Living in Freedom and Hope: Editors' Introduction

Have radical discourses about children's sexual liberation/empowerment become normative technologies of neoliberal governmentality? How do we see sexualised representations of girls and what does the sexualised child look like? A contemporary consensus between media narratives and radical cultural critiques about the dangerous intolerance of child sexual abuse (CSA) moral panics suggests that the CSA moral panic discourse is caught up in the neoliberal “regulation of intolerance” (Brown 2006) through the governance of the gaze. Focusing on the 2008 Australian media event that erupted over Bill Henson's “art” photographs of naked girls, this article analyses how a perception that the images sexualised children was governed by experts as a reactionary and perverse CSA moral panic gaze. I argue that this form of governance depends on the exclusion of the political gaze of the survivor, a gaze that has been vital to a feminist critique of hetero-normative paedophilia. Re-claiming an affective feminist gaze involves thinking beyond the upwardly mobile discourse of CSA moral panic and through the occluded question of the sexual politics of paedophilia.     

Media,The Public,and Freedom of the Press

Social Indicators Research - This article examines the diversification of the news media in Korea since the 1990s as a result of deregulation and democratization. It also examines the impact of...     

Macro-Structural Determinants of Political Freedom in Developing Countries: A Cross-National Analysis

This study attempts to evaluate the impacts of macro-structural factors on political freedom in developing countries (DCs). Political freedom is conceptualized as civil liberty and political rights the general population of a society can enjoy in influencing public policy. The Freedom House indexes are used as measures of freedom. In explaining the individual countries’ differences in political freedom, this study considers the following factors: regime types, level of development, social structure, fractionalization, the state and military influence and external economic dependence. Empirical modeling of 118 DCs with regression techniques and ordered logit methods demonstrates that besides the regime effects, economic development generates favorable influence, while a large poor population and military spending produce negative impact on freedom. In the concluding section, we discuss the theoretical implications in comparative perspective.     

Freedom as Mobility: Implications of the Distinction between Actual and Potential Travelling

This paper defines mobility as the potential transport of humans and explores the mobility aspect of freedom. Freedom as mobility is composed both of opportunities to travel when and where one pleases and of the feasibility of the choice not to travel. The essay further analyses the implications for the idea of freedom as mobility of distinguishing between actual and potential travel. It is also shown how mobility as a right is challenged by a central feature of democracy – namely, respect for unanimity – and how tracks left by travellers can be exploited for surveillance and control. Moreover, mobility leads to a potential absence and thus uncertainty. The paper evaluates how alternative responses to this problem have widely different consequences for the experience of freedom as mobility.     

The Role of Housing Space in Determining Freedom and Flourishing in Older People

This paper takes as its central thesis Martha Nussbaum’s normative proposition that social arrangements should be evaluated primarily according to the extent of freedom people have to promote or achieve functionings they value. Using this as a lens the paper explores the housing circumstances of older people in the UK. The paper makes three points. Firstly, given that people use their homes to structure and manage their lives, the design, quality and standard of their home is therefore a critical factor in determining their “doings and beings” [Sen: 1992, Inequality Re-examined (Clarendon Press, Oxford) p. 40]. Since older people are more likely to spend greater time within the home through lower income, lessening mobility or loss of companions, this may be of greater significance to them than other age groups. Secondly the paper argues that the design of “specialist” dwellings for older people where there is a shifting balance between housing and care has played a part in shaping the thinking about the position and status of older people as well as providing a material context in which older people live [Laws: 1994, Environment and Planning A 26: pp. 1787–1802]. This paper suggests that this context may alter or deny many aspects of life that may be meaningful to individuals and therefore may inhibit rather than promote human flourishing. The paper draws mainly on a small qualitative study in which older people spoke of their home and its meaning. Quotations from this work are given in italics.     

Freedom of information,privacy, and official secrecy: The evolution of federal government information policy concepts

At present, the ‘freedom of information’ concept has particular appeal to various democracies seeking to realize or refine a popular right to government information. The American experience with this construct provides both a significant theoretical model and a legislative realization of this idea. However, drafting imperfections and political tampering with the policy purpose of the Freedom of Information Act are apparent in the legislative history of the Federal statute and, hopefully, can be avoided by other nations pursuing this type of law. In addition, the United States has developed privacy of information and has sought to reconcile it and official secrecy with the ‘freedom of information’ concept. While the former is regarded as a valuable symbiont the latter appears to be a dangerous competitor to the effective realization of ‘the people's right to know’.     

Being Who I Am: Effective Teaching,Learning, Student Support,and Societal Change Through LGBQ Faculty Freedom

Framed within the context of a heterosexist society in which not all sexual minority faculty feel professionally and/or personally safe stepping out of the classroom closet, this qualitative study examines the phenomenon of non-heterosexual faculty disclosing their sexual orientation to students in their classrooms. Findings demonstrate the depth and magnitude of impact the disclosure has on teaching, learning, student support, and societal change. Overarching is that faculty do not necessarily view the experience as “coming out in the classroom,” but rather as “being who I am” in terms of freedom to present an authentic self, if so desired, to students.     

The Importance of Freedom in the East and the West Over Time: A Meta-analytic Study of Predictors of Well-Being

We examined whether sense of freedom is an important predictor of well-being, as compared to other typical predictors, across different periods in modern times (1981–2011), and in the East and the West. We applied a meta-analytical approach to the results of a series of multiple regression analyses conducted on six individual waves of Japanese data sets and five individual waves of American data sets from the World Values Survey. The final sample comprised 6389 Japanese and 6176 American respondents during all study periods. The main findings were that sense of freedom was one of the strongest predictors of life satisfaction (a) among several predictors (i.e., health condition, household income, marital status), (b) consistently across waves, and (c) in both Japan and the United States, as typical collectivistic Eastern and individualistic Western countries. We conclude that the greater importance of sense of freedom in ensuring well-being than other typical predictors is applicable to individuals across time and cultures.     

National Income,Political Freedom,and Investments in R&D and Education: A Comparative Analysis of the Second Digital Divide Among 15-Year-Old Students

Social Indicators Research - Digital technology has become an indispensable component in education around the world. Despite its growing importance, a gap in students’ digital skills and...     

Book Review Essay: Is Ethnic Globalism Adaptive for Americans? Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origin of Freedom,by Paul H. Rubin. New Brunswick,NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002: 223 pp. ISBN 0-8135-3096-2. Pbk $25, Hdbk $60

Population and Environment -