Charles Crothers

Questioning Child Witnesses in New Zealand's Criminal Justice System: Is Cross-Examination Fair?

The way in which children are questioned in forensic contexts can impact on the accuracy of their responses. Past studies have shown that children were often questioned in the New Zealand courts in ways that profoundly contradict best practice. This study analyses the questions posed to 18 child witnesses by forensic interviewers, prosecutors, and defence lawyers during criminal trials held in New Zealand courts in 2008. The results suggest that, as was found in earlier studies, many of the questions posed to children during cross-examination in particular were inconsistent with best practice in terms of eliciting full and accurate information from children. Indeed, the heavy reliance on closed, leading and complex questions, along with other common practices, casts doubt on the forensic safety of cross-examination, calling into question its fairness for children. The implications of these results for policy and practice are explored.

Child witnesses' access to alternative modes of testifying in New Zealand.

In 1990, New Zealand became the first common law country to introduce a comprehensive legislative package of reforms for child witnesses, including provision for children to testify via alternative modes, namely, admitting video-recorded forensic interviews as the childs evidence-in-chief and testifying at trial via closed-circuit television (CCTV) or screened from the accused. Since the 1990s, there has been no empirical research examining child witnesses access to these modes in New Zealand courts. The purpose of this article is to fill that gap by examining childrens access to alternative modes of giving evidence and determining how many applications are contested by the defence. Attention then turns to the issues surrounding the impact of alternative modes on perceptions of childrens testimony, before considering whether New Zealand might introduce a statutory presumption in favour of CCTV and pre-recorded testimony in the interests of enhancing childrens ability to provide best evidence and improving efficiency in trial processes.

Encyclopaedias, Handbooks, Dictionaries, Collections and Companions Assessing Collective Works in Sociology

Sociology has always included collective works for reference purposes alongside its more usual production of books, monographs and journal articles, but in recent years the steady provision of this form of publication has swollen into an outpouring. The essay discusses the characteristics of different types of collective works in English-speaking sociology, suggests interpretations that might explain the recent outpouring, draws out the implications for other work in sociology (especially the difficulties of quality control and reviewing this material) and speculates about the future of collective works in an increasingly Internet-orientated world of scholarship. La sociologie a toujours inclus les travaux collectifs servant de référence aux côtés de la production plus courante de livres, monographies et darticles dans les revues spécialisées. On notera que ces dernières années la production régulière de cette première catégorie de publication a connu un engouement exceptionnel. Larticle se propose de dégager les caractéristiques majeures des différentes formes de travaux collectifs dans le domaine de la sociologie, selon loptique anglaise. Aussi, suggère-t-il des interprétations qui pourraient expliquer leur récent développement en mettant en relief les implications des autres travaux en sociologie (se penchant tout particulièrement sur la question de la difficulté à effectuer des contrôles de qualité et den vérifier la documentation). Enfin, il sautorise à spéculer sur lavenir de ces travaux collectifs au sein du monde scolaire de plus en plus tourné vers les outils Internet. La sociología siempre ha incluido trabajos colectivos con propósitos referenciales en paralelo a su habitual producción de libros, monografías y artículos de revistas, pero recientemente la constante provisión de este tipo de publicaciones ha aumentado — se ha ampliado con vehemencia. El trabajo analiza las características de diferentes tipos de trabajos colectivos en la sociología en inglés, sugiriendo interpretaciones que pueden explicar esta reciente proliferación, expresa las implicaciones para otro trabajo en sociología (especialmente las dificultades del control de cualidad y la revisión del material) y especula sobre el futuro de los trabajos colectivos en un creciente mundo académico orientado al uso de Internet.

New Zealand Sociology Textbooks

The historical sequence of core New Zealand sociology texts is presented through brief descriptions of their content and form, together with some comments on other sociology-related texts and New Zealand-produced sociology texts that have wider distributions. Texts are progressively larger and with a more extensive range of coverage and move from being compilations of previously published work to original material. As the pedagogic form and content of the texts thickens, there is a consequent tendency for the texts to be distanced from ongoing sociological research in New Zealand and there is less attention to the key features of New Zealand society as the framework for organizing the text.

Race and Ethnic Studies in New Zealand: Review Essay

In some countries, some groups are widely regarded as ‘model ethnicities’: commentators on New Zealand sometimes make the claim that New Zealand is a ‘model society’ in terms of the relatively beneficent state of relations amongst its ethnic groupings. The series of books reviewed here does not attempt to assess this claim, but it does Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 30 No. 1 January 2007 pp. 165 170

Merton's Flawed and Incomplete Methodological Program: Response to Stephen Turner

Particularly during the 1940s, Robert Merton developed a loosely knit methodological program including such key concepts as “structure and functional analysis” and “middle range theories” which provided guidance for sociological work over several decades and which retains some considerable relevance today. However, there are inconsistencies and incompletions in this program which have become more problematic over time. The paper questions the depth of these difficulties and also points out that in the historical circumstances of a limited stimulus provided by the paucity of critique written at the time and Robert Mertons operational style, it is not surprising that difficulties were not attended to.

They Drag My Marks Down!--Challenges Faced by Lecturers in the Allocation of Marks for Multicultural Group Projects.

Our university hosts a diverse student cohort and, in certain discipline areas, international students and domestic students whose first language is not English outnumber their English-speaking peers. On the whole, group projects with these cohorts are challenging, and in particular, the allocation of marks is fraught with difficulty. Awarding the same mark to all group members is often viewed as unfair, and resented by those who feel either disadvantaged or exploited by group members they view as less able or less willing to share the workload. However, the allocation of individual marks to group members is equally difficult and elicits the same cries of injustice. In this study, 165 first-year university students were surveyed before and after the completion of assessed group projects in their different discipline areas. The findings reveal that students wanted some say into how marks were allocated and that students’ attitudes towards the allocation of group marks differed, depending on whether they were first- or second-language speakers of English. In this article, we explore the reasons for these differences and discuss the future of this vexed assessment model.

Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

A second edition of Professor Linda Smith’s impressively well-received methodology text has now been published. Some 13 years before (in 1999), her first edition developed the concept of indigenous methodologies, setting research on/with indigenous peoples in the context of the complex skeins of colonization. Linda’s approach is that of many ‘standpoint theorists’ in which a particular (underprivileged) social category is ‘privileged’ epistemologically and morally, following the lead of feminist research/ methodology and common to the preferred methodological stance of many other underprivileged groupings. The world is seen from their perspective and mobilization to protect and develop the group’s interests by researchers is called for. The text is set within a broad-ranging analysis of the processes of colonization in its various and changing manifestations over time, beginning with the hegemonically imposed power of Western categorizations (e.g. conceptualizations of time/space) which underpin its knowledge generation (and other) processes. The book’s focus progressively and gradually zooms in on more fleshed-out features of indigenous research, such as providing a ‘menu’ of potential methodological possibilities, discussion of indigenous social research infrastructure for example, iwi (=tribal) research units which are concerned to develop ‘claims’ for compensation for foregone resources/property) and discussion of culturally appropriate research tactics). This latter includes ethical frameworks to guide indigenous and non-indigenous researchers. Articulating the link between these two halves of the book a broad indigenous conceptual framework is laid out and briefly discussed on p. 121. Outside research on indigenous peoples is seen as one of the more pernicious and persistent features of colonization as yet another way in which colonization’s (in its political, economic and cultural aspects) mendacity, murderousness and pulverizing effects smash the integrity and cohesion of the lived realities of many indigenous peoples. Perhaps on the face of it the intrusion of researchers seems less devastating, yet the attention of Western (social) science has the potential to destroy the collectively held cultural essence of indigenous peoples. Non-indigenous research may steal the Intellectual Property of indigenous tribes, consume efforts through distracting from other activities and is often framed in an alienating way: for example, when ethnographic monographs are published in metropolitan centres with the extracted knowledge encapsulated in such tomes not being available to those who have provided it. So Smith is concerned to lay out the conditions under which research might work for, and even better be carried out with/by indigenous peoples. Maori-developed articulations of knowledge generation and diffusion are used as a case study throughout the book. To provide some sense of what these involve the following are six principles of Kaupapa Māori Theory:

Sociology and the Unintended: Robert Merton Revisited

Adam Smith famously saw effective capitalist markets as emerging unintentionally from the selfish economic drives of entrepreneurs, which Max Weber nicely complemented by arguing that these drives in turn were shaped by an unintended underlying motivation flowing from their Protestant faith. While a large array of other social theorists have included an examination of the unanticipated in their work, Robert K. Merton was the first to endeavour to conceptually tame this large (somewhat dark—well, at least gray) ‘‘realm.’’ This volume of over 20 chapters has emerged from a (twice as large, in terms of papers) conference held in Gdansk, Poland in 2011. Sociology and the Unintended is remarkable for its quick publishing turnaround, being issued in the same year as the conference. The timing of the conference was able to honor the 75th anniversary of Merton’s famous essay on the unintended consequences of purposive action (UC) and endeavored to update Merton’s work and also relate it to the treatments afforded this realm of social reality by other theoretical traditions. The authors came from four continents, just over a third from Poland—indeed, interpretations of aspects of Polish macrohistory through developing explanatory analytical models (in some cases drawing on game theory) are a major component of the book. Onto his basic action model scheme, Merton soon added discussions on a brace of more particular mechanisms (the Selffulfilling Prophecy and the Suicidal Prediction) which dealt with the effects of false theories/beliefs, together with general treatment of the boomerang effect (in which after a threshold is reached, a dawning realization sets in, leading to a reversal of the initial impetus). Finally, he translated this concept into his functionalist framework through developing the paired terms of manifest and latent functions. This is a further mechanism of unintended consequences which works at an institutional level: sociologically identifying activities which shore up the operation of a social structure without the apparent guidance of an explicit intention. However, this thrust in Merton’s early work was only episodically taken up in later decades, although his interest was capped 50 years after his initial publishing foray with a reflective summative essay. Merton argued that a concern with UC was important in applied sociological work, especially in the sociological consideration of social planning; and he also held that the uncovering of UCs was an important way for sociology to score intellectual plaudits. While having been primary in drawing attention to the potential of this area of study, Merton’s work needs further development as the editors rather magisterially intone: ‘‘At the risk of making an overstatement, the concurrence of the two factors: terminological excellence and theoretical insufficiency, can even be perceived as responsible for the success of Merton’s perspective’’ (p. 13). Since all but two of the chapters dutifully refer to the classic essay or a related piece of Merton’s work— the exceptions being the last and (more alarmingly) the first—there is a promise that the collection will achieve some thematic coherence through close attention to Merton’s work. Editors Adriana Mica, Arkadiusz Peisert, and Jan Winczorek organized the book reasonably successfully into three parts: theoretical refinements and redefinitions, case studies of UCs, and UCs of norms and social interventions. The ‘‘heavy lifting’’ in the book is accomplished in the first three chapters. Raymond Boudon, who is famous for his analyses of the ways the microfoundations of social life generate macro-structures, provides the lead essay in which UCs are disconcertingly mentioned only in passing, since his attention is consumed with further renditions of his three-model typology of social action: he ascetically asserts that ‘‘in the general case . . . the unintended collective Reviews 239

Administering CR to Resuscitate Sociology

The Critical Realist meta-theoretical position in sociology and other social sciences has tended to remain on the margins of the mainstream. Porpora develops the case for reconstructing sociology through the more active deployment of Critical Realist tenets. In developing his reform agenda, Porpora reviews the contribution Critical Realist views could have on several key recalcitrant issues in sociological theory and assesses the comparative performances of an array of contemporary sociology approaches in contributing to each of these issues. This essay summarizes his argument and suggests extensions.