Cultural Criminology: The Time is Now

Cultural criminology understandscrime and its control asproductsofmeaning. It exploressimultaneously the macro-, meso-and micro-levels of social life, sensitive tothe operation of power, in order to produce critical analyses that are politically potent and germane to contemporary circumstances. The cultural criminological project is broad and inclusive, but focused and urgent. It relishes coalition and collaboration, clarity of thought and purpose,praxis and intervention. In its relatively short history,it has carved out a distinctive identity whilst contributing something to the development of a host of other perspectives. This article begins by offeringa contemporary definition of cultural criminology, including some reflection on its antecedentsand theresponses that have recently been addressed toits critics. This is followed by a discussion of the concerns cultural criminology shares with a variety of complementary perspectives and how it can be used to address malign structures and discourses. Finally, the relationship thatthe sub-discipline might form with transformative politicsisexploredbriefly. As truth and meaning have become the theatresof struggle between fundamentally opposed political positionspromising radically different visions of crime, criminalisation, criminal justice and everyday life,never has cultural criminology been more prescient and necessary. Thetime for cultural criminology is now

A bibliometric index based on the complete list of cited Publications

We propose a new index, the j-index, which is defined for an author as the sum of the square roots of the numbers of citations to each of the author’s publications. The idea behind the j-index it to remedy a drawback of the h-index - that the h-index does not take into account the full citation record of a researcher. The square root function is motivated by our desire to avoid the possible bias that may occur with a simple sum when an author has several very highly cited papers. We compare the j-index to the h-index, the g-index and the total citation count for three subject areas using several association measures. Our results indicate that that the association between the j-index and the other indices varies according to the subject area. One explanation of this variation may be due to the proportion of citations to publications of the researcher that are in the h-core. The j-index is not an h-index variant, and as such is intended to complement rather than necessarily replace the h-index and other bibliometric indicators, thus providing a more complete picture of a researcher’s achievements

A Cultural Criminology of ‘New’ Jihad: Insights from Propaganda Magazines

The backgrounds and modus operandi of more recent jihadi terrorists tend to share factors and characteristics more typically associated with non-political violence such as mass- killings and gang violence. Their attacks, moreover, seem to have been precipitated not by the direct instructions of a formal hierarchy but by the encouragement of propaganda produced and disseminated by networked, media-savvy terrorist groups. It is necessary to explain how these ‘recruitment’ efforts work. Cultural criminology with its understanding of the relationship between mediated meaning and individual experience, can provide such an analysis. The paper presents a qualitative document analysis of 32 propaganda magazines produced by the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. It demonstrates that they contain significantly more than religious rhetoric and military strategy. Rather, they are part of a process that crystalizes a jihadi subculture that appeals to disaffected and/or marginalized, excitement- seeking youths. The magazines cultivate violence by constructing a militarized style that celebrates outlaw status, where violence is eroticized and aestheticized. They idealize the notion of a jihadi terrorist that is tough and willing to commit brutal violence. The lifestyle portrayed offers the possibility of heroism, excitement, belonging and imminent fame, themes often espoused by conventional, Western consumer culture. The magazines occasionally draw on street jargon, urban music, fashion, films and video games. The subcultural model of jihadi propaganda we explicate provides a novel way of understanding terrorist recruiting tactics and motivations that are not necessarily in opposition to contemporary conventional criminal and ‘mainstream’ cultures, but in resonance with them

Scumbags! An ethnography of the interactions between street-based youth and police officers

The interactions between young, disadvantaged, urban men and the rank-and-file officers who police them should be understood as layered structural, cultural and emotional phenomena. Using data from a multi-dimensional ethnographic project, this paper demonstrates that structural issues manifest in cultural scripts which place both groups in confrontation with each other. Within a tightly bound geographic district, competitiveness between them can be animated by intense emotionality. Frustration, humiliation, disdain and the potential for elation push both parties into behaviours that cannot be understood through discretion and confidence models of decision-making alone. Ultimately, through recognising how questions of inclusion/exclusion play out in simultaneously structural, cultural and emotive ways, the problems generated by negative interactions between the two groups might be meaningfully understood

Commodifying compliance? UK urban music and the new mediascape

Subcultural theory and cultural criminology have traditionally viewed ‘underground’ youth movements as providing images of deviance/resistance which the cultural industries harvest to turn a profit. The logic follows that street and sub cultures imbue products with a ‘transgressive edge’ that increases their appeal within youth markets. This paper uses the example of UK ‘grime’ music to demonstrate how this dynamic cannot be viewed as applying universally in contemporary times. Where their street orientated content is censured, many grime artistes express a desire for commercial success which would ultimately emerge through muting their rhetorical links to crime and violence and explicitly championing ‘mainstream’ values. This case is used as an empirical cue to explore the use and critique of the concept of ‘resistance’ within cultural criminology and subcultural theory. The paper problematizes commodification of resistance discourses as they apply to the rugged culture of the streets and indeed its supposed ‘oppositional’ character where disadvantaged urban youth clearly embody and practice the logic of neoliberalism. It furthermore suggests that certain critiques of cultural criminology go too far in denying any meaning to criminality and subcultural practice beyond consumer desire. Ultimately, the concept of ‘defiance’ is suggested as a useful tool to understand the norms of and behaviours of the excluded

Measuring impact of academic research in computer and information science on society

Academic research in computer & information science (CIS) has contributed immensely to all aspects of society. As academic research today is substantially supported by various government sources, recent political changes have created ambivalence amongst academics about the future of research funding. With uncertainty looming, it is important to develop a framework to extract and measure the information relating to impact of CIS research on society to justify public funding, and demonstrate the actual contribution and impact of CIS research outside academia. A new method combining discourse analysis and text mining of a collection of over 1000 pages of impact case study documents written in free-text format for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 was developed in order to identify the most commonly used categories or headings for reporting impact of CIS research by UK Universities (UKU). According to the research reported in REF2014, UKU acquired 83 patents in various areas of CIS, created 64 spin-offs, generated £857.5 million in different financial forms, created substantial employment, reached over 6 billion users worldwide and has helped save over £1 billion Pounds due to improved processes etc. to various sectors internationally, between 2008 and 2013

Strategic Trade Policy with Endogenous Choice of Quality and Asymmetric Costs

This paper examines the strategic trade policy incentives for investment policies towards quality improvements in a vertically differentiated exporting industry. Firms first compete in qualities and then export to a third country market based on Bertrand or Cournot competition. Optimal policies are asymmetric across the two producing countries. Under Bertrand competition, the low-quality country subsidizes investment to raise export quality, while the high-quality country imposes a tax so as to reduce the quality of its already high quality exports. Under Cournot competition, the results are reversed with a tax in the low-quality country and a subsidy in the high-quality country.

Genome-wide inference of ancestral recombination graphs

The complex correlation structure of a collection of orthologous DNA sequences is uniquely captured by the "ancestral recombination graph" (ARG), a complete record of coalescence and recombination events in the history of the sample. However, existing methods for ARG inference are computationally intensive, highly approximate, or limited to small numbers of sequences, and, as a consequence, explicit ARG inference is rarely used in applied population genomics. Here, we introduce a new algorithm for ARG inference that is efficient enough to apply to dozens of complete mammalian genomes. The key idea of our approach is to sample an ARG of n chromosomes conditional on an ARG of n-1 chromosomes, an operation we call "threading." Using techniques based on hidden Markov models, we can perform this threading operation exactly, up to the assumptions of the sequentially Markov coalescent and a discretization of time. An extension allows for threading of subtrees instead of individual sequences. Repeated application of these threading operations results in highly efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo samplers for ARGs. We have implemented these methods in a computer program called ARGweaver. Experiments with simulated data indicate that ARGweaver converges rapidly to the true posterior distribution and is effective in recovering various features of the ARG for dozens of sequences generated under realistic parameters for human populations. In applications of ARGweaver to 54 human genome sequences from Complete Genomics, we find clear signatures of natural selection, including regions of unusually ancient ancestry associated with balancing selection and reductions in allele age in sites under directional selection. Preliminary results also indicate that our methods can be used to gain insight into complex features of human population structure, even with a noninformative prior distribution.Comment: 88 pages, 7 main figures, 22 supplementary figures. This version contains a substantially expanded genomic data analysi

How 'gangsters' become jihadists: Bourdieu, criminology and the crime-terrorism nexus

A background in 'ordinary' crime, violence and drug use seems to characterize many European individuals recently involved in ISIS related jihadi-violence. With its long tradition of studying marginalized populations and street culture, criminology offers novel ways to theoretically explore these developments. In this paper, we demonstrate how Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of capital, habitus, and field allow for a nuanced analysis of how certain individuals move from street to politico-religious criminality. We show that 'investments' in street capital can be expended within the field of violent jihadism. We argue that an embodied street habitus supports continuities in attitudes and behaviours within different violent contexts, and furthermore that street social capital facilitates recruitment to violent jihadism. Finally, reflection is offered on resonances between street and jihadi fields. The paper explains how continuities in lifestyle can exist between the European city and Middle Eastern battleground