Improvising (Il)legality: Justice and the Irish Diaspora, NYC, 1930-32

The Seabury Commission, 1930-32, probed allegations of corruption made against, amongst others, the Irish-American Mayor of New York City, James J. ‘Jimmy’ Walker, and the Irish-dominated Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine that had supported Walker. Taking the Seabury inquiry as its focus, this article explores these allegations from the perspective of Critical Studies in Improvisation (C.S.I.) fused with postcolonial critique. Improvisation, in accordance with C.S.I. principles, is not a lawless or extempore event; it is, instead, lawful, or full of law. The laws of improvisation may appear impenetrable to those unfamiliar with the practice. However, when read through a hibernocentric postcolonial perspective, their meaning and form become more understandable. As will be argued in this article, diasporic communities are inherently improvisatory; that is, they utilise improvisational techniques to help adapt and respond to new situations and social contexts. To be queried is whether the law and politics practiced by Tammany and Walker, taken together, constituted a markedly Irish approach to justice, one that entailed not scripted or planned illegality, as was alleged by Judge Seabury, but improvisations on Anglo-Protestant law as a response to the displacement of and discrimination against the Irish Diaspora in early twentieth century America.

Lessons from 'The Wire': Epistemological Reflections on the Practice of Sociological Research

Recent debates and controversies have highlighted several issues surrounding sociological research, which relate to the general conditions under which it is undertaken and how this is changing. There is a pressing need to respond to these issues as a whole, in particular by examining what they tell us about research practices. This article argues that a consideration of themes raised by the American television drama The Wire is useful for facilitating such a response, since it may be read as a discussion of working conditions within neoliberal societies. The following themes are pertinent here: the need to reflect upon the terms by which research is framed by funders, to take adequate time to conduct and complete research, and to encourage critical debate within research. Whilst these relate to influential epistemological discussions by Pierre Bourdieu and Michael Burawoy, this reading of The Wire is particularly helpful for highlighting the practical and inter-relational situations in which sociological research is carried out but which tend not to receive the systematic attention they deserve.

Cuando la ciudad habla : Pensando el capitalismo tardío, el crimen y lo urbano a través de The Wire

The Wire, la serie concebida por David Simon a comienzo de la década pasada y emitida por HBO, es una de las pocas que puede presumir de ser llamada la mejor ficción creada para la televisión. Pero más allá de sus bondades artísticas, o precisamente por ellas, la mirada expansiva y total que realiza el programa sobre Baltimore, Maryland, en vísperas de nuestro siglo invita a que la utilicemos como punto de acceso para pensar el capitalismo, el crimen y la cuestión urbana en la actualidad. Pero por sobre todo, elaborar cómo estos términos interactúan en relaciones dialécticas que, en definitiva, producen la ciudad contemporánea

Cuando la ciudad habla : Pensando el capitalismo tardío, el crimen y lo urbano a través de The Wire

The Wire, la serie concebida por David Simon a comienzo de la década pasada y emitida por HBO, es una de las pocas que puede presumir de ser llamada la mejor ficción creada para la televisión. Pero más allá de sus bondades artísticas, o precisamente por ellas, la mirada expansiva y total que realiza el programa sobre Baltimore, Maryland, en vísperas de nuestro siglo invita a que la utilicemos como punto de acceso para pensar el capitalismo, el crimen y la cuestión urbana en la actualidad. Pero por sobre todo, elaborar cómo estos términos interactúan en relaciones dialécticas que, en definitiva, producen la ciudad contemporánea

Cuando la ciudad habla : Pensando el capitalismo tardío, el crimen y lo urbano a través de The Wire

The Wire, la serie concebida por David Simon a comienzo de la década pasada y emitida por HBO, es una de las pocas que puede presumir de ser llamada la mejor ficción creada para la televisión. Pero más allá de sus bondades artísticas, o precisamente por ellas, la mirada expansiva y total que realiza el programa sobre Baltimore, Maryland, en vísperas de nuestro siglo invita a que la utilicemos como punto de acceso para pensar el capitalismo, el crimen y la cuestión urbana en la actualidad. Pero por sobre todo, elaborar cómo estos términos interactúan en relaciones dialécticas que, en definitiva, producen la ciudad contemporánea

Cuando la ciudad habla : Pensando el capitalismo tardío, el crimen y lo urbano a través de The Wire

The Wire, la serie concebida por David Simon a comienzo de la década pasada y emitida por HBO, es una de las pocas que puede presumir de ser llamada la mejor ficción creada para la televisión. Pero más allá de sus bondades artísticas, o precisamente por ellas, la mirada expansiva y total que realiza el programa sobre Baltimore, Maryland, en vísperas de nuestro siglo invita a que la utilicemos como punto de acceso para pensar el capitalismo, el crimen y la cuestión urbana en la actualidad. Pero por sobre todo, elaborar cómo estos términos interactúan en relaciones dialécticas que, en definitiva, producen la ciudad contemporánea

Broadcasting digital stories on Australian community television : the Digistories Anthology

Community-based arts and media movements have been intsrumental in building population-wide creative capacity for cultural development, social participation and social transformation in many parts of the world. Digital storytelling is a form of media practice that was pioneered in the United States at the intersection of these movements. It is described here as a ‘co-creative’ media production method. This description aims to differentiate the approaches to collaborative content creation that are used in community cultural development (CCD) and community media movements from those valued in professional and consumer modes of media production. Yet, the products of co-creative practices, such as digital stories, do not circulate widely through existing media networks or through the newer social media networks that Australian CCD and community media movements anticipated by at least twenty years. The complex politics of story ownership are one of a number of factors that often render ‘publication’ a secondary consideration in the making of digital stories. The possibility of ‘downstream’ use and re-use of stories in other networks is not usually considered in initial planning and development processes. As landmark projects such as Capture Wales indicate, even where stories are made for broadcast outcomes, television can be a problematic window for exhibiting digital stories. Scepticism about the brave new world of reality television and user generated content also circulates in digital storytelling networks, especially when it comes to ethical concerns for managing the risks of harm associated with widespread distribution of digital stories to indiscriminate publics. This publication reports on a collaborative action research project that took a closer look at some of the constraints relating to the problems of re-purposing digital stories for television. It focussed on ‘best practice’ for managing the risks of harm to storytellers in the process of re-purposing digital stories for broadcast on community television.

Wire-cylinder corona discharge with the wire at positive potential studies of iron oxides

A wire-cylinder corona discharge was studied in nitrogen and dry air in crossed electric and magnetic fields for values of magnetic field ranging from 0 to 3000 G with the wire at positive potential. In the absence of a magnetic field pre-onset streamers and pulses were observed in nitrogen. In both nitrogen and dry air breakdown streamers were observed just before spark breakdown of the gap. Furthermore, experiments in dry air at atmospheric pressure in an electric field indicate regular pre-onset streamers appearing at time intervals of 19.5 µs. The appearance of regular pre-onset streamers suggests that it is not possible for negative ions to form a sheath close to the anode as postulated by Hermstein (1960) for the formation of steady or glow corona in a point-plane gap.

Wire-cylinder corona discharge with the wire at positive potential

A wire-cylinder corona discharge was studied in nitrogen and dry air in crossed electric and magnetic fields for values of magnetic field ranging from 0 to 3000 G with the wire at positive potential. In the absence of a magnetic field pre-onset streamers and pulses were observed in nitrogen. In both nitrogen and dry air breakdown streamers were observed just before spark breakdown of the gap. Furthermore, experiments in dry air at atmospheric pressure in an electric field indicate regular pre-onset streamers appearing at time intervals of 19.5 µs. The appearance of regular pre-onset streamers suggests that it is not possible for negative ions to form a sheath close to the anode as postulated by Hermstein (1960) for the formation of steady or glow corona in a point-plane gap.

Through the Wire: Relations of Power and Relations of Violence

Edkins, J. and Pin-Fat, V. (2005). Through the Wire: Relations of Power and Relations of Violence. Millennium - Journal of International Studies. 34(1), pp.1-24 RAE2008

Scientism and instrumentalism After the Bomb: Dr Strangelove, End Zone, Crash and The Wire

This thesis argues that through the prism of America’s Cold War, scientism has emerged as the metanarrative of the postnuclear age. The advent of the bomb brought about a new primacy for mechanical and hyperrational thinking in the corridors of power not just in terms of managing the bomb itself but diffusing this ideology throughout the culture in social sciences, economics and other such institutional systems. The human need to mitigate or ameliorate against the chaos of the universe lies at the heart of not just religious faith but in the desire for perfect control. Thus there has been a transference of power from religious faith to the apparent material power of science and technology and the terra firma these supposedly objective means supply. The Cold War, however was a highly ideologically charged opposition between the two superpowers, and the scientific methodology that sprang forth to manage the Cold War and the bomb, in the United States, was not an objective scientific system divorced from the paranoia and dogma but a system that assumed a radically fundamentalist idea of capitalism. This is apparent in the widespread diffusion of game theory throughout Western postindustrial institutions. The inquiry of the thesis thus examines the texts that engage and criticise American Cold War methodology, beginning with the nuclear moment, so to speak, and Dr Strangelove’s incisive satire of moral abdication to machine processes. Moving on chronologically, the thesis examines the diffusion of particular kinds of masculinity and sexuality in postnuclear culture in Crash and End Zone and finishing up its analysis with the ethnographic portrayal of a modern American city in The Wire. More than anything else, the thesis wishes to reveal to what extent this technocratic consciousness puts pressure on language and on binding narratives.