217 research outputs found

    Developing a ‘Global South’ Perspective of Street Children’s Involvement in Organised Crime

    Get PDF
    The majority of studies about gangs come from the global North meaning that we know very little about young people’s involvement in organized crime in the global South. This chapter explores the roles that Bangladeshi street children play organized crime groups by drawing on interviews with street children, criminal justice practitioners, non-government organization workers and community members, and over three years of participant observation of Bangladesh and its criminal justice system. This paper argues that in order to understand street children’s involvement in Bangladesh’s organized crime groups – the mastaans – it is necessary to expand the boundaries of criminology to include development studies’ concepts of social protection, patron-clientism and child labor. The chapter highlights the need to build a more cohesive collaboration between criminology and development studies

    Developing authenticity, building connections; exploring research methodologies in Asia

    Get PDF
    The article considers the methodological opportunities and challenges associated with three large-scale ethnographic studies conducted in Bangladesh, China and Nepal. It reflects on how locally, and regionally embedded cultural practices and meanings shape Asian criminological research projects. The article argues that conducting research in certain Asian contexts benefits from an awareness and sensitivity to specific modalities of culture in these regions. The following deliberations reflect on the importance of developing authenticity and building connections, embedded within concepts specific and relevant to research in Asia – relationality, guanxi, patronage and adda. The challenges of the research projects, of which there were many, are also discussed, and include dichotomies between research conducted in the global North and global South, coloniality, ethics and issues faced by a British researcher, conducting research in Asia

    A ‘Lens of Labor’: Re-Conceptualizing Young People’s Involvement in Organized Crime

    Get PDF
    Millions of the world’s children engage in labour, often exploitative and essential to their survival. Child labour is closely related to crime; global discourse illustrates how young people are victims of forced and bonded labour and recent studies from the global South demonstrate how young people are hired as the ‘illicit labourers’ of organised crime groups. Despite this, there is a tendency to consider young people, not as labourers but as victims of trafficking or as offenders (often in relation to gangs). To address this lacuna, the article draws on data from 3 studies conducted in the global South to develop a conceptual framework suitable for understanding the intersection between labour and crime. The article develops a metaphorical ‘labour lens’; a lens which centres and prioritises labour and instrumental drivers for crime, embedded within wider structures of illicit markets, established organised crime, state:crime collaboration and the need for children to work to survive. The article integrates economic drivers for involvement in organised crime with the moral economy, within the context of ecological framework of crime, embedded with wider issues of coloniality. In doing so the article develops a new conceptual framework for considering young people’s involvement in organised crime

    Understanding the Psychology of Gang Violence: Implications for Designing Effective Violence Reduction Interventions

    Get PDF
    An exploratory study to add to the understanding of the psychological processes contributing to violence carried out by gang members

    Lingin Derived Organic Matter in Georgia Coastal Waters

    Get PDF
    The importance of riverine- and saltmarsh-derived organic matter to the food web of Georgia coastal waters has been a focus of ecological research over the past thirty years. Studies based on energy budgets, carbon flux measurements, and stable isotope ratios have generally implicated marsh detritus as an important, although not always dominant, source of organic matter within the marshes and adjacent estuaries (Teal 1962, Odum and de la Cruz 1967, Haines 1977, Peterson and Howarth 1987). However, data on the contribution of exported marsh and riverine organic matter to productivity futher offshore, in continental shelf waters off the coast of Georgia, remains equivocal (Chalmers et al. 1985, Hopkinson 1985). Dissolved lignin-derived compounds provide molecular level markers by which to determine the presence of terrestrially-derived organic matter in marine ecosystems. Lignin is found only in vascular plants and has no known oceanic sources. Thus its presence in seawater serves as unequivocal evidence of input of marsh or riverine organic matter, and indeed such lignin-derived material has been found in open ocean water a great distance from its probable point of origin (Meyers-Schulte and Hedges 1986). In this study, we present data on concentrations and distribution of lignin phenols in seawater samples collected during October and November 1987 on the continental shelf of the southeastern U.S., between Cape Hattaras and Cape Canaveral

    Distribution of Terrestrially Derived Dissolved Organic Matter on the Southeastern United States Continental Shelf

    Get PDF
    Dissolved lignin-derived compounds in seawater indicate the presence of organic matter originating from vascular plants and therefore from terrestrial (upland and coastal marsh) ecosystems. We used a hydrophobic resin to concentrate lignin-rich humic substances and to determine concentrations of lignin oxidation products (vanillyl lignin phenols) for waters of the continental shelf of the southeastern U.S. Lignin phenol concentrations ranged from 0.05 to 4.2µg liter‒1 and accounted for 0.002–0.13% of the total dissolved organic carbon (DOC) pool in continental shelf waters. Dissolved lignin concentrations were generally highest near the shore and in those areas receiving greatest river and marsh discharge. Concentrations varied on both short-term (weekly) and seasonal time scales, however, indicating that the contribution of terrestrially derived dissolved organic matter to the C budget of the shelf is quite variable. Salinity (\u3e 31‰) was significantly correlated (negatively) with lignin phenol concentrations during three of four cruises, suggesting largely conservative mixing of lignin-derived material on the shelf In selected rivers and salt marshes contributing terrestrially derived organic matter to the continental shelf, lignin phenol C accounted for 0.14–1.0% of the DOC. A simple mixing model which assumes no biological or physical sinks of lignin-derived material during transport from terrestrial sources to the shelf predicts that an average of 6–36% of nearshore DOC derives from terrestrial ecosystems, depending on whether the terrestrial end-member (lignin source) is assumed to be a river or a salt marsh, while 5–26% of inner shelf DOC and 3–18% of mid- to outer-shelf DOC is of terrestrial origin

    Projected Changes to Growth and Mortality of Hawaiian Corals over the Next 100 Years

    Get PDF
    BACKGROUND: Recent reviews suggest that the warming and acidification of ocean surface waters predicated by most accepted climate projections will lead to mass mortality and declining calcification rates of reef-building corals. This study investigates the use of modeling techniques to quantitatively examine rates of coral cover change due to these effects. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Broad-scale probabilities of change in shallow-water scleractinian coral cover in the Hawaiian Archipelago for years 2000-2099 A.D. were calculated assuming a single middle-of-the-road greenhouse gas emissions scenario. These projections were based on ensemble calculations of a growth and mortality model that used sea surface temperature (SST), atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO(2)), observed coral growth (calcification) rates, and observed mortality linked to mass coral bleaching episodes as inputs. SST and CO(2) predictions were derived from the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) multi-model dataset, statistically downscaled with historical data. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The model calculations illustrate a practical approach to systematic evaluation of climate change effects on corals, and also show the effect of uncertainties in current climate predictions and in coral adaptation capabilities on estimated changes in coral cover. Despite these large uncertainties, this analysis quantitatively illustrates that a large decline in coral cover is highly likely in the 21(st) Century, but that there are significant spatial and temporal variances in outcomes, even under a single climate change scenario
    • …
    corecore