Cross-National Variation in Violent Crime Rates: Race, r-K Theory, and Income

Rushton's theory of r-K race differences was examined in relation to the rate of murder, rape, and serious assault per 100,000 population and Gross Domestic Product per Person for 74 countries from the 1993–1996 International Crime Statistics published by INTERPOL and the 1999 CIA World Fact Book. Each country was assigned to one of the three macro-races East Asian, European, and African. The results corroborated earlier findings that violent crime is lowest in East Asian countries, intermediate in European countries, and highest in African and in Black Caribbean countries. The median number of violent crimes per 100,000 population were: 7 East Asian countries—34; 45 European countries—42; and 22 African and Black Caribbean countries—149, respectively. The median Gross Domestic Product per Person was highest in East Asian countries ($12,600), intermediate in European countries ($7,400), and lowest in African and Black Caribbean countries ($1,900). Across the three population groups there was an ecological correlation of –.96 between crime and wealth (wealthier countries had less crime). Finer-grained analyses, however, found that while wealth was negatively related to crime across European or East Asian countries, it was positively related to crime for the African and Black Caribbean countries (i.e., the wealthier an African or Black Caribbean country, the greater its rate of violent crime). Future research needs to examine genetic factors in addition to cultural factors as well as their interactions.     

Transit boundaries: race and the paradox of immobility within mobile systems

ABSTRACT

The central city is once again hot. Many city areas where poor minorities were left behind during the decades-long suburban growth are experiencing a revival. New high-rise condominiums and other developments are drawing tens of thousands back to city spaces that were once considered undesirable. These ‘return to the city’ trends are supported in part by growth machine engines, such as Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and TIF (Tax Increment Financing) districts, often to the detriment of lower-income minority residents, who still find themselves trapped within the boundaries of spatial inequalities in the city. Drawing on six years of ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, I show how public transportation is used to buttress the city’s growth machine, while simultaneously maintaining the boundaries of spatial and other types of inequalities. In doing so, I highlight how public transit is used to create and support growth along race (and class) lines. Specifically, I show how mobility and growth for Whites and predominantly White spaces in the city are proactively shaped through favorable new public transit development and revitalization initiatives such as TOD and TIF. At the same time, in predominantly Black and Latinx spaces, where intracommunity public transportation usage is high, new transit related development is below sparse or completely lacking, further fortifying transit and other spatial boundaries.     

吉林省相对资源承载力与可持续发展研究

相对资源承载力是指通过选定资源承载力的理想状态作为参照区,以该参照区人均资源拥有量为标准,将研究区与参照区的资源存量进行对比,从而确定研究区内资源相对可承载的适度人口数量。吉林省与全国比较,相对资源综合承载力处于富余状态。自然资源对综合承载力的贡献率始终在50%以上,说明对吉林省相对资源综合承载力起支撑作用的主要是自然资源,经济资源承载力亟待加强。     

A critical disjuncture? The culmination of post-World War II socio-demographic and economic trends in the United States

This essay examines the consequences of major social, demographic and economic trends in the United States since World War II. These include rising women’s employment, the ‘Baby Boom’, the outlines of the so-called ‘new’ immigration, the increasing racial and ethnic diversity deriving from that immigration, the economic contexts in which recent US immigration has occurred, and recent technologically-induced features of global work flows that will condition immigration’s future reception and effects. Women’s wartime work experiences, together with their economic opportunities in the ensuing decades, boosted married women’s autonomy and domestic leverage. Rising economic prosperity encouraged marriage and family formation even as growing employment among married women of childbearing age made having and taking care of large families more difficult. World War II also spawned the expansion of migration to the United States, which in turn converted the country from a largely biracial society with a sizable white majority and a small black minority into a multiracial, multiethnic society with greater racial and ethnic boundary crossing and increasingly blurred colour lines. A major issue is whether currently changing economic conditions and social institutions will support and strengthen such tendencies or instead weaken them. Without robust job growth, the demographic legacy of the baby boom, which now involves ever-rising numbers of retired people, will be more difficult to support, especially given the country’s current fiscal deficits. Greater earnings inequality and weak job growth may also poison the climate for further immigration to the US, thus diminishing the chance that newcomers can continue contributing to the dissolution of fault lines among racial-ethnic groups and to the resolution of periodic labour shortages.     

W.E.B. Du Bois and the ideology or anthropological discourse of modernity: the African Union reconsidered

Pan-Africanism is usually considered a progressive movement for black socio-political and economic advancement. This focus on activism alone sometimes occludes the profound philosophical issues that inform Pan-Africanist discourse. The last decade has witnessed tremendous changes in the ideological posture of the African Union (AU) as reflected in the change of name from the Organization of African Unity (OAU). This paper explores the historical and philosophical contexts for understanding the agenda of the African Union and highlights the consequences of such an agenda. The paper argues that the establishment of the African Union conforms to certain aspects of W.E.B. Du Bois's philosophy of Pan-Africanism that focuses on economic self reliance, at the same time that it uses Du Bois as a template for critiquing the neoliberal economic dispensation of the African Union implemented through its program, the New Partnership for Africa's Development. This it accomplishes with its emphasis on Du Bois's critique and skepticism of modernism and Western philanthropy.     

The politics of indigeneity,identity and representation in literature from north Australia's Gulf Country

The Aboriginal author Alexis Wright's novels Plains of Promise, Carpentaria and The Swan Book have prompted scholars and critics towards enthusiastic comparisons with the ground-breaking work of a range of international writers. With her novels all set partly in the remote Gulf Country of north Australia, Wright's work arises from intellectual and political commitment to Indigenous people, and aspires to the idea of a distinctive ‘Aboriginal sovereignty of the mind’. Much less known yet, we argue, of complementary significance, are a broader suite of writings about this region, and we address representations of cultural identity and connections to place by authors with both Aboriginal and European ancestries. With our interest in a deliberately cross-disciplinary methodology, ethnographic research complements our focus on texts to facilitate analysis of diverse identities in a setting produced through both the resilience of Indigenous cultural traditions and the legacies of European settler colonialism. We argue that the range of authorial representations arising from this sector of Australian society provides a focus for understanding shared and contested postcolonial imaginaries about place, culture and identity.     

‘Gone,leave, go,move, vanish’: race,public space and (in)visibilities

This chapter is a discussion of the various ways Canadian-born young men of colour (aged 17–26) experience (in)visibilities in the public spaces of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I begin this chapter by analyzing the different ways ‘visibility’ and ‘invisibility’ have been conceptualized in the scholarly literature, including literatures on homelessness, public space, and race. Invisibilities include ‘invisible homelessness’ as well as material invisibilities in which young men of colour both purposefully and accidentally navigate public spaces in ways that affect whether they are seen or unseen and by whom. This research emphasizes the contingency and indeterminacy of varying (in)visibilities. Despite the various ways they move between visibility and invisibility in public spaces, young men of colour experiencing homelessness maintain an explicit presence in urban street spaces. Understanding their experiences of (in)visibility in urban space helps us understand the geographies of race and racism in the GTA and in North American cities more broadly.     

Oh,give me a home: diasporic longings of home and belonging

The conversations surrounding an ephemeral home – left behind decades ago or perhaps never even visited – always and continually begs the question: why? Why do we constantly talk about geographies to which we have little or no connection with such nostalgia and fervor? Why do immigrants pick a distant space and mark that territory as home, even as we settle into the spaces we presently occupy and slowly begin the journey toward some form of assimilation? Framed by these questions, this essay attempts to articulate – through a multi-site analysis including interviews, literary and media texts – how identities are shaped through – and in relation – to the nostalgic longings of non-white immigrant experiences. The essay contends that this nostalgic longing is constructed as a response to racial relationships in the United States that identifies non-white, in this instance South Asian Americans, as aliens and others who should go back home.