Graham Brown

The Power of Peers: Why Some Students Bully Others to Conform

Utilizing an interactionist perspective, two associated sensitizing constructs, and a combination of social psychological theory, this article reports on the influence of the peer group on individual perceptions, and its impact on initiation and persistence of bullying. The specific research question, “How does the need to conform with peers and the peer group influence the initiation and persistence of bullying others?” is investigated. Semistructured, one-on-one interviews with a purposive sample of 51 Grade 7 students (aged 12 years) were conducted during school time to investigate factors that influence students to bully others and what might help them to stop. Emerging from the theme of peer group was the need for belonging and group status, in particular social norms or the need to conform, which was influential when students described why they initiated and persisted with bullying others. The influence of labeling, the group process, and the aspiration to be like others within their group emerged as key constructs. The implications of these data for schools will be described and recommendations made.

Barriers to HIV testing among Australian gay men

OBJECTIVE To investigate the barriers to HIV testing among Australian gay men. METHODS An online survey was conducted to explore reasons for avoiding and delaying testing for HIV; 519 non-HIV-positive men completed the online survey. RESULTS Most non-HIV-positive men (92.9%) had been tested for HIV, with 75.4% indicating they had been tested in the previous year. The most common reasons for avoiding or delaying testing were a belief that they had not done anything risky (41.2%) and the need to return for a second clinic visit to receive results (40.3%). Among men who engaged in unprotected anal intercourse with casual partners (UAIC), those who had not been recently tested were more likely to cite the lack of any symptoms as reasons for not having tested (adjusted odds ratio: 2.34; 95% confidence interval: 1.03-5.31; P=0.041). CONCLUSIONS For men who do not engage in risky sex, the decision not to test is probably reasonable, but those who engage in non condom-based risk reduction may be at some increased risk and should be encouraged to test relatively often. Changes to Australias national HIV testing policy may ameliorate some of the need to return for second clinic visits to receive results, but the policy still requires full implementation, including the introduction of rapid point-of-care HIV testing to Australia. Among men who engage in UAIC, there appears to be a particular need for information about the benefits of early treatment after HIV diagnosis and about the relative likelihood of experiencing HIV seroconversion illness.

Horizontal Inequalities and Separatism in Southeast Asia: A Comparative Perspective

This chapter explores the role of horizontal inequalities in fomenting violent separatism through a comparative investigation of four cases in Southeast Asia. As Weiler (2005: 4) notes, self-determination struggles ‘have been among the most damaging and protracted to have bedevilled states and the international system since 1945’. Asia, Southeast Asia in particular, has been home to many of the longest running conflicts in the post-Second World War period.

Policies Towards Horizontal Inequalities

This book has argued that severe Horizontal Inequalities (HIs) predispose countries to violent conflict as well as reducing individuals’ well-being. Relevant HIs include socioeconomic, political and cultural status dimensions, and they are particularly damaging when they are consistent across dimensions. In the light of these findings, this chapter reviews policies towards reducing HIs.

Playing the (non)ethnic card: The electoral system and ethnic voting patterns in Malaysia

Abstract This paper examines the ethnic determinants of constituency delineations and voting patterns in West Malaysia over the past five general elections, paying particular attention to the ramifications of the 2002 re-delineation exercise. I show that the 2002 re-delineation exercise reduced markedly the ethnic bias of the electoral system yet increased the overall imbalance in constituency size. I then argue that the old electoral logic of small Malay-dominated rural constituencies, which tended to vote strongly for the Alliance/BN government (incumbent since independence), and large Chinese-dominated urban constituencies, which tended to vote more for the opposition, has become increasingly irrelevant thanks to Malay urbanization and shifting ethnic voting patterns. The paper thus concludes that the 2002 exercise represented the ‘correction’ of an increasing imbalance between the patterns of the governments electoral support and constituency delineations. Ethnic bias in the electoral system was substantially replaced by a direct political bias in favour of the BN government.

Cultural Status Inequalities: An Important Dimension of Group Mobilization

Recent research on the causes of civil wars and communal, ethnic or religious conflicts has focused predominantly on political and economic grievances, motivations and issues (for example, Collier and Hoeffler, 2004; Fearon and Laitin, 2003; Nafziger and Auvinen, 2002; Stewart, 2000a). However, in many conflicts, political and economic issues are complemented by perceptions of cultural discrimination, exclusion or inequality of treatment. As Horowitz (2002: 22) asserts cultural matters, ‘such as the designation of official languages and official religions, and educational issues, such as languages of instruction, the content of curricula, and the official recognition of degrees from various educational streams associated with various ethnic or religious groups’, and freedom of cultural expression more generally, often play a central role in the emergence of violent conflicts.

Approaches to the Measurement of Horizontal Inequalities

Most measures of inequality concern vertical inequality (VI), or inequality among individuals, and are generally confined to a few economic variables such as income, consumption, and sometimes assets. In this arena, Lorenz curves and the Gini coefficient have been extensively and powerfully used as measures of inequality. Much less attention has been paid to measuring inequalities between groups (or horizontal inequalities (HIs)). Although some measures of VI are decomposable into groups, these can be hard to interpret and, moreover, measure the contribution of group inequalities to overall VI rather than group inequality as such. This chapter considers alternative ways of measuring HIs and provides some empirical applications of different measures, showing how far the different measures correlate with one another.

Conceptualizing and Measuring Ethnicity

This paper critically reviews the ontological debates over the nature of ethnicity and the different ways in which it is operationalized and “measured” for quantitative research. It is argued that while moving away from a “primordealist” position on ethnicity renders measurement of the social diversity more difficult, conceptually and practically it does not invalidate this exercise. A second problem, however, is also identified with the measurement of ethnicity: when information on ethnic diversity is incorporated with other socio-economic information, a range of measures can be derived that purport to pick up very different distributions, but that are in reality often very highly correlated. These two problems combined present a significant challenge for the quantitative study of the relationship between ethnic diversity and political and economic outcomes such as conflict and growth patterns. The authors do not assert that these problems invalidate the exercise of investigating these relationships econometrically entirely, but they suggest the problems do warn us to be more guarded and modest in the claims made on the basis of such analyses.

Horizontal inequalities and conflict: a critical review and research agenda

In order to explain the emergence of violent conflicts, an increasing number of academic studies have focused on the role of inequalities between ‘culturally’ defined groups or ‘horizontal inequalities’. The concept and theory of horizontal inequalities is also gaining purchase in donor agencies and the broader international development community, particularly in the context of specific countries undergoing or recently emerged from violent conflicts in which such inequalities appear to have played an important role. In this article, we critically review the scope and evidence for the relationship between the presence of severe horizontal inequalities and the emergence of violent conflicts, and lay out areas demanding further research. We identify three main avenues for future research which could extend the horizontal inequality approach and deepen its analytical advances by focusing more attention away from the state. Two of these relate to the role of non-state centred dynamics in the evolution and interpretation of horizontal inequalities and their mobilisation capacity; the third relates to the broad sociological process through which horizontal inequalities and ethnic identity formation may, in fact, be iteratively or dialectically intertwined.

Major findings and conclusions on the relationship between horizontal inequalities and conflict.

In this book we set out to explore the relationship between HIs and conflict: whether indeed such a relationship pertains in recent conflicts; which type of inequality is most important; and in which conditions conflicts are more likely to emerge. We did so by case studies of countries in three regions of the world, West Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America, and also through more global analysis, using political-economy, econometric, historical and anthropological approaches. Throughout, we have aimed to contrast countries (and areas within them) that have managed to avoid serious conflict with those countries or areas that have experienced severe violent conflict in recent decades. The aim of this chapter is to bring together the main conclusions that emerge from these case studies. The final chapter of the book reviews policy conclusions of the analysis.