Neoliberalism,Individualisation and Community: Regional Restructuring in Australia

Since the early 1980s, Australian governments have embraced neoliberal policies as a means of improving the nation's global economic competitiveness. The impacts of such policies in regional areas have been quite profound, leading to socio-economic polarisation, population loss, and the growth of anti-globalisation sentiments. In this paper, we examine the process of regional restructuring that arises from this trajectory in Australia, and examine current policy responses to change under the neoliberal regime. We argue that while many such responses are individualistic, and based upon policies of personal responsibility, self-advancement and entrepreneurship, others are imbued with the language of community, social capital and collective action. The existence of individualism and community within the same policy agenda may appear contradictory, yet it is suggested that neoliberalism brings together these two opposing discourses through a process of what Nikolas Rose calls ‘governing through community’. We explore how neoliberalism underpins community approaches to regional development in Australia, arguing that such strategies do little to counter the negative forces of globalisation in non-metropolitan parts of the country.     

Understanding Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa from an Attachment Perspective

Using the Attachment History Questionnaire (AHQ), 30 female anorectic and bulimic inpatients were compared to a control group of 31 primarily female social work students to determine the connection between anorexia and bulimia and early childhood attachment relationships. As predicted, the results indicated that the anorectics and bulimics differed significantly from the controls on all four subfactors of the AHQ: secure attachment base (Factor 1), parental discipline (Factor 2), threats of separation (Factor 3), and peer affectional support (Factor 4). Post hoc comparisons between the eating-disordered group and the controls on the fifty-one individual items of the AHQ showed that within Factor 1, the items involving feelings of being unwanted, alone, helpless, and of shame and guilt, clearly and significantly discriminated between groups. Within Factor 3, the item addressing the child feeling responsible for parental happiness produced significance. The results of this study are interpreted in relation to John Bowlby's attachment theory and the clinical implications are discussed.     

Re-Figuring Marked Bodies on the Borders: Breast Cancer and “Femininity”

The author discusses writings by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Kathleen Martindale, Audre Lorde, and Barbara Rosenblum on their experiences with breast cancer, and explores their articulations of the impact mastectomy has had on their sense of femininity in relation to their own identities and body images, and in relation to cultural expectations, and how others perceive them. Their identification of the body as socially produced, and as a site of contestation and multiple struggles, offers a strategic site from which to engage with the violent gender-inflected notion of the ideal female body. Themes addressed include: the process of writing embodied experience to make it real, the body's role in the process of identity formation, the culturally constructed significance of appearance to the individual's sense of femininity, the value of the female body in a capitalistic society, and heterosexism in society and in the health care system.     

International Mobility of New Migrants to Australia1

Statistical models for residential spells and mobility data are used to examine the probability of repeat and return migration and ongoing mobility among New Zealand and British citizens who migrated to Australia between August 1999 and July 2002. The paper focuses on identifying the relationship between ongoing mobility patterns and personal and environmental circumstances, including institutional barriers to immigration and a discrete change in the social welfare eligibility of New Zealanders in Australia. The results confirm that ongoing migration patterns are far more complex than traditional migration paradigms suggest, with repeat and return migration and ongoing mobility being an important part of actual migration experiences.