Choosing Buddhism in Australia: towards a traditional style of reflexive spiritual engagement

There has been little dedicated sociological research on the appeal Buddhism holds for many individuals in the West. It is suggested that this absence reflects a current tendency within the discipline to highlight a new age approach to spiritual involvement and to overlook other optional styles of engagement. Such a pattern of study is concerning because the propensity to privilege the new age style would seem to be less an outcome of a coherent research agenda than a result of the currency that the idea of postmodern religion has come to assume in theoretical accounts of spiritual transformation in contemporary societies. Using data from a modest quantitative survey, the study investigates spiritual style among a sample of Australians who have developed an interest in Buddhist practice and belief. The results point to the prevalence of a traditional approach to involvement, whereby the individual decides to engage solely with Buddhism for the long duration. Given its possession of these qualities, the research goes on to examine the social patterning of spiritual commitment. The findings suggest that comprehending the social restrictions to any kind of involvement is a more pressing sociological question than explaining social divergences among the engaged.     

The Royal Commission,ATSIC and Self-Determination: A Review of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody

The National Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, in recommending fundamental reforms of government policy, proposed a primarily political and administrative notion of Aboriginal empowerment or ‘self-determination’. That is, the Commissioner argued the fundamental importance of publicly-funded Aboriginal organisations and urged governments to relax financial accountability requirements imposed on them. The paper quotes extensively from the National Report to argue that this, rather than ‘land rights’ or ‘economic independence’ is what the Commissioner meant by ‘self-determination’. But what is the place of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in such a view of Aboriginal and Islander political development? The paper demonstrates the Commissioner's ambivalence about ATSIC, and his failure consistently to project ATSIC's role when making his recommendations about health, alcohol and housing policies. It concludes by citing Commonwealth responses which indicate that ATSIC is likely to emerge as an obstacle in the Commissioner's scenario of Aboriginal and Islander political development.     

The world strike wave

The years since 1969 have seen a major increase in strike activity in nearly all the countries which collect and publish data on strikes. This wave of strikes has largely been caused by strikes over pay, probably connected both with higher rates of price inflation and a higher incidence of direct taxation on households. In some cases, the changed level of strike activity has also led to substantial changes in the structure of strikes, as we shall show for the United Kingdom and Australia, two countries which have suffered most from the strike wave.     

Ethical challenges in researching in group homes for people with severe learning difficulties: shifting the balance of power

Our aim in this paper is to open up debate about informed consent. We do this by presenting stories from group homes where staff have frustrated our research efforts and marginalised the interests of people with severe learning difficulties. We problematise normative ethics and argue that in some circumstances the basic principle of informed consent should be waived for employees of human service organisations. We maintain that, in such circumstances, researchers and an organisation’s senior managers can still act in a manner that is consistent with the broad aims of ethical regulation. We consider the role of Research Ethics Committees and suggest that in order to fully consider the conflicting interests of multiple stakeholders, the application of different ethical theories is required. A requirement for making balanced ethical judgements is to see outside the extant dominant view of ethical research standards and behaviour.     

The effect of personalization on response rates and data quality in web surveys

Personalizing correspondence has often shown to significantly increase survey response rates in mail surveys. This study experimentally tests whether personalization of email invitations acts correspondingly to web survey response rates. Also, it is investigated whether personalization influences data quality. The results of the study, using a large student sample, show that personalization significantly increases the web survey response rate by 8.6 percentage points. The data quality does not appear to be affected in any major way by personalizing the email invitations. However, the analyses do show that respondents of the personalization condition tend to respond with more social desirability bias to sensitive questions. Therefore, it is concluded that personalization has positive effects on the survey response rate, but one should carefully consider whether or not to personalize when a survey on sensitive topics is conducted.     

Analyses of multiple types of online gambling within one provider: an extended evaluation framework of actual online gambling behaviour

The aim of this article is to extend previous publications of actual online gambling behaviour that neglected involvement across multiple types of gambling and did not provide levels of at-risk involvement. Behavioural data from 27,653 subscribers of an online gambling provider (bwin) in February 2005 were reanalysed across eight products over seven months. Established involvement levels of offline gambling segregated possible online at-risk gamblers. Forty-seven percent of the sample exceeded at least one of the two most conservative thresholds. Each additionally used gambling product increased the risk of transgressing involvement cut-offs by 3.06 to 4.27 times, but type-specific risks decreased strongly after adjusting for involvement in multiple gambling types. Only Poker and Live-action betting remained significant risk factors after adjustment. Taken together, cross-product analyses of gambling patterns lay the groundwork for an extended understanding of individual online gambling behaviour and overcome the methodological artefacts of isolated analyses.     

The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man's Encounter with Liberty

Based on new archival findings and new interpretations, this article presents new perspectives of the ‘Amistad case’, bringing it back into Caribbean and Atlantic history. The article demonstrates that the captain of the Amistad, Ramón Ferrer, and his crew were transatlantic slave traders and smugglers and provides proof that the Amistad was built in Cuba. Moreover, as a result of the enormous profits of the illegal slave trade, Ferrer bought more slave ships and invested much money in the modernization of plantation production. This article also critiques one of the most influential narratives about the Atlantic crossing of the Amistad captives: that they did so in a ‘Portuguese ship named Teçora’. As the harbor lists of Havana in 1839 show, the captives came in a ship named Hugh Boyle under the American captain, J.R. Brown. All this gives new insights into the American participation in the hidden Atlantic and the significance of Cuba as a provider of contraband captives for the American South.