From Emotional Suppression to Regulated Empathy: The Changing Face of Control in the CES

Between the 1970s and the 1990s the level and type of emotionality in the Commonwealth Employment Service (the Australian national employment service) altered. Within a context of changing economic conditions and concomitant work intensification, it is argued that untenable working conditions resulted in new recruits adopting a coping strategy that led to the use rather than the suppression of emotions. The use of emotions provided workers with job satisfaction and greater control over service interactions. Management subsequently commandeered the use of emotions to complement the introduction of private sector management techniques and service delivery reforms, regaining control over worker-client interactions

Equity Management Strategies in the Australian Private Sector

This paper outlines the methods and outcomes of a study into equity management strategies in Australian private sector organisations reporting to the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency. Reports from 1976 organisations indicate eleven key factors characterising equity management in Australia. The study highlights differences within previously identified social structural policies, temperamental and opportunity policies and identifies a further policy type, categorised as “support policies”. Differences have also been identified in relation to distribution structures, suggesting that gender is not the sole consideration in determining equity management strategies. The principle of distribution also figures strongly in equity management implementation

Artisanal mining and livelihoods in the Global South

In recent years, rural livelihoods in resource-rich countries of the Global South have been rapidly transformed by the growth of the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector - low-tech, labour-intensive, mineral extraction and processing, typically focusing on precious metals and stones. Research has shown that despite being associated with a host of environmental, health and safety, and social concerns, the ASM sector provides a direct livelihood for an estimated 40 million people globally, with as many as 150 million people benefiting indirectly from the upstream and downstream activities it spawns. This work also suggests that the ASM sector has played an important role in meeting the needs of marginalised grassroots actors, including unemployed youth, women and children. However, these benefits often come at a cost. Most ASM takes place in the informal sphere, with mining activities occurring in remote areas where governance is poor, regulatory enforcement is virtually non-existent and elite capture is widespread. As the demand for key industrial minerals - such as the '3 T’s’ (tin, tungsten and tantalum) and cobalt - has soared in recent years, artisanal mineral supply chains that feed production in the major electronic companies have also come under increasing scrutiny. Research exploring the ‘darker side’ of ASM has examined its link to human rights abuses, shadow state economies, money laundering and criminal and terrorist networks. This chapter provides an introduction and critical overview of ASM and livelihoods in developing countries of the Global South. Drawing upon case study examples predominantly from sub-Saharan Africa, a range of different minerals that are extracted artisanally are explored. In reviewing both the challenges and benefits that artisanal operators face, the merits of a formalised ASM sector are discussed as a possible way of safeguarding livelihoods and ensuring that more benefits accrue to host communities where extraction takes place.</p

Can unions provide what workers want? The case of the Queensland health and fitness industry

Sexual, social and employment success have been linked to the physical capital drawn from having aesthetic attributes of the socially idealized body. In certain workplace settings, such as health and fitness centres, the body becomes a mainstream commodity with physical capital affording the fitness worker a high degree of distinction and adoration as well as employment opportunities. The employment relationship is shaped by 'lookism', with both the employer and employee taking advantage of the fitness worker's idealized form. The worker's physical capital provides a walking billboard advertising the employer's products and services, while exposure to comparison and adoration provides a heightened sense of self-worth, distinction and celebrity for fitness workers for which they are prepared to trade-off employment conditions. In redefining what they want from work, fitness workers challenge the traditional purpose of trade unions, and question their ability to deliver what these workers want from their employment relationship

Spaces for contestation:the politics of community development agreements in Sierra Leone

Across mineral-rich sub-Saharan Africa, it has become increasingly common for mining companies to support development schemes in host communities where resource extraction takes place. The negotiation of so-called ‘community development agreements’ (CDAs), provides an opportunity to address the social and environmental impacts of mining, while at the same time serving as a platform through which company-community relations can be mediated. Unlike discretionary corporate social responsibility programmes, in many countries, CDAs are embedded in law, invoking parties’ mutual commitments and responsibilities. Such initiatives have been heralded as ‘game–changers’, promising equitable redistribution of wealth, structured community development and stable investment climates for extractives companies. However, factors that concern the process of their negotiation, coupled with structural weaknesses, can affect their implementation, transforming them into spaces of contestation which can threaten their potential. Drawing upon fieldwork carried out in Sierra Leone between 2013-2018, this paper critically explores the contested nature of CDAs. Focusing on two different case studies in the south and east of the country, it argues that such agreements will only contribute to genuine development in host communities if the longstanding issues that have stalled the pre-existing forms and instruments of community development are systematically addressed

The challenges of amblyopia treatment

The treatment of amblyopia, particularly anisometropic (difference in refractive correction) and/or strabismic (turn of one eye) amblyopia has long been a challenge for many clinicians. Achieving optimum outcomes, where the amblyopic eye reaches a visual acuity similar to the fellow eye, is often impossible in many patients. Part of this challenge has resulted from a previous lack of scientific evidence for amblyopia treatment that was highlight by a systematic review by Snowdon et al. in 1998. Since this review, a number of publications have revealed new findings in the treatment of amblyopia. This includes the finding that less intensive occlusion treatments can be successful in treating amblyopia. A relationship between adherence to treatment and visual acuity has also been established and has been shown to be influenced by the use of intervention material. In addition, there is growing evidence of that a period of glasses wearing only can significantly improve visual acuity alone without any other modes of treatment. This review article reports findings since the Snowdon's report

Artisanal and Small-scale Mining and the Sustainable Development Goals::Opportunities and New Directions for Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper explains how formalizing and supporting artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – low-tech, labor-intensive mineral processing and extraction – would help governments in sub-Saharan Africa meet several targets linked the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While most of the men and women found working in ASM in the region choose to operate without the requisite permits and are rarely monitored or regulated, the local impacts of their activities are significant. After examining the long historical trajectory that has relegated most ASM activities in sub-Saharan Africa to the informal economy, three of the sector’s more obvious economic impacts are reviewed: its contribution to regional mineral outputs; how operations create employment opportunities for millions of people directly, and millions more in the downstream and upstream industries they spawn; and the links the sector has with subsistence agriculture, dynamics which have important implications for food security and gender equality. These contributions alone are sufficient justification for featuring ASM more prominently in the plans, policies and programs being launched in sub-Saharan Africa to help host governments meet their commitments to the SDGs

Gender Life Course Transitions from the Nuclear Family in England and Wales 1981-2001

In recent years there has been much political debate in the popular media about the fate of the nuclear family in the UK. Very little work has been done, using population data, to actually demonstrate the decline, or indeed continuance of this type of household formation. In this paper we use Office for National Statistics (ONS) longitudinal census data, from England and Wales, to explore the formation, dissolution and continuance of the nuclear family household over a twenty year period (1981- 2001). Our findings indicate a continuing importance of this household arrangement, however routes into and trajectories from nuclear family households take different forms for men and women across the life course.Nuclear Family; Households; Gender; Longitudinal Analysis