Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Traditionally the identification and apprehension of active serious offenders has relied on information from the public, the targeting of ‘known’ offenders and current knowledge of offending patterns. More recently, the method of offender self-selection has been offered as an additional identification tool, where certain minor infractions have been found to be ’triggers’ for uncovering serious criminality – self-selection because the individual has broken a law in the first place. This paper details a police operation – ‘Operation Visitor’ – focused on visitors to a young offenders institute, to explore whether minor offences committed – either whilst at, or en route to the institution – can be used as trigger offences to indicate serious criminality. One third of visitors caught offending had criminal histories, several considered serious active offenders.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: To the television viewer, the studio audience appears as a spontaneous reacting single body, a crowd smoothly engaging in sequences of collective behaviour. Hidden is the enormous amount of management needed before, during and after the process of recording the show to create this impression. It is the work that goes into this management that is the focus of my analysis.
Using my fieldnotes to describe the work that is going on in talk shows, I am taking the path of an ethnographer. Coming from an ethnomethodological approach, however, the data presented are taken from fieldnotes, in which my own understandings and activities provide the phenomena for analysis.
As one of the things people do in talk shows is talk, I will also look closely at that talk, showing what is done through talk at particular moments in the show.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The ancient concept of parrhēsia (‘telling all’) represents both an ideal form of speech that is direct and bold and the conditions in which it can take place. What happens in situations that lack institutional protection of free speech? Is free speech a necessary condition for frank political expression? To address these questions, I turn to a collection of medieval Arabic fables Kalīla wa Dimna. Through these stories their Persian translator, Ibn al-Muqaffa‘, instructs his readers in how to educate princes through using metaphor. While Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ depicts how to speak frankly in his own context, he teaches us also about the limits of what frank speech means in the history of western political thought. Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ reveals that the presumption that we must be direct when we communicate our views is linked intimately with the liberal separation of private and public matters and how we define the public sphere and appropriate forms of political action therein.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this time of shifting, complex identities, lived experiences of racism, powerful identity politics, and longings for a mythical time of stable identity, “ethnic” objects help to solidify personal narratives, performances, and/or displays of ethnic/racial identity. Objects are an inseparable part of every day life. Mass produced objects, as well as special, unique objects that we acquire and use in our home have a great deal to tell us about ourselves. I am interested in how people infuse meaning into ethnic objects and how those things give meaning to people. In my larger project, I am attempting to develop an understanding of the relationship between ethnic objects and the ways people live their ethnic/racial identity. Through a detailed study of material culture in people’s homes, I hope to explain some of the ways that the contradictions of commodities, culture, and resistance are interwoven into people’s daily lives. In this preliminary discussion of my findings, I will focus on the notion of authenticity and how people use objects in their homes to struggle with creating an ethnic/racial identity that both feels “authentic” and resists stereotypes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: It has been shown that democratic dyads have higher trade flows than non-democratic dyads (Dixon & Moon, 1993 and Morrow, Siverson & Tabares, 1999). This paper expands on this research by demonstrating that "country risk" is also relevant in influencing the trade flows of a dyad. Country risk is defined as the prevention of losses from sociopolitical, financial and operating risks, all of which are necessary and sufficient conditions for measuring the risk incurred on a business by operating in a foreign country (Haner & Ewing, 1985). This definition leads to the natural question of whether country risk is relevant in determining with which countries a company does business, in addition to whether these countries are democratic. Sociopolitical risk is an important part of assessing country risk; this leads to the assumption that if both a higher level of democracy and a lower level of country risk within a dyad lead to higher trade flows, then democracies are inherently less "risky" than other countries. An interaction term of the democratic and risk levels of the dyad will be used to assess how both factors combine to affect a dyad's trade flows. This means that while democracy does promote increased trade, the relationship between democracy and dyadic trade flows is conditional on the level of country risk in the country; heightened levels of democracy in low risk settings facilitate trade more so than either democracy or low country risk alone.