Contagious trauma: Reframing the spatial mobility of trauma within advocacy work

Scholars have theorized that advocates who listen to the experiences of traumatized individuals suffer from ‘vicarious trauma,’ where they become affected by the process of working with trauma sufferers. Yet I argue that trauma is contagious, rather than vicarious: contagious trauma spreads, compounding and binding together sometimes unrelated life traumas. This paper focuses on the spread of contagious trauma within advocates who work together with people affected by two sets of policies that compound trauma in Australia's Northern Territory, Aboriginal Australians affected by the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response Legislation and asylum seekers affected by Australia's policies of mandatory detention. Using ethnographic data from participant observation and interviews with advocates as well as autoethnographic excerpts from field notes, I argue that advocates experience contagious trauma as the effects of witnessing trauma combine toxically with their own life traumas. Contagious trauma expands the destructive effects of traumatic public policy, and simultaneously shrinks the capacity of advocacy that contests these policies. Capacity shrinks as advocates construct barriers to keep trauma at bay.     

Warlpiri fears/whitefella fears: Ways of being in Central Australia seen through an emotion

Experiences of fear and responses to it are variable across cultures and individuals, and across the environments they inhabit. In some environments, fear is a constant presence in people's lives; in others it is sporadic, provoked or intensified by particular events. This paper examines how fear shapes everyday actions and experiences in central Australia. It draws on material gathered during research among Indigenous (Warlpiri) residents in the remote Northern Territory settlement of Yuendumu, and on observations and conversations with Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the town of Alice Springs. The case studies presented revolve around a feud at Yuendumu, some well-publicised and related ‘murders’ in Alice Springs, and the Australian Federal Government's Intervention into Aboriginal Communities in the Northern Territory (NTER). The analysis examines how specific fears are generated in particular situations, and discusses how Warlpiri and non-Indigenous residents respond to such fear(s). The comparisons between town/remote and Indigenous/non-Indigenous settings and responses carry implications for how we analyse emotion and motivation in cross-cultural settings. The paper concludes by using fear as one prism through which to understand changing aspects of everyday life.     

Floating Provisos and Sinking Islands

Rising sea levels may sink entire countries. Individualistic solutions to this climate catastrophe, such as those proposed by Meisels and Risse, are inadequate on both Kantian and Lockean criteria. This article concurs with Cara Nine's recent argument that such ‘ecological refugee states’ are entitled to territorial remedies. But Nine's proposal, founded on Locke's ‘sufficiency’ proviso and Nozick's famous application of it to waterholes in the desert, is instructively incorrect. Careful consideration of the distinction between land and territory, and of the structure of Proviso arguments, supports a new theory of how territorial claims can be positive‐sum — how the amount of territory can increase even as the land base remains constant or decreases. This normative conception of territory as the ratio of justice to land use provides a better foundation for a political solution to the problem of ecological refugee states and also generates deeper insight into the nature of territory itself. The article thus contributes not only to our thinking about redress for ecological refugees, but also to the burgeoning literatures on territory and on the Lockean Provisos.     

Assessing cognitive impairment in Indigenous Australians: Re‐evaluation of the Kimberley Indigenous Cognitive Assessment in Western Australia and the Northern Territory

The Kimberley Indigenous Cognitive Assessment (KICA) was initially developed and validated as a culturally appropriate dementia screening tool for older Indigenous people living in the Kimberley. This paper describes the re‐evaluation of the psychometric properties of the cognitive section (KICA‐Cog) of this tool in two different populations, including a Northern Territory sample, and a larger population‐based cohort from the Kimberley. In both populations, participants were evaluated on the KICA‐Cog tool, and independently assessed by expert clinical raters blinded to the KICA scores, to determine validity and reliability of dementia diagnosis for both groups. Community consultation, feedback and education were integral parts of the research. for the Northern Territory sample, 52 participants were selected primarily through health services. Sensitivity was 82.4% and specificity was 87.5% for diagnosis of dementia, with area under the curve (AUC) of .95, based on a cut‐off score of 31/32 of a possible 39. for the Kimberley sample, 363 participants from multiple communities formed part of a prevalence study of dementia. Sensitivity was 93.3% and specificity was 98.4% for a cut‐off score of 33/34, with AUC = .98 (95% confidence interval: 0.97–0.99). There was no education bias found. The KICA‐Cog appears to be most reliable at a cut‐off of 33/39.     

Ecological Refugees,States Borders,and the Lockean Proviso

Ecological refugees are expected to make up an increasing percentage of overall refugees in the coming decades as predicted climate change related disasters will displace millions of people. In this essay, I focus on those rights ecological refugees may claim on the basis of collective self‐determination. To this end, I will focus on a few specific cases that I call cases of ‘ecological refugee states’. Tuvalu, the Maldives, and to a certain extent, Bangladesh are predicted to be ecological refugee states in the near future. These are states whose entire (or close to it) geographical territory is predicted to be lost to rising sea levels; the collective body of the people will itself become an ecological refugee. The question is: what may the people of an ecological refugee state legitimately claim on the basis of their right to self‐determination? Should we redraw state borders to accommodate a New Tuvalu? I argue that a plausible position regarding territorial rights is that when (1) a people clearly is (or recently was) self‐determining and has a legitimate claim to continue to be self‐determining, and (2) the self‐determination of a people is existentially threatened because the people lacks territorial rights, that (3) the people becomes a candidate for sovereign over a new territory. The result is that existing state borders may need to change to accommodate something like a New Tuvalu. To generate these results on behalf of ecological refugee states, I examine the principles of the system of territorial states. Because the system of territorial states is a system of exclusive rights over goods, especially land, it is possible that it is subject to the conditions of a Lockean proviso mechanism. This paper is dedicated mainly to adapting a version of the Lockean proviso for use in territorial rights theory.     

Are Peripheral Regions Benefiting from National Policies Aimed at Attracting Skilled Migrants? Case Study of the Northern Territory of Australia

Complex and interrelated trends in population and labour market dynamics in peripheral regions of developed countries have compelled them to use international skilled migration to address their skill shortages and facilitate economic development. Using the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia as a case study, this paper examines if and how these regions can benefit from a national policy for skilled migration, including the regional migration policy, which Australia has been operating since 1996–1997. The paper situates the regional migration policy in a context of the global competition for skills, explains how it came about and outlines the key characteristics of the NT as a peripheral region. An innovative approach to immigration data analysis permits formulating four propositions about the nature of international migration to peripheral regions. The analysis consists of tracking over a period of 17 years, the dynamics between all components of Australia’s and the Northern Territory’s permanent additions and comparing changes in the composition of their respective skilled migration streams. The paper proposes that peripheral regions benefit from skilled migration with a lagged effect as compared to Australia as a whole. It suggests that in order to better address skill shortages, they should also develop the capacity of the locally resident immigrant groups.     

When is the gift given? Organ donation,social representations,and an opportunity to register

The gift of life doctrine underpins Australia's approach to organ donation: in legislation, clinical practice, community awareness campaigns, and educational activities. In this paper, we present an approach that situates an understanding of organ donation within a social representation framework as a system of values, ideas, and practices. In cadaveric donation, the final giving‐of‐the‐gift can never be by the donor, leading us to ask where the potential donor's decision to give the gift really lies. We present research from three studies that explored the relationship between what was socially understood about organ donation and the registration of donation intent. Drawing from three socially and culturally diverse populations, we asked people working in a corporate city institution and those attending two football matches in the outer city area to complete a word‐association task and Likert‐scale belief questions about organ donation—followed by an opportunity to register immediately on the Australian Organ Donor Register. Driven by the interdependent themata of life/death and self/other, the gift of life doctrine is inextricably linked with the loss of life emerging as both positive and negative beliefs allowing their relationship to actual registration behaviour to be observed. Our findings suggest that in many instances, the potential donor's genuine desire to give the gift lies in the tension between positive and negative beliefs, manifesting as a consent registration when the positive beliefs about donation prevail and an immediate opportunity to register is available.     

Embracing Footy: The Sporting Dimensions of Australian Muslim Identity in Greater Western Sydney

Australia's most popular spectator sport is Aussie Rules football, administered by the Australian Football League (AFL). The 2012 debut of a professional Aussie Rules team for a growing and culturally diverse part of Sydney represents the culmination of efforts by the AFL to make inroads into the rugby-league-obsessed, poor and predominantly refugee and migrant neighbourhoods on the “wrong” side of the tracks in Australia's largest city. In the months before the siren sounded on the Greater Western Sydney Giants' first game, the researcher produced a long-form radio documentary for a religious affairs programme broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It discussed how a religiously diverse part of Australia juggles its negative reputation with a growing, strategically important population, which the sport of Aussie Rules is trying to reach out to, but whose identity is wrapped up in the “rival” football code of rugby league. The documentary's findings are that affiliation with a sport or team is fluid and thought of as a component of Australian Muslim identity; that it reflects attempts by existing power structures to connect with the shifting demographics of the region that is the focus of the documentary; and that it reflects failure or success on-field.     

Cultural Adaptation of CBT for Aboriginal Australians

This paper provides a commentary and provides international context to the research conducted by J. Bennett‐Levy et al. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a highly structured psychological treatment that has unprecedented empirical validation relative to other approaches to therapy. Despite the wealth of evidence supporting its use, the case for CBT is far less compelling for ethnic minority groups. There is however a growing body of international literature supporting the notion of adaptation of CBT for these groups. The research by J. Bennett‐Levy et al. represents a positive step toward validating CBT for use with Australia's indigenous people that is likely to shape the future direction of research in this field. Suggestions are made regarding the next logical empirical steps in this important area of investigation.     

Children and “junk food” advertising: Critique of a recent Australian study

A field experiment by Australian public health researchers Norman, Kelly, McMahon, and others allegedly demonstrated that primary school children's physical health is threatened by exposure to “junk food” advertising. Their study was published in the international health journal Appetite and was clearly intended to influence government regulatory policy. The methodology of the study was taken, without acknowledgement, from an earlier American study in the Journal of Consumer Research and much other research on children's consumer behavior, including pioneering studies conducted by the present author? was ignored. Also, quite unforgivably, the researchers neglected to cite Australia's already strict regulatory controls on and guidelines for advertising directed to children. The present author sent a rejoinder to Appetite pointing out the many problems with Norman et al.'s research and recommending that their article be withdrawn, but the editor insisted I revise it to remove almost all the criticisms, which I naturally refused to do. Instead, by publishing this article in JCB, the present author is hoping to make consumer researchers aware of the sort of poorly performed and ideologically influenced research relating to marketing and consumer behavior that is appearing in the health journals. The present article also contributes more generally by exposing problems that must be avoided in experimental research on consumer behavior.     

What It's Like To Have a Cognitive Home

Many people believe that the mind is an epistemic refuge of sorts. The idea is that when it comes to certain core mental states, one's being in such a state automatically puts one in a position to know that one is in that state. This idea has come under attack in recent years. One particularly influential attack comes from Timothy Williamson (2000), who argues that there is no central core of states or conditions—mental or otherwise—to which we are guaranteed epistemic access. In Williamson's words, we are cognitively homeless. In this paper I will argue that Williamson's argument for the conclusion that we are cognitively homeless fails. Then I will show that there is a class of phenomenal states that constitutes a substantial cognitive refuge. When all is said and done, I will have both defended and shed light on our cognitive home.     

Green Libertarianism

People evolved as part of an ecosystem, making use of the Earth’s bounty without reflection. Only when our ancestors developed the capacity for moral agency could we begin to reflect on whether we had taken in excess of our due. This outlines a ‘green libertarianism’ in which our property rights are grounded in fundamental ecological facts. It further argues that it is immune from two objections levelled at right- and left- libertarian theories of acquisition: that Robert Nozick, without justification, divided people into those who were able to acquire unowned resources, and those would could not; and, that left-libertarian attempts, such as Hillel Steiner’s, to separate choice from circumstance cannot account for the fact that not only people’s decisions to have children, but even their decisions to continue living, affect people’s entitlements to use the natural world.     

On Being Happy or Unhappy1

The psychological condition of being happy is best understood as a matter of a person's emotional condition. I elucidate the notion of an emotional condition by introducing two distinctions concerning affect, and argue that this “emotional state” view is probably superior on intuitive and substantive grounds to theories that identify happiness with pleasure or life satisfaction. Life satisfaction views, for example, appear to have deflationary consequences for happiness’ value. This would make happiness an unpromising candidate for the central element in a theory of well‐being, as it is in L. W. Sumner's work. Yet on an emotional state conception, happiness may prove to be a key constituent of well‐being. the emotional state view also makes happiness less vulnerable to common doubts about the importance of happiness, and indicates that mood states are more important for well‐being than is generally recognized.

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Adults' emotional states and recognition of emotion in young children

This study addressed the degree to which adults' emotional states influence their perception of emotional states in children and their motivation to change such states. Happiness, sadness, anger, or a neutral state was induced in adults, who then viewed slides of 4-year-old children who were actually experiencing various emotional states. Adults' own emotional states had little impact on their accurate recognition of children's emotions or on their motives for social action to change such emotions. However, adults' states did influence the intensity they assigned to children's emotions, with happy adults tending to rate some emotions as more intense for black children (sadness) and for girls (anger and neutrality). The base rates with which adults used different emotion labels also influenced judgments, increasing it for the recognition of happiness and reducing it for anger. The results are discussed in terms of the factors that influence whether or not emotional states affect judgment processes and the role of emotion labels in the effective recognition of ongoing emotional states. Also addressed is the consequence of adults' recognition of emotion in children for the effective socialization of emotion.     

Stone,Ken, Practicing Safer Texts: Food,Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective

Abstract

The past twenty years have witnessed much discussion about the place of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people in the Church, particularly through two sets of debates: on whether and under what circumstances LGBT people should be ordained, and on whether and under what circumstances LGBT people should have their marital unions blessed. The past twenty years have also witnessed the creation of various liturgical materials responsive to the needs of LGBT people, particularly for events that are crucial to an LGBT person's life and faith but for which there were no existing rites in public worship. However, by concentrating only on the occasional and extraordinary events in a person and a community's life as "queer worship" (with its double sense of both "unusual worship" and "worship for LGBT people"), we are neglecting the myriad ways in which day-to-day ordinary worship is, and is not, queer. This article therefore examines the ways in which heteronormativity and the demand for "covering" can create tacit prohibitions around worship for LGBT Christians. Arguing for the inherent queerness of Christian worship, it suggests practical ways in which LGBT people's lives can more fully integrate into a community's liturgical life, and vice versa.     

Children prefer to learn from mind‐readers

Kim and Harris ( 2014 , J. Cogn. Dev.) showed that children selectively learned from an informant who produced apparently magical outcomes as compared to another informant who produced only ordinary outcomes in the domain of everyday physics. In the present study, we tested children's ability to differentiate between and selectively learn from informants who displayed either an extraordinary or an ordinary ability in the domain of everyday psychology. Prior studies have shown that children come to appreciate what is ordinarily involved in knowing the private mental states of other people. Drawing on this research, we asked whether 3‐ to 4‐ and 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children preferentially learned from an informant who knew another person's mind via either an ordinary or an extraordinary form of communication. As compared to younger children, older children were more likely to learn from the extraordinary informant. Moreover, children's ability to differentiate between the two informants was a better predictor of their learning from the extraordinary informant than age. We discuss the findings in the light of prior work on selective learning, children's ideas about prayer and their understanding of impossibility.     

The social unconscious in persons,groups and societies,volume 1: Mainly theory,edited by Earl Hopper and Heim Weinberg

This paper looks at some instances of young children learning in a school setting, and suggests that ‘emotional learning’ is an integral part of the apparently ‘cognitive’ learning that takes place in school. The paper uses object relations psychoanalysis in order to explore some of the more-or-less hidden emotional states of mind that accompany difficulties and successes with school learning. Three extracts are presented from observations of young children coming to terms with reading and writing. Each of these is then discussed, with the aim of showing how learning always takes place in a dynamic, relational emotional context. From the theoretical perspective outlined in this article, all learning involves unconscious ‘object relating’. Things to be learnt about, and people requiring learning, or assisting with it, are the bearers of the learner's vivid unconscious ‘transferences’. Such transferences colour the learner's emotional experience of the people and things around him or her, constituting a dynamic, internally experienced, ‘emotional context’ for learning. While this emotional context may be partly subjective, it is also more or less affected by others' feeling states, pulling the learner into a shared learning environment which is emotionally complex and inter-subjective.     

Effects of Manipulation on Attributions of Causation,Free Will,and Moral Responsibility

If someone brings about an outcome without intending to, is she causally and morally responsible for it? What if she acts intentionally, but as the result of manipulation by another agent? Previous research has shown that an agent's mental states can affect attributions of causal and moral responsibility to that agent , but little is known about what effect one agent's mental states can have on attributions to another agent. In Experiment 1, we replicate findings that manipulation lowers attributions of responsibility to manipulated agents. Experiments 2–7 isolate which features of manipulation drive this effect, a crucial issue for both philosophical debates about free will and attributions of responsibility in situations involving social influence more generally. Our results suggest that “bypassing” a manipulated agent's mental states generates the greatest reduction in responsibility, and we explain our results in terms of the effects that one agent's mental states can have on the counterfactual relations between another agent and an outcome.     

Middlesex: A Pastoral Theological Reading

This article, written for the Group for New Directions in Pastoral Theology’s conference on the theme of “Emotion, Mood, and Temperament,” focuses on Middlesex, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, Professor of Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. The novel, set in 20th century America and written as a fictional memoir, is a coming-of-age story of Cal/Calliope, a man with an intersex condition caused by 5-alpha-reductase deficiency. The mission statement of the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) states that the organization is “devoted to systemic change to end shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital surgeries for people born with an anatomy that someone decided is not standard for male or female.” This essay employs the resources of pastoral theology to assist in the project of ending shame regarding intersex conditions by offering a pastoral theological reading of Middlesex. As such, this essay is an example of the discipline of pastoral theology being employed in the field of medical humanities in particular and the field of clinical humanities more broadly, and it also serves as an example as to how one might offer a pastoral theological reading of a novel.     

Children with autism's perception and understanding of ambiguous figures: Evidence for pictorial metarepresentation,a research note

A large body of autism research over the last 20 years has shown that people with autism have difficulties understanding mental states. This has been conceived of as a metarepresentational deficit. An open question is whether people with autism's metarepresentational deficit is limited to the mental domain. This research explores individuals with autism's understanding of the representational nature of pictures. With the use of ambiguous figures, where a single stimulus is capable of representing two distinct referents, we compared metarepresentational abilities in the pictorial and mental domains and the perception of pictorial ambiguity. Our findings indicate that individuals with autism are impaired in mental metarepresentation but not in pictorial metarepresentation. These findings suggest that children with autism understand the representational nature of pictures. We conclude that children with autism's understanding of the representational nature of pictures is in advance of their metarepresentational understanding of mind. Their perception of figure ambiguity is comparable to the typical population.