Population and Development

Book reviewed in this article: Fertility and Mortality: Theory, Methodology and Empirical Issues. Edited by K. Mahadevan with P.J. Reddy and D.A. Naidu Sex Roles, Population and Development in West Africa. Edited by Christine Oppong Population and Development Projects in Africa. Edited by John I. Clarke, Mustafa Khogali and Leszek A. Kosinski for International Geographical Union, Commission on Population Geography     

‘Let's Talk About Children’: Investigating the Use of a Family‐focused Intervention in the Gambling Support Services Sector

The family‐focused mental health intervention, ‘Let's Talk About Children,’ has positively influenced the lives of families affected by parental mental illness. This paper outlines the use of this brief, strengths‐based intervention for parents with gambling and other co‐occurring issues from the gamblers’ support services sector. Over a six‐month period, a training manual and accompanying resources were adapted for the gamblers’ support services sector and a targeted training session developed. Nine problem gambling counsellors from three Victorian gambling support services trialled the Let's Talk About Children intervention over a four‐month period. Qualitative data were gathered through focus groups, interviews, and practice enquiry groups to determine the impact of the Let's Talk About Children model for gambling support services. The results are presented as ‘practice wisdoms and recommendations’ reporting on the impact of the trial and to provide some guidance to support others in the implementation of a specific family‐focused intervention. This paper reports on the first exploratory trial of Let's Talk About Children for the gambler's support services sector in Australia.     

Participation, Authority, and Distributive Equity in East Timorese Development

The anthropology of development seeks to understand the complex encounter between international and national development regimes and local patterns of livelihood and being. As science and development move objects, at once material and discursive, through the networks of the social to reach “impoverished” others, local groups reach out to development actors to evaluate and appropriate their resources and accept or redirect those efforts. In a political interplay of disciplinary measures and localizing translations, development projects are re-invented, or aspects thereof refused, just as development actors strain to keep projects on track. With input from science and technology studies, this article explores the participatory, authoritative, and distributive dimensions to agricultural development in East Timor. Across four cases studies—a dairy, a greenhouse, a seed development program, and a permanent farming initiative—the politics of projects are compared and discussed within the broader context of colonial and postcolonial development. The article is based on a total of 1 year of fieldwork conducted in 2003, 2008, and 2009.     

What Determines Trust in Information About Food-Related Risks? Underlying Psychological Constructs

Trust in risk information about food related-hazards may be an important determinant of public reactions to risk information. One of the central questions addressed by the risk communication literature is why some individuals and organizations are trusted as sources of risk information and others are not. Industry and government often lack public trust, whereas other sources (for example, consumer organizations, the quality media, medical doctors) are highly trusted. Problematically, previous surveys and questionnaire studies have utilized questions generated by the investigators themselves to assess public perceptions of trust in different sources. Furthermore, no account of the hazard domain was made. In the first study reported here, semistructured interviewing was used to elicit underpinning constructs determining trust and distrust in different sources providing food-related risk information ( n = 35). In the second study, the repertory grid method was used to elicit the terminology that respondents use to distinguish between different potential food-related information sources ( n = 35), the data being submitted to generalised Procrustes analysis. The results of the two studies were combined and validated in survey research ( n = 888) where factor analysis indicated that knowledge in itself does not lead to trust, but that trusted sources are seen to be characterised by multiple positive attributes. Contrary to previous research, complete freedom does not lead to trust—rather sources which possess moderate accountability are seen to be the most trusted.     

Methodological Approaches to Assessing Risk Perceptions Associated with Food-Related Hazards

The psychometric approach developed by Slovic and his co-workers has been effectively used to assess risk perceptions associated with different food-related hazards. However, further examination (using questionnaire data and partial correlation techniques) has indicated that technological hazards are highly differentiated from lifestyle hazards, in terms of both hazard control and knowledge about the hazard. Optimistic bias was also seen to vary between hazards. Further research has focused on a particular hazard, genetic engineering. Risk perceptions associated with genetic engineering are underpinned by ethical concern and questions relating to perceived need for the technology, as well as perceptions of risk or harm. However, increasing the specificity of hazard stimuli was found to alter the factor structure of underlying risk perceptions. The utility of preference mapping procedures in determining individual differences in trust in risk regulators is also discussed.     

Encyclopaedic Desire: A Response to Gates

“We Spend Our Years as a Tale That Is Told”: Oral Historical Narrative in a South African Chiefdom by Isabel Hofmeyr. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann; Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press; London: James Currey, 1994.

Liquor and Labour in Southern Africa, edited by Jonathan Crush and Charles Ambler. Athens: Ohio University Press; and Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1992.

Politics and performance: Theatre, Poetry, and Song on Southern Africa, edited by Liz Gunner, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994.

In the Wake of the Affluent Society: An Exploration of Post‐Development by Serge Latouche; translated and introduced by Martin O'Connor &; Rosemary Arnoux; London: Zed, 1993.     

Constructing family relationships: Intimacy, harmony and social value in accounts of sheltered retirement community residents

This research was undertaken at a West Coast USA sheltered retirement community where fifteen able elder residents were interviewed about their personal relationships and communication with peers, family and younger people. This paper focuses on respondent's discursive constructions of their relationships with family—particularly adult grandchildren. The analysis shows how respondents' talk about family relationships is largely positive and discusses how respondents build an image of intergenerational solidarity through their accounts of frequency and quality of contact with grandchildren. Some of the ways that intergenerational solidarity is communicated in the context of the interview are: discounting of family problems; cataloguing achievements and talking about grandchildren with pride; demonstrating that they–the elder–are valued; and accounts of how problematic aspects of their relationships are avoided in intergenerational talk.