Criminology - Doctoral Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10468/9619

Browse

Now showing 1 - 5 of 6

Framing justice in ‘unjust times’: critiquing Irish legal, political, and medical debates on the right to die
(University College Cork, 2023) Keogh, James Patrick; Skillington, Tracey; O'Neill, Maggie
Against the backdrop of notable legal challenges here in Ireland, this research examines the enduring discord between the widespread societal endorsement of assisted dying and the prevailing legislative rigidity that unequivocally rejects it. To support this investigation, a qualitative methodology was applied, involving frame analysis of legal case documents and semi-structured interviews, supplemented with elements of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This approach helped identify the most dominant interpretive positions that constitute major sticking points of the right to die debate, and explore how these positions are shaped by ideologies, biases, and power dynamics that structure the exchange of ideas, arguments, and counter-positions. Drawing from critical definitions of justice (Forst, 2007; Honneth, 1995; Fricker, 2007) and Foucauldian considerations of power concerning both the physical and the body politic (Foucault, 1978), this study posits that end-of-life controversies are more usefully conceptualised as ‘pained’ experiences (Scarry, 1985), defined from the viewpoint of the suffering body. Providing detailed accounts of how justice regarding the right to die has been constructed in formal decision-making arenas and publicly challenged by an emerging social movement that considers it ‘unjust,’ this body of work observes the residual effects of a deeply conservative Catholic state on experiences of dying. Despite its loosening stranglehold on contemporary Irish society, a nexus of legal, political, and medical power structures continues to thwart efforts to legislate for assisted dying. These forces successfully frame the conditions for its possibility as morally reprehensible and as an extension of suicide, leaving legislators hesitant to take decisive action. Frustrated by the lack of progress on the issue and driven by the desperate pleas of loved ones, this study crucially documents the justifications employed by individuals for taking matters into their own hands and laying a claim upon death themselves. This subversive response, though shrouded in secrecy, speaks to the pressing nature of unfulfilled human needs and the desperate yearning for the fundamental requisites of compassion and agency. It represents a poignant manifestation of the stark realities faced by those entangled in end-of-life crises – realities that demand more urgent and heartfelt engagement from policymakers than currently offered.
Mapping the production of knowledge of cyberterrorism and hacktivism research using an integrated bibliometric and content analysis framework
(University College Cork, 2024) Hosford, Kevin; Windle, James; Lynch, Orla
The proliferation of Internet Communication Technologies (ICT) has prompted scholarly interest in role of ICT in facilitating cybercrime, particularly in the domains of cyberterrorism and hacktivism. Exploration of cyberterrorism and hacktivism has faced challenges stemming from the absence of dedicated platforms, such as academic journals and conferences impeding a consistent research output and hindering collaborative research. In contrast to more established domains like terrorism studies and organised crime studies, the research on cyberterrorism and hacktivism is still in its initial stages within the academic discourse. This doctoral thesis seeks to map the conceptual understandings and production of knowledge surrounding cyberterrorism and hacktivism research throughout a twenty-year period (2000-2020). Employing a modified version of Creswell and Clark's ‘Triangulation Design: Data Transformation Model,’ the research employs bibliometric analysis for a knowledge mapping of the academic domain. Additionally, a quantitative content analysis of definitions pertaining to cyberterrorism and hacktivism sheds light on key issues within the scientific domain. The investigation reveals a dominance of male, single-author publications, primarily originating from the global north, suggesting a potential lack of collaborative trans-national research amongst a backdrop of an array of multi-disciplined parties. The absence of consistent high-impact journal contributions, lack of knowledge cohesion, coupled with an over-reliance towards secondary sources, further hinders the rich and dynamic collection of researchers from achieving a cohesive academic discourse leading to the issue of knowledge fragmentation within academia fields. The analysis of definitions exposes cyberterrorism as predominantly hypothesised, emphasising unspecified actors and potential harms, diverging from conventional notions of terrorism as a spectacle. In contrast, hacktivism is characterised by more group-oriented definitions, rooted in specific events, their injustices, and associated hacktivist campaigns. Recognizing the distinct ideological motivations behind both cyberterrorism and hacktivism, this thesis concludes by proposing an ontological framework in effort to decentralise the dependency towards specific research definitions. This framework aims to facilitate the collection and dissemination of event details related to these phenomena, fostering more extensive and collaborative research efforts in this evolving field.
No ordinary death: the Disappeared of Northern Ireland's conflict
(University College Cork, 2022-08-31) Peake, Sandra; Lynch, Orla; Windle, James; University College Cork
This study is set within the context of the Northern Ireland Conflict, also known as the Troubles. The aim is to explore the impact of enforced disappearances on first and second generation family members. The study relates to the families of a group of people abducted, murdered and secretly buried by republican paramilitaries during the Troubles. The research considers the influence of disappearances on the interpersonal relationships in the families involved and in the communities in which they lived. The project also examines the historical significance of intra-community deaths and of interactions with other elements of society that make up our society such as the church, health professionals, members of the police and government bodies from the period following the abduction to the present day. Disappearing individuals is a phenomenon that occurs and has occurred outside of NI’s Conflict. The researcher draws on the experiences of families in other conflicts around the world, whose loved ones were also disappeared by paramilitaries, to examine how the context to the violence impact on the individual and family experiences. The study was carried out using a Grounded Theory framework and involved interviewing 40 people (repeat measures) - parents, siblings, children and other family members of those abducted. The researcher is an insider researcher as she worked with and works as an advocate for the interviewees, both nationally and internationally, for a period in excess of twenty years. Analysis of the data gathered produced eight theoretical higher order concepts, underpinned by a number of higher and lower order categories. These concepts have been developed into a new theoretical framework called ‘Orchestrated Loss’, which explains the impact of enforced disappearance within a conflict situation on individuals, families and communities. This new theoretical framework offers an insight into the unique situation in which the families of those disappeared in politically motivated, conflict-related situations find themselves. It also offers a basis and future direction for additional research in an area that has been under researched, and which is complex and conceptually immature.
Emile Durkheim: the narrative of a liminal subject
(University College Cork, 2021) Flannery, Sophia; Szakolczai, Arpad; Balfe, Myles
Since 1939, Anglo-American biographers have presented a non-political narrative of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) that has rendered subordinate the political assessments of Edward Tiryakian (1979) and Robert Alun Jones (1986). This is despite evidence existing that corroborates these latter researchers understanding. To elucidate the circumstances behind this disparity this thesis examines these biographies to discover if they display an engagement with rhetorical literary practices. This is to consider if these have caused them to make discursive statements that preclude the valuations of Tiryakian and Alun Jones in the same location from being given full recognition with the effect they limit knowledge formation around Durkheim’s identity. Additionally, it is to explore the situation whereby Tiryakian’s particular offering triggered Durkheim’s identity and this narrative to incur a state of liminality (Van Gennep, Turner) while more modern western biographies on Durkheim activated these to experience a state of permanent liminality (Szakolczai, 2009). To support these efforts, the concepts of liminality and permanent liminality are employed as a conceptual framework while Marie-Laure Ryan’s (2007) view of narrative and Judith Butler’s (1997) understanding of textual silences in conjunction with Foucault’s archaeological method and Derrida’s Theory of Deconstruction are utilised as an analytical framework. The objective is to locate points of agreement within Anglo-American biographies on Durkheim that can be analysed to confirm if the statements they make are exclusionary in form. To additionally enable this process these statements are analysed against others presented by more historically directed researchers. The intent is to unveil points of reference within these texts that connect Durkheim with French politics between 1858 and 1917. To broaden this research scope even further an examination of the level of reflexivity (Bourdieu) that underlies the above situations occurs. The aim is to affirm which of the above interpretations of Durkheim holds legitimacy in the contemporary context (Van Leeuwen, 2007). Moreover, it is to establish if beyond the observations of Tiryakian and Alun Jones, the information that biographies on Durkheim present has the capacity to confirm Durkheim as political in the republican sense and a ‘subject’ (Foucault) of the French Third Republic.
‘Ceci n’est pas du terrorisme: this is not terrorism’: representation of far-right and jihadi terrorism in the terrorism studies literature
(University College Cork, 2021) Ahmed, Yasmine; Lynch, Orla; Swirak , Katharina
This thesis examines how terrorism is imagined, constructed, and researched by examining the output of scholars in key research journals. The aim of this work is to understand exactly what it is we are talking about when we research about terrorism, not to examine how we define terrorism, but how we define the problem of terrorism. This representation becomes manifest in the research areas we prioritise, the different ways we talk about different ideological motivations, the methods we use to gather data and to analyse terrorism in two of its major manifestations: jihadi terrorism, and far-right terrorism. By examining how we define the problem of terrorism it becomes clear that as an area of study, Terrorism Studies as a manifestation of its time and place (western and post 9/11), is imbued with conservative notions of securitised state centred narratives and is influenced in its analysis by the ideological claims of the perpetrators. This thesis will demonstrate that the way we talk about jihadism as opposed to how we talk about the far-right is a manifestation of the field of terrorism studies. It will also demonstrate that in order to further the academic endeavour of research into terrorism we need new ways of thinking about the field, moving away from the influence of Western, state-centric dominant definitions and towards a framework that prioritises on an empirically based and grounded approach to understanding what the problem appears to be.

Browse

Recent Submissions