Urban Aboriginal‐Australian and Anglo‐Australian children: in‐group preference,self‐concept,and teachers' academic evaluations

The in‐group preference and self‐concepts of urban Aboriginal‐Australian and Anglo‐Australian children have never been compared, nor their relationships to teachers' evaluations of academic performance. In this study, 60 Aboriginal (primarily local Nyoongah) and 60 Anglo children aged 6–12 years were tested on in‐group preference; children aged 8+ were tested on self‐concept. Also, their teachers evaluated them on their general academic performance. Results indicated that Anglo children showed greater in‐group preference and scored higher on teacher evaluations than Aboriginal children, although there was no difference on self‐concept. No correlation existed between in‐group preference and self‐concept. It was concluded that the problems faced by Aboriginal children are only likely to be alleviated by a great deal of structural change. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the Prospects for Democratic Deliberation: Values Analysis Applied to AustralianPolitics

Democratic theorists increasingly stress that democratic legitimacy rests primarily on authentic deliberation. Critics of deliberative democracy believe that this hope is unrealistic—that deliberation either will prove intractable across political differences or will exacerbate instability. This paper deploys some tools of political psychology, notably Q methodology and values analysis, to investigate the conditions under which effective deliberation is likely to occur. These tools are applied to contemporary political debates in Australia, concerned with how the Australian polity should be constituted in light of a reform agenda underpinned by a discourse we term "Inclusive Republicanism." An investigation of the character of the basic value commitments associated with discursive positions in these debates shows that some differences will yield to deliberation, but others will not. When two discourses subscribe to different value bases, deliberation will induce reflection and facilitate positive-sum outcomes. When a discourse has a value base but finds its specific goals opposed by a competitor that otherwise has no value base of its own, deliberation will be ineffective. When one discourse subscribes to a value base that another questions, but without providing an alternative, deliberation can help to bridge idealism and cynicism.     

The Political Mobilization of America's Congregations

We use data from the National Congregations Study (NCS), including data from the fourth wave, to describe congregations’ political activity in 2018–2019, and to examine change in that activity since 1998. Congregations have become more politically mobilized since 1998, with the majority of congregations (56 percent) engaged in at least one of the political activities asked about in 2018–2019. Black Protestant congregations in particular experienced a surge in political activity since 2012, and congregations with politically liberal convictions or in traditions with more immigrant members have substantially increased their advocacy on behalf of immigrants in recent years. Overall, since 2012 and possibly since 1998, the political mobilization of congregations on the left has increased more than political mobilization of congregations on the right. We also find that 4 percent of (overwhelmingly Catholic) congregations have declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, and a surprisingly large minority (17 percent) of congregations would publicly endorse or oppose political candidates if doing so would not put their tax status at risk. Ironically, in light of the support for this tax law change among conservative leaders, African American and politically liberal congregations are by far most likely to publicly endorse a candidate if they could.     

COMMENTARY ON ELIZABETH COREY'S INTERPRETATION OF MICHAEL OAKESHOTT

Elizabeth Corey suggests that in order to understand Michael Oakeshott's worldview one should pay special attention to two subjects, religion and aesthetics, and analyze the connection between these two realms and the idea of practical life in general and of politics in particular. Her book provides a sympathetic but also critical conversation with Oakeshott's ideas, ultimately offering us a coherent picture of the place of the religious, poetical, and political in the totality of his thought. Corey persuasively shows that the major ideas of the mature Oakeshott originated in his earlier religious convictions and that his philosophy of aesthetics, contrary to what his critics claimed, fit nicely in the general framework of his thought.     

Self-Interest, Symbolic Attitudes, and Support for Public Policy: A Multilevel Analysis

This paper examines the role of self-interest and symbolic attitudes as predictors of support for two domestic policy issues—guaranteed jobs and incomes and national health insurance—in the American National Election Survey (ANES) between 1972 and 2004. As was the case in 1976 when Sears, Lau, Tyler, and Allen (1980 ) first explored this topic, symbolic attitudes continue to be much more important predictors of policy attitudes than various indicators of self-interest over the 30 years we analyze. We explore this finding further to determine whether any individual/internal and external/contextual variables affect the magnitude of self-interest effects on policy support. Five possible internal moderators of self-interest effects are examined: (1) political knowledge, (2) issue publics, (3) political values, (4) social identifications, and (5) emotions, but none are found to boost the magnitude of the self-interest effect. However, we do find some evidence that contextual variables representing the social/information environment moderate the impact of self-interest on public opinion.     

Trouble in Eden

In response to the Wild-Anderson Report, Little Children are Sacred (June 2007) that outlined a pattern of widespread sexual abuse of small children and chronic alcoholism among aboriginals in the Australians' N.T. (Northern Territory), the federal government launched a major Intervention there sending in teams of doctors and health workers to examine all aboriginal children for abuse and special police and army units to stabilise the situation in remote communities. Moving beyond the recommendations contained in the Report the Howard government announced it would use compulsory acquisition powers and appoint administrators over aboriginal townships and centres (about 73 of them) for five years. These officials would be charged with building up local infrastructures and could assign individuals to work for their welfare payments at jobs assigned to them. More disturbing to aboriginal leaders and communities was a government plan to allow individual aboriginals to lease small plots of land on traditional community owned reserves for the purpose, it was said, of owning their home and/or to start a small business. Furthermore, traditional owners would be allowed to enter into long term leases (for 99 years) on their lands in order to attract outside investment and capitol. There was considerable fear among aboriginals that these unilateral moves by the government would undermine the basis of aboriginal culture and lead inevitably to the loss by aboriginal people of real control over their traditional land.     

The Formation of Political Sub-Climates: Predictions from Social Identity,Structuration, and Symbolic Interaction

Merging the climate and politics literatures, this study evaluates whether organizations have a singular, shared political climate or whether sub-climates, “pockets of politics,” exist. Sub-climate formation is investigated by utilizing both political and climate explanations to determine the level of formation. The sample consisted of 891 employees of a retail services firm and the results of the study indicate that political climates do exist and may be best distinguished by defining the employee’s interactional patterns.     

Ethics of Globalization and the AIDS Crisis from a Jewish Perspective

This essay explores what Jewish ethics has to say about globalization in relation to the AIDS crisis. Special attention is paid to the consequences in affirming current intellectual trends to transcend traditional limits in both society and thought for rethinking traditional Jewish values. The discussion proceeds from two presuppositions. The first is that there is an intimate connection between ethics, science, and politics. The second is that the history of Jewish ethics involves three distinct forms that are generally correlated but rarely identical in content and moral judgment. These three forms are law, wisdom or virtue, and covenant. The discussion considers related issues of accidental connections in time between the bubonic plague and Zionism and between AIDS and homosexuality in relation to moral–theological issues related to divine providence and distributive justice.     

American Identity and Attitudes Toward Official-English Policies

This article analyzes the relationship between each of three conceptions of American identity—liberalism, civic republicanism, and ethnoculturalism—and support for declaring English the official language and printing election ballots only in English. Focus group discussions showed that these conceptions provide a common means of discourse for talking about language conflicts and ethnic change, and that the civic republican conception of American identity is a particularly important factor in the opinion formation process. Although all three conceptions help people to decide whether they think English should be the official language, they are not consistently associated with support for or opposition to restrictive language policies. How individuals interpret these images of national identity also shapes the direction of their preferences.     

On the Very Idea of Continental (or for that Matter Anglo–American) Philosophy

For most of the past century, philosophers on the Continent and those in the United States and Britain have taken themselves to be working in very different, even mutually exclusive, philosophical traditions. Although that may have been true until recently, it is no longer so. This piece surveys ten different proposed distinctions that have been offered between the two traditions, and it shows that none of them works, as there are major thinkers on both sides of each proposed distinction that do not neatly fit the proposal. The upshot of this is that it no longer makes sense to uphold the idea of two traditions, and that it is time we all dropped the mutual suspicion and denigration that have characterized relationships between us for the past hundred years.