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Full-Text Articles in Other Sociology
The Ferguson Effect In Contemporary Policing: Assessing Police Officer Willingness To Engage The Public, Christopher Mercado
The Ferguson Effect In Contemporary Policing: Assessing Police Officer Willingness To Engage The Public, Christopher Mercado
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Researchers suggest that as public scrutiny and video recording of violent/tumultuous police encounters increase, police would back away from proactive enforcement, resulting in an increase in crime—the Ferguson Effect. Recent scholarship refined these concerns over police disengagement with the study of de-policing, while other scholars explored police self-legitimacy, in order to explain law enforcement behavior, given the immediacy and ubiquity of social media and digital communication. This study surveyed 792 law enforcement officers from 10 different police agencies in the United States, to ascertain if police officers’ personal and contextual characteristics influence their decision to either take enforcement action (i.e., …
Gifts Among Strangers: The Social Organization Of Freecycle Giving, Sofya Aptekar
Gifts Among Strangers: The Social Organization Of Freecycle Giving, Sofya Aptekar
Publications and Research
The Freecycle Network, with its millions of members gifting objects to strangers, is a stalwart fixture of the increasingly popular sharing economy. Unlike the wildly profitable Airbnb and Uber, the Freecycle Network prohibits profit-making, or even barter, providing an altruism-based alternative to capitalist markets while keeping tons of garbage out of landfills. Why do millions of people give through Freecycle instead of selling, donating, or throwing away items? Utilizing participant observation of two overlapping Freecycle groups and a survey of their members, I investigate motivations for giving and the social norms that guide it. I find that while members of …