bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Alcoholism Treatment Offset Effects: An Insurance Perspective
Authors: Goodman Allen C. , Tilford John M. , Hankin Janet R. , Holder Harold D. , Nishiura Eleanor
Published: April 2009

This study investigates whether alcoholism treatment costs are offset by reductions in other medical treatment costs by comparing people treated for alcoholism with a matched comparison group. The alcoholism treatment group is defined by diagnoses of alcohol dependence, abuse, or psychoses from health insurance claims filed between January 1980 and June 1987. A comparison sample was matched on age, gender, and insurance coverage. In this primarily methodological study, expected costs for nonalcoholism treatments were calculated from standardized regressions. Offset effects were measured from the insurer’s perspective through differences in expected total nonalcoholism treatment costs in the periods preceding and following alcoholism treatment. Members of the alcoholism treatment group were more likely than the comparison group to be hospitalized and to need other (nonalcoholism) medical treatment, thus incurring higher total costs. Offset effects emerged for patients with alcohol abuse and without mental psychosis comorbidities.
The Impact of Prior Authorization on Outpatient Utilization in Managed Behavioral Health Plans
Authors: Liu Xiaofeng , Sturm Roland , Cuffel Brian J.
Published: April 2009

This study examines how preauthorization affects outpatient behavioral health utilization under managed care by comparing plans with similar benefits, but differing in the number of visits authorized. The authors compare plans primarily authorizing in increments of 5 visits to plans authorizing in increments of 10 visits. They analyze the likelihood of terminating outpatient service between the two groups using conditional logistic regression. Results suggest that patients whose treatment is authorized in increments of 5 sessions are nearly 3 times more likely to terminate treatment at exactly the fifth visit than if their treatment is authorized in increments of 10 sessions conditional on being in treatment until the 5th visit. The likelihood of termination peaks in both the 5- and 10-session authorization at the 10th visit, but the difference is not statistically significant. The authorization effect differs by provider type and is weaker among psychiatrists than among nonphysician providers.
Access to Medical Care Reported by Asians and Pacific Islanders in a West Coast Physician Group Association
Authors: Snyder Rani E. , Cunningham William , Nakazono Terry T. , Hays Ron D.
Published: April 2009

This study examines access to medical care for Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States, using a survey of patients receiving care provided by a physician group practice association concentrated on the West Coast. Asians and Pacific Islanders who had used their health plan in the past year had worse access to health care than whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Native American or other ethnicities. The odds that Asians reported that they had adequate access ranged from about one quarter to three quarters that of whites, depending on the measure. Cultural differences and associated communication problems may explain the access problems experienced by Asians. Interventions need to be developed to address the problems with access to services, and better translation services may play an important role in improving access to care for Asians. Future studies need to clarify why Asians were more vulnerable to the access problems examined than other ethnic groups that might experience similar barriers.
Children’s Health Insurance Coverage and Family Structure, 1977-1996
Authors: Weinick Robin M. , Monheit Alan C.
Published: April 2009

Using data from a series of nationally representative medical expenditure surveys, the authors document changes in children’s health insurance coverage in a period of two decades. Overall, it is found that the proportion of children with private coverage declined, while the proportions publicly insured and uninsured increased. However, when the authors account for differences in family structure, they find striking disparities in children’s insurance experiences. Contrary to overall trends, children in single-parent households made significant gains in private health insurance coverage after 1977 and experienced reductions in public insurance. Coincident with Medicaid expansions in the late 1980s, children in two-parent households experienced significant increases in public health insurance. It is found that the rise in the proportion of children who were uninsured in this period was largely a single-parent family phenomenon, and that parents’ marital status, employment status, and family income are crucial factors associated with children’s insurance status.
Covering Uninsured Children and their Parents: Estimated Costs and Number of Newly Insured
Authors: Thorpe Kenneth E. , Florence Curtis S.
Published: April 2009

The Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP) supplies $20.4 billion over 5 years and nearly $50 billion over 10 years to extend health insurance to uninsured children with family incomes up to 200 percent of poverty. This article analyzes the March 1997 Current Population Survey, estimating the number of children likely to be eligible for CHIP or currently eligible for Medicaid. Of the 8.6 million parents of uninsured children, four out of five were uninsured at the time of the survey. Expanding coverage to parents as well as children could make program participation more attractive and simplify the enrollment process. If 75 percent of uninsured parents of CHIP eligible children participated, 1.7 million parents could be insured, costing federal and state governments $4 billion. Another 3.4 million parents would be insured by expanding Medicaid to cover uninsured parents of Medicaid-eligible children.
The “Near Miss”: A Story of Relationship
Authors: Tom Allison , Herbert Carol P.
Published: April 2009

Doing good qualitative research requires engaging with the ethical and epistemological challenges of deliberately entering into relationships with people to learn about them. The authors draw on an event in their personal lives for insight into research relationships, hoping to deepen their understanding of how these relationships feel and work from research participants’ perspectives. The authors present their experience in two linked vignettes to explore ways research participants might experience research about their experiences of loss, pain, shame, and social stigma and to address ways researchers can begin to understand how it feels to be the “written about” in research projects about such topics. They frame their discussion around three areas that arise from the vignettes: the increased risk to research participants when they like and trust researchers who misunderstand their experiences, the personal costs of disclosure, and the need for flexible research plans that can adapt to the interpersonal demands of intimate research relationships.
Researchers as Storytellers: Writing on the Edge—And Without a Safety Net
Authors: Vickers Margaret H.
Published: April 2009

The author considers the underrated and marginalized role of the researcher as storyteller by sharing stories of her own life, first as a researcher and insider, and second, as one who suffered bullying and abuse at her workplace at the time. The stories are interleaved between the theoretical argument and deliberately stand in the foreground. They are not interpreted in the discussion but attest through substance and example to what the argument is trying to convey. Sharing these stories challenged two taboos that researchers traditionally face: those surrounding the methodological process and those concerned with political content. Future researcher-storytellers are encouraged to take risks. Writing of one’s own life experiences is concluded to be writing on the edge—and without a safety net. However, the rewards inevitably stem from connecting with those who want to know.
From Silence to Siren to Silence: A Personal Tale of Political Consequence
Authors: Lockford Lesa
Published: April 2009

Through interweaving her student’s troubling confessional self-disclosure revealed in a course assignment with a disturbing account taken from her own adolescent experience, the author considers the pedagogical challenges as well as the personal and political consequences of silence and of witnessing and the irrevocability and interpretive indeterminacy of such self-disclosure.
The Serious Play of Writing
Authors: Gurevitch Zali
Published: April 2009

This article describes the serious artist as originating from moments of broken play. It distinguishes between two types of seriousness: disciplinary seriousness (taking on oneself the responsibilities of an adult expert who abides by the rules of the game) and poetic seriousness (revealed from the point of view of the child whose play has been exposed). Two autobiographical moments are recounted, exemplifying the latter type of seriousness, and different related issues are discussed and connected to the new writing in social science such as the movement back of memory; the possibility of being seriously light; the poetic as a measure against any frozen form; and poetic writing as performance, experiment, and break-dance.
Producing Possible Hannahs: Theory and the Subject of Research
Authors: Honan Eileen , Knobel Michele , Baker Carolyn , Davies Bronwyn
Published: April 2009

This article presents and compares three analyses of qualitative data drawn from an ethnographic case study using distinctive theoretical approaches. The article shows the power of theoretical approaches to constitute the “subject” of a study and to constitute the character of the social world in which such a subject is situated. The three readings of the data produce different possible subjects located in differently constituted possible worlds. By putting theory at the center of analysis, the article shows how theoretical approaches radically influence what can be found in the data and how it can be found there.
Field School in Chiapas
Authors: Simonelli Jeanne
Published: April 2009

At times, the expression of a fieldwork encounter can be encapsulated and told effectively in verse, especially when it has been an emotional experience. This poem is an outgrowth of a service learning field program in Chiapas, Mexico, and part of a longer collection concerning the ethics of doing anthropological research in a conflict zone. In this offering, the participants begin to contemplate the fact that their presence in the area might easily be misinterpreted and could be a liability for those they have come to “serve.”
“Am I A...”
Authors: Varner Teri L.
Published: April 2009

Research in autobiography and biography has increasingly become an important means of expression and scholarship in the field of performance studies. Whereas biographical performance has its roots in the Chautauqua1 tradition dating as far back as early 20th-century America, performance scholars engaged in autobiographical staged performances frequently create a context for the audience whereby meanings, interpretations, and insight are evoked. This article and accompanying script, “Am I A...,” explores the author’s experiences of constructing/deconstructing her identity through a performance. Through oral invocation, body movement, personal narrative, and multiple texts, the author writes/performs a story that explores and evokes preconceived notions of identities on gender, race, sex, and sexuality. Using multiple methodologies, the author writes about our racist, sexist, and homophobic society and her acceptance and resistance of constantly being categorized.
On “Reflexivity” in Qualitative Research: Two Readings, and a Third
Authors: Macbeth Douglas
Published: April 2009

Reflexivity has become a signal topic in contemporary discussions of qualitative research, especially in educational studies. It shows two general inflections in the literature. Positional reflexivity leads the analyst to examine place, biography, self, and other to understand how they shape the analytic exercise. Textual reflexivity leads the analyst to examine and then disrupt the very exercise of textual representation. The purpose of this article is to develop a critical reading of contemporary formulations of reflexivity in the literature and then reintroduce an earlier discussion in social science, Garfinkel’s ethno-methodological “constitutive reflexivity.” The author suggests that postmodern attachments not withstanding, positional and textual reflexivities may have far more in common with Enlightenment certainties than is commonly allowed. As for constitutive reflexivity, a brief analysis of a videotaped sequence from a fifth-grade classroom is offered as an example of its alternative program and topics.
A Story of I and the Death of a Subject
Authors: Lewis P. J.
Published: April 2009

Story is one of the most powerful forms of making and conveying meaning. This story is the author’s attempt to share with other readers his experience of two intertwined struggles: one with loss and one with the notion of self. Through a visually subtle readerly juxtaposition of the texts as one, the author weaves together the narrative of loss, a discussion of the postmodern suggestion of the death of the subject, and the difficulty of trying to situate the I in narrative research. It is a story of trying to make sense of experience through story.
From Alternative School to Incarceration
Authors: Dunbar Christopher
Published: April 2009

These collective stories are about a group of African American boys who have been mandated to an alternative school for students unwilling or unable to conform to the norms of traditional public school. The author begins the story with his experience as an alternative school teacher; it evolves into a dialogue with students that draws upon vernacular, folk, and popular cultural forms used by these boys. The text speaks to and represents the needs of this group of boys specifically; however, it also speaks to a larger community of students placed in this kind of alternative school environment. This representation of text resists traditional epistemologies and discourses that claim to be the only legitimate way to view the world. The stories chronicle the injustices these boys have faced and their struggle to find places of dignity and respect and illuminate epiphanal moments both in the lives of the boys and the author.
How Interviewing Became Therapy for Wives of Professional Athletes: Learning From a Serendipitous Experience
Authors: Ortiz Steven M.
Published: April 2009

During field research on wives of professional athletes, several of the wives seemed to find that the in-depth interviews had a therapeutic value. Indeed, they themselves often referred to the interview sessions as “therapy sessions,” opportunities to unload suppressed feelings, innermost thoughts, and private experiences in ways that led to certain self-transformations. This article examines the nature of collaborative relationships in the interviewing process and factors that enabled some of the wives to experience a cathartic process of self-revelation and an introspective process of self-discovery, thereby gaining more from their participation than they had expected.
The Anthro Writes a Day
Authors: Richardson Miles
Published: April 2009

More than once, here and elsewhere, we have asked, What do we, ethnographers, do when we write? The author’s guess is that ethnographers commit themselves to the page and there, on the page, search the between of an ethnographer’s on-the-ground experience and a reader’s at-the-desk understanding. Here is a day’s search from Colombia in 1992.
Detecting the Fictional Problem Solvers in Time and Space: Metaphors Guiding Qualitative Analysis and Interpretation
Authors: Moring Inka
Published: April 2009

This article explores metaphors in qualitative analysis. Scientific paradigms are often embedded in metaphors that guide our research and its results. The purpose is to clarify the mix of positions that are taken by researchers as detectives. Three characters from different genres of detective stories are presented. A conclusion from the study is that a traditional researcher-as-detective metaphor (Sherlock Holmes) tends to bring a post-positivist approach also to qualitative research, although the paradigm is less satisfactory when solving research problems addressed in interpretative social research. An alternative detective metaphor, researcher as profiler, is found to be closer to the ontology, epistemology, and methodology of constructivist research approaches. Finally, the question is raised whether Paul Auster’s deconstructed character, Mr. Quinn, might prove to be a fruitful metaphor for postmodern research, placing emphasis on individual action and rejecting theories that place emphasis on the freedom and the ability of individual agents to shape the social world.
Intuition and Creativity: A Pas de Deux for Qualitative Researchers
Authors: Janesick Valerie J.
Published: April 2009

The author writes about the importance of intuition and creativity in the qualitative research project. By discussing lessons learned from well-known creative individuals, researchers find ways to open conversations on creativity. Because the researcher is the research instrument in qualitative research projects, the definition of the role of the researcher is critically important. In addition to all that is already known about the researcher’s role, the author argues for going a step further. The extra step is to reflect on, describe, and explain the intuitive moments and creative moments in any given qualitative research project.
“Mama Told Me...”: Exploring Childhood Lessons That Laid a Foundation for My “Endarkened” Epistemology
Authors: Hendrix Katherine Grace
Published: April 2009

The author explores the verbal and nonverbal communication practices that she used as a scholar of color conducting race-related research for her dissertation, which addressed professor credibility. Many scholars of color have argued that their research is conducted from standpoints that acknowledge their senses of “self” and cultures of origin. This essay illustrates how five childhood lessons influenced the author’s worldview and, ultimately, her approach to research as a Black scholar operating within a predominantly White academic environment.
Describing the Bricolage: Conceptualizing a New Rigor in Qualitative Research
Authors: Kincheloe Joe L.
Published: April 2009

Picking up on Norman Denzin's and Yvonna Lincoln's articulation of the concept of bricolage, the essay describes a critical notion of this research orientation. As an interdisciplinary approach, bricolage avoids both the superficiality of methodological breadth and the parochialism of unidisciplinary approaches. The notion of the bricolage advocated here recognizes the dialectical nature of the disciplinary and interdisciplinary relationship and promotes a synergistic interaction between the two concepts. In this context, the bricolage is concerned not only with divergent methods of inquiry but with diverse theoretical and philosophical understandings of the various elements encountered in the act of research. The insights garnered here move researchers to a better conceptual grasp of the complexity of the research act—a cognizance often missed in mainstream versions of qualitative research. In particular, critical bricoleurs employ historiographical, philosophical, and social theoretical lenses to gain a more complex understanding of the intricacies of research design.
Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research
Authors: Solórzano Daniel G. , Yosso Tara J.
Published: April 2009

This article addresses how critical race theory can inform a critical race methodology in education. The authors challenge the intercentricity of racism with other forms of subordination and exposes deficit-informed research that silences and distorts epistemologies of people of color. Although social scientists tell stories under the guise of “objective” research, these stories actually uphold deficit, racialized notions about people of color. For the authors, a critical race methodology provides a tool to “counter” deficit storytelling. Specifically, a critical race methodology offers space to conduct and present research grounded in the experiences and knowledge of people of color. As they describe how they compose counter-stories, the authors discuss how the stories can be used as theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical tools to challenge racism, sexism, and classism and work toward social justice.
Using Critical Race Theory, Paulo Freire’s Problem-Posing Method, and Case Study Research to Confront Race and Racism in Education
Authors: Smith-Maddox Renée , Solórzano Daniel G.
Published: April 2009

In this article, the authors use critical race theory (CRT), Paulo Freire’s problem-posing method, and case study research to introduce an alternative instructional and pedagogical methodology in teacher education. These approaches attempt to get at deep-rooted ideologies by creating a space in a social foundations course for teacher candidates to unlearn their stereotypical knowledge of race while analyzing and theorizing what it means to teach a diverse student population. When using such a methodology, the authors recommend that teacher candidates have access to a variety of cultural immersion and field experiences in communities of color. These experiences are critical to learning why they should and how they can talk about race and racism.
Evolving Reflexivity: Negotiating Meaning of Women’s Midlife Experience
Authors: Banister Elizabeth M.
Published: April 2009

After embarking on a research project, the author realized that her midlife experience would influence the way in which she interpreted her fieldwork with midlife women. However, the author was not prepared for the ambivalence, contradiction, and discomfort that she experienced in response to doing this research project. It was only when she discovered the concept of reflexivity, which enabled her to articulate the liminality of her position, that she came to understand that such feelings were critical elements of the research process. In this article, the author illustrates the ways in which interpretation and representation of ethnographic meaning emerge from the researcher’s position as a deliberate, self-reflexive participant observer.
Food Truck’s Party Hat
Authors: Smith Phil
Published: April 2009

As a result of what has been called the crisis of representation in qualitative inquiry, researchers have explored a diverse terrain of textual landscapes in a search for alternative forms of (re)presentation of and about their work. While working on a pilot research project that explored choice, control, and power in the lives of persons with developmental disabilities and their allies, the author joined that search as he sought to (re)present parts of the relationships he shared in ways that would reveal “the multiple meanings and the possible meanings that we create together.” A poetic, fictional narrative is offered as an example of an alternative (re)presentational form, one map of the many that might be drawn of the multiple cartographies of lived texts and shared experiences.
Quality in Qualitative Research
Authors: Seale Clive
Published: April 2009

A variety of conceptions of qualitative research exist, with competing claims as to what counts as good quality work. Rather than opting for the criteria promoted by one variety, “paradigm,” “moment,” or school within qualitative research, practicing researchers can learn valuable lessons from each one. This is because social research is a craft skill, relatively autonomous from the need to resolve philosophical disputes. At the same time, methodological awareness is a valuable mental resource in research studies. It can be acquired by exposure to almost any intelligent methodological discussion, whether from positivist, naturalistic, constructivist, or postmodern paradigms, as well as from careful consideration of research studies done by others. Particular techniques developed originally to fulfill the requirements of particular paradigms can often be used for other purposes and from within other paradigms if need be. This is illustrated in a case study of triangulation.
A Journal About Journal Writing as a Qualitative Research Technique: History, Issues, and Reflections
Authors: Janesick Valerie J.
Published: April 2009

The author is writing this article as a journal to show how a journal may be used as a qualitative research technique in long-term qualitative studies. The history of journal writing within the context of the arts and humanities is described to illuminate our understanding of the tradition of this type of writing. For qualitative researchers, the act of journal writing may be incorporated into the research process to provide a data set of the researcher’s reflections on the research act. Participants in qualitative studies may also use journals to refine ideas, beliefs, and their own responses to the research in progress. Finally, journal writing between participants and researcher may offer the qualitative researcher yet another opportunity for triangulation of data sets at multiple levels: first, the interdisciplinary triangulation of journal writing as a trope of literature, and second, data triangulation in terms of journal writing of the researcher, participants, and interaction between both.
Separation Assault in the Context of Postdivorce Parenting
Authors: Hardesty Jennifer L.
Published: April 2009

Although citing violence as a factor in divorce, most researchers do not analyze woman abuse in the postdivorce context. In particular, little research exists on how separation assault influences postdivorce parenting. The purpose of this article is to discuss separation assault in the context of postdivorce parenting. First, the literature on separation assault in general and then on separation assault in the context of postdivorce parenting is reviewed. Second, the theoretical explanations for separation assault in general and in the context of postdivorce parenting is reviewed. Finally, the theoretical explanations and literature are critiqued and research and practice implications are discussed.
Perceptions of Children and Teenagers on Community Policing: Implications for Law Enforcement Leadership, Training, and Citizen Evaluations
Authors: Williams Brian N.
Published: April 2009

The law enforcement community and the criminal justice system have embraced the emergence of the postbureaucratic era and its emphasis on more community responsibility. In particular, the organizational and philosophical strategy of community policing seeks to coproduce public safety and public order by integrating or partnering the local police department with its citizens. Although a plethora of research exists on the topic of citizen perceptions and satisfaction with community policing, an important sector of citizens has been overlooked and left out of this process—children and teenagers. This article uses focus group interviewing and an ethnographic-content analysis to examine the perceptions of inner-city children and teenagers in a neighborhood of Athens, Georgia, on law enforcement in general and community policing in particular. This research yields important implications for law enforcement leadership, training, and citizen evaluations of public programs.
Veering Toward Digital Disorder: Computer-Related Crime and Law Enforcement Preparedness
Authors: Correia Mark E. , Bowling Craig
Published: April 2009

The proliferation of computers in the mainstream has promoted access to technology once only available to scientists, researchers, and government officials. This “digitizing of society” has impacted many aspects of daily life, resulting in reliance on computers for the likes of banking, telecommunications, entertainment, and emergency services, to mention a few. This increasing dependence on computers, however, has opened the door for a new breed of criminals whose ill-gotten toolkit consists of Central Processing Units, modulator demodulators, war dialers, viruses, and warez. The targets of these high-tech criminals often include computer networks and the information therein. Law enforcement, generally a mechanistic body in both structure and operation, finds itself handicapped in attempting to maintain order in this hyperdynamic information age. Such developments lead to a new form of disorder—digital disorder. This article develops the concept of digital disorder by examining the characteristics of a “broken window” in cyberspace and law enforcement preparedness. In addressing the aforementioned, various theoretical issues are discussed, as are the empirical findings from a baseline study of 278 municipal police departments.
Dangerous Woods and Perilous Pearl Shells
Authors: Strathern Andrew , Stewart Pamela J.
Published: April 2009

This article approaches the analysis of ambivalence in exchange relations between groups in the Pangia area of the Southern Highlands Province in Papua New Guinea from an unusual angle: the structure and materials of a ceremonial longhouse constructed to house participants in a gift-giving occasion. The sponsor of the feast declared that it was to mark peace and alliance with neighbors, but one of the recipients noted that the types of wood used in the building themselves carried threatening and competitive messages encoded non-verbally. Gifts of pearl shells and pork were similarly interpreted as double-sided: both to repair friendships and to declare enmities. The recipients themselves risked, from their point of view, death in accepting these perilous gifts from a longhouse consisting of ‘dangerous woods’. The case study illustrates the possible disjuncture of interpretations of material acts and structures by differently positioned persons in the social arena.
The Therapy of Consumption Motivation Research and the New Italian Housewife, 1958-62
Authors: Arvidsson Adam
Published: April 2009

This article describes the transformation of the image of the housewife-consumer in Italian advertising during the ‘economic miracle’ of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Drawing on market research, professional debates and advertising campaigns it argues that motivation research - an originally American market research technique with Freudian origins - was crucial in altering the ways in which advertisers and marketers related to women consumers. Motivation research made advertisers and marketers conceive of consumers as endowed with an intrinsic desire for self realization. The qualitative methodology that it introduced also allowed the marketing profession to observe and absorb the new ways of life that were proposed by the counterculture and the women’s liberation movements of the early 1960s. Towards the early 1970s these elements blended into a distinctly ‘emancipated’ advertising discourse, a ‘commodity feminism’ where women consumers were encouraged to use consumer goods to mark off an autonomous, individualized subjectivity, rather than to ensure the compliance with traditional gender roles.
Showing and Telling: Australian Land Rights and Material Moralities
Authors: Strang Veronica
Published: April 2009

This article draws upon landscape theory and studies of material culture to explore the process through which space is humanized, examining in particular how this process legitimizes moral rights to property. Drawing on ethnographic research in the Western Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland, it considers some of the performative, representational and material activities through which Aboriginal groups assert their claims to the land.

The analysis is placed within the wider historical and political context of the land rights and environmental movements in which ownership of the peninsula is entangled. The Aboriginal community in Kowanyama has primary claims to several thousand square miles of land within and surrounding their ‘Deed of Grant in Trust’ area, but these are opposed by many local pastoralists, the National Parks service and, to some degree, tourist and environmental groups in the region. The article examines how the construction of performative and artefactual representations of an indigenous cultural landscape enables Aboriginal groups to concretize and communicate their particular moral and political position and challenge European Australians’ colonial control over the land.
Nose and Eyes for Identity
Authors: Pandya Vishvajit
Published: April 2009

Among the Muslim Jatha of Kachchh (western India), the differing practices of pastoral nomadism and settled agriculture create a division of the overall Jatha community into three subgroups. These differences are maintained and are projected within each subgroup of the community but find expression in its communal myths, history and ideology. Each subgroup symbolizes its identity, creating a non-verbal discourse made up of certain essential values. Within this discourse, the value of each subgroup’s individuality is important, but this individuality does not prohibit the integration of all the groups into one interdependent whole. For the Jatha, a material culture has been formed to sustain the cultural value, in relation to other communities, of being one distinct, ethnic group comprising separate subgroups. As an outcome of the Jatha interpretation of their history, mythology, and Islam, the whole community is bound together by the choice of dress, of ornament, and of each subgroup’s differing but interdependent economic practice. Through examining the ways in which subgroups within the Jatha community express their identities, and thereby contribute to the identity of the whole community, this article examines the forms and processes of materiality and the accoutrements of identity. It further considers the relationship between people and objects, and the connection between symbolism and materiality, which combine to construct a social entity.
Private passion, public neglect
Authors: M. Lewis Peter
Published: April 2009

Although radio is still the most important mass medium in many developing countries, in richer parts of the world visual media have come to dominate resource allocation, policy-making, academic study - and consequent media attention. This article notes the paradoxical effect of this vicious circle of neglect, in which radio is accorded little status in the public sphere yet is a significant element in the private lives of individual listeners. Historical reasons for public and academic neglect are advanced, and the author’s Radio Research Project is summarized. The project aims to redress this situation in the UK and hopes to form partnerships in other countries where scholars are attempting to give radio the attention it deserves.
Stereophonic nation
Authors: Ellis Geraint
Published: April 2009

Radio broadcasting in Wales has always been a controversial subject, as demands for increased Welsh language provision and distinctive English language programming have reflected the complexity of Welsh identity and tensions, not only between Welsh pressure groups and the government and BBC in London, but also within Wales itself. The recent changes to Radio Cymru, the BBC’s Welsh language service, provoked a fierce debate and led to a campaign of civil disobedience. The changes to its sister station, Radio Wales, have proved less controversial, but also show the way in which the BBC has adapted its Welsh output to face the challenges of the fast-growing independent radio sector. Can Radio Cymru and Radio Wales ever be truly national stations? To what extent should Welsh language broadcasting reflect the reality of a bilingual context? Are the demands for a third, and even fourth, national station for Wales justified? These and other issues are examined as part of a general analysis of radio broadcasting in Wales today.
Peru
Authors: Villaran Susana , Caistor Nick
Published: April 2009

This article is a case study of a country whose President rules through the military, and where a radio station is a vital element in the struggle for human rights. The Institute for Legal Defence (IDEELE) is an organization that offers legal advice to the victims of human rights violations, and the families of those extra-judicially executed. IDEELE also publishes a human rights magazine and coordinates a network of radio programmes. It provides ‘packages’ to more than 60 different regional outlets, covering both international news items and items of immediate concern. It also offers extensive training programmes to those working on human rights issues in the community media and to local officials of relevant organizations. Its two main radio series, ‘You and Your Rights’ and ‘The Power to Choose’ follow the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the country’s own constitution in promoting free and fair voting.
Talkback, advertising and journalism
Authors: Turner Graeme
Published: April 2009

Commercial radio in Australia was effectively deregulated in the late 1980s, when the statutory regulatory requirements were replaced by industry self-regulation. One of the effects of this deregulation has been a narrowing of the range of programming formats across the industry which has, in turn, dramatically increased the commercial power of the successful radio talkback hosts on the AM band. The eruption of a scandal involving a number of these talkback hosts in 1999 exposed problems in the way that self-regulation had operated. This article outlines what has become a case study of the failure of self-regulation to protect the public interest.
Towards a periodization of listening
Authors: Lacey Kate
Published: April 2009

Taking its cue from literature on visual culture this article addresses the possibility of a plurality of listening positions or, more precisely, the possibility of periodizing competing or co-existent ‘auditory regimes’. It therefore contributes to what Douglas has recently described as an ‘archaeology of listening’. By the 1920s film was being theorized as a new sense organ presenting a distracted, modern (and potentially progressive) way of seeing. But the really new medium of the 1920s was the radio, which quickly became defined as a secondary medium broadcasting fragmentary, ephemeral content. By drawing on theoretical discourses of perception in the work of Kracauer and Benjamin and on contemporary sources about radio and everyday life in Weimar Germany, this article examines the ‘modernization’ of an aural mode of perception, and the reversal of conventional gender roles in contemporary writings on the cinema, given radio’s primary location in the private sphere.
On playfully becoming the ‘Other’
Authors: Wilson Tony
Published: April 2009

The article provides a reception study of an Asian audience’s ethical and political responses to the US talk show, Oprah Winfrey. The programme’s western prescriptions of practical and principled conduct are discussed by viewers of Chinese, Indian and Malay ethnicity living in Malaysia (a country in continual competition with Singapore for the honourable title of Asia’s most digitally developed and diasporic nation). But the study of particular reception processes is never far from broader methodological issues. Epistemological anxieties about academics ‘externally’ mediating and interrogating viewers’ understanding of their reactions to programmes are considered. For ethnography is unavoidably interpretative. The article reflects on a range of audience narrative readings of talk shows to establish the former’s essential or phenomenological core, mapping out four types of response to television travelling across cultures. Foregrounding identification, cognitive conditions of audience empathy with, or dissent from, television’s perspectives on the world are described.
Mapping a critical framework for the study of travel journalism
Authors: Fürsich Elfriede , Kavoori Anandam P.
Published: April 2009

This article provides a programmatic framework for the investigation of travel journalism. We argue that travel journalism is an important site for studying the ideological dimensions of tourism, transcultural encounters and the ongoing dynamics of media globalization. Based on the literature on tourism in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, we identify three distinct but interrelated theoretical perspectives for the analysis of travel journalism structured by issues of periodization, power and phenomenology.
History, entertainment, education and jiaoyü
Authors: Donald Stephanie Hemelryk
Published: April 2009

Cultural citizenship is a concept that allows analysis of media product to acknowledge differing modes of reception and interpretation within a single nation-scape. When complemented by the notion of cultural competency, it is possible to use this concept to examine the levels of interpretative entry into dominant but implicit versions of the citizen in national media. This argument claims that first-generation migrant children in a settler society, such as Australia, are important negotiators between different cultural competencies and, by implication, different formulations of cultural citizenship. In the case study presented in this article, first-generation children of Chinese mainland migrant parents are both negotiators and sites of parental anxiety in relation to the new place of residency, its value systems and its measures of cultural and civic competency. History, education and remembered cultural norms become bones of contention in the process of media consumption.
Alien(ating) ideology and the American media
Authors: Campbell John Edward
Published: April 2009

The pervasiveness of the alien image in the contemporary American media raises a host of questions. The article’s objective is to offer one possible means of theoretically apprehending the use of the alien image in the American media, particularly in television programming. In this respect, no single television series better exemplifies the public intrigue with the alien than Fox’s The X-Files. Utilizing a textual analysis of The X-Files focused on those episodes of the first five seasons constituting the progressive alien-government conspiracy narrative, the article provides a theoretical basis for addressing the sociopolitical and ideological implications of the currency of the alien in the media. It is suggested that the very complexities within this mainstream media text reflect possible conflicting ideological perspectives in the realm of cultural production.
Media homes
Authors: Spigel Lynn
Published: April 2009

This article synthesizes Spigel’s research on the introduction of television and new technologies into the home. It looks at changing conceptions of ‘media households’ over the course of the last 50 years. The ‘home theater’ represents the media house of the 1950s; the ‘mobile home’ corresponds to the introduction of portable television in the 1960s; and the ‘smart home’ is the contemporary model of digital domesticity. The article considers how these changing models of home incorporate reigning middle class ideologies about family life for their respective times.
Searching for quality television in New Zealand
Authors: Lealand Geoff
Published: April 2009

After a decade or more of commercial imperatives dominating state-owned television in New Zealand, government policy is attempting to shift it back to public service or ‘civic’ objectives. As a result, debates about ‘quality’ have re-emerged, both in the public discourse and in the Charter which Television New Zealand will be expected to observe. This could be regarded as an echo of similar debates which occurred in British television in the early 1990s but, in the case of New Zealand, debates about ‘quality’ have tended to be under-articulated and impoverished, with the default meaning implying middle brow and conventional taste formations. Prevailing notions of ‘quality’ in television, as currently used in New Zealand debates, are decoded and challenged in this article.
The bohemianization of mass culture
Authors: Wilson Elizabeth
Published: April 2009

This article charts the development of the idea of ‘bohemia’ and the ‘bohemian’ from its emergence in the 1830s to the present day. I suggest that whereas the discourse surrounding bohemianism was one of authenticity versus the falseness and commercialization of mass culture, the figure of the bohemian was always discursively produced in popular culture from Henry Murger onwards, bohemians becoming the subject matter of numerous salon paintings, popular fiction, films and journalism. It is further argued that far from being extinct, bohemian values of expressiveness, sexual experimentation, radicalism and an aesthetic approach to life have become the mainstay of mass culture. This raises the question of whether the contested divide between ‘High Art’ and ‘Mass Culture’, much debated within cultural studies since the 1970s, is still as salient as we assume.
Mouthpiece or money-spinner?
Authors: Bin Zhao
Published: April 2009

The start of direct retail television in China signalled a new and more liberal stage in the commercialization of Chinese television in the second half of the 1990s. The mass media in China have been going through a steady process of marketization since the mid-1980s. This process has gathered pace since 1992, in a political climate congenial to economic liberalization, which was created by the late Deng Xiaoping touring and blessing the booming cities in south China in January that year. Constantly caught between the market and the state, television in the late 1990s is more than ever living a double life as a mouthpiece and a money-spinner. This article sets out to make sense of the unintended ‘cultural pluralism’ reflected on the small screen, looking at the most recent changes in television journalism as the last stronghold of party propaganda, and the latest money-spinning business in direct retail programming and in advertising generally. The danger of over-marketization is clearly there to be perceived for those who want to take a look.
Spatial configuration in institutional change
Authors: Pan Zhongdang
Published: April 2009

This paper examines the institutional changes in China's journalism reforms. These reforms involve the introduction of market forces into news operations without a fundamental change in the communist political system. Situated in this macro environment, journalists, as entrepreneurial actors, transform the internal tensions in the existing journalism institution into resources for carrying out their improvised and innovative practices. By doing so, they reconfigure the institutional space of the party-press system and create a unique dynamic of center versus periphery and front versus back regions in China's party press. Although the paper is based on an observational field study in China, it is written to present a more general argument on the institutional significance of journalistic practices.
Beyond the referential
Authors: Huxford John
Published: April 2009

This article explores the contradiction between the way journalism appeals to photographic indexicality in support of its claims to professional objectivity, while use of the news photograph includes violations of realism and the projection of multiple levels of connotative meaning. The article argues that in its drive to show as well as tell, the press routinely employs visual symbolism to supply photographic validation that it does not possess, even for abstract qualities that cannot be validated visually. Three classifications of photographic symbolism in the press are offered: temporal, in which time frames are evoked and utilized within the newspage; metaphorical, where analogical associations are employed; and synthetic, representations that entail gross distortions of reality. The study charts the codes and conventions that the press employs to create these levels of symbolism, and discusses examples of the way moving beyond the referential creates visual illusions that can frame and mislead.