Exploring parents’ understandings of their child’s journey into offending behaviours:a narrative analysis

Parents are perhaps the best placed individuals to comment upon their child’s life story, including early life experiences, transitions and their child’s needs. However, research has rarely focussed on the views of parents of young people who have committed serious offences. This research aimed to explore parents’ opinions of which factors may have led to their child becoming involved with the criminal justice system. Interviews were undertaken with six parents who were asked to narrate their child’s life journey into offending behaviours. The data were then analysed using narrative analysis techniques, and a shared story was created which incorporated the main transitional stages in the children’s journeys, as seen by the parents. The findings suggest that it is not just the child, but the whole family who have been in a state of distress throughout the child’s life. Systemic and environmental factors are argued to contribute to this distress, and the use of diagnosis for this population is critically evaluated. The research highlights a life story in which the child’s and family’s distress remains unheard and therefore unresolved. Clinical implications for working with this population are discussed

Strange reading: Keith Windschuttle on race, Asia and White Australia

In his recently published book, The White Australia Policy, Keith Windschuttle accuses academic historians of errors of fact and judgement in their accounts of white Australia. This article examines these claims of exaggeration and distortion with particular reference to the nature and meaning of race, racism and representations of Asia in Australian history. The article rejects Winschuttle\u27s sweeping claim that academic historians have sought to make Australia appear a much more racist society than the historical record would suggest.<br /

Where extremes meet: Sport, nationalism and secessionism in Catalonia and Scotland

In this essay, we trace the symbolic conundrums of belonging, and of the reconciliation of identities, in the context of Catalan and Scottish sport and politics. Our discussion will commence with a necessarily concise consideration of past academic contentions regarding the national ‘psyches’ which have been argued to shape contemporary notions of identity and politics in Catalonia and Scotland, before turning our attention to the specific role of sport vis-à-vis these ‘psyches’ and the growing clamour for greater political autonomy for each of these stateless nations. Based on evidence drawn from the interaction between sport and politics in the two nations, we argue that secessionism is a liminal field of transformation as it includes what is seen as mutually exclusive sets of relationships (Catalans vs. Spaniards; Scottish vs. British, secessionists vs. unionists/centralists), which at the same time allows subjects to pass from one state to another and occupy them non-exclusively