Image and visual culture after the pictorial turn: an outsider's note

Visual culture is the name of a now well-established academic field, the disciplinary and symbolic status of which nevertheless remains uncertain. Structured around the notion of the ‘pictorial turn’, visual culture has encountered various critiques, which impose on the field to state of permanent revision and repositioning. This article attempts to give an overview of some recent theoretical debates and sketches some perspectives for further research.     

E-Government Implementation: Theoretical Aspects and Empirical Evidence

Despite its increasing importance and beneficial outcomes, e-government still has not been fully implemented. Previous literature has scarcely been able to provide a holistic explanation for this research issue. In this study we identify drivers of and barriers to e-government implementation and empirically examine these aspects. This paper contributes to the e-government literature by presenting a comprehensive overview of drivers and barriers and providing empirical evidence thereof. Also, it represents a further step towards filling in the gap concerning our knowledge of the reasons for the lack of e-government implementation. Furthermore, we derive academic and managerial implications and provide suggestions for future research.     

I had a dream

I had a dream. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. said in a speech memorized by almost all Chinese students, I had a dream. My dream was that one day I would teach in a foreign country. Little did I know how fascinating and rich teaching in the Law School of Shandong University would be.     

Television Viewing by School-Age Children: Associations with Physical Activity,Snack Food Consumption and Unhealthy Weight

Alarm about the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity has focussed attention on individual lifestyle behaviours that may contribute to unhealthy weight. Television viewing is often a focus of the obesity debate. Not only is it sedentary, it also has the potential to influence other lifestyle behaviours either by displacing physical activities or through the consumption of high energy snack foods while watching TV. The research reported here uses data from 2,143 Australian 6–7 year children to examine the lifestyle behaviours associated with excess weight. These children spent 90 min each day watching television, 100 min each day in physical activity, and 39% consumed high levels of snack foods. Nearly one in five (18%) were overweight or obese. After adjustment for family and child characteristics, more time spent watching television was associated with more snacking and less physical activity. However, television viewing was associated with children’s weight status, but snacking and physical activities were not. These findings confirm the existence from a young age, of a cluster of lifestyle behaviours that are associated with unhealthy weight status.     

Daily data collection of sexual and other health‐related behaviors

This article documents some findings of a sociological research project which was done in West Germany from 1970 ‐ 1973 (Dannecker/Reiche 1974). 139 contact‐persons, chosen by the authors, distributed 1617 questionnaires to homosexuals. 789 were filled out and sent back and constitute our sample.

The complete research project comprises six themes: coming out; homosexual subculture; homosexual friendships; sexuality of homosexuals; jobs and the employments of homosexuals; the collective neurosis of homosexuals.     

Two studies of male sex impotence

Abstract

The age at which female mice attain puberty depends to a large extent on their prior experience with male stimuli. Females exposed to male odors mature more rapidly than those denied access to the smell of a male. Such an odor can be termed a priming pheromone because it sets in motion a chain of physiological events which, in this case, culminate in puberty. The demonstration that a social factor such as a pheromone can influence the rate of sexual development in the mouse may have implications for man. It seems likely that a complex of stimuli, certainly not odors alone, may have contributed to the accelerated rate of human sexual maturation which has occurred during the past century.     

International Women's Day: Art project for young women

Abstract

The primary aim of the project was to provide the opportunity for a marginalised group of young women to participate in International Women's Day with other women and members of the community and to have the opportunity to express themselves and aspects of their lives in art work on ceramic platters. The target group were ‘homeless, transient and at risk young women from 18 to 25 years of age, including Koori women’, engaged mainly through local homeless youth agencies in the Port Phillip area in Victoria. It was thought that many of this target group had been left out of formal support service provision. The project was evidently a success, both in terms of its modest aims and, most importantly, as evaluated by the participants themselves. Those interviewed expressed greater feelings of social connectedness - particularly with other women, raised self esteem and optimism and a new found enjoyment in the creative process.