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This paper involves an examination of skilled manual work in the modern paper industry. The data were collected at five mills in three countries -- the UK, Australia and the USA. The questions were formulated in order to probe four theories of skilled work. The results suggest that the distinction between skilled and nonskilled work is a fundamental feature of occupational differentiation in all five plants. They also reveal that there are intra-skilled conflicts over relative pay and demarcation lines and that these are affected by the wider socio-political environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that the number of children and young people needing care keeps rising and fewer people are becoming foster carers, efforts to support carers and workers in foster caring are essential. This paper considers the experiences of carers and foster care agency workers involved in Australia's piloting of the Mockingbird Family. With a view understanding experience, data were collected via focus groups with carers and agency workers (n = 20) involved in piloting, implementation and evaluation. Deductive analysis applied the theory of experience to generate understanding of experience, as both intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions to capture strengths in the Mockingbird Family's foster caring networks. These dimensions of experience included collective passions of carers and workers; experiential change over time; collective experiences as a moving force; and experiences as transformational. Understanding of experience associated with the perceived strengths of the Mockingbird Family, including strategies to promote strong professional relationships between carers and workers, is an important element in strengthening environments of children and young people in care. Safe and stable environments are crucial for wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background While inclusive research has become an important stream in research with people with intellectual disabilities, there is a tension between the possibly empowering research process and the strength of the research itself to make social change happen. In this paper, we explore the contribution of two inclusive qualitative research studies in Australia and the Republic of Ireland to change in policy and legislation. Materials and methods Both studies used qualitative methods including life stories and focus groups to explore the issue of sexuality and relationships. In both studies, people with intellectual disabilities were actively involved in undertaking the research. Results Both studies revealed that it was difficult for people with intellectual disabilities to express their sexuality openly or to form adult relationships. Conclusions Both studies were used by people with intellectual disabilities and their supporters to promote change in which they had a heard voice. Accessible Abstract This paper is about how people with intellectual disabilities and their supporters can use research which they have done to change policies and laws that affect them. When people with intellectual disabilities are doing research it is called inclusive research.We write about two research studies which were about the sexual lives and relationships of people with intellectual disabilities. One research study was in Australia and one was in the Republic of Ireland.In the Australian study, Living Safer Sexual Lives, 25 people with intellectual disabilities told their life stories and talked about sexuality and relationships.In the Irish study people with intellectual disabilities told life stories and talked with other people with intellectual disabilities about their sexuality and relationships in groups. These are called focus groups.In this paper we explore 4 questions that arose from these studies. Question 1. What impact does doing research have on the people who are involved in it? People with intellectual disabilities in Australia were members of the group that guided the research. They were partners in its design, in deciding what questions should be asked about sexuality and relationships., and thinking about what was found out. They became involved in making films about the study. They learned a lot about research, sexuality and relationships and became members of a government committee to change policy about sexuality and people with disabilities. In Ireland people with intellectual disabilities involved in doing the research talked together about their lives. They then talked with 16 groups of people with intellectual disabilities about their relationships and sexuality. They learned about research and about sexuality and developed plays about their experiences., Question 2. To what extent can inclusive research change policy and practice? In Australia the research led to a change in government policy about sexuality and people with disabilities. The new policy clearly stated people with disabilities had rights to relationships and to a sexual life. It set out rights and responsibilities for people with intellectual disabilities and service providers about relationships and sexuality. It took a long time to get a change in policy and people with intellectual disabilities were part of the getting the change to happen. In Ireland there is a law which says that it is illegal to have some forms of sex with people with intellectual disabilities. From the research people with intellectual disabilities became involved in talking with government about changing this law so that it gives them more rights to a sexual life. The law has not changed yet but the voices of people with intellectual disabilities are now being heard., Question 3 When does research shift into being advocacy? How does this happen? People with intellectual disabilities in both studies became advocates to get change to happen. Partly this was because they had become more 'expert' about sexuality and relationships and the policy and law. They were angry at what they had found out in the research and wanted to get change to happen., Question 4 What added value does including people with intellectual disabilities as researchers give to the research? People with intellectual disabilities had knowledge and experience that made it possible for the research in both Australia and Ireland to happen. They were important in how the research was done and what was done with it after it was finished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Job insecurity is a widespread workplace stressor that has been extensively investigated using quantitative approaches. With the use of a critical organisational psychology framework, we conducted a meta‐synthesis of 20 qualitative studies to investigate the experience of job insecurity among vulnerable employee groups (i.e., women and immigrants). The qualitative meta‐synthesis results suggest that there are meaningful differences. Specifically, whereas women were more concerned with and exposed to deteriorating working conditions, men experienced job insecurity as a threat to their identity. Among immigrants, the experience of job insecurity is viewed as largely intersecting with the legal system, impacting their ability to remain in their country and making them feel powerless. Thematic evidence also emerged regarding individual actions that participants use to attain security in contrast to corporate strategies that enhance job insecurity. We contribute to the critical organisational psychology literature by discussing how these results test common academic theories and neoliberal assumptions pervasive within the job insecurity literature: We highlight how organisations manufacture job insecurity, question the existence of harmonious social exchanges, discuss the use of job insecurity as a form of worker control, consider the role of the legal context in aiding worker exploitation and argue for an intersectional view of job insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's metropolitan cities have undergone significant social, economic and demographic change over the past several decades. In terms of socio-economic advantage and disadvantage these changes, which are often associated with globalisation, wider economic and technological restructuring, the changing demographics of the population and shifts in public policy are not evenly dispersed across cities, but represent a range of often contrasting outcomes. The current paper develops a typology of socio-economic advantage and disadvantage for locations across Australian metropolitan cities. More specifically, the paper takes a range of Australian Bureau of Statistics data and uses a model-based approach with clustering of data represented by a parameterised Gaussian mixture model and discriminant analysis utilised to consider the differences between the clusters. These clusters form the basis of a typology representing the range of socio-economic and demographic outcomes at the local community level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: This paper will review progress towards the identified targets within the Australian government policy document commonly known as 'Closing the Gap' and examine the role of nurses in supporting its implementation. Background: Australia is not alone in seeking to address the health inequity between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous people. Globally such health inequities are similar and require interventions supported by governments in conjunction with health and education systems to affect desired change. For this reason, it is timely to undertake a review of progress on the impact of the Closing the Gap initiative. Sources of evidence: The Australian national partnership agreement and subsequent annual performance reports issued between 2010 and 2017. Discussion: Targets set within the Australian government national partnership agreement have had a range of success. Those targets not on track require significant long‐term investment to ensure their success. Nurses as a large professional group are powerful advocates to speak up and support policy change that affects disempowered social groups. Conclusion: Long‐term social change takes time, yet without the commitment of Australian Governments through effective policy and economic support, the inequity in the health of Indigenous people will continue both now and in the future. Implications for health and social policy: Nurses, as the largest health professional group, are uniquely placed to support and implement social change at all levels of health care (primary, secondary and tertiary) and to lobby government to amend policy alongside those who are disempowered. Implications for nursing practice: Health promotion and education programmes that are led by nurses can make an impact to health disparities within groups who are most at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various reports in the issue on the topics including one on clinical psychology, the other on family therapy and the third on history resisting individualism and focusing on relational and social processes.

Intensive farming is an increasing part of Australian agriculture, including in the multi-functional landscapes at the edges of Australian cities. The example of intensive "broiler" poultry production reveals the tensions that arise when sites of hyper-productivity conflict with social change in rural areas. Planning processes for intensive farming in the Australian state of Victoria are predicated on stability and consensus: on assumed static and uncontroversial ideas of agriculture, its place, and the primacy of agricultural productivity. Yet concerns about the industrialisation of agriculture are live political issues at the local level, especially in dynamic periurban locations. This paper explores the emergence of a politics of place outside the bounds of planning consensus through an analysis of planning appeals and associated media relating to planning permits for intensive poultry developments in Victoria over 2011--2016.We highlight tensions that exist in relation to technical planning assessments and categorisations used to assert farming as the orthodox use of rural land, especially when new forms of farming look and feel demonstrably different. Using Mouffe's problematising of the negation of antagonism and Rancière's notion of the risks of a false consensus democracy, we argue that planning processes for intensive farming illustrate critical issues in participatory planning. While ostensibly post-political decision-making narrows the politics of place and food systems to decisions about policing the boundaries and buffer distances placed around intensive poultry developments, alternative representations of rural life persist. The certainty offered by code-based planning does not negate the ongoing (if inconvenient) politics of intensive peri-urban agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical work on household consumption informed by theories of social practice has grown exponentially in the last few years. This is partly due to conceptual developments positing practices as being comprised of materials, meanings and skills. Such formulations are readily applied to empirical investigations. As the aim of a growing body of empirical work with theories of social practice is to present evidence for how practices can, should, have or might change in the future towards improved sustainability, greater questioning and broader reflection about methods and approaches would be helpful. In the interests of contributing to such methodological discussions and broadening out the range of tools available, this paper is concerned with how to study the processes and dynamics involved in the globalisation of practices. We do so by adapting a method of scrapbooking used as a cultural probe in human–computer interactions research. We apply this method in a qualitative study with international students studying in Australia where we combined interviewing techniques with a purpose‐designed practice memory scrapbook containing a variety of images of current and historical practices. Practices of interest were those related to keeping warm, cool, laundering and bathing. We found the scrapbook useful in four main ways: it facilitated discussion about mundane everyday practices; it uncovered assumptions about “normal” ways of carrying out everyday practices; it foregrounded the absence/presence of material elements; and it facilitated reflection on how practice entities are changing. We conclude that the practice memory scrapbook is a useful and complementary qualitative research method to consider in studies seeking to understand the practice dynamics involved in globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper directly challenges the persisting argument that in the host-(uninvited) guest relationship of Kimberley coastal tourism in Australia's far northwest, Traditional Owners (the hosts) have a pedagogic responsibility to first educate the tourism industry (the guests) of their impacts on them in order to facilitate culturally appropriate and sustainable tourism experiences. We contend that such an argument reflects a deeply entrenched context of erasure and power imbalance between Australian Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal people. We highlight, using three decades of public records, the fact that government and industry have ignored and continue to ignore knowledge and learning shared by Kimberley Aboriginal peoples in attempts to rectify serious issues of cultural impacts and risks to visitors arising from unsanctioned tourism activities on Traditional Owners' land and sea country. We argue for the possibility of tourism operating in a mutually satisfactory hybrid space in which acknowledgement, tolerance and respect discharges the need for understanding different ontologies that operate within that space but provides the potential for learning. Using Bourdieu's notion of transformative practice, we propose that the development of such a hybrid space could transform the problem of unsanctioned tourism access to the Kimberley coast into an iteration that could facilitate its taming and thus a shift towards sustainable practices based on mutual recognition and respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, microfinance is gaining visibility as a distinct poverty alleviation strategy. Within the Australian microfinance policy and program discourses, the microfinance sector is framed as targeting both men and women equally. Yet at the practice level, the majority of loan recipients are women. Such a gender neutral framing is in stark contrast to microfinance policy and practices developed elsewhere. This paper explores how gender is represented in microfinance policy and practice in Australia, drawing on an analysis of the policy and practice statements of Australian microfinance programs. It is argued that the robust feminist assessments of the relationship between microfinance and gender equality that have emerged in developing countries could usefully inform Australian developments in this area of social policy, but that this shift requires acknowledging gender in the framing of the problem Australian microfinance seeks to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographies of activism draw on many traditions but few have charted social movements over time. This paper suggests that the consideration of action over time not only enhances our understanding of the degree of social change that occurs, but also the way activists’ interests are acknowledged, or contained, by those they seek to influence. The paper reviews existing literature and proposes the adoption of a particular conceptualization of time–space geometries. The case is made for attending to kairological and topological notions of time–space while recognizing these involve complex geometries of power relations, meanings, resources and social actions. The variability of these patterns in different time–spaces can stimulate multi-dimensional studies and the example of women's agricultural activism in Australia is employed to explore the usefulness of these ideas for geographies of social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional Australia has experienced significant changes in population and employment since the early 1990s. Evidence regarding these changes has often been anecdotal, with references in political and media spheres to a 'Sea Change' or 'Tree Change'. There has also been considerable public discussion about the effect that the structural changes and misfortunes within the agricultural sector have had on localities in rural regions. The purpose of this paper is to provide and analyse data on regional population and employment changes since the early 1990s. It will also examine the role that the agricultural sector may have had in these changes. This will provide a basis for informed debate and analysis of population changes in regional Australia and the causes and implications of these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of an economy taking a geographical journey highlights the importance of changing spatialities and how these shape and result from economic change. It also focuses on the geographical scaling of key processes. Using these insights, this paper explores three decades of economic change in Australia in which the nation State has played a central role in the operation of markets and accumulation processes, albeit with dramatic shifts in the qualitative nature of that role. Such shifts have been crucial during the emergence of Australia's particular variety of neoliberalism. The paper explores the liberalisation of Australia's financial and corporate environment, trade policies and the industrial relations environment. The three cases suggest contradictions inherent in the State's adherence to a neoliberal reform agenda, in the name of globalisation, while facing: first, political needs to retain sovereignty over national security and tighten border protection; and second, multi-scaled political processes including clashes with State governments grappling with regional and local impacts of change. There has been no simple roll-out of neoliberalism in Australia since the mid 1990s. Geographical scales, constructed contingently by social and political agents, have contributed in fundamental ways to the power and direction of economic reform. Despite powerful re-scalings to both global and local levels over the past three decades, there is no evidence of a diminished role for the nation State. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently the objectives of tropical river management were narrowly construed: the development imperative drove resource policy. During recent decades, community attitudes to river and water management have changed considerably and the national program of water reform, the National Water Initiative, is accelerating alterations to the way that water is used, managed and priced. A broader range of values and imperatives is now influencing water resource management policy. Not least is the concern over the ecological impacts and economic inefficiencies of the large-scale hydrological schemes that once excited the public's imagination. This paper reports on a recent study of social and economic values of tropical rivers conducted by the authors for an Australian statutory research and development corporation. The study shows that the values associated with tropical rivers have changed and diversified over time with growing societal awareness of the contribution made by unregulated, healthy river systems to human wellbeing and cultural identity. As a consequence of substantial social change, tropical river management must now contend with a more complex array of societal values and water management objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, women's contribution to farming has been increasingly recognized by academics, decision makers, and some sectors of the farming community. In contrast, women's activism in agricultural politics is less well accepted or understood. This paper investigates data from a number of farm activist groups operating on a variety of scales in Australia. The paper examines the ways in which farm women develop political agency and then mobilize across a number of "fields of action" to effect both personal and industry-wide change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This psychobiography focuses on the advocacy work of Natasha Keating, a trans woman incarcerated in two male prisons in Australia between 2000 and 2007. Incarcerated trans women are a vulnerable group who experience high levels of victimization and discrimination. However, Natasha advocated for her rights while incarcerated and this advocacy contributed to substantial changes in the carceral system. This psychobiography uses psychological understandings of resilience as well as the Transgender Resilience Intervention Model (TRIM) to investigate the factors that enabled this advocacy. Method: Data consisted of an archive of letters written by Natasha and interviews with individuals who knew her well. This psychobiography was guided by du Plessis' (2017) 12‐step approach and included the identification of psychological saliencies and the construction of a Multilayered Chronological Chart. Results: Natasha's life is presented in four chapters, with each chapter including a discussion of resilience based on the TRIM. Conclusions: The TRIM suggests that during incarceration, Natasha was able to access more group‐level resilience factors than at any other time in her life. This, combined with individual resilience factors, enabled her advocacy. This finding has implications for advocacy in general as it highlights the importance of both individual‐ and group‐level factors in enabling individuals to effectively advocate for change in their environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Health promotion programs and interventions are designed to encourage behavioral changes in children, encouraging them to make safe and healthy life choices. This systematic review seeks to examine how social impact is measured in primary school health promotion interventions. METHOD: A systematic search and review process was used to identify and examine primary school health promotion interventions. The PRISMA guidelines were followed to source articles from 6 electronic databases reporting school health promotion programs or interventions in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or the United Kingdom. RESULTS: A total of 77 studies were located, representing 55 health promotion interventions delivered in primary school settings. Of these interventions, only 8 (15%) measured or attempted to measure social impact, whereas another 8 (15%) alluded to social impact. The predominant theories reported were social based theories (theories which examine the social influences on people, environments, and behaviors) (n = 17, 59%), with almost a third not informed by an overt health promotion framework or model (n = 34, 59%). A systematic rating system identified some level of stakeholder engagement (n = 30, 53%). CONCLUSIONS: This systematic review highlights the need for social impact measurement within health promotion to illuminate the role of school programs in delivering lasting change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Worry about climate change may be associated with poorer mental health but also with greater political engagement. We determined trajectories of climate change‐related worry over adolescence and whether these were associated with depression symptoms and greater engagement with news and politics in late adolescence. Methods: At ages 10–11, 12–13, 16–17 and 18–19 years, adolescents participating in the Kindergarten cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children rated their worry about climate change. At age 18–19 years, participants reported on depression symptoms and engagement with news and politics. Latent profile analysis determined trajectories of climate change‐related worry across all time points (N = 2244). Linear regression analyses examined the association between trajectories and outcomes at 18–19 years. Results: Thirteen per cent (n = 290) of adolescents had high persistent worry. The largest proportions had moderate (n = 559, 24.9%) or increasing worry (n = 546, 24.3%), followed by persistent low worry (n = 376, 16.8%), slightly decreasing worry (n = 297, 13.2%) and steeply decreasing worry (n = 176, 7.8%). Adolescents with high persistent worry had higher depression symptoms at age 18–19 years compared to the moderate group, while those with increasing worry did not. The high persistent and increasing worry groups reported greater engagement with news and politics across several measures. Conclusion: This is the first study to track climate‐related worry and outcomes in young people across adolescence. A substantial number of Australian adolescents experience high or increasing worry about climate change, which is associated with greater societal engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current debate in Indigenous affairs in Australia often involves the assertion that the last 30 years has been a period of policy failure. This article examines trends across a number of socioeconomic outcomes for Indigenous Australians from the 1967 referendum to the present, using census data. Overall, there has been steady, although not spectacular improvement in outcomes over time. These improvements are especially marked for education, which was coming from an exceptionally low base. This finding is somewhat at odds with the common perception of the ‘failure’ of Indigenous policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a reply to the comments made on the book 'Native Title and the Descent of Rights' about the Aborigines. Role of kinship to Aboriginal systems and societies in Australia; Distinction between the classical and post-classical in Aboriginal cultural history; Discussion of social changes in the Aboriginal society.

Social movements pushing for social change are often met with reactionary counter‐movements that defend the status quo. The present research examined this interplay by focusing on the role of racial majority group members claiming collective psychological ownership. We examined collective ownership that stems from being native to the land and from being founders of the nation. Study 1 found that in Malaysia, the Malay majority group endorsed more native ownership than Chinese and Indian minorities, which in turn predicted greater threat in response to protests demanding electoral reforms and subsequently greater support for a reactionary pro‐government movement. Situated in the United States, Study 2 found that the more that White Americans endorsed founder ownership beliefs, the more they reported negative attitudes towards the Black Lives Matter protests, which in turn predicted more support for White nationalistic counter‐protests. This effect was stronger among White people compared to people of colour. Study 3 examined both founder and native ownership in Australia. Founder (but not native) ownership beliefs predicted more negative attitudes towards Invasion Day protests, which subsequently predicted more support for counter‐protests defending Australia Day celebrations. Implications of culture‐specific beliefs about collective ownership for social movement research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents certain abstracts from various books. These books are: "New Patterns of Urban and Regional Development in Australia: Demographic Restructuring and Economic Change," by Chris Paris; "Social Polarization and Australian Cities," by Peter Murphy and Sophie Watson; "Class Relations and Tourism Urbanization: The Regeneration of the Petite Bourgeoisie and the Emergence of a New Urban Form," by Patrick Muffins; "Snakes or Ladders?: The Housing Market and Wealth Distribution in Australia," by Blair Badek; "Capital Flows, Redlining and Gentrification: The Pattern of Mortgage Lending and Social Change in Glebe," by Benno Engles; "Stories of Crisis: Restructuring Australian Industry and Rewriting the Past," by A.W. Metcaife and J. Bern; and "Planning as Legitimation: A Study of the Brisbane Strategy Plan," by Janice Caulfield and John Minnery. Each abstract is translated in French also. The subject of these books is related to social change, restructuring, development, urbanization and tourism in Australia.

The arrival of the Museum and Old and New Art (Mona) in the disadvantaged municipality of Glenorchy was heralded as the beginning of significant social change in Australia's island state of Tasmania. These expectations were premised on a local place discourse known as the "Tasmanian gothic," and, in this article, our aim is to illustrate the importance of place specifications in culture‐led change, including in relation to how place discourse constitutes such change. To do this work, we illustrate a Mona effect that comprises a critical account of the Tasmanian gothic informed by an empiric of tourist movement to and from Mona. We demonstrate that tourist movements follow existing socio‐spatial patterns, with tourists from higher socio‐economic backgrounds bypassing Glenorchy and those from lower socio‐economic backgrounds more likely to stop in this disadvantaged municipality. This socio‐spatial account unsettles the characterisation of Tasmania and Tasmanians provided by the Tasmanian gothic and we conclude by observing (1) a lack of significant social change resulting from Mona, in part explained by well‐established socio‐economic patterns; (2) signs of more subtle change that warrant further investigation; and (3) how local place discourse can act to curtail culture‐led change by reinforcing existing socio‐economic patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant reforms to Australia's adult safeguarding laws and practices are in the process of occurring in the context of increasingly market‐oriented social care provision and rising human rights consciousness. Recent safeguarding developments have included federal regulatory reforms concerning disability and aged care service provision, together with significant reform activity stemming from a national inquiry into elder abuse. Despite this national activity, adult safeguarding continues largely to be an arena of state and territory responsibility. This article examines recent reform developments and asks how safeguarding laws and practices can be reformed to take account of increased federal involvement in social care regulation and the more market‐oriented ways in which social care is being provided. The article argues that while state and territory safeguarding laws and practices are unlikely to become uniform, 10 principles ought to guide continued adult safeguarding reform. These principles seek to balance respect for the autonomy of individuals with society's obligation to support those in need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and how do social movements form to mobilize action across national boundaries? In the context of the 2015 movement to support Syrian refugees, we develop an integrative model of transnational social movement formation shaped by pre‐existing world‐views (social dominance orientation and right‐wing authoritarianism) and social media exposure to iconic events, resulting in an emergent group consciousness ("we are", "we believe", "we feel"). Group consciousness is, in turn, the proximal predictor of solidarity with refugees. Participants were from six countries: Hungary (N = 267), Romania (N = 163), Germany (N = 190), the United Kingdom (N = 159), the United States (N = 244) and Australia (N = 344). Multi‐group structural equation models confirmed that group consciousness, shaped by individual differences and exposure to events through social media, was the proximal predictor of solidarity. The subjective meaning of group consciousness varied across samples, reflecting national differences. Results support the importance of considering individual and national differences, and group processes in understanding emergent social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Australia is one of the few countries which has specific health policies for boys/men and girls/women as distinct groups. In this article I present an analysis of the discourses of gender, equity and disadvantage drawn upon in Australia's men's health policy. Through comparison with the women's health policy, I show that a dual focus on the essential differences between men and women and the ways in which the health system has failed men contribute to an adversarial gender politics, positioning men and women as rivals with competing needs. Reflecting broader debates concerning the negative impact of societal change on boys/men, I argue that, in its current form, Australia's health policy both taps into and, crucially, legitimises backlash politics, enabling it to ‘pass’ as sound public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrants are important both as providers and users of paid care services in Australia, yet migration has rarely featured in Australian strategies to grow and sustain the paid care workforce. Correspondingly, Australia is rarely mentioned in the international scholarship on care and migration that has burgeoned since the 1990s. This article shows the ways that service providers, consumer advocates, unions and scholars have begun to bring migration into debates about workforce growth in two of Australia's most significant areas of paid care: aged care and childcare. Drawing on submissions to national enquiries in both areas, we identify the actors who have sought to adjust Australia's migration settings to respond to growing demand for care, and explain the rationales - which differ between the sectors - underlying their advocacy for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unpredictable impacts of climate change, combined with significant social and economic changes, mean that policy analysis is becoming inordinately more complex. Coping with this increasing complexity while engaging with a full range of stakeholders and the community requires a new approach to leadership and governance. Water planners (and others involved in the planning processes) need new skills in active listening and constructive cultural behavior, and all agencies need to recognize that thinking and acting only in the interests of their own silo of responsibilities will inevitably produce suboptimal outcomes. Leadership focused on constructive behavior that recognizes and rewards generosity of spirit across disciplines and between organizations is the foundation of this new approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent evidence suggests that Americans underestimate wealth inequality in the United States and favor a more equal wealth distribution (Norton & Ariely, ). Does this pattern reflect ideological dynamics unique to the United States, or is the phenomenon evident in other developed economies-such as Australia? We assessed Australians' perceived and ideal wealth distributions and compared them to the actual wealth distribution. Although the United States and Australia differ in the degree of actual wealth inequality and in cultural narratives around economic mobility, the Australian data closely replicated the United States findings. Misperceptions of wealth inequality as well as preferences for more equal distributions may be common across developed economies. In addition, beliefs about wealth distribution only weakly predicted support for raising the minimum wage, suggesting that attitudes toward inequality may not translate into preferences for redistributive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay proposes that a fundamental arbitrariness and absurdity at the heart of culture becomes visible in times of radical social change. As the Australian nation attempts to celebrate and revive Aboriginal Culture, and institutions call upon culture to remedy Aboriginal ills, Aboriginal traditions are also being held responsible for present distress and social disorder. However, some Aboriginal people are also developing new relationships with 'their culture', taking up opportunities to refashion or construct identities that are free of ancestral power, and encouraging new forms of subjective identification, social recognition, and self-assertion. Equivalent processes are explored in remote and suburban Australia at semiotic, political, and social levels. Résumé Le présent essai postule que les périodes de changements sociaux radicaux dévoilent l'arbitraire et l'absurdité fondamentaux qui se nichent au cœur de la culture. À l'heure où la nation australienne tente de mettre en lumière et de ranimer la Culture Aborigène et où les institutions en appellent à la culture pour remédier aux maux des Aborigènes, les traditions aborigènes sont aussi tenues responsables de la détresse et des désordres sociaux actuels. Certains peuples aborigènes sont cependant en train de tisser de nouveaux liens avec « leur culture » en profitant des occasions de remodeler des identités dégagées du pouvoir des ancêtres et en favorisant de nouvelles formes d'identification collective, de reconnaissance sociale et d'affirmation de soi. L'auteure explore des processus équivalents, au niveau sémiotique, politique et social, dans les zones isolées et suburbaines d'Australie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with Robin Room, researcher and scholar, is presented. He shares that he participated in SLATE, a student political party that promotes peace and manages on-campus issues. He mentions that alcohol issues is a broad idea like drink driving, but there are other types of problem in the workplace and in the family as well as the physical effects of alcohol. He notes that he stayed in Oslo for 6 months to finish a collaborative project about alcohol policy in developing sectors.

Common experience of injustice can be a potent motivator of collective action and efforts to achieve social change - and of such efforts becoming more widespread. In this research, we propose that the effects of co-victimization on collective action are a function of inclusive social identity. Experiment 1 ( N= 61) demonstrated that while presence (compared to absence) of co-victimization positively predicted consumer (i.e., participants) willingness to act collectively in solidarity with sweatshop workers, this effect was mediated by inclusive social identity. In Experiment 2 ( N= 120), the salience of inclusive social identity was experimentally manipulated and interacted with co-victimization to predict collective action. When inclusive social identity was salient, co-victimization enhanced collective action, including willingness to pay extra for products made ethically and in support of fair wages for workers. In contrast, collective action was attenuated when co-victimization took place in the absence of inclusive social identity. Implications for understanding when co-victimization is transformed into common fate and political solidarity with the disadvantaged are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The release of the fourth United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in February 2007 prompted a flood of responses from political leaders around the globe. Perhaps nowhere was this more apparent than in Australia, where its release coincided with the first sitting week of the Australian Parliament, in an election year. The current study involves a discursive analysis of climate change rhetoric produced by politicians from the major Australian political parties in the period following the release of the IPCC leading up to the national election. Data include both transcripts of parliamentary debate and statements directly broadcast in the media. The analysis focuses on the various ways in which the issue of climate change was invoked and rhetorically managed by each of the two parties in the lead up to the election. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which appeals to the `national interest' and `lifestyle maintenance', both regular features of political rhetoric, were mobilized by both parties to discursively manage their positions on the climate change issue. Implications of the ways in which such appeals were constructed are discussed in relation to the discursive limits of the ways in which the issue of climate change is constructed in public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various aspects of Christian belief and practice have been documented as significant across Aboriginal Australia. In recent years, many communities have been involved in seeking to achieve traditional rights in land and sea as recognised in Australian law. Asserting and proving these rights entails demonstrating continuity of traditional law and custom since the establishment of British sovereignty. While legal discourse indicates that this does not exclude cultural change, law and custom must continue to derive from pre-sovereignty traditions. This article addresses the extent to which Christian belief and practice have been articulated and researched in applied anthropological work, against the background of relevant academic studies. If a sophisticated theory of cultural change and continuity is germane to researching land claims and native title, what is the significance of Christian syncretism in Aboriginal relations with place and the inheritance of ancestral connections to 'country'? Several case studies are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between Australian political and social history has received little historiographical attention. Political history has been lauded or, more often, dismissed as traditional historical practice, while from the 1960s social history took its place as a catch-all phrase for various “new” histories concerned with everyday life. This article examines the place of political and social history in the nascent Australian academic historical profession of the 1950s to the early 1970s, and then explores the impact of the new social history on academic political history. It will suggest that while there was only limited exchange before the late 1980s, in the last twenty years social history has contributed modestly to a reconstituted understanding of political history as part of lived experience. “[...] I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?” “Yes, I am fond of history.” “I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention [...]”. 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-standing policy of “practical reconciliation” between Australian Indigenous and Non-Indigenous people has actively disregarded the need to redress past injustice as the basis of current intergroup inequality. While this approach has received extensive critique from reconciliation scholars, its implications for Non-Indigenous involvement in reconciliation have been neglected. When Indigenous disadvantage is divorced from its social and historical context it is also more likely to be seen as having little to do with “us” as Non-Indigenous Australians. In contrast, when inequality is seen as stemming from the past and present reality of intergroup relations, and as such shapes the meaning of Non-Indigenous identity, it will be seen as more illegitimate, in need of change, and is more likely to motivate political engagement in the reconciliation process. The current study tests and finds support for this idea. Importantly, controlling for the contributions of perceived legitimacy of inequality and need for social change, Non-Indigenous identity meaning continued to significantly predict intentions to vote and engage in political action in support of reconciliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy development and implementation should be fundamental for community psychologists in their endeavors to create social change. Policy necessarily is engaged at broad social and political levels, but it is mediated through communities and individuals, and thus appealing for our discipline. We argue that there are increasing opportunities for social input in liberal democracies with the growing awareness of the need to consider social factors in policy. Public participation is one aspect of policy development, but it can be problematic and can disempowered communities, especially disadvantaged communities. Using the framework of the ‘third position’, a case study of attempts to ameliorate institutional oppression of Australian Aboriginal people through policy change is described. Structural reform to community engagement is described in terms of empowerment and capacity building. Power relationships are deconstructed to allow understandings of the dynamics of policy change, and the broader implications for community psychological praxis are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the production and circulation of an internationally available compact disc of dreaming songs of Warumungu women. The cultural changes that occurred during production, circulation and ongoing insertion into cultural negotiations are analyzed. The recording of ancestral songs were done by the Warumungu women in ways that relate their traditions and their uncertain future through proper cultural actions.

Social change is a phenomenon experienced in all societies, whether from gradual passages and time and interaction with other groups, or through the more immediate impacts such as war, invasion, or physical catastrophe. How societies manage change indicates much about their abilities to survive and the type of social cohesion that will be evidenced. In this article, the authors investigate the use of common symbols and shared history as ways of either maintaining social identity and moving with change, or using them in negative ways to resist change. The case study of immigration to Australia is used to demonstrate that members of the community are able to identify a series of salient identity markers—whether they wish to accept all of them or not—as the types of knowledge that all members share. Many of the markers reflect decades of passed history, but are seen as foundational to Australia today. Although they are core to identity, they are the types of symbols that are grasped as a lifestyle under threat by those who are newcomers. Often the markers are there as more unconscious constructions, to be evoked at times of high emotion to indicate what must be “saved” for current ideas to survive. The authors discuss the meanings of these markers as ways in which the identity of members of the community has been established. But these are seen as reminders, or glorifications, of the past, and how such markers are able to be captured and (mis)used by narrow populist and extremist interest groups. The challenge of managing change is how to build forward, maintaining those markers of real social value, and incorporating the new ones that are brought by newcomers, and those that are developed together. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sarason (2000) argued that we are often surprised by events because of the failure to appreciate ongoing change around us. He called for the need for community psychology to develop “barometers of change,” or ways of recognizing change and its likely impact. Extreme examples of this are the events of September 11th, 2001, and subsequent reactions. This highlighted the need for a nation to be aware of its impacts on other nations and peoples, and also be conscious of the perceptions of foreigners. On a less dramatic and painful level, we would argue that a scientific discipline needs the reflections of outsiders to maintain its sense of purposeful development. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The connection between class and voting choices has been the subject of controversy in recent years. At one time, most scholars regarded class as the primary basis of political alignments in industrial societies, at least in those not sharply divided by religion or ethnicity. In the 1970s, however, researchers in several countries argued that the connection between class and party was now weakening. Several researchers hold that the political significance of class increases in the early stages of industrialization, but declines in advanced industrial societies. Thus, the leading position of social class was characteristic of a particular stage of society that is now passing. Although this view is widely accepted, it has attracted a number of critics, some argue that political alignments have not actually changed very much in recent years, while others stress the diversity of national experiences. A major reason for the continued disagreement is simply the scarcity of evidence. To measure the association between class and party choice precisely, one must have individual-level data, which are not available for most countries until the 1970s.

The authors present a discussion of "Women’s role in the rise in drinking in Australia 1950–1980: an age–period–cohort analysis of data from the Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study" by O. Stanesby et al. in the current issue.