Reflections from the riot zone: The Fair Go Project and student engagement in a besieged community

This article describes and evaluates a pedagogical intervention aimed at improving student engagement in a very disadvantaged and low socio-economic status community in Australia. The intervention took place at a time of great community unrest and provides a contrast between wider public and media perceptions of poor communities and efforts at community renewal through education. A theoretical framework of student engagement developed in a research project into student engagement and students in poverty is introduced and then classroom changes that work within this framing are discussed. Finally, data showing results from the intervention are presented.     

Changing society's DNA codes: Democracy and the global movement for community progress measures

This paper examines some critical issues and opportunities for democracy and public policy posed by the growth of the global progress measurement movement. From the democratic perspective, these include: citizen progress measurement as a form of democratic re‐engagement; the re‐examination of democracy and the development of new indicators to define and measure a ‘healthy’ democracy; and the demonstration of clear linkages between healthy regimes, and broader individual and societal wellbeing. In public policy, the global movement challenges two long dominant assumptions: the primacy of continuous economic growth as the key driver of wellbeing; and the ‘inevitability of progress‘. In their place, it offers a more holistic, integrated and nuanced model that recognises the interdependence of economic, social, cultural, environmental and democratic dimensions for genuine wellbeing, progress and sustainability. The paper reviews work in Australia over the past decade at both local community and national levels as examples of these trends, including the development of citizen‐engaged community planning and neighbourhood renewal schemes in which progress and wellbeing indicators play a central role; the development of state‐wide local progress measurement frameworks as part of a commitment to devolved planning and stronger local democracy; and the evolution of national progress measurement systems. The paper concludes with a proposal for a broad community engaged National Development Index (NDI) for Australia.     

A survey of recent Belgian population policy

In this article, an outline of the demographic situation of Belgium is given, stressing the different situation of the Walloon and Flemish communities. Family allowance policy in Belgium is described, and its status in a general scheme of social security legislation assessed. It is shown that family allowances have been regarded as part of a general system of social security rather than as part of population policy.     

Bodily Entanglement: Bergson and Thresholds in the Sociology of Affect

D. H. Lawrence's and Henri Bergson's systemic accounts of life in terms of material connectivity/entanglement and durational self-differentiation provide an exciting alternative to static, analytical and atomistic approaches to consciousness, the individual and the group. However, they pose important questions regarding the precise nature of boundaries in a dynamic, materially connected universe. Where does consciousness begin and end, where does the individual begin and end, where does the group begin and end? How do discrete entities emerge at all in a universe of flux, transformation and connectivity? This paper suggests that we might think in terms of dynamic 'thresholds' produced by systems of selection and limitation. Some pointers in this direction are taken from Bergson himself, but also from the work of the complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman and the neurophilosopher Gerald Edelman. One way that this might be applied in practice is demonstrated by use of a case study on African-American youth culture taken from the work of Jock Young.     

From ‘weak’ to ‘strong’ multifunctionality: Conceptualising farm-level multifunctional transitional pathways

Building on normative conceptualisations of multifunctionality as a decision-making spectrum bounded by productivist and non-productivist action and thought, this paper analyses farm-level multifunctional agricultural transitions. First, the paper suggests that it may be possible to categorise different farm types along the productivist/non-productivist multifunctionality spectrum, and that transitional potential from weak to strong multifunctionality often differs between different categories of farms and types of farm ownership. Second, the paper conceptualises multifunctional transitional processes at farm level over time, and introduces the notions of multifunctional path dependency and decision-making corridors, the latter of which can be understood as ‘bundles’ of decision-making opportunities bounded by productivist and non-productivist action and thought. The analysis suggests that system memory plays an important role in defining the likelihood of multifunctional actions, and argues that transitional ruptures—sudden breaks in transitional pathways—often characterise farm-level transitions. The paper concludes by highlighting the methodological challenges awaiting future researchers of multifunctional agricultural transitions.     

The embodiment of neoliberalism: exploring the roots and limits of the calculation of arbitrage in the entrepreneurial function

How has neoliberalism achieved its sway? We address this question by tracing an alternative history of the economic theorization of ‘entrepreneurship’ that reveals the extent to which sociological transformation is attendant upon the construction, dissemination and change of the concepts of economy. Surveying the theoretical works of luminaries such as Kirzner, Mises and Simmel and reading them alongside ethnographies of the practices that instantiate a neo‐liberal world we see the ways in which entrepreneurship is fashioned, realized and ramified and, in so doing, reveal new fault lines for exploitation by those who would rather seek to escape its pernicious embrace. For it is the notion of entrepreneurship that enables both the functioning of an apparently objective market to best deploy societal resources and the continuing capture of the benefits of such by a privileged elite who seemingly bear its mark in the most vivid of terms. By unpacking entrepreneurship we unpack the market, which is a vital first step in any attempt to trammel its seemingly inevitable and unstoppable march through an otherwise undefended social.     

Reducing Overconfidence in the Interval Judgments of Experts

Elicitation of expert opinion is important for risk analysis when only limited data are available. Expert opinion is often elicited in the form of subjective confidence intervals; however, these are prone to substantial overconfidence. We investigated the influence of elicitation question format, in particular the number of steps in the elicitation procedure. In a 3‐point elicitation procedure, an expert is asked for a lower limit, upper limit, and best guess, the two limits creating an interval of some assigned confidence level (e.g., 80%). In our 4‐step interval elicitation procedure, experts were also asked for a realistic lower limit, upper limit, and best guess, but no confidence level was assigned; the fourth step was to rate their anticipated confidence in the interval produced. In our three studies, experts made interval predictions of rates of infectious diseases (Study 1, n = 21 and Study 2, n = 24: epidemiologists and public health experts), or marine invertebrate populations (Study 3, n = 34: ecologists and biologists). We combined the results from our studies using meta‐analysis, which found average overconfidence of 11.9%, 95% CI [3.5, 20.3] (a hit rate of 68.1% for 80% intervals)—a substantial decrease in overconfidence compared with previous studies. Studies 2 and 3 suggest that the 4‐step procedure is more likely to reduce overconfidence than the 3‐point procedure (Cohen's d = 0.61, [0.04, 1.18]).     

Sex offenses against female children perpetrated by men who are not pedophiles

Previous research and clinical impression indicate two possible predictors of gynephilic preference among offenders against female children: (1) the occurrence of the offense within a father‐daughter (or stepdaughter) relationship, and (2) victimization of only one child. Validation of these putative predictors was by phallometric test results of a total of 187 male adult subjects: 95 “incest” offenders against female children, 54 such non‐incest offenders, and 38 offenders against adult females. Each of these predictors showed to be valid in its own right, and the interaction of the two did not increase prediction potential.     

Standards of Care for Research with Participants Who Identify as LGBTQ+

ABSTRACT

The following standards of care have been developed to support the continued development of research with individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus individuals whose orientations differ from those who identify as heterosexual and cisgender (LGBTQ+). The guidelines presented are conceived as a working document that reflect the current state and body of knowledge that can inform and provide reference for counseling research, and can be used in the preparation and training of future researchers. The standards outlined in this document will continue to evolve as does research, LGBTQ+ communities, and the sociopolitical climate.     

Characterizing variation of nonparametric random probability measures using the Kullback–Leibler divergence

This work characterizes the dispersion of some popular random probability measures, including the bootstrap, the Bayesian bootstrap, and the Pólya tree prior. This dispersion is measured in terms of the variation of the Kullback–Leibler divergence of a random draw from the process to that of its baseline centring measure. By providing a quantitative expression of this dispersion around the baseline distribution, our work provides insight for comparing different parameterizations of the models and for the setting of prior parameters in applied Bayesian settings. This highlights some limitations of the existing canonical choice of parameter settings in the Pólya tree process.