A walk on the wild side: Urban ethnography meets the Flâneur

Abstract

This paper focuses on the concept of the flâneur, deriving largely from the works of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, and attempts to reveal its contemporary relevance for sociological practice. The flâneur is treated as an instructive metaphor for the sociologist's relationship with modernity and urban life, and therefore as providing insight into the social, historical and theoretical contexts for the analysis of the world today. More than this, the idea of the flâneur is treated as highly instructive of research strategies confronting urban life, namely ethnography. The paper seeks to expose a critical space between ‘realist’ and ‘textual’ ethnographies and provide a locus for the discussion of associated methodological problems. A burgeoning literature and tradition of work in this area is examined which will also be of interest to the sociological theorist.     

Preschool Children's Anticipation of Recipients' Emotions Affects Their Resource Allocation

The present study investigated the impact of preschoolers' anticipation of recipients' emotions on their resource allocation decisions. Three‐ to six‐year‐old children participated in one of three different scenarios before performing a resource allocation task. In the Other condition, children were led to think about another person's emotions when being shared with or not being shared with. In the Self condition, children were led to think about their own emotion when being shared with or not being shared with. In an epistemic control condition, children were asked to think about another person's knowledge state. The results showed that children were able to attribute different emotions to the respective recipient when being shared with or not being shared with. Children in the Other condition and the Self condition were more likely to allocate resources to the other when decisions were not associated with costs. Moreover, correlational analyses demonstrated that the more negatively children rated the emotion of the recipient when not being shared with the more they were to allocate resources to the recipient. This indicates that children's inclination to allocate resources to another person can be promoted by their awareness of a recipient's negative emotions when not being shared with.     

Schooling the public on boys: the ongoing salience in media representations of the “crisis” in boys’ education

This paper explores the salience of the “crisis” in boys’ education as it is articulated in Australian print media. We will consider the ways in which this crisis is expressed through a gendered language which simultaneously represents boys as “forgotten” by teaching practices thought to be prioritising girls’ learning, and as an equity (disadvantaged) grouping who require specialised teaching methods different from those currently offered within the Australian school system. Further, we will examine the extent to which feminist-inspired reforms in education are either implicitly or explicitly referenced as an explanation for boys’ apparently poor education attainment, and relatedly consider the work of “experts” supporting claims of a pro-feminine bias that adversely affects boys’ learning outcomes, particularly those experts offering neurological or psychological/cognitive findings which assert a biological basis for gender difference. In this context, we argue that rather than advancing gender equity in schools, popular public discourse, as presented in Australian print media, reinforces and perpetuates notions of gender difference and masculine entitlement.     

《英属印度与西藏》摘译(四)

本文通过大量英文原始档案,叙述英国在两次鸦片战争得胜后,依从本土和在印商人同中国的西藏地方通商的要求,由英印选定锡金作为进入西藏的唯一途径,但派代表到边上联络或递信,都未成功。英印在锡金境内修路、廓尔喀上层趋向亲英,都激起藏民对英人的忌恨,拒绝英人入藏。英驻华公使向总理衙门屡次交涉西藏开放问题,不得结果。文中表露出这时期内英国仍然重视清朝在西藏拥有的主权地位。     

Patterns of Strategic Change in the Development of Human Resource Management

In addition to being characterized by the consistency of employment decisions one with another and their alignment with business strategy, human resource management (HRM) has also been deeply involved in the reshaping of organization structures in the 1980s, under conditions of increased external and internal complexity, and in managing other aspects of strategic change. These have contributed to the distinctive character of HRM and the shift away from a style of personnel management focused on administration and industrial relations. This evolution is explored through the concept of life-cycle change in a sample of ten firms that underwent major transformation during the 1980s.     

The New Zealand government approach to stress and fatigue

Abstract

Self-control involves inhibiting undesired behaviours and emotions, and it can be particularly relevant in the service sectors. Recent theoretical developments in cognitive and social psychology suggest that the demands on an individual of exercising self-control have an effect as a source of stress at work. In turn, burnout could be associated with being unable to meet those demands. It was expected that cognitive control deficits, as assessed by a questionnaire measure of self-reported failures in perception, memory, and action, would function as a vulnerability factor in the relationship between self-control demands and indicators of job strain. Data from 630 staff members of a German municipal administration revealed significant main effects of both self-control demands and cognitive control deficits on the burnout dimensions of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Both predictors were positively related to burnout. In addition, the results provided clear evidence of the vulnerability hypothesis of cognitive control deficits. By way of contrast, musculoskeletal complaints did not reflect similar main and interactive effects of self-control demands and cognitive control deficits. The requirements for self control in the service sector are expected to increase as the sector expands, and the practical implications for this are discussed.     

Family Therapy — An Enduring Passion: An Interview With Michael Locke

Michael has been involved in family therapy since 1975. He is a past president of the Queensland Association for Family Therapists (QAFT), and for fifteen years was an assessor for the ANZJFT. During this time he has been steadily training, and conducting his practice. Mike's involvement at Centacare has made him part of one of the longest‐running reflecting team projects in Brisbane. The interview with Michael was playful, unpredictable and free from stifling earnestness. Chris Lobsinger interviewed Michael Locke in late November 2002.     

Reconstructing rurality and community: plantation forestry in Victoria, Australia

Changes in land use are a common response to deterioration in the economic viability of farming. While diversification into other agricultural land uses apparently takes place with little consternation or resistance, the development of plantation forestry on agricultural land is often accompanied by concern and controversy. What sets plantation forestry apart from agriculture is that it often involves new forms of ownership and control, it is accompanied by changes in population, and it transforms the production landscape. The development of plantation forestry has become increasingly commonplace in many parts of rural Australia, and it has been met with mixed reactions from rural communities. Our interest was to explore the outlook and perspectives on forestry within a rural locality—Branxholme in the State of Victoria—that is experiencing relatively rapid land-use change into planted forests. We provide a synopsis of community reactions to land-use change. The social construction of change is reported at one level in relation to well-established elements—population, service provision, and employment. Underlying our analysis, though, is an attempt to understand the social construction of change in relation to the higher-order concepts of rurality and community.