Public confidence in policing: a neo-Durkheimian perspective

Public confidence in policing has received much attention in recent years, but few studies outside of the United States have examined the sociological and social–psychological processes that underpin trust and support. This study, conducted in a rural English location, finds that trust and confidence in the police are shaped not by sentiments about risk and crime, but by evaluations of the values and morals that underpin community life. Furthermore, to garner public confidence, the police must be seen first to typify group morals and values and second to treat the public with dignity and fairness. All these findings are consistent with the perspective that people are Durkheimian in their attitudes towards crime, policing and punishment—a perspective developed here in this paper

Anthropology and Open Access

While still largely ignored by many anthropologists, open access (OA) has been a confusing and volatile center around which a wide range of contentious debates and vexing leadership dilemmas orbit. Despite widespread misunderstandings and honest differences of perspective on how and why to move forward, OA frameworks for scholarly communication are now part of the publishing ecology in which all active anthropologists work. Cultural Anthropology is unambiguously a leading journal in the field. The move to transition it toward a gold OA model represents a milestone for the iterative transformation of how cultural anthropologists, along with diverse fellow travelers, communicate more ethically and sustainably with global and diverse publics. On the occasion of this significant shift, we build on the history of OA debates, position statements, and experiments taking place during the past decade to do three things. Using an interview format, we will offer a primer on OA practices in general and in cultural anthropology in particular. In doing so, we aim to highlight some of the special considerations that have animated arguments for OA in cultural anthropology and in neighboring fields built around ethnographic methods and representations. We then argue briefly for a critical anthropology of scholarly communication (including scholarly publishing), one that brings the kinds of engaged analysis for which Cultural Anthropology is particularly well known to bear on this vital aspect of knowledge production, circulation, and valuation. Our field’s distinctive knowledge of social, cultural, political, and economic phenomena should also—but often has not—inform our choices as both global actors and publishing scholars

Phylogeography of the Malagasy Ant Species Odontomachus coquereli

Madagascar is an extremely diverse and geographically complex area boasting levels of endemism that blatantly raise questions about their origins. There is evidence that these endemics arose via insitu diversification during Madagascar\u27s ~88 million year isolation, even though it was essentially in the middle of Gondwana with ample opportunity to acquire inhabitants. Madagascar\u27s high levels of diversity and endemism make it an ideal location to study speciation, especially considering the evidence that such high levels speciation occurred in Madagascar itself. Several hypotheses have been formulated to relate the complex geography to genetic divergence, and thereby speciation. I explore three hypotheses concerning the effect of mountains, rivers, and watersheds on the genetic distribution of the endemic Malagasy ant species Odontomachus coquereli. I recovered three genetic clusters from STRUCTURE arranged from north to south. Genetic diversity in these clusters decreases southward, suggesting a southward migration. Divergence time analysis in IMa2 indicates that these clusters were formed by splits during the last two consecutive ice ages, and the geographical positioning of these clusters indicates that these splits coinciding with ice ages were aided by different montane refugia within the species. Together, the data show that climate change and refugia have been the driving force of genetic structuration in this species

The Story of Colonialism, or Rethinking the Ox-Hide Purchase in Native North America and Beyond

In this paper I offer a comparative assessment of the ox-hide purchase narrative (tale type AT 2400, ATU 927C*; Motif K185.1) in Native North America. Drawing on my own fieldwork and the beginnings of a historic-geographic treatment, I consider the story from the perspective of work on historical consciousness in Native North America and treat it as an opportunity to establish a link between folkloristics and other fields concerned with interpreting the legacies of colonialism

Evaluation of deck casting on the construction performance of straight and skewed steel I-girder bridges

The use of skew in bridges is becoming increasingly more popular with the number of urban or geographical restraints that require unique abutment and pier orientations. The increasing transportation needs in highly-populated areas require more complicated interchanges, along with the use of skewed or even curved bridges. However, the use of skew complicates the design and performance of the bridge. In straight bridges, girder stress and rotations are fairly easy to predict. However, the use of skew in steel I-girder bridges can cause uneven loading and detailing issues with girders and cross-frames. In particular, skew can result in increased warping, which produces a stress phenomenon known as lateral flange bending.;Lateral flange bending (LFB) is the torsional effect in flanges of an I-section that results from warping. Since the st. Venant torsional stiffness for an open cross-section is low, torsional loads are resisted by the girder in the form of lateral bending stresses. The current AASHTO LRFD Specifications use a fixed-end moment approximation to account for LFB in the design phase. The method assumes that cross-frames act as fixed supports and employs fixed-end moment equations to compute LFB moments in respective unbraced segments. During this study, it was found that this approximation is quite accurate for estimating LFB stresses at cross-frame locations; however, the method tends to overestimate LFB in between cross-frame locations.;Therefore, the goal of this project was to assess the AASHTO LRFD approximation for LFB. To accomplish this, a commercial finite element software package (Abaqus) was employed. The finite element modeling technique was used in several parametric matrices of simple-span bridges to determine the key parameters that affect LFB. Once key parameters were identified and assessed, a modification factor was developed which includes the effect of these parameters and directly adjusts the AASHTO LFB approximation. Observing the data developed in this study, it can be seen that the empirical modification significantly improves the accuracy of the approximation in those regions between the cross-frames, which can improve the efficiency of the design of simple span I-girder bridges

Chinese Vernacular Culture in the Global Midwest: A Workshop Held at Indiana University, September 4-6, 2014

A report on a project planning workshop--Chinese Vernacular Culture in the Global Midwest--held at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, September 4-6, 2014.(1) College Arts and Humanities Institute (CAHI, College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University. (2) The Humanities without Walls Consortium with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation