Queensland Aborigines,Multiple Realities and the Social Sources of Suffering: Psychiatry and Moral Regions of Being: Part 1

ABSTRACT This two part paper considers the experience of a range of magico‐religious experiences (such as visions and voices) and spirit beliefs in a rural Aboriginal town. The papers challenge the tendency of institutionalised psychiatry to medicalise the experiences and critiques the way in which its individualistic practice is intensified in the face of an incomprehensible Aboriginal ‘other’ to become part of the power imbalance that characterises the relationship between Indigenous and white domains. The work reveals the internal differentiation and politics of the Aboriginal domain, as the meanings of these experiences and actions are contested and negotiated by the residents and in so doing they decentre the concerns of the white domain and attempt to control their relationship with it. Thus the plausibility structure that sustains these multiple realities reflects both accommodation and resistance to the material and historical conditions imposed and enacted by mainstream society on the residents, and to current socio‐political realities. I conclude that the residents' narratives chart the grounds of moral adjudication as the experiences were rarely conceptualised by local people as signs of individual pathology but as reflections of social reality. Psychiatric drug therapy and the behaviourist assumptions underlying its practice posit atomised individuals as the appropriate site of intervention as against the multiple realities revealed by the phenomenology of the experiences. The papers thus call into question Australian mainstream ‘commonsense’ that circulates about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people which justifies representations of them as sickly outcasts in Australian society.     

Mechanisms of Failure and Slope Development in Rock Masses

This paper examines the mechanisms of failure in jointed rock slopes. The distribution of discontinuities is a significant control of rock-mass stability, determining the mechanism by which blocks fail from a cliff, and the consequent slope development through time. It is often assumed that the principles of single-block movements are geomechanically similar to those of larger, multiple-block rock-mass failures, under a given set of boundary conditions and controlling variables. Results presented here, based on computer modelling using the Universal Distinct Element Code (UDEC), show that such assumptions are not always correct. After a theoretical modelling exercise, real-world rock slopes were studied from the Portland Limestone outcrop of the Isle of Purbeck, England. There is good association between the theoretical results and model output for the fieldsites. The conclusions are thus useful in enhancing knowledge of jointed rock-mass failure conditions, and improving understanding of rock-slope development.     

American power before and after 11 September: dizzy with success?

One of the most interesting consequences of the war against international terrorism is the discovery by many analysts of American power. However, if the experts had been more attentive they might have noticed that a power shift in favour of the United States is not just some recent phenomenon arising from US victory over the Taliban or the new Bush military build-up. Rather, it can, and should be, traced back to important trends of the early 1990s. What the war has done is to reveal the extent of America's renaissance in the postwar decade while its position as true hegemon was being consolidated. However, victory in war may not bring order in peace if the United States does not draw the correct lessons.     

Cold War,Public Opinion,and Foreign Policy Spending Decisions: Dynamic Representation by Congress and the President

Conventional wisdom before the Vietnam War held that public opinion exerted no influence on U.S. foreign policy decisions. Scholars working in Vietnam's aftermath found episodic influence of public opinion on foreign policy, but missing in our understanding were longitudinal examinations of public opinion's influence on foreign policy. A number of post-Vietnam scholars subsequently revealed a long-term relationship between public opinion and defense spending. This study extends that work by analyzing responsiveness to public opinion in different foreign policy arenas by different government institutions, and by accounting for a critical variable not relevant in most previous studies: the end of the cold war. We construct a model explaining the influences of public opinion and the cold war on spending proposals for defense and foreign economic aid by the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Both public opinion and the end of the cold war exert direct influence on defense spending proposals by the presidency, while the Senate and the House respond primarily to public opinion inputs and the partisan composition of the Senate. In the case of foreign economic aid, the cold war's end gives occasion for increasing spending proposals, contrary to the public's expectation that the end of the cold war minimized the need for the U.S. to provide foreign economic assistance.     

The Atlantic Empires in the Eighteenth Century

Spanish America; John J. Tepaske