R Watts
Biographic Data
| ID | 29937 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Watts |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Watts |
| SIGNATURE | WATTS R |
| AFFILIATIONS | RMIT University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2886-1366 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 45 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Australia’s Big Project: Restoring the Intergenerational Contract
The issue of intergenerational fairness, particularly as it affects younger Australians, has become a significant contemporary political and policy issue. Key concerns include generationally unfair housing and taxation systems, and the failure to address climate change, leading to allegations that the ‘intergenerational contract’ is being broken. Yet precisely what an ‘intergenerational contract’ means is not clear. Equally, the initial interest …
Young and invisible in a time of polycrisis: Reframing the problem and finding solutions
Intergenerational Climate Justice: Applying Theory to Policy in the Anthropocene
In this article we show that while it is important to develop and refine the moral theory of environmental and climate justice, it is also important to consider how to apply those theories, to shape laws and policies and develop good practice in climate movements. This article we identify and assess some promising policy design principles and legal strategies for advancing intergenerational climate justice. We begin by saying why intergenerationa…
The Political in the Anthropocene: Reflections on a Ministerial Veto, 2021
This article was prompted by a Ministerial veto (2021) of the Australian Research Council’s decision to fund a research project by the authors to explore the student-led climate movement in Australia. It was also prompted by criticism of the veto which accused the Minister of bringing “politics” into what was represented as a scholarly matter. It addresses two questions: How should we understand this idea of “politics” in the context of Australia…
A New Ontology and Youth Work Ethics in a Time of Planetary Crisis
Evidence of the far-reaching impact of the Anthropocene on young people presents youth work with opportunities to reflect on some long-standing issues. This pioneering exercise considers the implications for youth work practice and its ethical frameworks should it embrace the tenets of the 'new materialism'. We ask how youth work practice is currently understood, especially in 'British-influenced youth work' and whether there are problems with it…
Children’s Guerrilla Play and Dirt Jumps: Parkland as Contested Space During the Covid-19 Pandemic in Australia
In 2020-21 the Victorian state government in Australia imposed 262 days of sustained lockdown on Melbourne’s population in a bid to contain the COVID pandemic. These lockdowns, among the longest in the world, affected young people especially. Children were subjected to months of curfews, home schooling using digital platforms and severe travel. Nonetheless some children engaged repeatedly in autonomous and well co-ordinated efforts to construct d…
‘Blah, Blah, Blah … [not] business as usual’: Politics through the lens of young female climate leaders
Girls and young women have played leading roles in Australian climate politics since 2018. The distinctive age-cohort and gendered characteristics of this movement and the implications of this for contemporary politics and democracy are not well documented. Focusing on School Strike 4 Climate movement, we ask how to best understand this development? Is their appearance as leaders and speakers in political forums politically significant, and if so…
Translating Bourdieu into youth studies
Against a backdrop of lively discussion about the best ways to do youth studies, or sociology of youth, this article asks: Can Pierre Bourdieu’s work be translated into youth studies in ways that benefit the field? We begin by considering Bourdieu’s thoughts on the category of ‘youth’ using a new translation of this text, and then turn to an important discussion by Furlong, Woodman, and Wyn about certain long standing tensions in youth studies. T…
Public Administration, Habermas and the Crisis of Legitimacy in the Youth Justice System: An Australian Case Study
Using an Australian case in which a liberal-democratic state systematically breached the human rights of children involved in in its youth justice system, this article explores the idea of ‘legitimacy’ and ‘legitimation crisis’ in the modern administrative state. We acknowledge the relevance of Habermas’ account of a crisis of legitimacy when responding to Carl Schmitt’s challenge to the claim to legitimacy vested in liberal rule of law principle…
Psilocybin with psychological support for treatment-resistant depression: Six-month follow-up
RATIONALE: Recent clinical trials are reporting marked improvements in mental health outcomes with psychedelic drug-assisted psychotherapy. OBJECTIVES: Here, we report on safety and efficacy outcomes for up to 6 months in an open-label trial of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. METHODS: Twenty patients (six females) with (mostly) severe, unipolar, treatment-resistant major depression received two oral doses of psilocybin (10 and 25 m…
Psychedelics and connectedness
The Precarious Generation: A Political Economy of Young People
This book draws on a wealth of evidence including young people’s own stories, to document how they are now faring in increasingly unequal societies like America, Britain, Australia, France and Spain. It points to systematic generational inequality as those born since 1980 become the first generation to have a lower standard of living than previous generations. While governments and experts typically explain this by referring to globalization, new…
On Technology and the Prospects for Good Practice in the Human Services: Donald Schön, Martin Heidegger, and the Case for Phronesis and Praxis
Technology is fundamental to and embedded in the way practice is conceptualized and institutionalized in social service work. Many scholars assume and expect that good practices of care are achieved with the correct application of theory produced by rigorous scientific research. However, there are significant critiques of this viewpoint. We examine the work of Donald Schön and Martin Heidegger and agree with these authors’ suggestions that techni…
States of Violence and the Civilising Process: On Criminology and State Crime
This book offers a distinctive and novel approach to state-sponsored violence, one of the major problems facing humanity in the previous and now the twenty-first century. It addresses the question: ho
Australia's boldest experiment: War and reconstruction in the 1940s
Continuing Subversion of the Children's Court: A Review of Victoria's New Child Protection Laws 2014
This article describes and assesses the Children, Youth & Families Amendment (Permanent Care and Other Matters) Act 2014 passed into law in the last months of Victoria's Napthine government just prior to its defeat in the 2014 state election. The article argues there are good reasons for concern about both the process and substance of the legislation. It is argued that this was an unusual legislative process marked by a relative absence of the le…
Cruel optimism’: A southern theory perspective on the European Union's Youth Strategy , 2008–2012
European Union youth policy since the 1990s has been ostensibly committed to enhancing the social participation of young people. This study explores the reliance of the 2009 European Union (EU) Youth Strategy on a combination of OECD ‘active society’ and human capital theory which seeks to increase educational participation rates in Europe with the goal of creating more and better opportunities for young people and to promote active citizenship, …
Truth and Politics: Thinking About Evidence‐Based Policy in the Age Of Spin
Evidence‐based policy and the contemporary politics of spin are said to characterise contemporary politics and policy. The paper asks firstly what sense is to be made of this coincidence, and then documents this coincidence. It then asks how credible is the conception of ‘evidence’ espoused by advocates of evidence‐based policy when it is conventionally represented as an ‘objective’ counter to ideology, spin or opinion? It points to major problem…
Illuminating Our World: An Essay on the Unraveling of the Species Problem, with Assistance from a Barnacle and a Goose
In order to plan for the future, we must understand the past. This paper investigates the manner in which both naturalists and the wider community view one of the most intriguing of all questions: what makes a species special? Consideration is given to the essentialist view—a rigid perspective and ancient, Aristotelian perspective—that all organisms are fixed in form and nature. In the middle of the 19th century, Charles Darwin changed this by sh…
The mismeasurement of youth: Why adolescent brain science is bad science
Medical imaging technology has been used since the 1990s to make claims about how adolescent brains are different to adult brains. In turn these differences have been used to explain what are said to be typical patterns of adolescent behaviour like risk taking, sensation seeking and intense peer interaction. This article critically assesses the scientific basis of the claims that link observations about adolescent brains to adolescent behaviour v…
In Defence of Victoria's Children's Court: Its Value and Role in the Child Protection System
Australian child protection systems have been subject to sustained and significant criticism for many decades. As a central part of that system Children’s Courts have been implicated: three recent inquiries into the child protection system in Victoria all criticised the Family Division of the Children’s Court.1 In the resulting debate two diametrically opposed points of view surfaced about the Children’s Court and the role that legal procedures a…
Accounting for Future Generations: Intergenerational Equity in Australia 1
Australian governments have published three intergenerational reports since 2002. In line with a general international trend these reports pointed to a problem said to arise from an ageing population which exposes Australia to the risk of a future major fiscal crisis. In this article we argue that by failing to use a generational accounting framework, the reports privilege the elderly at the expense of young people. Added to this, they fail to en…
International Criminology: A Critical Introduction
International Criminology is an easy-access critical introduction to how conventional criminologists in the international arena think about and research crime. By using examples from the US, UK and Australia, the authors outline key ideas, vocabulary, assumptions and findings of the discipline while opening up a set of critical underlying issues and problems. From theoretical traditions to historical perspectives; contemporary criminology to refl…
Australia's Welfare Wars Revisited: The Players, the Politics and the Ideologies
This represents a substantial revision of Philip Mendes' successful textbook Australia's Welfare Wars, in which the author explains - and questions - many of the values and assumptions that underpin contemporary social welfare policies. In particular, the book is critical of the Neo-liberal or Economic rationalist ideas that now dominate the welfare debates in Australia and overseas, and instead demonstrates and reaffirms the ongoing relevance of…
Socrates at the Tech: On Higher Education in the Age of the Mass University
Translating Bourdieu into youth studies
Against a backdrop of lively discussion about the best ways to do youth studies, or sociology of youth, this article asks: Can Pierre Bourdieu’s work be translated into youth studies in ways that benefit the field? We begin by considering Bourdieu’s thoughts on the category of ‘youth’ using a new translation of this text, and then turn to an important discussion by Furlong, Woodman, and Wyn about certain long standing tensions in youth studies. T…
Accounting for Future Generations: Intergenerational Equity in Australia 1
Australian governments have published three intergenerational reports since 2002. In line with a general international trend these reports pointed to a problem said to arise from an ageing population which exposes Australia to the risk of a future major fiscal crisis. In this article we argue that by failing to use a generational accounting framework, the reports privilege the elderly at the expense of young people. Added to this, they fail to en…
Truth and Politics: Thinking About Evidence‐Based Policy in the Age Of Spin
Evidence‐based policy and the contemporary politics of spin are said to characterise contemporary politics and policy. The paper asks firstly what sense is to be made of this coincidence, and then documents this coincidence. It then asks how credible is the conception of ‘evidence’ espoused by advocates of evidence‐based policy when it is conventionally represented as an ‘objective’ counter to ideology, spin or opinion? It points to major problem…
Making numbers count: The birth of the census and racial government in Victoria, 1835–1840
In a context of a uncritical reliance by Australian historians on census data as a source of ‘historical evidence ‘, this paper argues that early colonial censuses played a key role in the processes of colonial dispossession of the Aborigines. Following Foucault, the paper argues that statistical measurement was to play a key role in establishing ‘racial government’. In the Port Phillip District in 1835–40, censuses became a central part of the g…
The mismeasurement of youth: Why adolescent brain science is bad science
Medical imaging technology has been used since the 1990s to make claims about how adolescent brains are different to adult brains. In turn these differences have been used to explain what are said to be typical patterns of adolescent behaviour like risk taking, sensation seeking and intense peer interaction. This article critically assesses the scientific basis of the claims that link observations about adolescent brains to adolescent behaviour v…
On Technology and the Prospects for Good Practice in the Human Services: Donald Schön, Martin Heidegger, and the Case for Phronesis and Praxis
Technology is fundamental to and embedded in the way practice is conceptualized and institutionalized in social service work. Many scholars assume and expect that good practices of care are achieved with the correct application of theory produced by rigorous scientific research. However, there are significant critiques of this viewpoint. We examine the work of Donald Schön and Martin Heidegger and agree with these authors’ suggestions that techni…
Headlining Heroin: Policy Change and Reporting the Heroin Problem
This article explores the role of daily print media in the formation of policies on illicit drug use. It asks how we might think about the rote of the media in making drug policy and how the print media represent the use of heroin. In answering these questions through an examination of the complex process of problem making, the article suggests it may help us to better understand how issues which policy-makers identify as 'problems' come to achie…
Australian Living Standards: Some Gender Considerations
This paper is an exploration of the contemporary definitions in use of the idea of a standard of living as it has been developed in social policy and economic research both in Australia and overseas. It is suggested that the assumptions underpinning the idea of a standard of living in areas such as poverty research or the analysis of redistributive policies and their effects are neither tenable nor useful. The concept is flawed because it makes u…
A New Ontology and Youth Work Ethics in a Time of Planetary Crisis
Evidence of the far-reaching impact of the Anthropocene on young people presents youth work with opportunities to reflect on some long-standing issues. This pioneering exercise considers the implications for youth work practice and its ethical frameworks should it embrace the tenets of the 'new materialism'. We ask how youth work practice is currently understood, especially in 'British-influenced youth work' and whether there are problems with it…
Public Administration, Habermas and the Crisis of Legitimacy in the Youth Justice System: An Australian Case Study
Using an Australian case in which a liberal-democratic state systematically breached the human rights of children involved in in its youth justice system, this article explores the idea of ‘legitimacy’ and ‘legitimation crisis’ in the modern administrative state. We acknowledge the relevance of Habermas’ account of a crisis of legitimacy when responding to Carl Schmitt’s challenge to the claim to legitimacy vested in liberal rule of law principle…
Australia's boldest experiment: War and reconstruction in the 1940s
Continuing Subversion of the Children's Court: A Review of Victoria's New Child Protection Laws 2014
This article describes and assesses the Children, Youth & Families Amendment (Permanent Care and Other Matters) Act 2014 passed into law in the last months of Victoria's Napthine government just prior to its defeat in the 2014 state election. The article argues there are good reasons for concern about both the process and substance of the legislation. It is argued that this was an unusual legislative process marked by a relative absence of the le…
Warfare and the Australian welfare state
(1999). Warfare and the Australian welfare state. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 23, War and Other Catastrophes, pp. 84-95
Violence, Schools and Young People: A Preliminary Report
Family allowances in Canada and Australia 1940-1945: A comparative critical case study
Whilst quantitive and 'positivist' modes of comparative social policy can reveal significant structural factors involved in the making of welfare states, they too often ignore the role of human agency, intention and political processes. A critical-historical comparative case study of the introduction of 'child endowment' and of 'family allowances' respectively in Australia (1941) and in Canada (1944) reminds us of the interplay between structural…
Industry policy: Making history
The Jargon Of Evaluation: Critical Considerations On The Baume Report
In the 1970's what can be called the “jargon of evaluation” has increasingly come to the fore within Australian social policy, social administration and even within welfare education. It has become part of the political currency of Fraser's “New federalism” and of the Bailey Committee Reports. In professional welfare contexts agencies have been exhorted to carry out evaluation programmes, whilst many welfare courses include training in evaluation…
The Jargon Of Evaluation: Critical Considerations On The Baume Report
In the 1970's what can be called the “jargon of evaluation” has increasingly come to the fore within Australian social policy, social administration and even within welfare education. It has become part of the political currency of Fraser's “New federalism” and of the Bailey Committee Reports. In professional welfare contexts agencies have been exhorted to carry out evaluation programmes, whilst many welfare courses include training in evaluation…
Social Change and the Client: Critical Reflections on Dependency and Liberation in Welfare Education
During the student rebellions at Columbia University in the late 1960's, the social work students were notably absent from the action. “And where were you when we needed you?” asked the leaders of the rebellion. The social workers' response was painfully real. “Our survival in school”, they contended, “is based not only on our ability to do the required intellectual work, but also upon our aptitudes, behaviours and our activities. Participation c…
Revising the Revisionists: The Alp and Liberalism 1941 - 1945
Industry policy: Making history
The Working Class and Welfare. Reflections on the Political Development of the Welfare State in Australia and New Zealand, 1890-1980
Family allowances in Canada and Australia 1940-1945: A comparative critical case study
Whilst quantitive and 'positivist' modes of comparative social policy can reveal significant structural factors involved in the making of welfare states, they too often ignore the role of human agency, intention and political processes. A critical-historical comparative case study of the introduction of 'child endowment' and of 'family allowances' respectively in Australia (1941) and in Canada (1944) reminds us of the interplay between structural…
The Foundations of the National Welfare State
The Fraser Years, 1975-1983 Phillip Ayres, Malcolm Fraser: A Biography (Heinemann, 1987)
Bringing them home’: Vietnam and the sixties revisited
R. Gerster and J. Bassett, Seizures of Youth: The Sixties and Australia, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1991, pp. vii + 216; G. Langley, A Decade of Dissent: Vietnam and the Conflict on the Australian Home Front, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1992, pp. xii + 232
Australian Living Standards: Some Gender Considerations
This paper is an exploration of the contemporary definitions in use of the idea of a standard of living as it has been developed in social policy and economic research both in Australia and overseas. It is suggested that the assumptions underpinning the idea of a standard of living in areas such as poverty research or the analysis of redistributive policies and their effects are neither tenable nor useful. The concept is flawed because it makes u…
Arguing about the Welfare State: The Australian Experience
Beyond Nature and Nurture: Eugenics in Twentieth Century Australian History
Arguing about the Welfare State: The Australian Experience
Part 1 Arguments: welfare for citizenship - the emergence of ideals welfare as social security - from citizenship to provision. Part 2 Institutions: finding the welfare state - from arguments to institutions establishing the national welfare state in Australia. Part 3 Administration: locating welfare in administration changing the institutions of social administration
Violence, Schools and Young People: A Preliminary Report
Vii: Educating for Citizenship and Employment in Australia
On cultures of violence: The nightwatchman state and modernity
Cultural Liberalism in Australia: A Study in Intellectual and Cultural History
Warfare and the Australian welfare state
(1999). Warfare and the Australian welfare state. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 23, War and Other Catastrophes, pp. 84-95
Violent acts: Why do they do it
There are problems associated with mainstream sociological and criminological research into youth violence. Conventional frameworks ignore the interpretive component of violence and thus fail to treat youth violence as a form of action in which motivations, moral impulses and feelings are constitutive of the action. Young people historically have had little opportunity to enter into dominant discourses about violence. This paper reports on the ac…
Making numbers count: The birth of the census and racial government in Victoria, 1835–1840
In a context of a uncritical reliance by Australian historians on census data as a source of ‘historical evidence ‘, this paper argues that early colonial censuses played a key role in the processes of colonial dispossession of the Aborigines. Following Foucault, the paper argues that statistical measurement was to play a key role in establishing ‘racial government’. In the Port Phillip District in 1835–40, censuses became a central part of the g…
Headlining Heroin: Policy Change and Reporting the Heroin Problem
This article explores the role of daily print media in the formation of policies on illicit drug use. It asks how we might think about the rote of the media in making drug policy and how the print media represent the use of heroin. In answering these questions through an examination of the complex process of problem making, the article suggests it may help us to better understand how issues which policy-makers identify as 'problems' come to achie…
Socrates at the Tech: On Higher Education in the Age of the Mass University
International Criminology: A Critical Introduction
International Criminology is an easy-access critical introduction to how conventional criminologists in the international arena think about and research crime. By using examples from the US, UK and Australia, the authors outline key ideas, vocabulary, assumptions and findings of the discipline while opening up a set of critical underlying issues and problems. From theoretical traditions to historical perspectives; contemporary criminology to refl…
Australia's Welfare Wars Revisited: The Players, the Politics and the Ideologies
This represents a substantial revision of Philip Mendes' successful textbook Australia's Welfare Wars, in which the author explains - and questions - many of the values and assumptions that underpin contemporary social welfare policies. In particular, the book is critical of the Neo-liberal or Economic rationalist ideas that now dominate the welfare debates in Australia and overseas, and instead demonstrates and reaffirms the ongoing relevance of…
Accounting for Future Generations: Intergenerational Equity in Australia 1
Australian governments have published three intergenerational reports since 2002. In line with a general international trend these reports pointed to a problem said to arise from an ageing population which exposes Australia to the risk of a future major fiscal crisis. In this article we argue that by failing to use a generational accounting framework, the reports privilege the elderly at the expense of young people. Added to this, they fail to en…
Political science (38 works) · Sociology (37 works) · Law (35 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (19 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Welfare (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Psychology (9 works)