Justice Quarterly 27(4)

If Your Friends Jumped Off of a Bridge, Would You Do It Too? Delinquent Peers and Susceptibility to Peer Influence
Author: Holly Ventura Miller

Association with delinquent peer groups is one of the most salient predictors of delinquent behavior. Despite the widespread documentation of these effects, little is known about whether the delinquent peer effect is conditioned by individual-level characteristics. Using data from a multi-wave survey of Mexican-American adolescents, this study explored the interactive effect of susceptibility to peer influence and differential association with delinquent peers on delinquent outcomes. Results suggested that the delinquent peer effect on self-reported delinquency is amplified when an adolescent is highly susceptible to peer influence. Analyses also indicated that this moderating effect varies according to offense seriousness. Specifically, the conditioning effect is most important when considering acts of serious delinquency.

“That's Not Who I Am:” How Offenders Commit Violent Acts and Reject Authentically Violent Selves
Andy Hochstetler; Heith Copes; J. Patrick Williams

Participation in contemporary street cultures often exposes individuals to a world characterized by violence. The participants in this study admitted to frequent experience with violence and regular use of it. Many viewed violence as an appropriate response to some situations, though they often worked to avoid negative connotations of such behavior, especially ascriptions of an “authentically” violent self. Using an interactionist framework, we explore the processes by which offenders who engage in violent crimes resist being labeled as authentically violent. Drawing from data from semi-structured interviews with 30 offenders who engaged in carjackings, we analyze contrastive statements they employed to resist a violent self-concept and label. Offenders differentiated their own violent behaviors, as situational and excusable, from behaviors that characterize authentically violent others. Understanding these processes sheds light on criminal identities and gives insights into attempts to change offender behavior by altering self-conceptions.

Alcohol and Drug Mitigation in Capital Murder Trials: Implications for Sentencing Decisions
Beth Bjerregaard; M. Dwayne Smith; Sondra J. Fogel; Wilson R. Palacios

Analyses of the impact on sentencing when alcohol and drug-related mitigation is used in the sentencing phases of capital murder trials is virtually absent from the existing literature. The present study addresses this by exploring the effect of having mitigation with alcohol and drug themes accepted in a large sample (n = 804) of capital murder trials in North Carolina. Logistic regression analyses that include a number of relevant control variables reveal no substantive impacts of having alcohol mitigation accepted by capital murder juries, but drug mitigators that were either accepted or rejected by juries were associated with an increased risk of receiving a death sentence. Possible reasons for the results and their implications are discussed and suggestions are made for further study of the effects of alcohol/drug mitigation in capital trials.

Cognitive Skills, Adolescent Violence, and the Moderating Role of Neighborhood Disadvantage
Paul E. Bellair; Thomas L. McNulty

Numerous studies uncover a link between cognitive skills and adolescent violence. Overlooked is whether the relationship changes at varying levels of neighborhood disadvantage. We examine the issue by contrasting two models that place individual difference in cognitive skill within a social-structural framework. Using five waves of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a three-level hierarchical model, results indicate that cognitive skill is inversely associated with violence and that the relationship is strongest in non-disadvantaged neighborhoods. However, the cognitive skills-violence relationship is indistinguishable from zero in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods. The findings are therefore consistent with the hypothesis that social expression of developed ability is muted in disadvantaged contexts.

Trial Penalties in Federal Sentencing: Extra-Guidelines Factors and District Variation
Jeffery T. Ulmer; James Eisenstein; Brian D. Johnson

The guarantee of the right to a jury trial lies at the heart of the principles that underlie the American criminal justice system's commitment to due process of law. We investigate the differential sentencing of those who plead guilty and those convicted by trial in U.S. District Courts. We first investigate how much of any federal plea/trial sentencing differences are accounted for by substantial assistance to law enforcement, acceptance of responsibility, obstruction of justice, and other Guideline departures. Second, we investigate how such differences vary according to offense and defendant characteristics, as well as court caseloads and trial rates. We use federal sentencing data for fiscal years 2000-02, along with aggregate data on federal district court caseload features. We find that meaningful trial penalties exist after accounting for Guidelines-based rationales for differentially sentencing those convicted by guilty plea versus trial. Higher district court caseload pressure is associated with greater trial penalties, while higher district trial rates are associated with lesser trial penalties. In addition, trial penalties are lower for those with more substantial criminal histories, and black men. Trial penalties proportionately increase, however, as Guideline minimum sentencing recommendations increase. We also supplement our analysis with interview and survey data from federal district court participants, which provide insights into the plea reward/trial penalty process, and also suggest important dimensions of federal court trial penalties that we cannot measure.

Private Military Contractors, Crime, and the Terrain of Unaccountability
Dawn L. Rothe; Jeffrey Ian Ross

Criminological research has traditionally attempted to explain the etiological factors of crime and then suggest appropriate controls. More often than not, the foci of this kind of work have remained on “street crime.” Since the 1990s, however, some scholars have turned their attention to the causal factors of corporate crime, state crime, crimes of globalization, supranational crimes, and their various permutations and interconnections. Clearly missing from this literature is the growing phenomenon of private military contractors (PMCs) and the crimogenic culture of and atmosphere within which they operate. Specifically, while the use of PMCs is rapidly growing, the increasing propensity for PMC's crimogenic culture and the unregulated nature of what has become a global industry is rarely studied by social scientists. Further, few criminologists have examined this area of research by applying criminological theory to explain the growth and emergence of PMCs. Our goal is to help fill this gap. Through the process of theory building and refinement we identify factors that facilitate the criminogenic environment within which PMCs operate. Additionally, without attempting to expand explanatory and causal mechanisms, policies aimed at reducing PMC criminality and social justice for their victims cannot be developed. As such, we draw from theoretical developments in state and state-corporate crime, social disorganization, and anomie literature to shed light on key factors associated with PMCs, namely, the crimogenic atmosphere within which they operate.

Justice Quarterly, August 2010: Volume 27, Issue 4

Journal of Marriage and Family 72(3)

Editorial Comment

The Decade in Review
David H. Demo

Families, Social Structures, and Social Locations

Demographic Trends in the United States: A Review of Research in the 2000s
Andrew J. Cherlin

Filling the Glass: Gender Perspectives on Families
Myra Marx Ferree

Critical Race Theories, Colorism, and the Decade's Research on Families of Color
Linda M. Burton, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Victor Ray, Rose Buckelew, Elizabeth Hordge Freeman

Poverty and the American Family: A Decade in Review
Kathryn Edin, Rebecca Joyce Kissane

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Families
Timothy J. Biblarz, Evren Savci

Connecting Complex Processes: A Decade of Research on Immigrant Families
Jennifer E. Glick

"Families" in International Context: Comparing Institutional Effects Across Western Societies
Lynn Prince Cooke, Janeen Baxter

Family Risk and Resilience in the Context of War and Terrorism
Shelley M. MacDermid Wadsworth

Families Over the Life Course

Partnering Across the Life Course: Sex, Relationships, and Mate Selection
Sharon Sassler

Diversity in Pathways to Parenthood: Patterns, Implications, and Emerging Research Directions
Pamela J. Smock, Fiona Rose Greenland

Families With Children and Adolescents: A Review, Critique, and Future Agenda
Robert Crosnoe, Shannon E. Cavanagh

Parenthood, Childlessness, and Well-Being: A Life Course Perspective
Debra Umberson, Tetyana Pudrovska, Corinne Reczek

Marriage, Family Processes, and Well-Being

Marriage in the New Millennium: A Decade in Review
Frank D. Fincham, Steven R. H. Beach

Research on Divorce: Continuing Trends and New Developments
Paul R. Amato

Remarriage and Stepfamilies: Strategic Sites for Family Scholarship in the 21st Century
Megan M. Sweeney

Socioeconomic Status, Family Processes,and Individual Development
Rand D. Conger, Katherine J. Conger, Monica J. Martin

Work and Family Research in the First Decade of the 21st Century
Suzanne M. Bianchi, Melissa A. Milkie

Conflict, Power, and Violence in Families
Kristin L. Anderson

Advances in Families and Health Research in the 21st Century
Deborah Carr, Kristen W. Springer

Biosocial Influences on the Family: A Decade Review
Brian M. D'Onofrio, Benjamin B. Lahey

Family Policy: Becoming a Field of Inquiry and Subfield of Social Policy
Karen Bogenschneider, Thomas J. Corbett


Journal of Marriage and Family, June 2010: Volume 72, Issue 3

British Journal of Criminology 50(4)

Introduction to the BJC Special Issue on Terrorism
Michael Levi, Susanne Karstedt, and Vincenzo Ruggiero

Global Perspectives

Cross-National Patterns of Terrorism: Comparing Trajectories for Total, Attributed and Fatal Attacks, 1970–2006
Gary LaFree, Nancy A. Morris, and Laura Dugan

Despite growing international concern about terrorism, until recently, very little was known about worldwide risk patterns for terrorist attacks. In this paper, we are especially interested in determining the extent to which terrorism is concentrated at the country level over time and whether different measures of terrorism (total, attributed and fatal attacks) yield similar results. Traditional sources of crime data—official police records and victimization and self-report crime surveys—typically exclude terrorism. In response, there has been growing interest in terrorist event databases. In this research, we report on the most comprehensive of these databases to date, formed by merging the Global Terrorism Database maintained by the START Center with the RAND-MIPT database. We use a statistical method called semi-parametric group-based trajectory analysis to examine 73,961 attacks in 206 countries and territories from 1970 to 2006. Our results confirm that terrorist attacks, like more common crimes, are highly concentrated across specific countries and these concentrations are fairly stable over time. Ten countries account for 38 per cent of all terrorist attacks in our data since 1970; 32 countries account for more than three-quarters of all attacks. The trajectory analysis also reveals a rapidly rising new terrorist threat concentrated especially among countries in South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Combating the Financing of Terrorism: A History and Assessment of the Control of ‘Threat Finance’
Michael Levi

The history of international efforts to control the flow of funds to designated ‘terrorist groups’ via the formal financial system is examined. The work shows that—despite the high motivation of some governments and international banks to reduce terrorist attacks, which harm their citizens, customers, staff and profits—it remains difficult to determine how this private–public policing interface can rationally target ‘risky capital’. Financial intelligence efforts have had little externally discernible impact on reducing levels of terrorism or on criminal convictions. It reviews evaluation problems in knowing whether the apparent lack of effects is due to measurement failure (estimating how much terrorist harm might have occurred had the controls not been imposed), theory failure or implementation failure. It argues for a more modest assessment of the likely impact of measures against financing terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Motivations, Strategies and Pathways

Gender, Crime and Terrorism: The Case of Arab/Palestinian Women in Israel
Anat Berko, Edna Erez, and Julie L. Globokar

This article compares the background, motivation, pathways and prison experiences of Arab/Palestinian women who were imprisoned for conventional crimes with those who were incarcerated for security-related or terrorism offences. In-depth interviews of the two groups were conducted in the Israeli prisons in which they served their sentences. Prison personnel were also interviewed and court and prison files examined to validate the women's background and criminal history. Although both groups transgressed gender expectations by venturing into male-dominated worlds (crime and terrorism), the data point to differences between the groups regarding their personal background and the manner in which their violations were influenced by gender and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The implications of the findings for differences between crime and terrorism as related to gender and Palestinian terrorism are discussed.

A Behavioural Analysis of Terrorist Action: The Assassination and Bombing Campaigns of ETA between 1980 and 2007
Margaret A. Wilson, Angela Scholes, and Elizabeth Brocklehurst

This study examines the range of terrorist action employed by ETA and the underlying psychological dimensions that distinguish between the conduct of their two main forms: assassinations and bombings. Descriptive accounts of incidents occurring between 1980 and 2007 are analysed for content and for the similarities and differences between the incidents represented, using Multidimensional Scalogram Analysis. The results show that incidents vary according to dimensions of victim targeting. For assassinations, these dimensions are proximity and specificity, whilst bombings vary in the level of ‘intent to harm’ and the type of victim. Correlational analysis reveals that the group goes through periods of increased and decreased activity involving all forms of action, rather than displaying a substitution effect between different methods. The implications are discussed.

Armed Struggle in Italy: The Limits to Criminology in the Analysis of Political Violence
Vincenzo Ruggiero

Repeated calls to criminologists to engage in the analysis of violent political conflict have been followed by an abundant production of literature within the discipline. This article examines such production and attempts to delineate the limits to criminology in the analysis of political violence. By presenting interview extracts from a case study centred on violent political conflict in Italy during the 1970s and 1980s, I demonstrate why criminology should seek supplementary explanatory categories within the broader realm of social theory, rather than rely exclusively on the theories and assumptions of traditional criminology.

Policing and Peacemaking in Conflict Zones

Terrorist Threats and Police Performance: A Study of Israeli Communities
David Weisburd, Badi Hasisi, Tal Jonathan, and Gali Aviv

In recent years, scholars and police practitioners have become increasingly concerned with the possible impacts of terrorism on police performance. Some scholars have argued that increased terrorist threats will reduce resources that are devoted to ordinary policing functions such as solving crimes, and that anti-terrorism functions may overshadow traditional police activities. Others have suggested that heightened surveillance due to terrorist threats could have unintended crime prevention benefits. In this study, we examine the impacts of terrorist threats on one aspect of police performance—the clearance of police files. Using Israel during the Second Intifada (2000–04) as a case study, we analyse the impact of level of terrorist threat, while controlling for other possible confounding factors, separating out communities that are primarily Jewish or Arab. Our analyses suggest that terrorist threats have a significant impact upon police performance, though that impact varies strongly by type of community. Higher levels of threat are associated with lower proportions of cleared cases in the majority Jewish communities, and higher proportions in the majority Arab communities.

Police Involvement in Counter-Terrorism and Public Attitudes Towards the Police in Israel—1998–2007
Tal Jonathan

Public attitudes towards the police are considered one of the important outcomes of policing in democratic countries. However, it is not clear how policing terrorism may affect these evaluations. The ‘Rally Effect’ provides a context for examining this question, and suggests that when faced with severe terrorism threats, public perceptions of the police will rise in the short term but decline over time. Utilizing this framework, this article examines fluctuations in attitudes of Jewish adults in Israel towards the police over the past decade, within the context of legitimacy and procedural justice. The results lend support for the hypothesized model, and suggest that in addition to police conduct, public attitudes toward the police may be influenced by larger social forces.

Identity, International Terrorism and Negotiating Peace: Hamas and Ethics-Based Considerations from Critical Restorative Justice
Bruce A. Arrigo

This paper conceptually examines one specific case of international terrorism, including the emergence and maintenance of membership-allegiance in its militant extremist group. This is the case of the Islamic Resistance Movement (or Hamas) and the manifestation of its corresponding Palestinian identity. Although the social person is constituted by symbols and objects, acts and social acts, meanings, and role-taking and role-making, questions persist about how best to promote peaceful coexistence, advance the interests of non-violence and ensure the protection of basic human rights. These practices constitute an ethic grounded in Aristotelian virtue. The delineation of key principles emanating from critical restorative justice helps to specify this brand of moral reasoning. The integration of these principles with the proposed symbolic interactionist framework demonstrates how extremist violence can be mediated. Suggestive examples of the same involving Hamas and those with whom it struggles (Palestine, Israel and the United States) are used to guide the analysis. The proposed conceptual framework is then briefly assessed for its overall explanatory capabilities, especially in relation to furthering terrorism studies.

British Journal of Criminology, July 2010: Volume 50, Issue 4

American Sociological Review 75(3)

The Effects of Organizational and Political Embeddedness on Financial Malfeasance in the Largest U.S. Corporations: Dependence, Incentives, and Opportunities
Harland Prechel and Theresa Morris

This article examines the causes of financial malfeasance in the largest U.S. corporations between 1995 and 2004. The findings support organizational-political embeddedness theory, which suggests that differential social structures create dependencies, incentives, and opportunities to engage in financial malfeasance. The historical analysis shows that neoliberal policies enacted between 1986 and 2000 resulted in organizational and political structures that permitted managers to engage in financial malfeasance. Our quantitative analysis provides three main findings. First, capital dependence on investors creates incentives to engage in financial malfeasance. Second, managerial strategies to increase shareholder value create incentives to engage in financial malfeasance. Third, the multilayer-subsidiary form and the political structure permitting corporate PAC contributions create opportunities to engage in financial malfeasance. These findings have important implications for public policy; the corporate and state structures enacted in the late-twentieth century were the outcome of a long-term, well-financed, and systematic political strategy that provided managers with unprecedented power, autonomy, and opportunity to engage in financial malfeasance.

The Global Rise of Democracy: A Network Account
Magnus Thor Torfason and Paul Ingram

We examine the influence of an interstate network created by intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) on the global diffusion of democracy. We propose that IGOs facilitate democracy’s diffusion by transmitting information between member states and by interpreting that information according to prevailing norms in the world society, where democracy is viewed as the legitimate form of government. We employ a network autocorrelation model to track changes in democracy among all of the world’s countries from 1815 to 2000. We find that democracy does diffuse through the IGO network and that the influence of democratic countries is stronger than that of undemocratic countries. Evidence indicates that the IGO network serves as a basis for normative diffusion. This is an important contribution to sociological accounts of globalization, which tend to emphasize diffusion divorced from network structure or diffusion dependent on the coercive influence of a small set of international organizations.

Latino Immigrants and the U.S. Racial Order: How and Where Do They Fit In?
Reanne Frank, Ilana Redstone Akresh, and Bo Lu

How do Latino immigrants in the United States understand existing racial categories? And how does the existing U.S. racial order influence this understanding? Using data from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), our analysis points to changes in how the U.S. racial order might operate in the future. We find that most Latino immigrants recognize the advantages of a White racial designation when asked to self-identify, but wider society is not often accepting of this White expansion. Our findings suggest that relatively darker-skinned Latino immigrants experience skin-color-based discrimination in the realm of annual income. Furthermore, Latinos who are most integrated into the United States are the most likely to opt out of the existing U.S. racial categorization scheme. We predict that a racial boundary is forming around some Latino immigrants: those with darker skin and those who have more experience in the U.S. racial stratification system.

Occupations and the Structure of Wage Inequality in the United States, 1980s to 2000s
Ted Mouw and Arne L. Kalleberg

Occupations are central to the stratification systems of industrial countries, but they have played little role in empirical attempts to explain the well-documented increase in wage inequality that occurred in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. We address this deficiency by assessing occupation-level effects on wage inequality using data from the Current Population Survey for 1983 through 2008. We model the mean and variance of wages for each occupation, controlling for education and demographic factors at the individual level to test three competing explanations for the increase in wage inequality: (1) the growth of between-occupation polarization, (2) changes in education and labor force composition, and (3) residual inequality unaccounted for by occupations and demographic characteristics. After correcting for a problem with imputed data that biased Kim and Sakamoto’s (2008) results, we find that between-occupation changes explain 66 percent of the increase in wage inequality from 1992 to 2008, although 23 percent of this is due to the switch to the 2000 occupation codes in 2003. Sensitivity analysis reveals that 18 percent of the increase in inequality from 1983 to 2002 is due to changes in just three occupations: managers "not elsewhere classified," secretaries, and computer systems analysts.

Gastronationalism: Food Traditions and Authenticity Politics in the European Union
Michaela DeSoucey

By developing the concept of "gastronationalism," this article challenges conceptions of the homogenizing forces of globalism. I analyze (1) the ways in which food production, distribution, and consumption can demarcate and sustain the emotive power of national attachment and (2) how nationalist sentiments, in turn, can shape the production and marketing of food. The multi-methodological analyses reveal how the construct of gastronationalism can help us better understand pan-national tensions in symbolic boundary politics—politics that protect certain foods and industries as representative of national cultural traditions. I first analyze the macro-level dimensions of market protections by examining the European Union’s program for origin-designation labels that delineates particular foods as nationally owned. The micro-level, empirical case—the politics surrounding foie gras in France—demonstrates how gastronationalism functions as a protectionist mechanism within lived experience. Foie gras is an especially relevant case because other parties within the pan-national system consider it morally objectionable. Contemporary food politics, beyond the insights it affords into symbolic boundary politics, speaks to several arenas of sociological interest, including markets, identity politics, authenticity and culture, and the complexities of globalization.

Stained Red: A Study of Stigma by Association to Blacklisted Artists during the "Red Scare" in Hollywood, 1945 to 1960
Elizabeth Pontikes, Giacomo Negro, and Hayagreeva Rao

We suggest that moral panics exert spillover effects through stigma by mere association. Individuals are harmed even if their ties to stigmatized affiliates are heterophilous, and high-status individuals can also suffer. This creates a broadcast effect that increases the scale of the moral panic. Analyzing the U.S. film industry from 1945 to 1960, we examine how artists’ employment in feature films was influenced by their associations with co-workers who were blacklisted as communists after working with the focal artist. Mere association reduces an artist’s chances of working again, and one exposure is enough to impair work prospects. Furthermore, actors’ careers are impaired when writers with whom they worked are blacklisted. Moreover, the negative effects of stigma by mere association hold even when the focal artist has received public acclaim. These findings have broad implications. When a few individuals or organizations are engaged in wrongdoing and publicly targeted, stigma by association can lead to false positives and harm many innocents.

American Sociological Review, June 2010: Volume 75, Issue 3

American Journal of Sociology 115(6)

Compensation Benchmarking, Leapfrogs, and the Surge in Executive Pay
Thomas A. DiPrete, Gregory M. Eirich, and Matthew Pittinsky

Scholars frequently argue whether the sharp rise in chief executive officer (CEO) pay in recent years is “efficient” or is a consequence of “rent extraction” because of the failure of corporate governance in individual firms. This article argues that governance failure must be conceptualized at the market rather than the firm level because excessive pay increases for even relatively few CEOs a year spread to other firms through the cognitively and rhetorically constructed compensation networks of “peer groups,” which are used in the benchmarking process to negotiate the compensation of CEOs. Counterfactual simulation based on Standard and Poor’s ExecuComp data demonstrates that the effects of CEO “leapfrogging” potentially explain a considerable fraction of the overall upward movement of executive compensation since the early 1990s.

Toward a Historical Sociology of Social Situations
David Diehl and Daniel McFarland

In recent years there has been a growing call to historicize sociology by paying more attention to the contextual importance of time and place as well as to issues of process and contingency. Meeting this goal requires bringing historical sociology and interactionism into greater conversation via a historical theory of social situations. Toward this end, the authors of this article draw on Erving Goffman's work in Frame Analysis to conceptualize experience in social situations as grounded in multilayered cognitive frames and to demonstrate how such a framework helps illuminate historical changes in situated interaction.

Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States
Alexes Harris, Heather Evans, and Katherine Beckett

The expansion of the U.S. penal system has important consequences for poverty and inequality, yet little is known about the imposition of monetary sanctions. This study analyzes national and state‐level court data to assess their imposition and interview data to identify their social and legal consequences. Findings indicate that monetary sanctions are imposed on a substantial majority of the millions of people convicted of crimes in the United States annually and that legal debt is substantial relative to expected earnings. This indebtedness reproduces disadvantage by reducing family income, by limiting access to opportunities and resources, and by increasing the likelihood of ongoing criminal justice involvement.

Cultural Objects as Objects: Materiality, Urban Space, and the Interpretation of AIDS Campaigns in Accra, Ghana
Terence E. McDonnell

AIDS media lead unexpected lives once distributed through urban space: billboards fade, posters go missing, bumper stickers travel to other cities. The materiality of AIDS campaign objects and of the urban settings in which they are displayed structures how the public interprets their messages. Ethnographic observation of AIDS media in situ and interview data reveal how the materiality of objects and places shapes the availability of AIDS knowledge in Accra, Ghana. Significantly for AIDS organizations, these material conditions often systematically obstruct access to AIDS knowledge for particular groups. Attending to materiality rethinks how scholars assess the cultural power of media.

A Signal Juncture: The Detroit Newspaper Strike and Post-Accord Labor Relations in the United States
Chris Rhomberg

This essay uses a deviant case analysis of the 1995–2000 Detroit newspaper strike to critique and revise theories of strike activity. As the formal institutions regulating industrial relations in the United States have declined, workplace struggles have expanded or reentered into other arenas of the state and civil society. In addition, the essay develops the methodological concept of a “signal juncture,” that is, moments of conflict that reveal a “collision” of underlying developmental paths. Unlike the more familiar concept of the critical juncture, a signal juncture reveals ongoing structural tensions and conflicting actors within otherwise continuous trends.

American Journal of Sociology, May 2010: Volume 115, Issue 6

Sociological Theory 28(2)

Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research: A Critical Analysis of Inclusions, Interactions, and Institutions in the Study of Inequalities
Hae Yeon Choo, Myra Marx Ferree

Institutional Isomorphism Revisited: Convergence and Divergence in Institutional Change
Jens Beckert

Hybrid Cultural Codes in Nonwestern Civil Society: Images of Women in Taiwan and Hong Kong
Ming-Cheng M. Lo, Yun Fan

Toward a Theory of Emotive Performance: With Lessons from How Politicians Do Anger
Kwai Hang Ng, Jeffrey L. Kidder

Beyond the Elementary Forms of Moral Life: Reflexivity and Rationality in Durkheim's Moral Theory
Robert Wade Kenny

Sociological Theory, June 2010: Volume 28, Issue 2

Theoretical Criminology 14(2)

A general strain theory of terrorism
Robert Agnew

This article reviews and critiques current strain-based explanations of terrorism, then draws on general strain theory and the terrorism research to present a general strain theory of terrorism. This theory states that terrorism is most likely when people experience ‘collective strains’ that are: (a) high in magnitude, with civilians affected; (b) unjust; and (c) inflicted by significantly more powerful others, including ‘complicit’ civilians, with whom members of the strained collectivity have weak ties. These collective strains increase the likelihood of terrorism for several reasons, but they do not lead to terrorism in all cases—a range of factors condition their effect.

Legitimating police violence: Newspaper narratives of deadly force
Paul J. Hirschfield and Daniella Simon

Newspaper coverage of police-perpetrated homicides may reflect and promote public and official tolerance for police violence. Interpretive content analysis was performed on 105 news articles appearing in 23 major daily newspapers between 1997 and 2000 that center on incidents of deadly force. Using Thompson’s (1990) conceptual framework, patterns of ideological content were identified and analyzed. Most articles, subtly drawing upon iconic images of police professionals and vigilantes, cast victims of police killings as physical and social threats and situate police actions within legitimate institutional roles. Articles appearing after police killed Amadou Diallo are less likely to demonize both police officers and victims, partially reflecting efforts to frame deadly force and police racism as systemic issues.

The transnational security consultancy industry: A case of state-corporate symbiosis
Conor O'Reilly

This article examines state—corporate organizational complexes within the transnational policing sphere. Its specific focus is upon the transnational security consultancy industry and its interaction with state security agencies. Exemplifying the proposed theoretical construct of state—corporate symbiosis, leading firms are held out as key facilitators for this ongoing close association between dominant interests. Their activities reflect how this security amalgamation imposes itself upon the agendas, discourse, methods and ideologies of the global policing environment. As well as highlighting the degree to which both behaviour and techniques traverse the state—corporate security nexus, this article also identifies core factors which have driven this convergence of interests. It concludes by suggesting that this evolution towards state—corporate symbiosis exacerbates those trends within transnational policing that prompt most concern, while undercutting those for which hope is harboured.

Forgetting the future: Cause lawyering and the work of California capital trial defenders
Paul J. Kaplan

This article aims to push the boundaries of definitions of capital cause lawyering to include a more potentially radical ‘cause’ that takes on one key ideological underpinning of state killing: individualism. This article studies whether and how capital trial lawyers take up a ‘radical’ cause by challenging individualism. To the extent that they oppose state killing and illuminate social inequality, the defenders studied in this project engage in something beyond the parameters of their particular trials, and thus fall partially within current definitions of cause lawyering. However, considering that they are unaware of, avoid, or suppress subversive arguments within the expansive discursive space afforded by penalty phase proceedings, they may be ‘forgetting the future’ precisely so that their clients may avoid a death sentence. Rather, defenders construct narratives that portray a liminal conceptualization of the influence of social forces on human free will, a concept known in the defense bar as ‘diminished autonomy’.

Theoretical Criminology, May 2010: Volume 14, Issue 2