Jeffrey Stevenson Murer

An Experimental Trial Exploring the Impact of Continuous Transdermal Alcohol Monitoring upon Alcohol Consumption in a Cohort of Male Students

Objective To examine the impact of continuous transdermal alcohol monitoring upon alcohol consumption in male students at a Scottish university. Method Using a within-subject mixed-methods design, 60 male university students were randomly allocated into three experimental conditions using AUDIT score stratified sampling. Participants in Conditions A and B were asked not to consume alcohol for a 14-day period, with those in Condition A additionally being required to wear a continuous transdermal alcohol monitoring anklet. Condition C participants wore an anklet and were asked to continue consuming alcohol as normal. Alcohol consumption was measured through alcohol timeline follow-back, and using data collected from the anklets where available. Diaries and focus groups explored participants’ experiences of the trial. Results Alcohol consumption during the 14-day trial decreased significantly for participants in Conditions A and B, but not in C. There was no significant relative difference in units of alcohol consumed between Conditions A and B, but significantly fewer participants in Condition A drank alcohol than in Condition B. Possible reasons for this difference identified from the focus groups and diaries included the anklet acting as a reminder of commitment to the study (and the agreement to sobriety), participants feeling under surveillance, and the use of the anklet as a tool to resist social pressure to consume alcohol. Conclusions The study provided experience in using continuous transdermal alcohol monitors in an experimental context, and demonstrated ways in which the technology may be supportive in facilitating sobriety. Results from the study have been used to design a research project using continuous transdermal alcohol monitors with ex-offenders who recognise a link between their alcohol consumption and offending behaviour.

Ethnic Conflict: An Overview of Analyzing and Framing Communal Conflicts From Comparative Perspectives

This article examines developments in the analysis of communal conflict over the past twenty years, exploring insights regarding the relationships of economic structure, conceptions of deprivation, and the constructions of narratives making sense of civil strife. The piece compares analyses from differing paradigms and disciplines, including terrorism studies, the sociology of violence and war, and the anthropology of violence. The article explores how shifting emphases from both participants and analysts cast incidents of violence in a different light, proscribing differing potential intervention strategies and interpretations of outcomes. Highlighting these shifts provides new space for analyses and greater understanding of the potential costs and consequences of intervention.

Understanding collective violence : the communicative and performative qualities of violence in acts of belonging

This chapter explores the motivations for joining violent groups across a range of circumstances. In particular the chapter will explore the similarities in both entry and exit among groups as diverse as street gangs and terrorist organisations. Frequently membership in violent groups is explained in terms of individual material gain or the attainment of individual fame. Indeed many of these studies treat joining these groups and the deployment of violent as being anti-social. However, much can be gained by seeing these groups in completely the opposite light: gangs, factions, militias, even terrorist organisations can be highly social environment, especially for those who feel that they have limited opportunities for social capital accumulation or mobility, or indeed have even been expelled from a social milieu for mobility altogether. Within such social milieus violence is but one form of social action among a whole range social acts; or to put it more succinctly, in such circumstances violence itself is a social act. For those who experience family instability, or otherwise experience low social status, joining a violent group might become one of the means of accumulating social capital, and experience upward social mobility. Violence itself may be the act that produces social capital, and at the same time reinforces group membership. It does so in a number of ways. Violent imaginaries join groups together. Demonstrations of this shared violent imaginary become the means of expressing group belonging. Similarly violence becomes the means of communicating with group members, as the means of reinforcing collective solidarity, and demonstrating distance and distinction from other groups that become the targets of violence. Those who commit violence may not be making an individual decision to be “bad” or “evil”; they may be responding to social expectations and norms in a specific environment. They may be performing their identity.