Reading Between the Lines: Representations and Constructions of Youth and Crime in Aotearoa/New Zealand

<p>In this thesis, I examine constructions of youth deviance in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 2002. In 2002, New Zealand had a national election in which adult commentators and observers concentrated and speculated on the reasons for a supposed increase in youth deviance and a spate of extraordinarily violent youth crimes. Youth-at-risk, early intervention, the family, and education were words that emerged continuously in commentator discussions. There was no critique of these words, or the practices they implied, and very little discussion of the implications the use of these words and practices posed for young people. In this thesis, I address this gap in the discussion by critically exploring the ways in which authors in institutional contexts constructed deviant youth and the implications of these constructions for youth. In this research, I sampled published texts in 2002 from academia, government, and media; three institutions which produce and reproduce knowledge in New Zealand. I applied a form of discourse analysis to the texts to explore and contextualise evident constructions. This analysis involved a bricolage of poststructural methodologies in the attempt to make an accessible argument, which effectively addressed the purposes of the research. I found that authors did not apply a knowledge devoid of power. Whether used to construct a picture of the deviant youth, or to describe necessary interventions into deviance, they used knowledge to construct the deviant youth as powerless effects of development and risk. Authors used knowledge to divide young people into the abnormally-deviant youth-at-risk and the normally-deviant adolescent. Applying knowledge allowed those writing about youth crime to construct and position young people as powerless. Authors reinforced this when they used knowledge to inform practices and interventions, which allowed adults to control the young person’s access to, and use of, power. In particular, authors and other experts saw mass education as a powerful practice of control and socialisation. Through education, adult society could remove the abnormallydeviant youth from the dysfunctional family environment and re-socialise the young person into conformity. Those writing applied a similar reasoning in other described interventions such as surveillance, conferencing, and early intervention. Interventions allowed adults to control the deviance of youth. I finish this thesis by arguing that interventions and contradictions in constructions show that power is not one-sided. That is, power is not always in the hands of adults. Rather, sociological theory can be applied to demonstrate and explore a power struggle between adults and young people where resistance coexists with power. I argue that resistance can provide an alternative explanation to the dominant ideas held by those working with, and talking about, deviant youth. Resistance allows for a concept of agency in which both deviance and non-deviance can be seen as a reactive response by the young person.</p>

Reading Between the Lines: Representations and Constructions of Youth and Crime in Aotearoa/New Zealand

<p>In this thesis, I examine constructions of youth deviance in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 2002. In 2002, New Zealand had a national election in which adult commentators and observers concentrated and speculated on the reasons for a supposed increase in youth deviance and a spate of extraordinarily violent youth crimes. Youth-at-risk, early intervention, the family, and education were words that emerged continuously in commentator discussions. There was no critique of these words, or the practices they implied, and very little discussion of the implications the use of these words and practices posed for young people. In this thesis, I address this gap in the discussion by critically exploring the ways in which authors in institutional contexts constructed deviant youth and the implications of these constructions for youth. In this research, I sampled published texts in 2002 from academia, government, and media; three institutions which produce and reproduce knowledge in New Zealand. I applied a form of discourse analysis to the texts to explore and contextualise evident constructions. This analysis involved a bricolage of poststructural methodologies in the attempt to make an accessible argument, which effectively addressed the purposes of the research. I found that authors did not apply a knowledge devoid of power. Whether used to construct a picture of the deviant youth, or to describe necessary interventions into deviance, they used knowledge to construct the deviant youth as powerless effects of development and risk. Authors used knowledge to divide young people into the abnormally-deviant youth-at-risk and the normally-deviant adolescent. Applying knowledge allowed those writing about youth crime to construct and position young people as powerless. Authors reinforced this when they used knowledge to inform practices and interventions, which allowed adults to control the young person’s access to, and use of, power. In particular, authors and other experts saw mass education as a powerful practice of control and socialisation. Through education, adult society could remove the abnormallydeviant youth from the dysfunctional family environment and re-socialise the young person into conformity. Those writing applied a similar reasoning in other described interventions such as surveillance, conferencing, and early intervention. Interventions allowed adults to control the deviance of youth. I finish this thesis by arguing that interventions and contradictions in constructions show that power is not one-sided. That is, power is not always in the hands of adults. Rather, sociological theory can be applied to demonstrate and explore a power struggle between adults and young people where resistance coexists with power. I argue that resistance can provide an alternative explanation to the dominant ideas held by those working with, and talking about, deviant youth. Resistance allows for a concept of agency in which both deviance and non-deviance can be seen as a reactive response by the young person.</p>

Diversity, Dissent and Representation: Lessons From The First Minority Judge in the Israeli Supreme Court

This paper seeks to enrich existing empirical research on substantive representation in the judicial system by exploring a case study of the Honorable Justice (retired) Salim Joubran, the first ethnic-minority judge appointed to the Supreme Court of Israel. By employing a dual methodology of qualitative discourse analysis and dissenting quantitative studies, the study investigates when, why and how he dissented in controversial cases, which are defined as cases that resulted in non-unanimous votes. The study shows that a quantitative study on dissenting opinions of a minority judge alone did not provide comprehensive conclusions. The complementary qualitative discourse analysis shows that in cases that challenged state actions that impacted his social group, Joubran employed distinct strategies and reasoning that are akin to feminist judgments approach. Hence, the study adds to existing research on judicial diversity indicating that women and ethnic minorities judges not only share common challenges but might also operate similar reasoning strategies. In light of these insights, the study calls for employing the combined qualitative and quantitative methodology on examining judgments focusing on dissenting opinions of women and ethnic minority judges as it offers a complex understanding of substantive representation and provides answers regarding the socio-legal effects of judgments group affiliation on.

BRAHMAGUPTA AND THE CONCEPT OF ZERO

This paper attempts to reconstruct the possible reasoning process that led the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta in 628 A.D. to the formulation of two controversial rules for arithmetic involving the number zero; rules which, contradict the modern arithmetic. This paper outlines a possible explanation of the issue based on similar reasoning.

Information Stored in Memory Affects Abductive Reasoning

Abductive reasoning describes the process of deriving an explanation from given observations. The Theory of Abductive Reasoning (TAR; Johnson &amp; Krems, 2001) assumes that when information is presented sequentially, new information is integrated into a mental representation, a situation model, the central data structure on which all reasoning processes are based. Because working memory capacity is limited, the question arises how reasoning might change with the amount of information that has to be processed in memory. Thus, we conducted an experiment (N = 34) in which we manipulated whether previous observation information and previously found explanations had to be retrieved from memory or were still visually present. Our results provide evidence that people experience differences in task difficulty when more information has to be retrieved from memory. This is also evident in changes in the mental representation as reflected by eye tracking measures. However, no differences are found between groups in the reasoning outcome. These findings suggest that individuals construct their situation model from both information in memory as well as external memory stores. The complexity of the model depends on the task: when memory demands are high, only relevant information is included. With this compensation strategy, people are able to achieve similar reasoning outcomes even when faced with tasks that are more difficult. This implies that people are able to adapt their strategy to the task in order to keep their reasoning successful.

“Why MANtoring is not the solution. A Rebuttal to ‘The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance.’”

The findings of AlShebli Makovi &amp; Rahwan1 highlight an endemic problem in science: co-authoring with men is associated with greater numbers of citations for junior scientists than co-authoring with women. The reasons for this likely stem from a long history and culture in science where White, straight, cisgender men are the dominant force. Under the authors’ assumption that authorship is equal to mentorship (a notion we criticize below), the reported citation disparity by coauthor gender for junior scientists may simply reflect that under the current status quo there are more barriers for women to establish strong mentorship programs and secure resources to support their mentees compared to men. In other words, citation disparity is the problem, not the solution as proposed by the authors. We argue that the citation disparity is uncorrelated with mentorship and the quality of the publication. Unfortunately, AlShebli Makovi &amp; Rahwan err in their publication in two ways: they define mentorship as co-authorship (albeit with conditions), and they prescribe the problem as a solution suggesting that junior scientists, especially women, ought to be mentored by men - a proposal we have aptly named “MANtoring”. These faulty interpretations and conclusions reveal a broader problem in scholarship: failure to critically examine structural biases and assumptions when evaluating and interpreting data showing disparity. Much work is needed to improve the culture of science and to provide a more fair and equitable environment for individuals of any background (women in this case, but a similar reasoning would apply to people historically marginalized based on gender, race, sexuality, class, and other dimensions) to thrive2. The AlShebli et al article is a wakeup call to authors in all disciplines to take greater care in interpreting and acting on their disparity data. Failure to do so could have catastrophic effects on science including the irony of exacerbating the very problems researchers are attempting to address.

Enforcement may crowd out voluntary support for COVID-19 policies, especially where trust in government is weak and in a liberal society

Effective states govern by some combination of enforcement and voluntary compliance. To contain the COVID-19 pandemic, a critical decision is the extent to which policy makers rely on voluntary as opposed to enforced compliance, and nations vary along this dimension. While enforcement may secure higher compliance, there is experimental and other evidence that it may also crowd out voluntary motivation. How does enforcement affect citizens’ support for anti–COVID-19 policies? A survey conducted with 4,799 respondents toward the end of the first lockdown in Germany suggests that a substantial share of the population will support measures more under voluntary than under enforced implementation. Negative responses to enforcement—termed control aversion—vary across the nature of the policy intervention (e.g., they are rare for masks and frequent for vaccination and a cell-phone tracing app). Control aversion is less common among those with greater trust in the government and the information it provides, and among those who were brought up under the coercive regime of East Germany. Taking account of the likely effectiveness of enforcement and the extent to which near-universal compliance is crucial, the differing degrees of opposition to enforcement across policies suggest that for some anti–COVID-19 policies an enforced mandate would be unwise, while for others it would be essential. Similar reasoning may also be relevant for policies to address future pandemics and other societal challenges like climate change.

Theodoros Adamakopoulos and Others v. Republic of Cyprus, ICSID Case No ARB/15/49, Decision on Jurisdiction, 7 February 2020

This case note examines the findings of the Tribunal in the Decision on Jurisdiction in Adamakopoulos v. Cyprus, focusing on Respondent’s objections based on the alleged incompatibility of the BIT S and the EU Treaties, and the mass claim nature of the proceeding. The decision of the majority of the Tribunal in dismissing the EU law objection adds to a body of investment arbitration jurisprudence in which similar reasoning has been used to dismiss comparable objections. However, the dissenting opinion of Marcelo Kohen is the first time that an arbitrator, presented with an intra- EU investment arbitration claim, has considered that the tribunal lacks jurisdiction on the basis of the incompatibility between the relevant BIT S and EU law. Furthermore, Adamakopoulos is one of the few ‘mass claim’ arbitrations brought under the ICSID Rules. If it proceeds to the merits stage as planned, it will provide an opportunity for the Tribunal to resolve questions regarding the management of the procedure under the ICSID framework with such a large group of claimants, whilst maintaining the right to be heard, procedural equality and fairness.

The influence of domestication, insularity and sociality on the tempo and mode of brain size evolution in mammals

The ability to develop complex social bonds and an increased capacity for behavioural flexibility in novel environments have both been forwarded as selective forces favouring the evolution of a large brain in mammals. However, large brains are energetically expensive, and in circumstances in which selective pressures are relaxed, e.g. on islands, smaller brains are selected for. Similar reasoning has been offered to explain the reduction of brain size in domestic species relative to their wild relatives. Herein, we assess the effect of domestication, insularity and sociality on brain size evolution at the macroevolutionary scale. Our results are based on analyses of a 426-taxon tree, including both wild species and domestic breeds. We further develop the phylogenetic ridge regression comparative method (RRphylo) to work with discrete variables and compare the rates (tempo) and direction (mode) of brain size evolution among categories within each of three factors (sociality, insularity and domestication). The common assertion that domestication increases the rate of brain size evolution holds true. The same does not apply to insularity. We also find support for the suggested but previously untested hypothesis that species living in medium-sized groups exhibit faster rates of brain size evolution than either solitary or herding taxa.

Heuristic decision of planned shop visit products based on similar reasoning method: From the perspective of organizational quality-specific immune

The purpose of this study is to reduce the maintenance time, cost, and scheduling distance and to determine the maintenance priority of planned shop visit products. This study introduces the concept of maintenance map, establishes the evaluation indicators system of maintenance map from the perspective of organizational quality-specific immune, and puts forward two key dimensions named maintenance plan and technical support of maintenance map. Based on the theoretical framework, construct a heuristic decision model of planned shop visit products based on similar reasoning, set the maintenance services data of Harbin Dongan Engine Co., Ltd., as research objects, and use the concrete schemes and cases to solve and carry out an empirical analysis of the heuristic decision of planned shop visit products based on similar reasoning with the help of the ant colony algorithm; the empirical analysis results indicate that maintenance map and evaluation indicators system are the fundamental basis of the heuristic decision based on similar reasoning, the combinations of similar reasoning and ant colony algorithm can achieve the optimal heuristic decision of planned shop visit products, which have effectiveness, feasibility, and operability. This research will be conductive to give out the heuristic decision of scheduling schemes of planned shop visit products, which will be beneficial to enhance maintenance efficiency and quality, promote learning effects and learning pattern paths, and reduce maintenance scheduling distances of planned shop visit products from the aspects of theoretical framework guidance, empirical system enlightenment, and conceptual paradigm reference.