A comparative analysis of Inspector responses to complaints about psychosocial and physical hazards

Work Health and Safety Inspectors are at the forefront of efforts to protect workers from harm from psychosocial hazards, yet the application of regulatory theory to their practice has been limited. Drawing on models of responsive regulation and strategic enforcement, we analyze extensive (N = 46,348) complaint and incident notification data from an Australian Work Health and Safety Inspectorate, to compare Inspectors' responses to psychosocial versus non-psychosocial hazards. We found psychosocial hazards were less likely to be actioned than non-psychosocial hazards. When they were actioned, psychosocial hazards saw more Inspector activity, but fewer enforcement notices than non-psychosocial hazards. These findings are inconsistent with the version of responsive regulation espoused by the regulator. Our theoretical conclusion is that Weil's strategic enforcement approach is likely to offer greater possibilities for guiding future resource allocation.     

Explaining fear of crime in Queensland

A model to explain fear of crime in Queensland is developed and fitted to data from the 1991 Queensland Crime Victims Survey. Fear of crime is measured from the answers to the question about respondents' feelings of safety when walking alone in their area after dark. The results suggest that factors such as gender, age, poverty, educational level, labor force status, level of incivility in the area, perceived amount of crime in the area, and neighborhood cohesion all make an impact on fear of crime in a way that is consistent with the theory. The results also show that fear of crimein Queensland is explained by very concrete factors that can be subject to intervention and policy formulation by relevant bodies.The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Government Statistician's Office or the Queensland Government.     

The Im/Possibility of Abandonment in New Materialist Ontologies

Organising prominent critiques of new materialism is the suggestion that it contains a gesture of abandonment. New materialism abandons the past to enable its self-promotion as a novel brand and generation of feminist intervention wedded to a particular vision of matter's transformative possibilities. Or it abandons questions of race in advancing a grand ontology, while simultaneously enacting a particular politics of perspective—one that is racialised. In this article we acknowledge the importance of these critiques as we engage them through an interrogation and opening of the nature of abandonment itself. From within a new materialist frame, we ask who or what abandons, and what assumptions about matter, race, the human and the iterative act of abandonment are at work in critiques of this field? We question how a new materialist approach enacts and recasts the positionality and privilege of ‘whiteness-as-humanness’ at the same time it is considered to elide these. Taking up with discussions from within critical race theory and approaches to human exceptionalism, we ask from this whether we can conceive of new materialism in terms of a perverse ontology that renders abandonment im/possible.     

Yubbi Yarning Circle Model: Collective Narratives and Cultural Expression in the Journey of Trauma

This article describes a “working model” that started as a culturally appropriate workshop created by students and staff involved in the Certificate III in Visual Arts at Goulburn Ovens Institute of TAFE, Shepparton Campus, Victoria in 2018. The Yubbi Yarning Circle Model (YYCM) sees First Nations Artists, as both Facilitators and Storytellers, expressing the ongoing effects of Aboriginal Exemption using visual storytelling. We explore how the model of a visual narrative can be utilised in further cultural activities planned for research into Aboriginal Exemption and how this art resource may effectively be disseminated to Storytellers who not only have a history of Aboriginal Exemption, but also more broadly in the wider community. The YYCM approach is multi-disciplinary and combines the cultural healing practices of the Yarning Circle, the Mariku knowledge of symbology, participatory action research using decolonised methodologies and findings on behavioral research from Northern Ireland about how the narrative can heal trauma.     

‘Situated Knowledges’ and New Materialism(s): Rethinking a Politics of Location

Abstract

Playing a pivotal role in foregrounding a feminist politics of difference, a politics of location embodies what can be termed second-wave concerns that continue to inform contemporary feminist modes of inquiry and research. However, the attention to material specificity that locatability performs has emphasized the identity of the speaking subject at the same time as it has acknowledged materiality's entangled engagements as suggestive of the complicated production of any identity. In her 1988 essay ‘Situated Knowledges’, Donna Haraway both raises and responds to the challenge of a feminist politics of location in a way that anticipates a convoluted politics of the subject, in particular where she is not satisfied to relinquish universality and objectivity, or the ‘non-local’, in her provocative thinking through of situated knowledge production. The partial perspective she uncovers insists that the capacity for identity is addressed as a political gesture, with a reminder that any appeal to perspective is a non-innocent participation in what it helps to produce. In taking up Haraway's essay, the author engages with the problematic nature of a politics of location that is confounded by the direction of its critical interventions, and in such a way anticipates and performs new (feminist) materialist concerns. Questioning the nature of non-locatability and its political imperatives, the author suggests an ‘annunciative politics’ through which to consider some of the implications of Haraway's figuring of the partial perspective, to ask after feminism's political impetus with the tensions raised in Haraway's argument kept alive.     

Characterization of Digital Cameras for Reflected Ultraviolet Photography; Implications for Qualitative and Quantitative Image Analysis During Forensic Examination

Reflected ultraviolet imaging techniques allow for the visualization of evidence normally outside the human visible spectrum. Specialized digital cameras possessing extended sensitivity can be used for recording reflected ultraviolet radiation. Currently, there is a lack of standardized methods for ultraviolet image recording and processing using digital cameras, potentially limiting the implementation and interpretation. A methodology is presented for processing ultraviolet images based on linear responses and the sensitivity of the respective color channels. The methodology is applied to a FujiS3 UVIR camera, and a modified Nikon D70s camera, to reconstruct their respective spectral sensitivity curves between 320 and 400 nm. This method results in images with low noise and high contrast, suitable for qualitative and/or quantitative analysis. The application of this methodology is demonstrated in the recording of latent fingerprints.     

French administration: Sanctified or demystified?∗

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