̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - society

A third of people from Chicago carry concealed handguns in public before they reach middle age

fpjl2 — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 09:56:48 +0000

Around a third (32%) of people who grew up in Chicago have carried a concealed firearm on the city streets at least once by the time they turn 40 years old, according to a major study of gun usage taking in a quarter of a century of data.

Urban sociologists behind the research argue that such carry rates are likely to be similar across many other major US cities.

̽��ֱ��research suggests that almost half of men (48%) have carried a concealed gun by the age of 40, compared to just 16% of women.*

̽��ֱ��study, published in Science Advances, is one of the few to track gun usage in the same US population across decades, and reveals that two-thirds of those who carried a gun in the past year started doing so in adulthood, compared to only a third who began in adolescence.

̽��ֱ��research also found that gun carrying in adolescence and adulthood may occur in response to different concerns. Those who started carrying in their teens often picked up a handgun in response to experiencing gun violence first-hand.** This was not true of those who began carrying over the age of 21.

“Among adolescents, we found a strong association between either witnessing a shooting or being shot, and beginning to carry soon after,” said Dr Charles Lanfear, study lead author from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

“ ̽��ֱ��majority of people who ever carry a concealed handgun start doing so in adulthood. For those adults, we found no link between direct exposure to gun violence and gun carrying,” said Lanfear from Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology.

“This pattern suggests that gun carrying among adults may be linked to perceived threats of a more general nature, such as the idea that the world is a dangerous place, and police are incapable of ensuring public safety. Whereas gun carrying in adolescence may more often be related to direct experiences of gun violence.

“One simple but crucial fact is clear from our study, that carrying a concealed firearm is now a common event in the life course for Americans,” Lanfear said.

In the US between 1995 and 2021 some 89% of firearm homicides were committed with a handgun. However, despite the US gun stock doubling over the past quarter-century, and homicides spiking in COVID-era America, little is known about when and why people start carrying handguns.

̽��ֱ��latest study was conducted by researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ̽��ֱ�� of Pennsylvania and Harvard ̽��ֱ��. Data was taken from a representative sample of 3,403 children originally from Chicago who were tracked over a 25-year period between 1994 and 2021.

When data-gathering began in the mid-90s, children were drawn at random from 80 of Chicago’s 343 neighbourhoods and from across the racial and socioeconomic spectrum, as part of a major longitudinal study run by Harvard.

̽��ֱ��new analysis of this huge tranche of data reveals what researchers have called ‘dual pathways’ of concealed gun carrying: those who start in adolescence and those who start in adulthood, with the cut-off being the 21st birthday – the legal age for purchasing and carrying a handgun.

In addition to findings on why people carry, the team discovered that most people who carry a gun in their teens do not continue in later life, with only 37% still carrying in 2021. Those who start carrying handguns in adulthood are more persistent, with 85% still taking a gun out in public in 2021.

Moreover, the use of guns – whether it be shooting someone, shooting at someone, or brandishing a gun in self-defence – differs among the 2 groups.

Teenage gun-carriers that fired or brandished their weapons all did so for the first time before adulthood. “We found that no one who began carrying a gun in adolescence ended up using it for the first time after the age of twenty-one,” said Lanfear.

Those who picked up a gun in adulthood had a relatively steady rate of first usage over time, so that by middle age (40 years old) both groups of carriers had reached almost identical levels of gun usage: with around 40% of carriers having used a gun.

Researchers found a racial component to gun-carrying. Black individuals carried at rates over 2 times as great as those of Hispanic and white individuals. However, a previous study by the same team showed that Black city residents were twice as likely as White residents to witness a shooting by age 40.

In fact, the research found that those least likely to witness gun violence – White residents – are the most likely to start carrying a firearm in response to gun violence exposure.

While all self-described gun-carriers – whether they started in adolescence or adulthood –are more likely to have an arrest history compared to those who don’t carry guns, the researchers say their study reveals ‘stark’ differences in why and when and for how long people take guns onto the streets.

Added Lanfear: “These findings take on new relevance given recent social changes in America. In 2020 and 2021 the nation saw a sharp increase in adult gun carrying, coinciding with an uptick in gun purchases following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd. We found the same trends in adult gun-carrying among our study sample.”

Major 25-year study reveals a ‘dual pathway’ for when people start carrying.

Carrying a concealed firearm is now a common event in the life course for Americans

Charles Lanfear

Jamie Carroll/Getty

A man drawing a conceal carry pistol from an inside the waistband holster

Notes:

* ̽��ֱ��researchers found female gun-carrying to be uncommon. However, they detected a rapid increase in some cohorts at the age of 35, but these increases all occurred during the first year of COVID-19 (2020). Researchers say this is consistent with other research finding large COVID-era increases in gun ownership among groups with historically lower rates of ownership.

**Exposure to gun violence before age 15 is associated with a doubling in the probability of carrying a concealed gun between ages 15 and 21. Around 44% of adolescent gun carriers started carrying after being exposed to gun violence. In contrast, exposure to gun violence at an older age is not statistically or substantively associated with gun-carrying. Direct exposure to gun violence after age 21 is far less frequent than during adolescence.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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How a drought led to the rise of skateboarding in 1970s California

sc604 — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 13:00:11 +0000

Why did professional skateboarding arise in southern California in the 1970s? Was it a coincidence, or was it a perfect storm of multiple factors?

Black British Voices: the findings

fpjl2 — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 05:46:05 +0000

̽��ֱ��largest survey to date of the opinions and attitudes of Black people in Britain has revealed a central split on the question of British pride.

Risk of volcano catastrophe ‘a roll of the dice’, say experts

fpjl2 — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 15:05:49 +0000

̽��ֱ��world is “woefully underprepared” for a massive volcanic eruption and the likely repercussions on global supply chains, climate and food, according to experts from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).

In an article published in the journal Nature, they say there is a “broad misconception” that risks of major eruptions are low, and describe current lack of governmental investment in monitoring and responding to potential volcano disasters as “reckless”.

However, the researchers argue that steps can be taken to protect against volcanic devastation – from improved surveillance to increased public education and magma manipulation – and the resources needed to do so are long overdue.

“Data gathered from ice cores on the frequency of eruptions over deep time suggests there is a one-in-six chance of a magnitude seven explosion in the next one hundred years. That’s a roll of the dice,” said article co-author and CSER researcher Dr Lara Mani, an expert in global risk.

“Such gigantic eruptions have caused abrupt climate change and collapse of civilisations in the distant past.”

Mani compares the risk of a giant eruption to that of a 1km-wide asteroid crashing into Earth. Such events would have similar climatic consequences, but the likelihood of a volcanic catastrophe is hundreds of times higher than the combined chances of an asteroid or comet collision.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars are pumped into asteroid threats every year, yet there is a severe lack of global financing and coordination for volcano preparedness,” Mani said. “This urgently needs to change. We are completely underestimating the risk to our societies that volcanoes pose.”

An eruption in Tonga in January was the largest ever instrumentally recorded. ̽��ֱ��researchers argue that if it had gone on longer, released more ash and gas, or occurred in an area full of critical infrastructure – such as the Mediterranean – then global shock waves could have been devastating.

“ ̽��ֱ��Tonga eruption was the volcanic equivalent of an asteroid just missing the Earth, and needs to be treated as a wake-up call,” said Mani.

̽��ֱ��CSER experts cite recent research detecting the regularity of major eruptions by analysing traces of sulphur spikes in ancient ice samples. An eruption ten to a hundred times larger than the Tonga blast occurs once every 625 years – twice as often as had been previously thought.

“ ̽��ֱ��last magnitude seven eruption was in 1815 in Indonesia,” said co-author Dr Mike Cassidy, a volcano expert and visiting CSER researcher, now based at the ̽��ֱ�� of Birmingham.

“An estimated 100,000 people died locally, and global temperatures dropped by a degree on average, causing mass crop failures that led to famine, violent uprisings and epidemics in what was known as the year without summer,” he said.

“We now live in a world with eight times the population and over forty times the level of trade. Our complex global networks could make us even more vulnerable to the shocks of a major eruption.”

Financial losses from a large magnitude eruption would be in the multi-trillions, and on a comparable scale to the pandemic, say the experts.

Mani and Cassidy outline steps they say need to be taken to help forecast and manage the possibility of a planet-altering eruption, and help mitigate damage from smaller, more frequent eruptions.

These include a more accurate pinpointing of risks. We only know locations of a handful of the 97 eruptions classed as large magnitude on the “Volcano Explosivity Index” over the last 60,000 years. This means there could be dozens of dangerous volcanoes dotted the world over with the potential for extreme destruction, about which humanity has no clue.

“We may not know about even relatively recent eruptions due to a lack of research into marine and lake cores, particularly in neglected regions such as Southeast Asia,” said Cassidy. “Volcanoes can lie dormant for a long time, but still be capable of sudden and extraordinary destruction.”

Monitoring must be improved, say the CSER experts. Only 27% of eruptions since 1950 have had a seismometer anywhere near them, and only a third of that data again has been fed into the global database for “volcanic unrest”.

“Volcanologists have been calling for a dedicated volcano-monitoring satellite for over twenty years,” said Mani. “Sometimes we have to rely on the generosity of private satellite companies for rapid imagery.”

̽��ֱ��experts also call for increased research into volcano “geoengineering”. This includes the need to study means of countering aerosols released by a massive eruption, which could lead to a “volcanic winter”. They also say that work to investigate manipulating pockets of magma beneath active volcanoes should be undertaken.

Added Mani: “Directly affecting volcanic behaviour may seem inconceivable, but so did the deflection of asteroids until the formation of the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office in 2016. ̽��ֱ��risks of a massive eruption that devastates global society is significant. ̽��ֱ��current underinvestment in responding to this risk is simply reckless.”

While funding is pumped into preventing low-probability scenarios such as asteroid collision, the far more likely threat of a large volcanic eruption is close to ignored – despite much that could be done to reduce the risks, say researchers.

̽��ֱ��risks of a massive eruption that devastates global society is significant

Lara Mani

Dr Mike Cassidy

Mount Rinjani in Indonesia, which had one of the largest eruptions in the last millennium in 1257 (magnitude 7).

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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“Write fewer papers, take more risks”: researchers call for ‘rebellion’

tdk25 — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 06:46:37 +0000

̽��ֱ��appeal is the starting point for a new book which questions prevailing orthodoxies in academia. Its editors, who are four academics based in Britain and Australia, invite university staff to “rise up and rebel” against these conventions. They attack the assumption that the main output of research should be papers for scholarly journals, describing this as the “boring stuff” of their profession, which often undermines its quality and public value.

Instead, the book calls for more university researchers to “depart radically” from traditional modes of academic production and combine forces with organisations beyond the ‘academy’, “to do the radical kind of work that the world needs right now, in a time of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and rising nationalism and populism.”

It examines, in particular, how this could be achieved through the arts. In a wide-ranging survey, different contributors cite examples of how academics have used creative writing, poetry, podcasts, music – and less obvious media including circus arts and magic – both to communicate their work, and as research tools.

̽��ֱ��book, Doing Rebellious Research in and beyond the Academy, has been co-written by social scientists, critical theorists and performing artists. It argues that although universities often claim to be interdisciplinary, many academics still work in silos – rarely collaborating with colleagues, let alone beyond their institutions.

It adds that this is often a consequence of convention and not intention, and that rather than being inherently remote and ‘stuffy’, as cliché might have it, many academics are under constant pressure to publish in specialist journals. ̽��ֱ��volume itself is an anthology of “creative essays” exemplifying alternative ways to present research: as creative writing, poetry and art.

Pamela Burnard, one of the co-editors and a Professor of Arts, Creativities and Educations at the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Universities are meant to exist for everyone’s benefit. It’s bizarre that their main research output is complex, esoteric writing that only a few other academics read or understand.”

“Nobody is claiming that academic writing is pointless, but why is it the norm? If we want research to address the biggest challenges facing society, we need academics to have the confidence – in a sense the permission – to depart radically from it. We need to be braver and take more risks with what we do.”

In the book’s prologue, the editors quote a similar point made by the anthropologist, Mary Pratt, in 1988: “How could such interesting people, doing such interesting things, produce such dull books?”

They argue the arts provide alternative modes of expression that give non-academics better opportunities to connect meaningfully with academic ideas. They also suggest that when used as part of the research process, the arts give academics a means to ‘live’ and ‘experience’ their research as something creative and engaging. This often enables them to see the work differently and innovate further. ̽��ֱ��book provides numerous examples of how this has been done by researchers around the world, using forms such as dance, the visual arts, poetry, hip-hop and podcasting.

One example is the ‘Departing Radically in Academic Writing’ programme in Australia, which trains postgraduate students not just to turn their research into creative writing, but to use it as a research method. Its methods include ‘thesis drabbling’, in which students summarise their thesis as 100 words of stream-of-consciousness prose. Students say this has helped them to make their work “more human”, focus on its real purpose, and reconnect emotionally with why they wanted to do research in the first place.

Elsewhere, the book presents the recent case of a ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge student who used podcasting to collect data from students and staff for a study about how COVID-19 affected university life. It explains how the project stemmed partly from a dance workshop and ended with her releasing an electronica and spoken word album featuring performed fragments of the interviews on Spotify, to convey the fears and anxieties experienced on campuses during lockdown.

In a separate chapter a psychologist discusses how she used slam poetry and spoken word art to get marginalised young people to open up about their experiences of social injustice. She concludes that poetry can be used to challenge established “notions of what research and knowledge look like.”

This book also touches on even more offbeat artforms. One chapter, for example, reports on the Stockholm ̽��ֱ�� of the Arts ‘Department of Circus’. This trains circus performers but has also used the unexpected realm of circus arts, and their capacity to test the extremes of human ability and self-control, to undertake studies into issues such as teamwork and collaboration in high-risk environments.

In similar vein, a chapter co-authored by a medic, an award-winning biomechanics researcher, and an illusionist and escapologist, write about how the Academy of Magic & Science has created ‘magic shows’ which introduce audiences to transdisciplinary practices and ideas connecting diverse fields such as engineering, chemistry, electronics, physiology, psychology and performance cultures. ̽��ֱ��co-authors argue that the careful structuring of magic acts, to provoke curiosity and surprise, could be applied more widely in scientific writing. They suggest that presenting research as an illusionist might do could engage wider audiences far more than the “cold lists of data and conclusions” in many scientific papers.

Burnard said she fully expects the book, which features plenty of other, different examples of rebellious scholarly writing, to be “written off” by some scholars. “Our ideas and intentions are challenging – but that’s something that academics are meant to be,” she added. “ ̽��ֱ��emergence of unimagined possibilities should be celebrated.”

Doing Rebellious Research in and beyond the Academy is published by Brill-i-Sense. It will be widely available following a launch event in Cambridge on Monday 6 June.

A group of education specialists are urging researchers to challenge the “structures and regulations” which define academic scholarship, arguing that different approaches are needed in an age of climate change, COVID-19 and rising populism.

Pamela Burnard

Joakim Björklund

Student performing on rigging at the ̽��ֱ�� of Stockholm’s ‘Department of Circus’, which explores different disciplines through circus arts.

Yes

Gorillas found to live in 'complex' societies, suggesting deep roots of human social evolution

fpjl2 — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 05:24:40 +0000

Algorithms reveal “social tiers” in gorillas seen in only a few other species, such as dolphins and humans. Researchers suggest that some of these social bonds may be analogous to “old friendships” and “tribes” in humans.

Muslims leaving prison talk about the layers of their lives

amb206 — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 07:55:01 +0000

Dr Ryan Williams has become accustomed to uncomfortable moments. His research into the lived experiences of people in the criminal justice system (CJS) has taken him into high-security prisons to interview people convicted of serious crimes, and to East London to speak to recently released prisoners. All his interviewees were Muslim.

He describes this area of study as highly problematic: “I was working with people who often feel doubly marginalised – as individuals with a criminal record and seeking to rebuild their lives, and as Muslims living in British society and having to fight against stereotypes. You run the risk of bringing genuine harm to people by failing to reflect their complex life realities.”

Williams is based at Cambridge’s Centre of Islamic Studies and at the ̽��ֱ�� of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. An interest in Islam and society took him into a domain usually studied by criminologists. His interviews explored the journeys, values and struggles of people caught up in the CJS. They took place in prisons (including segregation units), probation offices, cafés, mosques and ‘chicken shops’.

In 2017, an independent review by the Rt Hon David Lammy put race equality in the spotlight by highlighting a rise in the proportion of BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) young offenders in custody: from 25% in 2006 to 41% in 2016. Lammy stated that his “review clearly shows BAME individuals still face bias – including overt discrimination – in parts of the justice system”.

̽��ֱ��same review drew attention to the over-representation of Muslims in the CJS. Between 2002 and 2016, the proportion of Muslims in the prison population doubled.

“ ̽��ֱ��higher up the CJS you go, the greater the proportion of people identifying as Muslim,” says Williams. “More than 40% of the prisoners in the high-security prison that I was working in were Muslim.”

While the over-representation of Muslims in the CJS forms the backdrop to Williams’ research, his work looks not at the causes of crime but at the experiences of offenders as they serve their sentences and reflect on their lives. “By asking questions around belonging and how people can lead a good life, we begin to see what might help them in the future,” he says.

Rapport with participants was key. He says: “In effect, they interviewed me to ensure that I wouldn’t reinforce a ‘one-dimensional’ view of them as Muslims.”

As one interviewee remarked: “There’s more to life than the little bits that you read in the paper.” ̽��ֱ��interviewee had observed other people taking an interest in Muslims in prison: “They’re all asking the same questions” about discrimination and radicalisation, and “[I’m] just standing there thinking, like, ‘is that all you want to know?”’

Through his interviews, Williams came to learn how difficult it is for people to put their finger on inequality and discrimination. It was often indirect, found in everyday examples like (says one interviewee) being refused a toilet roll by a member of staff but seeing a white prisoner acquire one with ease. For white Muslim converts, there was a sense that being a Muslim was incompatible with being British – they were seen as ‘traitors’ to their country, reinforcing the view that Islam is a ‘foreign’ religion.

For one interviewee, the rise of Islamophobia was both tragic and laughable. He observed: “It’s really sad. People are scared of Muslims now and it makes me laugh because I think to myself, ‘Hang on a minute, what are you scared of?’” He also pointed out: “Everybody knows a Muslim. You probably work with one. You might live next door to one. Your neighbour’s cool. Your work colleague’s cool.”

Since 9/11, and more so in the wake of recent attacks in London, the term Muslim has become linked with negative associations.

“‘Muslim’ is a badge applied to offenders in a way that masks other aspects of their identity – for example their roles as sons, brothers and fathers. For much of the popular media, it’s a blunt term that hints heavily at terrorism,” says Williams.

Through guided conversations, Williams encouraged his interviewees to talk about the things that meant most to them, sharing their feelings about family, community and society. He explains: “Broadly speaking, my work is about people’s lives as a moral journey – one marked by mistakes and struggle – and how this connects to belonging and citizenship in an everyday sense.”

̽��ֱ��project was sparked by a conversation that Williams had four years ago with a Muslim offender of Pakistani heritage who’d been brought up in the UK. “He said that he felt so discriminated against that he felt he couldn’t live here any longer. To me, that was shocking,” says Williams.

“It made me wonder how the CJS might serve to help people feel like citizens and rebuild their lives. What if we brought the end goal of citizenship into view, rather than focusing exclusively on risk to the public? How would this change how people see themselves and how others see them?”

Williams’ interviews revealed that, for many, learning to be a good Muslim was also tied with being a better citizen, and each had their own way of going about this. “For one person, day-to-day practices of prayer kept them away from crime. For another, for whom crime was less of a struggle, practising zakat (charity) by providing aid to the Grenfell Tower survivors enabled him to fulfil a need to contribute to society,” he says.

He interviewed 44 Muslim men, sometimes interviewing them more than once, and triangulated his data with conversations with prison and probation staff.

“My approach was experiential-based – qualitative rather than quantitative. I didn’t have a set of boxes to fill in with numbers. I used one standard survey tool from research on desistance from crime, but I found it removed richness and detail from people’s complex stories. Participants welcomed the chance to reflect more deeply on their lives.”

An individual’s faith journey, argues Williams, cannot be separated from the complex reality they find themselves in. Faith is always interpreted and filtered through our experiences and can help to construe a positive view of what it means to live a life worth living. As one participant observed: “I want to actually do some things now, like goodness, like volunteering, helping people out, helping the vulnerable… God loves that.”

Williams says that as a fellow human being he empathises with this improvised desire to find meaning in life by doing good in the world. He says: “ ̽��ֱ��most profound thing to emerge from my conversations is that leading a good life is hard – and harder for some than for others.”

In April 2018, Williams organised a workshop ‘Supporting Muslim Service Users in Community and Probation Contexts’ for frontline staff and volunteers. Probation officer Mohammed Mansour Nassirudeen, who attended the workshop, said: “We need Ryan and researchers like him to give us the bigger picture. I believe this would help bring about desired outcomes for service users from BAME backgrounds, which is long overdue.”

Adds Williams: “My contribution is simply to get people to think about the issues in a different way, to facilitate discussion drawing on people’s own strengths and expertise, and then see where it takes us.”

In July 2018, Williams won a Vice-Chancellor’s Impact Award for his work.

Ryan's research has been incorporated into: guidelines on countering prison radicalisation, adopted by the European Commission in 2017; the evidence base for the Lammy Review on equality and implementing its recommendations; a course on the Good Life Good Society, adopted in 2016 in a high security prison. Read Ryan's This Cambridge Life interview here.

̽��ֱ��workshop ‘Supporting Muslim Service Users in Community and Probation Contexts’ was funded by the Arts and Humanities Impact Fund, and supported by the School of Arts and Humanities and the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

The Lammy Review in 2017 drew attention to inequalities among black, Asian and minority ethnic people in the criminal justice system. It also flagged the over-representation of Muslims in prisons. Research by Dr Ryan Williams explores the sensitivities around this topic.

̽��ֱ��higher up the criminal justice system you go, the greater the proportion of people identifying as Muslim

Ryan Williams

Andy Aitchison

Yes

How Japan’s ‘salaryman’ is becoming cool

sjr81 — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 13:50:30 +0000

Read more about the new research into 'Cool Japanese men.

Japanese men are becoming cool. ̽��ֱ��suit-and-tie salaryman remodels himself with beauty treatments and 'cool biz' fashion. Loyal company soldiers are reborn as cool, attentive fathers. Hip-hop dance is as manly as martial arts. Could it even be cool for middle-aged men to idolise teenage girl popstars?

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

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