‘They are working every angle’. A qualitative study of Australian adults' attitudes towards,and interactions with,gambling industry marketing strategies

As gambling products have diversified so too have the ways in which the gambling industry has been able to target, reach and engage different sectors of the community. Limited research has explored the ways in which individuals conceptualize and respond to gambling marketing strategies. Semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with 100 adults in Victoria, Australia, who had gambled at least once during the previous year. Participants described the multi-layered ways in which gambling was marketed and were concerned about the role of marketing in ‘normalizing’ gambling for some groups. Male participants felt ‘bombarded’ and ‘targeted’ by sports bet marketing. Most women and older men actively resisted gambling marketing strategies. Older women, younger men, moderate and high risk gamblers and those from low socio-economic backgrounds were particularly influenced by incentivization to gambling. This study highlights the complex ways in which different individuals interpret and respond to gambling industry marketing strategies.     

Biological Determinism and Symbolic Interaction: Hereditary Streams and Cultural Roads

This article discusses current claims to have demonstrated a biological basis for elements of human behavior. It argues that many of these are seriously flawed by their misunderstandings of the nature of culture and social interaction, which leads to the adoption of an inappropriate realist epistemology. These issues were extensively debated during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when the intellectual and institutional boundaries between the social and biological sciences were more fluid. The arguments of that period about the role of “instinct” in human behavior are important resources for responding to the recent revival of biological determinism. As defined by Blumer and Strauss, however, symbolic interactionism has moved away from its engagement with biology. This article argues for reengagement and for a reappraisal of the historical resources available to sociologists in sifting the “imperialist” claims of biology while acknowledging the importance of embodiment as a constraint on social constructionism.     

Spatial inequality and poverty among American children

National-level statistics often mask extreme spatial differentiation in child poverty. Using county-level data from the 1990 US decennial census summary tape file, we show that child poverty is distributed unevenly over geographic space. Child poverty is concentrated in counties in Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, and the southern black belt. Child poverty rates are strongly influenced by the local industrial composition (e.g., agriculture and manufacturing), but the effects are largely indirect, operating primarily through reduced employment opportunities among adult workers. High county unemployment and underemployment rates contribute directly to children's economic deprivation, as well as indirectly by undermining the formation and stability of two-parent families. Our results highlight existing spatial differentiation and inequality in children's economic well-being, and provide a point of departure for additional research on the geography of child poverty.     

Class struggle and the transformation of the labor process

Conclusion The reorganization of work in the early decades of this century was not the simple product of a group of far-sighted industrial engineers any more than it was the direct result of an omniscient capitalist class. The basic need for this reorganization (as well as the limits of its development) was set by a broad process which can best be termed capital accumulation. But, as I have argued in this paper, the particular forms, timing, and ideological effects of this reorganization in the United States were conditioned by the patterns of interacting organizations including the state and emergent occupational groups as well as the constitutive formal and informal organizations of the capitalist class and the working class. Relegating these patterns to the status of only epiphenomenal effects of an underlying and determinant process of capital accumulation obscures important political consequences which arise from these patterns themselves. To identify only a few: The contemporary system of American industrial relations finds its origins in the forms and timing of the reorganization of work examined in this essay. Although they did not spring into existence in their fully developed forms (and although their patterns did not evidence an uninterrupted unilinear development), many of elements — and the relations between them — of contemporary American labor relations were prefigured during the period studied here. For we find, especially during the crucial period of World War I, the American labor movement in a situation of double jeopardy — heavily dependent on the state to provide the basis legal conditions for organizing, but without a party of its own to struggle politically to maintain these conditions in periods when state managers find it less expedient to continue or extend these arrangements. With a significant part of the organized labor force concentrated in war-related industry, with collective bargaining defined as a set of technical operations in which legal and engineering experts from both sides engage in processes of productivity bargaining, and with the routinization of tasks and erosion of traditional work rules conducted under the aegis of conservative trade unions, we observe, in that period, a pattern of labor relations closely corresponding to that of our own.     

Improving Australian Residential Aged Care Facilities: A Review of Minor Refurbishment Elements

The objective of this study is to identify elements pertaining to minor refurbishments of residential aged care facilities. A narrative review of relevant publications was conducted. Inductive content analysis was used to categorize coded data into major or minor refurbishment or staff practices. Further analysis identified minor refurbishment domains. There were 14 major refurbishment, seven minor refurbishment and two staff practices domains established. The minor refurbishment elements (n?=?7) identified were lighting, furniture, color and contrast, wayfinding, noise, signage, and flooring. Assessing these elements would assist residential aged care providers to prioritize the provision of minor improvements to the environment for residents.     

Hollywood power brokers: Gender and racial inequality in talent agencies

As the US labour market shifts towards project‐based, contractual and contingent work, the importance of intermediary brokerage organizations will continue to grow. In this article, I use Joan Acker's theory of gendered organizations to examine Hollywood talent agencies as one case of these powerful intermediary organizations. The power structures, promotion process, mentoring networks and discourses described by the talent agents I interviewed privilege white men. The agents interviewed for this study described their top management as being overwhelmingly composed of men, they discussed the patrimonial systems of mentorship and exclusive male networks that advantage white men, and talked about colleagues and clients in ways that valorized elite masculinity and disparaged femininity. Thus, the organizational structures and culture of these talent agencies collectively create an environment that reproduces itself, encouraging white men to join and persist, and presenting barriers to women and racial minority men. Although the focus of this article is on Hollywood talent agencies, the findings from this research help explain how inequality is reproduced in the non‐traditional work arrangements that characterize the new economy.     

Partner Violence Victimization Among Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, and Queer Youth: Associations Among Risk Factors

Literature shows that youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) experience high rates of victimization across various contexts, though there is little research specific to partner violence victimization. Given the deleterious effects of partner violence seen in both youth generally and LGBTQ adults, it is imperative to investigate partner violence among LGBTQ youth. The authors investigated the prevalence of partner violence among a community sample of LGBTQ youth (N = 140) and examined potential correlates of said violence. Approximately half of the participants had ever experienced some form of partner violence. Rates of ever experiencing partner violence were approximately 2.5 times higher for youth who had binge drank in the past month or ever experienced familial abuse and nearly three times higher for youth who had experienced an episode of homelessness in the past year. Implications for professionals who serve LGBTQ youth are discussed.     

Home Environment,But Not Socioeconomic Status,is Linked to Differences in Early Phonetic Perception Ability

Infants perceptually tune to the phonemes of their native languages in the first year of life, thereby losing the ability to discriminate non‐native phonemes. Infants who perceptually tune earlier have been shown to develop stronger language skills later in childhood. We hypothesized that socioeconomic disparities, which have been associated with differences in the quality and quantity of language in the home, would contribute to individual differences in phonetic discrimination. Seventy‐five infants were assessed on measures of phonetic discrimination at 9 months, on the quality of the home environment at 15 months, and on language abilities at both ages. Phonetic discrimination did not vary according to socioeconomic status (SES), but was significantly associated with the quality of the home environment. This association persisted when controlling for 9‐month expressive language abilities, rendering it less likely that infants with better expressive language skills were simply engendering higher quality home interactions. This suggests that infants from linguistically richer home environments may be more tuned to their native language and therefore less able to discriminate non‐native contrasts at 9 months relative to infants whose home environments are less responsive. These findings indicate that home language environments may be more critical than SES in contributing to early language perception, with possible implications for language development more broadly.     

Human Sexuality Education in Marriage and Family Therapy Graduate Programs

Given the likelihood that marriage and family therapists will encounter clients with sexual concerns, it is important to know how graduate training programs are preparing future clinicians to work with this domain of life. Sixty‐nine marriage and family therapy (MFT) program directors completed an online survey to examine how sexual health education is integrated into graduate training programs. Findings indicate that while the majority of program directors value sexuality curriculum, and most programs require at least one course in this area, there are barriers to privileging sex topics in MFT graduate programs. Barriers include few MFT faculties with expertise in human sexuality and marginalized sexual health topics. Implications for training MFT graduate students and their work with future clients are discussed.     

‘Determined to breastfeed’: A case study of exclusive breastfeeding using interpretative phenomenological analysis

Background

Given the significant benefits of breastfeeding, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommend exclusive breastfeeding for six months. Despite numerous strategies aimed at increasing the percentage of babies who are exclusively breastfed, Australia currently has one of the lowest six-month exclusive breastfeeding rates in the developed world. Notably, most research focuses on the early postnatal period (birth-two months) yet the largest decline in exclusive breastfeeding rates is observed between two and six months.