'The ravages of permissiveness': sex education and the permissive society

In this article we explore how sex education in schools has become an adversarial political issue. Although sex education has never been a wholly uncontroversial subject, we show that for two decades after the Second World War there was a broad consensus among policy-makers that it offered a solution to public health and social problems, especially venereal disease. From the late 1960s, this consensus came under attack. As part of a wider effort to reverse the changes associated with the 'permissive' society and legislation of the late 1960s, moral traditionalists and pro-family campaigners sought to problematize sex education. They depicted it as morally corrupting and redefined it as a problem rather than a public health solution. Henceforth, the politics of sex education became increasingly polarized and adversarial. We conclude that the fractious debates about sex education in the 1980s and 1990s are a legacy of this reaction against the permissive society.     

Timor-Leste and the discourse of state failure

The disorder in Timor-Leste in 2006, the collapse of the Alkatiri government, and the political crisis following the 2007 parliamentary elections have all fuelled speculation that the country is a potential ‘failing state’. After outlining the history of the latter concept, this paper examines the Timor-Leste case in relation to the phenomena associated with social and political instability. It has exhibited tensions between the civil regime and the military, apparently deepening ethnic/regional differences, weakness in governance institutions and a dependence upon state office as a means to wealth/power; all of these factors are associated with instability. In addition, some policy choices have fostered particular grievances. Timor-Leste's situation with reference specifically to the comparative literatures on ‘state failure’ and on ‘Africanisation’ is then reviewed. State failure literature suggests that regime type and executive recruitment and participation practices are crucial; as a new democracy hitherto dominated by a distinct political faction and facing vital electoral contests, the political system was bound to exhibit turbulence. However, Timor-Leste should be seen in a broader comparative context; accordingly though clearly at risk some caveats should be entered on the prospects for ‘failure’ of the Timor-Leste state. Timor Leste never having been the site of a fully functioning state, its politics more resemble Melanesia than Africa.     

Taming Space: Drug use,HIV, and homemaking in Downtown Eastside Vancouver

This article explores ideas of home and place making that bear on the narrated realities of 14 women who are drug users living with HIV in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. ‘Taming Space’ refers to the negotiations, transgressions and accommodations they make within particular spatial regimes. As residents of a ‘skid row’ district, research participants work to reconcile personal identities within representations of stigmatized space. As the subjects of epidemiological enquiry, clients of public health services and recipients of harm reduction initiatives, women both resist and acquiesce to the parameters of medicalized space. Housing and social service policies further demarcate spatial orders, especially framing women's options for mobility and homemaking. Finally, as street-involved persons they are subject to the often contradictory socio-spatial codes of street drug sociality. Drawing on the concept of turning points, I analyze the diverse narratives of these women as they flesh out particular dynamics of space and identity within broader structural contexts of colonialism, public health and poverty.     

INAA of pre-contact basalt quarries on the Samoan Island of Tutuila: a preliminary baseline for an artifact-centered provenance study

This project presents a material-centered instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) characterization of 120 geologic samples selected from four fine-grained basalt quarries on the Samoan Island of Tutuila. Previous attempts at definitive differentiation of these Tutuilan quarries have utilized x-ray fluorescence (XRF). In this study, clear differentiation of each analyzed quarry was achieved using INAA. Biplots of canonical discriminant analysis (CDA) scores for the INAA data illustrate clear separation based on the variation in chemical composition between each quarry. The samples analyzed not only define quarry separation, but also provide the “core group” for a preliminary baseline necessary for future artifact-centered provenance studies. Inclusion of these “core group” samples in the baseline was confirmed by stepwise discriminant analysis. These findings suggest the ability to determine artifact quarry of origin on the island of Tutuila, which can elucidate the importance of individual Tutuilan quarries in the production, distribution and consumption of fine-grained basalt artifacts in Polynesia.     

Imperialism and nationalism: The Home Rule struggle and border creation in Ireland, 1885–1925

This article explores relationships between imperialism and nationalism, illustrated by their interactions in the struggle over devolved Irish ‘Home Rule’ and partition between 1885 and 1925. Ireland's partition border was primarily an imperial creation shaped by the prolonged, complex and unequal interactions between Irish nationalism and British imperialism. But partition was by no means an inevitable outcome of a mutually constitutive and ambiguous relationship where British imperialism had long characterised Ireland as a frontier zone but one within the core of empire. The Irish case serves as a reminder of the role of imperial arbitration in modern state and nation-building, and also in sowing the seeds of contemporary conflicts. This argument draws on the recent ‘re-discovery of imperialism’ and is advanced as a corrective to reading history backwards through the lenses of contemporary national states. It challenges the tendency to draw overly sharp temporal and spatial distinctions between imperialism and nationalism as rival ideologies and practices.     

Three Ideas of the University

What is a university? In the nineteenth century John Henry Newman famously spoke of “the idea of a university.” This phrase has dominated all discussions of the nature of the university since. Most contemporary writers are against any attempt to theorise the university in terms of a single idea. But against the now standard view that universities should only be characterised empirically as institutions that perform many different activities, I attempt to defend the idea of the university, not by reviving a single idea of the university but by suggesting that there are, at root, three ideas of the university. These are rival ideas, and strictly incommensurable, though they often exist together in a state of tension in actual universities. I call them the eternal, the immortal, and the immediate ideas of the university.