Intergroup Competition and Attitudes Toward Immigrants and Immigration: An Instrumental Model of Group Conflict

High levels of worldwide migration paired with increasingly negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration in host countries indicate that it is crucial to gain an understanding of the bases of these attitudes. This article discusses one determinant of negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration: perceived competition for resources. We present our instrumental model of group conflict, which suggests that competition for resources, and attempts to remove this competition, are important determinants of intergroup attitudes and behavior. We then review relevant research on perceived competition and attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. We conclude by discussing the implications of this research for attempts to alleviate tension between immigrants and members of host populations, and for our more general model of group conflict.     

Canadian Campus Smoking Policies: Investigating the Gap Between Intent and Outcome From a Student Perspective

Abstract

Background: Young adults remain the earliest legal target for the tobacco industry. Against this, the existence of smoking policies would appear to offer some protection to students on campus. However, little research has been conducted into the outcomes of such policies from a student perspective. Methods: The authors conducted 8 focus groups at 4 selected Canadian undergraduate campuses to investigate student perceptions and behaviors resulting from campus smoking policies. Results: Results indicated that student smoking behaviors are minimally impacted by campus smoking policies due to seriously compromised implementation and enforcement. Conclusions: These findings imply that the presence of campus smoking policies and claims of “smoke-free” campuses should not be misinterpreted as achievement and without renewed focus and adequate tobacco control infrastructure, it will remain possible for young adults to initiate and maintain tobacco smoking on campus.     

Connecting and Strengthening Young Aboriginal Men: A Family Wellbeing Pilot Study

A significant proportion of young people in Australia are currently not being engaged in school and other social systems. This article presents the results of a mixed-methods study of a pilot Family Wellbeing intervention designed to enhance the social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) of young Aboriginal men and improve engagement in education, employment, and other social participation. A questionnaire incorporating the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale and respondent self-assessment SEWB questions was administered to program participants pre and post intervention (N = 30) and qualitative data were collected from program organisers (N = 6). The results suggest that the Family Wellbeing intervention has the capacity to make a marked contribution to the SEWB of young Aboriginal men; participants experienced strong improvement in capacity to manage relationships, engagement in education and employment, and mental and physical health. The factors that enabled the program to be adapted to the target group and setting are documented.     

Safety as a Fifth Dimension in Supervision: Stories from the Frontline

Child and family practice is recognised as a field of social work that has become increasingly complex. While evidence is growing in relation to effective supervision, there has been little research about the attributes of an effective supervisor, or the components of effective supervision. This paper reports on research undertaken in Victoria, Australia, which explored practitioners’ and supervisors’ experiences of effective supervision in this field. Data collection involved in-depth interviews with experienced supervisors and supervisees in order to explore the concept of effective supervision from participants’ perspectives. The data were systematically interrogated using a thematic inductive process, designed to enhance the voice of participants in the research. The study findings confirmed the complexity and centrality of the supervisory relationship, with the experience of a safe supervisory relationship proving essential. The importance of contemporary knowledge, leadership skills, and an enabling organisational and community context were also highlighted.     

Sexual Victimization and Sex-Related Drinking Motives: How Protective is Emotion Regulation?

One in five college women experience sexual victimization (SV), and SV severity is associated with subsequent psychological distress, including sex-related distress. SV severity may also be associated with drinking motives to cope with sex-related distress and to enhance sex (sex-related drinking motives [SRDMs]), particularly if individuals suffer from emotion regulation (ER) difficulties. College women (N = 151) completed a survey assessment of ER, SV history, childhood sexual abuse (CSA), and SRDMs. Twelve regression models assessed six facets of ER as moderators between SV severity and SRDMs. Among women with no or low levels of prior SV severity, women with greater access to ER strategies were less likely to endorse drinking to cope SRDMs. At higher levels of SV severity, women at all levels of access to ER strategies were equally likely to endorse drinking to cope SRDMs, suggesting that access to ER strategies did not mitigate motivations to drink to cope with sex-related distress for these women. Women with severe SV histories may benefit from interventions that build on existing ER strengths or address other factors. However, greater access to ER strategies may serve as a protective factor against SRDMs when SV severity is low.     

‘Knows how to please a man’: studying customers to understand service work

This paper argues that sociologists interested in service work in consumer culture should pay attention to customers' understandings and accounts of their experience and participation in service encounters. It takes the market for sex as a case study and counters the neglect of customers within the study of service work by analysing customer service reviews of paid‐for sex published on a UK website, Punternet. It argues that male customers, familiar with the norms of consumer culture, assess the erotic, aesthetic and emotional labours performed by female workers to make judgements of service quality which suggests that the feminised ‘good worker’ is defined as professional when they disguise the market transaction.     

Psychoanalysis and Politics Juliet Mitchell,Then and Now

Feminism and psychoanalysis have been in constant dialogue over the last four decades, and Juliet Mitchell has played a critical role in instigating and shaping that conversation. Yet her own work incorporates some of the most contentious aspects of it. Here I explore her latest book, Madmen and Medusas, to reflect upon why the relationship between her work and that dialogue remains so troubled. This exploration enables me to consider, once more, the contrasts between psychoanalytic perspectives that focus upon kinship, ideology, and symbolic structures and those which stress the historical contingency of gender categories.     

After the highwayman: Syntax and successful placement of press releases in newspapers

This study proves once again that too many press releases are poorly written and over-written, with long sentences and paragraphs, and poor syntax as well as weak and passive construction. In their use of press releases, journalists almost always have to make them simpler, shorter, easier to read, and less passive.The authors conclude that success in writing of press releases requires brevity and simplicity, shorter paragraphs, sentences, and words, and the elimination of the passive voice.Timothy Walters is an assistant professor of communication at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX. Lynne Walters is associate professor of journalism and Douglas Starr professor of journalism, both at Texas A&M University, College Station. Lynne Walters is currently a Fulbright professor at the American Journalism Center in Budapest, where her husband Timothy is also on a one-year appointment as a visiting professor.