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Apparent learning disability, as measured by European/American tests and exam/nations, may, in fact, represent a false positive and an artifact of the testing, when the subjects are members of an ethnic culture in which traditions of skills and knowledge do not match those of the culture of those who devised the test. For an authentic estimate of abilities, one must have tests that fit the cultural traditions of the subjects being tested. This principle is extremely relevant to the testing of members of minority cultures in the United States, as well as of Aboriginal Australians who provided the raw data for this paper. In nonminority cultures, the same principle may also be relevant to the testing of a child with a learning disability; for a learning disability may, unsuspectedly, be the specific response of a particular child to his family's inchoate, covert, and paradoxical tradition, directive, or taboo against a specific facet of learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals primarily with Australian aboriginal society and culture, and compares these with the society and culture of white Australia in the special realm of the family. It assumes that white Australia is a complex but fundamentally coherent whole, and that aboriginal Australia can also be viewed as a coherent whole, irrespective of regional variations, for comparative purposes. The major distinction between the aboriginal family and the white family is a significant difference in the relationship between social structure and culture in the context of family. The only differentiations in modes of livelihood in an aboriginal tribe were the obvious ones based on age and sex. The familial cultures of aboriginal Australia exhibited a remarkable uniformity, even from tribe to tribe, compared with the diversity of familial cultures in white Australia, but the reverse is true of family structure. Earlier works on the aborigines had over-stressed "group marriage" to such an extent that the presence of some monogamists in the tribe was ignored. A typical aboriginal family consists of a man aged 50 years old or above, two wives, and children. Each family, whether polygynous or monogamous, constituted a separate camping unit with its own shelter and fire.

In this paper Australian data are used to test the hypothesis that status inconsistency is linked with political liberalism. Status inconsistency is here defined operationally in two different ways: (1) as a score following Lenski's original procedure and (2) as specified combinations of status categories. Since for behavioral studies status inconsistency is better conceived in terms of interaction between specific status categories rather than as a generalized score, the method of regression analysis with dummy variables is used to assess the explanatory power of alternative statistical models. Although status inconsistency in general has no clear effect on voting behavior, specific types of inconsistency do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first findings of a survey carried out in Melbourne, Australia. It attempts to test hypotheses based on the embourgeoisement thesis, and its variations, in a social system with a strong equalitarian ideology and compulsory arbitration for all sections of the work force. It assesses the economic differences between white collar and blue collar workers and also the difference between these groups and a middle class group. It also compares the Australian situation with America and Britain. It finds a significant difference between blue collar and white collar income rates, total income medians and career income medians, as against the apparent near parity of the situation in Britain and America. These differences are not mitigated by wives' earnings or income from other sources. There is an almost complete dichotomy between these groups and the middle class group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social life of the primitive Australian aborigines has been a fascinating field of scientific interest and rheoretical speculation for several generations of European and American sociologists and social anthropologists. Knowledge of the native family and kinship systems and their associated esoteric totemic rites, for example, stimulated such social theorists as Emile Durkheim and Lewis H. Morgan. The present article is an attempt to present some results of investigations done in Australia. Special emphasis is given to the several typical forms of kinship found in Australia and the principles underlying the organization of the immediate family and larger kinship structures. A somewhat different method of kinship analysis, which applies not only to Australian but to any other systems, is used in an effort to remove the strangeness and complexity from the minds of those, who have not specialized in this field of family research. The kinship terms are always designating instruments organized around the individual who places his various kin by the use of them, and by so doing, also socially places himself as the designator. In other words, Ego anchored in his immediate family, looks out at his kinship world and places all the kindred in relation to himself by means of his kinship terms and in so doing also socially orientates himself.

The comparative method can be a powerful instrument in understanding the complex relationship of institutions and human behavior. This article describes an attempt to apply this method to the study of labor markets. The authors compare the sources and areas of recruitment for different occupational groups in Perth, Australia with those observed in the San Francisco Bay Area by F. Theodore Malm ind reported on in the July 1954 issue of this Review. The results reported in this article refer, however, only to the two areas chosen for comparison. While Perth may be typical of Australian urban labor markets generally, because of the peculiarities of the San Francisco Bay Area—for example, the high degree of unionization and relatively small size of employing units—the results cannot be taken as necessarily representative of differences in recruiting patterns elsewhere in the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determination of wages in Australia through a system of industrial arbitration has had significant economic and social consequences, unforeseen by the initiators of the system, whose principal objective in its establishment was reduction of industrial strife, This article discusses some of the effects of wage arbitration on the Australian economy and suggests that in view of the widespread economic and social consequences of arbitration, its rote in the functioning of the economy should be reviewed for the purpose of integrating wage policy more closely with other aspects of the nation's economic program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After attending a rural compensatory preschool for 5 half days a week over 1 year, Australian black and white children showed substantial gains on tests of vocabulary, auditory association, grammatic closure, and operational thinking. Tests repeated 8 months later when the children were at primary school showed marked erosion on auditory association and grammatic closure but little erosion on vocabulary or operational thinking. Scores of the black children tended to erode more than scores of the white children. The erosion was attributed to failure to correct life style deficits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes an attempt to determine whether arming the police does or does not tend to increase the level of violence in a community. The study was carried out in Australia where states which are relatively homogeneous in respect of the population composition, culture, and general regulations regarding the ownership and carrying of firearms, pursue quite different policies in regard to police armament. It was found that rates of killing and wounding by and of the police appear to be highest in those states which follow the American policy in relation to arming the police and lowest in those states which maintain the English tradition of a disarmed police force. Moreover, although there is a direct correlation between the rate of killing police and the general homicide rate, the risk of being killed for policemen, which is always higher than for ordinary citizens, is relatively much higher in states which have adopted the American police firearms policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a summary of the central point made in the writer's recent book, POLICE KILLINGS IN AUSTRALIA. (Penguin, 1970), which will, be referred to simply as POLICE KILLINGS in this article. That central point is that it is highly probable that the majority of killings by police in the course of their duty occur in circumstances which are not permitted by law, but that the legality or illegality of such killings is never tested in an effective way because of various defects in the actual administration of the law. So invariable and systematic is the failure to test such conduct that one can say that the law, while remaining formally unchanged, has in fact been modified so as to afford greater protection to a privileged group within society-the police. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the marriage rules and kinship system of tribes in Australia. A settlement in Northern Australia in 1824 established contact with the Iwaidja tribe of Port Essington. This tribe presents a system of three matrilineal divisions, each comprising numerous totem groups. Two of these divisions intermarry with the third. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown described and discussed the kinship system and marriage rules of the Kariera tribe of Western Australia. A special form of kinship terminology was found to be associated with a marriage rule permitting marriage with the mother's brother's daughter's and father's sister's daughter. Various factors which are concerned in Australian marriage rules has ranged between purely local-group organizations, highly developed class systems, and systems which represent a compromise between these two contested forms of organization. It is therefore necessary to recapitulate the argument to some extent in order to present it in a possible historical perspective. The intermarriage of local totemic groups in accordance with any set custom will cause these groups to be associated in such a way that a pattern of genealogical sequences of named groups will tend to appear and consequently certain groups will tend to present to one another certain statuses of relationship which may be expressed in relationship terms.

This article studies the mentality of the Australian native. The Australian native has been repeatedly chosen to illustrate the lowest point of human development. The lowest stage of all straight-haired men, and perhaps of all the human species, is occupied by the Australian aborigines or Austral Negro. Between the most highly developed animal souls and the lowest developed human souls, there exist only a small quantitative, but no qualitative difference, and this difference is much less than the difference between the lowest and highest human souls, or than the difference between the highest and the lowest animal souls. In disposition, the Australian aborigines are bright, laughter-loving folk, but they are treacherous, untruthful and hold human life cheaply. They have no great physical courage. They are mentally in the condition of children. None of them have an idea of what the West calls moral, except the simple one of right or wrong arising out of property. The mentality of the Australian aborigines really places them nearly on a level with the apes. It is found that a backward culture, such as that of the natives of Australia, has much more substance, and affords wider scope of mental activity.

The article focuses on issues related to democracy. The importance of trying to understand democracy at the present time is very apparent. In some sense or other, it is more and more coming to be recognised as the dominant tendency in all those countries that are commonly described as civilized. And, indeed, in nearly all parts of the world the various countries seem to be approximating to a common civilization, which is largely based on principles of a democratic type. It is perhaps in some of the smaller countries, such as Switzerland, and in some of the younger colonies, such as Australia and New Zealand, that these democratic tendencies can be studied in their least diluted form. In Great Britain, notwithstanding the strong tendency that it has to cling to the traditions of the past, it can hardly be questioned that the influence of democratic ideals is constantly increasing. This influence is not confined to the sphere of imperial or local politics, but permeates whole life of the British.

The incidence and patterning of divorce in Australia differs substantially from that in the United States: Australians resort to divorce less frequently than do Americans, and generally only after a much longer duration of marriage, it is suggested that this arises from differences between the two countries in (1) the availability of divorce (in both existential and normative senses), (2) the availability of alternative "remedies" for marital disharmony, and (3) the extent of marital disharmony itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "The Old-New Distinction and Immigrants in Australia," Stanley Lieberson's interpretation of Australian immigration statistics is open to serious question. Contrary to his premise, the Australian immigration experience does not provide appropriate data for evaluating the old-new differentiation of immigrant behavior in American history. The Australian statistics do not support Lieberson's assertion that "northwestern and southeastern European immigrant patterns of adaptation and assimilation will be similar whenever the groups are established in the society at a comparable period." The emergence of the old-new classification of immigrants in America, as Lieberson pointed out, owed much to the change in the composition of immigrants around the turn of the century. The admission into Australia since World War II of immigrants born in southern, central, and eastern European countries differed considerably and fundamentally from the previous influx of "new" immigrants into the U.S. In the case of displaced persons, the Australian government established stringent criteria for admission. The number and monthly rate of admissions of the immigrants were specified as were their age, marital status, dependent status, employability, and "security" and health conditions.

First, it should be noted that various services for immigrants, such as English language training, citizenship programs, welfare agencies, and the like, were available for newcomers to the U.S.. But, granted that the lot of the new immigrant to the U.S. in earlier periods was harsher than that of contemporary migrants to Australia, the point remains that the immigrants are subject to a constant set of conditions, i.e., Australia and the services it provides. If northwestern Europeans did possess a greater propensity to as similar and adopt than other European immigrants, then the superior social facilities. Australia should in no way prevent them from showing more favorable rates relative to south eastern European immigrants. One critical issue raised is that immigration was rigidly controlled by the Australian government. Ignoring the fact that all sorts of undesirable Europeans were excluded by the U S. beginning with the immigration law of 1882, the marital status, dependent status, employability, and security and health conditions of immigrants to Australia were rigorously specified.