School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemPlaying by the rules? How community actors use experts and evidence to oppose coal seam gas activity in Australia(Elsevier, 2021-09-01)Evidence-Based Policy Making advocates for greater attention to evidence, and particularly technical evidence and expertise, in developing policy. This pervasive paradigm presents community actors with a conundrum: how to engage in ways that are consistent with the norms and expectations of policy consultation, whilst also representing the nature and nuance of their lived experience? In this paper we explore one response to this conundrum, in which community actors adopt and adapt technical knowledge claims alongside their lived experience to pursue their case. Using the conflict over Coal Seam Gas development in New South Wales, Australia, we explored community actors’ interpretations and use of evidence and expertise in seeking to make their voices heard and their knowledge count. Analysis of qualitative interviews found community actors seemed compelled to conform with expectations of policy influence, producing and using technical knowledge and evidence, and drawing on scientific expertise and evidence, presenting these in a rational and objective way. This research also finds a complicated relationship between different forms of knowledge, with local knowledge enhancing technical expertise. Emotions, though deeply felt by the community actors in our research, were not seen as convincing to policy decision makers. The Evidence-Based Policy Making paradigm seems to be constraining what community actors feel they must contribute to be seen as legitimate actors, as well as how they contribute it.
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ItemThe Social License: Insights from Australia(The University of Melbourne, 2020)This report summarises a multi-year research project into the concept of a social license to operate and Australia’s coal seam gas (CSG) industry. The project was completed by researchers at the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University and was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Program (DP 140102779).
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ItemYou’re a Criminologist? What Can You Offer Us? Interrogating Criminological Expertise in the Context of White Collar Crime(Routledge, 2020)Public criminology in relation to white collar crime began with E. H. Sutherland’s coining of the term to draw attention to the criminal nature of corporate activity and the need for greater use of criminal penalties against white collar criminals. Understanding the power of and limitations to criminalization remain central to our expertise. The complexity of this work has made a public criminology of white collar crime more challenging. For some, greater attention should be paid to crime prevention—or regulation—prior to (or instead of) criminalization. Yet, both criminalization and crime prevention demand expertise that extends beyond the traditional criminological canon to ensure that a specific law when enforced can be effective in reducing white collar crime. Without this, acting lawfully is entirely compatible with continuing harm. Indeed, acting lawfully can engender further damage by white collar individuals and corporations. Laws, as recent analyses of white collar crime show, are contradictory. Because of this, greater attention needs to be given to the context within which criminalization is demanded. Knowledge of place is a critical corollary to understanding when either or both criminalization and regulation are an effective strategy or when they deflect attention away from the need for broader structural reforms.
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ItemIntroduction(ROUTLEDGE, 2020)BACKGROUND: One important way to transform food systems for human and planetary health would be to reduce the production and consumption of animals for food. The over-production and over-consumption of meat and dairy products is resource-intensive, energy-dense and creates public health and food equity risks, including the creation of superbugs and antimicrobial resistance, contamination and pollution of land and waterways, and injustice to animals and humans who work in the sector. Yet the continuing and expanding use of animals is entrenched in food systems. One policy response frequently suggested by parties from all sectors (industry, government and civil society) is voluntary or mandatory labelling reforms to educate consumers about the healthiness and sustainability of food products, and thus reduce demand. This paper evaluates the pitfalls and potentials of labelling as an incremental regulatory governance stepping-stone to transformative food system change. METHODS: We use empirical data from a study of the regulatory politics of animal welfare and environmental claims on Australian products together with an ecological regulation conceptual approach to critically evaluate the potential of labelling as a regulatory mechanism. RESULTS: We show that labelling is generally ineffective as a pathway to transformative food system change for three reasons: it does not do enough to redistribute power away from dominant actors to those harmed by the food system; it is vulnerable to greenwashing and reductionism; and it leads to market segmentation rather than collective political action. CONCLUSION: We suggest the need for regulatory governance that is ecological by design. Labelling can only be effective when connected to a broader suite of measures to reduce overall production and consumption of meat. We conclude with some recommendations as to how public health advocates and policy entrepreneurs might strategically use and contest labelling and certification schemes to build support for transformative food system change and to avoid the regressive consequences of labelling.
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ItemGrappling with injustice: Corporate crime, multinational business and interrogation of law in context(SAGE Publications, 2021)This article interrogates criminological ambivalence towards law as both essential in the control of corporate crime and as an enabler of corporate harm. It argues we can make sense of such tensions by seeing law—in its plurality of soft and hard forms—as constituent elements within multiple fields of struggle, in which laws operate as tools wielded to influence contested rules, and as rules governing regulatory struggles. This argument is developed by bringing criminological analyses of the law’s role in business facilitation and regulatory enforcement together with sociological analyses of ‘fields of struggle’. The value of this approach in illuminating law’s ambiguous role in relation to corporate harm is illustrated through two cases of multinational business activity in Indonesia.
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ItemNonjudicial business regulation and community access to remedy(Wiley, 2020)Redress for communities harmed by transnational business activity remains elusive. This paper examines community efforts to access redress for human rights-related harms via recourse to transnational nonjudicial mechanisms (NJMs) – a prevalent but widely debated instrument of transnational business regulation. Drawing together insights from theoretical debates surrounding nonjudicial regulation and evidence from a major empirical study of human rights redress claims in Indonesia and India, the paper explores the conditions under which NJMs can support community access to remedy. Three conditions are shown to be central in enabling some degree of NJM effectiveness: the institutional design of regulatory strategies, the institutional empowerment of regulatory institutions, and social empowerment of affected communities and their supporters. While all three conditions are required in some measure to underpin effective NJM interventions, these conditions can be combined in varying ways in different contexts to underpin either top–down or bottom–up pathways to redress. The former derives its primary influence from institutional authority and capacity, while the latter relies more heavily on diffuse societal leverage in support of community claims. These findings have significant implications for theoretical debates about the capacity and limits of nonjudicial regulatory approaches to support human rights redress within decentered contexts of transnational regulation where both regulatory power and agency are widely diffused.