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Book part
Publication date: 5 August 2011

Steve Carlton-Ford

Purpose – This chapter examines the impact of armed conflict and three forms of militarization on child mortality rates cross-nationally. Previous theorizing argues that…

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter examines the impact of armed conflict and three forms of militarization on child mortality rates cross-nationally. Previous theorizing argues that praetorian militaries create conditions particularly adverse to the well-being of civilians, but the effects of praetorian militarization are likely confounded both by economic and social militarization, and by armed conflict, economic development, and political regime.

Methodology – This study conducts a cross-national panel study of the impact of armed conflict and militarization on civilian life chances using data from 175 countries with populations 200,000 or larger. Analyses employ a fixed-effects model, which controls for stable country characteristics; the analyses also control for time-varying characteristics of countries that influence the impact of armed conflict and militarization on life chances.

Findings – Praetorian militarization appears to increase child mortality, as does social militarization (particularly during years of internationalized internal armed conflict), once stable country effects and other variables are controlled. This chapter is the first to systematically examine the impact of praetorian militarization on social development (indexed by child mortality rates).

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The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-075-9

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Book part
Publication date: 4 July 2019

Ashley K. Farmer, Cara E. Rabe-Hemp and Jeruel Taylor

The militarization of police has garnered great attention in recent decades. Bolstered by the wars on drugs and terrorism, police agencies have been receiving military weapons and…

Abstract

The militarization of police has garnered great attention in recent decades. Bolstered by the wars on drugs and terrorism, police agencies have been receiving military weapons and equipment since the 1033 Program was authorized by the Department of Défense. A recent American Civil Liberties Union investigation on police raids found that militarization has occurred with almost no oversight. They studied more than 800 paramilitary raids and found that almost 80% were for ordinary law enforcement purposes like serving search warrants in people’s homes; only 7% were for genuine emergencies, such as barricade or hostage situations. Most compelling, the raids disproportionately targeted people of color. This chapter traces the history of police militarization in America, and how it has targeted and adversely affected minority communities.

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Political Authority, Social Control and Public Policy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-049-9

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Book part
Publication date: 9 September 2020

Chris Thornhill

This chapter proposes a sociological reconstruction of the emergence of citizenship as a source of legitimacy for political institutions, and it focuses on examining the…

Abstract

This chapter proposes a sociological reconstruction of the emergence of citizenship as a source of legitimacy for political institutions, and it focuses on examining the historical processes that first gave rise to this concept. It explains how citizenship has its origins in the transformation of feudal law, a process that culminated in patterns of military organization that characterized the rise of the early modern state in Europe. On this basis, it describes how the growth of constitutional democracy was integrally marked by the militarization of society and explains that military pressures have remained palpable in constitutional constructions of citizenship. In particular, it argues that, through the early growth of democracy, national citizenship practices were closely linked to global conflicts, and they tended to replicate such conflicts in national contexts. It concludes by showing how more recent processes of constitutional norm formation, based largely in international human rights law, have acted to soften the military dimensions of citizenship.

Book part
Publication date: 5 August 2011

Volume 14 of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (SSCY) is comprised of empirical research and theoretical papers within three areas, namely children's well-being, children…

Abstract

Volume 14 of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (SSCY) is comprised of empirical research and theoretical papers within three areas, namely children's well-being, children and youth peer cultures, and the rights of children and youth. In this volume, the term “children” is used inclusively to encompass those from infancy through the transition to adulthood. These empirical studies include children's voices and experiences from four continents and a range of methodological and theoretical orientations. Additionally, a clear connection to social policy is made in many of these studies. Altogether, these studies highlight how structure and culture both limit and enable the life chances of children, how children interpret and construct their social relations and environments, and finally, how children view themselves as well as how others view the rights of children.

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The Well-Being, Peer Cultures and Rights of Children
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-075-9

Abstract

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Intelligence and State Surveillance in Modern Societies
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-171-1

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Book part
Publication date: 4 July 2019

Abstract

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Political Authority, Social Control and Public Policy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-049-9

Book part
Publication date: 2 July 2007

Anna M. Agathangelou and Tamara L. Spira

As triumphantly announced in journals and magazines, a la Fukuyama, late capitalism and its contingent logic of neoliberalism (ostensibly) reigns supreme, exploiting each site it…

Abstract

As triumphantly announced in journals and magazines, a la Fukuyama, late capitalism and its contingent logic of neoliberalism (ostensibly) reigns supreme, exploiting each site it encounters with precision. According to this fantasy of capitalism's seamless and ultimate triumph, domination is produced as inevitable, social struggle and revolution, a utopian dream. Yet, what many have seen since the 1990s is that this narrative requires military mobilizations of different kinds (i.e., “the war on terror” has become of late the reason thousands are being killed daily in Afghanistan and Iraq).

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Sustainable Feminisms
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1439-3

Book part
Publication date: 22 October 2019

Victoria Reyes

The Chicago School of Sociology heralded a new age: that of the rise and establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in the US. It also spurred on an intellectual…

Abstract

The Chicago School of Sociology heralded a new age: that of the rise and establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in the US. It also spurred on an intellectual tradition in ethnography that focuses on a wide array of methodological tools and empirical data with a focus on the specificity of place that continues to live on in contemporary urban sociology. Yet, its traditions have also been extensively criticized. Burawoy (2000) is one preeminent scholar, who has denounced the Chicago School as being parochial, ahistorical, and decontextualized from the national and international processes that shape cities. Instead, he calls for a move toward “global ethnography,” one that focuses on “global processes, connections, and imaginations” (Burawoy et al., 2000). Increasingly, US urban sociologists study research sites that are located outside the US and pay attention to how global actors and/or transnational connections influence US dynamics. Given this trend, what, if any lessons can global and urban sociologists take away from the Chicago School? In this chapter, I highlight three such lessons: (1) the global is central to city life; (2) rooting our work in the specificities of place helps extend and build theory; and (3) the School still provides useful conceptual and methodological tools to study the global. In doing so, I argue that scholars should recognize the plurality of approaches to global ethnography and how each approach can further our understanding of how the global shapes social life.

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Urban Ethnography
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-033-2

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Book part
Publication date: 25 August 2009

Peter K. Manning

The study of policing in Anglo-American societies has been severely restricted in the last 20 years to quasi-historical overviews, studies of policing in times of stable…

Abstract

The study of policing in Anglo-American societies has been severely restricted in the last 20 years to quasi-historical overviews, studies of policing in times of stable, non-crisis periods in democratic societies that in turn had survived the crisis as democracies. Perhaps the epitome of this is the sterile textbook treatment of policing in Canada and the United States – a sterile rubble of functions, duties, training surrounded by clichés about community policing. Scholarly writing on democratic policing and its features is severely limited by lack of inclusiveness of the range of contingencies police face, and many respects this work is non-historical and non-comparative. In the present world of conflict and strife that spreads beyond borders and challenges forces of order at every level, the role of police in democratic societies requires more systematic examination. In my view, this cannot be achieved via a description of trends, a scrutiny of definitions and concepts, or citation of the research literature. Unfortunately, this literature makes a key assumption concerning police powers in democratic societies: that the police are restricted by tradition, tacit conventions, and doctrinal limits rooted in the law or countervailing forces within the society. While these constraints are sometimes summarized as a function of “the rule of law,” this assumption is much deeper and more pervasive than belief in the rule of law. It is possible to have a non-democratic police system that conforms to the rule of law and reflects the political sentiments of the governed. It is also possible to have non-democratic policing emerge from a quasi-democratic system as I show in reference to the transformation of the police in the Weimar Republic to the police system of the Third Reich. The complex relationship between policing and a democratic polity remains to be explored.

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Special Issue New Perspectives on Crime and Criminal Justice
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-653-9

Book part
Publication date: 2 July 2007

Brooke Ackerly is an assistant professor in political science at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include democratic theory, feminist methodologies, human rights…

Abstract

Brooke Ackerly is an assistant professor in political science at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include democratic theory, feminist methodologies, human rights, social and environmental justice. She integrates empirical research on activism into her theoretical work. Her publications include Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism (Cambridge University Press, 2000), “Women's Human Rights Activists as Cross-Cultural Theorists” in International Journal of Feminist Politics (2001), “Is Liberal Democracy the Only Way? Confucianism and Democracy” in Political Theory (2005), and Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference (Cambridge, forthcoming). She is currently working on the intersection of global economic, environmental, and gender justice. With Jacqui True (University of Auckland), a text on feminist research methodologies, Doing Feminist Research in Social and Political Sciences (Palgrave), is forthcoming.

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Sustainable Feminisms
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1439-3

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