Kindled by Catastrophe

Fire disasters were a major threat to eighteenth-century villages and towns. Following such conflagrations, writers, artists, and publishers were eager to represent the disaster in great detail. Printed poems and pamphlets did not only describe the flames’ destruction, but also put great emphasis on the solidarity during and after the catastrophe. The risks of looting and social disorder were acknowledged by authors, but received little attention overall. Instead, poets and writers focused on acts of care and charity in four phases of fire disaster management: firefighting, immediate relief, collecting for reconstruction, and remembrance. While the first two phases were characterised by local and regional solidarity, the latter two could encompass – in the imagination of the authors – the whole Dutch nation. Writers appealed to faith and nationhood to convince people to make charitable donations. Afterwards, they celebrated and remembered the generosity of various communities. This article concludes that authors appropriated destroyed lives and buildings to construct identities and solidarity.

Law and Order in Contemporary Papua New Guinea: an Examination of Causes and Policy Options

<p>After twenty-one years of independence, problems of law and order remain the single most important issue on the agenda of public debate in Papua New Guinea. The impression is one of rising crime and social disorder, on the one hand, and an ineffective crime prevention capability on the other. Against that background, this thesis offers an exploratory and illuminative account about the nature of crime and delinquency in Papua New Guinea. A general descriptive analysis of causal determinants of crime in Papua New Guinea is offered, with examination of the prevalence of law and order problems in different parts of the country, and the effectiveness of state responses as reported by youths and government officials in the city of Port Moresby, and also by young people and village leaders in the Central Highlands region of the country. The thesis is unique in that it is the first research of its kind to be carried out by a Melanesian scholar belonging to a tribal group whose explanations for crime and delinquency are also given formal acknowledgement. The thesis concludes that as crime and social disorder in Papua New Guinea is manifest with a Melanesian social and cultural setting, it must be examined as a melanesian social problem that requires Melanesian approaches in addressing it.</p>

Law and Order in Contemporary Papua New Guinea: an Examination of Causes and Policy Options

<p>After twenty-one years of independence, problems of law and order remain the single most important issue on the agenda of public debate in Papua New Guinea. The impression is one of rising crime and social disorder, on the one hand, and an ineffective crime prevention capability on the other. Against that background, this thesis offers an exploratory and illuminative account about the nature of crime and delinquency in Papua New Guinea. A general descriptive analysis of causal determinants of crime in Papua New Guinea is offered, with examination of the prevalence of law and order problems in different parts of the country, and the effectiveness of state responses as reported by youths and government officials in the city of Port Moresby, and also by young people and village leaders in the Central Highlands region of the country. The thesis is unique in that it is the first research of its kind to be carried out by a Melanesian scholar belonging to a tribal group whose explanations for crime and delinquency are also given formal acknowledgement. The thesis concludes that as crime and social disorder in Papua New Guinea is manifest with a Melanesian social and cultural setting, it must be examined as a melanesian social problem that requires Melanesian approaches in addressing it.</p>

Airbnb and neighborhood crime: The incursion of tourists or the erosion of local social dynamics?

The proliferation of internet-based home-sharing platforms like Airbnb has raised heated debates, with many in the general public believing that the presence of Airbnb listings can lead to an increase in crime and disorder in residential neighborhoods. Despite the importance of this debate to residents, policymakers, and other stakeholders, few studies have examined the causal linkage between Airbnb listings and crime in neighborhoods. We conduct the first such empirical test in Boston neighborhoods, focusing on two potential mechanisms: (1) the inflow of tourists might generate or attract crime; and (2) the creation of transient properties undermines local social dynamics. Corresponding to these mechanisms, we examine whether the number of tourists (approximated with reviews) or the prevalence of listings predict more incidents of private conflict, social disorder, and violence both concurrently and in the following year. We find evidence that increases in Airbnb listings–but not reviews–led to more violence in neighborhoods in later years. This result supports the notion that the prevalence of Airbnb listings erodes the natural ability of a neighborhood to prevent crime, but does not support the interpretation that elevated numbers of tourists bring crime with them.

The Shiners’ War: Social Violence in the Ottawa Valley in the 1830s

By late May of 1835, unrest in Bytown had reached unprecedented proportions. All winter, the people of the town, the entrepôt of the Ottawa timber trade, had been bracing themselves, awaiting the annual visitation, the annual affliction, of the raftsmen who came each spring from high up the Valley to roister and riot in the streets of Bytown. Like the freshets in the streams, the raftsmen and social disorder arrived each April and May. But never before had their coming brought such organized violence as it did in 1835. For the Irish timberers, now had a leader, and a purpose. Peter Aylen, run-away sailor, timber king, ambitious schemer, had set himself at the head of the Irish masses, had moulded them into a powerful weapon. He had given them a purpose: to drive the French Canadians off the river and thus guarantee jobs and high wages in the timber camps to the Irish.

Community policing in Nigeria: A mere rhetoric than practical

This paper is designed to investigate into the various reasons to incorporate members of the community in Nigeria in the business of crime control thereby making them to be part and parcel of security outfit in their environs. This is premised on the grounds that with the involvement of the indigenes of the community in crime control and social disorder it will go a long way in checkmating crime. The paper will also dissect the reasons for introducing community policing and its benefits in creating an environment where crime cannot flourish. It is also expected to x-ray lapses in the current policing structure in Nigeria and why community policing will be like pouring water on a rocky ground. Finally, it will expose some salient areas to be addressed by the police in order to create a fertile ground for community policing to thrive.

Hannah Arendt, antiracist rebellion, and the counterinsurgent logic of the social

Arendt’s concept of the social is at the heart of her interventions in racial politics in the United States. Readers of Arendt often focus on whether her distinction is too rigid to accommodate the reality of US racial politics, or whether it can be altered to be more capacious. The central issue here is that of closing the gap between conceptual abstraction and concrete reality. However, by extending our archive regarding the social and political beyond Arendt—to work in subaltern studies and the thought of Arendt’s radical Black contemporaries—I argue that we can craft a concept of the social as a counterinsurgent logic by which political acts are reduced to social disorder, neutralizing the political edge and novelty of revolt. The distinction between the social and political is therefore useful not to describe or categorize kinds of revolts or struggles but to critically examine the way they are interpretatively and concretely transformed from ‘political’ to ‘social’ struggles. Situating Arendt among contemporary revolutionaries such as James and Grace Lee Boggs, I argue that they mobilized such a distinction, asking not what rebellions were but what might be made of them.

Unemployment and Social Disorder during the British Colonial Period in Eritrea (1941–1951)

This article investigates the connection between unemployment and social disorder that characterized British colonial rule in Eritrea between 1941 and 1951. Using the archives of labour of the British period, this article documents the causes of social disorder that galvanized the British period in Eritrea. Based on archival documents, the article argues that the public insecurity and social disorder of the British period were largely related to socio-economic conditions resulting in mass unemployment caused by (1) the dissolution of the colonial army institution; (2) the destruction of the manufacturing industries; (3) the importation of labour from neighbouring British colonies. Upon the defeat ofItaly by the British in Eritrea during WWII, the British system had a clearly diminished appetite for colonialism and abandoned any agenda of capitalist expansion, inflicting massive redundancies on the labour force. This produced new social groups such as migrant workers, brigands, and vagabonds. Based on these archival documents, an alternative explanation is introduced pinpointing far more accurately the sources of public insecurity and social disorder during the British colonial period between 1941 and 1951.

Functionalism of Municipal Laws and Good Governance in Pakistan

The main objective of this research is to make a case for good governance as the only solution for Pakistan’s multitude of problems. There is a need for goodwill to be restored among the people, if there was any, to begin with, given that Pakistan has always struggled with governance issues since its origin. What Pakistan needs now is the implementation of policies that can be a catalyst for dynamic and long-lasting social change. Categorically, the current nature of existing problems rooted within halted development, social disorder, and a state of anarchy, can only be combated through effective institutional structures and effective models of government that are able to act upon actionable items in the interest of the public. Today’s dilemmas are rooted in archaic practices that need to be re-evaluated to meet the needs of the hour. Obsolete, ineffective modes of practice need to be reconfigured through a process of intense scrutiny and amendments. Political reform is the ultimate solution for the way forward. In this era of rapid globalization, and the visibility of other nations thriving across the globe, there is an urgent need to act swiftly to bring forth positive change within the existing system that is not failing, but in fact, has already failed.