Whom can you trust? The politics of ‘grassing’ on an inner city housing estate

This paper derives from an ongoing research project concerned to explore how people living in, going to work in, attending school in, high crime areas manage their routine daily lives. It focuses on one of our research areas in which we argue that the question of the 'fear of crime' is much better understood through an appreciation of how the question of trust manifests itself in that community. In other words, whom you trust, when, and by how much, mediate the way in which people living in this area manage their routine daily lives and within that their sense of security.     

Michel Maffesoli's sociology of modernity and postmodernity: an introduction and critical assessment

This article introduces and criticises Michel Maffesoli's attempt to formulate a post-modern sociology for post-modern times. While arguing that Maffesoli's sociology is suggestive and insightful about many aspects and features of late-modern life this article, nonetheless, questions whether Maffesoli's approach should be accepted as a fruitful sociological paradigm which others should take up uncritically. Moreover, it will be argued that Maffesoli's approach is an ultimately incoherent and one-sided approach to studying the ‘postmodern condition’ in that it does not escape the problem of ‘performative contradiction’ identified by the likes of Habermas, Giddens and Touraine. That is to say, Maffesoli has produced a one-sided and flattened out image of modernity that cannot account for the possibility of social and political critique.     

South Australia's First Family Therapist — Jeff Gerrard Remembers: An Interview

Jeff Gerrard can claim the distinction of being the first family therapist in South Australia. Early on in his career as a psychiatrist he explored the growing field of psychotherapy overseas and observed, studied, and trained with some of the historical greats in the area. When he returned to South Australia in the early 70s, it seems to have been a natural step for him to begin practising family therapy and training other health professionals in the theory and practice of family therapy. The early training that Jeff led at the South Australian Children's Hospital enabled a cooperation between a number of early family therapists, such as Michael White and Anne Sved Williams, to train the first cohort of people who would later go on to become significant contributors to the family therapy field in Australia. In this interview, Lorraine Read invites Jeff to explore his early contributions to the field and to discuss the training and supervision experiences which were/are important in his development as a family therapist.     

Suicide ideation among a stratified sample of rural and urban adolescents

This study examined factors associated with sucidal ideation among a stratified sample of rural and urban adolescents. Data was collected on 1,728 eighth and tenth grade southern Nevada students from 23 schools. No overall differences were found between rural and urban adolescents, although results did indicate that grade, gender, and school achievement variations exist between rural and urban student populations. Implications for social workers and other youth service providers are discussed.     

Looking Forward Not Looking Back: The Evaluation of Community Living

This article outlines the development of evaluative methods within the field of mental handicap services. It suggests that evaluators have too often taken for granted the tacit assumptions underlying service models, using these to determine the criteria for evaluating success. It argues that evaluators should be more explicit about the values they adopt, and what patterns of life services should be enabling people to achieve. By more closely linking evaluation criteria to what people with a mental handicap should achieve, evaluation can become more effective in promoting positive change in service models. The article describes an approach developed by the authors for the evaluation of the 'All-Wales Strategy for the Development of Services for Mentally Handicapped People'.     

Suicide ideation,attempts and abuse among incarcerated gang and nongang delinquents

The present study examines suicide ideation and attempts as well as reported levels of physical and sexual abuse among gang and nongang-involved incarcerated youth. The self-report survey data were collected from 334 males and 61 females who were incarcerated in Nevada youth correctional facilities in the summer of 1994. Over half (58.3 percent) of the males and nearly half (45.2 percent) of the females reported being gang members. Surprisingly high rates of abuse (more than 70 percent for both physical and sexual abuse) were found among the incarcerated females of this study. Females reported significantly more suicide attempts and were more likely to have been physically and sexually abused than males. Nongang males reported significantly more suicide attempts and were more likely to report sexual abuse than gang-involved males. Among the gang-involved delinquents, females reported significantly more suicide attempts than males. In addition, gang members who reported sexual abuse were more likely to have higher levels of suicide ideationand to have attempted suicide. Implications for youth correction specialists and social workers are discussed.The data for this study were collected under Grant #000616 from the Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station.