Homosexually Active Latino Men:

This paper presents a critical overview of the literature on homosexual conduct and identity among Latino men both in Latin America and in the United States. The relationships between homosexually active Latino men and their families, the various Latino national origin communities, and gay communities are also considered. Latino perspectives are contrasted with the dominant North American gay understandings of homosexuality in terms of individual identity and political activism. The unique problems of this population are also discussed with an emphasis on the social and cultural resources available to homosexually active Latinos and social work practitioners who serve them. Recommendations for social work practice and further research are offered.     

Health Strategies of HIV-Infected,Homosexually Active Men in Sydney,Australia

Drawing from a sample of gay and bisexual men who participated in large-scale surveys, and exploring issues derived from a smaller-scale study on working-class gay men, this close-focus study explores the relation between sexual identity, attachment to gay community and responses to HIV infection. Ten long-term HIV-infected, homosexually active men were interviewed using the open-ended life history method. A typology of four health strategies desribes these men's relations to medicine and the type and range of responses developed. These strategies are informed by class background, form and degree of attachment to the gay community, and age. Implications are discussed for existing AIDS service organizations, and for the possible future development of health services within gay and lesbian communities.     

Queer Christian: The Catholic Homosexual Apologia and Lesbian/Gay Practice

This essay concerns recent positions on homosexuality taken by the Roman Catholic Church and places them with respect to historical documents engaging same-sex desire. Analyzing Aelred of Rievaulx's twelfth-century Spiritual Friendship, John Bloxam's 1894 The Priest and the Acolyte, and Marc-André Raffalovich's 1896 Uranisme et Unisexualité, this essay offers perspectives on contemporary lay and ecclesiastical apologias, defenses, and critiques of homosexual behavior. The relationship between past and present locates the Christian churches' response to the modern homosexual as a historically developed—rather than permanently fixed—model of identity and action.     

The Effects of Using Fear in Public AIDS Education on the Behaviour of Homosexually Active Men

AIDS Education is a wide ranging term which can embrace a number of different strategies to promote sexual behaviour change. This paper compares the behaviour of male homosexually active volunteers in two countries; one group being exposed to a fear based public education campaign (the Australian Grim Reaper Public AlDS Campaign, n = 771, the other group being either exposed to a variety of gay sensitive, sexually positive material or allocated to a control group (in New Zealand, n = 159). At base-line, approximately 75% of both samples reporting engaging exclusively in safer sex behaviour. At follow-up, while the percentage of those practicing safer sex behaviour significantly increased to 83% in those exposed to the gay sensitive material and control, The prevalence of safer sex among those who experienced the fear based program, decreased dramatically to 47%. These findings, supported by previous research on the effects of fear, highlight the dangers of using fear based programs on the behaviour of those most at risk.     

Depressive Distress and Prevalence of Common Problems Among Homosexually Active African American Women in the United States

SUMMARY

We report findings from a national survey of 603 homosexually experienced African American women who self-identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Levels of psychological distress greatly exceeded population norms for African American women. The most frequent problems participants reported were romantic relationship and financial difficulties. Problems with using drugs or alcohol to self-medicate psychological distress were the most chronic stressors. Although 31% of women indicated they received emotional support from a counselor or other professional in the prior month, the least likely to receive support were those reporting chronic financial, housing, anger, or substance use problems. These findings underscore the vulnerability of African American women, who navigate the triple stigma of having a minority ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender.     

Preventive Care's Forgotten Women: Life Course,Sexuality, and Sexual Health among Homosexually and Bisexually Active Women in France

Although studies show that women who have sex with women (WSW) have poorer sexual health and more limited access to health care for gynecological problems than other women, the social processes giving rise to such health differences have not, so far, been explored. These processes may be formed in response to a dominant social norm, which assigns women to a heterosexual and monogamous sexuality. Based on data from a national random survey of sexuality (N = 6,824), enriched by qualitative interviews with WSW (n = 40), this analysis shows that bisexually active women had similar socio-demographic profiles to heterosexually active women, whereas homosexually active women appeared to be more highly educated than other women and less likely to live as couples than bisexually active women. Bisexually active women had more diversified sexual trajectories and sexual networks than other women. Chlamydia prevalence was found to be higher among bisexually active women, and homosexually active women reported fewer medical consultations for gynecological reasons. These analyses highlight the need to deconstruct the binary classification of homosexual versus heterosexual women. Because of constraint by the monogamous heterosexual norm, bisexually active women were less likely to be tested for sexually transmitted infections, and homosexually active women were less likely to have had gynecological follow-ups.     

Calling capital: call centre strategies in New Brunswick and New Zealand

This article compares government promoted call centre initiatives in New Zealand and New Brunswick, Canada, thereby identifying differing policies and practices associated with ‘globalization’. Both New Brunswick and New Zealand are small resource based economies in which policy makers aspire to attract foreign investment into call centres as a new means of economic growth and job creation. However there are significant differences between the two call centre strategies. In New Brunswick the provincial government plays a central role, most notably through the use of incentives to lure companies to the province but also through the coordination of education and training. In New Zealand an informal network made up of public and private sector actors drives the strategy, and the relevant government agency (Trade NZ) plays only a coordinating role. Despite these differences both call centre strategies aspire to link service sector activities into global flows and networks, and foster low wage and feminized forms of employment.     

Difference in Condom Use Among Sexually Active Males at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Black men who have sex with men (MSM) and black men who have sex with both men and women (MSMW) may not perceive themselves to be part of the larger gay community and hence may not heed prevention messages aimed at the community. Objective and Participants: To better understand the participants behaviors, the authors examined differences in condom use between black MSM/W (including MSM and MSMW) and men who have sex with women (MSW) at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Methods: A paper-and-pencil questionnaire survey investigated sexual behaviors of 1,865 freshmen from 35 HBCUs during the 2001-2002 school year. Results: MSM/W were about 0.37 times less likely to always use condoms compared with MSW (adjusted odds ratio = 0.63, 95% confidence interval = 0.42-0.95). Sexual behavior, age at survey, total family income, and religion were also associated with condom use. Conclusions: These findings offer new directions for sexually transmitted disease and HIV prevention aimed at a highly marginalized population that remains at high risk for infection.     

Asian Transnational Families in New Zealand: Dynamics and Challenges

Since the 1990s, Asia has emerged as the major contributor of migration flows into New Zealand. Settler migration, tourism, international business and more recently, international education make up the diverse flows of Asian peoples into the country. This paper explores the changing dynamics of Asian transnational families over the last two decades, with a special focus on the experiences of young people within these families. In the early 1990s, bi-local families were commonly known as astronaut families, in which one or both parents returned to their countries of origin to work, leaving their children to be educated in New Zealand. Over time the structures of these families have changed, as many young migrants relocated back to their former homeland or re-migrated to a third country, while astronaut parents rejoined their spouses either in the origin or destination. More recently, the educational migration of international students from countries in Asia has given rise to another form of transnational family, in which young people enter New Zealand as international students and some subsequently become residents. In this paper, the experiences of these young people are explored within the wider context of family strategies for maximising benefits through spatially extended networks on the one hand, and government initiatives and immigration policy changes that have been taking place in New Zealand since the 1990s on the other.     

Qualitative sociology in New Zealand

Conclusion It can be argued that qualitative research has become more popular in New Zealand in recent years. If this is so, then researchers in diverse subfields of sociology may come to develop an awareness of their common interests, thus fostering the growth of qualitative sociology as a basis of occupational identification. However, many of the developments which have bearing on the state of qualitative sociology in New Zealand (e.g., a local journal, funding agencies and research centres) have only been recently established. It is therefore too early, perhaps, to assess the future role of qualitative sociology in New Zealand scholarship. Nevertheless, the preceding discussion has demonstrated the existence of a lively research scene, much of it qualitative, which exists in New Zealand at present.     

A failed graft: Rural sociology in New Zealand

This paper examines the attempt to transfer American-style rural sociology to New Zealand in the years between 1935 and 1957. In the first half of this period the ground was prepared through sponsorship by an influential group of intellectuals, visits by leading American rural sociologists and support from the Carnegie Foundation. Between 1944 and 1957 the attempt at transfer was made in the New Zealand Department of Agriculture, but it failed. Reasons for the failure are shown to turn on the internal institutional structure of the Department, and the way in which it was articulated with powerful interest groups.     

External legitimacy of unions: Trends in New Zealand

Just 5 years ago, at the pinnacle of their success, New Zealand unions negotiated collective agreements covering over 720,000 employees and were successful in persuading some 603,000 of these employees to join. In May 1991, the Employment Contracts Act, which withdrew totally any state-endorsement or sponsorship of union activity, radically altered their position. Union membership fell by around 40 percent in the four years since the enactment of the Act — from 603,000 to 376,000 members in December 1994; the overall number of unions remaining has declined to around 80; a number of unions have become insolvent and have filed for liquidation; staff retrenchments within unions has been widely reported and, in some cases, this has led to a reduction in services and capacity. Data for 1993 suggest that union decline may have “bottomed out” with unions losing fewer than 20,000 members in that year. However, decline is again apparent in the 1994 data. The removal of external legitimacy has had a significant impact on unionization rates. We review the conditions under which the restoration of legitimacy would bring about a reversal of union decline.     

Ulster Protestants in New Zealand: A Bibliographic Essay

One of the most noticeable aspects of recent studies which examine Irish migration to New Zealand has been the identification of a sizeable contingent of Ulster Protestant settlers within that migrant stream. Their presence has proven to be a complicating factor in how the history of the Irish in New Zealand has been written and has made easy assumptions about the loyalty, identity, politics and ethnicity of that population impossible. This essay surveys the existing literature on New Zealand's Ulster Protestant population across a wide range of subjects while at the same time considering their apparent disappearance as a distinct ethnic grouping in the new world.     

Family Court Mediation: New Zealand Practices and Perspectives

Family separation is increasingly being dealt with by counsellors trained in the skills of mediation, along with skills of counselling and therapy. Other professionals also offer mediation services. In New Zealand, special provisions exist in the Family Court system to minimise the trauma for families by using mediation services, with the special opportunity for a couple to enter a Mediation Conference chaired by a Family Court Judge. It is argued that mediation is different from counselling and therapy, but that mediation requires many of the skills of counselling. This has particular consequences for training and for multidisciplinary teamwork.     

The peasant within: agrarian life in New Zealand and Canada

Cette communication analyse les tentatives des membres des families ďagriculteurs de vouloir imposer leurs propres modèles sur le processes de production et sur la création et la reproduction de leur existence sociale. Cette communication souligne aussi ľimportance ďune reformulation des approches traditionnelles envers la culture rurale en reconnaissant ľinfluence importante ďune histoire de domination. Les arguents sont basés sur les résultats de recherches entreprises sur place dans le nord de la Nouvelle Zélande et en Alberta central.
This paper examines the concern of the members of farm households to impose their own designs on the productive process, and on the creation and reproduction of their social existence. It also points to the importance of rethinking conventional approaches to rural culture by recognizing the pervasive influence of a history of domination. The arguments draw upon the results of field work conducted in northern New Zealand and central Alberta, Canada.     

Coming Across: Family Therapy in Australia and New Zealand*

In this Keynote Address I ask where family therapy comes from in Australia and New Zealand, as a way of seeing where it might go. I look at our histories, cultures and traditions and how they are connected. What happened to the old certainties of our field, and where do we take a stand today? How can we come across with courage, imagination and a sense of community? How can we maintain those impulses to justice and to remembering that psychotherapy stands for at its best?     

A New Agenda for European Charity: Catholic Welfare and Organizational Change in France and Germany

Case study research from France and Germany reveals that Catholic welfare is revising its mission and its methods. Central points are a different approach to voluntary participation, new public relations, and a rearrangement of public-private partnerships. As a result, Catholic welfare has become activated in both countries. While the shrinking of the overall influence of Catholic charity seems inevitable, there is more creative agency, and less programming by the old stakeholders. The national paths of change, however, differ in that Caritas, defending its service approach, is confronted with a process of de-institutionalization while Secours catholique, though giving particular emphasis to voluntary action is entering into further institutionalization.     

Status and Cultural Defense: The Case of the New Christian Right

Abstract

Miller (1985) has claimed that a properly designed research project shows no support for the cultural defense or “politics of lifestyles concern” explanation for the rise of the New Christian Right. This short article argues that Miller's data have little or no bearing on the issues he claims to explore.