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Publications FeedJournal Articles
Race, Risk, and Fiction in the War on Terror
3 December 2010
Literature Interpretation Theory
This article examines how racial perceptions manifest themselves across a range of post-9/11 fictions. Assistant Professor Georgiana Banita argues that American literature after 9/11 has sought to alleviate the pressure of racial discrimination by replacing a moral discourse based on race with a more ambiguous ethical approach that emphasizes risk, supported by narratives of contingency. Georgiana Banita is a postdoctoral fellow at the US Studies Centre. Read article
Beyond the Depleting Model of Parenting: Narratives of Childrearing and Change
30 November 2010
by Jennifer Silva and Allison Pugh in Sociological Inquiry
A great deal of scholarship investigates the effects of parenting on adults who parent. While existing literature has identified the ways in which parenting affects parents adversely, the authors argue that more attention needs to be paid to how having children may enhance parents' lives. Thus, we draw upon twenty-four in-depth interviews with young parents in order to investigate this process. First, the authors identify five ways in which parents say caregiving has changed their worldviews, relationships, and expectations, leading them to 1) erect barriers, 2) aspire for more, 3) view parenthood as a second chance, 4) hew a new path, and 5) make connections. Second, the authors uncover two central metaphors that parents rely on to explain the effect that having responsibility for children has had on their lives: the child as witness and the child as tether. The authors also point to future areas of investigation, arguing that only with an adequate understanding of what parenting does to parents can we understand what changing trends in families and inequality hold for ourselves and our futures. Read Article
From Charlie Chan to The karate kid—changing perceptions of oriental style
23 November 2010
Recent Hollywood action and science fiction movies are helping shape new images of East Asia, says Jane Park in the latest issue of Asian Currents. Read Article
Another Mars-Venus divide? Why Australia said ‘yes’ and Canada said ‘non’ to involvement in the 2003 Iraq War
25 October 2010
by Brendon O'Connor and Srdjan Vucetic
This essay published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs considers how two countries with much in common came to differ on the question of whether to fight in Iraq. O'Connor and Vucetic say that while the views of Prime Ministers Howard and Chretien were important, more attention ought to be given to public opinion, the history of both countries and the dominant views within the ruling parties. Read article
The more things change, the more they stay the same?
30 September 2010
O'Connor asks the question: does the election of any new leader really make a difference? Is Barack Obama really that different, that special, that he can defy the iron law of politics: disappointment? Read Article
Strategic choices: Australia, China and the US in Asia
20 August 2010
In the latest edition of the Asialink Essays Geoffrey Garrett discusses the important strategic choices facing the Australian government in the Asia-Pacific Century. Read Essay
The Dynamics of Top-Down Organizational Change: Donald Rumsfeld's Campaign to Transform the US Defense Department
4 August 2010
by Timothy Came and Colin Campbell
Drawing upon interviews with 69 defense policymakers and close observers, this Governance article develops an extrapolation-oriented case study of Donald Rumsfeld's campaign to transform the development of the U.S. Defense Department's future capabilities. This reform effort, launched by President George W. Bush during his first presidential campaign, encountered difficulties in developing and promoting the content of the proposed transformation and in executing it. Following Eugene Bardach's work on institutional craftsmanship and Michael Barzelay's efforts to further develop Bardach's methodology for extrapolation-oriented case studies, the article explores the sources of the transformation campaign's difficulties, identifying several mechanisms linking common process context factors, exacerbated by process design features, to these negative outcomes. It also offers suggestions for rendering the design of change campaigns more robust to these vulnerabilities. Read Article
Measuring Government Effectiveness and Its Consequences for Social Welfare in Sub-Saharan African Countries
31 July 2010
by Audrey Sacks and Margaret Levi
The authors introduce a method for measuring effective government and modeling its consequences for social welfare at the individual level. They focus on the experiences of citizens living in African countries where famine remains a serious threat. If a government is effective, it will be able to deliver goods that individuals need to improve their social welfare. At a minimum, effective governments facilitate reliable access to food for its citizens. The authors assess this conception of effective government via a multi-level model from 17 sub-Saharan countries sampled in 2005 by Afrobarometer. We find that citizens who live in regions and in countries with a civil bureaucracy, reliable law enforcement and good infrastructure enjoy higher levels of food security than those who live in regions with weaker institutional penetration. Link to publishers
Political fortunes: On finance and its regulation
15 July 2010
by Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, Thomas Romer and Howard Rosenthal
This article co-authored by US Studies Centre Visiting Fellow Thomas Romer will appear in an upcoming issue of Daedalus and looks at the political dimensions of the 2008 financial crisis. Read Article
Negotiating the promised land: The end of innocence?
22 June 2010
This essay in the Israel Studies Forum (Vol. 25 Iss. 1) focuses on three broad issues crucial to a successful Arab-Israeli negotiated outcome including strong leadership, excellent timing, and proper management of the US-Israeli relationship. The essay reviews three recent books by former US policymakers: Martin Indyk’s Innocent Abroad, Daniel Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky’s Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace, and Aaron David Miller’s The Much Too Promised Land. Read Article
VIDEOS & INTERVIEWS
Dr David Smith analyses how Obama's public support of same sex marriage may affect his re-election chances.
Edward Blakely discusses his new book 'My Storm' and the lessons that Australians can learn from Hurricane Katrina.
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