The monster and the police: Dexter to Hobbes

On 25 February 2002, Rafael Perez, a former officer of the LAPD’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums unit (CRASH), appeared in court accused of various crimes: covering up a bank robbery, shooting and framing an innocent citizen, stealing and selling cocaine from evidence lockers, being a member of the Los Angeles gang called the Bloods, and murdering the rapper The Notorious B.I.G. In his statement to the court he pointed out that above the threshold of doors that lead to CRASH offices there are philosophical mottos such as ‘Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall’ and ‘We intimidate those who intimidate others’. Perez commented: ‘To those mottos, I offer this: “Whoever chases monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself.”

International law as primitive accumulation: Or, the secret of systematic colonization

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright © The Author, 2012.This article aims to bring the category of ‘primitive accumulation’ into the vocabulary of critical and Marxist international legal theory. It does so by first elaborating the critique of international law that has recently developed through the lens of colonialism, by bringing to bear on the issue Marx’s thinking about colonization and thus his arguments concerning accumulation. In so doing the article also seeks to be an immanent critique of critical international legal theory itself, by suggesting that critical international legal theory is limited by its failure to properly use and think through what Marx might offer. The bulk of the article involves some historical claims, but the central argument is theoretical: offering a category to consolidate the connections that have been made among capital, colonization and international law. This requires a revelation of the secret of Marx’s Capital; the secret of capital and the secret of systematic colonization, all of which takes us to the secret of international law

‘O effeminacy! Effeminacy!’ War, masculinity and the myth of liberal peace

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ 2011 The Author.This article challenges a received wisdom in the liberal peace thesis, namely that the roots of the conjunction of liberalism and peace can be traced back to the idea of an essentially pacific commercial civil society in the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment. The article instead shows that the Scottish Enlightenment was committed to the idea of military virtue. Textual analysis of the work of Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson reveals a deep and abiding commitment to martial values. The article explores this commitment via an account of the rise of concerns over ‘effeminacy’ in the 18th century, understood as a threat to both military virtue and masculine strength. In exploring these ideas the article claims that IR has helped perpetuate one of today’s key political myths: that liberalism is committed to peace

Red and Dead: Reply to critics

This article is a response to the comments made by Illan Rua Wall, Caroline Holmqvist, Claudia Aradau and Yari Lanci on my book War Power, Police Power (Edinburgh UP, 2014)

The Fascist Moment: Security, Exclusion, Extermination

Security is cultivated and mobilized by enacting exclusionary practices, and exclusion is cultivated and realized on security grounds. This article explores the political dangers that lie in this connection, dangers which open the door to a fascist mobilization in the name of security. To do so the article first asks: what happens to our understanding of fascism if we view it through the lens of security? But then a far more interesting question emerges: what happens to our understanding of security if we view it through the lens of fascism? Out of these questions it is suggested that the central issue might be less a question of “security and exclusion” and much more a question of “security and extermination.

A Partially Linear Censored Quantile Regression Model for Unemployment Duration

Censored Regression Quantile (CRQ) methods provide a powerful and flexible approach for the analysis of censored survival data when standard linear models are felt to be appropriate. In many cases however, greater flexibility is desired to go beyond the usual multiple regression paradigm. One area of common interest is that of partially linear models, where one (or more) of the explanatory variables are assumed to act on the response through a non-linear function. Here the CRQ approach (Portnoy, 2003) is extended to such partially linear setting. Basic consistency results are presented. A simulation experiment and analysis of unemployment data example justify the use of the partially linear approach over methods based on the Cox proportional hazards regression model and methods not permitting nonlinearity.quantile regression ; partially linear models ; B-splines ; censored data ; unemployment duration

State, power, administration: Marxist and Foucauldian perspectives on state development in Britain, 1832-1918

This thesis seeks to contribute an original account of state power by reconceptualising the state-civil society distinction through the category of political administration. Through an analysis of the development of the state in Britain between 1832 and 1918 it seeks to show why such a reconceptualisation is necessary and the features which distinguish it from other accounts. This task is performed via an immanent critique of the work of Hegel, Marx and Foucault. It is argued that historical materialism has lost the recognition of the constitutive power of the state found in Hegel and Marx, a recognition which needs to be recuperated in order for an adequate theoretical account of state power to be sustained. From 1832 in Britain this constitutive power was expressed in the development of new administrative mechanisms through which the state ordered and structured civil society. The threefold function of political administration - the fashioning of labour power, the subsumption of struggle and the constitution of legal subjects - place it with law at the heart of the operation of state power, and it is this that political theory in general, and historical materialist theory in particular, need to recognise. The category of political administration is developed through a critique of Foucault's account of administration which, it is argued, lacks an understanding of the political. It is argued that political administration emerges as a response to class struggle and that from 1832 the British state was shaped through this struggle; this use of struggle is counterposed to Foucault's category of resistance

Design philosophy issues of fiber reinforced polymer reinforced concrete structures

The conventional design philosophy for reinforced concrete (RC) relies heavily on the ductile properties of steel. These ductile properties are used as a "fuse" and conceal the large uncertainty in the determination of modes of failure caused directly by concrete. Current design guidelines for fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) RC structures have inappropriately adopted the same design philosophy used for steel RC, leading either to the adoption of conservative safety factors or reduced structural reliability. A reliability-based analysis of FRP RC beams shows that the current, very conservative partial safety factors for FRP reinforcement on their own do not influence the structural safety of overreinforced concrete elements. Proposals are made for the modification of the material partial safety factors to achieve target safety levels

Behaviour of concrete columns with drilled holes

Holes drilled out to install additional services or equipment, such as for ducts through columns, beams or walls, can lead to loss of strength and possible structural failure. Until now little work has been done on holes in columns and, hence, the present study aims to examine the amount of strength lost owing to the presence of holes in columns. The reported experimental work deals with different parameters such as the number and dimensions of the holes and their relative position. It is shown that, for large diameter holes, a section capacity loss of up to 50% is possible. © 2006 Thomas Telford Ltd

Design issues for concrete reinforced with steel fibers, including fibers recovered from used tires

The writers are investigating the use of steel fibers, recovered from used tires (RSF), as concrete reinforcement, aiming at the development of design recommendations. This paper presents part of this research and examines initially an existing design guideline, developed by RILEM for steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC), in order to assess the suitability of the guideline for the flexural design of concrete reinforced with RSF (RSFRC). This examination indicates that, although the RILEM guideline is in general suitable for the flexural design of RSFRC, there are some fundamental issues related to the evaluation of the tensile stress-strain behavior of SFRC that affect the accuracy of the guideline. Thus, based on this conclusion, a new approach is outlined for the evaluation of the tensile stress - strain behavior of SFRC and models are derived for different types of RSF and industrially produced fibers. These models are applied to the flexural design of concrete reinforced with RSF (RSFRC) and results are compared with those obtained by using the RILEM tensile stress-strain models. It is concluded that the model proposed in this study is more conservative and accurate than the RILEM models. Recommendations are also made on values of tensile strain to be used as the ultimate limit state, when predicting the resistance capacity of SFRC and RSFRC. © 2006 ASCE