Representing the riots: the (mis)use of statistics to sustain ideological explanation

This paper analyses the way that figures were used to support two kinds of accounts of the riots of August 2011 prevalent in media coverage and in pronouncements by government ministers. The first of these accounts suggested that the rioters were typically characterised by uncivilized predispositions. The second kind of account suggested that damage to property was typically irrational or indiscriminate. These accounts echo discredited ‘convergence’ and ‘submergence’ explanations in early crowd psychology. We show that the ‘convergence’ explanation – that the rioters were typically ‘career criminals’ or gang-members – was based on arrest figures, treating as unproblematic the circular way that such data was produced (with those already known to the police most likely to be identified and arrested). The ‘submergence account – the suggestion that violence was typically indiscriminate or irrational – was based in part on grouping together attacks on properties in different districts; those areas where 'anyone and anything' was attacked were affluent districts where the target was the rich district itself. Like their academic counterparts, the two types of accounts of the riots of August 2011 are profoundly ideological, for they serve to render the riots marginal and meaningless rather than indicative of wider problems in society

Possible Causes of Increased Domestic Violence among Military Veterans: PTSD or Mefloquine Toxicity?

After more than a decade at war, our returning service members and their families are facing enormous amounts of difficulty when returning home. PTSD and TBI, the signature wounds of these wars, have been well covered in the media. The family struggles have remained hidden and mostly undiscussed. These families are facing very specific issues in military relationships like infidelity, substance misuse, and intimate partner violence; the latter of which military families are three times more likely to experience when compared to the civilian population. There is a potential effect on caregiver burden in the role of PTSD as a factor for relationship difficulties as well. Many times, spouses can struggle with no longer a being just a wife; they have become full-time, exclusive caregivers. This loss of personal identity is one of many things that can cause a cascade of mental health problems for the spouse. As much as spouses are excited to have their service member home, incorporating the service member back into the family can be stressful. Spouses may be taken off guard to find themselves experiencing deep sadness at the changes they perceive in their veteran. These are some of the more common relationship issues in a marriage where PTSD is present. Yet there seems to be a darker side to all of this. With the higher rates of domestic violence, this paper is researching the possibility of being wrong about PTSD or potentially there may be some previously unrecognized confounder that has not been looked at yet. Mefloquine is an anti-malaria pill given to our military members that is already known to confound the diagnoses of PTSD and TBI. This literature review will assess the difficulties that these veterans and family members are facing by looking at the different possibilities of what could be making veterans more violent

Mechanisms of Psychological Distress following War in the Former Yugoslavia: The Role of Interpersonal Sensitivity

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This study was funded by a grant from the European Commission, contract number INCO-CT-2004-509176. AN was supported by a Clinical Early Career Research Fellowship (113295) and a Project Grant (104288

Between fallacy and feasibility? Dealing with the risk of ecological fallacies in the quantitative study of protest mobilization and conflict

In recent years, the quantitative study of conflict has increasingly focused on small-scale and/or localized conflicts in the developing world. In this paper, we analyze and critically reflect upon a major methodological shortcoming of many studies in this field of research. We argue that by using group- or macro-level empirical data and modelling techniques, while at the same time theoretically underpinning observed empirical associations with individual-level mechanisms, many of these studies risk committing an ecological fallacy. The individual-level mechanism on which many studies rely concerns the presence of grievances which mobilize people to participate in contentious politics. This motivational approach was also present in early studies on protest mobilization in Western societies, which often relied on similar research designs. However, subsequent advances in this literature and the use of methods that were targeted more directly at the individual level uncovered that grievances alone cannot explain mobilization and that organizational capabilities and complex psychological mechanisms of belonging also form part of the puzzle. While drawing on conflict events as well as survey data from Africa, we demonstrate empirically that here, as well, inferring micro-level relations and dynamics from macro-level empirical models can lead to erroneous interpretations and inferences. Hence, we argue that to improve our understanding of conflict mobilization in the developing world, especially for conflicts with low levels of violence, it is necessary to substantially expand our methodological toolbox beyond macro-level analyses

Intervention strategies for children and adolescent with disorders: from intrapsychic to transactional perspective

A large amount of studies and clinical evidence document the importance of infancy and early childhood influences on long term developmental trajectories toward mental health or psychopathology (Sameroff, 2000, 2010). Without healthy, productive adults no culture could continue to be successful. This concern is the main motivation for society to support child development research. Although the academic interests of contemporary developmental researchers range widely in cognitive and socialemotional domains, the political justification for supporting such studies is that they will lead to the understanding and ultimate prevention of behavioural problems that are costly to society. With these motivations and support, there have been major advances in our understanding of the intellectual, emotional, and social behaviour of children, adolescents and adults. This progress has forced conceptual reorientations from a unidirectionalunderstanding of development (e.g., parents affect children and not vice versa) toward a bidirectional conceptualization of development. Childrenare now assumed to affect and even select their environments as much as their environments affect their behaviour. Indeed, key among many of the most influential developmental theories in the past several decades is the assumption that children have bidirectional, or reciprocal, relationships with their environments (Bandura, 1977; Bronfenbrenner, 1979). To date, it is widely accepted that children’s healthy development is shaped by complex transactional processes among a variety of risk and protective factors, with cumulative risk factors increasing the prediction of emotional and behavioural problems (Anda et al., 2007; Rutter & Sroufe, 2000; Sameroff, 2000). Risk and protective factors include individual child characteristics such as genetic and constitutional propensities and cognitive strengths and vulnerabilities; parent characteristics such as mental health, education level, sense of efficacy, and resourcefulness; family factors such as quality of the parent-child relationship, emotional climate, and marital quality; community connectedness factors such as parental social support, social resources, and children’s peer relationships; and neighbourhood factors such as availability of resources, adequacy of housing, and levels of crime and violence (Sameroff & Fiese, 2000). The predictive value of these factors across many studies led to the development of transactional-bioecological models that attempt to conceptualize the relative contributions of proximal and distal risk and protective factors to children’s developmental outcome (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). In 1975, Sameroff and Chandler proposed the transactional model. This theoretical framework has become central to understanding the interplay between nature and nurture in explaining the development of positive and negative outcomes for children. The transactional model is a model of qualitative change. Sameroff asserted that the transactional model concerned qualitative rather than incremental change and that the underlying process was dialectical rather mechanistic in nature. The aim of this chapter is to explore this theoretical framework and its intervention strategies. In the first part, the transactional model will be described after a brief summary that will illustrate the transition from intrapsychic to transactional perspective. In the second part, intervention strategies for children and adolescent will be described. The attention of research on environmental risk and protective factors has fostered a more comprehensive understanding of what is necessary to improve the cognitive and social-emotional welfare of children and adolescents

How is rape a weapon of war?: feminist international relations, modes of critical explanation and the study of wartime sexual violence

Rape is a weapon of war. Establishing this now common claim has been an achievement of feminist scholarship and activism and reveals wartime sexual violence as a social act marked by gendered power. But the consensus that rape is a weapon of war obscures important, and frequently unacknowledged, differences in ways of understanding and explaining it. This article opens these differences to analysis. Drawing on recent debates regarding the philosophy of social science in IR and social theory, it interprets feminist accounts of wartime sexual violence in terms of modes of critical explanation – expansive styles of reasoning that foreground particular actors, mechanisms, reasons and stories in the formulation of research. The idea of a mode of critical explanation is expanded upon through a discussion of the role of three elements (analytical wagers, narrative scripts and normative orientations) which accomplish the theoretical work of modes. Substantive feminist accounts of wartime sexual violence are then differentiated in terms of three modes – of instrumentality, unreason and mythology – which implicitly structure different understandings of how rape might be a weapon of war. These modes shape political and ethical projects and so impact not only on questions of scholarly content but also on the ways in which we attempt to mitigate and abolish war rape. Thinking in terms of feminist modes of critical explanation consequently encourages further work in an unfolding research agenda. It clarifes the ways in which an apparently commonality of position can conceal meaningful disagreements about human action. Exposing these disagreements opens up new possibilities for the analysis of war rape

Criminal narrative experience: relating emotions to offence narrative roles during crime commission

A neglected area of research within criminality has been that of the experience of the offence for the offender. The present study investigates the emotions and narrative roles that are experienced by an offender while committing a broad range of crimes and proposes a model of Criminal Narrative Experience (CNE). Hypotheses were derived from the Circumplex of Emotions (Russell, 1997), Frye (1957), Narrative Theory (McAdams, 1988) and its link with Investigative Psychology (Canter, 1994). The analysis was based on 120 cases. Convicted for a variety of crimes, incarcerated criminals were interviewed and the data were subjected to Smallest Space Analysis (SSA). Four themes of Criminal Narrative Experience (CNE) were identified: Elated Hero, Calm Professional, Distressed Revenger and Depressed Victim in line with the recent theoretical framework posited for Narrative Offence Roles (Youngs & Canter, 2012). The theoretical implications for understanding crime on the basis of the Criminal Narrative Experience (CNE) as well as practical implications are discussed

Framing post-conflict societies: an analysis of the international pathologisation of Cambodia and the post-Yugoslav states

The article examines the pathologisation of post-conflict societies through a comparison of the framing of the Cambodian and post-Yugoslav states. The notion of failed states fixes culpability for war on societies in question, rendering the domestic populations dysfunational while casting international rescue interventions as functional. The article suggests that the discourse of pathologisation can be understood not as a means of explaining state crisis so much as legitimising an indefinite international presence and deferring self-government

Nollywood in Diversity: New Dimensions for Behaviour Change and National Security in Nigeria

This paper sets out to demystify the nature of Nollywood movies existing in diversity and to propose new dimensions for using film to achieve behaviour change and a dependable national security in Nigeria. The paper views national security as the art of ensuring national safety of the government. Nollywood has naturally diversified along ethnic dimensions including the Hausa movies (Kannywood) in the North, the Yoruba movies in the West and the Ibo movies in the Eastern part of the Nigeria. Others include the Akwa-Cross movies from the Southern part and the Tiv movies from the Middle Belt region of Nigeria. The paper adopts observation and analytical research methods depending on secondary sources. The paper finds out and concludes that Nollywood’s diversity is an opportunity to ameliorate some security challenges of the country and recommends the use of behaviour change focused themes which should be featured by Nollywood movie producers in Nigerian films produced along cultural, ethnic and regional boundaries

Evidence synthesis on the occurrence, causes, consequences, prevention and management of bullying and harassment behaviours to inform decision making in the NHS

Background Workplace bullying is a persistent problem in the NHS with negative implications for individuals, teams, and organisations. Bullying is a complex phenomenon and there is a lack of evidence on the best approaches to manage the problem. Aims Research questions What is known about the occurrence, causes, consequences and management of bullying and inappropriate behaviour in the workplace? Objectives Summarise the reported prevalence of workplace bullying and inappropriate behaviour. Summarise the empirical evidence on the causes and consequences of workplace bullying and inappropriate behaviour. Describe any theoretical explanations of the causes and consequences of workplace bullying and inappropriate behaviour. Synthesise evidence on the preventative and management interventions that address workplace bullying interventions and inappropriate behaviour. Methods To fulfil a realist synthesis approach the study was designed across four interrelated component parts: Part 1: A narrative review of the prevalence, causes and consequences of workplace bullying Part 2: A systematic literature search and realist review of workplace bullying interventions Part 3: Consultation with international bullying experts and practitioners Part 4: Identification of case studies and examples of good practic