Frank Lewins

Explaining stable partnerships among FTMs and MTFs: a significant difference?

Research on male to female (MTFs) and female to male (FTMs) transsexuals has pointed to a number of important differences between these categories, namely their different propensity towards cross dressing and relative levels of mental stability. Recent research demonstrates that these assumed differences are not supported by evidence. One difference remains unchallenged – the greater capacity of FTMs to attain and maintain stable partnerships. Extensive interviewing amongst both categories of transsexual reveals that the capacity to maintain stable partnerships is linked to gender socialization. Being socialized as a girl then as a woman elevates the importance of affective ties in partnerships, such as bonding and caring. By contrast, being socialized as a boy then as a man places more importance on the role of physical characteristics of the man and his partner in attaining and maintaining partnerships.

Attitudes concerning Euthanasia: Australia at the Turn of the 21st Century

Abstract With rapid developments in life-prolonging technologies and increases in average life expectancy, euthanasia has become an increasingly topical issue. This paper contributes to the euthanasia debate an analysis of Australian attitudes to assisted suicide, active non-voluntary as well as passive non-voluntary euthanasia. Between 1993 and 2002, Australians supported access to voluntary euthanasia of the terminally ill, but had reservations when death was not imminent. The age of patients was relatively unimportant in these considerations. Non-voluntary euthanasia of babies and adults received widespread approval only when particular situations could be defined as ‘letting die’ rather than ‘killing’.

The development of bioethics and the issue of euthanasia: regulating, de-regulating or re-regulating?

This paper relates the development of bioethics and the issue of euthanasia to social control. It suggests that, contrary to appearances, developments in these areas indicate increasing government control of health care practice. Specifically, it argues that, although the emergence of bioethics may appear to indicate health care professionals engaging in self-regulation, the reality is more a case of re-regulation or a shift of regulatory control from health care professionals to governments or agents of governments. By contrast, the issue of euthanasia appears to be proceeding in a different direction in that it seems to be a dispute over de-regulation of health care practice. In reality, though, it is similar to the development of bioethics. The issue of euthanasia, especially in recent years, rests on the same type of re-regulation of health care practice—a shift from medical control to increasing control by government.

Everyday Culture in China: The Experience of Chinese Intellectuals

The author is attached to the Department of Sociology at The Australian National University. He would like to thank the Faculties Research Fund of The Australian National University for funding this project, and the Contemporary China Center for its support and resources during his period there as a Visiting Fellow. He is also grateful to Jonathan Unger, Geremic Barmé, David Kelly, Andrew Walder, Mo Yimei and anonymous referees for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Book Reviews : THE ANALYSIS OF IDEOLOGY. Raymond Boudon. Translated by Malcolm Slater. Cambridge, Polity Press, 1989. 241pp.

ogie : ou l’origine des idees reçues (1986) brings a great deal of order into the confused discussions of ideology. Acknowledging from the outset the wide use of the term ’ideology’, a corpus of work which is ’like a dialogue of the deaf in terms of its utility (p. 17), Boudon illuminates the question ’what is ideology?’ by developing a number of important discussions. Particularly illuminating are his treatment of the contributions of a wide

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Similarly, Alexander in his very interesting article on the Watergate affair uses some sophisticated theoretical ideas from semiotic studies in his concern with meaning, sign and discourse etc. However, the speculative and tentative nature of this exercise falls well short of helping us address some basic questions. What was it in the first place that led to the realisation that the Watergate affair was a threat to American democracy? Which social and political forces confronted the people involved in the affair and how? The discussion of semiotics and the theory of meaning does not take one very far in addressing such issues. In both Tiryakian’s and Alexander’s contributions the main point that emerges is that religion helped to ritualise the events in question and thus legitimised them. Not a very startling new ’insight’, it would seem! Despite all these reservations, as a tentative attempt to reconstruct ’late Durkheim’, the book deserves a good hearing. Unfortunately, it is not priced to meet this need.

Book Reviews : The Spirit of Chinese Capitalism: S. Gordon Redding. Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1990. 267 pp. US

conformity being waged by the French siege culture of Quebec. Section four examines three alternatives open to ethnic groups: get power, show commitment, or segregate. Baker compares resistance to Anglo-domination in Canada, United States and South Africa. Goldlust and Richmond do a multivariate analysis of responses to seven questions indicating commitment to and identification with Canada by about 2,000 immigrant men living in metropolitan Toronto. Weaver observes Treaty Indians demanding special status from a federal government that wants to eliminate privilege. Research seems minimal on such intergroup bargaining, especially as it may influence nation building and economic development. Section fivehas Palmer reviewing research in Canada from the British brand of bigotry evident in works by J.T.M. Anderson, who was later to become premier of Saskatchewan with help from the Ku Klux Klan, to the comparative approach evident in Book IV of the Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Zubrzycki notes the lack of research on the political behavior of over three and one-half million immigrants who came to Canada and to Australia between 1947 and 1971. Commentator Matejko traces the current revival of interest in ethnicity to two opposing sources: a genuine search for identity and the search for new ways to manipulate people by politicians. Commentaries by McKenna may add less than they subtract from the general high quality of most of the other contributions. Perhaps the most relevant effort here, with the strongest personal impact, is the frank non-scholarly autobiography submitted by the late William Kurelek, immigrant to Toronto from western Canada, to whom this book may well have been dedicated.