“It Will Never Happen Again”: The Myth of Flood Immunity in Brisbane

Although scholarship shows how collective memory aids community resilience to hazards, sociopolitical forces erode this transformative potential. A study of Brisbane River floods highlights the entanglement of memory with a myth of flood immunity, created by community faith in dams to prevent flooding, infrequent floods, drought and hydrological misunderstandings, and upheld by floodplain development perceived as an economic booster. When flooding threatened the myth of immunity in 2011, the event was framed as dam mismanagement to deflect attention from poor land use practices and government culpability. This myth endures, leaving South East Queensland no more resilient for unpredictable but certain future flooding.     

Social Rules: Some Problems for Hart’s Account,and an Alternative Proposal

What is a social rule? This paper first notes three important problems for H.L.A. Hart’s famous answer in the Concept of Law. An alternative account that avoids the problems is then sketched. It is less individualistic than Hart’s and related accounts. This alternative account can explain a phenomenon observed but downplayed by Hart: the parties to a social rule feel that they are in some sense ‘bound’ to conform to it.

     

Feminist consciousness and candidate preference among American women, 1972–1988

Recent research has suggested that women with a feminist consciousness differ from nonfeminists in their attitudes and values. This paper investigates the impact of feminist consciousness on candidate preference and vote choice in presidential elections from 1972 to 1988. In those elections in which candidates took divergent positions on feminist issues, feminism was a significant predictor of candidate preference after controls for demographic variables, political attitudes, and partisanship. In elections in which the candidates took similar positions, however, feminism did not affect candidate preference. The 1980 election was the exception: in that election, feminists cast relucantant ballots for Carter, while rating John Anderson higher.     

Timing of menarche,preparation, and initial menstrual experience: Replication and further analyses in a prospective study

The goals of this study were to assess the significance of two timing variables (objective timing of menarche and subjective timing, i.e., the belief—not necessarily true—about one's status as early, average, or late maturing) and two cognitive variables (preparation for menstruation and ego functioning) as predictors of the experience of menarche. Subjects were 92 girls who changed from pre- to postmenarcheal between two test occasions, six months apart. Findings were that subjective timing of menarche and preparation were significant predictors of menarcheal experience, while objective timing and ego functioning were not. The results replicated earlier findings based on cross-sectional analyses. Interpretation of the results suggested some directions for further exploration of determinants of initial menstrual experience.This research was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant 16034 to the first two authors.Received Ph.D. from Clark University. Major interest is in clinical-developmental psychology.Received Ph.D. from Tufts University. Major interests are psychobiology and adolescent development.Received Ph.D. from Brandeis University. Major interest is early adolescent girls' development.