Risk-Based Approaches to Deal with Uncertainty in a Data-Poor System: Stakeholder Involvement in Hazard Identification for Marine National Parks and Marine Sanctuaries in Victoria, Australia

Management responsibilities for the system of marine national parks and sanctuaries declared in Victoria, Australia in 2002 have created imperatives for robust, scientifically defendable approaches to identifying threats to valued ecological attributes of the parks, setting management priorities, and developing monitoring systems. We are developing a protocol for ecological risk assessment in the parks that has due regard for the perception of risks by individuals, and ensures that stakeholder values are an intrinsic part of decision making. The inclusive and transparent protocol provides an opportunity for stakeholder involvement in the identification of valued attributes, as well as in the assessment of associated risks. Our approach brings together ideas about how science enters the community engagement domain in ways that promote collaboration and transparency in decision making. A series of stakeholder workshops across the state drew on the expertise of agency staff, community groups, fishers, industry representatives, academics, and knowledgeable park neighbors to identify hazards of major concern in the parks. Many hazards involved predictable, tangible threats like pollution and exotic species, but the approach also identified a number of less obvious threats related to governance issues and the knowledge-base for the parks. Importantly, the workshops with their broad range of stakeholders identified threats not previously considered by the management agency in its internal assessments, and several of these "new" threats are already the subject of action by the agency. The deliberate incorporation of local knowledge and local networks in the risk assessment process also provided opportunities for greater engagement of stakeholders with the management agency.     

Do you feel powerless when a patient refuses medication?

1. Because a client legally has the right to refuse medication, the nurse can only recommend, advise, suggest, or urge the patient to comply. Consequently, it is important to understand the nurse's response to patient refusal of medication. 2. Overall, nurses were more apt to identify with indirect indicators than they were to identify words that address the concept directly (control and powerlessness). 3. The most common hazard identified in a medication refusal event was the potential for injury, and the individuals most at risk were the nurse giving the medication and other personnel on the unit. 4. The most prominent nursing response to medication refusal was counseling. Nearly all the nurse subjects believed that the medication refusal event negatively influenced nursing care, the patient/nurse interaction, and patient teaching.     

Interethnic Ideology, Intergroup Perceptions, and Cultural Orientation

We examined endorsement of multicultural, assimilation, and colorblind ideologies, including their relations to stereotyping and in-group bias, among community samples of Latinos and non-Latino Whites. Participants also completed measures of their orientations to Latino and non-Latino White cultures. Analyses indicated that participants endorsed multiculturalism more strongly than colorblindness and colorblindness more strongly than assimilation. Although Latinos endorsed multiculturalism more strongly than did Whites, ratings of colorblindness and assimilation did not differ. Both groups exhibited in-group bias and out-group homogeneity. However, multiculturalism was associated with lower in-group bias. Further, Latinos who more strongly endorsed multiculturalism perceived less within group variability (i.e., had stronger stereotypes), whereas the reverse was true for Whites. Finally, analyses of cultural orientation measures indicated that ethnicity is not synonymous with cultural orientation; Latinos were equally oriented to Latino and White cultures, overall, and Latino and White American orientations were unrelated.     

Gender and Compulsory Sterilization Programs in America: 1907–1950

Current scholarship on compulsory sterilization and gender focuses almost exclusively on women as the targets of these programs. As Philip Reilly (1991:98) indicates, however, there occurred a "dramatic change" in the gender of those targeted for compulsory sterilizations in America. Prior to 1928 men were more likely to be sterilized, but, after 1928, women became far more likely to be sterilized. I use this shift as a focal point in examining the changing role of gender. First, I show the ways in which rationales for sterilization differed by gender. Then, turning to analyze the shift, I argue that the medical and legal professions criticized the rationales for male sterilization, yet these professions and others tended to be more supportive of female sterilization, imagining sterilization to have many advantages for society and women. Superintendents, simultaneously responding to external pressure and shaping sterilization to meet their own interests, transformed sterilization into a program which focused largely upon women.     

Critical Commentary: Happy Shopper? The Problem with Service User and Carer Participation

This critical commentary assesses the consequences and impactof forms of seemingly widespread, constructive and altruisticservice user and carer participation (SUCP) within social work.In particular, and whilst drawing from Gramsci's understandingof hegemony and Levitas's critical interpretation of socialexclusion, it is proposed that SUCP serves the interests ofgovernment, affiliated organizations, including those withinsocial work and social care, and, perhaps more generally, thedisparate needs generated by the neo-liberal-inspired socialcare market. Arguably, there are also related substantive aspectsof SUCP that are problematic on ethical grounds—includingthe possibility that participation inadvertently increases socialinequalities by justifying and promoting hegemonic agendas.Some suggestions are briefly made regarding how to move SUCPforward, including difficult questions that must be asked aboutwhether or not SUCP can confront forms of structural disadvantageand oppression.     

The Synergy and Substance of Organizational and Community Change in the Response to Crime and Conflict: The Emergence and Potential of Restorative Justice

The story of the one-hundredth monkey has generated new ways of thinking about cultural transformation. Different experiences and new understandings of justice have emerged in a variety of cultural contexts and led to a rather sudden multi-national shift in thinking about the collective response to crime, harm and conflict that raises broader theoretical questions about restorative justice as a social movement or innovation. This article will describe the restorative justice movement in an historical context and its emergence into a worldwide phenomenon. The authors also examine the role of communities, or “instrumental communities” in public organizations.