Comparative Ignorance and the Ellsberg Paradox

We investigate the evaluation of known (where probability is known) and unknown (where probability is unknown) bets in comparative and non-comparative contexts. A series of experiments support the finding that ambiguity avoidance persists in both comparative and non-comparative conditions. The price difference between known and unknown bets is, however, larger in a comparative evaluation than in separate evaluation. Our results are consistent with Fox and Tversky's (1995) Comparative Ignorance Hypothesis, but we find that the strong result obtained by Fox and Tversky is more fragile and the complete disappearance of ambiguity aversion in non-comparative condition may not be as robust as Fox and Tversky had supposed.     

“The loss was traumatic… some healthcare providers added to that”: Women’s experiences of miscarriage

Background

Miscarriage is a common event in Australia and is estimated to occur in up to one in four confirmed pregnancies. Prior research has demonstrated that miscarriage is associated with significant distress, grief and loss, and in some cases clinically significant levels of depression, anxiety, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Despite these consequences for women’s emotional and mental health, studies have commonly found that women feel that healthcare providers often lack empathy, support, and acknowledgement of their loss.

'Sifting the Wheat from the Chaff': A Two-dimensional Discriminant Analysis of Welfare State Regime Theory

Welfare state modelling has long been an important strand within comparative social policy. However, since the publication of Esping‐Andersen's ‘Worlds of Welfare’ typology, welfare state classification has become particularly prominent and a multitude of competing typologies and taxonomies have emerged. Each of these is based on different classification criteria, and each is trying to capture what a welfare state actually does. The result is that the literature is in a state of confusion and inertia as it is unclear which of these rival systems is currently the most accurate and should be taken forward, and which are not and should perhaps be left behind. This article extends Bonoli's two‐dimensional analysis of welfare state regimes by using multivariate analysis of variance and discriminant analysis to compare and contrast the various classifications on universal criteria. It also examines the usefulness of the two‐dimensional approach itself and suggests how it can be enhanced to benefit future attempts at holistic welfare state modelling. The article concludes that there are some welfare state classifications that are more useful than others, especially in terms of reflecting a two‐dimensional analysis: it thereby ‘sifts the wheat from the chaff’ in terms of welfare state regime theory.     

Inventing Tradition,Inventing Modernity: Dayak Identity in Urban Sarawak

While a good deal of ethnographic work has been done on the Dayak groups of Sarawak, much of it refers to a hinterland life that is now rare. As Sarawak's urban areas burgeon under the impetus of industrialisation, its ethnic groups are coming to understand themselves, ethnic fellows and ethnic others in new ways. In this article, I draw upon a field project involving 112 interviews of Dayaks living in Kuching to locate such changes within the context of a changing Malaysia and a changing world. What is emerging from the research is that ethnicity, in Sarawak as elsewhere, is helpfully seen as a key element in the struggle to define what is traditional versus what is modern. Increasingly, Dayaks have vested interests in what their government promotes as modern, but there are indications that these same Dayaks want input into how modernity is constructed, and wield a concept of ethnicity as a means to exercise some control over the process. Such intrigues lead us far from the 'end of culture' that proponents of globalisation have touted, as people manipulate the modern in keeping with their own ends, though not without constraints on their capacity to act.     

Re‐Organizing Work Roles in Health Care: Evidence from the Implementation of Functional Flexibility

Functional flexibility has been advocated as a mechanism for improving efficiency and service quality and is, it is argued, especially appropriate to service environments. In recent years the UK public health service has been subject to an ongoing programme of reform, designed to modernize the way in which health services are provided. A central feature of the reform involves breaking down traditional boundaries and the re‐organization of work roles. This article is concerned with examining the implementation of functional flexibility in three health‐care settings. Case‐study data are presented, focusing on the responses of employees and managers to initiatives to work more flexibly. For managers the implementation achieved efficiency gains and improvements to service quality, in spite of some resistance from employees. For employees the outcomes were more mixed. There was evidence of ‘humanization’ through greater job variety, challenge and access to training, but there were also costs in terms of intensification, role confusion and stress. The implications of these findings both for understanding the issues raised by the use of functional flexibility and for the implementation of policies in the NHS involving job redesign are discussed.     

From Lesbian Nation to Transgender Liberation: A Bisexual Feminist Perspective

This paper begins by raising some questions about the relationship between transgenderism and bisexuality within queer politics and theory, centering on an interview with the curator of the Sexual Minorities Archives in Northampton, Massachusetts. The interview focuses on the changing body of the Archives from the New Alexandria Lesbian Archives to the Sexual Minorities Archives, in relation to the changing body of the curator, Bet Power, from lesbian to female-to-male nonoperative transsexual. These texts—interview, Archives, and body—are discussed from the perspective of a bisexual feminist interviewer and in the broader contexts of queer politics and theory. The aim is to highlight the interplay of gender, sexuality, and class in one particular context and through one interviewer’s eyes. What queer readings can be made of those “plays”? And how do those “plays” illuminate some of the issues and contradictions within queer politics and theory at present?     

Young Men as Victims and Perpetrators of Violence in Northern Ireland: A Qualitative Analysis

This article explores issues of masculinity and violence in the lives of young men in disadvantaged areas in Northern Ireland. Qualitative data were collected in four focus groups, one group of young men from the Catholic community, one group of young men from the Protestant community, one group of community representatives, and one group of Young Offenders ( N = 28). Themes were extracted from the data using a grounded approach. Results indicate that social disadvantage is fundamental to experiences of violence and that young men understand the costs and benefits of a masculine identity that incorporates a capacity for violence. Discussion suggests that initiatives to reduce violent behavior should be compatible with socially and culturally acceptable constructions of masculinity.     

Body of knowledge: Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery and the blind imagination

ABSTRACT

This article examines the cultural and philosophical intersection between visual and tactile knowledge and the emergent aesthetics of modernism. In the September 1913 edition of The Museums Journal, J. A. Charlton Deas published a paper entitled “The Showing of Museums and Art Galleries to the Blind.” The text, exceptional in its historical context, complicated prevailing assumptions about acts of “visual” art and blindness. Deas details a series of experiments undertaken at Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery from 1906 to 1913 that consisted of making accessible exhibits, specimens and paintings for blind children to touch. Unprecedented at the time, these experiments recast the persistent Western belief that the eye has privileged access to knowledge, instead asserting that knowledge is embedded within material corporeality. The physical, creative and intellectual inclusion of blind people into the formerly inaccessible space of the museum was unique in its reach and offers a refreshing new perspective of what those (authoritatively visual) spaces could be. Sunderland, a region which tends to be discursively separated from the ambitions and experiments of modernism, was at the center of modernist discussions about knowledge, sight and touch; and, disrupts modernism’s silence with respect to acknowledging unprecedented regional developments such as those detailed in “Showing.”     

Theoretical Perspectives of Male Sexual Abuse: Conceptualization of a Case Study

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the traumatic impact that sexual abuse can have on a young male's development by addressing mediating dispositions that can render a child vulnerable to the effects of sexual abuse. Consideration is given to three different theoretical perspectives that are not exclusive to male victims but shed light on the impact that sexual abuse can have on the development of a young boy. These perspectives include early family relationships and attachment theory, developmental psychopathology, and trauma theory. These theoretical lenses provide a conceptual understanding into why some victims are vulnerable to the effects of sexual abuse. Each theoretical view is applied to a case study of an adolescent male with a history of early trauma and sexual abuse. Clinical implications are discussed.