Will working from home become the ‘new normal’ in the public sector?

The COVID-19 pandemic compelled large sections of the workforce out of their workplaces and into their homes to work. Many commentators suggest this has forever changed how and where we work. This article analyses how Australia's biggest employers – state and federal governments – approached the transitions to working from home, and back into regular workplaces. It considers the timing of policy responses to the pandemic as one indicator of resistance to, or acceptance of, widespread working from home. The article also demonstrates previous resistance to working from home for public servants, and questions widespread conjecture that it will become the ‘new normal’.     

Halogenated solvent interactions with N,N-dimethyltryptamine: formation of quaternary ammonium salts and their artificially induced rearrangements during analysis

The psychoactive properties of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) 1a are known to induce altered states of consciousness in humans. This particular attribute attracts great interest from a variety of scientific and also clandestine communities. Our recent research has confirmed that DMT reacts with dichloromethane (DCM), either as a result of work-up or storage to give a quaternary N-chloromethyl ammonium salt 2a. Furthermore, this was observed to undergo rearrangement during analysis using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) with products including 3-(2-chloroethyl)indole 3 and 2-methyltetrahydro-beta-carboline 4 (2-Me-THBC). This study further investigates this so far unexplored area of solvent interactions by the exposure of DMT to other halogenated solvents including dibromomethane and 1,2-dichloroethane (DCE). The N-bromomethyl- and N-chloroethyl quaternary ammonium derivatives were subsequently characterised by ion trap GC-MS in electron and chemical ionisation tandem MS mode and by NMR spectroscopy. The DCE-derived derivative formed at least six rearrangement products in the total ion chromatogram. Identification of mass spectrometry generated by-products was verified by conventional or microwave-accelerated synthesis. The use of deuterated DCM and deuterated DMT 1b provided insights into the mechanism of the rearrangements. The presence of potentially characteristic marker molecules may allow the identification of solvents used during the manufacture of controlled substances, which is often neglected since these are considered inert.     

The effects of self-protective behaviors on injury for African American women in domestic violence situations

The stereotype of the strong, independent, and invulnerable African American woman may have implications in violent intimate partner relationships. More specifically, one behavioral manifestation of this stereotype is that African American women may be more likely to “fight back” in domestic violence situations. However, little is known about the consequences of these self-protective behaviors for African American women. To this end, this study will address whether forceful and nonforceful acts of resistance result in the desired effect of avoiding injury. Using a sample of incarcerated African American women, this study examines the effects of self-protective behaviors on injury for a marginalized population at a high risk of violence.

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New Legal Realism and the Ethnography of Transnational Law

The new legal realism builds on the strengths of the legal realism of the early twentieth century, viewing law as a set of social processes embedded in historical and political contexts. As it addresses sociolegal phenomena of the early twenty-first century, however, the new legal realism is more attentive to the effects of transnationalism, legal culture, and legal consciousness, and the way ideas and norms travel and are adopted around the world. Asking questions of this kind requires new, more multi-sited or deterritorialized methods of scholarship. This article explores these new perspectives and their methodologies through an examination of the use of human rights in the international movement against violence against women.     

Narrating Domestic Violence: Producing the "Truth' of Violence in 19th' and 20th-century Hawaiian Courts

Stories told by and about men who batter women in the courts of Hawai in the mid-19th century and in the late 20th century are strikingly similar. Courts, then as now, accept some justifications for battering and reject others, in the process constructing the boundary between legitimate and illegitimate violence. Throughout this period, the legal system claimed to focus only on the violent act itself, not the emotional or personal violation. The law interprets the violence as brute fact, knowable without regard to the social relationship or system of cultural meanings within which it occurs. There are persistent contradictions between the law's construction of domestic violence as an unambiguous physical act and litigants' and judges' views that these violent acts are moments within the social dynamics of gendered power relations. At the same time, there are recurrent tensions between the efforts of the legal system to portray violent acts against women in terms of rational categories of action and, in contrast, the experience of violence and the meanings within which it occurs that are often opaque to such sense-making, defiant of a simple means-ends calculus.     

The influence of fit perceptions, equal opportunity policies, and social support network on pre-entry police officer career commitment and intentions to remain

This longitudinal field study examined the influence of (1) perceived person-job and person-organization fit, (2) social support network, and, (3) equal employment opportunity (EEO) policy on pre-entry career commitment and intentions to remain in the profession. In addition, the study explored whether gender moderated the relationship between equal employment opportunity policy and pre-entry career commitment and intentions to remain in the profession. The sample consisted of 116 Australian police force applicants who completed a questionnaire prior to formal selection procedures (Time 1) and on completion of the selection procedure (Time 2). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that perceived fit perceptions and EEO policy were significant predictors of pre-entry career commitment and intentions to remain in the profession; social support network was a significant predictor of the latter, but not the former variable. Analyses showed that gender was not a moderator variable. The practical and future research implications of the results are discussed.