“He's Doing Fine”: Hope Work and Emotional Threat Management Among Families of Seriously Ill Children

In this study, I examine how people in emotionally fraught circumstances strategically structure social interactions in order to protect fragile emotional states. Data come from interviews and observations with 18 families of children being treated for life‐threatening conditions at an elite university research hospital. I show how families worked to ward off emotional threats to their ability to maintain hope that their children would recover by preempting and restructuring social interactions with friends and family members and pruning social networks. These efforts allowed families to minimize reciprocal obligations and avoid encountering pessimistic reflected appraisals that might trigger “emotional shortcuts” leading to states of fear and anxiety. Similar efforts to reconstruct social interactions and social networks may be common among those working to maintain fragile emotional states in a variety of challenging circumstances.     

‘I’m not really sure but I hope it’s better’: early thoughts of parents and carers in a regional trial site for the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is one of the most significant initiatives in Australian social policy history. Its complexity has been compounded by a fast-paced introduction and ongoing refinement throughout the initial trial phase. Parents and carers of very young disabled children face particular challenges accessing and navigating NDIS systems. This article presents findings from a mixed-method pilot study examining the perspectives of parents and carers of disabled children in one NDIS trial site – the Hunter Region of New South Wales. The research highlights a number of policy assumptions potentially impacting on NDIS take up for young disabled children and their families in regional contexts. Based on research findings a number of policy suggestions and improvements for disabled children and their families entering the NDIS and other individualised funding schemes are outlined.     

Neoliberalism,Inequality and Politics: The Changing Face of Australia

Since the early 1980s Australian public policy has undergone the most major transformation since Federation. This transformation has been underwritten by two key principles: liberalism – the view that citizens are autonomous individual actors whose interests are best served when they are free from coercive government interventions into individual action; and marketisation – the belief that free markets are arenas which best enable individual autonomy and produce efficient economic outcomes. These principles define ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘hard liberalism‘. After summarising the major policy changes identified with neoliberalism in Australia, the paper introduces a new research project that examines its impact on socioeconomic inequality, gender inequality and politics and culture. Inspection of relevant data indicates that there are important trends in inequality, public opinion and political behaviour that warrant this investigation.     

“I Did Not Get that Job Because of a Black Man...”: The Story Lines and Testimonies of Color-Blind Racism

In this paper we discuss the dominant racial stories that accompany color-blind racism, the dominant post–civil rights racial ideology, and asses their ideological role. Using interview data from the 1997 Survey of College Students Social Attitudes and the 1998 Detroit Area Study, we document the prevalence of four story lines and two types of testimonies among whites. We also provide data on ideological dissidence among some whites (we label them racial progressives) and blacks. We show that although these stories, and the racial ideology they reinforce, have become dominant, neither goes uncontested.