Collective violence as social control

Collective violence is often social control: self-help by a group. It typically defines and responds to conduct as deviant. When unilateral and nongovernmental, it appears in four major forms—lynching, rioting, vigilantism, and terrorism—each distinguished by its system of liability (individual or collective) and degree of organization (higher or lower). Following Donald Black's paradigm of pure sociology, the central assumption is that collective violence varies with its location and direction in social space—the conflict structure. I offer ten propositions that predict and explain the likelihood and severity of collective violence in general and the four forms of collective violence in particular. Conflict structures with a high degree of relational distance, cultural distance, functional independence, and inequality between the adversaries are associated with collective violence in general. Each of the four forms depends on the degree of social polarization between the parties as well as the continuity of the deviant behavior to which the violence responds. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1992, and the Centennial Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, University of Paris (Sorbonne), Paris, June 1993.     

Binomial Mixture Modeling of University Credits

The paper reviews finite mixture models for binomial counts with concomitant variables. These models are well known in theory, but they are rarely applied. We use a binomial finite mixture to model the number of credits gained by freshmen during the first year at the School of Economics of the University of Florence. The finite mixture approach allows us to appropriately account for the large number of zeroes and the multimodality of the observed distribution. Moreover, we rely on a concomitant variable specification to investigate the role of student background characteristics and of a compulsory pre-enrollment test in predicting gained credits. In the paper, we deal with model selection, including the choice of the number of components, and we devise numerical and graphical summaries of the model results in order to exploit the information content of the concomitant variable specification. The main finding is that the introduction of the pre-enrollment test gives additional information for student tutoring, even if the predictive power is modest.     

Social movement schools: sites for consciousness transformation,training, and prefigurative social development

ABSTRACT

We develop the concept of “social movement school’ (SMS), showing how these organizational spaces are deliberately designed for purposes of educating, mentoring, training, and coordinating individuals as effective, committed movement agents. SMSs can also be important sites of prefigurative design and practice for future societal development consistent with movement goals. We motivate the theoretical significance of SMSs based on five perspectives in social movement scholarship: (1) resource mobilization; (2) cultural approaches to repertoires of contention; (3) cognitive perspective; (4) micro-mobilization; and (5) biographical consequences of participation. We then offer a typology to capture primary purposes, and spatial reach within the broad field of SMSs. Within-movement variation is illustrated by focusing on a variety of SMSs in the U.S. civil rights movement; and the cross-movement breadth of the concept is illustrated by highlighting contemporary SMS forms drawn from three very different movements–labor, radical feminism, and mindfulness meditation movements. In the interest of launching a research agenda on SMSs, we end with several key questions that could serve to guide future research. Important theoretical, empirical, and practical considerations suggest that SMSs deserve the attention of scholars and activists alike.     

Union–Firm Bargaining as a Repeated Game and the Behaviour of Wages over the Business Cycle

This paper studies a repeated game between a union and a firm in the presence of revenue fluctuations. The simple setup, mainly based on Schultz’s (1995) model, gives support to the idea that the existence of a long-term relationship may change the predictions of the static one-shot model of wage and employment determination in unionized labour markets. In particular, when revenue is fluctuating and the discount factor is moderate the players can commit themselves to some ‘second best’ strategies, rather than playing non-cooperative strategies. As a consequence of the enforcement problems a flat wage over the business cycle may arise. This analysis suggests that ‘second best’ strategies allowing for a pro-cyclical wage as well as for a counter-cyclical wage are feasible. However, when the discount factor decreases and approaches a certain threshold value the parties cannot do better than play a wage constant over the cycle. Moreover, the resulting wage varies less than the employment level, in accordance with the empirical evidence.     

International issues of the design and usage of websites for e-commerce: Hotel and airline examples

Technology has globalized businesses. International business is difficult due to differences in languages and cultures. In terms of technology, in some countries, it is difficult to get data; while in others, data is input in different ways. This paper examines how international differences affect website design, implementation and usage. We analyze websites of airlines and hotels. While some websites take into consideration language and culture differences, we find significant room for improvement in both industries. We found support for localization strategy in marketing, communication and transactions. Theoretical and practical implications, including language translators, currency converters and pull-down fields, are discussed.     

Male Infertility: Integrating an Old Psychoanalytic Story with the Research Literature

Male infertility, different from female infertility, is characterized by anxiety about sexual adequacy, potency, and manliness. This assault on a man's sense of self revives feelings of competition, castration, and experiences of developmental trauma. In this article we review the literature on male factor infertility and its relationship to psychogenic impotence and to psychological fertility in the larger sense. We also discuss spermatogenesis, sperm donation, and the emotional implications for men of the new reproductive technologies. Finally, we consider the effect on the couple relationship and the value of psychological treatment.     

Baseline Characteristics of Dependent Youth Who Have Been Commercially Sexually Exploited: Findings From a Specialized Treatment Program

ABSTRACT

Commercial sexual exploitation of children has emerged as a critical issue within child welfare, but little is currently known about this population or effective treatment approaches to address their unique needs. Children in foster care and runaways are reported to be vulnerable to exploitation because they frequently have unmet needs for family relationships, and they have had inadequate supervision and histories of trauma of which traffickers take advantage. The current article presents data on the demographic characteristics, trauma history, mental and behavioral health needs, physical health needs, and strengths collected on a sample of 87 commercially sexually exploited youth. These youth were served in a specialized treatment program in Miami-Dade County, Florida, for exploited youth involved with the child welfare system. Findings revealed that the youth in this study have high rates of previous sexual abuse (86% of the youth) and other traumatic experiences prior to their exploitation. Youth also exhibited considerable mental and behavioral health needs. Given that few programs emphasize the unique needs of children who have been sexually exploited, recommendations are offered for providing a continuum of specialized housing and treatment services to meet the needs of sexually exploited youth, based on the authors’ experiences working with this population.     

“The People Have No More Love Left for the Commonwealth”: Media,Migration and Identity in the 1961–62 British Smallpox Outbreak1

In the last days of 1961, with a Conservative government gingerly guiding highly controversial immigration restrictions through Britain's Parliament, another unwanted immigrant to the UK suddenly made its presence felt: smallpox. Media reportage, in both Pakistan and Britain, immediately intertwined legislation and outbreak. This article explores the interplay between these two sets of events, and their mutual impact on public, political, and medical perceptions of and responses to post-colonial immigration and immigrants in Britain.