“NEW” STRUCTURAL POVERTY?

Proponents of the new structural poverty thesis contend that "overly generous" meanstested transfer payments increase poverty by encouraging female headship and welfare dependency. Skeptics of this view concede that transfer programs have serious faults, but argue that their overall effect is to reduce poverty. Focusing on states' Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) programs, this article examines how well these competing hypotheses account for changes in poverty since 1960. AFDC contributed to the substantial poverty reduction of the 1960s. By the next decade, however, such effects attenuated, in part because the most generous programs began to encourage slight increases in female headship, which exacerbates poverty. The new structural poverty thesis may offer some understanding of the feminization of poverty in recent years, but the argument that AFDC transfers generate poverty is unfounded.
The welfare system is anti-work, anti-family, inequitable in its treatment of the poor and wasteful of taxpayers' dollars. It provides incentives for family breakup. It discourages work. (Carter 1977)     

“Mad Money” madness: Jim Cramer's image restoration effort

The following is an evaluation of “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer's image restoration attempts during his March 2009 week-long media battle with Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show.” Using Benoit's (1995) image restoration theory as a conceptual framework, it is apparent that Cramer failed in restoring his reputation because he frequently coupled incongruent strategies and was unable to grasp the dynamic nature of communicative image restoration.     

A Passion for Prevention: An Interview with Anne Sved‐Williams

Anne Sved Williams is a perinatal and infant psychiatrist, who was trained in family therapy at the Ackerman Family Institute in New York, in 1976–77. In 1979, she was one of two women (the late Eleanor Wertheim being the other) invited to join the original Editorial Board of this journal. She is Director of Helen Mayo House and Psychiatric Services to the Women's and Babies Division, Women's and Children's Hospital Adelaide. She is a Clinical Senior Lecturer, University of Adelaide. In speaking with Colin MacKenzie, she recalls her introduction to family therapy, her training, her decision to move away from repair work with parents needing help in parenting adolescent children, in order to start ‘at the beginning’ with the parents of infants. She speaks of her pride in the ANZJFT's continuing tradition of Education Update, originally Anne's own initiative.     

Stone's Hypothesis of “Personalizing” Shopping as Compensation for Urban Depersonalization: A Reconsideration*

Critics of Wirth's theory of urban life suggest that he underemphasized the extent of urban social networks that counteract trends toward depersonalization. One argument, by Stone. claims that persons who lack social ties at the neighborhood level compensate by establishing personal relationships in shopping, an activity normally considered highly pecuniary in orientation. A replication of Stone's theory for grocery shoppers shows just the opposite. If anything, persons who lack social ties at the neighborhood level also minimize “personalizing” in their grocery shopping.     

Rwandan “home grown initiatives”: Illustrating inherent contradictions of the democratic developmental state

The 21st‐century developmental state is envisaged as implying democratic participation. Rwanda both explicitly aspires to follow the developmental state example and eloquently ascribes to far‐reaching participatory ideals, and a number of development programmes, “home grown initiatives,” have been launched, allegedly reviving traditional participatory practices. Based on original material, this article analyzes local experiences of the participation entailed in some of these programmes. In the conclusion, the poor practice of participation reported is found to point to inherent contradiction of the idea of a democratic and participatory version of the developmental state.     

The Demand for Healthy Eating: Supporting a Transformative Food “Movement”

To the extent that social science scholarship engages real‐world developments it remains grounded and better able to resist elite agendas. With this in mind this article argues for the critical encounter with what I argue is the most significant struggle around food and agriculture today—the amorphous and broad‐based movement that strives to resist the further degradation of food environments and ensure healthy eating in society. This struggle is inevitably engaged with contemporary neoliberal agendas that have transformed and degraded food environments as they have privileged profit making over healthy diets. The article considers different sites where the struggle over healthy eating is taking place, both at the level of the state and more extensively in civil society. It considers the debate over bovine growth hormone in Canada and the wider efforts to turn around school food environments as examples of state‐centered and civil‐society struggles, respectively, that illustrate different dimensions of the healthy‐eating movement today. In each case the agendas of transnational food corporations are seen to be directly contradicting efforts to ensure healthy diets. The article considers some notable successes among advocates of healthy eating, in the United States and Canada and most notably in Britain, and examines some of the factors that may account for this success. Overall, I argue that this struggle has the potential to challenge the hegemony of neoliberal discourse in fundamental ways. The article concludes with a call for academics, and rural sociologists in particular, to give a much greater priority to healthy‐eating struggles, and considers a number of areas where academic practitioners can aid activists' efforts to resist the further degradation of diets and establish healthier food environments.     

‘Drawing the Circle That Takes Them In’: Liz Mackenzie in Conversation

Liz Mackenzie's involvement with family therapy began in 1978 at the Psychiatry Department of the Adelaide Children's Hospital. She contrasts the field then and now, naming some of the dysfunctional facets of family therapy. She became manager of a specialist foster/residential program in the non‐government sector, definitely the most difficult, extending and satisfying period in her working life. In 2007, she is back where it began for her, in the (renamed) Women's and Children's Hospital, working in a Child and Adolescent Community Health team     

Battling “Unhealthy Relations”: Soviet Youth Sexuality as a Political Problem

This paper explores the way Soviet party and education officials dealt with female youth sexuality, in an effort to get it under control in order to ensure that Soviet girls grew up to be productive members of Soviet society. Many of the policies enacted by the regime reflected profound social conservatism of the majority of the top political leadership of the country and their great fear of youth, and particularly female, sexuality, as a force that could not be overcome, controlled or fully harnessed for the service of the state.     

Unpacking “the pimp case”: Aging black masculinity and grandchild placement in the child welfare system

The child welfare system is responsible for identifying long-term caregivers for children whose biological parents are unable or unwilling to care for them. Although grandparents are increasingly identified as custodians for their grandchildren, little is known about how grandparents are assessed by state actors. Using ethnographic data, this article unpacks the failure of one 63-year-old African American grandfather and his wife to gain custody of his grandson from foster care. This case–known informally as ‘the pimp case’ because of the unverified but widely accepted belief that he had earned income through sexual solicitation–illustrates how men's aging bodies and histories undermine their efforts to be seen as competent caregivers. This article shows how this grandfather's aging body and its perceived limitations became problematic, how his illegitimate social history was at issue, how their family form as grandparents (and thus, non-parents) was deemed illegitimate, and how these came together to mark race, class, and gender in interrelated–but also contradictory–ways.     

Narrating Nursing Jurisdiction: “Atrocity Stories” and “Boundary‐Work”

Sociologists have long recognized that the division of labor is, at its root, a process of social interaction. Although “negotiations” figure centrally in symbolic interactionist studies of work, relatively little attention has been given to the ways in which the structure of workplace talk contributes to the social constitution of occupations. Drawing on the insights of discourse and conversation analysis, this article examines occupational atrocity stories and considers how they accomplish boundary‐work in the hospital setting. I focus on the stories British nurses told about doctors and use data generated in ethnographic research into the routine accomplishment of nursing jurisdiction. I conclude with some general observations about how the detailed analysis of stories and storytelling can contribute to the wider study of social group formation.     

Chrysalid Goffman: A Note on “Some Characteristics of Response to Depicted Experience”

Goffman's first substantial sociological work, his M.A. thesis entitled “Some Characteristics of Response to Depicted Experience,” has hitherto escaped critical commentary. Inspection of the thesis yields insights into the early development of Goffman's sociology. It shows that Goffman's later dismissal of positivistic and experimental approaches, his suspicion of interview methods, and his valorization of observational data have their origins in his research experiences in late 1940s Chicago while he worked toward his first graduate degree. The thesis fails to deliver the findings promised by the approved thesis proposal but succeeds as a demonstration of Goffman's methodological acuity.     

“His” and “her” marriage expectations: Determinants and consequences

This article uses couple‐level data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N= 2,263) to investigate factors associated with unmarried parents’ expectations about marriage and the association between their expectations and subsequent union transitions. In most couples, both partners expect to marry, and their shared expectations are the strongest predictor of marriage and separation following their child's birth. Although men's expectations are somewhat more consequential for union transitions, marriage and relationship stability are more likely when at least one parent expects to marry. Factors such as children from previous relationships, distrust, conflict, and shared activities are also associated with union transitions. Findings about how expectations and other factors relate to marriage and separation may inform new marriage promotion initiatives.     

“Just a Typical Teenager”: The Social Ecology of “Normal Adolescence”—Insights from Diabetes Care

In Western society “normal adolescence” is understood to be a biologically driven phase characterized by emotional turmoil and irrational behavior. Despite being discredited within academic literature this discourse persists both in formal theory and everyday use. Drawing on the case of diabetes care, I argue that the discourse of “normal adolescence” derives its power from its value as a vocabulary of motive through which to navigate the contradictions inherent in the social order at this stage of the life‐course. While helping us to comprehend sociologically the ecological niche in which “normal adolescence” is sustained, this analysis raises questions about the persistence of this discourse for social action.     

The “Zen Lady” An interview with Insoo Kim Berg

In May this year, Insoo Kim Berg was a visiting professor at Southern Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in Adelaide. Heather Hayes spoke with Insoo about her work at the Brief Family Therapy Center, Milwaukee, where she is a co-director.     

The Inseparability of “Career” and “Personal” Counseling

In this article it is argued that “career” and “personal” counseling should not be viewed as different types of counseling because: (a) the holistic philosophy of counseling emphasizes helping “whole” persons whose lives contain many important and meaningful roles; (b) recent research on the implications of gender and race for career development further demonstrates the inseparability of our career and “personal” lives; and (c) there are numerous commonalities in the “career” and “personal” counseling process.     

“I Amn Not a Utistivc on Thje Typ” (“I'm Not Autistic on the Typewriter”)

Facilitated communication involves hand-over-hand or hand-on-forearm support of students as they communicate through pointing at pictures, letters or other objects. Over time, it is expected that the hand and arm support can be faded back. This observational study describes an effort to introduce facilitated communication to 22 students, ranging in age from 3 years 10 months to 21 years, in several US public schools. The students are all labeled autistic and do not speak or speak only with echolalic phrases. The findings include observations of the students communicating with facilitation, language samples, and conversations by the students. The students reveal unexpected literacy and numeracy skills. The appearance of these abilities raises a number of questions concerning prior assumptions about autism, communication, independence and interdependence, and the education of students with and without disabilities.     

Some Central Ideas in the “Just Therapy” Approach

This paper comprises significant extracts from a plenary address on Family Therapy and Social Justice given at the Second Australia and New Zealand Family Therapy Conference, Melbourne, July 1992. It contains the language of the three cultures at the Family Centre, Maori, Samoan and English. The two writers give their perspectives, those of Samoan womanhood and Pakeha (white) manhood, as they address the development of “Just Therapy”. The paper is an unusually subjective account of historical vignettes that proved to be crucial to the original developments of therapy at the Family Centre. Through speech making, poetry, prose and song, the paper outlines the critical cultural, gender and socio-economic contexts central to the “Just Therapy” approach. “Belonging”, “sacredness” and “liberation” have become the essential themes in this unique approach to an anti-colonial, anti-sexist and anti-class therapy. To put it more positively, this paper outlines a history of struggle with issues of equity that have consistently attempted to create a therapy inclusive of women's experience, dominated cultures and low-income families marginalised in the market.     

“Like a violet unseen”—the apotheosis of absence in Hutterite life*

Cet article tente de comprendre la manière dont les Hutterites imprègnent de signification les phénomènes invisibles et imperceptibles. II comprend trois parties principales. La première est une analyse structurale qui, tout en demontrant que l'absence de designation est un aspect important de la symbolique hutterite, ne réussit pas à relier significations et actes. La seconde partie utilise la théorie pragmatique de la communication pour comprendre comment l'absence fonctionne dans la conduite réelle (dans l'appel a l‘église et à la chorale). Cependant cette théorie pragmatique est aussi superficielle car elle engendre un paradoxe qui est un artefact produit par l'analyse et elle échoue à pénétrer la réalité psychologique de la vie quotidienne des Hutterites dans laquelle l'absence de choses “mondaines” sert à signifier la présence de l'Esprit-Saint. La dernière partie utilise un procédé littéraire et une métaphore musicale pour essayer d'evoquer l'imprégnation mystique de la réalité hutterite. In this paper an attempt is made to understand how Hutterians imbue unseen and unheard phenomena with meaning. The paper consists of three basic parts. The first section is a structural analysis which, while it demonstrates that the absence of designata is an important aspect of Hutterian symbology, fails to relate meaning to acts. The second section utilizes pragmatic communication theory to understand how absence functions within actual behaviour (in the call to church and singing). However, the pragmatic theory is also superficial in that it produces a paradox which is an artifact of analysis and it fails to penetrate the psychological reality of Hutterite life in which the absence of worldly things serves to signify the omnipresent Holy Spirit. The third section utilizes a literary device and a musical metaphor in an attempt to evoke the mystical sentiment of the Hutterian reality.