bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Use of Continuous Intravenous Ketamine for End-Stage Cancer Pain in Children
Authors: Conway Mary , White Natalie , Jean Candie St. , Zempsky William T. , Steven Katherine
Published: February 2009

Children in the terminal stage of cancer may experience intractable pain despite the use of high doses of opioids. The resultant sedating effect of the opioids limits the child's ability to communicate and participate in activities, thereby negatively affecting quality of life. Ketamine, an intravenous (IV) anesthetic with analgesic properties, when used in low doses, may be useful in managing pediatric cancer pain at the end of life. Ketamine can prevent the development of opioid tolerance and provide additional analgesia without an increase in sedating effects. At the authors' institution, 2 children with end-stage cancer were started on continuous infusion low-dose ketamine to help achieve adequate pain control and allow the children to be home and interactive for the last weeks of their lives. Each case illustrates the complexities of achieving and maintaining adequate pain control and promoting care of the child and family in a setting that is most appropriate for them.
Mating Strategies in a Darwinian Microworld: Simulating the Consequences of Female Reproductive Refractoriness
Authors: Pashler Harold , Mozer Michael , Harris Christine R.
Published: February 2009

Characteristic sex differences in mating strategies (e.g., choosy females, unselective males) have been claimed by Trivers and other theorists to evolve as an automatic consequence of sex differences in minimum parental investment, arising chiefly from greater female reproductive refractoriness. The theory has been supported by correlational evidence and conceptual analogies to economics. A simulated evolution experiment was performed to provide a clearer test of whether female reproductive refractoriness alone can drive the emergence of differences in mating selectivity. A population of male and female replicators initially differed only in that females were unavailable to mate for a fixed period prior to the appearance of offspring. Over succeeding generations, females evolved far greater selectivity than males with respect to the longevity of potential mates. This greater selectivity was relatively robust with respect to population and genetic parameters, but quantitatively unstable with realistic breeding population sizes.
Behavior and Adaptability of a Six-Legged Walking System with Highly Distributed Control
Authors: Kindermann Thomas
Published: February 2009

A situated, moderately complex kinematic system—here an 18-degree-of-freedom six-legged walking system—can show a variety of behaviors, even when controlled by a relatively simple controller. Therefore, a detailed quantitative study of the behavior of such a system is necessary to achieve an understanding of its properties. This “artificial ethology” is applied to a controller with a decentralized structure that uses essential design characteristics of its biological model, the stick insect. The system takes advantage of recurrent connections that establish a loop through the environment. Despite its completely reactive nature, the system can adapt to unpredictable external conditions with no need for specific reprogramming. Leg trajectories are always adapted such that mechanical stress is reduced. This even holds true for special situations like, for example, walking over obstacles, stumbling, or walking with partially or totally amputated legs. Similarities and important discrepancies between the model's behavior and the walking behavior of stick insects are discussed.
Optimal Control Using the Transport Equation: The Liouville Machine
Authors: Kwee Ivo , Schmidhuber Jürgen
Published: February 2009

Transport theory describes the scattering behavior of physical particles such as photons. Here we show how to connect this theory to optimal control theory and to adaptive behavior of agents embedded in an environment. Environments and tasks are defined by physical boundary conditions. Given some task, we compute a set of probability densities on continuous state and action and time. From these densities we derive an optimal policy such that for all states the most likely action maximizes the probability of reaching a predefined goal state. Liouville's conservation theorem tells us that the conditional density at time t, state s, and action a must equal the density at t+ dt, s+ ds, a+ da. Discretization yields a linear system that can be solved directly and whose solution corresponds to an optimal policy. Discounted reward schemes are incorporated naturally by taking the Laplace transform of the equations. The Liouville machine quickly solves rather complex maze problems.
A Computational Model of Learned Avoidance Behavior in a One-Way Avoidance Experiment
Authors: Johnson Jeffrey D. , Li Wei , Li Jinghong , Klopf A. Harry
Published: February 2009

We present a computational model of learned avoidance behavior in a one-way avoidance experiment. Our model employs the reinforcement learning paradigm and a temporal-difference algorithm to implement both classically conditioned and instrumentally conditioned components. The role of the classically conditioned component is to develop an expectation of future benefit that is a function of the learning system's state and action. Competition among the instrumentally conditioned components determines the overt behavior generated by the learning system. Our model displays, in simulation, the reduced latency of the avoidance behavior during learning with continuing trials and the resistance to extinction of the avoidance response. These results are consistent with experimentally observed animal behavior. Our model extends the traditional two-process learning mechanism of Mowrer by explicitly defining the mechanisms of proprioceptive feedback, an internal clock, and generalization over the action space.
Comparison of Administrators’ and School Nurses’ Perception of the School Nurse Role
Authors: Green Rebecca , Reffel Jim
Published: February 2009

The current tenuous status of public education funding requires that school nurses be proactive in advocacy efforts on behalf of their school nursing programs. Advocating for nursing practice within an educational setting presents unique challenges. Lack of state or national consensus for support of school nurse services creates an opportunity for school nurse advocates to develop quantitative tools to evaluate their school nurse program. Identifying commonalities and differences between school administrators’ and school nurses’ perceptions of the school nurse role will provide information that can be used to strengthen programs and facilitate the understanding of school personnel about what school nurses do. This study compared school administrator and school nurse perceptions of the role of the school nurse using a tool based on the National Association of School Nurses’ “Advocacy Talking Points.” Analysis of responses identified specific areas in which schools could improve their school nurse program and enhance school administrators’ understanding of the school nurse role.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in School-Age Children
Authors: Helbing Mary-Lee C. , Ficca Michelle
Published: February 2009

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by disturbing thoughts, impulses, or images (obsessions); repetitive or ritualistic behaviors (compulsions); or the presence of both. Although some may believe this disorder is isolated to the adult population, it affects anywhere from 1% to 4% of children in the United States. However, symptom presentation of this psychiatric condition may be different in the pediatric population. School-age children who are affected by the condition or their parents may attempt to hide these behaviors due to embarrassment or fear of peer victimization. If left untreated, OCD can interfere with the ability to play, socialize, attend school, and function as a part of a family, ultimately affecting success not only in school but in life. It is imperative school nurses are aware of this condition, its symptoms, and treatments and techniques to help students with OCD cope effectively.
Evaluation of a Tuberculosis Skin Testing Program
Authors: Kahn Pamela
Published: February 2009

There has been a recent slowdown in the decline of rates of tuberculosis (TB) in the United States. However, there are disparities in TB diagnosis between U.S.-born and foreign-born persons and between Whites and minorities. Measures for achieving TB elimination include identification of high-risk persons, including children and adolescents, at increased risk of progression to TB disease. A public school district TB skin-testing program was evaluated to determine the program’s efficacy in diagnosing infectious TB and the financial effect of the program on the district. Analysis of the correlation between ethnicity and a positive skin test was also performed. Results showed the TB screening program did not identify any cases of infectious TB and found no statistically significant relationship between positive test results and student ethnicity. It was also demonstrated that the school district lost state funds due to days of school missed in relation to the screening process.
The New Men
Authors: Russell Nicholas
Published: February 2009

Science communication should include some account of doing science as well as of its product; new scientific knowledge. Fiction and drama are well placed to communicate the process of doing science although, in practice, popular novels on this theme are rare. One exception is the collectivist period in British history from the early 1930s to the late 1960s, when several science-trained authors wrote popular novels about doing science. They gave reasonably sophisticated accounts of the practice, philosophy, sociology and politics of science and their representations of these activities are outlined here. If historical context was a major factor in these novels being written, this may explain why contemporary popular fiction about science is hard to publish. The economic upheavals of 2008 may herald a new era of managed capitalism which might trigger a fresh wave of fictional representations of science.
Community Perspectives on Factors That Influence Collaboration in Public Health Research
Authors: Pinto Rogério M.
Published: February 2009

Community collaboration in research may lead to better methods, results, and dissemination of interventions. Little systematic research has examined specific factors that influence community-based organizations (CBOs) to collaborate in public health research. There is an urgent need to advance knowledge on this topic so that together, researchers and CBOs can minimize barriers to collaboration. This study advances a CBOfocused characterization of collaboration in HIV-prevention research. By focusing on the perspectives of 20 key informants in 10 HIV-prevention CBOs, qualitative data revealed factors that influenced their collaborations in four domains: (a) Researchers’ Characteristics (expertise, availability), (b) Collaborative Research Characteristics (ought to improve services and CBO infrastructure); (c) Community Partner—Researcher Relationships (resolving social and professional issues); and (d) Barriers to HIV-Prevention Research Collaboration (cultural and social disconnect between CBO and academia). To reduce barriers, researchers ought to enhance motivators that facilitate collaboration. To use the advantages of community-based research, prevention scientists and policy makers ought to embrace CBOs’ characterization of what makes health research genuinely collaborative.
The Impact of Removing Snacks of Low Nutritional Value From Middle Schools
Authors: Schwartz Marlene B. , Novak Sarah A. , Fiore Susan S.
Published: February 2009

Removing low nutrition snacks from schools is controversial. Although the objective is to decrease the consumption of these foods at school, some critics argue that children will compensate by eating more of these foods at home. Others worry that school-based obesity prevention programs will increase student preoccupation with weight. The present study examines these concerns. Three middle schools replaced snacks and beverages that did not meet nutrition guidelines, whereas three comparison schools made no systematic changes. Students were surveyed about dietary intake and weight concerns before and after implementation of the intervention. Findings indicate that removing low nutrition items from schools decreased students’ consumption with no compensatory increase at home. Furthermore, there were no differences in students’ reported weight concerns. These results support the value of strengthening school nutrition standards to improve student nutrition and provide evidence dispelling concerns that such efforts will have unintended negative consequences.
Sustaining School-Based Individualized Positive Behavior Support
Authors: Bambara Linda M. , Nonnemacher Stacy , Kern Lee
Published: February 2009

This qualitative interview study investigates the perceived barriers and enablers to implementing and sustaining individualized positive behavior supports (IPBS) by school-based team members across five stakeholder groups. The findings reveal specific factors across five broad themes: (a) school culture, (b) administrative leadership and support, (c) structure and use of time, (d) ongoing professional development, and (e) family and student involvement. The findings offer insight into the interconnectedness of factors that can interfere with or support IPBS in schools and suggest implications for practice and future research.
Bridging Home and Work in the Transition to Motherhood
Authors: Bailey Lucy
Published: February 2009

This article examines the relationship between discourses of motherhood and discourses of employment for contemporary middle-class women. Drawing on data from a study of the transition to motherhood conducted in Bristol, UK, it is suggested that there are important continuities as well as conicts between the discursive construction of these two spheres. In consequence, a variety of relationships may be established between mothering and employment identities. The concept of `inter-spatiality' is suggested to conceptualize how the women negotiated the relationship between the two. The findings suggest both that women do not necessarily experience conict between these two sources of identity, and that they may have a degree of agency in negotiating the relationship between these interlocking parts of their lives.
Changing Femininity, Changing Concepts of Citizenship in Public and Private Spheres
Authors: Arnot Madeleine , Araújo Helena , Deliyanni Kiki , Ivinson Gabrielle
Published: February 2009

This article reports on an EU-funded project conducted in Greece, Portugal, England and Wales. Data were collected from male and female student teachers using surveys, interviews and focus groups. The project investigated their understanding of citizenship and the role of men and women in public and private life. Pateman's (1988) concept of a sexual contractwas used to discover how student teachers understood changing relations between men and women. Young professionals in each country had relatively similar representations of the public sphere, which was seen as a distant sphere in which masculine power was unchallenged. The tension between power and femininity was articulated differently by men and women. Cross-national comparisons revealed how women in different European countries struggle (albeit in different ways) over gender relations in family life and in everyday social contexts. Although gender relations are changing, the primary context for female citizenship is still predominantly the family. The sexual contract remains therefore a key theme to be considered in relation to the education of citizens.
A Feminist's Response to the Technologization of Discourse in British Universities
Authors: Morrish Liz
Published: February 2009

Norman Fairclough has coined the term ‘technologization of discourse’. This he defines as the ‘calculated intervention to shift discursive practices as part of the engineering of social change’. This process can be seen at work in British universities in the late 1990s. This article was conceived out of a need to critique, from a feminist perspective, managerialism and the damaging discourse it has radiated in British universities. It explores some of the consequences of the corporatization of the universities, and the effect of emerging hegemonic discourse on the subjectivity of academic professionals. Possibilities for resistance are also discussed. An understanding of feminist theory brings with it an invitation to critique the everyday practice of institutions and their power. Feminist theory has also provided a model for coalition-building with other marginalized figures in the academy. It reminds us that we must all adopt strategies of resistance by confounding the rhetorical privileging of exclusionary language, and of reworking the meanings of language used to oppress.
From the Woman Question in Technology to the Technology Question in Feminism
Authors: Henwood Flis
Published: February 2009

There have, by now, been a number of thorough-going critiques of what has variously been called the ‘equality’, ‘equity’ or ‘liberal’ approach to understanding ‘the woman problem in technology’ by those who would prefer to focus on ‘the technology question in feminism’. Most of these critiques adopt deconstructivist techniques to expose the limitations of equality approaches, including, most centrally, their assumptions about the neutrality of technology and the limited nature of equality programmes designed simply to increase access for women to that technology. However, the critiques themselves have so far failed to come up with convincing alternative interventionist strategies, either because the universalizing tendency of their theoretical perspective gives rise to interventions that fail to deal with the diverse and fragmented nature of women's experiences and needs, or because recognition of this diversity and fragmentation leaves very little common ground on which to build successful intervention strategies. This article addresses this dilemma in the context of computing and IT education and draws on empirical research on women's experiences of computing and IT in two different educational settings where issues of gender difference and equality were managed in very contrasting ways. It then offers some suggestions for how both a critical and constructivist discourse on technology might be made to coexist in educational programmes designed to promote gender equality.
Hard Labour
Authors: Inowlocki Lena , Lutz Helma
Published: February 2009

Immigrant women to Western Europe, especially those originating from Islamic countries, have been turned into icons of cultural difference by the general discourse on immigration. They are not recognized as actors in a changing society, just as society's changes through immigrants tend to be denied. This obscures the work and the accomplishments of women in the course of their immigration. Focusing on a biographical interview with a Turkish woman who came to Germany as a ‘guest worker’ in 1972, the social history of this labour migration is outlined. Instances of ‘biographical work’ in the interview are discussed, pointing out the transformation potential of immigrant women's biographies.
Shifting Boundaries of Self and Other
Authors: Salih Ruba
Published: February 2009

This article suggests that both the multicultural perception of ‘ community’ as a bounded and internally homogeneous body and the celebration of migrants as hybrids and anti-essentialist actors fail to acknowledge the complexity of processes of identity construction. The first reifies and essentializes migrants’ cultural identities, denying subjective contestations over notions of cultural and religious authenticity. The celebration of migrants as progressive and counterhegemonic ‘hybrids’, however, reinforces essentialist understandings of ‘migrants’, producing a hierarchy between experiences of displacement. The article suggests that it is essential to understand the ways in which migrants construct imagined, transnational and local communities. It provides a picture of the ways in which Moroccan migrant women in Italy draw and experience boundaries of exclusion and inclusion, of Self and Other in their day-to-day practices and discourses. In particular, it argues that Moroccan women define themselves both vis-a-vis Italians as well as by drawing boundaries between themselves and other Moroccan women and men.
Exiles from Power
Authors: Draga-Alexandru Maria-Sabina
Published: February 2009

This article relates two forms of political and cultural marginality and emancipation to a third one, which, in traditional patriarchal cultures, is the embodiment of marginality par excellence: that of the female self. It explores their similar positioning in the spatial and temporal economy of power relations in a detailed analysis of Irina Grigorescu Pana's novel Melbourne Sundays(1998), a fictionallyrical account of the Romanian author's 11-year exile in Australia, read as a narrative counterpart of her critical approach to exile in The Tomis Complex: Exile and Eros in Australian Literature(1996). These two works describe an experience happening at the intersection between the author's (communist, then postcommunist) national background – that of Romania – and the postcolonial one of her country of adoption – Australia – as they become relevant from her personal and professional experience as a woman writer. Exile is thus reflected in language (negotiated within the English/Romanian opposition), being spatially constructed by means of metaphors such as book, theatre, carnival, garden, which are also relevant for the process of identity formation. The argument mainly relies on Kristeva's theories, an approach motivated by Pana's own choice of the Kristevan discourse of love/hate in relation to the theme of exile in her fictional and critical works, since, as she remarks, exiles and lovers share a marginal, though at the same time essential, position in postcolonial cultures.
Gender, Nationality and Cultural Representations of Ireland
Authors: Stevens Lorna , Brown Stephen , Maclaran Pauline
Published: February 2009

Ireland has struggled with its ‘feminine’ identity throughout its history. The so-called ‘chasmic dichotomy of male and female' is embedded in colonial and postcolonial constructions of Irishness and it continues to manifest itself in contemporary cultural representations of Ireland and Irishness. This study explores issues of gender and nationality via a reading of a 70-second television advertisement for Caffrey's Irish Ale, titled ‘New York’. The article suggests that, although colonial and postcolonial discourse on Ireland continues to perceive the ‘feminine’ in problematic terms, this is gradually changing as Irish women increasingly, in poet Eavan Boland's words, ‘open a window on those silences, those false pastorals, those ornamental reductions’ that have confined us.
Emergent Feminist(?) Identities
Authors: Budgeon Shelley
Published: February 2009

The article seeks to examine identities young women are producing within late modern social conditions with the aim of exploring these identities in relation to the increasingly fragmented project of second wave feminism. In order to evaluate whether feminism has maintained intergenerational currency, the article, based upon interviews with 33 young women aged 16–20, discusses ways in which young women are engaging with choices available to them. The active negotiation of identity(ies) requires an examination of the discourses available to the subjects and in this study it is apparent that, while these young women were alienated from second wave feminism, their identities were indeed informed by intrinsically feminist ideals. This contradiction begs the question of what place young women occupy within the increasingly diverse category of ‘feminisms’? The tension between second wave feminism and postfeminism and their problematic relationship is analysed as a problem deriving from difference. Analysis of interview material is used to argue that the identities under construction allow the young women to engage in a resistant fashion with the choices they have available at the micro-level of everyday life.
Not Without My Daughter
Authors: de Hart Betty
Published: February 2009

In 1987 the book Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody became a worldwide best-seller. In the line of Mahmoody’s book, similar ‘true stories’ of western white women with oriental husbands were published. These books concentrate on topics like bad marriages, abuse and international parental abduction. In this article the books are analysed as popular culture products of orientalist discourse on mixed marriages. They are maternal melodramas in which women who are victims of their intermarriage become heroines by sacrificing themselves for the sake of their children. As ‘learned foolhardy women’ the authors of these stories are cultural reproducers of the West; their function is to warn other women not to enter into a mixed marriage and to warn western society about the dangers of racial and cultural intermixture.
The Rest is Silence...
Authors: Mizielińska Joanna
Published: February 2009

This article focuses on questions rarely spoken of openly or written about in Poland. The article investigates what is behind such silence and tells of invisibility. The silence regarding lesbians in Poland is meaningful and reveals a lot about the concept of the Polish nation. This article examines Polish nationalistic discourse, which largely avoids the question of a homosexual orientation. Moreover, the heterosexual orientation is taken for granted as the only possible and natural one. Therefore, invisibility is a major theme of the article. The author illustrates this invisibility by examining two texts: the latest edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the new Polish Constitution. Both discourses are interwoven and deal with a very rigid concept of the Polish nation. The author goes on to look at how these discourses are perceived by Polish lesbians and how this concept of the Polish nation affects their daily lives (e.g. double life, staying in the closet, ‘white marriages’). The article draws largely on the results of the study that the author conducted in 1997 regarding lesbian existence in Poland. She bases her discussion on excerpts from interviews and questionnaires distributed among Polish lesbians. The author argues that the silence and invisibility of lesbians in official discourse influence Polish opinion about them, thus reinforcing homophobia and increasing pressure on lesbians to remain invisible.
The Infertility Clinic and the Birth of the Lesbian
Authors: Bryld Mette
Published: February 2009

As a feminist updating of Foucauldian analysis, the article makes the point that ‘the lesbian’ was not significantly exposed or seriously interpellated by Danish official discourse until the political debate on new reproductive technologies and reprogenetics accelerated at the end of the 20th century. In the 1990s, the debate thus constructed ‘the lesbian’ not only as an ‘unnatural mother’, but also as heiress to the monstrous figure of the ‘mad scientist’ whose tampering with the embryo had stirred the political mind in the previous decade. Deeply worried by developments in biotechnology, many politicians felt they should protect the embryo from this sinister scientist, and, subsequently, the innocent child from the monstrous lesbian. Hence, a majority of MPs voted for excluding lesbians and single women from access to assisted reproduction in medical clinics.
Querying the Discourses of Love
Authors: Gabb Jacqui
Published: February 2009

This article looks at the discourses of love through an analysis of the ‘stratification of intimacy’ within lesbian families. I suggest that traditional discourses of love effectively reify our emotions into socially prescribed categories, where ‘mature love’ is conflated with sex and desire. The love that mothers feel for their child(ren) is set apart, ‘instinctive’, wholly separate to adult (sexual) love. However this ‘stratification of intimacy’ obscures the lived experiences and feelings of many parents. In this article the author argues that whom we love is culturally constituted: it is unnecessarily quantified whereby monogamy is (mis)read as the sign of true (adult) love. I illustrate how lesbian mothers’ location on the social margins enables them to construct new ‘patterns of love’ within their ‘families of choice’ in ways that challenge these traditional discourses of love. This theoretical analysis is based upon ‘patterned variations’ drawn from qualitative research with 20 lesbian families with children living within the Yorkshire region in the UK.
How Sexual and Reproductive Rights Can Divide and Unite
Authors: van Eerdewijk Anouka
Published: February 2009

This article explores how cross-cultural research on sexual and reproductive rights can be vulnerable to ethnocentrism, and in what way ethnocentrism can be reduced in such research. Against the background of feminist debate on equality and difference, it discusses how the concepts of sexual and reproductive rights, within the parameters of development discourse, can reinforce hierarchical dichotomies of North–South, modern–traditional and actor–structure, and undervalue southern women's agency. An analytical framework that combines the entitlement approach and the three-dimensional model of gender is proposed to diminish ethnocentrism and counter homogenization and generalization. This framework aims at balancing agency, actor and structure, and allowing for differences, heterogeneity and contradictions.
Making Women Count
Authors: van den Ende Jan , van Oost Ellen C.J.
Published: February 2009

This article is a longitudinal analysis of the relation between gendered labour divisions and new data processing technologies at the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Following social-constructivist and evolutionary economic approaches, the authors hold that the relation between technology and work organization is a two-way process. This means that technology does not only affect the relations between men and women at work, but that these relations also influence technological choices. The proportional numbers of men and women on the labour market and changing conceptions of which work is deemed appropriate for women have been important factors in the strongly varying extent to which women participated in office work. They have also been important factors in determining the course of technological development. Shortages of women on the labour market have even determined search heuristics for new technological solutions in specific directions.
A Sentence Made by Men
Authors: Wall Celia J. , Gannon-Leary Pat
Published: February 2009

This article takes a fresh look at the Ardeners' muted group theory, originally applied in social anthropology and later taken up by the women's movement. The theory has wider applicability in aiding understanding of the communication processes between females and males but there is a need for a combination of disparate types of research extending the focus beyond mutedness as a structural product to the processes by which women are rendered mute, involving a broader analysis of the political, economic and organizational context. The communications research arena is envisaged as one in which further work could be carried out.
Social Policy and Fertility Change in Ireland
Authors: Murphy-Lawless Jo , McCarthy James
Published: February 2009

This article explores the background to the conclusive drop in Irish fertility rates over the last two decades, from a total fertility rate of 3.55 in 1975 to 1.87 in 1995. This steep decline marks the end of Ireland's position as demographic outlier in Europe, which has proved a compelling topic of investigation for demographers. The decline also marks the end of a society which was characterized by an ideology of largely rural values which placed stringent restrictions on women in order to secure a vision of society which saw the family as its cornerstone. The article analyses the collective impact of women's battles for personal autonomy which have brought about dramatic changes in public policies about contraception, abortion and divorce, changes which have consistently lagged behind these dramatic shifts in fertility.
Public Affects
Authors: Giardini Federica
Published: February 2009

The entwinement of affects and the public dimension seems an enigma. We cannot resolve this problem if we continue to refer to the Freudian analysis that deals with the classic dualisms opposing violence to order, love to death, and the body to social order. A feminist analysis, reworking psychoanalytical knowledge, offers another thesis. Taking the concept of `affects' – defined as one's corporeal drives in their sociocultural expression – a different analysis and new political practices emerge. This concerns recognizing a necessary tension between an irreducible singularity and the `being-together' dimension, which is beyond the classic dualism opposing the body to the Law.
A Good Practice
Authors: Gru™nell Marianne
Published: February 2009

Since 1991 government has harnessed mass media resources to tackle the problem of physical and sexual abuse, aiming its media messages specifically at men as potential perpetrators. This article examines the ways this new state responsibility has taken shape. The central theme here is the role played by women's studies as intermediary between feminist action and government policy. It looks at how physical and sexual abuse became part of the parliamentary political agenda and how a political and policy basis was created. A guiding role was played by representative research commissioned by government on sexual abuse of girls and violence in heterosexual relationships. Data on the extent of the problem generated surprise and concern among the general public and downright disbelief in the press. Yet, government continued to pursue policy development, supported by the clearly demonstrated extensive physical and sexual abuse. One decisive result of the representative research – the relationships or family dynamics interwoven with violence – remained less easy to tackle through government policy. The more precise questions subsequently posed by women's studies on specific relationships and situations in which women can be affected by violence are reected in government policy aimed at groups of women at risk. Those elements which apply to potential victims also apply to potential perpetrators. Here again, sociopsychological research among perpetrators has been initiated whereby sexual violence as an element of everyday reality becomes more transparent. These studies emphasize the significance of a dominant heterosexual pattern and the relationship dynamic this implies, and as such reects the first representative studies. This concept has ultimately been incorporated into the mass media information programmes initiated by government.
Feminist Emancipatory Discourse from Astell's `Hog-Tending' through de Beauvoir's `Complicity' to Nussbaum's `Human Capabilities'
Authors: Wishart Helen , Soady Viki
Published: February 2009

Even after two millennia, through her adherence to the Hegelian/Sartrean model of transcendence versus immanence, Simone de Beauvoir perpetuated the valorization of male risk-taking over the creation and nurture of life, obligations she assigned solely to the female. Nonetheless, her dispassionate, meticulous, phenomenological description of women's lived experience in The Second Sex, combined with her insistence that women, in spite of their oppression, must choose to become subjects, to `engage in freely chosen projects', has spurred contemporary feminist theorists to expand the definition of the ethical and the moral to value female experience. The emancipatory discourse, therefore, has been extended by the work of feminists such as Martha Nussbaum, Luce Irigaray and Carol Gilligan, who insist upon the inclusion of marginalized `others' in the definition of `human being' and `ethical activity'.
Religious discourse as metaculture
Authors: Tomlinson Matt
Published: February 2009

Religious discourse heard in rural Fijian Methodist contexts is often metacultural, that is, it is a cultural product that comments on 'culture' itself. In this article, I examine the implications of religious discourse's metacultural functions, including the ways in which senses of time's movement are constructed and inflected with moral evaluation, and the ways in which senses are generated of the present's inferiority compared to the past. Drawing on linguistic data from a variety of sources, and examining it at progressively finer levels of analysis, I argue that Fijian Methodist metacultural statements can have profound political impact and effectively circulate 'culture' in the general anthropological sense.
A very British carnival
Authors: Attwood Feona
Published: February 2009

This article addresses the claim that pornography's theme is 'male power' and the recent counter-claim that pornography may embody transgressive potential. It pursues the apparent contradictions in these claims by focussing on a specific pornographic text, the British downmarket softcore magazine, Fiesta, and locating it in relation to other forms of sexual and non-sexual representation. In considering the text's relation to other 'mass' and 'low' texts, 'bawdy' and 'carnivalesque' sensibilities, it becomes possible to establish its particularly British and vulgar representation of sexuality which relies not only on its sexual content, but on a 'dirty style' in which notions of sexual propriety are self-consciously transgressed. The analysis of Fiesta plays particular attention to the role of women's bodies and a mode of 'dirty talk' as key elements in its representation of sexuality which illuminate the rather abstract claims made about pornography's structures of dominance and transgression.
Governing (through) the Internet
Authors: Reed Lori
Published: February 2009

This article examines how definitions of `healthy' and `unhealthy', `appropriate' and `inappropriate' computer use are produced and mobilized by and through very specific American cultural ideals and interests. Following Foucault (1978) and Rose (1990, 1998), this article explores how the discourse on pathological computer use functions as a normalizing discourse — and as an apparatus of governance — by mapping correlations `between fields of knowledge, types of normativity, and forms of subjectivity' in a particular context (Rose, 1998: 11). The article describes the historical management of computer fear and addiction, and the formation of the `computerphobe' and `computer addict' as products of a specific historical milieu. For example, the convergence of American (sub)cultures such as the drug counterculture, cyberpunk technoculture, and the `culture of addiction' functioned as the conditions of possibility for the cultural intelligibility of `computer addiction'. At the same time, the article illustrates how computer use pathologies have been produced and mobilized toward the production and management of people's developing relationships with this new media technology, even while it defines and produces — or governs — related definitions of `appropriate' and `inappropriate', or `normal' and `abnormal', social practice such as commercial property and labor efficiency.
Big Brother
Authors: Tincknell Estella , Raghuram Parvati
Published: February 2009

The emergence of a relatively new genre, `reality television', has helped to break down the division between text and audience in significant ways, and this presents us with interesting questions for cultural studies. In this article we consider one such text, the enormously successful `reality gameshow' Big Brother, and explore the extent to which it challenges or helps to reconfigure current conceptualizations of the audience and the `television text'. We outline some of the issues involved in analyzing Big Brother and situate the program within the context of the complex history of cultural studies' attempts to `think the audience' for popular media.
The power of feeling
Authors: Harding Jennifer , Pribram E. Deidre
Published: February 2009

Within cultural studies, there has been little detailed investigation of emotions as part of everyday personal, cultural and political life. In this article, we argue the need for a cultural studies approach to emotions that focuses in detail on: how emotions are constituted, experienced and managed; what is culturally permissible for specific categories of subjects to express as part of their constitution within contemporary power relations; and the techniques and contexts in and through which the emotional subject is produced. We develop an analytical framework based on a critical review of, first, Michel Foucault's analyses of modern power, discourse and the formation of subjectivity (focusing on `technologies of power' and `technologies of self'), second, Alison Jaggar's conceptualization of `emotional hegemony' and, third, Raymond Williams's conceptualization of `structure of feeling'. We apply this framework to specific examples to demonstrate how emotions might participate in the reproduction of culture, subjectivity and power relations. Here, we discuss the unexpected and extensive public outpourings of grief following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and media and government responses to these. We also look at the ways in which diaries/day planners may be used to provide a structure not only for appointments, but also for feelings — registering and managing individual emotional states — and self-construction. In each of these examples, we consider how `the emotions', as a category of experience, might be implicated in negotiations of the (hierarchically arranged) public/private divide.
Fans with a lot at stake
Authors: Bloustien Geraldine
Published: February 2009

In what ways do programmes like Buffy the Vampire Slayer resonate with the (female) adolescent experience even in social contexts far from its geographic origin? This article places the enthusiastic reception of such American programmes within the context of the everyday lives of many of its Australian adolescent (female) fans. Drawing upon an ethnographic study in Adelaide, South Australia, the USA and Britain, together with material from online chat pages and World Wide Web sites, the research presented here investigates the nature of spectatorship and fandom in terms of the significant global nature of play and mimetic excess. Serious play, together with the symbolic vehicles of humour, music and mimetic excess, is a manifestation of the quest for very stable identities in a world that often appears shifting and ephemeral.
Media culture and Internet disaster jokes
Authors: Kuipers Giselinde
Published: February 2009

The joke cycle about bin Laden and the attack on the World Trade Center is the first cycle of Internet disaster jokes. This article argues that both traditional oral jokes and visual Internet jokes are best understood as a reaction to media coverage of disasters. For Internet jokes, this connection with media culture is even stronger than for oral jokes. Internet jokes are visual collages, assembled from phrases and pictures from popular media which derive their humorous effect from a combination of elements of innocuous genres from media, commercial or popular culture with references to disaster. It is argued that the need for this genre of play is mainly a reaction to the ambivalent feelings provoked by the media coverage of these events. In form and content, digital disaster jokes are a reflection of today's fragmented, visual media culture, as well as a comment on this culture.
Types of morphemes and their implications for second language morpheme acquisition
Authors: Longxing Wei
Published: February 2009

This paper explains observed morpheme accuracy orders on the basis ofa model of morpheme classification,the 4-M model proposed by Myers-Scotton and Jake(2000). It argues that the adult second language morpheme acquisition order is determined by how morphemes are projected from the mental lexicon. Four types of morphemes are identified: content morphemes,early system morphemes, and two types of late system morphemes. Early system morphemes are indirectly elected at the same time that content morphemes are directly elected by the speaker's intentions. Late system morphemes are activated later in the production process as required by the grammatical frame of the target language. This paper claims that there is variation within individual lexical categories and that the distinction between particular types of morphemes is not a lexical category-defining feature. That is, the classification of morphemes is based on how morphemes are activated. Interlanguage data from early adult Chinese and Japanese learners of English as a second language indicate an implicational hierarchy of morpheme acquisition: content morphemes are acquired before any system morphemes,and early system morphemes are acquired before late system morphemes. Reported in this paper are the learners' production of English determiners and pronouns relevant to testing the categorization of morphemes as specified in the 4-M model. The accuracy/frequency count of the learners' acquisition of the types of morphemes provides statistical evidence for the 4-M model and the hypotheses of the study.
Noun phrase structure in German-English codeswitching: Variation in gender assignment and article use
Authors: Fuller Janet M. , Lehnert Heike
Published: February 2009

This article investigates the construction of the grammatical frame in codeswitching in terms of the roles played by the two languages in contact, referred to here as the Matrix Language(ML) and Embedded Language(EL). In “classic” codeswitching, the ML sets the grammatical frame; in addition, however, we claim that the ML frame may be synchronically variable and may converge toward the EL with increased duration of bilingualism. This process has been called an ML turnover, and these data show the roots of this development. We present data from German-English codeswitching on grammatical gender assignment and article use in noun phrases. These features have been chosen for analysis because they are aspects of the noun phrase in which English and German exhibit structural differences, and it is important to study how bilinguals deal with the lack of congruence in codeswitching structures. For grammatical gender assignment, the ML(in this case, German) determines the codeswitching structure, yet this does not result in a homogenous patterning of gender marking. While there is a strong tendency toward the use of the cognate strategy, there is also much variation due to conflicting strategies and the lack of one strategy which applies in all contexts. In article use, we find that speakers with longer exposure to bilingualism will use English-influenced patterns in noun phrases containing English nouns. Thus, we claim that both synchronic and diachronic variation are to be expected in codeswitching structures.