Security Sector Reform and Citizen Security

Experiences from Urban Latin America in Global Perspective

Robert Muggah, John de Boer

Part of the SSR Papers series.

While widely considered a core pillar of the peace and security architecture, Security Sector Reform (SSR) is coming under fire. SSR theory and practice are criticized for being overly focused on traditional conflict and post-conflict settings and for being unable to adjust to unconventional settings marked by chronic crime and terrorism. SSR tends to be disproportionately focused on national institutions and less amenable to engaging at the subnational scale. Drawing on the experiences of so-called ‘citizen security’ measures in cities across Latin America and the Caribbean, this paper offers some opportunities for renewing and revitalizing SSR. The emphasis of citizen security interventions on multiple forms of insecurity, data-driven and evidence-informed prevention, the promotion of social cohesion and efficacy and designing crime prevention into the social and built environment are all insights that can positively reinforce comprehensive SSR measures in the 21st century. 

Application of Molecular Methods and Raman Microscopy/Spectroscopy in Agricultural Sciences and Food Technology

Biljana Vucelić-Radović et al. (eds.)

This book has been prepared with the aim to present the application of these two state-of-the art technologies in agricultural sciences and food technology, and to explain the protocols for analyses of different plant, animal, microbiological and food samples as well as for different biotechnology procedures.

Selected methods and protocols which are used in plant stress physiology, weed science, fruit breeding research, microbial ecology, plant virus and fungus diagnostics, phytobacteriology, fishery, food biochemistry, food materials and food technology are described. Special adaptation of certain protocols is required for application in each of these sciences, for every type of GMO organism, food technology raw material, and food technology product, as well as for every type of bacteria, virus, fungus or fungus-like organism, for each type of raw material in terms of plant host species, plant organs, year period and conditions in the laboratory.

Application of molecular methods, primarily qPCR, and Raman microscopy/ spectroscopy in agricultural and food sciences provides substantial opportunity for increased production efficiency, food safety, better product quality and improvement of plant and animal health.

This book is aimed for students, scientists and professionals working in the field of agriculture and food technology.

Pro-ecological Restructuring of Companies

Case Studies

Aleksandra Gąsior (ed.)

This book presents a practical approach to pro-environmental challenges faced by companies in the process of restructuring.

It contains a broad variety of case studies from different economic sectors, and small and large businesses, in four European countries: Ukraine, Romania, Germany and Poland. The studies are the results of surveys of companies that had either already restructured or were planning to, and reveal both the weaknesses and strengths in these practices. The book is divided into three parts: explorations of how political and legal factors are embedded in a company’s strategy and how they influence the company’s behaviour; analyses of companies’ activities on matching restructuring with ecology; and approaches to ecoinnovations within the companies.

The case studies throughout the book show that the restructuring of a company is an opportunity for the implementation of proecological action and “green” business models. The authors trust that the experiences and good practices of others will prove valuable both for future businessmen (i.e. students), but also for academics and representatives of local government, central environmental agencies, owners and managers of enterprises to be restructured.

Rethinking Community Policing in International Police Reform

Examples from Asia

Deniz Kocak

Part of the SSR Papers series.

Community policing has often been promoted, particularly in liberal democratic societies, as the best approach to align police services with the principles of good security sector governance (SSG). The stated goal of the community policing approach is to reduce fear of crime within communities, and to overcome mutual distrust between the police and the communities they serve by promoting police citizen partnerships. This SSR Paper traces the historical origins of the concept of community policing in Victorian Great Britain and analyses the processes of transfer, implementation, and adaptation of approaches to community policing in Imperial and post-war Japan, Singapore, and Timor-Leste. The study identifies the factors that were conducive or constraining to the establishment of community policing in each case. It concludes that basic elements of police professionalism and local ownership are necessary preconditions for successfully implementing community policing according to the principles of good SSG. Moreover, external initiatives for community policing must be more closely aligned to the realities of the local context.

CLARIN in the Low Countries

Jan Odijk, Arjan van Hessen (eds.)

This book describes the results of activities undertaken to construct the CLARIN research infrastructure in the Low Countries, i.e., in the Netherlands and in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium).

CLARIN is a European research infrastructure for humanities and social science researchers that work with natural language data. This book introduces the CLARIN infrastructure, describes various aspects of the technical implementation of the infrastructure, and introduces data, applications and software services created in the Low Countries for a wide variety of humanities disciplines. These enable researchers to accelerate their research activities and to base their conclusions on a much larger and richer empirical base than was possible before, thus providing a basis for carrying out groundbreaking research in which old questions can be investigated in new ways and new questions can be raised and investigated for the first time.

Given CLARIN’s focus on language data, linguistics and particularly syntax are prominently present. However, other humanities disciplines that work with natural language data such as history, literary studies, religion studies, media studies, political studies, and philosophy are represented as well. The book is a must read for humanities scholars and students who want to understand and use the potential that the Digital Humanities offer, as well as for computer scientists and developers of research infrastructures, in particular for researchers working on the CLARIN infrastructure in other countries.

Migration of the Ukrainian Population

Economic, Institutional and Sociocultural Factors

Yuriy Bilan

Ukraine is a 'border'€™ society, situated culturally and socio-politically between Eurasian and Euro-Atlantic poles of attraction. The influence of these two distinct cultures can be seen throughout Ukrainian society, but particularly in its migration patterns.

In this book, Dr Hab. Y. Bilan analyses external migration from Ukraine using the system analysis approach combining econometric analysis and statistical modelling, historiographical and institutional analyses along with quantitative and qualitative sociological analysis with special attention to media discourse and congregational, demographic, gender and regional dimensions.

Mapping and the Citizen Sensor

Giles Foody et al. (eds.)

Maps are a fundamental resource in a diverse array of applications ranging from everyday activities, such as route planning through the legal demarcation of space to scientific studies, such as those seeking to understand biodiversity and inform the design of nature reserves for species conservation. For a map to have value, it should provide an accurate and timely representation of the phenomenon depicted and this can be a challenge in a dynamic world. Fortunately, mapping activities have benefitted greatly from recent advances in geoinformation technologies. Satellite remote sensing, for example, now offers unparalleled data acquisition and authoritative mapping agencies have developed systems for the routine production of maps in accordance with strict standards. Until recently, much mapping activity was in the exclusive realm of authoritative agencies but technological development has also allowed the rise of the amateur mapping community. The proliferation of inexpensive and highly mobile and location aware devices together with Web 2.0 technology have fostered the emergence of the citizen as a source of data. Mapping presently benefits from vast amounts of spatial data as well as people able to provide observations of geographic phenomena, which can inform map production, revision and evaluation. The great potential of these developments is, however, often limited by concerns. The latter span issues from the nature of the citizens through the way data are collected and shared to the quality and trustworthiness of the data. This book reports on some of the key issues connected with the use of citizen sensors in mapping. It arises from a European Co-operation in Science and Technology (COST) Action, which explored issues linked to topics ranging from citizen motivation, data acquisition, data quality and the use of citizen derived data in the production of maps that rival, and sometimes surpass, maps arising from authoritative agencies.

Thoughts and Ways of Thinking

Source Theory and Its Applications

Benjamin Brown

Why do we think differently from one another? Why do religious people adhere to their faith even against reason, whilst atheist thinkers label it “nonsense”? Why do some judges turn more to moral values and others less? Why do we attach different meanings to the same words?

These questions can be tackled on psychological or sociological levels, but we can also analyze the subjects on the epistemological level. That is the purpose of this book.

Thoughts and Ways of Thinking offers Source Theory as a single explanation for epistemic processes and their religious, legal and linguistic derivatives. The idea is simple: our senses, our understanding, our memory, the testimonies that we trust, and many other objects transmit data to us and so shape our beliefs. In this function they serve as our truth sources. Different beliefs stem from different sources or different hierarchies between same sources. This notion is formalized here through the new tool of Source Calculus, and, after balancing its relativistic consequences by adding pragmatic constraints, it is applied to the philosophies of religion, law and language. With this unified theory, old doubts are framed in new perspectives, and some of them even find their solution.

Production Ergonomics

Designing Work Systems to Support Optimal Human Performance

Cecilia Berlin, Caroline Adams

Production ergonomics – the science and practice of designing industrial workplaces to optimize human well-being and system performance – is a complex challenge for a designer. Humans are a valuable and flexible resource in any system of creation, and as long as they stay healthy, alert and motivated, they perform well and also become more competent over time, which increases their value as a resource. However, if a system designer is not mindful or aware of the many threats to health and system performance that may emerge, the end result may include inefficiency, productivity losses, low working morale, injuries and sick-leave.

To help budding system designers and production engineers tackle these design challenges holistically, this book offers a multi-faceted orientation in the prerequisites for healthy and effective human work. We will cover physical, cognitive and organizational aspects of ergonomics, and provide both the individual human perspective and that of groups and populations, ending up with a look at global challenges that require workplaces to become more socially and economically sustainable. This book is written to give you a warm welcome to the subject, and to provide a solid foundation for improving industrial workplaces to attract and retain healthy and productive staff in the long run.

Doing the Right Thing

A Value Based Economy

Arjo Klamer

This book is for all those who are seeking a human perspective on economic and organizational processes. It lays the foundations for a value based approach to the economy.

The key questions are: “What is important to you or your organization?” “What is this action or that organization good for?”

The book is directed at the prevalence of instrumentalist thinking in the current economy and responds to the calls for another economy.

Another economy demands another economics. The value based approach is another economics; it focuses on values and on the most important goods such as families, homes, communities, knowledge, and art. It places economic processes in their cultural context.

What does it take to do the right thing, as a person, as an organization, as a society? What is the good to strive for? This book gives directions for the answers.

The value based approach restores the ancient idea that quality of life and of society is what the economy is all about. It advocates shifting the focus from quantities (“how much?”) to qualities (“what is important?”).