Cultural Schemas of Religion,Science, and Law in Talk About Social Controversies

We analyze cultural schemas of religion, science, and law reflected in the way ordinary citizens discuss contemporary social controversies and assess whether these schemas accord with a modernization narrative or whether people's experiences with each of these institutional arenas lead them to adopt realistic or critical schemas not predicted by modernization accounts. Focus group participants in three metropolitan areas were asked to talk about one of three vignettes on faith‐based prison ministries, parents’ refusal of medical treatment for a child on religious grounds, or preimplantation genetic diagnosis of human embryos. We find that people's everyday experiences, grounded in specific institutional contexts, produce perceptions of the domains of religion, science, and law that are not fully captured by the modernization account. Further, our findings illustrate that schemas of law, science, and religion are varied and evoked by social context and the specific issues under consideration. Schemas that do not fit the modernization framework provide a way for people to address concerns about power and effectively level the playing field between more and less rationalized social domains. Future research on a broader range of issues is needed to develop a theory of when different schemas of law, science, and religion are activated.     

Widening the gap: White ignorance,race relations and the consequences for Aboriginal people in Australia

White ignorance has a critical impact on race relations and is implicated in the maintenance of Aboriginal disadvantage. Addressing this ignorance is a largely overlooked capacity-building opportunity within Australia's non-Aboriginal population. It warrants consideration as a key component of strategies targeting Aboriginal disadvantage. Despite the established links between race relations and Aboriginal well-being, Aboriginal perspectives on non-Aboriginal people rarely feature in public discourse on “Aboriginal problems.” This paper draws on data from 180 in-depth interviews with 44 Aboriginal people in Darwin on the topic of White Australian people, culture and race relations. It reports Aboriginal perceptions of White Australian ignorance across areas of great symbolic and practical significance to Aboriginal people's lives. Their experience is that most White Australians are ignorant of the history of colonisation and the complexities of its aftermath. They are ignorant of Aboriginal law, cultures and languages, and of the extent of their own ignorance. The call to address White ignorance subverts assumptions about whose ignorance and capacity must be dealt with in order to progress national goals of reconciliation, address Aboriginal disadvantage and achieve justice and equality for Aboriginal people.     

'Ladettes' and 'Modern Girls': 'troublesome' young femininities

‘Ladettes’ are argued to be a sign, and product, of contemporary development and change; their fortunes are presented as inextricably related to the conditions of late modernity. Using the past to shed light on the present, this paper considers whether fears and claims about the behaviour of some contemporary young women in Britain are exclusive to the present. Two data sets inform the discussion: first, representations of ladettes in national and local newspapers from 1995 to 2005; second, materials relating to the ‘modern girl’ published in the popular print media between 1918 and 1928. Although there have been important changes in the conditions of girlhood since the 1920s, this historical comparison highlights continuities in the representation of ‘troublesome’ youthful femininities. We explore similarities and differences in the characteristics attributed to the modern girls of the twenties and the ladettes of recent years, and the dominant discourses that underpin popular constructions of troublesome young women.     

Severe borderlines and self psychology

This paper will discuss work with a woman diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder because of classic symptoms of intense unstable affect, recurrent suicidality, self-mutilation, and primitive defensive organization. Once a selfobject transference tie was established, the borderline symptoms remitted. Discussion of this case will focus on the clinical application of concepts from the field of psychoanalytic self psychology, particularly the concepts of self-object functions and intersubjectivity, in work with patients diagnosed as borderline.     

Challenges to reproductive health in Australia

Reproductive health in Australia is assessed using the parameters outlined in the UN 1994 Cairo conference; some limitations of that approach are noted and further aspects of reproductive health identified and discussed. While many of the basic goals of reproductive health, for example low maternal mortality and widespread contraceptive use, have been largely achieved in Australia, the gains have not been uniform and certain groups such as indigenous Australians, those in rural and remote areas, young people and men remain disadvantaged. The remaining challenges cannot be met within the health system alone but require broader systemic interventions.     

The One-Box Challenge: Providing a Federated Search That Benefits the Research Process

The one-box federated search of databases brings as many challenges as promises to database searching, especially in terms of adapting these systems to user needs and the effects this new mode of searching will have on users' research behaviors. This issue of “The Balance Point” presents several librarians with strong interests in reference and instruction, who tell the story of adapting a federated search system for their libraries and reflect upon how federated searching can change the way students do research and on the implications federated searching has on information literacy skills and the quality of results found.     

Transforming Retirement: New Definitions of Life After Work

This quantitative research study uses survey data of women born between 1946 and 1951 in Australia. It follows earlier work that identified the importance of transitions from work for women of the baby boomer generation. We provide important insights into the lives of women who have partially or fully retired and the changing nature of women's work and retirement. For many women, retirement is characterized by newfound freedoms, opportunities, career change, and evolving identities, yet others view retirement as a continuation of previous occupational and gendered roles and commitments. This study has important implications for retirement policies for women.     

Beyond the Nuclear Family? Familism and Gender Ideology in Diverse Religious Communities

Religious familism, or ideology about "the good family," has been central to the culture and practice of local religious communities in the United States. Recent research has suggested that the "Ozzie and Harriet" familism dominant among mainstream religious groups in the 1950s religious expansion has remained formative for many local religious communities in the intervening decades. This research suggests that religious familism shapes how gender is symbolized and enacted in local religious communities and leads to differences in the meaning of religious participation for contemporary men and women. However, this work has been based largely on studies of white, middle-class religious communities. In this article, we analyze the relationship between family ideology and gender in three congregations chosen to exemplify those social locations where we would expect considerable distance from the 1950s "Ozzie and Harriet" ideal—one Hispanic Catholic parish, one African-American congregation in the black Church tradition, and one white liberal Protestant congregation that has adopted an open and affirming stance toward homosexuality and same-sex unions. We find considerable innovation in family-oriented rhetoric and ministry, and a range of gendered practices that prove considerably more inclusive than those found in previous research. We also find considerable symbolic affirmation of the value of more traditional gender roles and practices, particularly in the realm of the family, than we expected to find. We explore the implications of these findings for how we understand the production of gender in local religious communities and for the capacity of local religious communities to become truly gender-inclusive spaces.     

A Systems-Developmental Approach to Counselling Couples with Sexual Problems: Part II — Strategies for Intervention

We present a two-part model for the understanding and treatment of long-standing sexual problems, especially those involving desire discrepancy between partners. In Part I, we described a theoretical model for understanding the development of sexual problems in terms of the normal developmental patterns of relationships in current Western culture and the balances and imbalances that develop as a consequence of differences in styles of loving. In this Part II, we examine and describe the implications of the theoretical model for therapeutic intervention.