Australian Vietnam Research Articles

Gourmet Travel: Culinary Television Representations of Food-Inspired Touring

This article examines one of the earliest forms of culinary television, the food/travel program. The vicarious travel opportunities such programs offer are explored to reveal the lifestyle aspirations of contemporary audiences. Food is an essential part of any culture and often relatively accessible, and therefore an easy way to experience other places and lives, however vicariously. In the close study of two contemporary Australian television programs, Food Safari and Luke Nguyen's Vietnam, this article examines media representations of cultures and cuisines, and constructions of otherness. The pivotal role the hosts of current food television play in the promotion of consumption is also explored. It finds that in combining the pleasures of food and travel, culinary programs provide a risk-free way of exploring foreignness, both locally and globally. Ideas of authenticity are key to these explorations. However, culinary television depictions of cultures and cuisines are complex and, at times, problematic in encouraging understanding primarily through consumption.

MMPI-2 based subgroups of veterans with combat-related PTSD: differential patterns of symptom change after treatment.

Considerable research has focused on the use of the MMPI to assess posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through identification of mean profile configurations and the development of PTSD subscales. Little work, however, has addressed the heterogeneity of profiles evident in PTSD populations. This study investigated the MMPI-2 profiles of 158 Australian treatment-seeking Vietnam veterans with combat-related PTSD to identify distinct subgroups. Three robust subgroups were identified on the basis of their MMPI-2 profile and compared on PTSD and associated symptomatology. These subgroups consisted of a mild PTSD group with subclinical personality pathology, and two severe PTSD groups that differed in levels of personality disturbance and general psychopathology. Most notably, differences between these latter two groups occurred in the areas of externalization, alienation, and propensity for acting out. These groups were labeled as subclinical, trauma profile, and global. The groups demonstrated significant differences in the patterns of recovery after treatment. The subclinical group demonstrated little change after treatment. In contrast, the trauma profile and global groups both improved, although the trauma profile group demonstrated greater PTSD symptom reduction than the global group.

The Australian labor party and Vietnam

The Australian labor party and Vietnam