‘Something sensational…* The sexual diary as a tool for mapping detailed sexual behaviour

Reliable information about the detail and context of sexual behaviour is crucial for describing high-risk behaviours for the transmission of Aids/HIV, and for estimating parameters of epidemiological models. It is possible to adapt the method of systematic diary-keeping to this end and develop a tool which is also close to the subject's conceptions of the ‘chunks’ of sexual behaviour. The structure of reports of sexual behaviour is viewed as akin to linguistic structure, with a basic unit of the sexual act built into a ‘session’. Such structure leads naturally to a coding system which allows natural language accounts to be represented symbolically, and parsed and analysed formally. The coded version is easily learnt and used, and is incomprehensible to outsiders. Examples are given of its use to collect systematic data on homosexual and bisexual behaviour.     

Perceptions of drinking among Hispanic college students: how qualitative research can inform the development of collegiate alcohol abuse prevention programs

Alcohol abuse on college campuses continues to be a significant public health issue and health promotion strategies are being directed at changing the culture of collegiate drinking. From a qualitative research perspective such efforts remain uniformed since this area of research is currently dominated by large-scale surveys that illuminate little regarding undergraduate perceptions of alcohol use. This study describes results conducted on perceptions of drinking among college students, and discusses the implications these results may have for developing collegiate alcohol abuse prevention programs.     

NEO-DURKHEIMIAN ANALYSES OF ECONOMIC LIFE AND STRIFE: FROM DURKHEIM TO THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

“The task of the most advanced societies, is, then, a work of justice… Just as the ideal of lower societies was to create or maintain as intense a common life as possible, in which the individual was absorbed, so our ideal is to make social relations always more equitable… The harmony of functions and, accordingly, of existence, is at stake. Just as ancient peoples needed, above all, a common faith to live by, so we need justice…”     

A case of mistaken identity? Debating the dilemmas of street-level bureaucracy with Musil et al.

Lipsky's Street-level Bureaucracy (Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1980 Lipsky, M. 1980. Street-level Bureaucracy: The Dilemmas of Individuals in Public Service, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.  [Google Scholar]) has exerted a strong influence on the study of public service organisations. There has been a growing interest in using this perspective to understand the organisational context of social work and Musil et al.'s article in the EJSW (2004, ‘Do social workers avoid the dilemmas of work with clients?’, European Journal of Social Work, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 305–319) reflects this interest. Musil et al. argue that it is possible to identify two forms of practitioner response to the constraints of street-level bureaucracies: adapting working practices in ways that disadvantage service users or challenging working conditions in order to achieve more professionally acceptable practice. Their contribution to the debate is helpful, particularly with regard to their identification of responses by practitioners that seek to advance the interests of service users. However, we view their approach as constrained by lack of consideration of the construction of social work roles within particular street-level bureaucracies. We suggest that Lipsky's work should be approached as a tentative analytic framework, rather than as a fixed model and we argue that a productive approach to research on social workers as street-level bureaucrats is conjunctural analysis. Such analysis examines the contexts, circumstances and statuses of practitioners and how these factors shape the specific forms of street-level practice that operate in particular organisational settings. We illustrate this in our discussion of the factors that are likely to have had a bearing on the two practice settings used as case studies by Musil et al.     

Shaved heads and sonnenrads: comparing white supremacist skinheads and the alt-right in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

This article looks at two periods in the history of white supremacy in New Zealand: the short-lived explosion of skinhead groups in the 1990s, and the contemporary rise of the internet-driven alt-right. It looks at the similarities and differences between the two groups, looking at style, symbols, ideology, and behaviour. It looks at the history of these two movements in New Zealand and compares the economic and social factors that contributed to their rise, in particular how the different social class of members produced groups with near-identical ideology but radically different presentation and modes of action.