Search results

The paper aims to relocate discussions on police stops and police interactions from the Anglophone world to the particularistic context of the post-colonial state of India. The paper further frames the everyday policing practices in a theoretical dialog between questions of legitimacy, accountability and tolerated illegalities. For that purpose, the author contextualizes the discussion in the post-colonial state of India, in the jurisdictions of two police stations (PSs), in the National Capital Territory of Delhi and the State of Kerala.

The author conducted ethnographic studies in one station each in Kerala and Delhi, India, from February to July 2019 and July 2019 to January 2020, respectively. The study mapped everyday power relations as the relations manifested within the site and jurisdiction of the PSs.

Through the research, the author found that to fully understand everyday practices of policing, especially police interactions and police stops, one must contextualize the police force within the administrative power-sharing relations, police force's accountability structures, legal procedures and class dynamics, which mark the terrain in which personnel function. In that terrain, the author found that the dialog between particularistic legitimacy, accountability and tolerated illegalities offered an important framework to interpret the everyday policing practices.

Through the paper, the author seeks to expand the analysis of ethnographic descriptions of policing by contextualizing them in the political economy of the state. In doing so, the author aims to provide a framework through which police interactions in post-colonial India could be understood

The purpose of this paper is to expound on the idea that informal economy is a “conforming” situation, based on the informal sale of medicines in Lomé.

The paper takes the form of a case study based on interviews.

The case makes it possible to understand that the quality‐price ratio mainly explains the existing practices, inducing an immediate satisfaction of the purchasers. Indeed, the average income in developing countries is very low and consumers are inclined to buy these products because of their low prices (i.e. “Bottom of the Pyramid” issues – BOP).

To say that the informal economy “conforms to the rules” is to assert its institutional dimension and suggest it should be considered within the categories of institutionalization. It is also a scathing criticism of the logic of international organizations and CSR, one that is unlikely to crop up in the so‐called audited reports.

Informal economy gives rise to innovations and the development of a kind of entrepreneurship dissimilar to that of business schools and the very honorable “social entrepreneurs”. Concepts such as leadership, motivation, negotiation power, organizational learning, strategy, competitive advantage, diversity and the like have coherent materializations, albeit structurally different in origin from the received wisdom about them.

The argument of this research is based on the observation that informal economy is a situation just as “conforming” as the formal economy. It should be mentioned that in economics, grassroots collective and non‐institutionalized action is referred to as “informal economy”. It is regarded as inseparable from the formal economy – as evidenced in the case of Togo's reform of public health policy following the Bamako Initiative and its consequences as studied in this paper – but receives less attention despite numerous studies.

This paper presents a real field study. The interviews were carried out near all the categories of actors implied in the drugs sales: wholesalers and retailers and customers (primary wholesalers, local dealers, retailers, patients).

The purpose of this paper is to assess the compatibility between the religious investing criteria of some Christian mutual funds and the “ Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility” (ICCR) shareholder resolutions about corporate unethical/illegal practices.

Among all ICCR 2007‐2008 shareholder resolutions, the paper analyze unethical practices that could lead to corporate illegalities for business corporations that are included in the portfolios of Christian mutual funds. It will determines to what extent such companies have codes of ethics that clearly explained the expected behaviour from their employees, managers, or directors about given ethical issues: sexual orientation discrimination, conflicts of interest on the board and slave labour in the supply chain.

About the issue of slave labour in the supply chain, managers of Christian mutual funds could not invoke ignorance since in the code of ethics of one company, there is no provision dealing with slave labour. Concerning conflicts of interest on the board, managers of Christian mutual funds could not identify potential risks related to those companies, since the problem is the applicability of their codes of ethics. Finally, companies have very different ways to address or not the issue of sexual orientation discrimination in their codes of ethics.

The originality of the paper is twofold: first to compare companies Christian mutual funds are investing in (on the basis of Christian selection criteria) and companies for which there are ICCR resolutions (the aim of such resolutions is to change some questionable or unethical aspect of a given business corporation), and second to see to what extent corporate codes of ethics are written in a way to reduce or increase the potentiality of ethical conflicts.

This article explores officer use of suspicion before informal police-citizen encounters as a method to further understand police officer decision-making. There is a body of research focused on officer decision-making before formal “stop and search” encounters, yet, while the more informal “stop and chat” encounters are ubiquitous, they are a comparatively under-researched part of policework.

The research takes an ethnographic approach to explore police decision-making. It used participant observation (800 h over 93 patrol shifts) of front-line first response officers from New Zealand (n = 45) and South Australia (n = 48). Field observations were complemented with informal discussion in the field and 27 semi-structured interviews.

It reveals that officers applied three situational “tests” to assess the circumstances or actions observed before initiating an informal encounter. Officers then weighed up whether the circumstances were harmful, contrary to law, or socially acceptable to determine the necessity of initiating a police-citizen encounter. This process is conceived as suspicioning: deciding whether circumstances appear prima facie suspicious, how an officer goes about collecting more information to corroborate suspicion to ultimately inform a course of action.

The findings present a new perspective to understanding how and why police officers decide to initiate encounters with members of the public. Moreover, as the first ethnographic cross-national research of officers from New Zealand and South Australia, it provides a rare comparative glimpse of Antipodean policing.

The last few years have seen a steady crescendo in the panic over the threat of organised crime in society. In fact, society is increasingly realising that it is involved in a life and death situation, a war whose battleground is continually expanding as every clash uncovers new frontiers to be broken down and new elements to be fought — just like the fight against some new and unknown disease — a struggle society cannot afford to lose.

There is a conflation of Mexican origin with the category “undocumented immigrant” that targets and stigmatizes undocumented Mexicans – I call this Mexican illegality stigma. I assess whether Mexican illegality stigma negatively affects the psychological well-being of Mexican-origin individuals in the US, distinguishing between undocumented Mexicans and citizen Mexican Americans. I draw from the stress process model and 52 in-depth interviews – 30 with undocumented young adults from Mexico and 22 with US-born young adults of Mexican descent – to evaluate how undocumented Mexicans and citizen Mexican Americans experience Mexican illegality stigma and to determine whether it affects the psychological well-being of undocumented Mexicans in a distinct manner. I found that all respondents experienced social rejection and discrimination when they were assumed or perceived as undocumented Mexicans. While few of the US-born respondents were affected by these incidents, most undocumented young adults found these incidents stressful because they were humiliating, excluded them from valuable resources and opportunities, and forced them to incur financial burden (e.g., unfair fines), which disrupted their transition to adulthood processes such as parenthood and labor market advancement. This study found evidence that Mexican illegality stigma is a stressor and source of distress for undocumented young adults from Mexico. As opposition to undocumented immigration from Mexico intensifies, the hostile context may further strain the psychological well-being of undocumented Mexicans.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the tests the author faced in her sociolegal fieldwork on Hawaiian cockfighting, and to draw broader lessons from these tests for other ethnographers of illegal organizations.

The author draws on six weeks of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork and interviewing.

Relational work in ethnographic fieldwork requires skills academia does not always impart – including humility, a sense of humor and patience with yourself and other people. Each test we face is a part of the ongoing process of building these relationships.

As ethnographers, it is sometimes considered “taboo” to tell our stories – to explain our internal and external struggles in the field. This taboo makes a certain amount of sense. After all, we are trying to understand society, not reflect on our own development as people. Yet the taboo is also a pity. For one, it is unrealistic to think that we are “mere observers” whose presence in the field does not affect it. “Scrubbing” ourselves from the field necessarily scrubs out some of our data. It also omits parts of the story that other researchers might find interesting or instructive.

The exclusionary rule remains one of the most controversial doctrines in America’s constitutionalized criminal procedure. Jurists and commentators criticize the American exclusionary rule as a rule unique to American jurisprudence. Though American jurists and commentators’ criticism focuses on the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule, the criticism of the American exclusionary rule with reference to practices in foreign countries serves to create and maintain the misconception that the United States is the only country that has the exclusionary rule. The belief that the exclusionary rule exists only in the United States is far from accurate. This article examines the historical development and the current status of exclusionary rules in the United States, England, France, Germany, and Italy. Attentions are especially devoted to analyzing the characteristics of the American exclusionary rule with reference to exclusionary rules in other countries.

In light of frequent corporate scams and frauds, this paper aims to investigate the relationship of corporate illegality with the board of directors’ characteristics in Indian manufacturing companies.

The board of director characteristics of sample companies charged with violation of the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulations from 2008 to 2013 are matched to an equivalent-sized control data set. A cross-sectional logistic regression model is applied to test the hypothesized association.

The findings suggest that the SEBI violations are less likely to occur when a large fraction of the board of directors consists of independent directors and when the individual directors have multiple appointments on the boards of other companies. However, it is observed that the size of the board and its meetings have no observable association with violation of the SEBI regulations.

This work is likely to aid future research in exploring the impact of governance mechanisms on the occurrence of illegality. In future, studies may be conducted to investigate the probability of illegal corporate events using a larger sample size and corporate governance variables which have not been examined in the present study.

The analysis provides corporate policy makers and investors an insight to evaluate the vulnerability of a company being engaged in illegality based on its board features.

The present study is distinct from previous reports as it makes a novel attempt to gauge the relationship between the board of directors’ characteristics and the occurrence of illegality in the Indian corporate section.

The purpose of this paper is to explore black market retailing, with a focus on Colombia’s San Andresitos.

The authors use grounded theory methodology to develop a theoretical framework that explains how consumers rationalize their acceptance, rejection, or tolerance of black market retailing. The authors obtained qualitative data based on reader responses to newspaper articles on San Andresitos and used the responses as qualitative data in comparative analysis to derive a “strategy family” theoretical framework.

The framework advances rationalization techniques that consumers employ to accept, reject, or tolerate the San Andresitos.

Colombians are divided on the legality of the San Andresitos. Although half the informants note the wrongfulness of the San Andresitos, the other half offer reasons to accept or tolerate them.

Legitimate (i.e. lawful) retailers operating in Colombia, or planning to enter, need to realize that local and national government officials support the San Andresitos. Colombia’s legitimate retailers must co-exist with the black market and dissuade consumers from patronizing unauthorized vendors or purchasing illicit goods.

Colombia’s acceptance of its black markets results in consumers inadvertently supporting crime, terrorism, and even bodily harm via the San Andresitos. However, the San Andresitos enable lower-income consumers to gain access to otherwise unattainable merchandise and provide employment through lower-skilled labor.

This paper is one of the first to explore black markets. From a transformative service research perspective, this research reveals how consumers, retailers, and government officials participate in Colombia’s black market, and how their activities serve to harm consumer well-being.