bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Women and Crime, 1750–2000
Authors: van der Heijden Manon
Published: July 2016

This essay discusses women and patterns of crime in the Western world across time. Although criminologists generally agree that women are responsible for a considerably smaller proportion of prosecuted crime than men, historical studies indicate that they played a much more prominent role in crime before the twentieth century. This essay pays attention to explanatory factors for past high female crime rates, such as level of urbanization, migration patterns, and women’s public lifestyles. It also examines various important historical debates on changes in patterns of crime and gender, including the debate about the decline of female crime in Western Europe after 1800 and the discussion regarding women’s changing attitudes toward violence beginning in the eighteenth century. Finally, it examines shifts in female crime rates in the last two decades, concluding that more systematic data on male and female crime rates that include variation across time and space are needed.
Policing Minorities
Authors: de Koster Margo , Reinke Herbert
Published: July 2016

This essay seeks to broaden the discussion of the policing of minorities to situate it within its longer history of the policing of migrants. Since theancien régime, the explicit endeavor to control migrants has been a major driving force behind the development of modern policing and the professionalization of police practices. This essay charts how, from the sixteenth century onward, the movements of migrants and traveling groups were increasingly controlled through vagrancy regulation, poor laws, and the creation of specialized policing agencies and techniques. It also considers the realities of policing and repression of vagrancy in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, showing how the intensity of repression varied considerably. Finally, the essay discusses minority policing and the recruitment of minorities into the police during the post–Second World War period.
Crime, Criminology, and the Crime Genre
Authors: Cavender Gray , Jurik Nancy
Published: July 2016

For years, many criminologists have argued that the crime genre misrepresents crime and the criminal justice system, causing misperceptions among the public. However, other scholars have suggested that despite inaccuracies, the crime genre is actually far more reflective of the workings of the criminal justice system than previously thought. This essay traces the relationship of crime genre productions such as novels, film, and television to past and present criminal justice practices and trends. Focusing on three thematic linkage areas between the crime genre and criminal justice practice—science and technology, cultural diversity, and security/insecurity—it demonstrates both opposition and synchronicity in comparisons of the crime genre to real-world crime across time periods. The essay argues that the parallels as well as the divergences between fictional constructions and the “reality” found in criminological analyses can help scholars gain significant insight into the problems in each.
Contested Spaces
Authors: Ystehede Per Jørgen
Published: July 2016

This article provides an outline of the history of crime museums, monuments, and crime memorials and suggests how these can be understood as historical, social, and cultural phenomena. First, some common characteristics of crime museums, monuments, and memorials are set out. Second, a short historical outline of the rise of the (crime) museum from the Renaissance period until the twenty-first century is provided, followed by a consideration of crime museums, crime monuments, and memorials as separate categories and objects of study. A selection of examples of crime museums, monuments, and memorials is presented with the aim of showing some particular perspectives on and approaches to the study of crime museums, monuments, and memorials, and their relevance to criminological research.
The Origins of “Modern” Policing
Authors: Finnane Mark
Published: July 2016

The public police is an inseparable part of the modern state, and the origins and development of the ideas of police, policing, and their institutional locations have been the subject of considerable historical debate over the last four decades. This essay reviews the historiography of modern policing, which can be divided into three strands. The first has aimed to revise earlier accounts identifying modern civil policing as the legacy of Robert Peel’s London Metropolitan Police. The second has highlighted the importance of an earlier European conception of policing as a comprehensive government of populations. The third has been preoccupied with the origins, function, and diffusion of militarized gendarmerie-style policing, closely identified with state security and French prerevolutionary police innovations. This essay further examines how these approaches have been closely linked to contemporary debates about the powers, functions, and governance of the modern public police.
Detectives and Forensic Science
Authors: Shpayer-Makov Haia
Published: July 2016

This exploratory essay outlines various pivotal trends in the professionalization of police detection in England, France, and the United States from the mid-eighteenth century to the Second World War. Key landmarks in the evolution of the role of the detective from criminal turned paid informant, or from nonspecialist law enforcer, to a professional member of a detective unit are traced. The essay draws upon the history of forensic science to highlight the interface between detection and forensic science and to point toward forensic science methodologies that made significant inroads in the world of police detection, thereby enhancing its professionalization.
Histories of Crime and Criminal Justice and the Historical Analysis of Criminal Law
Authors: Dubber Markus D.
Published: July 2016

This essay reflects on the relationship between the history of crime, the history of criminal justice, and the history of criminal law. It suggests an account of the historical-comparative analysis of criminal law that locates it within the general project of critical analysis of law and police on the one hand, and a rich multidisciplinary historiography of crime on the other hand. There are as many histories of crime as there concepts of crime. As a social phenomenon, social historians are interested; law may figure into these histories as one factor in constructing the social environment of crime. Social histories ought not to preclude other perspectives, such as moral, cultural, and political histories. Ideally, histories of crime will come from various perspectives, but with clearly defined tools of analysis, and will complement one another to generate a nuanced and contextual kind of historical inquiry.
The Death Penalty
Authors: McGowen Randall
Published: July 2016

Although the death penalty often appears a timeless question, the last three centuries have witnessed dramatic changes in the frequency and organization of capital punishment in Europe and America. This essay examines the history of the death penalty and how it has reflected changing social and judicial ideas. The punishment became a target of intense complaint in the eighteenth century, which led to a dramatic decline in its use and its disappearance from public view. Yet while abolition excited passionate commitment, other groups remained committed to the retention of the death penalty, seeing it as vital to the security of society as well as a legitimate expression of a healthy emotion. The fortunes of abolition or retention have been shaped by political developments in particular nations at different times, and the penalty retains a unique ability to condense and channel powerful sentiments about the nature and goals of state power.
The Mad, the Bad and the Pauper
Authors: Scicluna Sandra
Published: July 2016

This essay analyzes the development of carceral institutions, such as asylums, workhouses, and hospitals, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to show that although these institutions were established with the stated aim of controlling crime, in reality they sought to control the poor, the lazy, and the morally corrupt. The rise and fall of these institutions and the problems they faced is incorporated into a discussion on the treatment of women, children, debtors, and the poor. The island of Malta, as crossroads for power, religion, and culture is used as a snapshot example to assess the extent to which continental European and English ideas shaped carceral institutions elsewhere.
Histories of Interpersonal Violence in Europe and North America, 1700–Present
Authors: McMahon Richard
Published: July 2016

Do changes in patterns of violence in Europe and North America from the eighteenth century to the present day reflect an increasing marginalization of interpersonal violence in social and cultural life? Can these changes be interpreted as a consequence of the benefits of specifically modern forms of economic organization and social interaction, as well as profound alterations in cultural and political life? These questions have exercised the minds of historians on both sides of the Atlantic for at least the last forty years and have provoked a range of methodological and theoretical debates. This essay offers an overview of the key texts and debates by examining both quantitative and contextual research on interpersonal violence and provides some wider reflections on the place of such violence in Western cultures since the eighteenth century.
Ideas and Practices of Prostitution Around the World
Authors: Rodriguez Garcia Magaly
Published: July 2016

This essay provides a global overview of prostitution from the early modern period to the present. Although the distinction between “premodern” and “modern” prostitution is not necessarily sharp, the profound political, military, and socioeconomic changes from roughly 1600 onward had an important impact on the sale of sex. Worldwide, the practice of prostitution and societal reactions to it were influenced by processes of colonization, industrialization, urbanization, the rise of nation-states, military modernization, nationalism, and war, as well as revolutions in politics, agriculture, transport, and communication. A long historical and broad geographical perspective reveals the continuities and discontinuities in the way commercial sex was practiced, perceived, and policed. This essay paper approaches prostitution from a double (top-down and bottom-up) perspective that integrates criminology and labor theory, presenting the views of authorities, anti-vice campaigners, and society at large while situating prostitution as an integral part of labor history.
C. Wright Mills,
Authors: Genieys William
Published: July 2016

This chapter examinesThe Power Elite, a radical work by C. Wright Mills that challenges the foundations of US liberal democracy and analyses the conditions under which democratic pluralism in the country can be reversed. Focusing on the theory of divided and united elites in relation to the system of checks and balances, Mills argues that the emergence of a power elite in the United States after 1945 necessitates a reevaluation of the foundations of democratic pluralism due to the significant changes in the competition for power and alternation in office at different levels of government. He also contends that members of only three elite groups had access to positions of national power: the “corporate rich,” the “warlords,” and the members of the “political directorate.” This chapter considers the rise and the fall of the elite model by assessing the four strands of Mills’s thought, one of which concerns the formation of state elites as the “true” power elite.
Thomas R. Dye,
Authors: Goldsmith Michael
Published: July 2016

This chapter examinesPolitics, Economics and the Public: Policy Outcomes in the American States, a book by Thomas Dye that highlights the importance of politics in determining public policy. First published in 1966, Dye focuses on the extent to which political variables influenced policy in comparison with economic ones, in particular economic development. He analyzes the impact of economic development and political variables, such as party and electoral systems on five policy areas: education, welfare, highways, tax/revenue policy, and public regulatory policy. Dye also measures economic development in terms of urbanization, industrialization, wealth, and education. This chapter discusses the importance of Dye’s book in the political science literature on public policy by setting it in the context of the state of political science of the period.
Fritz W. Scharpf, “The Joint-Decision Trap: Lessons from German Federalism and European Integration”
Authors: Héritier Adrienne
Published: July 2016

This chapter examines the joint decision trap (JDT), a decision-making mechanism developed in 1988 by Fritz Scharpf to show the link between higher level government’s decisions and the unanimous or consensus agreement of lower level governments. JDT explains how the interlinking of decision-making processes translates to suboptimal policy outcomes because higher level decisions can be blocked by each lower level actor. The chapter discusses how the concept and theory of JDT offer important insights into the dynamic of European decision-making, but by no means all of its aspects. It considers the definition of JDT and its important contribution to theoretical and empirical and research on European decision-making. It then evaluates some of the arguments against JDT and the limits of its explanatory power, as well as Scharpf’s alternative to the theoretical debate between (liberal) intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism. The chapter concludes by assessing the continuing heuristic value of JDT.
Graham T. Allison,
Authors: Vanhoonacker Sophie , Wangen Patrice
Published: July 2016

This chapter comments on Graham Allison’s 1971 book,Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, a classic that occupies an important place in disciplines ranging from political science and public administration to international relations and business studies. Allison offers a critical analysis of governmental decision-making during the Cuban missile crisis, one of the most challenging crises of the Cold War, through three conceptual lenses: rational actor, organizational behavior, and governmental politics. After a brief introduction on Allison and the broader context in which his work took shape, the chapter considers the continuing relevance ofEssence of Decisionfor scholars in foreign policy and public administration. More specifically, it discusses Allison’s rational actor, organizational behavior, and governmental behavior models and how each of them identifies different explanatory factors for the decisions that were taken regarding the crisis.
Michael D. Cohen, James G. March, and Johan P. Olsen, “A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice”
Authors: Jann Werner
Published: July 2016

This chapter examines “A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice,” a paper authored by Michael D. Cohen, James G. March, and Johan P. Olsen. It first discusses the assumptions of the garbage can model about decision-making in organizations, paying particular attention its three main elements: problematic preferences, unclear technologies, and fluid participation. It then considers four “relatively independent streams” and their interrelations: problems, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities. The chapter also assesses the paper’s main impact by focusing on organization theory and the original formal model before turning to the more specific areas of policy-making, administrative reform, and institutional theory.
Ian Ayres and John Braithwaite,
Authors: Lodge Martin
Published: July 2016

This chapter focuses onResponsive Regulation: Transcending the Deregulation Debate(1992), a book by Ian Ayres and John Braithwaite that occupies a prominent place in the field of regulation. Combining law and economics with socio-legal studies, the book deals with a dynamic and gradual sanctioning regime known as the enforcement pyramid and favors the inclusion of third-party actors. This chapter considers the intellectual background and central argument ofResponsive Regulationbefore assessing its overall contribution. It then examines three themes that are central to the book: the role of inspectors and their enforcement strategies, the importance of discretionary decision-making, and the role of regulatee motivations. Finally, it discusses some criticisms ofResponsive Regulationand the immediate responses to them.
Poets, Patronage, and the Prince’s Court
Authors: Wilks Timothy
Published: July 2016

This chapter examines Prince Henry’s emergent court during the years 1603 to 1612. It traces the development of a court culture that drew upon the contingent spheres of London publishing and public theatre to express the interests and ambitions of the prince’s circle. Both the patronage of writers and the establishment of libraries are presented as priorities of the court in its formative years. Shakespeare’s tragicomedies, all written in this period, respond to the interests in exploration, colonization, British identity and heritage being strongly advanced at Henry’s court; though unlike Jonson, Shakespeare appears not to have written for Henry. After Henry’s death, Protestant pastoral, having, in the Jacobean age, briefly found a court with which it could sympathize, is seen to change into an opposition poetry.
The Gordian Knot of Policy
Authors: Gajda Alexandra
Published: July 2016

In his exploration of kingship, Shakespeare exhibits a keen engagement with contemporary debates about the conflict between classical and Christian ethics and ‘statecraft’—the morally compromised behaviour employed by successful political actors in the fallen world. This chapter explores the expression of ideas of ‘policy’ or reason of state in post-Reformation Europe and their application by English writers to monarchical rule in a world rent by religious schism. Often associated with the influence of Machiavelli, Lipsius, and Botero, princely statecraft was most prominently invoked in negative senses by authors in the great polemical battles of the Reformation, where Protestant and Catholic accused each other of manipulating religion for wicked political ends. But the notion that the prudent prince might be required to compromise conventional ethical codes for the stability of state and commonwealth gained cautious acceptance amongst some apologists for strong monarchical rule in early modern England.
The Bible in English Culture
Authors: Tadmor Naomi
Published: July 2016

William Shakespeare’s thirty-nine plays contain numerous biblical references. Of the 151 English Psalms, for example, twenty-nine only receive no mention, while a total of about 350 phrases are quoted by Shakespeare from the remaining Psalms. The frequent mention of the Bible by a playwright such as Shakespeare was the outcome of four overlapping processes, explained in the chapter. First, there was the consolidation of the English biblical codex, largely in the context of the Reformation. Second, the Bible was propagated through church reading, widely prevalent catechisms and prayer books, as well as private and domestic reading—all of which rendered it widely familiar. Third, it is important to note the unprecedented scale of the dissemination, owing to mass print production. Finally, the chapter explains the processes of ‘Englishing’, whereby the biblical translations of the Tudor and early Stuart period rendered the ancient text in familiar terms, assisting its assimilation.
Cuckold’s Haven
Authors: Amussen Susan D.
Published: July 2016

This chapter uses the cuckold, the man whose wife is unfaithful, to explore connections between gender and the important theme of inversion in early modern popular culture. The cuckold reminds us that the social challenge of inversion was as much the result of the failure of superiors to govern properly as the misbehaviour of women and other subordinates. By examining popular practice in skimmingtons, libels, and insults, symbolic expressions of cuckoldry such as horns, and depictions of cuckolds in popular literary culture, including jestbooks proverbs, ballads, and theatre, this essay shows how cuckold humour was used to contain anxieties about disorder in early modern society. It also explores how inverted gender relationships were connected by early modern imaginations to political abuses and conflicts.
Robert Cecil and the Transition from Elizabeth to James I
Authors: Croft Pauline
Published: July 2016

This chapter traces the rise to power of Robert Cecil first earl of Salisbury (1563–1612) from his early years under the supervision of his powerful father, William Cecil Lord Burghley, to his central role in the politics of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean years. It discusses the rivalry between Cecil and the earl of Essex, Elizabeth’s last favourite, and Cecil’s key role in master-minding the smooth accession of James VI of Scotland as King of England in 1603. Created earl of Salisbury, he was the most powerful of James’ ministers, but he struggled to curb the king’s hopeless extravagance and his undue reliance on male favourites. Nevertheless, Salisbury’s premature death in 1612 ended the most constructive period of James’s rule.
Music and the Stage in the Time of Shakespeare
Authors: Duffin Ross W.
Published: July 2016

‘Music and the Stage’ looks at the musical instruments called for or mentioned as used in plays during Shakespeare’s period, including evidence for a special consort of six contrasting instruments as a kind of ‘standard’ theatrical band. Also examined are the disposition of musical ensembles within the performing space, assessing such terms as ‘music above’, or ‘music within’, and the difficulty of dealing with songs in the plays, particularly with almost no musical settings of play lyrics apparently surviving from Shakespeare’s lifetime. Last is a discussion of the people associated with creating and performing music in Shakespearean theatre, including composers with known or suspected theatrical associations, and actors—including famous actors—with documented musical connections.
Adolescent Cultural Contexts for Substance Use: Intergroup Dynamics, Family Processes, and Neighborhood Risks
Authors: Schwartz Seth J. , Des Rosiers Sabrina E. , Unger Jennifer , Szapocznik José
Published: July 2016

This chapter reviews the role of cultural processes in substance use and other health problems among adolescents. The chapter focuses on Hispanics because of their status as both a minority group and an immigrant group, and because Hispanics have been a “lightning rod” for political discourse about immigration and US national identity. The core argument is that intergroup processes such as social dominance and system justification are responsible, at the population level, for unequal allocation of social resources—which, in turn, creates health disparities. These intergroup processes compound the effects of more proximal contexts such as individual, family, and neighborhood. It is argued that interventions to combat the social/cultural determinants of health disparities should be multilevel, including individual-, family-, community-, and population-level strategies.
Convergent Developments between “Old” and “New” Englishes
Authors: Filppula Markku
Published: July 2016

This chapter focuses on some features shared by “Old” and “New” varieties of English. “Old” refers here to varieties of English spoken in Britain only (i.e., English English and/or British English). They represent the longest-established varieties of English and are part of the hardcore of the L1 or the “Inner Circle” of Englishes. “New” varieties, in this context, are ones that have arisen in colonial or postcolonial contexts (the “Outer Circle”) and also comprise historically L2 varieties, such as Irish English, that have evolved as a result of language shift. This chapter examines three syntactic features that show similar developments in both New and Old varieties: the use of some modal auxiliaries, especially WILL/SHALL, some “extended” uses of the progressive, and finally, combinations of these two, especially WILL/SHALL + be V-ing. All three display convergent developments that suggest a leading role for the New Englishes rather than the Old varieties.
American Rhapsody
Authors: Zilczer Judith
Published: July 2016

The opening decades of the twentieth century saw painters renounce mimetic representation for the formal rigors and spiritual transcendence of visual art divorced from reproduction of the visible world. That they chose to do so in no small measure resulted from a profound shift in aesthetic values: music became the paradigm for visual art. While the concept of visual music gained international currency, this seductive aesthetic model had particular resonance in the United States. Between 1910 and 1930, leaders of the American avant-garde, such as Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Max Weber, experimented with musical ideas to forge a new abstract art. A comparative case study of the music pictures of these painters and the inter-media installations of contemporary artist Jennifer Steinkamp will illuminate the transformation of the modernist ideal of visual music in the postmodern era.
Songs of Oru Olai and the Praxis of Alternative Dalit Christian Modernities in India
Authors: Sherinian Zoe
Published: July 2016

This chapter addresses an alternative Dalit Christian modernity transmitted and practiced through song and drumming in Tamil Nadu, India. Using two examples of the praxis of sharing, I analyze expressions of agency by the caste and gender oppressed that shows an awareness of discourses of liberation in both the bible and the modern world outside the caste-inflected village. Daily practice of economic sustainability through community finds its musical analogy in folk music’s potential for re-creation, unity, accessibility, and common ownership by the oppressed. I theorize this as an indigenous religio-political cosmopolitanism, expressed by Dalits as a discourse of supra-localism and spirituality that reverses the discourse of caste impurity and pollution. These cases show the historical and contemporary nature of Christian transnational flow in the form of theology, politics, and utopian community, its dialogical process of indigenization, and the process of cross-cultural musical exchange to (re)make Christianity meaningful through local musical reconstruction.
Radiocarbon Dating and Egyptian Chronology—From the “Curve of Knowns” to Bayesian Modeling
Authors: Höflmayer Felix
Published: July 2016

Radiocarbon dating has become a standard dating method in archaeology almost all over the world. However, in the field of Egyptology and Near Eastern archaeology, the method is still not fully appreciated. Recent years have seen several major radiocarbon projects addressing Egyptian archaeology and chronology that have led to an intensified discussion regarding the application of radiocarbon dating within the field of Egyptology. This chapter reviews the contribution of radiocarbon dating to the discipline of Egyptology, discusses state-of-the-art applications and their impact on archaeological as well as chronological questions, and presents open questions that will be addressed in the years to come.
Saichō’s Tendai
Authors: Swanson Paul L. , Ziporyn Brook
Published: July 2016

Saichō (767–822) was a Japanese Buddhist monk who transmitted the Chinese Tiantai tradition as well as other aspects of Mahāyāna Buddhism to found the Japanese Tendai school. His endorsement of universal Buddhahood (Buddha-nature) on the basis of the one-vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sutra and the establishment of Mahāyāna precepts based on an altruistic bodhisattva spirit, to replace the detailed precepts of the traditional Vinaya, had a lasting influence on the basic assumptions of Japanese Buddhism. His legacy includes later developments in the radically nondual interpretation of “original enlightenment” to mean that all living things are enlightened just as they are. The second part of this chapter explores some of the crucial ambiguities and implications of this idea in its original Chinese and Japanese Buddhist contexts and in general philosophical perspective as they pertain to perennial issues of Buddhist practice as well as to general ethical and epistemological concerns.
Principles of Effective Intervention with Incarcerated Offenders
Authors: Goggin Claire
Published: July 2016

This essay summarizes the literature regarding the principles of effective correctional programming-offender risk, needs, and responsivity (RNR)-and the contribution of these principles to establishing “what works” in correctional rehabilitation. Origins of the rehabilitative ideal are reviewed, followed by its progress through the 1960s and 1970s, including the near-fatal blow dealt by Martinson in the mid-1970s. The research response to Martinson is discussed in conjunction with the role of meta-analyses in resuscitating the rehabilitative ideal and developing the RNR principles. Issues surrounding effective prison treatment programs are presented followed by descriptions of several exemplary institutional treatment programs currently in use. Next steps for research and practice in the area are also reviewed.
Offenders with Mental Illness in Prison
Authors: Manchak Sarah M. , Morgan Robert D.
Published: July 2016

This essay describes trends in the number of mentally disordered offenders in prison and the unique challenges posed by them in terms of prison management and service delivery. The essay first explores why persons with mental illnesses are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, then discusses efforts to rehabilitate this population should not take place within the prison environment (and, if they do, what changes in current practices are necessary to adapt to the prison setting). How the challenges posed by mentally ill inmates are managed is also covered, with critical discussions of these strategies. Finally, an analysis of the changes that are needed to improve conditions for inmates with mental illness in prisons is presented, with a description of one promising program for treating these offenders. Suggestions for future research with this population that will help inform and improve prison conditions for offenders with mental illness are also provided.
Understanding the Contours of Prison Disciplinary Procedures
Authors: Marquart James , Trulson Chad
Published: July 2016

This essay reviews the evolution of US procedures for detecting and investigating crimes and other rule infractions committed by inmates during confinement, their apprehension, determination of guilt, and opportunities for appeal. Special attention is paid to due process considerations and how these procedures have evolved since the inmate rights movement. The importance and effectiveness of disciplinary review boards are discussed. Possible biases in these procedures and inmates’ perceptions of bias are also considered in terms of how they might influence cynicism toward legal authority. An overview of possible sanctions imposed upon determinations of guilt is provided along with discussion of how these sanctions vary across facilities based on crowding and other resource constraints.
Exploring Imprisonment across Cross-National Contexts
Authors: Mazerolle Paul , Rynne John , McPhedran Samara
Published: July 2016

This essay explores cross-national contexts in the use of imprisonment as a penal policy. Incarceration figures from select countries are presented with accompanying discussions of methodological and measurement challenges. Possible reasons for differences in the use of imprisonment across countries (including social, political, and economic influences) are also provided. The role of public opinion is explored, including similarities and differences in cultural attitudes regarding incarceration and capital punishment. This discussion also focuses on broader cultural differences that might have greater impact on a nation’s use of incarceration compared to specific sentencing polices or crime control strategies. From a global perspective, certain striking examples act as a helpful focal point for broader debate about macro-level factors and conceptual frameworks influencing the use of imprisonment and that may facilitate comparisons between different nations. Illustrative examples are the privatization of prisons and the rise of super maximum security (“supermax”) facilities.
Constructing the Abortion Argument
Authors: Rhodes Rosamond
Published: July 2016

Debates in the abortion literature typically rely upon crude versions of ethical naturalism. Pro-choice advocates invoke the absence of psychological characteristics such as the capacity to reason to support the claim that fetuses do not have a right to life; pro-life advocates invoke biological characteristics such as the human genome to support the claim that the fetus does have that right. Yet such arguments notoriously transition from claims of fact to moral claims. In contrast, constructivism offers a novel and useful approach to the abortion debate. In this chapter, I provide a constructivist account of the ethics of abortion. On this account, the fetus’s right to life derives from parents taking on the obligation to care for and nourish their future child. This constructivist account of the right to life as a special personal obligation offers a dramatic challenge to natural rights theorists’ paradigmatic example.
Free Will as a Psychological Accomplishment
Authors: Nahmias Eddy
Published: July 2016

This chapter analyzes free will in terms of a complex set of psychological capacities that agents possess and exercise to varying degrees, focusing on the capacities for imagination. To have free will is to possess these psychological capacities such that the agent is the author of his or her actions and can deserve credit or blame for them. To act of one’s own free will is to have had (reasonable) opportunity to exercise these capacities in making decisions and acting. There is a long philosophical tradition of treating free will as the set of capacities that, when properly functioning, allow us to make decisions that contribute to a good or flourishing life. On this view, free will is a psychological accomplishment. Free will also allows us to be the causal source of our actions in a way that is compatible with determinism and naturalism.
Beyond the standard model of particle physics
Authors: Virdee T. S.
Published: July 2016

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and its experiments were conceived to tackle open questions in particle physics. The mechanism of the generation of mass of fundamental particles has been elucidated with the discovery of the Higgs boson. It is clear that the standard model is not the final theory. The open questions still awaiting clues or answers, from the LHC and other experiments, include: What is the composition of dark matter and of dark energy? Why is there more matter than anti-matter? Are there more space dimensions than the familiar three? What is the path to the unification of all the fundamental forces? This talk will discuss the status of, and prospects for, the search for new particles, symmetries and forces in order to address the open questions.

This article is part of the themed issue ‘Unifying physics and technology in light of Maxwell's equations’.
Multi-attribute grey target decision method with three-parameter interval grey number
Authors: Li Ye , Zhu Shanli , Guo San-dang
Published: July 2016

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to propose the grey target decision method based on three-parameter interval grey number for dealing with multi-attribute decision-making problems under uncertain environment.

Design/methodology/approach

– First, the kernel and ranking method of three-parameter interval grey number are defined, which is the basis of determining the positive and negative bull’s-eye. Next, a new distance measure of three-parameter interval grey number is defined in view of the importance of the “center of gravity” point. Furthermore, a new comprehensive bull’s-eye distance is proposed based on the kernel which integrates the distance between different attributes to the positive and negative bull’s-eye. Then attribute weights are obtained by comprehensive bull’s-eye distance minimum and grey entropy maximization.

Findings

– The paper provides a grey target decision method based on three-parameter interval grey number and example analysis shows that the method proposed in this paper is more reasonable and effective.

Research limitations/implications

– If we have a better understanding of the distribution characteristics of three-parameter interval grey number, it is possible to have a more reasonable measure of the distance of three-parameter interval grey number.

Practical implications

– The paper provides a grey target decision method, which can help decision maker deal with multi-attribute decision-making problems under uncertain environment.

Originality/value

– This paper proposed the kernel and ranking method of three-parameter interval grey number, and defined a new distance measure of three-parameter interval grey number and proposed a new comprehensive bull’s-eye distance, Furthermore, this paper structured a grey target decision method based on three-parameter interval grey number.
Grey social media engagement analysis
Authors: Delcea Camelia
Published: July 2016

Purpose

– Recent studies have shown that customers are more likely to buy a certain product or service from a company they can follow or contact on social media. Moreover, the customers feel a stronger relationship with the companies they are interacting in the virtual networks. But have the companies succeed in getting everything from this strong relationship? Are their online advertising campaigns getting to the right customers? Is there any connection between the social media engagement and the decisions users are taking? This is going to be shaped in this paper through a grey analysis applied to the selected variables. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

– As the nature of the relationships created in the online social networks is characterized by incomplete information, the analysis will make used of the concepts and means offered by the grey systems theory, a theory that have obtained good results over the time when used on uncertain situations.

Findings

– By applying a grey relational analysis (GRA) to the considered variables, a strong relationship between the decision easiness and both time spent on social media platforms and number of the accessed websites has been identified. Moreover, it has been determined that the decision happiness is closely related to the companies’ websites and their commercials.

Research limitations/implications

– The present paper shapes the relationship between the usage of online social media and consumers’ decision-making process and decision-making happiness. Due to the fact that the online social media includes billions of users worldwide, the study has some limitations due to the users’ number.

Originality/value

– The paper uses GRA for drawing the connections between the online social networks reality and its influence to users’ every-day life. Considering the present findings, it can be underlined that the identification of the persons which are influential becomes important in order to get to the proper targeted customers.
Fostering risk management in healthcare units using grey systems theory
Authors: Delcea Camelia , Ioana-Alexandra Bradea
Published: July 2016

Purpose

– The identification of the main risk triggers is essential for the hospital’s survival and performance with direct effects on its patients’ health and well-being. For this reason, in this paper some of the most important risk categories have been determined. While in a previous research a qualitative analysis has been done for determining which are the most important risks felt by the patient that are believed to affect their health through the usage of a questionnaire and through conducting a confirmatory factor analysis, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the quantitative side of these risks’ presence in a hospital.

Design/methodology/approach

– On this purpose, four main categories of risks have been considered (the same as in the qualitative research) and they have been analyzed from the hospital’s point of view – through the usage of the hospital financial and internal documents. Therefore, a series of indicators have been determined for each risk category. After that, a representative indicator has been selected and the grey incidence analysis has been conducted.

Findings

– By comparing the results gathered form this study with the qualitative analysis conducted among the patients (Delcea et al., 2016) it can be said that there can be seen a difference among the way a hospital and a patient perceive the risks within a medical activity. While for the hospital, the most affecting risk is the technological and hospital conditions risk, for the patients the most affecting risk seems to be the human resources and clinical risk. The mismanagement risk and inability to treat patients is the second in intensity for both the hospital and patients, with a smaller value in the patients’ case.

Practical implications

– From here, the research can be extended for capturing the risks that are considered to be important for the medical stuff, which will permit us to have a global image over the healthcare risks. After that, a comparative analysis among the hospitals with different financial performance can be conducted in order to see how these risks are affecting their performance and to determine which can be the decisions that can fostering the reduction of these risks.

Originality/value

– The present paper offers a quantitative analysis from the hospital’s point of view using the advantages offered by the grey systems theory. Combining this analysis with a qualitative one conducted on the patients, the managers of the hospital can a have a more adequate view over the risks that they are facing with. In this context, grey systems theory offers the needed methods for dealing with such situations.
Characteristics of cross-functional integration processes
Authors: Pimenta Marcio Lopes , da Silva Andrea Lago , Tate Wendy L
Published: July 2016

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to characterize the cross-functional integration processes between marketing and logistics, while considering five basic elements: boundary spanning activities, integration factors, level of integration, formality/informality and impacts of integration.

Design/methodology/approach

– After an extensive literature review, five case studies were performed and in-depth interviews conducted. Both within-case and cross-case analysis was performed to better understand the cross-functional integration processes between marketing and logistics.

Findings

– A characterization of cross-functional integration in the form of a managerial framework was proposed. This framework presents the elements in a process view, instead of disconnected parts of the integration processes. The framework and process perspective helps to explain the integration process, the roles and impacts of integration within organizations, while considering cultural formality and informality.

Research limitations/implications

– Qualitative data collection and analysis methods cannot achieve amplitude with respect to sampling nor generalize results. In spite of this, the implications revealed by the propositions may be applied not only to Brazilian companies, but organizations in other countries as well, due to the high level of heterogeneity of the sample, and the fact that they represent multinational organizations. Therefore, further research using broad-based survey data could test the correlations between the elements of cross-functional integration processes.

Practical implications

– The identification of the cross-functional integration processes within organizations can help managers to facilitate the efforts of integration between marketing and logistics, reducing conflicts and improving business performance.

Originality/value

– Case studies focussing specifically on five Brazilian organizations help provide evidence for an initial definition of cross-functional integration processes by analyzing five key elements according to their characteristics and respective roles. This research provides a strong foundation for future broad-based survey research.
Remanufacturing of electronic products in bonded port area across home and foreign markets
Authors: Chen Hong , Liu Nan , He Yuxuan
Published: July 2016

Purpose

– This study proposes a process for remanufacturing waste electrical and electronic equipment, and exporting part of the remanufactured products, which are processed in bonded port areas, to less developed countries by using a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC). The purpose of this paper is to verify the profitability of remanufacturing and to find conditions under which exporting remanufactured products can increase and maximize the home manufacturer’s total profit while performing his environmental responsibility.

Design/methodology/approach

– The authors use the CLSC approach to construct the model, which involves two different markets where a Stackelberg game exists. The study derives an equilibrium under which an optimal quantity for exporting increases and maximizes the home manufacturer’s profits.

Findings

– The authors discuss the influences of seven factors, and three are determinant parameters on whether the home manufacturer should export its remanufactured products: the privileges of the bonded port area, the home market consumers’ green awareness, and the degree of competence in products in the foreign market. If the market conditions at home and abroad meet the requirements of these three determinant parameters, entering the foreign market can always help the home manufacturer make more profits regardless of whether its home market increases or decreases, how many used products can be collected, and whether the foreign local manufacturer is technically competitive.

Originality/value

– The authors expand previous studies on CLSC by considering two different markets that allow the home manufacturer to either sell remanufactured products to the home market or export to the foreign market.