bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bone Marrow Transplantation from a Parental Perspective
Authors: Forinder Ulla
Published: May 2004

The present study focuses on the parents of the first group of children in Sweden to receive a bone marrow transplant and survive. Its aim was to get in-depth knowledge of the parents’ situation during this critical time. The result of 10 years of research (1988–98), the study deals with the situation to which the parents had to adapt and the strategies that they used to handle their situation within a long-term perspective. Two series of qualitative interviews with the parents of 20 children who had undergone bone marrow transplantation were carried out. A self-report questionnaire for coping was also used. The result shows that the child’s illness and treatment played an important role in the parents’ lives for many years. Those parents who managed to put reason before emotion rated their coping as better. A sense of participation was also a useful coping strategy.
Does British Music Still Matter?
Authors: Frith Simon
Published: May 2004

This article examines the present status of British popular music. It illustrates the declining global significance of British rock and pop recordings by considering the Mercury music prize (for the ‘best’ British releases each year) and the US sales charts (in which British records rarely now appear). The continuing political assertion that British musical talent is an important source of export earnings is shown to refer to acts (and often recordings) produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s. We can conclude that in this, as in other cultural spheres, ‘globalization’ has also meant a new account of ‘local’ production such that, in commercial terms, Britain is no more important than other European countries as a source of internationally successful recordings. ‘Anglo-American rock’ is no longer a useful label.
The ‘Failure’ of Youth Culture
Authors: Kahn-Harris Keith
Published: May 2004

This article examines an enduring question raised by subcultural studies: how youth culture can be challenging and transgressive, yet ‘fail’ to produce wider social change. This question is addressed through a case study of the black metal music scene. The black metal scene flirts with violent racism, yet has resisted embracing outright fascism. The article argues that this is due to the way in which music is ‘reflexively antireflexively’ constructed as a depoliticizing category. It is argued that an investigation of such forms of reflexivity might explain the enduring ‘failure’ of youth cultures to change more than their immediate surroundings.
EastEnders
Authors: Madill Anna , Goldmeier Rebecca
Published: May 2004

This article describes a study investigating narratives obtained from 45 participants about their watching of the television program, EastEnders. The first aim was to understand why people watch this program. The second aim was to identify the kinds of social object dominating their accounts as a way of revealing the forms of cultural debate catalyzed by the show. Material was generated via an open-ended email questionnaire and analyzed qualitatively using grounded theory. Two major themes constituting social objects were identified - female desire and community. These themes were made up of seven categories, each of which helped explain why participants watched EastEnders: reduced troubles, gender, relaxation, social activity, community, realism and Britishness. These results are discussed in relation to past research but the authors also argue that, as the findings suggest some participants gained a therapeutic effect from watching EastEnders, there is a fruitful and little-explored link between such comfort viewing and research on psychotherapy.
The Global Reach of a New Discourse
Authors: Wang Jing
Published: May 2004

This article raises the question of ‘creativeindustries’ as a travelling discourse and examines its relevance to mainland China in the wake of its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). How do we construct a viable comparative framework that would enable us to track the place-specific economies of knowledge, creativity and content production? How do we account for a locale’s needs for specific discursive constructs? How can responsible cultural theorists talk about different national cultural policies relationally? This article brings to the fore an approach that prioritizes the infrastructural inquiries of the local agenda. Thus, it is shown that the same socialist state launched a campaign on creative industries in Hong Kong while stepping up its promotion of ‘cultural industries’ as a new policy category on the mainland. China’s stakes of entering the WTO are examined alongside the sites of crises embedded in the Chinese local norm.
Researching Creative Applications of New Information and Communication Technologies
Authors: Tacchi Jo
Published: May 2004

This article describes two ‘ethnographic’ research projects – one in Australia and one in South Asia. These projects stand apart from more traditional ethnographies in the way in which they combine ethnography with action research; they are, in effect, applied ethnographic research. Both projects reflect an interest in examining the changing processes and applications of creativity, production and consumption and the desire to gain deeper understandings of what roles new technologies play in all of this. The research attempts to develop answers to some very basic questions about the implications of new technologies on the everyday lives of a wide range of people and the implications of the everyday lives of those people on the uses and potential uses of new technologies.
The Cultural Economy
Authors: Pratt Andy C.
Published: May 2004

This article argues that the analytical pendulum has swung too far in prioritizing consumption in analyses of the cultural economy. The article adopts a version of the ‘production of culture’ perspective and is illustrated through discussion of three interrelated fields of the cultural economy: the new economy, creativity and consumption. The article argues in favour of studies of the material culture of production (redefined to take in the whole ‘cycle’ of the making and shaping of cultural commodities) and recommends this as a basis of policy development.
The Creative Industries after Cultural Policy
Authors: Cunningham Stuart
Published: May 2004

How can we most usefully appropriate the rhetorics of the new economy to advance a contemporary understanding of the production and consumption of creative and informational content? Can the concept of creativity be broadened, but not so much that it becomes everything and nothing – the newest business lit fad and just as ephemeral as the rest – such that claims for its role as a driver of economic growth can be sustained? Can the analytical and research context for ‘experiential’ or ‘cultural’ consumption – core business for cultural, communications and media studies academics – be helpfully developed through new economy models? This piece takes an explicitly policy-orientated line and tendentiously tracks a genealogy and some possible preferred futures for the creative industries beyond their framing within a cultural policy problematic. I track the fate of creative and informational content as it passes across three grids of understanding: ‘culture’, ‘services’ and ‘knowledge’. These grids also serve as historical and/or possible rationales for state intervention in the creative industries as well as industry’s own understandings of their nature and role.
Persuasive Arguments and Beating Around the Bush in Negotiations
Authors: Harinck Fieke
Published: May 2004

Individuals in negotiations often do not talk about their reasons to aim for a certain outcome and design their arguments in such a way that their reasons are unclear to the other party. Three experiments examined the occurrence and the underlying motive for this ‘beating around the bush’ as a function of the conflict issue—conflicting interests, conflicting ideas about intellective problems or conflicting ideas about evaluative problems. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that beating around the bush occurred more frequently in (a specific instance of) conflict of interest than in intellective or evaluative conflict. Experiment 3 suggests that providing arguments for one’s position in terms of self-interest is considered honest but not very smart or strategic.
Resistant versus Acquiescent Responses to Ingroup Inferiority as a Function of Social Dominance Orientation in the USA and Italy
Authors: Overbeck Jennifer R. , Jost John T. , Mosso Cristina O. , Flizik Agnieszka
Published: May 2004

Social identity theory typically emphasizes how low status group members resist and challenge imputations of inferiority (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), whereas system justification theory emphasizes the tendency to accept and justify status hierarchies (Jost & Banaji, 1994). On the theoretical assumption that responses to ingroup inferiority would vary according to individual differences in social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994), we predicted and found in two studies that low SDO members of low status groups engage in resistance and social competition, as social identity theory would predict, whereas high SDO members follow system justifying patterns of acquiescence and even active bolstering of the status quo. The fact that the studies were conducted in two cultures (USA and Italy) that differ with regard to hierarchical traditions and beliefs about social mobility increases the generalizeability of the results and strengthens the conclusion that SDO predicts acquiescent vs. resistant responses to ingroup inferiority.
Reactions to Perceived Categorization by others during the Transition to College: Internalization and Self-Verification Processes
Authors: Lemay Edward P. , Ashmore Richard D.
Published: May 2004

The current study examined longitudinal reactions to subjective perceptions of being categorized by others, termed reflected categorization, during the transition to college. Reactions were examined across 85 social categories relevant to the US college culture (e.g. jock, partier, brain). Initial reflected categorization predicted changes over time in self-categorization, suggesting internalization of the social categories ascribed by peers in the new context. Initial self-categorization also predicted changes in reflected categorization, suggesting self-verification of category memberships. Both effects were moderated by category valence and membership importance. Internalization and verification effects were somewhat stronger when these processes entailed acquiring or verifying positive category memberships. Internalization effects were stronger and verification effects were weaker when membership was important to self-definition. The findings suggest that perceived categorizations from others are both cause and consequence of self-categorization during a major life transition, although investment in membership and self-esteem motives partially determine the relative strength of these effects.
Effects of Status Difference and Group Size in Group Decision Making
Authors: Ohtsubo Yohsuke , Masuchi Ayumi
Published: May 2004

The purpose of this study was to empirically test the finding of Ohtsubo, Fujita, and Kameda’s (in press) thought experiment regarding the relation between the high status member’s influence and the number of low status members in the decision-making groups. Against intuition, the thought experiment showed that increasing low status memberswould not necessarily undermine the high status member’s influence. This study had three-,four-, and five-person groups engage in group decision-making tasks while manipulatingstatus difference by bogus feedback about task-relevant ability. Results showed that the high status members’ overall influence increased when the number of low status membersincreased from three to four. The Social Decision Scheme Model analyses, however,suggested that the observed aggretation process was different from the one assumed inthe thought experiment.
The Democratizing Dynamics of a European Public Sphere
Authors: Trenz Hans-Jörg , Eder Klaus
Published: May 2004

The riddle of how to democratize the multi-level polity of the EU is answered by pointing to the empirical impact of an unfolding European public sphere. It is argued that there is a self-constituting dynamic of a European public sphere which abets the coupling of transnational spaces of communication with the institutional integration of the EU. From this perspective, democracy is not external to the EU, it is already part of the logic of European institution-building and governance and is fostered by collective learning processes in which definitions of the collective good as well as conditions for appropriate forms of political participation are negotiated. In discussing the case of the EU’s constitutional reform, a theory of democratic functionalism is proposed which accounts for this specific form of democratization of the EU.
The Sacralization of Memory
Authors: Misztal Barbara A.
Published: May 2004

This article argues that today’s search for identity, in the context of the rise of a new spirituality and the decline of authoritative memories, facilitates the forging of a new connection between soul and memory and enhances the importance of traumatic memories. Consequently, we witness the sacralization of memory which in unsettled times, when memories tend to become fixed and frozen, can undermine intergroup cooperation. The article asserts that an ethical burden, prompted by viewing memory as the surrogate of the soul and the overrating of the importance of the politics of identity, can result in the displacement of public concerns with private ones. It stresses a need to rethink what kind of memory is compatible with a just, pluralist and cohesive democratic system.
War on the Couch
Authors: Pupavac Vanessa
Published: May 2004

The emotional state of war-affected populations has become a central concern for international policy-makers in the last decade. Growing interest in war trauma is influenced by contemporary Anglo-American emotionology, or emotional norms, which tends to pathologize ordinary responses to distress, including anger related to survival strategies. The article critically analyses the ascendancy of a therapeutic security paradigm in international politics, which seeks to explain the prevailing political, economic and social conditions in terms of cycles of emotional dysfunctionalism. The article contends that international therapeutic governance pathologizes waraffected populations as emotionally dysfunctional and problematizes their right to self-government, leading to extensive external intervention. However, international therapeutic governance may be detrimental to postwar recovery as well legitimizing a denial of self-government.
A Study on the Control of Surface Condensation on a Multi-Cone Diffuser in Cold Air Distribution Applications
Authors: Chuah Y. K. , Hu S. C. , Shieh M. F.
Published: May 2004

Multi-cone diffusers have good air distribution characteristics in cooling applications. However, surface condensation has been a problem impeding the use of multi-cone diffusers in cold air applications. An experimental study and a computer analysis are presented to show the causes of surface condensation on a multi-cone diffuser when distributing cold air. This study also attempts to alter the flow field characteristics near the diffuser cone surfaces by using an open inner cone with an insert that has a porous structure. Computer analysis has shown that the resultant airflow from the inner cone will repel the entrained room air away from the diffuser, thus preventing contact of the more humid air with the cold cone surfaces. The analysis has also shown that the altered flow field will cause the air dew point temperature in the vicinity of the diffuser to be lower than the temperature of the cone surfaces. Inserts with different porosities that were effective in preventing surface condensation were tested and the results are presented. These results indicate that the proposed airflow control method is effective in preventing surface condensation.
Analysis of Thermal Comfort Near Cold Vertical Surfaces by Means of Computational Fluid Dynamics
Authors: Manz H. , Frank T.
Published: May 2004

Cold surfaces may cause thermal discomfort due to down draught and/or infrared radiation exchange. In this paper a cold vertical surface of 3m height in a room (3 × 3 × 5m3) was investigated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Also calculated were a parameter that expresses thermal discomfort for the whole human body – the predicted percentage of (those people) dissatisfied – and parameters of local discomfort such as air speed and draft risk. Five cases with different heat loads (0–80Wm−2) and with/without furniture were simulated, each case with three different temperatures of the cold surface (17.5, 15, and 10°C). The mean operative temperature was approximately 20°C in all cases. It was found that with respect to thermal discomfort, draught was more critical than reduced operative temperatures or radiation asymmetry. An increase of the heat load in the room leads to higher down draught air speeds. Therefore, experiments performed in empty rooms tend to underestimate the maximum air speed that occurs in real, furnished rooms with heat loads. A set of correlations for maximum air speed within the occupied zone is proposed. Additionally, this study shows that CFD is a valuable technique to complement and broaden knowledge gained in laboratory experiments in the field of thermal comfort.
Growth Response of Stachybotrys Chartarum to Moisture Variation on Common Building Materials
Authors: Menetrez M.Y. , Foarde K.K. , Webber T.D. , Betancourt D. , Dean T.
Published: May 2004

The mould Stachybotrys chartarum has been found to be associated with idiopathic pulmonary haemorrhage in infants and indoor exposure has also been linked to other pulmonary diseases, including allergies and asthma. S. chartarum has been studied both for toxin production and its occurrence in water-damaged buildings. Growth of S. chartarum on building materials such as gypsum wallboard has been frequently documented. Given that there may be a high frequency of occurrence and so the risk of exposure, environmental factors leading to the growth of S. chartarum have been studied. Samples of commonly used building materials were sterilised, inoculated with S. chartarum and exposed to controlled levels of relative humidity and wetting. A quantitative analysis of viable S. chartarum was performed on the building materials during a 7-month period. The results indicate that for environments with a relative humidity below total saturation, wetting was necessary for visible growth to occur. Conversely, high levels of relative humidity without wetting did not initiate growth. Porous materials, after becoming sufficiently wet and measuring saturation on a moisture meter, exhibited mould growth in every experiment conducted.
Measurement of Indoor Fungal Contaminants Causing Allergy among the Workers of Paper-Related Industries of West Bengal, India
Authors: Majumdar Manas Ranjan , Bhattacharyya Kashinath
Published: May 2004

Qualitative and quantitative differences in dominant airborne fungal spores at premises related to the paper industry were assessed to determine their potential to incite respiratory allergy among employees. The 2-year study (September, 1999–August, 2001) was carried out using a two-stage Andersen viable particle sizing sampler. A total of 26 fungal types from all the survey sites were recorded during the period of which the most dominant were Aspergillus niger (36.1%), Cladosporium cladosporioides (30.2%) and Fusarium solani (11.62%). As with previous reports airborne fungal levels were shown to be non-normal in distribution, while the Friedman test showed that, except for airborne spores from the fungi above plus Aspergillus fumigatus (2.6%) and Curvularia lunata (3.03%), overall the other types were insignificant in relation to their incidence. Clinical investigations by skin prick test with antigenic extracts of the eight commonest spore types clearly demonstrated their allergenic nature. It was evident that among the 53 patients tested, the highest positive reaction (2+ or more intensity) was produced by Aspergillus niger (30.1%) followed by Aspergillus fumigatus (22.6%), Cladosporium cladosporioides (20.7%) and Curvularia lunata (18.8%). Allergenic symptoms were more pronounced during monsoon (44.5%) and post-monsoon (40.7%) but less frequent in the summer (14.8%). It is proposed that the high frequency of positive response among workers was due to an increased prevalence of these fungal forms in their work environment resulting from the moderate temperatures (28–32°C) and high RH (80–88%) that favour mould growth and sporulation.
Motorcyclists’ Interpretations of Risk and Hazard
Authors: Natalier Kristin
Published: May 2004

Injury and death rates mark motorcycling as a hazardous activity. However, this article argues that such indicators of risk have little resonance for those who ride motorcycles. Central to motorcyclists’ understandings of their pursuit is the celebration of technique and a belief in the ability to control their riding experiences. The importance of the lived experience of riding encourages motorcyclists to marginalize expert systems of knowledge in favour of their own practical experience. Through these processes, the potential of injury and death are downplayed.
Perspectives on the Meanings of Symptoms among Cambodian Refugees
Authors: Stevens Christine A.
Published: May 2004

Environmental stressors place refugees at risk of mental ill health and this article examines the meaning of selected symptoms such as sleeping problems, nightmares, breathing problems, pain, headaches, dizziness, fatigue and lethargy, trouble with concentration and memory loss among a random sample of 150 male and female Cambodians aged 20 to 75 years in South Australia. Respondents were interviewed in their own homes by the author, accompanied by a Cambodia-born research assistant who interpreted where necessary. The interview schedule used was devised in collaboration with a Cambodia-born advisory committee. Understanding of the meaning of the symptoms experienced was explored through two main approaches. First, analysis of their social, demographic and health correlates provided an objective view of those who suffer. This revealed that older people, individuals with large families and those who lacked the support of a spouse were more likely than others to experience the symptoms, while young single people who reported they were in good health were least likely to experience symptoms. Second, respondents’ ideas on the causes of their symptoms provided subjective insights into the meaning for those who suffer. Current stressors predominated in the accounts given of causes by the Cambodians themselves, with family relationships and medical problems the most common factors.
Birth and the ‘reflexive consumer’: trust, risk and medical dominance in obstetric encounters
Authors: Zadoroznyj Maria
Published: May 2004

The doctor–patient relationship has come under considerable scrutiny in recent research as a ‘site’ for the analysis of consumerism in medical encounters. The research reported in this article examines consumerism in obstetric encounters through an analysis of the birthing narratives of 50 women. The analyses reveal that there are clear, socially patterned variations in the character of the relationships between birthing women and their doctors. There is considerable evidence to support the notion of childbearing women as both consumers and as ‘patients’ in a medicalized encounter. There is also strong evidence that women’s use of maternity services is highly reflexive, and characterized by conscious ‘risk assessment’. These findings have important implications for the analysis of trust, risk and medical dominance in obstetric encounters.
Animals and modernity: changing human–animal relations, 1949–98
Authors: Franklin Adrian , White Robert
Published: May 2004

In this article we provide an empirical test of Franklin’s (1999) recent contribution to the burgeoning study of human–animal relations. Drawing on the anthropological claim that animals are good to think with, Franklin used theories of reflexive modernization to explain a shift to increasingly zoocentric and sentimentalized relations with animals. After deriving a series of expectations from this account, we tested them through a content-analysis of over 1000 articles from one Australian newspaper over a 50-year period. Broadly, we found support for Franklin’s key claims. But we also found local contingencies and historical continuities which suggest limits to the sweeping theorizations of change in accounts of reflexive modernization.
Educational attainment of the children of divorce: Australia, 1940–90
Authors: Evans M. D.R. , Kelley Jonathan , Wanner Richard A.
Published: May 2004

Much research suggests that the disruption of marriage through parental death or divorce imposes a small but significant educational disadvantage on American children, although the most recent and comprehensive analysis casts serious doubt on this claim. What is the situation in Australia? Using representative national samples (n= 29,443) and OLS and logistic regression with robust standard errors, we estimate models controlling many potentially confounding variables. We find that divorce in Australia costs seven-tenths of a year of education, mainly by reducing secondary school completion. Importantly, divorce has become more damaging in recent cohorts.
The focus group method and contemporary French sociology
Authors: Hamel Jacques
Published: May 2004

This article reviews the development of the focus group method in French sociology as compared with the sociological intervention method proposed by Alain Touraine. It further purports to describe and discuss matters such as representativeness, objectivity, status of data and so forth. Lastly, it looks at the development of the epistemology of reception.
Who gets the best deal from marriage: women or men?
Authors: Dempsey Ken
Published: May 2004

Feminists of various kinds – structural, radical, critical, materialist – have repeatedly asserted that marriage benefits men more than women and usually at women's expense. There is now a considerable body of empirical evidence that supports the major thrust of their claims. However, there are feminists adopting a post-structuralist perspective who argue that many accounts of men's dominance are overly deterministic. The argument goes that there is insufficient recognition of change that is already ensuring more rewarding marriages for women much of which is probably due to women's exercise of agency. It is further argued that, in order for women to initiate successful change, it is necessary but not sufficient for them to be aware of inequities and other shortcomings occurring at specific sites in their marriage. In the present study, a sample of 45 wives and 40 husbands were questioned to see if they agreed that men generally benefited the most from marriage, to find out what reasons they offered for their judgements and to establish if women were more conscious than men of the need for specific changes in their own marriages. The possibilities of actors negotiating successfully for specific change in the face of their partner's opposition are also considered. It is argued that women will make only limited gains until men experience a change of heart.
Globalization and scientific labour: patterns in a life-history study of intellectual workers in the periphery
Authors: Connell R. W. , Wood Julian
Published: May 2004

Sociological theories about intellectuals need to be rethought in relation to globalization. The interplay between intellectual work and globalization is studied via life-history interviews with 18 Australians involved in natural science. Centre–periphery relations are important in their careers, an interactive process not a simple domination. Quasi-globalization rather than full globalization is the main pattern of internationalization of science. The commodification of knowledge, now an important force in natural-science research, follows similar spatial patterns. Personal and institutional connections remain important vehicles of international connection, alongside traditional formats such as journal publication; electronic communications are emerging as an associated pattern rather than as an alternative. Participating from the periphery is structured by metropolitan predominance, with regional satellite centres complicating the pattern. Participation in elite world networks is possible, though tending to reinforce centre–periphery patterns; which in turn create problems for the reproduction of the scientific workforce in the periphery under a neoliberal political regime.
Symposium introduction: shockwave
Authors: McDonald Kevin
Published: May 2004

Today we live in global society. It is not a unitary society, nor is it an ideological community or a state, but it is a single power network. Shockwaves reverberate around it, casting down empires, transporting massive quantities of people, materials and messages, and finally, threatening the ecosystem and atmosphere of the planet. (Mann, 1993: 11)
Parenthood and pay in Australia and the UK: evidence from workplace surveys
Authors: Whitehouse Gillian
Published: May 2004

This article addresses the effect of parenthood on pay, examining potential reasons for differences between Australia and the UK that are evident in spite of their similarly minimalist, male breadwinner style approaches to work/ family issues. Although cross-national differences reflect complex intersections of policy combinations, institutional frameworks, patterns of employment and gender contracts that cannot be assessed in a single analysis, the data used in this analysis uncover some of the factors that contribute to different outcomes. Motherhood penalties in the UK appear to be associated primarily with the comparatively low level of part-time earnings in that country, while higher premiums to fatherhood at least in part reflect a wider overall wage distribution. These findings reinforce the need to interpret earnings effects of parenthood within the context of national patterns of employment and wage distribution, and highlight the breadth of strategies needed to deliver more equitable outcomes.
Patterns of change and stability in the gender division of household labour in Australia, 1986–1997
Authors: Baxter Janeen
Published: May 2004

Recent research in Australia and overseas has suggested that we are witnessing a convergence of men's and women's time on domestic labour activities. But there is disagreement about whether this is due to women reducing their time on housework or men increasing their time on housework. This article addresses these issues using national survey data collected in Australia in 1986, 1993 and 1997. The results show some changes in the proportional responsibilities of men and women in the home with men reporting a greater share of traditional indoor activities. But overall both men and women are spending less time on housework. In particular, women's time on housework has declined by six hours per week since 1986. Hence, while the gender gap between men's and women's involvement in the home is getting smaller, it is not the result of men increasing their share of the load, but is due to the large decline in women's time spent on domestic labour. There is also evidence of change in the relationship between paid and unpaid work for women. Women's hours of paid labour had a greater impact on their involvement in domestic labour in 1997 compared to a decade earlier. The article concludes that women's increased labour force involvement in combination with changing patterns and styles of consumption is leading to some changes in the gender division of household labour, but not in the direction anticipated by earlier commentators on the domestic division of labour.
Share ownership in Australia
Authors: White Robert , Tranter Bruce , Hanson Dallas
Published: May 2004

The rise in private share ownership over the last decade is an interesting but relatively poorly researched issue in Australia. In the expectation that relations between large companies and their shareholders are already important and will become increasingly so, we report exploratory longitudinal studies of two aspects of the interaction. Regression analysis of shareholders’ demographic and attitudinal characteristics, drawn from National Social Science and Australian Electoral Study surveys, shows what shareholders might expect from their companies. Content-analysis of corporate annual reports shows how two companies have reacted; here we compare Coles Myer, the subject of recurrent scandal, with Amcor, as a model of corporate responsiveness. We conclude that widespread share ownership is conducive to increasing social tension across a range of dimensions.
Identifying the diversity in Australian children’s living arrangements
Authors: Brandon Peter D.
Published: May 2004

The dramatic changes in family composition have profound implications for studying relationships of children to other adults in a household. However, methods for studying such relationships have been outpaced by the transformation of families and thus today’s studies, for example, often inaccurately assess whether a child lives with one or two parents and whether he or she is the biological child of those parents. Despite needing increased detail about relationships of children to adults in a household, few surveys gather such data. An exception is the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, which collects detailed household relationship data. Analyses of these data suggest that there is tremendous diversity in Australian children’s living arrangements; that the circumstances of the arrangements are equally varied; and that Australian children are more likely to live with unmarried parents than American children. HILDA could enormously benefit studies of the relationships of children to adults in a household and future family-oriented policies.
Examining the factors that influence the intentions to adopt internet shopping and cable television shopping in Taiwan
Authors: Li Shu-Chu Sarrina
Published: May 2004

Using Rogers’ diffusion of innovation model, this study attempts to compare the adoption of internet shopping with that of cable television shopping in Taiwan. Rogers’ diffusion model has been criticized for its pro-innovation bias, and thus this study expects that the adoption of internet shopping will be consistent with the predictions of Rogers’ model, while the adoption of cable television shopping will not. A telephone survey with 1227 valid interviews was used to collect data for this study. As expected, most findings regarding internet shopping follow the predictions of this model. However, the diffusion process in relation to cable television shopping digresses from the path predicted by Rogers’ model. The detailed findings of the study are discussed in the article.
Hackers and the contested ontology of cyberspace
Authors: Nissenbaum Helen
Published: May 2004

This article analyzes the transformation in our conception of hacking over the past few decades to the current point where hackers are conceived as miscreants, vandals, criminals, and even terrorists. It argues that this transformation is more a function of contextual shifts than of changes in hacking itself. In particular, the hacker ethic, which eschews centralized, restricted access to computers and information, is inimical to the interests of established corporate and government powers, including particularly intellectual property and order. Central to this article’s argument is that the transformation has been achieved not through direct public debate over conflicting ideals and interests, but through an ontological shift mediated by supportive agents of key societal institutions: legislative bodies, the courts, and the popular media.
Mobile Communication as a Social Stage
Authors: Oksman Virpi , Turtiainen Jussi
Published: May 2004

The spread of mobile communication among Finnish teenagers has been markedly rapid during the latter half of the 1990s. Young people have created and developed a communication culture that incorporates many special features, such as a rise in the use of text-based communication channels. Teenagers’ intersecting and selective use of communication channels has generated multimedial communication. From the theoretical standpoint provided by symbolic interactionism, we can ask whether communication through new media technologies generates new forms of social interaction. If this is the case, how could we describe and analyse these new forms of interaction? The media landscapes created by teenagers serve to articulate their personal space, as well as enabling their presentation of self and defining their relationships to others. This article is based on thematic interview material, and its purpose is to analyse the meanings and use contexts of mobile communication and other multimedial communication culture among Finnish youth.
Interactive Uses of Journalism: Crossing Between Technological Potential and Young People’s News-Using Practices
Authors: Hujanen Jaana , Pietikäinen Sari
Published: May 2004

The article examines the interactive uses of journalism, focusing on the changes brought by new communication technology in the everyday news media uses of young Finns. The study is based on a survey and in-depth interviews. The results indicate that even though young Finns have easy access to new communication technology, journalism is still predominantly used via television and printed newspapers. While nearly all subjects followed news regularly, a fifth of the respondents had taken advantage of participatory activities offered by the news media. Consequently, technology alone does not seem to alter news practices. The interactive usage of journalism thus seems to be individualized entertainment for the majority of the young people that were studied, and only for few was it a platform for active citizenship. The everyday practices of using journalism via new media point towards heterogeneous activity and the conflicting meanings given to them.
Contingency and Units in Interaction
Authors: Ford Cecilia E.
Published: May 2004

Starting with Houtkoop and Mazeland’s (1985) study of discourse units, and touching upon recent studies aimed at detailing unit projection in interaction, this article argues that the drive toward abstract and discrete models for units and unit projection is potentially misleading. While it has been established that to engage in talk-in-interaction, as it unfolds in real time, participants rely on projectable units (Sacks et al., 1974, 1978), research aimed at defining units unintentionally backgrounds the contingency inherent in interaction. A central function of language for collaborative action is the management of simultaneously unfolding facets of action, sound production, gesture, and grammar – produced by multiple participants. This article draws upon classic and current data analyses foregrounding linguistic/interactional practices designed to manage local contingencies. It is argued that attention to participants’ regular methods for managing and exploiting contingencies be incorporated from the outset in our descriptions of language and the nature of unit building in interaction.
Responding to the Double Implication of Telemarketers’ Opinion Queries
Authors: Mazeland Harrie
Published: May 2004

During a call, telemarketers sometimes solicit respondent’s opinions about a product or service. This turns out to be a query with multiple implications, and respondents are alive to them. On the one hand, the recipient orients to a local preference to evaluate the telemarketer’s product positively. On the other hand, a positive assessment may result in expectations and commitments that survive the sequence and that are relevant for the call’s outcome. The recipient is faced with two types of preference structures, one grounded in the sequence and the other one in the course of action it is part of. The preferences may be incompatible. Analysis shows that the shape of response turns with congruent preferences is observably different from response turns with cross-cutting preferences. In the latter case, the dispreferred character of the response to the caller’s ultimate purpose – that is, making a proposal for a commercial transaction – dominates over the response to the opinion query as just an opinion query in its own right. To generalize, the analysis shows that preparatory sequences in standardized courses of action in institutional settings are a special type of presequence. The participants develop a course of action through ordered series of preparatory sequences. Although locally responding to initiatives of the interlocutor, each response shows an orientation to both the local contingencies of the ongoing sequence and to the overall course of action it is contributing to.
Construction of Rules, Accountability and Moral Identity by High-Functioning Children with Autism
Authors: Sterponi Laura
Published: May 2004

This article explores how high-functioning children with autism navigate in the social world, specifically how they orient in the realm of norms and standards. In particular, this investigation focuses on rule violations episodes and sheds light on how these children account for their (mis)conduct and position themselves in the moral framework. This analysis shows that high-functioning children with autism can actively engage in discourse about norms and transgressions in an initiatory capacity, thereby displaying a mastery of social rules as a guide for appropriate conduct and interpretation of others’ behavior. Furthermore, this article argues that these social skills are linked with the ability to operate with sequentially based understandings: Prior courses of action constitute for the autistic children the fundamental source for reaching an understanding of the normative mechanics of everyday life, and subsequently for constructing their own lines of conduct and themselves as moral agents.
Toward a Dictatorship Over the Poor?
Authors: Wacquant Loïc
Published: May 2004

Like many countries of the Second World caught in the throes of post-Fordism before they could reap the full benefits of Fordist-style development, Brazil is tempted to import the US-style discourse and policy of ‘zero tolerance’ because, enshrouded in the aura emanating from America as the world’s sole symbolic superpower and global Mecca of crime control, they appear cutting edge, effective and efficient; and because they are the indispensable order-maintenance counterpart to policies of economic deregulation and fiscal austerity adopted by Latin American countries under the press of international financial agencies. But in Brazil, as in neighboring nations, this borrowing promises to produce a social catastrophe of historic proportions because the depth and scale of urban poverty are much greater, violent crime is more prevalent and more entrenched in the history and economy of the country, and because the Brazilian police is not a remedy against violence but a major source of violence in its own right. Moreover, Brazil does not possess a rationalized court system capable of ensuring minimal protection of constitutional rights and its prisons are plagued by fantastic overcrowding, gross lack of access to food, hygiene and health and inordinately high levels of brutality, akin to concentration camps for the disruptive fractions of the (sub)proletariat. Under such conditions, to respond to the disorders generated by the rise of absolute and relative poverty associated with incorporation in the emergent neoliberal global order with the penal apparatus is tantamount to instituting a chaotic dictatorship over the poor, and therefore antithetical to the project of nation building on a pacified and democratic basis.
Situating and Researching Restorative Justice in Great Britain
Authors: Miers David
Published: May 2004

This article reviews the primary claims made for restorative justice as a response to offending. It summarizes Home Office research published in 2001 which evaluated seven restorative justice schemes operating in England during the 1990s. The narrative sets the recent resurgence of interest in the potential of restorative justice within Great Britain in a wider context of successive state responses to victimization. The article highlights recent national and European initiatives and links the findings of the Home Office research to evaluations of other schemes in England and Scotland. It addresses basic questions concerning the proper measure for the evaluation of the success or otherwise of restorative justice schemes, and draws attention to the recommendations of the Review of the Criminal Justice System, that there should be a national strategy for the implementation of restorative justice initiatives.
Understanding Prison Riots
Authors: Boin Arjen , Rattray William A.R.
Published: May 2004

This article formulates a theoretical framework that helps to explain the origins of prison riots. Our explanation builds on existing theories, taking the integrative theory outlined by Useem and Kimball (1989) as a starting point. It shows how a variety of causal factors interact to create an institutional environment in which routine incidents can develop into full-fledged riots. We illustrate our framework with an analysis of the Strangeways prison riot in Manchester, UK (1990).
Lethal ‘Borders’
Authors: Fleury-Steiner Benjamin , Argothy Victor
Published: May 2004

The focus of this article is to investigate how Latino Americans have been historically racialized in popular culture, key state legislative iniatives, and jurors’ death sentencing decisions. While the bulk of the literature on the death penalty and criminal punishment more broadly focuses on racial disparities in sentencing outcomes, far less is know about how the sentencing process is itself racialized. Drawing on the stories of former jurors who served in death penalty cases involving Latino American defendants, we argue that such agents of the state are racially disciplined to punish in capital murder trials. Finally, we comment on directions for a more culturally-centered study of penal action.
Youthfulness Responsibility and Punishment
Authors: Kupchik Aaron
Published: May 2004

This article describes interaction in a criminal (adult) court in which adolescents are punished. As a result of the particular set of courtroom dynamics and the youthfulness of the defendants in this court, two potentially conflicting ideas about punishment are expressed concurrently: (1) proportionality, and (2) reduced culpability among youth. I demonstrate how judges talk to adolescent defendants during sentencing in ways that simultaneously communicate the defendants’ criminal responsibility and their youthfulness. In doing so, judges admonish the adolescents. The delivery of this admonishment is a ceremonial event that bears some similarities to the degradation rituals described by Harold Garfinkel, and also to the reintegration ceremonies described by John Braithwaite. Yet the admonishment varies from both of these events in that it is a more practical adaptation to the particular constraints of punishing adolescents in a criminal court. Thus I illustrate how judges strategically use admonishing discourse to solve intractable problems that arise from the circumstances of this court.