Ethical Practice and Narratives of Resistance to Violence: Becoming Resilient Part 2

This paper is the second part of a previous publication in this journal and is based on a plenary address at the 30th Australian Family Therapy Conference in 2009. It develops the idea of ethical practice in therapy for men and boys with a history of significant violence and abuse. This fosters a connection with resilience that resists or refuses to participate in historical narratives that support violence and its effects. In the paper, I provide several therapeutic examples of working with narratives of violence and present a theory of resilience and ethical practice drawing on the ideas of Deleuze. This helps to understand resilience as a process of ethical agency, creative renewal, and the production of expansive difference.     

Do Term Limits Help Women Get Elected?

Objective . We examine the proposition put forward by term limit advocates and some scholars that the implementation of term limits will lead to increases in the numbers of women serving in state legislatures. Methods . Data are examined for all state house races in the six states that implemented term limits in 1998. Results . Although there was some variation across the states, the overall number of women serving in state house seats that were term-limited actually decreased following the election. Conclusions . More research is needed as more states implement term limits in future elections. However, our analysis suggests that term limits, unaccompanied by efforts to recruit women to run for term-limited seats, may be insufficient to increase the number of women state legislators.     

Gold coasters overseas, 1880–1919: With specific reference to their activities in Britain

One effect of the British conquest of the Gold Coast was an acceleration in the exodus of members of Euro‐African families from the coastal townships to the British West African empire and to the imperial metropole. Using Gold Coast sources, in the main, to identify these expatriates and to ascertain the nature and purpose of their migration overseas, the article suggests that while the exodus may be interpreted as a nationalist response to colonialism, it also represented a pragmatic and indeed successful reaction in defence of the political and economic interests of an emergent Euro‐African Society, whose origins may be traced to the early phase of ‘informal’ imperialism, associated with the promotion of ‘Commerce and Christianity’ in the Gold Coast.     

Social Work,Social Policy and the Journal

There are problems associated with mainstream sociological and criminological research into youth violence. Conventional frameworks ignore the interpretive component of violence and thus fail to treat youth violence as a form of action in which motivations, moral impulses and feelings are constitutive of the action. Young people historically have had little opportunity to enter into dominant discourses about violence. This paper reports on the accounts of 29 young people who have been directly involved in violence. Those young people were asked to define violence and describe what personal and collective meanings they attach to their actions.     

Beyond Performance Enhancement: Polypharmacy among Collegiate Users of Steroids

Abstract

The extremely low prevalence of steroid use among college students makes it virtually impossible to conduct analyses on any single college campus. By studying a cohort of 58,625 college students from 78 institutions that administered the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey in 1990 and 1991, a critical mass of 175 users on which it was possible to conduct statistical analyses was identified. Compared with a randomly selected group of nonusers, the steroid users reported consuming dramatically more alcohol and demonstrated higher rates of binge drinking. In addition, a significantly higher percentage of steroid users reported using tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, sedatives, hallucinogens, opiates, inhalants, and designer drugs. A higher percentage of steroid users than nonusers also reported experiencing negative consequences as a result of substance abuse, and a greater percentage of the steroid users reported family histories of abuse of alcohol and other drugs. Implications from the standpoint of student development are discussed.     

IMAGINING 'ASIA-PACIFIC': FORGETTING POLITICS AND COLONIALISM IN THE MAGICAL WATERS OF THE PACIFIC. AN AMERICANIST CRITIQUE

This essay offers a critical genealogy of US imperial dynamics in the Pacific in the context of examining the discursive tactics of APEC and the emerging hegemony of transnational capital in the region. Moving from Honolulu to Taipei and Canberra in focus, it tracks the dynamics of globalization and localization under which Asia-Pacific is being constructed into postcolonial if not post-political identity as a coherent region of teleological belonging. Literary and cultural producers are invoked, to the contrary, in order to wrest Asia/Pacific into critical self-consciousness of regional unevenness, alternative possibility, spatial contestation, and desublimated otherness. Asia/Pacific can thus become the signifier for a cultural studies in which opposition, location, indigeneity, and alternative discursive framings of the region can come into contemporary critical play.     

Child protection pathways for newborn infants: A multi-disciplinary retrospective chart review of an Irish maternity hospital’s records

In Ireland, little is known about mothers and infants where child welfare and protection concerns arise during the perinatal period. This study explores, for the first time, perinatal child protection. A retrospective audit was carried out of a large maternity hospital's medical social work, neonatal and psychiatric files for a five-year period from 2016 to 2020. The study identified 99 children, born to 86 mothers, who were either subject to a child protection conference; placed for adoption; discharged to someone other than the mother; or discharged home under supervision. The study found that two-thirds of the children were discharged to their mother's care. When compared to national data, the health indicators for this cohort of mothers and children painted a grim picture. The maternal profiles identified high prevalence of mental health and addiction difficulties and domestic violence. The study found evidence of supports provided to the mothers to enable them to care for their infants while they remained in the hospital and during an initial discharge from hospital. However, a significant number of the mothers were not caring for their children when viewed across a longer time frame. Dedicated multi-disciplinary clinics and improved data systems were identified as of importance.