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This chapter examines the nature and role of theory in criminal justice evaluation. A distinction between theories of and theories for evaluation is offered to clarify what is meant by ‘theory’ in the context of contemporary evaluation practice. Theories of evaluation provide a set of prescriptions and principles that can be used to guide the design, conduct and use of evaluation. Theories for evaluation include programme theory and the application of social science theory to understand how and why criminal justice interventions work to generate desired outcomes. The fundamental features of these three types of theory are discussed in detail, with a particular focus on demonstrating their combined value and utility for informing and improving the practice of criminal justice evaluation.

Purpose – The chapter looks at the way a group of Cook Islands women in South Auckland used neoliberal-inspired community funding to fulfil the criteria of the funders as well as their own noncapitalist aims.Methodology/approach – The chapter draws upon a combination of original ethnographic fieldwork and literature pertaining to the production and use of tivaivai in South Auckland and neoliberal policy in New Zealand.Findings – The chapter analyzes the cultural context of value creation that the production and use of tivaivai constitutes for Cook Islanders in South Auckland. The production of tivaivai as a “commercial” derivative of these elite social textiles saw the group of Cook Islands women operating in a “human economy” (Graeber, 2012), despite the neoliberal agenda of the funding.Originality/value – As a group, Cook Islanders are marginalized in New Zealand, but the outcome of this funding in the details of how the women recipients managed the use of the money, and how and what they produced, tells a different story about how Cook Islanders engage with capitalism via the “human economy.” Such an analysis adds considerable complexity to the understandings of the way women make and use tivaivai in New Zealand, as well as the ways Cook Islanders do economics in an expanded notion of economy. This sheds light on the subaltern strategies that Cook Islanders create in response to the opportunities and hegemonic forces that exist in the global capitalist economy, and the way they engage with capitalism in the context of the New Zealand political economy.

Diagrams are ubiquitous in economics and are uncontestably among the most used, if not the most important workhorses of economists, though they come in many forms. This essay examines the different uses of graphs and diagrams in the pioneering work of two Victorian economists, Stanley Jevons and Alfred Marshall. We stress the difference between their use as representations and as visual reasoning tools, a difference that became obscured in the twentieth century with the rise of econometrics.

Purpose – A study of amateur gourmet chefs was conducted in order to expand our understanding of consumer resistance, and to theorize the relationship between culture, consumer culture, and material culture.

Methodology/approach – A semi-structured long interview approach was employed, so that the interviewees could relate their experience of cooking in their own terms. The methodology was inspired by the existential–phenomenological tradition in consumer research.

Findings – All eschewed participation in the market for cookware. They contend that “real” cooks value utility over all, and question the aestheticization, fetishization, and mass marketing of cookware to a general audience. Their responses reveal the role of culture, knowledge, information, socialization, and market structure on consumer values and beliefs, thereby bringing into question the concept of consumer agency.

Research limitations/implications – The interviews were conducted in only one geographic location and cultural milieu. Future research should examine these concepts in additional contexts.

Practical implications – The analysis reveals the basis of effective consumer resistance. In order to resist, consumers must reject citizenship in consumer culture and reconceive their political subjectivity. That said, such an approach only has emancipatory potential at the level of the individual. The interviews underscore the need for a continued critique of the operation of power in the market.

Originality/value of paper – Most of the extant literature focuses on cultural practices that have formed in response to practices within mainstream consumer culture. The cooks interviewed argued that their practice is rooted in traditions that precede consumer culture.

Purpose – Emissions trading is often heralded as an efficient approach to environmental regulation. In the mid-90s Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), a Los Angeles-based advocacy organization, raised concerns that emissions trading in the South Coast Air Basin, the most polluted region in Southern California, would result in environmental injustice. The organizations concerns received mixed responses from regulators. Historical analysis is used to assess the clash between emissions trading and environmental justice (EJ).

Methodology/approach – Emissions trading and EJ arose side by side between the 1960s and the 1990s, yet they disagree on how to clean the air. Historical analysis of legal documents, presidential addresses, letters, working papers, reports, and the like offers a better understanding of the development of emissions trading and EJ, and their intersection in environmental policy.

Findings – Emissions trading was grafted onto Clean Air Act policies not inherently designed for their incorporation. As a result, emissions trading came into direct philosophical opposition with EJ as political pressures calling for both economically efficient antiregulatory-ism and environmental equity forced their intersection. Formally, regional and national government accepted EJ as part of law. However, in principle, emissions trading undermined this acceptance. As a result, CBE could not easily win or explicitly lose its battle against emissions trading.

Originality/value of paper – Previous work on the relationship between emissions trading and EJ tend to focus on legal analysis and normative implications of emissions trading. Putting emissions trading and environment justice into historical perspective helps to illuminate larger questions about EJ activism and policy. Also, as California, the United States, and Europe turn to emissions trading to combat not only air pollution but also climate change, important lessons can be learned from the histories and collision of emissions trading and EJ.

I have been asked by Professor Lonnie Athens to shed light upon those parts of my academic career that may be of interest to sociologists working within the tradition of symbolic interactionism. With this in mind, the present essay offers an account of how I became a scholar whose main focus has for many years been the philosophy and social psychology of George Herbert Mead (1863–1931).