Incomplete Citizens: Changing Images of Post-Separation Children

The image of the child as the victim of separation or divorce is well-established in legal, socio-legal and popular discourse. However, the authors argue, alongside this traditional image of the child, there is a different image of the child emerging, that of the autonomous, responsible child. This is apparent in academic discourse, policy documents and legal pronouncements. This child is included in the project of 'remoralising' the family by building the 'good' post-separation family. The 'good' child of separation or divorce is responsible for safeguarding his or her own welfare and is expected to make those choices that are assumed to best protect his or her best interests. In order to ensure that the child makes the 'right' decisions, he or she, like the adults concerned, is the target of education, information and therapeutic intervention. There is a blending of paradigms in which the ideal child is both an autonomous social actor and a vulnerable object of concern.     

Assessing the Effect of Batterer Program Completion on Reassault: An Instrumental Variables Analysis

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the utility of using the instrumental variables (IV) method to estimate batterer program efficacy, i.e., the program effect among batterers who complete batterer programs. This method takes account of possible confounding due to unmeasured traits of compliers and non-compliers. A structural model is used to estimate the impact of program completion on reassault using instrumental variables (IV) regression. Data on 640 batterers enrolled at three batterer programs are used. Results obtained from IV regression are compared with those obtained from a more traditional regression analysis. The results indicate that usual regression methods yield estimates of program effect that may be biased due to confounding by unmeasured batterer characteristics. Unfortunately, IV estimates may be unreliable due to failure of some of the assumptions on which they are based. If equations are adequately identified by the non-linear functional form used to estimate them, then IV results indicate that among a very select group of batterers, program completion significantly reduces the probability of reassault. The implications of confounding due to program non-compliance, program non-enrollment and attrition for future evaluations of batterer programs are discussed.     

Are counter-terrorism strategies effective? The results of the Campbell systematic review on counter-terrorism evaluation research

The events of September 11th have led to massive increases in personal, commercial, and governmental expenditures on anti-terrorism strategies, as well as a proliferation of programs designed to fight terrorism. These increases in spending and program development have focused attention on the most significant and central policy question related to these interventions: Are these programs effective? To explore this question, this study reports the results of a Campbell Collaboration systematic review on evaluation research of counter-terrorism strategies. Not only did we discover an almost complete absence of evaluation research on counter-terrorism interventions, but from those evaluations that we could find, it appears that some interventions either did not achieve the outcomes sought or sometimes increased the likelihood of terrorism occurring. The findings dramatically emphasize the need for government leaders, policy makers, researchers, and funding agencies to support both outcome evaluations of these programs as well as efforts to develop an infrastructure to foster counter-terrorism evaluation research.     

Educated doubt: women,religion and the challenge of higher education,c. 1870-1920[1]

Abstract

The advent of higher education for women, with its emphasis on reason, on scientific thought and on critical approaches to knowledge, constituted a potential threat to religious belief. The stories of male ‘doubters’ are legion but what happened to thoughtful women, confronted with challenges to their belief systems? This article shows that educated doubt was not only a male affliction. Women responded to the challenge in a variety of ways. Some rejected belief, turning their religious impulses to aesthetic or social ends. Others brought scientific reasoning to bear on religious phenomena, hoping to ‘prove’ the existence of spirituality. Some saw in science and reason a further manifestation of the spiritual impulse; in education further possibilities of the life of the spirit. A common thread unites the responses, the search for a voice, an authority which women sought in the new secular institutions of higher learning.     

Guessing in the Gaps

The genesis of this conversation was the forthcoming new Penguin edition - under the general editorship of Adam Phillips - of the works of Freud. Mark and Phillips consider the concept of a 'literary' Freud alongside the 'scientific'or 'clinical' Freud, and discuss the related issues of translation, representation and interpretation, particularly as they bear on psychoanalytic writing. Adam Phillips's relationship to the institutions of psychoanalysis is considered, and the perpetuation of these institutions through the training of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. Also discussed is the project of psychoanalysis: the nature of psychoanalysis as a therapy as well as a body of ideas. Mark and Phillips make reference to the work of Freud, Lacan, Klein, Winnicott and Laplanche, and to concepts such as the 'enigmatic signifier' and 'transgenerational haunting'.     

Sex as Slavery? Understanding Private Wrongs

The era of globalization has been accompanied by an increased awareness of private wrongs as well as acceleration of many forms of cross-border labor exploitation. The essay explores how refined distinctions between forced and free sex work could improve anti-trafficking policies. It addresses the understudied linkages between other forms of migration and sexual exploitation and suggests a triage approach to all forms of labor exploitation—based on harms rather than type of labor or victim. A better understanding of freedom, sex, and development will allow us to expand a human rights approach to these private wrongs. The best anti-trafficking policy is one of universal, indivisible human rights. Victims of sexual exploitation need the same things as all migrants and all workers—recognition, monitoring, resources, access to justice, and organization.     

‘Utterly Disgraceful’: Social Media and the Workplace

Social media use by Australian public servants has given rise to questions pertaining to their political rights, impartiality and privacy outside of work. Drawing on the recent case Starr v Department of Human Services these issues are explored. The findings suggest that social media use has heightened tensions around public servant's rights to comment on issues of the day, and its use by employees both inside and beyond the workplace remains contested terrain.