A Pacific Sojourn: Anna Kavan and the New Zealand Connection, 1941–2

Abstract

This article examines Anna Kavan’s sojourn in New Zealand from February 1941 to November 1942 in the company of the pacifist playwright Ian Hamilton. Living in the most remote of the ex-British colonies reinforced Kavan’s ontological sense of homelessness and wish to disidentify from British society, yet the colony’s anglophone orientation offered familiarity within the strange and alien. The geography, landscapes and communities of its Pacific islands encouraged a reshaping of her imaginative engagement with otherness. Referring to Kavan’s recently published diary, ‘Five Months Further or What I Remember ab[ou]t New Zealand’, the essay argues that the New Zealand ‘experience’ encouraged her use of tropes of the Gothic and uncanny as she grappled with issues of distance, homelessness and disjunctive reality. The discussion focuses on the alternative/parallel world that New Zealand represents in stories published in I Am Lazarus (1945). It identifies experimental techniques associated with Gothic fiction by which Kavan registers the overlapping dualisms of war-torn London and idyllic rural New Zealand, and represents memory through framing devices and defamiliarizing rhetorical tropes as a distancing activity interrupting the present moment: dream sequences, irruptions into and splittings of reality, space and time reversals, doublings of self/other, disjunctive non sequiturs and ghostly mirror imaging.     

Comparing Putin’s and Brezhnev’s Policies toward the Middle East

This article compares Moscow’s and Washington’s foreign policies toward the Middle East in 1982 and 2008. In 1982, Moscow and Washington each had a distinct set of friends and foes. In 2008, Washington still has a distinct set of friends and foes, but Moscow has relatively good relations with all governments and most major opposition movements in the region—the only exceptions being Al Qaeda and its affiliates. It is argued that Putin’s policy toward the Middle East is not really aimed at displacing the U.S. in the region, but protecting Russia and Russian interests from Al Qaeda and its allies. Indeed, a continued American presence in the region serves to protect Russian interests in the region.

Contextual Socioeconomic Status and Mental Health Counseling Use Among US Adolescents with Depression

Most adolescents with depressive disorders do not receive any mental health services, even though effective treatments exist. Although research has examined numerous individual-level factors associated with mental health service use among depressed adolescents, less is known about the role of contextual factors. This study examines the relationship between contextual-level socioeconomic status (SES) and clinic-based mental health counseling use among US adolescents with high depressive symptoms in urban and suburban areas. Data from the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 1,133; 59 % female) were analyzed using multilevel logistic models in which adolescents were nested within counties. After controlling for individual-level predisposing, enabling, and need characteristics, as well as county racial/ethnic composition, county SES was positively associated with clinic-based counseling use among depressed youth. A one standard deviation increase in the county affluence index was associated with 43 % greater odds of receiving any clinical counseling services. Furthermore, the positive relationship between county affluence and clinical counseling use was no longer significant after controlling for the county supply of mental health specialist physicians. The results indicate that county residential context is a key correlate of mental health service use among depressed adolescents, such that those who live in lower SES counties with fewer mental health specialists are less likely to receive treatment.     

Interrogating Gender Divides in Technology for Education and Development: the Case of the One Laptop per Child Project in Ghana

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project aims to make low-cost computers accessible to the “world’s poorest children,” presuming that the gadgets will support their empowerment via education. The project’s success globally, however, has been mixed at best, with many countries terminating their purchases due to cost, inadequate infrastructure, and negative side effects. In October 2010, Ghana suspended the country’s 3-year participation. This study examines the complex history and failure of OLPC Ghana in two pilot schools, one urban and one rural, with particular attention to gender bias. The analysis draws on interviews with government personnel, students, and teachers in the pilot classes. Despite lacking electric power in the rural community, UNDP’s Millennium Villages Project played a strong support role, making OLPC somewhat more effective with less of a gender divide in the rural school than in the urban school in Accra. Both pilot schools faced severe sustainability challenges raising decade-old questions about modernity and technological determinism. Further, in both schools, particularly the urban school, a digital divide by gender was evident.