Inventing community safety: representation and performativity in the criminological imagination

What is a criminological imagination for? This paper considers developments in criminological theory that question orthodox concerns with contesting representational claims about crime and control, emphasising instead the performative qualities of criminological thought; that theory brings into being the very social relations it then explains. Against the proposition that performativity liberates criminological thought from the burdens of sociological realism, it is argued the two are interdependent; criminological futures are invented through representations of the present. Further, a rejection of sociological realism obviates the anterior conditions of any particular imagination, notably other, competing, imaginaries. This anteriority is demonstrated through reference to four inventions of ‘community safety’, a floating signifier within contemporary criminology with no fixed referent and a multiplicity of significations. Rather than demonstrating the detachment of performative and representational claims, the polyvalence of this concept reveals the necessary dependence of each invention on contested representations of the present; of what community safety ‘really’ is about

Understanding recovery from a family perspective: a survey of life in recovery for families

A growing body of research describes how the lives of dependent drinkers can change as they move from active addiction to recovery. The Life in Recovery surveys in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and South Africa all reveal marked improvements in physical and psychological health, family functioning, employment and education, reductions in crime and community engagement (Best, 2014; Best et al, 2015). However, no surveys have, until now, assessed the experience of recovery from the perspective of family members. For family members, recovery is experienced in two senses. They observe the journey of the recovering drinker; however, they also embark on their own journey of change as a consequence of their experiences. The work presented here attempts to describe both aspects

From Isotopes to TK Interviews: Towards Interdisciplinary Research in Fort Resolution and the Slave River Delta, Northwest Territories

Evolving research in Fort Resolution and the Slave River Delta, Northwest Territories, aims to improve understanding of how the natural ecosystem functions and responds to various environmental stressors, as well as to enhance the stewardship of natural resources and the capacity of local residents to respond to change. We seek to integrate approaches that span the natural and social sciences and traditional knowledge understandings of change, employing a research design developed in response to the concerns of a northern community. In doing so, we have strived for a research process that is collaborative, interdisciplinary, policy-oriented, and reflective of northern priorities. These elements characterize the new northern research paradigm increasingly promoted by various federal funding agencies, northern partners, and communities. They represent a holistic perspective in the pursuit of solutions to address complex environmental and socioeconomic concerns about impacts of climate change and resource development on northern societies. However, efforts to fulfill the objectives of this research paradigm are associated with a host of on-the-ground challenges. These challenges include (but are not restricted to) developing effective community partnerships and collaboration and documenting change through interdisciplinary approaches. Here we provide an overview of the components that comprise our interdisciplinary research program and offer an accounting of our formative experiences in confronting these challenges

From Isotopes to TK Interviews: Towards Interdisciplinary Research in Fort Resolution and the Slave River Delta, Northwest Territories

Evolving research in Fort Resolution and the Slave River Delta, Northwest Territories, aims to improve understanding of how the natural ecosystem functions and responds to various environmental stressors, as well as to enhance the stewardship of natural resources and the capacity of local residents to respond to change. We seek to integrate approaches that span the natural and social sciences and traditional knowledge understandings of change, employing a research design developed in response to the concerns of a northern community. In doing so, we have strived for a research process that is collaborative, interdisciplinary, policy-oriented, and reflective of northern priorities. These elements characterize the new northern research paradigm increasingly promoted by various federal funding agencies, northern partners, and communities. They represent a holistic perspective in the pursuit of solutions to address complex environmental and socioeconomic concerns about impacts of climate change and resource development on northern societies. However, efforts to fulfill the objectives of this research paradigm are associated with a host of on-the-ground challenges. These challenges include (but are not restricted to) developing effective community partnerships and collaboration and documenting change through interdisciplinary approaches. Here we provide an overview of the components that comprise our interdisciplinary research program and offer an accounting of our formative experiences in confronting these challenges.Des travaux de recherche en cours à Fort Resolution et dans le delta de la rivière des Esclaves, aux Territoires du Nord-Ouest, visent à mieux comprendre le fonctionnement de l’écosystème naturel, à réagir aux divers facteurs d’agression environnementaux ainsi qu’à rehausser la gérance des ressources naturelles et la capacité des habitants de la région à réagir au changement. Nous cherchons à intégrer des méthodes qui englobent les sciences naturelles et sociales et favorisent la compréhension du changement du point de vue des connaissances traditionnelles. Nous cherchons également à employer une méthodologie respectueuse des inquiétudes de la collectivité du Nord. Ce faisant, nous avons abouti à un processus de recherche caractérisé par la collaboration, l’interdisciplinarité et les politiques, processus qui tient également compte des priorités dans le Nord. Ces éléments définissent le nouveau paradigme de recherche dans le Nord qui est de plus en plus préconisé par divers organismes de subvention fédéraux, partenaires du Nord et collectivités. Ils représentent une perspective holistique en guise de solutions à des enjeux environnementaux et socioéconomiques complexes portant sur les incidences du changement climatique et de l’exploitation des ressources sur les sociétés du Nord. Toutefois, les efforts visant à concrétiser les objectifs de ce paradigme de recherche font face à une multitude de défis. Ces défis comprennent (mais sans s’y restreindre) la formation de partenariats efficaces avec les collectivités, des efforts de collaboration et la prise de notes sur les changements qui s’opèrent grâce à des méthodes interdisciplinaires. Ici, nous fournissons un aperçu des éléments de notre programme de recherche interdisciplinaire et donnons un aperçu de l’expérience formative qui a découlé de ces défis

CESM1(WACCM) Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering Large Ensemble Project

This paper describes the Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering Large Ensemble (GLENS) project, which promotes the use of a unique model dataset, performed with the Community Earth System Model, with the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model as its atmospheric component [CESM1(WACCM)], to investigate global and regional impacts of geoengineering. The performed simulations were designed to achieve multiple simultaneous climate goals, by strategically placing sulfur injections at four different locations in the stratosphere, unlike many earlier studies that targeted globally averaged surface temperature by placing injections in regions at or around the equator. This advanced approach reduces some of the previously found adverse effects of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering, including uneven cooling between the poles and the equator and shifts in tropical precipitation. The 20-member ensemble increases the ability to distinguish between forced changes and changes due to climate variability in global and regional climate variables in the coupled atmosphere, land, sea ice, and ocean system. We invite the broader community to perform in-depth analyses of climate-related impacts and to identify processes that lead to changes in the climate system as the result of a strategic application of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering

Policing cyber-neighbourhoods: Tension monitoring and social media networks

We propose that late modern policing practices, that rely on neighbourhood intelligence, the monitoring of tensions, surveillance and policing by accommo- dation, need to be augmented in light of emerging ‘cyber-neighbourhoods’, namely social media networks. The 2011 riots in England were the first to evidence the widespread use of social media platforms to organise and respond to disorder. The police were ill-equipped to make use of the intelligence emerging from these non-terrestrial networks and were found to be at a disadvantage to the more tech-savvy rioters and the general public. In this paper, we outline the development of the ‘tension engine’ component of the Cardiff Online Social Media ObServatroy (COSMOS). This engine affords users with the ability to monitor social media data streams for signs of high tension which can be analysed in order to identify deviations from the ‘norm’ (levels of cohesion/low tension). This analysis can be overlaid onto a palimpsest of curated data, such as official statistics about neighbourhood crime, deprivation and demography, to provide a multidimensional picture of the ‘terrestrial’ and ‘cyber’ streets. As a consequence, this ‘neighbourhood informatics’ enables a means of questioning official constructions of civil unrest through reference to the user-generated accounts of social media and their relationship to other, curated, social and economic data