New Agendas for Social Policy and Criminology: Globalization, Urbanism and the EmergingPost-Social Security State

The subjects of social policy and criminology have long been concerned with the criminalization and regulation of the poor. The premise of this paper is that in recent years new forms of criminalization and regulation have emerged that various authors, from both disciplines, have begun to theorize. The paper aims to contribute to this growing literature by bringing together diverse themes that deserve to be extensively discussed in conjunction with one another. These are: first, globalization; second, the changing nature of the state; third, the reorganization of space and time, especially at the urban level. It proceeds through examinations of some of the recent work of Jock Young, David Garland, Ramesh Mishra, Peter Taylor-Gooby and Zygmunt Bauman. It concludes that theoretical and empirical research should analyse the reorganization of space and time which is being effected by the "post-social security state" and it is this which constitutes the new agenda for social policy and criminology.     

Entrepreneurship – A Suitable Case for Sociological Treatment

Entrepreneurs are of great interest inside and outside the academic world. But there are considerable ambiguities and confusions about the nature of entrepreneurship among members of the public and entrepreneurship scholars alike, with the latter typically failing to locate entrepreneurial activities fully in their historical and societal contexts. Even work in the sociology of entrepreneurship is achieving less than might be expected in this respect. To overcome these problems it is helpful to return to basic sociological principles associated with Durkheim, Weber and Wright Mills and work with two newer sociological concepts; those of ‘institutional logics’ and ‘situated creativity’. Working in this way encourages us to drop entirely the analytical concept of ‘entrepreneur’ and to study, instead, ‘entrepreneurial action’– a concept which enables us to appreciate the relationship between the making of adventurous, creative or innovative exchanges in societies and both the organisational and the societal/institutional/historical settings in which these comes about – for better or worse.     

No Path to Paradise: Deconstructing the Promise of Public Sociology

This essay treats Burawoy’s advocacy for public sociology as a social problems claim. Using a social constructionist approach, I examine the rhetorical strategies Burawoy uses to construct the discipline in a way that makes public sociology seem not only relevant, but integral to what sociologists do. Sociology’s history, ethos and practitioners are framed in ways that make its commitment to the civil sphere appear as a “natural” direction for the discipline. Certain features of the discipline are foregrounded. Motives and desires are imputed. Villains are constructed and the paths to progress are outlined. By examining the framing strategies Burawoy uses to present his vision, the promise of public sociology is called into question. I do not argue that public sociology is without value. Rather, I unpack the claims its advocates make and question whether public sociology can deliver on its promise of a better sociology or a better society.     

Monitoring Partnership‐based Aid Relationships: A Note

Based on the premise that moves towards partnership‐based aid relationships require that the monitoring and evaluation of such relationships should be jointly conducted or sponsored, this note draws attention to an experiment conducted in Tanzania for monitoring by an independent group, drawn from the recipient country and from outside. It seeks to identify the key ingredients of successful use of such a model and urges its wider adoption.     

The Changing Landscape of Indigenous Gambling in Northern Australia: Current Knowledge and Future Directions

Little is formally known about the gambling practices, both regulated (e.g. poker machines) and unregulated (e.g. card games), of indigenous people in northern Australia, nor of the range of social consequences of these practices. To begin addressing this shortfall, a scoping study of indigenous gambling in the Northern Territory (NT) was conducted. This paper reports the key findings of this study and integrates them with information on indigenous gambling from the Northern Territory Prevalence Survey 2005 and from the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey 2002. The emergent picture of indigenous gambling in the NT is one of widespread incorporation of gambling, both regulated and unregulated, into contemporary indigenous social practices with considerable negative consequence. However, the strength of this conclusion is tempered by the paucity of available data, by the limitations of existing gambling research methodologies and by the scoping purpose of the exercise.