Identifying the Material and Non‐Material Ingredients of the Good Life

Criticism of the neo‐liberal approach to generating economic growth and rising prosperity rests on the view that it has failed to deliver many of the things that people most value. Developments in the measurement of quality of life, and in the poverty literature, have moved away from relying solely on economic variables such as income. The deprivation approach provides an insight into the items that people value because it asks a random sample of the population whether or not a list of items are regarded as essential – things that no‐one should have to go without. Drawing on results from a recent deprivation survey, this paper examines the strength of Australian opinion about whether material and non‐material items are essential. The results confirm that there is widespread support for many non‐material items being essential and that lack of ownership of these items is often widespread, with adverse affects on wellbeing.     

Strategies,Action Repertoires and DIY Activism in the Animal Rights Movement

Following Tilly, this paper argues that a social movement is what it does as much as why it does it. This approach is particularly important in the case of the animal rights movement, which is often demonized as extremist and violent. Critics of the movement claim that animal activists use letter bombs, arson attacks and threats to intimidate those they see as animal abusers and that violent direct action of this kind is typical of the movement as a whole. The present paper argues that the mainstream animal movement – in the USA, the UK and Australia – is overwhelmingly non-violent and that its core strategies and tactics have two broad aims, namely to gain publicity for the movement and to challenge conventional thinking about how we treat non-human animals. This is achieved primarily by the deployment of the key tactical mechanisms of persuasion, protest, non-cooperation and intervention. These tactics may be deployed collectively or as DIY (Do-It-Yourself) activism which many grassroots animal activists – ‘caring sleuths’ to use Shapiro's apt term – seem to prefer. The paper focuses on demonstrations and pamphleteering as examples of publicity strategies or liberal governance strategies as well as critical governance strategies or interference strategies such as the hunger strike, ethical vegetarianism and undercover surveillance.     

Xhosa history

The House of Phalo by J.B. Peires, Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1981, 281 pp.     

Health-Related Stereotype Threat Predicts Health Services Delays Among Blacks

To our knowledge, no published research has developed an individual difference measure of health-related stereotype threat (HRST). We adapted existing measures of academic stereotype threat to the health domain on a sample of black college students (N = 280). The resulting health-related stereotype threat scale-24 (HRST-24) was assessed for internal consistency, construct and incremental validity, and whether it explains variance in self-reported delays among four preventive health behaviors—blood pressure and cholesterol assays, physical exams, and routine checkups. After adjusting for several control variables, the HRST-24’s (full scale α = 0.96) perceived black health inferiority (18 items; α = 0.96) and perceived physician racial bias (6 items; α = 0.85) subscales explained unique variance in delays among two of the four behaviors including a blood cholesterol check (p < .01) and routine checkup—albeit at marginal levels (p = .063) in the case of the latter. Overall, these data provide preliminary evidence of construct and incremental validity for the HRST-24 among blacks. Recommendations for administering the scale are provided and future directions for HRST research are discussed.     

Alcohol Misuse Among Older Adult Public Housing Residents

Low-income older adults living in public housing are at heightened risk for substance misuse. This study identified the prevalence of alcohol misuse among older public housing residents (n?=?187) and explored predictors of problem drinking. Including weekly drinking levels and binge drinking, 23% of the sample engaged in problem drinking behaviors. Logistic regression analysis revealed that race, gender, employment status, years smoking, and illegal drug use were significant predictors of problem drinking. No residents were receiving substance abuse treatment. As the number of older adults increase, training social workers to assess and treat alcohol misuse in older adults is critical.     

The Time-Pressure Illusion: Discretionary Time vs. Free Time

People’s welfare is a function of both time and money. People can – and, it is said, increasingly do – suffer time-poverty as well as money-poverty. It is undeniably true that people feel increasingly time pressured, particularly in dual-earner households. But much of the time devoted to paid and unpaid tasks is over and above that which is strictly necessary. In that sense, much of the time pressure that people feel is discretionary and of their own making. Using data from the 1992 Australian Time Use Survey, this paper demonstrates that the magnitude of this ‘time-pressure illusion’ varies across population groups, being least among lone parents and greatest among the childless and two-earner couples.     

Social Security Reform in China's Transition to a Market Economy

This paper begins by describing the origins of a social security system that was based on a series of institutional splits that resulted in the development of a fragmented system characterized by inequity and incomplete coverage. The entitlements embedded in this system have proved difficult to revise in the light of changing circumstances and the pressures associated with economic transition, demographic change and the newly emerging problems of open unemployment and urban poverty. These developments, particularly the latter, are creating new demands on a system already struggling to adjust to structural problems of coverage and financial soundness. A series of extensive reforms in the areas of pensions and unemployment insurance and a rationalization of administrative arrangements and responsibilities have been introduced over the last two decades, but further reform seems inevitable as external pressures and policy priorities change. A key goal of the reform process has been to transfer responsibility for social security from enterprises to the state, but the system still suffers from a series of serious financial problems. Despite the extensive reforms that have already been introduced, these problems and the structural imbalances underlying them will require further action. The most important of these imbalances relate to the split between the nature and role of social security in the urban and rural sectors, the role of the commercial provision and its relationship with the state, and the extension of programmes aimed at poverty alleviation.     

In Search of the Lemmus Lemmus: An Investigation into Convergent Competition

This paper explores the reasons for industries converging upon poor strategies. The phenomenon is likened to the periodic mass suicide of the lemmus lemmus (the Norwegian lemming). It gives historic examples of the phenomenon, and evidence of its occurring within a simulated business environment. A literature review shows how it can be explained using theories from economics, psychology and competitive analogies used in business. An inputs-process–outputs model provides a theoretical framework for Lemmus Lemmus strategies and is used to derive hypotheses.     

Japanese marketing strategies in the United Kingdom

This article is based on a study which examined hypotheses about Japanese marketing using a matched sample of British companies and their major Japanese competitors. Japanese subsidiaries in Britain were shown to be much more marketing-oriented, more responsive to strategic opportunities, and more single-minded in their pursuit of market share. Organizationally, there were few differences between the two groups. The Japanese subsidiaries, however, were more inclined to use product or market-based divisions and continuous, informal planning and control procedures. The result is that managerial focus and responsibility are centred upon overall product-market rather than financial or production performance, with continuous feedback facilitating rapid adaptation and implementation of marketing plans and strategy.