'Lots of little kindnesses': valuing the role of older Australians as informal volunteers in the community

This paper describes the ways in which older people contribute to their communities and families as informal volunteers. It challenges current ways of thinking that assign an economic value to the productive activities undertaken by older people. Using qualitative data from a study of older people resident in Queensland, Australia, the paper explores the ways that older people contribute to their families and to the community and the outcomes associated with these activities. Two specific themes emerged from the data: first, the ways' in which older people contribute to strong inter-generational relations, and second, how they provide essential mutual support that permits many older people to remain living in the community. These contributions, while often small in themselves, are in aggregate critical both to family functioning and to the maintenance of sustainable and healthy communities. Many are reciprocal interactions that add value to the lives of individuals and offer positive social roles in later life, and they may be particularly important for those from minority cultural backgrounds or at risk of social isolation. The findings suggest that older people are integral to community and civil society and, therefore, that social policy should respond to the ageing of Australia's population and recognise the positive contributions of older people, rather than emphasising the costs of demographic change.

The Gothic scene of international relations: ghosts, monsters, terror and the sublime after September 11

Accepting Furet’s claim that events acquire meaning and significance only in the context of narratives, this article argues that a particular type of international relations narrative has emerged with greater distinction after the traumatic experience of September 11: the gothic narrative. In a sense the political rhetoric of President Bush marks the latest example of America’s fine tradition in the gothic genre that began with Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne and extends through Henry James to Stephen King. His discourse of national security, it will be shown, assumes many of the predicates of gothic narratives. The gothic scenes evoked by Bush as much as Poe involve monsters and ghosts in tenebrous atmospheres that generate fear and anxiety, where terror is a pervasive tormentor of the senses. Poe’s narratives, for example, turn on encounters with dark, perverse, seemingly indomitable, forces often entombed in haunted houses. Similarly, Bush’s post-September 11 narratives play upon fears of terrorists and rogue states who are equally dark, perverse and indomitable forces. In both cases, ineffable and potently violent and cruel forces haunt and terrorise the civilised, human world.