B Baker
Biographic Data
| ID | 41343 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B Baker |
| GIVEN NAMES | B |
| FAMILY NAME | Baker |
| SIGNATURE | BAKER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Coventry University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0915-9072 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 78 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 226 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 78 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
How and why racial isolation affects education costs and the provision of equal educational opportunity
This article provides a review of prior empirical work exploring whether and to what extent school district racial composition affects the costs associated with providing equal educational opportunity to achieve a common set of outcomes. This prior work mainly involves education cost function modeling on several states and in an earlier version of our national education cost model. Here, I update the national education cost model and apply a seri…
Policy Dialogue
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the San Antonio v. Rodriguez case, viewed by some as the worst decision in the US Supreme Court’s modern history. As legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky observed, the court essentially declared that “discrimination against the poor does not violate the Constitution and that education is not a fundamental right.” 1 Five decades later, how does this case from the past continue to exert its influence on the pr…
Modern Cronies
Journal Article Modern Cronies: Southern Industrialism from Gold Rush to Convict Labor, 1829–1894 Get access Modern Cronies: Southern Industrialism from Gold Rush to Convict Labor, 1829–1894. By Kenneth H Wheeler. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2021. 187 pp. Cloth, $14.95. Paper, $34.95.) Bruce E Baker Bruce E Baker Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar J…
I am not a beggar’
Scholars have long known the Narrative of North Carolina writer and activist Moses Roper, first published in London in 1837. This article uses newly discovered sources and the multiple editions of the Narrative to reconstitute the biography of this first fugitive slave abolitionist to lecture in Ireland and Britain. It explores Roper’s interactions with British abolitionists, especially prominent Baptist ministers Francis A. Cox and Thomas Price.…
Murder in New Orleans
Jeffrey S. Adler has produced as fine a quantitative study of urban life as can be imagined in Murder in New Orleans, which covers the period from 1920 to 1945. He was able to do this partly because of the thorough archives of police, court, and coroner records, supplemented by city directories, census schedules, newspapers, and other materials. These sources, and years of patient work, allowed Adler to assemble rich quantitative and qualitative …
School funding disparities and the plight of Latinx children
This article provides a systematic decomposition of disparities in school funding by race and ethnicity using two new data resources. First, we use a national district level panel of data from the School Finance Indicators Database to evaluate recent (2012 – 2017) disparities in school revenue and spending by race in addition to poverty, across and within all states and within selected states. Next, we use data from the National Education Cost Mo…
Esports y ciencia
The cultural changes suffered in the last decades have originated different emergent phenomena that have burst into our time. Electronic sports (esports) have been consolidated as one of them, giving rise to their study from multiple areas, especially from the sciences of physical-sports activity (leisure, performance, professionalization ...). Therefore, this work illustrates how the scientific-academic world is currently addressing this phenome…
The Revolution That Failed
The Revolution That Failed is a deeply researched monograph but an uneasy marriage of two forms: a detailed local study of Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, and a broad argument about the meaning and historiography of Reconstruction. The result is a book that, while valuable, is uneven for several reasons. Natchitoches Parish was unusual, even in the unusual state of Louisiana, as a French settlement in a part of the state dominated by Anglo-Americ…
Programme des Journées
Flux migratoires entre les continents africain et asiatique la fin du Plistocne et au dbut de l'Holocne : une contribution de l'anthropologique biologique -I. CreveCoeur, F
The character and value of vernacular security
This article reports the findings of field research into the vernacular understanding of security in South West Cameroon. It was found that security significantly contested; it is both objective and subjective; it is communal, whilst at the same time requiring individual l responsibility of personal security; it favours certainty and stability; it draws on a multiplicity of providers, and it goes beyond traditional conceptualisations. The finding…
Is it complex environments or complex systems that undermines police reform in developing countries
This article is a reflection upon the challenges facing police reform in developing countries. In doing so it explores the usefulness of complexity theory both to understand the evidence of relative failure and to reconsider the explanations offered for that failure in terms of unique individual factors or the complex nature of the environment. The article suggests that the nature of police organisations as complex social systems may be a princip…
Security sector reform in conflict-affected countries
Security sector reform in conflict-affected countries: the evolution of a model." International Peacekeeping, 25(3), pp. 469–470
Discovering the South
Jennifer Ritterhouse's Discovering the South is a book about a book: A Southerner Discovers the South, published in 1938 by Jonathan Daniels, the editor of the Raleigh (NC) News and Observer and the son of Josephus Daniels. Since readers are figuratively stuck in the car with Daniels on his 1937 tour through the South described in the book, it is helpful that he is an interesting and pleasant character, definitely a product of the modern South ra…
Hawaiian Music in Motion
Hawaiian Music in Motion: Mariners, Missionaries, and Minstrels." American Nineteenth Century History, 18(2), pp. 180–181
Working on the Dock of the Bay
Although Michael D. It well deserved that award. Historians have written about Charleston’s waterfront before the revolution and about the struggles of a free and biracial workforce to negotiate the waterfront in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fewer scholars have examined the period between the 1780s and the 1860s, perhaps because it seemed relatively static and thus less interesting. This book proves the error of such an assu…
Free Labor
Free Labor: The Civil War and the Making of an American Working Class." Cultural and Social History, 14(1), pp. 128–129
A Working People
Book Review| February 01 2016 A Working People: A History of African American Workers since Emancipation A Working People: A History of African American Workers since Emancipation. Reich, Steven A.. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013xi + 231 pp., $35.00 (cloth); $34.99 (e-book) Bruce E. Baker Bruce E. Baker Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2016) 13 (1): 156–158. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3342830 Cite …
Mark Wahlgren Summers. The Ordeal of the Reunion
The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction is a book forty-six years in the making, and Mark Wahlgren Summers has paved the way with many previous important monographs about Reconstruction, particularly on railroads, corruption, and paranoia in this period. This book draws on all that research and more, and Summers is a master at weaving together many strands of arguments at once. There is a lot to be said in favor of this book, b…
Unchanging public order policing in changing times in East Africa
This article offers a political analysis of the practices and motives of public order policing in Ethiopia and Uganda. It offers an explanation of the continuation of forceful tactics against political protest in a context of changing methods of information gathering, organisation and mobilisation by urban activists resulting from their access to internet and communication technology. It finds the two regimes, as anocracies, are caught between le…
Stephen V. Ash. A Massacre in Memphis
It is surprising that no one has written a book on the 1866 Memphis Riot before, but no historian could be better prepared to do so than Stephen V. Ash, much of whose work centers on Tennessee during and immediately after the Civil War. The structure of the book is elegant and effective, almost theatrical. Ash sets the stage, introduces the characters, tells the story, and discusses the aftermath. Four groups of people came together in Memphis by…
Remarks by Commentating Editor
Hybridity in policing
Hybridity is used in a broad range of disciplines to define a process or institutional outcome of mixed organisational systems and practices. In justice, security and policing studies, it is used to describe the interpenetration of different policing and justice providers. The paper examines the parameters within which hybridity is a beneficial concept for the analysis of policing providers and their relationships, and considers whether it offers…
Security Beyond the State
Security Beyond the State Security Beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics by Rita Abrahamsen and Michael C. Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. vii+272
What Reconstruction Meant
A great deal has been written about southern memory centering on Civil War, particularly view of war as a valiant lost cause. In this challenging new book, Bruce Baker looks at a related, and equally important, aspect of southern memory that has been treated by historians only in passing: Reconstruction. What Reconstruction Meant examines what both white and black South Carolinians thought about history of Reconstruction and how it shaped way the…
The Boss of New Orleans
Multi-layered justice and security delivery in post-conflict and fragile states
This paper examines the value of an alternative approach to SSR policy, namely a multi-layered one in post-conflict and fragile state environments. It begins by arguing that there is a state-centric bias in current SSR policy and practice. This contradicts development principles of a ‘people-centred, locally owned’ approach in post-conflict and fragile state contexts. The SSR's state-centric approach rests upon two fallacies: that the post-confli…
Multi-choice policing in Uganda
Though increasing diversification of policing away from the state to non-state formal and informal agencies is a widespread pattern, it does not capture the nuances of Uganda's situation. Participative research reveals a fragmented and overlapping pattern of policing, but one that, for historical reasons, is still heavily influenced, if not controlled, by state institutions. Through its penetration of society by its local council structure, and t…
Living with non-state policing in South Africa
Though policing is widely regarded as an inherently public good, in reality non-state policing is widespread in South Africa, doing everything that the public police force does. The paper examines the extent, nature and attitudes towards non-state policing in South Africa in its different forms, that is, autonomous citizen responses, 'responsible' citizen responses and commercial private security. The paper concludes by assessing the social and p…
When the Bakassi Boys Came
(2002). When the Bakassi Boys Came: Eastern Nigeria Confronts Vigilantism. Journal of Contemporary African Studies: Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 223-244
Outstaying one's welcome
A policing partnership for post-war Africa? Lessons from Liberia and southern Sudan
The paper examines partnerships between the police and local groups engaged in policing in two fragile African states – southern Sudan and Liberia. There is a tendency in Africa for such partnerships to function as local policing activities assisted by the police. This is in contrast to the model more familiar in the West, where partnerships tend to function as the police assisted by local policing activities. The article evaluates two examples o…
Cape Verde
This article examines the substance behind the claim that Cape Verde, a small archipelago state off the west coast of Africa, is the best country in Africa for political rights and civil liberties. Based on interviews conducted with 22 key informants in government, the judiciary, the legislature and civil society, it explores the electoral process, the political parties, the functioning of the National Assembly, civil and political rights, the ju…
The class of 1990
The movements of political protest, competitive elections and the installation of new regimes are widely regarded as the most significant political upheaval to shake Africa since political independence. The impression is often given that this transformation has also seen the sweeping away of the old guard of autocratic leaders. The image of renewed leadership does not however correspond with reality. Taking the leaders that were in office in 1990…
Community Policing in Freetown, Sierra Leone
Though community policing is widely promoted by donors and criticized by academics, there has been little research on its practice in Africa. This essay examines one of the main elements of community policing, namely community forums, in Freetown, Sierra Leone. They were examined from the point of view of the police, Partnership Board executives and local communities. The triangulation of response provided an evaluation of their strengths and wea…
Reconstructing a Policing System Out of the Ashes
Civil war (1990-1994) and genocide (1994) left the Rwandan government with the daunting task of re-establishing internal security. The policing model they have pursued, reflecting their regime ideology, is a hybrid model. It combines a modern professional and disciplined police force with the informal social control mechanisms of popular justice. The article, based on two months fieldwork in 2006, demonstrates that the model has provided an effec…
Policing and the Rule of Law in Mozambique
Policing concerns a central issue of democracy, namely the rule of law. It is the rule of law that determines the degree to which political and human rights are enjoyed equally. Unlike the established democracies, Mozambique is trying to establish the rule of law after it has introduced democracy. This article examines how successful it has been in the area of democratic policing. Not surprisingly, given the legacy of the civil war and the one-pa…
Who do people turn to for policing in Sierra Leone
Security sector reform in conflict-affected countries
Security sector reform in conflict-affected countries: the evolution of a model." International Peacekeeping, 25(3), pp. 469–470
Comoros
The Comoros archipelago has had a troubled political history with territorial division at independence and, for the state of Comoros, repeated coups and a recent attempted secession. The article analyses the structural and contingent factors behind the susceptibility to conflict. It finds that the political and economic weaknesses that provoke conflict remain unaddressed and that these have been exacerbated by a failure of governance by governmen…
Cape Verde
Faced with a lack of natural resources Cape Verde has made good governance one of its most marketable products. Running parallel to the institutionalisation of democratic politics there has been an overhaul and growing sophistication in public administration, though certain weaknesses persist. This report argues that it is reform and improvement in this area in particular that has enabled this small island state to punch above its weight and achi…
Beyond the Tarmac Road
Civil war deeply disrupted policing in Sierra Leone and Rwanda, leaving their state police forces inadequate in numbers, skills and resources to serve all citizens. In this security vacuum local forms of policing play an important role. The article argues that the country-specific pattern of local forms of policing depends on three factors: the nature of the conflict and peace settlement; the regime ideology; and the level of regime insecurity an…
Post-War Policing by Communities in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Rwanda
The article demonstrates that community-based policing in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Rwanda has survived conflict, but that its variable form and function is in part the product of conflict. Conflict has shaped public attitudes to state policing, the ideology, and the insecurity of the resultant regime, and state capacity. In these three cases community-based policing usually has some form of relationship with the state police and is not without …
How Civil War Altered Policing in Sierra Leone and Uganda
Uganda and Sierra Leone both experienced civil wars that, inter alia, seriously disrupted policing. The wars left legacies that post-conflict reconstruction of policing arrangements has had to take into account. Based on fieldwork conducted during 2004 and 2005, this paper examines how conflict altered existing policing systems or produced alternatives. It considers the degree to which non-state policing agencies appeared in the security vacuum a…
The character and value of vernacular security
This article reports the findings of field research into the vernacular understanding of security in South West Cameroon. It was found that security significantly contested; it is both objective and subjective; it is communal, whilst at the same time requiring individual l responsibility of personal security; it favours certainty and stability; it draws on a multiplicity of providers, and it goes beyond traditional conceptualisations. The finding…
State and substate policing in Africa and the boundaries between them
Following an overview of the diverse substate policing sector in Africa and the main changes taking place within it, there follows an examination of the complex and dynamic boundaries between state and substate. The boundaries are at times imagined. States are constantly engaged in constructing an image of policing and its boundaries that does not correspond with reality. The boundaries are also permeable: authority, activities and agents pass ac…
Seychelles
This article is an assessment of the country's governance and the likelihood that the country can break free from the shadow of former President René and his one-party state. The paper examines eight key areas of democratic governance: the constitution and rule of law; the judiciary; the National Assembly; elections; civil society; the internal security forces; economic life; and the executive. Although it finds some changes for the better over t…
The African post-conflict policing agenda in Sierra Leone
This article examines policing in Sierra Leone four years after the civil war. It evaluates the achievements in the area of policing against the major policing challenges in African post-conflict societies. These are recruitment and (re)training of a civilian force; establishing an organizational culture that is accountable and responsive to citizen concerns; organizational rebuilding and re-equipment; utilizing the resources of commercial and co…
Reconstructing Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone's ten-year civil conflict ended in 2001 and was followed by a substantial reconstruction project. This article considers how far that programme addresses the underlying factors predisposing Sierra Leone to internal conflict and to what degree signs of genuine reconciliation are emerging. To do so, three indicators of reconstruction are examined, namely youth alienation, state corruption and national reconciliation. The article conclu…
Protection from crime
At independence many in Africa anticipated a national state police force that would provide a universal, effective and just protection from crime and disorder, but after 40 years of independence it has become apparent that African governments are not willing or able to provide the level of service they had promised. The explanation is partly financial, but it is also true that weak states often choose to privilege "regime stability and narrow sec…
Popular justice and policing from bush war to democracy
Beyond the long arm of the law
(1997). Beyond the long arm of the law: The pattern and consequences of disengagement in Africa. The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics: Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 53-74
The class of 1990
The movements of political protest, competitive elections and the installation of new regimes are widely regarded as the most significant political upheaval to shake Africa since political independence. The impression is often given that this transformation has also seen the sweeping away of the old guard of autocratic leaders. The image of renewed leadership does not however correspond with reality. Taking the leaders that were in office in 1990…
Quality of Life Comparison Between the Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator and Amiodarone
s of Papers for 1999 Annual Meeting: Symposium: Psychosocial Factors in Malignant Cardiac Arrhythmias and Their Treatment with Implanted Defibrillators
The quality of African democracy
The “Hoover Scare” in South Carolina, 1887
Thirty years ago, Herbert Gutman pointed out that without "detailed knowledge of the 'local world' inhabited by white and Negro workers" in the late nineteenth-century South, we cannot fully understand the early days of organized labor in the South. The CWA might have succeeded: In South Carolina it drew upon earlier models of organizing by black laborers and tapped into a pool of local leadership. Yet, the CWA failed, due partly to inopportune t…
Can democracy in Africa be sustained
Can the young democracies born with such speed in Africa in the early 1990s survive into their teens? Already many show signs of ill health and some have been wounded, perhaps fatally, at the hands of armed men (Burundi, Comoros Islands, Congo‐Brazzaville, Guinea‐Bissau and Niger). This article reviews current thinking on the variables most decisive in determining democratic sustainability, that is, not just the presence, but the stabilisation of…
Going to war democratically
2000). Going to war democratically: The case of the second Congo war (1998–2000) Contemporary Politics: Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 263-282
Who should be called to account for good governance in Africa
Accountability has been identified as one of the most serious issues in the new democracies. Typically, assessments of the strength of democratic accountability in Africa rarely go beyond the elected and their election. This article argues that an examination of accountability needs to be widened to include all who make decisions that affect the community leaving them with no effective choice, whether they are elected to do so as representatives,…
Jane Hicks Gentry
Book Review| April 01 2000 Jane Hicks Gentry: A Singer among Singers Jane Hicks Gentry: A Singer among Singers, Betty N. Smith. Bruce E. Baker Bruce E. Baker Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Folklore (2000) 113 (448): 229–230. https://doi.org/10.2307/541304 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Bruce E. Baker; Jane Hicks Gentry: A Singer amon…
The Bonny Earl of Murray
Book Review| January 01 2000 The Bonny Earl of Murray: The Man, the Murder, the Ballad The Bonny Earl of Murray: The Man, the Murder, the Ballad, Edward D. Ives. Bruce E. Baker Bruce E. Baker Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Folklore (2000) 113 (447): 104–105. https://doi.org/10.2307/541276 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Bruce E. Baker…
Separating the Sheep from the Goats among Africa's Separatist Movements
Currently at least 12 separatist/secessionist movements are engaged in negotiations or campaigns of violence (guerrilla and regular armed conflict) in Africa. But though they are agreed on the need for radical constitutional change, they are not agreed on the solutions. More than that, they rarely maintain a unity of aim within their ranks at any given moment of time, or a consistency of aim over time. It is these shifting political objectives an…
When the Bakassi Boys Came
(2002). When the Bakassi Boys Came: Eastern Nigeria Confronts Vigilantism. Journal of Contemporary African Studies: Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 223-244
When to call black white
Although hundreds of observers witnessed the same presidential election, the diversity of their reports is quite remarkable. Whereas some spoke of them being generally free and fair, others spoke of the abandonment of all electoral standards. Examining the observer responses of Zimbabwean groups, African nations and the West, the extent to which their verdicts are political rather than objective statements becomes apparent. This article argues th…
Stony the Road They Trod
The contributing editors encourage readers to suggest representations of history in American public culture that might be reviewed. In addition to continuing coverage of museum exhibitions, they are interested in covering living history projects, historical pageants and reenactments, memorials, historic preservation projects, and virtual museums. Please contact: We would like to thank the American Association for State and Local History for provi…
Outstaying one's welcome
Living with non-state policing in South Africa
Though policing is widely regarded as an inherently public good, in reality non-state policing is widespread in South Africa, doing everything that the public police force does. The paper examines the extent, nature and attitudes towards non-state policing in South Africa in its different forms, that is, autonomous citizen responses, 'responsible' citizen responses and commercial private security. The paper concludes by assessing the social and p…
Policing and the Rule of Law in Mozambique
Policing concerns a central issue of democracy, namely the rule of law. It is the rule of law that determines the degree to which political and human rights are enjoyed equally. Unlike the established democracies, Mozambique is trying to establish the rule of law after it has introduced democracy. This article examines how successful it has been in the area of democratic policing. Not surprisingly, given the legacy of the civil war and the one-pa…
Reconstructing Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone's ten-year civil conflict ended in 2001 and was followed by a substantial reconstruction project. This article considers how far that programme addresses the underlying factors predisposing Sierra Leone to internal conflict and to what degree signs of genuine reconciliation are emerging. To do so, three indicators of reconstruction are examined, namely youth alienation, state corruption and national reconciliation. The article conclu…
Protection from crime
At independence many in Africa anticipated a national state police force that would provide a universal, effective and just protection from crime and disorder, but after 40 years of independence it has become apparent that African governments are not willing or able to provide the level of service they had promised. The explanation is partly financial, but it is also true that weak states often choose to privilege "regime stability and narrow sec…
Protection from crime
Popular justice and policing from bush war to democracy
Twilight of impunity for Africa's presidential criminals
This article tracks the fate of six former African tyrants all accused of crimes against humanity: Charles Taylor; Mengistu Haile Mariam; Hissène Habré; Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko and Jean‐Bédel Bokassa. It examines the politics that have determined their fate and finds that, despite changes in international law and opinion since the Cold War, impunity still prevails. Western governments are still willing to trump justice with politics; and Afric…
Lynch Law Reversed
This study examines an 1887 lynching in Pickens County, South Carolina, in which a black mob lynched a white man for the rape and murder of a black girl. Two members of the mob, both African American, were eventually convicted, but a massive petition campaign led the Governor to pardon them. The study relies largely on coroner’s inquests for the murder victim and the lynching victim, court records, and newspaper articles. It suggests that the ano…
Multi-choice policing in Uganda
Though increasing diversification of policing away from the state to non-state formal and informal agencies is a widespread pattern, it does not capture the nuances of Uganda's situation. Participative research reveals a fragmented and overlapping pattern of policing, but one that, for historical reasons, is still heavily influenced, if not controlled, by state institutions. Through its penetration of society by its local council structure, and t…
Who do people turn to for policing in Sierra Leone
Political science (64 works) · Sociology (54 works) · Law (48 works) · Law (38 works) · Politics (33 works) · History (26 works) · Public Administration (24 works) · Public Administration (21 works) · History (20 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (19 works)