Janette Young

Exploring discourses of equity, social justice and social determinants in Australian health care policy and planning documents

The Australian National Health Reform agenda includes aims to reduce health disadvantages and provide equitable access. However, this reform will be implemented through state and territory governments, and as such will be built on existing conceptualisations of health as a social justice concept (core to understandings of social determinants). A selection of state and territory health policy documents were analysed within a critical discourse framework focussing on their use of terms relating to social determinants. Analysis revealed that the understandings of social justice concepts vary across Australia and are generally apolitical, belying core concerns inherent in a social determinants understanding. Such differentiation bears recognition by reformers seeking to implement national consistency. This paper also considers how health professionals might become aware of their own cultural enmeshment in neo-liberal frameworks of understanding, recognising a social determinants framework as counter-cultural and hence requiring radical thinking.

Christian Approaches to the Restorative Justice Movement: Observations on Scripture and Praxis

The restorative justice movement provides both faith-based and secular justice advocates with much common ground for dialog. This review of the roots of this dialog, from the perspective of both historical and contemporary Christianity, points to the wide diversity of Christian scriptures that provide guidance (and some headaches) for faith-based restorative justice practitioners. Contemporary links between faith communities and restorative justice initiatives are, nevertheless, substantial and fundamental. Restorative themes have enjoyed a long history in Christianity and will continue to inform ‘restorative’ practises, empowering and enlivening justice practitioners generally.

Health promotion and crime prevention: recognising broader synergies

ISSUE ADDRESSED Although health promotion and crime prevention have been brought together to address specific social ills, such as illicit drugs and road trauma, there is little literature that seeks to lift the connections between the fields of health and justice to a more general level. METHODS The present paper explores the synergies between health promotion and crime prevention by considering a range of parallels between them. RESULTS Health promotion and crime prevention can be shown to have several parallel interests, agendas, systemic locations and shared population foci, indicating a potential for more conscious engagement between each field. CONCLUSION There are a range of synergies, parallels and shared interests that crime prevention and health promotion share. These fields could develop more supportive networks with each other. So what? There is scope for those who champion both crime prevention and health promotion to align more readily in activities of public policy, academia and practice. In addition, the two fields and their advocates could be more supportive of each other in progressing agendas of social equity. Health promotion practitioners could consider seeking to extend their employment and opportunities by being aware of projects, employment and relationships outside of health in the field of crime prevention.

Exploring city branding strategies and their impacts on local tourism success, the case study of Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan

ABSTRACT City branding is a managerial procedure which offers any given city a distinct identity; providing cities with a chance to present as different, positive and distinguishable from other competitors. In Japan, the use of mascots for city branding is often part of urban planning strategy. Kumamon is the most successful regional mascot in Japan and offers an opportunity to explore the nature of mascot city branding strategies. Employing a large number of promotional strategies, the local prefecture created a unique Kumamon city brand and enhanced the local image, resulting in significant economic benefits. The paper argues that five main factors contributed to the success of Kumamon: government support, power of emotional attachment and anthropomorphism, efficient public transport and tourism services, the mascot branding, and social media. Understanding how Kumamon mascot branding succeeded can assist makers to decide whether to replicate the use of mascot branding in other cities and regions.

Fresh air, sunshine and happiness: Millennials building health (salutogenesis) in leisure and nature

ABSTRACT This paper explores intersections between health creation, leisure and nature emerging from research with Millennial university students in Australia studying to become health(system) professionals. Most enter university believing that ‘health’ is a bio-medical (illness and disease focused) concept. This reflects the dominant discourse of ‘health’. The term ‘salutogenesis’ (meaning health as a resource) is used to disrupt this discourse. In 2015 and 2016 students completed an online survey in which they subjectively identified three things that build their health and how these work for them. Many identified factors that fit within a broad definition of ‘leisure’. About one quarter refer to nature. What emerges are insights into the manner in which leisure, nature and wellbeing intersect for these Millennials and suggests that their subjective understandings of health creation, including for some a leisure: nature intersection can assist future health professionals to understand ‘health’ as not only bio-medical.

Successful British Migration to Australia—what lies beneath the macro-level?

ABSTRACT What is successful migration? At a macro-socio-political level migration by individuals may appear to be successful when it has met the objectives of governments, industries and domestic profit makers. However, delving beneath the surface can reveal contradictions and other measures of success at the individual, or micro-level. Within a broader critical historical ethnography, we interviewed 26 post-World War 2 (WW2) British migrants living in South Australia. All interviewees could be viewed as successful at the macro-level, having remained in Australia for many years and having established multi-generational Australian families. Their migration was a ‘success’ when measured against the priorities that were actively promoted by Australian governments in the post-WW2 period. At a micro-level, the migrants involved in this study reported mixed outcomes. While migration did result in self-identified aims of migration including employment, opportunities and adventure, some migrants reported high levels of distress and longing, linked to loss and dislocation from people and places in geographically distant locales. For some, these feelings extended into the present, raising questions over the ‘success’ of their migration experiences at a personal level. We argue that pro-active migration recruitment—such as that undertaken by Australian governments in the post-WW2 period—has the potential to pressure some persons into migration, creating ongoing and unresolvable tensions. Experiences of such disruptions merit further exploration to develop deeper critical understandings of migration success.

Animals and tourism: understanding diverse relationships

have the flexibility of spending hours playing pickup basketball or attending tournaments, but they are still, at least to some extent, constructed as being effeminate and weak when they do play. Thangaraj argues some South Asian American males have thus used basketball as a way of ‘manning up’ (4) The ways in which they are able to man up relies on the presence or absence of other bodies (e.g. the real or implied presence of women in their lives so that the Desi players can reinforce their heterosexuality and the absence of African American men, who are often more skilled basketball players, and who thus threaten the South Asian Americans’ displays of expertise on the court). He does not shy away from identifying and dissecting his ‘interlocutors’’ (as he calls them) (ix) sexist, racist, and homophobic remarks. Indeed, the author draws on a wide array of sociology, anthropology, gender, leisure, and sport scholars to deftly analyse the research participants’ words and actions. Given that the author labels his work an experiential ethnography, I would have liked to have read more about the author himself and his contributions to situations that he described. A bit more reflexivity about what his presence meant, how he reacted, and how others reacted to him would have added even more nuance to an already very strong text. Given the book’s title, the fourth chapter, which takes the focus off of basketball, seems a bit out of place. While I appreciated the ways in which the chapter takes the reader into different leisure venues, like strip clubs, the link to basketball at times seemed either absent or forced. This chapter provides very strong analysis of gender relations, but at times felt a bit like a standalone journal article that had been published separately but included to round out the dissertation research. If the book had had a different title, perhaps the reader would have been better prepared for its inclusion. The text in its entirety shows the complexity of what on the surface might seem like a mundane topic. For this reason, it is a wonderful teaching text. Nevertheless, what makes it so brilliant – its complexity – is also what makes it potentially too difficult for many undergraduates. Select chapters at a junior undergraduate level and the entire text at a senior undergraduate or graduate level would make a strong addition to sociology and anthropology of sport and leisure courses, qualitative methods and data analysis, and gender studies courses. As professor, I enjoyed the book immensely and found myself highlighting enormous portions of it. Certainly, it provided an inspiration for me to continue doing ethnographic research and, if you will indulge me in a basketball reference, to step up my own game.