Making the Invisible Visible: Disability Inclusive Development in Solomon Islands

International and national level disability inclusive discourse, policy and strategy typically render invisible the institutional structures, political economies and socio-cultural power relations that constitute the lived experience of disability. The lack of robust information on disability extends these theoretical blind spots to the absence of disability in official statistics, political dialogue and social policy. Empirically grounded, inclusive research that recognises disability as embedded in globalised political economies and culturally specific power relations is required to address the theoretical, statistical and programmatic invisibility of disability. Such research will provide a solid knowledge base on which to build effective inclusive interventions.     

Love,sex and the spaces in-between: Kepri wives and their cross-border husbands

In the Riau Islands of Indonesia significant numbers of women have entered into marriages with men from the nearby countries of Singapore and Malaysia. In many cases, neither spouse migrates after marriage: instead, husband and wife continue to reside in their country of origin. Their close geographical proximity means that the couples can see each other regularly while at the same time taking advantage of the economic opportunities presented by living on different sides of the border. These cross-border marriages challenge the normative model of the nuclear cohabiting couple/family. Our research into the motivations and desires of these cross-border couples living in the Riau borderlands reveals that space and mobility mediate their interactions with the Singaporean, Malaysian and Indonesian states, thus producing localized accounts of citizenship in which class mobility (rather than physical mobility) becomes the dominant frame through which they view state regulation of marriage and migration. This research challenges the state-centric tendencies in some of the scholarly literature on international and transnational marriage which places overwhelming emphasis on the ability of states to regulate access to citizenship rights. In presenting a view of inconsistent and sometimes incoherent states, we highlight the significant differences between perceptions of state influence and actual state practices in relation to the regulation of international marriages.     

Towards Law and Music

Through a review of Sara Ramshaw’s, Justice as Improvisation, the essay evaluates recent scholarly directions in the interdisciplinary field of law and music. The essay considers both methodological and epistemological questions motivating this scholarship, and argues that there yet remains the opportunity to pursue with even greater specificity the meaning of music, in terms of its own vocabulary and genre. The new field of law and music is slowly but surely combining these formal considerations with an ever richer vocabulary, and a richer inter-disciplinary dialogue not just about jazz but with it. What might have been a somewhat sterile exercise in virtuosity is turning into a fully-fledged interdisciplinary claim, with its own methodology and its own epistemology, capable of illuminating not just law or music, but both in light of the other.     

Detection of intimate partner violence in a general medicine practice

In this study, an assessment phase is undertaken to determine intimate partner violence (IPV) prevalence. An anonymous survey is followed by a chart review documenting identification of IPV. Two methods are attempted to increase assessment/documentation of IPV: a physician educational intervention and a nursing routine inquiry intervention in one quadrant of the practice. The IPV physician educational intervention includes didactic sessions, an IPV counselor, and resource information. The routine inquiry intervention involves nurses screening female patients for IPV at check-in. IPV is found to be prevalent in a general medicine clinic. An enhanced educational intervention does not increase IPV documentation. A routine inquiry intervention significantly increases documentation of lifetime IPV but does not impact current IPV identification.     

Richard C. Cornuelle and the Revolution of Social Responsibility

The capacity of a nation to sustain itself as a free society depends upon the extent to which its people have confidence in their own capability to diagnose, act on, and solve social problems. Classical liberal theorist and activist Richard Cornuelle (1927–2011) advanced our understanding of the necessary role of voluntary action in creating and sustaining communities in which people can flourish. Grounded in the methodological principles of Austrian economics, Cornuelle sought to balance libertarian thought by promoting a robust understanding of social process to complement the Austrian economists’ well-developed understanding of market process. The development of this social vision took place through a lifetime process of “action research” that has a tangible legacy for future scholarship of social process and the practices of philanthropists and social entrepreneurs.     

The Intellectual Crisis in Philanthropy

Defenders of modern philanthropic freedom often defend donor intent and celebrate voluntary action. Nevertheless, donor intent and voluntarism have often undermined the conditions of constitutional freedom. This paper proposes that philanthropy currently suffers an intellectual crisis very much like the intellectual crisis in public administration diagnosed by Vincent Ostrom. The Common Core State Standards initiative is a case study of the problems of epistemic drift in philanthropy and raises questions about whether merely defending donor intent and voluntary action for their own sake is sufficient. To escape philanthropy’s current intellectual crisis requires a clearer consideration of the epistemic choices that shape donor intent and voluntary action.