Alignment and Belonging in the Sociolinguistic Interview

This chapter examines five first meetings of the author (an Anglo-Australian researcher), a Javanese research assistant, and five Javanese study participants. The meetings were interviews within a larger project, which explored how Indonesian youth used language styles to enact an identity known as gaul (literally, “sociable”). In the current chapter, the author reviews transcripts of these meetings and highlights how the research assistant facilitates rapport and orients him (the researcher) and the participants (the researched) to youth identity as a stance object (cf. Du Bois, 2007). The research assistant often does this through a series of rhetorical moves that enable interview participants to achieve role alignment as “researcher” and “researched,” respectively. This chapter shows how such role alignment is an interactional process, which often entails snap judgments about interactional preferences, common ground, and moral concerns. These judgments may be recognized as acts of belonging, which interactants must tend to quickly, to establish rapport and to collect good data. Yet, this chapter ends by pointing out some of the perils of negotiated alignment and belonging, and how discursive moves to establish rapport can, in fact, lead to the collection of less-than-best data.

Overcoming Barriers to Applying Systems Thinking Mental Models in Policy-Making Comment on "What Can Policy-Makers Get Out of Systems Thinking? Policy Partners’ Experiences of a Systems-Focused Research Collaboration in Preventive Health"

Systems thinking provides the health system with important theories, models and approaches to understanding and assessing complexity. However, the utility and application of systems thinking for solution-generation and decision-making is uncertain at best, particularly amongst health policy-makers. This commentary aims to elaborate on key themes discussed by Haynes and colleagues in their study exploring policy-makers’ perceptions of an Australian researcher-policy-maker partnership focused on applications of systems thinking. Findings suggest that policy-makers perceive systems thinking as too theoretical and not actionable, and that the value of systems thinking can be gleaned from greater involvement of policy-makers in research (ie, through co-production). This commentary focuses on the idea that systems thinking is a mental model that, contrary to researchers’ beliefs, may be closely aligned with policy-makers’ existing worldviews, which can enhance adoption of this mental model. However, wider application of systems thinking beyond research requires addressing multiple barriers faced by policy-makers related to their capability, opportunity and motivation to action their systems thinking mental models. To make systems thinking applicable to the policy sphere, multiple approaches are required that focus on capacity building, and a shift in shared mental models (or the ideas and institutions that govern policy-making).

Bioboard

AUSTRALIA – New Therapy could Restore Mobility in Stroke Victims. AUSTRALIA – Sugar as Bad as Fat. AUSTRALIA – Scientists Uncover Cancer-fighting "Death" Protein. AUSTRALIA – Shrinking Brain in Dementia Prompts Overeating. AUSTRALIA – New Monitoring System for Mosquito-Borne Disease. AUSTRALIA – Australian Researcher Finds Radical Technique to Save MAS Babies. AUSTRALIA – Austrian Scientists Discover Enzyme Function in Cancer. CHINA – Domestic Dengue Fever Cases Breaks 1,000. CHINA – China Experts Design Gel to Protect Women from HIV. INDIA – India, South Africa to Team up on HIV Vaccine Research. MALAYSIA – Malaysia to use Lab Mosquitoes to Fight Dengue NEW ZEALAND – Plant Derived Foods can Keep us Feeling Full. SINGAPORE – Singapore Hosts First "Decade of the Mind" Conference in Asia and Expands Efforts in Brain & Cognition Research. SINGAPORE – Drugs May Replace Chemo in Leukemia Therapy. SINGAPORE – Singapore Scientists First to Perform Genome-Wide study of Human Stem Cells. SINGAPORE – Singapore Babies in Waste-disease Trial. SINGAPORE – New Technology a Shot in the Arm for Biofuels. SINGAPORE – S$3.7 Billion for Singapore Biomedical Sciences R&D. TAIWAN – Medical Tourism Booms in Taiwan. OTHER REGIONS — EUROPE – Gene that Triggers Human Cancer Identified. OTHER REGIONS — EUROPE – Painfully Potent Pepper. OTHER REGIONS — NORTH AMERICA – 2 Dads and No Mum make 10 Mice.

On the Pleistocene settlement of South America

Australia and the Americas provide the two case-studies of the late human settlement of a continent by, it seems, Homo sapiens sapiens. At one time the corollaries of first occupation of the Americas, at perhaps 12,000 b.p., were a similarly late settlement of Australia and the need for a land-bridge across the Bering Straits. But now the pattern of occupation in New Guinea and its offshore islands proves that a long sea-crossing was made there before about 40,000 b.p. Here an Australian researcher looks across the Pacific to the evidence that has been offered for a Pleistocene occupation in south America, of a date comparable with that in Sahul.