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.     

Peer Group Affiliation of Children: The Role of Perceived Popularity,Likeability, and Behavioral Similarity in Bullying

To understand children's peer group affiliation, this study examined to what extent children in naturally occurring groups resemble each other on bullying, likeability, and perceived popularity. Participants were fourth‐ to sixth‐grade pupils (N = 461). Peer groups were identified using the social cognitive map procedure. Resemblance on bullying, likeability, and perceived popularity was evaluated by means of variance components models. Resemblance in peer groups was strongest for perceived popularity, followed by bullying and likeability. Moreover, resemblance on bullying could for a large part be attributed to the high‐perceived popularity of the group, and to a lesser extent, to the low likeability of the group. It is concluded that children showing bullying seem to affiliate with each other most of all to attain or maintain their position in a perceived popular peer group. Results stress the importance of considering the functionality of bullying from a group perspective.     

Commercial sex between men: A prospective diary‐based study

This paper describes the results of a self‐reporting dairy completed by 186 male sex workers (MSWs) over a 2‐week period in Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne, Australia. The diary was completed following each commercial sex encounter by the MSW. The results reveal that MSWs reported 2088 commercial sex encounters during the study period, with an average of 11.2 encounters per MSW. The majority of sex encounters took place in either the client's or the MSW's residence, with significant variations by city. The average sexual encounter lasted 70 minutes, and comprised two sexual acts, masturbation and oral sex. Condom use was reported in 67.4% of all the encounters. Using the AIDS Council safe‐sex classification system, the majority of the commercial sex encounters fell in the “safer sex” category; however, there were significant differences by source of clients and place of the encounter. Use of drugs and alcohol reveal interesting patterns: Clients were more likely to use alcohol, while MSWs had significant differences of usage of the different drugs. This study demonstrates that the majority of MSWs are offering and practicing safe sex behaviours, however, MSWs working in the street setting are still likely to be practising unsafe sex. Male sex work is becoming an organised business and this provides opportunities to implement further public health interventions.     

When Precaution Creates Misunderstandings: The Unintended Effects of Precautionary Information on Perceived Risks,the EMF Case

In the past decade, growing public concern about novel technologies with uncertain potential long‐term impacts on the environment and human health has moved risk policies toward a more precautionary approach. Focusing on mobile telephony, the effects of precautionary information on risk perception were analyzed. A pooled multinational experimental study based on a 5 × 2 × 2 factorial design was conducted in nine countries. The first factor refers to whether or not information on different types of precautionary measures was present, the second factor to the framing of the precautionary information, and the third factor to the order in which cell phones and base stations were rated by the study participants. The data analysis on the country level indicates different effects. The main hypothesis that informing about precautionary measures results in increased risk perceptions found only partial support in the data. The effects are weaker, both in terms of the effect size and the frequency of significant effects, across the various precautionary information formats used in the experiment. Nevertheless, our findings do not support the assumption that informing people about implemented precautionary measures will decrease public concerns.     

Towards a prospective technology assessment: challenges and requirements for technology assessment in the age of technoscience

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the expanding discourse on conceptual elements of TA. As a point of departure, it takes the recent transformation of the science, technology and innovation system (“technoscience”). We will show that the age of technoscience can be regarded as presenting not only a challenge, but also a chance and opportunity for TA. Embracing this opportunity, however, implies imposing several requirements on TA. In order to specify these requirements and to foster the ongoing discourse on the foundations of TA, this paper suggests a programmatic term: prospective technology assessment (ProTA). This term is intended mainly as a reflection framework, aimed at providing an extension and complement—and not a replacement—of well-established TA concepts. Three requirements for ProTA are sketched: (1) early stage orientation—the temporal dimension, (2) intention and potential orientation—the knowledge dimension, (3) shaping orientation—the power/actor dimension. Examples from fusion and nano research will illustrate the need for ProTA, as well as its specific focus. The paper concedes that ProTA is in its infancy and that there is a clear need for further clarification.     

Face,Accounts, and Schemes in the Context of Relationship Breakups

This article investigates account strategies that individuals employ to neutralize identity threats caused by breakups from romantic relationships. I distinguish three narrative frames for such accounts: dumper, dumpee, and consensus narratives. Individuals who employ a consensus narrative frame provide accounts by default: they deny that any harm was done to anyone. Dumpers dismissed the breakup's conflictuality, used externalization strategies, and depicted themselves as empathetic. Dumpees used externalization strategies and denials of injury, emphasized their agency, and pointed out valuable changes of self. I then analyze the results from a phenomenological perspective to identify connections between accounting practices and the structure of the self. I argue that accounting for traumatic breakups is important for the development of schemes that guide perception, action, and the interpretation of biography.     

Entscheidungsverhalten von Kunden in Mass Customization-Systemen

Sequential choice processes are ubiquitous in consumer decision making. In each attribute decision, consumers are often faced with different numbers of options which they must trade off in order to make the best possible choice. Thereby, complicated high variety choices at the beginning of a choice process produce a larger trade-off conflict and, thus, initially a greater mental depletion than more simple low variety choices. We examine the strength of mental depletion in sequential choices on individuals’ perceived attractiveness of the firm’s recommended default option at a target choice. We show that consumers who are confronted with difficult high variety choices early in the decision sequence followed by low variety choices initially deplete more than consumers who encounter exactly the same attribute decisions in reverse. As a result, depleted consumers are more likely to fall prey to the recommended default or some perceptually focal options close to the default anchor at target choice succeeding a sequence of decisions.     

Problem Gambling and Gaming Machine Density: Socio-spatial Analysis of Three Victorian Localities

This paper examines the debate about possible relationships between problem gambling and accessibility to electronic gaming machines (EGMs), in the context of the Victorian Government's policy that imposed a ‘cap’ on EGMs in disadvantaged communities. Using GIS (Geographical Information Systems), the spatial distribution of social disadvantage in three ‘capped’ localities was compared with the spatial distribution of gaming venues and patterns of concentrated EGM expenditure during 2001–2005, including seasonal trends. Research revealed different relationships between spatial and social categories in the study localities, indicating the need for more systematic local area analysis. This research raises questions about the limitations of conventional methodologies and regulatory strategies based on simple measures such as gaming machine density. We propose improvements to the methodology to better measure the changing level of local supply and demand for machine gaming.     

Debt–Growth Nexus: A Spatial Econometrics Approach for Developing Countries

The objective of this paper is to examine the role of external debt in a country’s economic growth. With 31 developing countries divided into four regions, this paper employs the recent technique of spatial econometrics to incorporate the neighbouring effect in the debt–growth model. The empirical results reveal that the East Asia and Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean and the Sub-Saharan Africa regions provide convincing evidence to support a negative relationship between the external debt and economic growth. In addition, there is evidence to support the existence of spillover growth among neighbouring countries. This suggests that the role of spatial correlation is important and should be considered for any analysis of the growth model.