of the ontological problems (the status of the political and of antagonisms). The paper starts with an exposition of the most general possibilities in the notions of discourse, field of discursivity and dislocation. Then it points out a set of conceptual choices made by Laclau that do not follow from these general possibilities: primarily the concepts of antagonism and equivalence, but also concepts such as 'the group', and not least 'society'. The paper concludes with a discussion of Mouffe's normative claims for an 'agonistic' democracy and a multi-polar world-order.