The terrorist,the artist and the citizen: Oscar Wilde and Vera

This article links Oscar Wilde’s prose writings with his earliest drama Vera, or The Nihilists (1880, rev., 1883) and suggests how the idea of terrorism and political violence was a spectacle and threat that Wilde acknowledged and encompassed in his writing and thought. I discuss Wilde’s adoption of a Hegelian view of the development of civilisation and suggest that during his 1895 trials he cast himself self-consciously as at once agitator and scapegoat, finding that his own life had come to imitate his art though not in the ways with which we are commonly familiar. Modern terrorism from its roots in 1870s Russian political unrest is recognised as both a new force and a familiar fantasy which shapes literature.     

Prison sexology: Two personal accounts of masturbation,homosexuality, and rape

As revealed in two unrelated reports from prison inmates, the sexology of all‐male incarceration subdivides into masturbation, wet dreams, and partner contacts in association with heterosexual imagery; consenting homosexual pairing with one partner exclusively androphilic and the other bisexual; coercive partnerships with one partner dominating but not injuring the other and neither being permanently and exclusively androphilic; and violent homosexual rape. The long‐term outcomes of prison celibacy and homosexuality are not presently known. These outcomes need to be studied systematically and prospectively. It is suggested that it is illogical to punish sex offenders by incarcerating them in an environment that breeds sex offending. A system of conjugal visitation, and possibly of family living in prison, is a more logical, and probably the only alternative to institutionalized sexual brutality and homosexuality that is situationally evoked.     

Performative family: homosexuality,marriage and intergenerational dynamics in China

Using in‐depth interview data on nominal marriages – legal marriages between a gay man and a lesbian to give the appearance of heterosexuality – this paper develops the concept of performative family to explain the processes through which parents and their adult children negotiate and resolve disagreements in relation to marriage decisions in post‐socialist China. We identify three mechanisms – network pressure, a revised discourse of filial piety and resource leverage – through which parents influence their gay offspring's decision to turn to nominal marriage. We also delineate six strategies, namely minimizing network participation, changing expectations, making partial concessions, drawing the line, delaying decisions and ending the marriage, by which gay people in nominal marriages attempt to meet parental expectations while simultaneously retaining a degree of autonomy. Through these interactions, we argue that Chinese parents and their gay adult children implicitly and explicitly collaborate to perform family, emphasizing the importance of formally meeting society's expectations about marriage rather than substantively yielding to its demands. We also argue that the performative family is a pragmatic response to the tension between the persistent centrality of family and marriage and the rising tide of individualism in post‐socialist China. We believe that our findings highlight the specific predicament of homosexual people. They also shed light on the more general dynamics of intergenerational negotiation because there is evidence that the mechanisms used by parents to exert influence may well be similar between gay and non‐gay people.     

Oscar Pistorius and the melancholy of intersectionality

The alleged shooting by Paralympian and Olympian athlete Oscar Pistorius of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp has led to strong reactions worldwide. Scholars in the field of disability studies have expressed shock and disappointment in response both to the death itself and to its implications for the representation of disability. In South Africa in the wake of the death of Ms Steenkamp, much has been made both by critics of Pistorius and by his defenders about his status as a white South African man, but little has been said about disability issues. This silence in South Africa about disability as a possible identity factor in this case draws attention to the extent to which disability questions remain profoundly raced and gendered, and influenced by the colonial and apartheid past. The tragic alleged shooting by Oscar Pistorius draws attention back to how important intersectionality is to understanding disability in South Africa and other unequal societies.     

The 2002 Winter Olympics scandal: rent-seeking and committees

In the wake of a judging controversy at the Winter 2002 Olympic games, the governing council of the International Skating Union scrapped its judging system, replacing it with a new system which uses scores from only some of the judges, selected randomly. This means that the composition of the awarding committee is unknown. I examine rent-seeking expenditures when the composition of the committee is unknown relative to the case when it is known. When the composition of the committee is unknown, I find that rent-seeking expenditures directed towards each committee member may fall but aggregate rent-seeking expenditures will not fall. I find the counter-intuitive result that there may be no change in the rent-seeking effort directed at each committee member, even if it is known that some of the members will not be part of the final awarding committee. The results hinge on whether there is full rent dissipation or rent under-dissipation when the composition of the committee is known.     

Weathering the storm: Hauser's Vernacular Voices,public relations and the Roman Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal

Since 2002, the Roman Catholic sexual abuse scandal has had disastrous and far-reaching effects on both the church's ability to interact with its internal publics and its ability to pursue its public agenda. This paper blends the author's experience as a public relations practitioner in the Roman Catholic Church with Gerard Hauser's theory of publics and public spheres articulated in Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres to discover how organizations could improve their responses to crises.     

A metahistorical information theory of social change: the theory

Abstract

A new yin-yang metahistorical approach that we call sociohistory is created to explore the possibilities of tracking and explaining social change. For this purpose, a frame of reference is created using Social Viable Systems theory to harness Sorokin's sociocultural dynamics. Epistemological content is enhanced by Frieden's new constructivist information theory called Extreme Physical Information. Its aim is to provide a scientific framework for the metahistory. The coupling of these theories has the potential for explaining and possibly predicting long-term, large-scale or short-term, small-scale sociocultural events. This new theory should be seen as emerging from the convergence of the approaches by Sorokin, Yolles and Frieden.     

Family and sexual orientation: the family-demographic correlates of homosexuality in men and women

Using a nationally representative sample of young adults, I identify the family-demographic correlates of sexual orientation in men and women. Hence, I test the maternal immune hypothesis, which posits that the only biodemographic correlate of male homosexuality is the number of older brothers, and there are no biodemographic correlates of female homosexuality. For men, I find that having one older brother does not raise the likelihood of homosexuality. Although having multiple older brothers has a positive coefficient, it is not significant. Moreover, having any older sisters lowers the likelihood of homosexual or bisexual identity. For women, I find that having an older brother or having any sisters decreases the likelihood of homosexuality. Family structure, ethnicity, and education are also significantly correlated with male and female sexual orientation. Therefore, the maternal immune hypothesis cannot explain the entire pattern of family-demographic correlates. The findings are consistent with either biological or social theories of sexual orientation.     

Discourse, interaction, and testimony: The making of selves in the U.S. Protestant dispute over homosexuality

Ethnography helps to elaborate Foucault's conception of power at work to produce subjects through micro-level interactions. I examine interactions among Protestants as they discuss homosexuality in two sites, an ex-gay movement seminar and a pro-gay liberal congregation. In two opposed groups, the genre of testimony produced an authentic-seeming truth, working performatively to produce group boundaries, to legitimate authority and hierarchies in the group, and to tacitly define certain categories as abject, unlivable. That groups can produce this effect in spite of their intentions illustrates how certain forms of social power inhere in language and work through everyday talk.     

Pragmatic optimism,crisis leadership,and contingency theory: A view from the C-suite

In the last three decades, the theory of strategic conflict management has been developed so that it is a strong framework for considering the factors that influence an organization’s response to crises and identifying the importance for dynamic and flexible approaches to crisis decision-making and communication. While leadership is considered one of the critical internal contingency factors but individual characteristics of key decision-makers, like the CEO, are also one of the most understudied ones. At the same time, the concept of optimism has long been explored as a factor influencing performance and positive outcomes in many arenas, but with scant evidence in the application to senior-level leadership or crisis contexts. In fact, in the crisis literature where optimism and pessimism is addressed, it largely argues that crisis leaders should adopt a pessimistic mindset. For this study senior-leaders in multinational companies responsible for managing employees in an average of 70 countries each and with extensive crisis leadership experience reflect on their own experiences during crises. Findings indicate that optimism is a critical trait in successful crisis leadership connecting to positive outcomes for the teams and organizations. These data also provide critical insights that develop a stronger understanding of contingency planning in crisis management because we have identified a trait that amongst an elite group of managers with extensive crisis experience was consistently attributed to their own success as crisis leaders.     

Australia's Bill Henson scandal: notes on the new cultural attitude to images

In May 2008 police removed a series of artworks by internationally renowned photomedia artist Bill Henson from the walls of a Sydney gallery just hours before his exhibition was due to open. They did so in response to an allegation that the invitation to the opening carried an image of child pornography. This article explores some of the events and public debate that followed. The author suggests that rather than simply replicating an age-old debate over censorship, the recent furore in Australia reveals dimensions of a new cultural attitude to images. She sketches some of the key dimensions of this attitude, with a particular focus on the increasingly dominant visual experiences offered by digitally mediated images. Following scholars writing at the interface between art theory and anthropology, she argues that these experiences configure relationships between persons and images in particular ways. She argues, too, that our mediated engagements with fleeting digital images are influencing the way we apprehend other kinds of pictures, and in turn have implications for our relations with each other. In conclusion she suggests that the Henson case highlights the ethical implications of recognising the qualitative distinctiveness of different kinds of visual experience.     

Promoting tolerance for homosexuality: An evaluation of intervention strategies

This article presents a methodological critique of the few attempts to promote tolerance for homosexuality through education. The d statistic was utilized to assess the extent of attitude change from pre‐ to post‐intervention assessment. With few exceptions, data have been gathered from college students in courses focused on human sexuality. These data suggest that students who complete these courses become less fearful of contact with homosexuals, more tolerant of homosexuals in social roles, and more tolerant of homosexual behavior, although the extent and duration of the changes may be limited. Although some attribute attitude change to the intensiveness of the course, methodological and conceptual problems, including volunteer bias, provide alternative explanations. Further attempts to promote tolerance toward homosexuality must consider differences in attitudes toward gay men and lesbians and the extent to which men and women differ in their level of tolerance toward these groups.     

Condition,orientation, role or false consciousness? Models of homosexuality and transsexualism1

Two aspects of theories of deviant behaviour are outlined and discussed. These are concerned with whether or not the deviant behaviour indicates some inherent quality of the actor and with the tenability of that behaviour from the theorist's point of view. Combining these aspects produces four models which are discussed here in relation to homosexuality and transsexualism. The ‘condition’ and ‘orientation’ models presume an intrinsic nature, whereas the ‘role’ and ‘ false consciousness’ models reject this conception. The ‘orientation’ and ‘role’ models regard the deviant phenomenon as acceptable, as a tenable variation, whereas the ‘condition’ and ‘false consciousness’ models regard it as unacceptable, as morally, biologically, politically or psychologically untenable.