The Archive Function

As Joan Wallach Scott warns in The Fantasy of Feminist History, the danger of depositing one's personal papers in an archive is that one's papers then become open to misinterpretation. In this article, Scott's fears are enacted in relation to another feminist theorist's archival collection, that of prominent Canadian scholar Barbara Godard who died before she could complete the process of donating her papers to the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at York University. Drawing on personal memories and eclectic textual traces, this article attempts to recover Godard's theory of the archive—a theory she never fully articulated in her lifetime, despite dedicating much of her time and energy to collecting and preserving her own words and the words and papers of her students and collaborators.     

A Voice for the Injured

This article analyses the nature and effect of the campaign against the Family Court led by social commentator Bettina Arndt from 1995 to 2006, in the context of the men's rights agenda and the politics of anti-feminist backlash. It documents the changes to Australian family law and the workings of the Family Court under the Howard government, as a result of this campaign, in order to understand the politics of backlash in the context of Wendy Brown's States of Injury theory of 1995. In this analysis, the conservative men's rights agenda is understood as a reaction to structural and economic adjustments associated with neoliberal reforms, especially labour market regulation. But this context, of structural adjustment, is distorted in the rhetoric and focus of campaigns characterised by anti-feminist backlash, such as that directed at the Family Court in Australia. The example of Arndt and her championing of men's rights in this arena is presented as a means by which to compare the different experiences and traditions of feminism in Australia and America, and the associated politics of backlash in each nation, all of which have had a profound influence on Arndt's outlook and work.     

Oversight and accountability for serious incidents in Canada: Who polices the police?

This study examines the agencies responsible for investigating when a member of the public is seriously injured, is killed or experiences other serious and potentially criminal actions at the hands of police officers in Canada. The article takes a comprehensive approach by examining all police oversight agencies that are responsible for responding to and investigating allegations of police criminality—eight organizations, across nine jurisdictions. The study integrates insights from public administration and police accountability literature and examines the structures and administration of the agencies. The study provides a critical assessment of the state of police oversight for serious incidents in Canada, it identifies agency outputs (including case substantiation), levels of independence, efforts at transparency, and considers the challenges in attempting to hold police accountable in Canada.     

The enduring challenge of ‘wicked problems’: revisiting Rittel and Webber

There is, in the twenty-first century, an intense interest in the nature of wicked problems and the complex tasks of identifying their scope, viable responses, and appropriate mechanisms and pathways towards achieving improvement. This preoccupation is timeless, but the discussion over several decades has benefited from Rittel and Webber’s (Policy Sci 4(2):155–169, 1973) path breaking conceptualisation of wicked problems and the political argumentation needed to resolve them. This review revisits Rittel and Webber’s work and its enduring significance, reflecting upon its broad uptake and impact in the policy sciences, an impact that continues to grow over time. We revisit how the classic 1973 paper came to be published in Policy Sciences, its innovative depiction of social problems, its rejection of rationalistic design, its acknowledgement of the subjectivities involved in problem identification and resolutions, and the consequent need for argumentative-based solution processes. We find great resonance in the paper with contemporary problem solving preoccupations, not least that the political context is crucial, that argumentation must be transparent and robust, and that policy interventions may have consequences that cannot be easily controlled in open and highly pluralised social systems.     

A Variable-Centered and Person-Centered Evaluation of Emotion Regulation and Distress Tolerance: Links to Emotional and Behavioral Concerns

Distress tolerance and emotion regulation deficits are associated with many emotional and behavioral concerns and may be important deficit areas for college students especially during the transition to college. However, little is known about how distress tolerance and emotion regulation relate to each other or what typical profiles of these deficit areas might be. We took a variable-centered (i.e., exploratory factor analysis) and a person-centered approach (i.e., latent profile analysis) to identify the overlap and distinctiveness of distress tolerance and emotion regulation deficits and then evaluated how the profiles related to several emotional and behavioral concerns. Participants were undergraduates (N = 627; age M = 20.23, SD = 1.40; 60 % female; 47 % European-American) who completed an online assessment. The exploratory factor analysis of distress tolerance and emotion regulation subscales demonstrated three factors with one factor corresponding to distress tolerance and two factors defined by emotion regulation. Subscales demonstrated significant multidimensionality across the factors. The latent profile analysis with distress tolerance and emotion regulation subscales produced three profiles corresponding to “Functional”, “At Risk”, and “Challenged” levels of distress tolerance and emotion regulation abilities. Internalizing symptoms (i.e., depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and suicidal ideation) had significantly higher symptom severity in the “At Risk”, and “Challenged” profiles than in the “Functional” profile. ADHD symptoms and hostility showed a similar pattern. Conduct problems and substance use were much less related to the deficit profiles. Implications for the etiology of mental health, for prevention and treatment of college students are discussed.