Jonathan Mendel
Biographic Data
| ID | 643656 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan Mendel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan |
| FAMILY NAME | Mendel |
| SIGNATURE | MENDEL J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Dundee |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9865-7283 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Politics without principle
Anti-trafficking has been spreading in a novel way, with moral certitude (where human trafficking is deemed uniquely wrong, and this wrongness is taken as a founding principle for anti-trafficking action) accompanied by little or no accountability. This moral certitude drives anti-trafficking networks to spread across borders, just as it is assumed that trafficking will. The paper critiques this certitude and spread of anti-trafficking by develop…
Re-politicising Anti-Trafficking
Drawing on multi-method research, this article demonstrates that the risks of large-scale trafficking due to the war in Ukraine were mitigated by granting Ukrainians more extensive rights than typically afforded to refugees. This shows the advantages of rights-based approaches to migration and labour exploitation. We draw on Bakhtin’s and Žižek’s work on the carnivalesque to argue that mainstream anti-trafficking initiatives—which are depoliticis…
Expansion, Fracturing, and Depoliticisation
Anti-trafficking policy discourses and funding trajectories in the UK are developing and expanding in a fractured way. This paper demonstrates that current policies and funding allocations primarily focus on supporting specific ‘victims’ and targeting indistinct ‘criminals’, rather than addressing the broader structural issues underlying human trafficking. This focus perpetuates ignorance of harm done at other scales. Supporting migrants who meet…
From passerby to ally
Despite the ubiquity of poverty, its causes remain largely misunderstood and many attribute poverty to individual shortcomings. This stigma not only predicts negative physical and mental health outcomes for those living in poverty, it also psychologically distances them from the economically advantaged. Thus, solutions to the problem of poverty should include efforts to reduce stigma among the economically advantaged, who are often crucial decisi…
‘Stick Them to the Cross’
There is a long history of ignorance production around trafficking in human beings. A proliferation of anti-trafficking apps plays an important role in the reinforcement of this ignorance. Anti-trafficking apps work in different ways from other (mis)information tools, but there is a lack of academic research on the topic. This paper addresses this gap through an agnotological approach focusing on how ignorance is produced and becomes productive, …
Let's Win this Game Together
Sport's transformative potential is known to support marginalised children, to deal with traumatic experiences and instil positive values; yet hosting mega sporting events (MSEs) can have negative impacts. Drawing on participatory research with favela-based children during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, this article argues that MSEs bring a macro-securitisation of urban life, which causes considerable harm. This paper also suggests that the inclus…
Trafficking in Human Beings
This article responds to Gozdziak's (2015: 30) call to explore how the knowledge that informs public debates about human trafficking is generated. Media imagery and narratives play a significant role in constructing both knowledge and ignorance. This article reflects on the construction of such knowledge by analysing how anti-trafficking docufiction videos from the Unchosen competition dramatize trafficking. We draw on Goffman's (1974) work on fr…
Gadflies Biting Science Communication
Large-scale online science communication and engagement projects can assume an overly ordered and sterile type of online public space or civil society. Against this, the article offers a vision of more carnivalesque spaces for online science communication and engagement. Participants in these spaces taking the role of tricksters disrupting the status quo might offer new opportunities for engagement, play, and politics online: the online public sp…
Unpublished policy trials, the risk of false discoveries and the persistence of authority-based policy
The use of trials in the policy process is often presented as a move towards evidence-based policy and away from authority-, ideology- or faith-based policy. However, this paper will draw on two UK examples of unpublished policy trials in order to argue that – when policy is based on such research – it should not usually be described as evidence-based. Instead, the paper will argue that policies based on such unpublished trials are, at best, auth…
Human Trafficking and Online Networks
Dominant anti‐trafficking policy discourses represent trafficking as an issue of crime, “illegal” migration, victimhood and humanitarianism. Such a narrow focus is not an adequate response to the interplay between technology, trafficking and anti‐trafficking. This article explores different levels of analysis and the interplay between human trafficking and technology. We argue for a shift from policy discourses with a very limited focus on crime …
Science Blogging Below-the-Line
Urban Violence and Militarization
Science Blogging
There is limited research into the realities of science blogging, how science bloggers themselves view their activity and what bloggers can achieve. The ‘badscience’ blogs analysed here show a number of interesting developments, with significant implications for understandings of science blogging and scientific cultures more broadly. A functioning and diverse online community (with offline elements) has been constructed, with a number of non-prof…
Threatprints, Threads and Triggers
The international 'data war' that is fought in the name of counter-terror is concerned with mobilising the uncertain future to intervene'before the terrorist has been radicalised'. Within this project, the digital footprint has become increasingly significant as a security resource. At the international border, particularly, the traces of data that cannot help but be left behind by everyday consumption and travel activity are mobilised within 'sm…
Afghanistan, Networks and Connectivity
Afghanistan is often thought to be a failed state because it is isolated from the networks of globalisation: for example, Afghanistan is viewed as part of Thomas Barnett's Non-Integrating Gap. On the contrary, the article will show that Afghanistan has – for decades – been very much integrated into a range of international networks. These networks have played major roles in Afghanistan and have also spread to have significant impact across the wo…
The Witnesses
Human Trafficking and Online Networks
Dominant anti‐trafficking policy discourses represent trafficking as an issue of crime, “illegal” migration, victimhood and humanitarianism. Such a narrow focus is not an adequate response to the interplay between technology, trafficking and anti‐trafficking. This article explores different levels of analysis and the interplay between human trafficking and technology. We argue for a shift from policy discourses with a very limited focus on crime …
Science Blogging
There is limited research into the realities of science blogging, how science bloggers themselves view their activity and what bloggers can achieve. The ‘badscience’ blogs analysed here show a number of interesting developments, with significant implications for understandings of science blogging and scientific cultures more broadly. A functioning and diverse online community (with offline elements) has been constructed, with a number of non-prof…
Threatprints, Threads and Triggers
The international 'data war' that is fought in the name of counter-terror is concerned with mobilising the uncertain future to intervene'before the terrorist has been radicalised'. Within this project, the digital footprint has become increasingly significant as a security resource. At the international border, particularly, the traces of data that cannot help but be left behind by everyday consumption and travel activity are mobilised within 'sm…
Trafficking in Human Beings
This article responds to Gozdziak's (2015: 30) call to explore how the knowledge that informs public debates about human trafficking is generated. Media imagery and narratives play a significant role in constructing both knowledge and ignorance. This article reflects on the construction of such knowledge by analysing how anti-trafficking docufiction videos from the Unchosen competition dramatize trafficking. We draw on Goffman's (1974) work on fr…
Re-politicising Anti-Trafficking
Drawing on multi-method research, this article demonstrates that the risks of large-scale trafficking due to the war in Ukraine were mitigated by granting Ukrainians more extensive rights than typically afforded to refugees. This shows the advantages of rights-based approaches to migration and labour exploitation. We draw on Bakhtin’s and Žižek’s work on the carnivalesque to argue that mainstream anti-trafficking initiatives—which are depoliticis…
Expansion, Fracturing, and Depoliticisation
Anti-trafficking policy discourses and funding trajectories in the UK are developing and expanding in a fractured way. This paper demonstrates that current policies and funding allocations primarily focus on supporting specific ‘victims’ and targeting indistinct ‘criminals’, rather than addressing the broader structural issues underlying human trafficking. This focus perpetuates ignorance of harm done at other scales. Supporting migrants who meet…
Let's Win this Game Together
Sport's transformative potential is known to support marginalised children, to deal with traumatic experiences and instil positive values; yet hosting mega sporting events (MSEs) can have negative impacts. Drawing on participatory research with favela-based children during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, this article argues that MSEs bring a macro-securitisation of urban life, which causes considerable harm. This paper also suggests that the inclus…
Gadflies Biting Science Communication
Large-scale online science communication and engagement projects can assume an overly ordered and sterile type of online public space or civil society. Against this, the article offers a vision of more carnivalesque spaces for online science communication and engagement. Participants in these spaces taking the role of tricksters disrupting the status quo might offer new opportunities for engagement, play, and politics online: the online public sp…
Afghanistan, Networks and Connectivity
Afghanistan is often thought to be a failed state because it is isolated from the networks of globalisation: for example, Afghanistan is viewed as part of Thomas Barnett's Non-Integrating Gap. On the contrary, the article will show that Afghanistan has – for decades – been very much integrated into a range of international networks. These networks have played major roles in Afghanistan and have also spread to have significant impact across the wo…
The Witnesses
Afghanistan, Networks and Connectivity
Afghanistan is often thought to be a failed state because it is isolated from the networks of globalisation: for example, Afghanistan is viewed as part of Thomas Barnett's Non-Integrating Gap. On the contrary, the article will show that Afghanistan has – for decades – been very much integrated into a range of international networks. These networks have played major roles in Afghanistan and have also spread to have significant impact across the wo…
Threatprints, Threads and Triggers
The international 'data war' that is fought in the name of counter-terror is concerned with mobilising the uncertain future to intervene'before the terrorist has been radicalised'. Within this project, the digital footprint has become increasingly significant as a security resource. At the international border, particularly, the traces of data that cannot help but be left behind by everyday consumption and travel activity are mobilised within 'sm…
Science Blogging
There is limited research into the realities of science blogging, how science bloggers themselves view their activity and what bloggers can achieve. The ‘badscience’ blogs analysed here show a number of interesting developments, with significant implications for understandings of science blogging and scientific cultures more broadly. A functioning and diverse online community (with offline elements) has been constructed, with a number of non-prof…
Science Blogging Below-the-Line
Urban Violence and Militarization
Unpublished policy trials, the risk of false discoveries and the persistence of authority-based policy
The use of trials in the policy process is often presented as a move towards evidence-based policy and away from authority-, ideology- or faith-based policy. However, this paper will draw on two UK examples of unpublished policy trials in order to argue that – when policy is based on such research – it should not usually be described as evidence-based. Instead, the paper will argue that policies based on such unpublished trials are, at best, auth…
Human Trafficking and Online Networks
Dominant anti‐trafficking policy discourses represent trafficking as an issue of crime, “illegal” migration, victimhood and humanitarianism. Such a narrow focus is not an adequate response to the interplay between technology, trafficking and anti‐trafficking. This article explores different levels of analysis and the interplay between human trafficking and technology. We argue for a shift from policy discourses with a very limited focus on crime …
Gadflies Biting Science Communication
Large-scale online science communication and engagement projects can assume an overly ordered and sterile type of online public space or civil society. Against this, the article offers a vision of more carnivalesque spaces for online science communication and engagement. Participants in these spaces taking the role of tricksters disrupting the status quo might offer new opportunities for engagement, play, and politics online: the online public sp…
Trafficking in Human Beings
This article responds to Gozdziak's (2015: 30) call to explore how the knowledge that informs public debates about human trafficking is generated. Media imagery and narratives play a significant role in constructing both knowledge and ignorance. This article reflects on the construction of such knowledge by analysing how anti-trafficking docufiction videos from the Unchosen competition dramatize trafficking. We draw on Goffman's (1974) work on fr…
Let's Win this Game Together
Sport's transformative potential is known to support marginalised children, to deal with traumatic experiences and instil positive values; yet hosting mega sporting events (MSEs) can have negative impacts. Drawing on participatory research with favela-based children during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, this article argues that MSEs bring a macro-securitisation of urban life, which causes considerable harm. This paper also suggests that the inclus…
‘Stick Them to the Cross’
There is a long history of ignorance production around trafficking in human beings. A proliferation of anti-trafficking apps plays an important role in the reinforcement of this ignorance. Anti-trafficking apps work in different ways from other (mis)information tools, but there is a lack of academic research on the topic. This paper addresses this gap through an agnotological approach focusing on how ignorance is produced and becomes productive, …
From passerby to ally
Despite the ubiquity of poverty, its causes remain largely misunderstood and many attribute poverty to individual shortcomings. This stigma not only predicts negative physical and mental health outcomes for those living in poverty, it also psychologically distances them from the economically advantaged. Thus, solutions to the problem of poverty should include efforts to reduce stigma among the economically advantaged, who are often crucial decisi…
Re-politicising Anti-Trafficking
Drawing on multi-method research, this article demonstrates that the risks of large-scale trafficking due to the war in Ukraine were mitigated by granting Ukrainians more extensive rights than typically afforded to refugees. This shows the advantages of rights-based approaches to migration and labour exploitation. We draw on Bakhtin’s and Žižek’s work on the carnivalesque to argue that mainstream anti-trafficking initiatives—which are depoliticis…
Expansion, Fracturing, and Depoliticisation
Anti-trafficking policy discourses and funding trajectories in the UK are developing and expanding in a fractured way. This paper demonstrates that current policies and funding allocations primarily focus on supporting specific ‘victims’ and targeting indistinct ‘criminals’, rather than addressing the broader structural issues underlying human trafficking. This focus perpetuates ignorance of harm done at other scales. Supporting migrants who meet…
Politics without principle
Anti-trafficking has been spreading in a novel way, with moral certitude (where human trafficking is deemed uniquely wrong, and this wrongness is taken as a founding principle for anti-trafficking action) accompanied by little or no accountability. This moral certitude drives anti-trafficking networks to spread across borders, just as it is assumed that trafficking will. The paper critiques this certitude and spread of anti-trafficking by develop…
Political science (16 works) · Law (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Sex work and related issues (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Criminology (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Political economy (5 works) · Politics (4 works)