Flipping the “New Penology” Script: Police Misconduct Insurance, Grassroots Activism, and Risk Management–Based Reform

Through a multi-method qualitative case study, I examine the failed 2016 ballot campaign of the Committee for Professional Policing (CfPP), a police accountability group in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In attempting to make Minneapolis the first city nationwide to require police to carry professional liability insurance, the CfPP turned the logic of Malcolm M. Feeley and Jonathan Simon’s “new penology” paradigm onto police. Their thesis argues that a contemporary penal shift occurred away from rehabilitation toward managing aggregates of dangerous criminal categories through risk management approaches. I extend their thesis in a new direction by examining how—in the emerging age of “algorithmic risk governance”—social movement organizations, like the CfPP, are starting to invert the new penology onto criminal justice personnel. In flipping the script, the CfPP called for a new private insurance market using mandatory police misconduct insurance to manage aggregates of dangerous police officers. After highlighting how the CfPP developed new penological objectives, discourses, and technologies, I discuss the implications of grassroots groups adopting and redefining traditional penal logics and propose future research avenues.

From Confrontation to Collaboration: Peasant Negotiations in the Arena of Decentralization

Decentralization and local democracy are two inseparable elements of post-New Order Indonesia development politics. Furthermore, the quality of decentralization to a certain extent is influenced by the depth and quality of local democratic practices. This study reveals that decentralization is not only an arena of competition between local elites in possession of capital through local democratic institutions, but also an arena in which grassroots groups (peasants) could fight for their land rights. This study observes that local democratic procedures and institutions that are practiced in unison with decentralization are not utilized by the lower classes in the struggle for their rights. This shows the failure of local democratic institutions from taking root in the marginal groups. The success of peasant movements in the struggle for their rights and the practice of local elite domination of the decentralization arena does not come out of the blue, but is related to the history of the formation of the agrarian structure and social class. This study concludes that on one side, local elites trust democratic institutions and procedures to achieve their goals, while on the other side the grassroots have their own logic on how local democracy should have been practiced, namely by not separating practice of local democracy from the missions of justice and social welfare for the common good.

Seeds of hope, seeds of resistance: Cultivating food justice and community economies through urban agriculture

<p>Grounded on the experiences and discourses of volunteers and members of Southern Garden located in the Southern suburbs of Wellington and Wesley Community Action in Cannons Creek, I explore the work these community projects to contest the current corporate agrifood system using ethnographic and participatory approaches. This thesis is an attempt to show the often unrecognised and underestimated revolutionary work community activist are doing through UA. This research seeks to advance the discussions around food justice, and community economies in UA in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand since the literature around these topics is limited. The main aim of this thesis is to open spaces for these conversations to happen both in academia and among grassroots groups in order to push forward for a more just system. Using food sovereignty, food justice, community economies and the right to the city as my theoretical framework, I highlight the power of everyday politics to change and challenge the status quo without being complacent and uncritical about the limitations and contradictions of such work. Both projects open spaces of possibility and freedom where we can all build better futures to come. I have tried in this thesis to make justice to their work and to help move forward in search of more radical spaces of transformation.</p>

Seeds of hope, seeds of resistance: Cultivating food justice and community economies through urban agriculture

<p>Grounded on the experiences and discourses of volunteers and members of Southern Garden located in the Southern suburbs of Wellington and Wesley Community Action in Cannons Creek, I explore the work these community projects to contest the current corporate agrifood system using ethnographic and participatory approaches. This thesis is an attempt to show the often unrecognised and underestimated revolutionary work community activist are doing through UA. This research seeks to advance the discussions around food justice, and community economies in UA in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand since the literature around these topics is limited. The main aim of this thesis is to open spaces for these conversations to happen both in academia and among grassroots groups in order to push forward for a more just system. Using food sovereignty, food justice, community economies and the right to the city as my theoretical framework, I highlight the power of everyday politics to change and challenge the status quo without being complacent and uncritical about the limitations and contradictions of such work. Both projects open spaces of possibility and freedom where we can all build better futures to come. I have tried in this thesis to make justice to their work and to help move forward in search of more radical spaces of transformation.</p>

Mind the gap between discourses and practices: Platform workers’ representation in France and Italy

This article, based on a 6-month cross-national ethnography conducted in France and Italy, aims at contributing to comparative debates on the representation of platform workers. The study takes the cases of both traditional and alternative actors that currently represent platform workers. In particular, by investigating both trade unions and grassroots groups, research findings show the gap between discursive and effective representation in the two European countries studied. Drawing on Hyman and Gumbrell-McCormick’s concept of ‘variable geometry of resistance’, we discuss how these gaps are wider or narrower depending on to what extent – in the two countries and in the studied organizations – there is capacity to build both solidarity in difference and alliances between traditional and alternative actors.

Russia’s Fascist Thinkers and Doers

This chapter looks into Russia's strategy of bolstering the European and U.S. far right. It addresses the fringe element of Russia's society that is inspired by extreme right arguments, adding its sociological basis remains difficult to grasp. The chapter then presents Russia's grassroots groups, which can be divided into several categories. It begins by discussing small far-right movements that try to adapt to the wider Zeitgeist and shift their doctrines from classic fascism to a defense of a Christian and white Russia resistant to migrants. The chapter also reviews a broader subculture of paramilitary and extreme combat sport communities that promote vigilantism with some elements of their repertoire identifiable as fascism light, such as a muscular masculinity and the cult of violence. Next it focuses on the Russian “thinkers,” those who spread the idea of Russia's Aryan identity, revamp race theories, or endorse the concept of the Conservative Revolution. Ultimately, the chapter examines how the groups' presence in the public space partly contributes to blurring Russia's antifascism posture.

Improving norms in research culture to incentivize transparency and rigor

Improving research culture to value transparency and rigor is necessary to engage in a productive “Credibility Revolution.” The field of educational psychology is well positioned to act toward this goal. It will take specific actions by both grassroots groups plus leadership to set standards that will ensure that getting published, funded, or hired is determined by universally supported ideals. These improved standards must ensure that transparency, rigor, and credibility are valued above novelty, impact, and incredibility. Grassroots groups advocate for change and share experience so that the next generation of researchers have the experience needed to sustain these early moves. Each community can take inspiration from others that have made shifts toward better practices. These instances provide opportunities for emulating trail-blazers, training for new practices such as preregistration, and constructively evaluating or criticizing practice in ways that advances the reputation of all involved.

Mapping the field of turbulent changes around the issue of migration in Poland

The issue of migration had become highly politicized in Poland already before the 2015 elections. The neoconservative Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) party made it one of the key topics in the electoral campaign both for the parliamentary and for the presidential elections, both of which the party won. Poland has switched from a country with the highest acceptance rate of refugees in the EU to the one with the lowest rate within about a year. The narrative about masses of refugees in Poland and at its borders threatening Polish culture, civilization and identity started to gather momentum and has provoked numerous intended and unintended consequences, political and social. On the one hand such statements and politics have sparked an increase in hate speech and incidents, and violent actions. On the other, as a reaction, there is an observable awakening of the civil society in Poland through more intensified actions of various groups and organizations. Both are outcomes of the situation in which the government and the ruling party take a strong and negative stance on the issue of migrants and refugees. At the same time, anti-racist activism has been instrumentalized as a tool for anti-government struggles, involving new actors into the struggle. The new alliances forged after 2015 are more than interesting and will be described below, based on the empirical research conducted for a comparative research project on anti-racist contention in the Baltic Sea region. I will show particularly the nature of cooperation between grassroots groups (often radical) and the more moderate NGOs, activists (of both stripes) and civil servants as well as politicians; and here point to the specific role of municipalities and the city-level.

‘It depends on your threat model’: the anticipatory dimensions of resistance to data-driven surveillance

While many forms of data-driven surveillance are now a ‘fact’ of contemporary life amidst datafication, obtaining concrete knowledge of how different institutions exploit data presents an ongoing challenge, requiring the expertise and power to untangle increasingly complex and opaque technological and institutional arrangements. The how and why of potential surveillance are thus wrapped in a form of continuously produced uncertainty. How then, do affected groups and individuals determine how to counter the threats and harms of surveillance? Responding to an interdisciplinary concern with agency amidst datafication, this article explores what I term ‘anticipatory data practices’ – future-oriented practices which provide a concrete anchor and a heuristic for action amidst the persistent uncertainties of life with data. This article traces how anticipatory data practices have emerged within civil society practices concerned with countering the harms of surveillance and data exploitation. The mixed-method empirical analysis of this article draws from 50 interviews with digital security educators and technology developers; participant observation at 12 civil society events between 2016 and 2019 and the textual analysis of 100 security manuals produced by NGOs and grassroots groups.