Foreign Bodies at Work: Good, Docile and Other-ed

The lived, and oftentimes silenced, experiences of ‘foreign workers’ as ‘race-d’ constructs (PuruShotam 2000) articulate the negotiation of power relations between ‘citizen’ and ‘foreigner’, ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. These are translated into discursive practices that, in effect, legitimise and entrench differences – and hence inequalities – that effectively discipline the ‘foreign worker’ as ‘not one of Us’. By taking the example of Bangladeshi construction workers in Singapore as a case study, this paper argues that the workspaces of ‘foreign construction workers’ in Singapore typify that of a ‘total institution’, which correspondingly mould the worker into a discursive ideal – the ‘good, docile Other’. Such impositions and productions of Other-ness, however, face rupture as workers (re)negotiate, (re)work, and (re)inscribe their everyday lives through the employment of what James Scott (1985, 1987) terms "everyday ‘resistances’" in rising above that which subjugates them. This paper will present primary data elicited and collated from direct participant observation, fieldwork and in-depth interviews in a construction project in Singapore.

Department of Sociology

National University of Singapore

Tel: (65) 6874 3822

Fax:(65) 6777 9579

"The Knowledge Society": Challenging the dominant discourse

The concept of a "knowledge society" has been energetically discussed for almost thirty years among academics, business leaders and analysts. The current dominant discourse concerns the significance of a knowledge society through its perceived status as the next transition beyond a capitalist industrial society to one in which workers would own the means of production (Drucker 1968, Bell 1973). The unique feature of a knowledge society is that it is differentiated from industrial society and pre-industrial society through its focus on knowledge as an economic resource (Drucker 1968, 1993), which is tightly bound to technological developments (Bell 1973, 1976, 1999), that is, knowledge has become the business of business.

There is an alternative discourse shows that the concept of knowledge society is not the latest in a line of historical periodizations that Foucault (1972) calls the "linear schema" of totalizing history, but are part of a broader and discontinuous general history whose roots are embedded in much earlier events that are dispersed across time and space. When we apply the contemporary discourse about the conception of a knowledge society to social and economic changes wrought by the development of the printing press in the fifteenth century (Febvre 1979; Eisenstein 1983), we see that the elements cited as fundamental to the current discourse on the knowledge society are addressed here also.

Through relocating a contemporary discourse to another historical context, this paper challenges the underlying discourse concerning the contemporaneousness of a knowledge society and urges that we resist and question the assumptions of any dominant established discourse which purports to be neutral and natural.

Australian Graduate School of Management

University of New South Wales

j.adelstein@agsm.edu.au

The Enigma- A new discourse of the other

This paper is situated within current debates in cultural studies, post colonial theory and psychology concerning the construction of the racial and cultural Other. The paper raises questions in relation to how the Other establishes a sense of ‘self’ in a society in which they are insidiously represented by their ‘difference’ and marginal ethnic status. It further raises questions as to whether an authentic conversation, relationship or dialogue could take place between the Other and those from the dominant cultural group.

Based on interviews with non European immigrants and refugees l explore their narratives of ‘Otherness’ and their experiences of the ‘first encounter’ with Europeans. The paper gives voice and visibility to the ‘Other’s’ experience of the European linguistic, philosophical cultural and psychological space and explores the nexus between the ‘informal’ psychological negotiation that takes place between the Other and the European in the construction of the ‘self’ of the non European Other.

Victorian University of Technology,

Department of Psychology

Faculty of Arts

Immigrant Employees in the Hotels

In 2002, some 22,000 people worked in NSW hotels, most of them in the large 4 and 5 star city hotels owned predominantly by global hospitality chains. Hotel workers are part of the larger accommodation industry workforce, an expanding industry that accounts for some 1.2 per cent of NSW total employment.

Immigrant workers from non-English speaking countries (NESCs) have historically had a strong foothold in this industry, and in recent years have increased their presence in it, making up roughly a fifth of workers in 2001. Despite the recognised importance of the immigrant workers to the industry, and vice versa, clear patterns of demarcation exist between the jobs they are concentrated in and the jobs performed by Australian born people and English speaking background immigrants.

The concentration of immigrants in ‘back-of-house’ jobs, and their relative absence from management positions which instead tend to be occupied by Anglo-Australian males, is such an enduring feature of the hotel industry that it seems ‘normal’ – not only to those working in it but to other academic researchers, for whom immigrant women’s work (in particular) has tended to be invisible.

Empirical research in two large Sydney hotels in 2002 allowed me to problematise these patterns, and examine how and why they come about. This paper reports on the some of the findings of this research, drawing on the theories of labour market structuration I use in my PhD, where the incorporation of immigrants into the IT industry is also being studied.

University of Sydney

Plural Islam in Australia

Islam means submission to the will of God and is practiced by over a billion people in different cultures all over the world. All adherents to Islam called Muslims share certain beliefs and practices, however, divisions persist, from very early in Islamic history to this day, based on the issues of religious and political leadership, interpretations of Islamic law, and theology. Therefore, differences in religious and cultural practices are wide-ranging. Australia is a good example of this phenomenon.

Islam was first established, in Australia, by the Ghan camelmen during nineteenth century and today is home to almost 300 000 Muslims from over 70 different countries. As such, Islam in Australia is a sharp reflection of Muslim parochial, ethnic, and cultural diversity rendering Islam a plural culture. Islamic pluralism, therefore, is a result of Muslim heterogeneity which is based on sectarianism, parochialism, and ethnicity and perpetuated by Australian settlement programs.

In this paper I will attempt to locate Islamic practices, particularly Muslim life cycle rituals, in the context of immigration and explore their social and political ramifications. I wish to demonstrate that divergent Islamic practices have helped in the creation of separate Muslim communities and Australian settlement programs have aided in perpetuating it. Importantly, I will argue that Islam is an insignificant social force in Australia because Muslim communities continue to be ethnically based and unfairness and injustice remains pervasive in the Australian settlement programs.

University of New South Wales

jan_ali66@hotmail.com

Gendering Holocaust Remembrance: Personal Testimonies and the Production of Memory in Australian Holocaust Museums and Memorials

The Holocaust is the paradigmatic genocidal and traumatic event of the twentieth century. The horrors and chaos of the events of the Holocaust continue to impact on the Jewish survivors, their families and communities decades after the end of the war. How the Holocaust is remembered, where memories of the past are created in the present, reflects the particular political, historical and cultural locations of their production.

My PhD project is about the contemporary politics of Holocaust remembrance and how specific forms of memory and identity are produced in different political and cultural locations. The focus of my research is the relationship between the authoritative forms of remembrance in the Holocaust museums and memorials and the personal memories of survivors. I am particularly interested in the different forms of remembrance that become authorized in Holocaust memorials and museums. Unique to the Australian sites is the work of Holocaust survivors as guides and educators and the ways in which they tell their personal stories. In reflecting on how some survivors’ stories become privileged here, I draw on my own mother’s Holocaust experiences and life in Australia which stand as a counter narrative to the particular experiences represented in the Australian memorials and museums.

There is a growing body of contemporary scholarly work reclaiming women’s survivor testimonies and their literary and artistic accounts as a strategy to include women’s different gendered experiences in the dominant narrative of the Holocaust. In this paper I give a brief overview of how the concept of gender is mobilized in some of the current debates about women and the Holocaust. I then discuss my preliminary reflections on visits to the Sydney Jewish Museum and the Melbourne Holocaust Museum and the ways in which the survivors’ memory work interacts with and contributes to these particular Holocaust narratives.

Centre for Gender, Sexuality and Culture

School of Humanities

Australian National University

sue.andrews@anu.edu.au

"‘Another (niche) marketing opportunity?’:

The Counter-Globalisation Movement and the Cultural Commons"

A more appropriate description of the so-called ‘anti-globalisation’ movement appears to be ‘counter globalisation’. Building on previous social movements based on both class (distribution) and identity, what seems to make the counter-globalisation movement it its ability to fuse a wide range of perspectives and tactics, working to establish an alternative (counter) view of globalisation using a plural political space. One central feature of the CGM is that it works to re-establish ‘cultural commons’. The cultural commons, which have been identified here as trust, hope, safety and intellect are core aspects of how we identify community. That is, they represent the very foundations that allow a cohesive and cooperative society to function. They are much like the physical (environmental) commons in that they exist both locally and globally, and if shared are abundant rather than scarce. In contrast, neo-liberal capitalism works to engulf both the cultural and physical commons, turning them into commodities. In this way, it is the assertion of this paper that the main contestation that exists between capital and the CGM is one over the cultural commons – with each attempting to establish their own vision of community.

University of NSW

Class Discussion: The Relevance of Social Class in Academe

Within the realm of academic study in Australia, the concept of social class is rarely acknowledged. There is a denial of the relevance of class as other issues of identity such as gender, race and sexual orientation are examined. Class however, does remain a powerful indicator of inequality within society, and the general discomfort created when class is mentioned needs to be addressed.

The Australian working class are afforded little opportunity to have their voices heard within academic forums and it is important to demonstrate that this sector of society is also marginalised. By bringing to light the continued existence of class inequality within Australia from the perspective of a working class person within academia, it will hopefully assist in changing attitudes which deny class in order to protect the interests of those who operate from a privileged position.

University of Technology, Sydney

‘Poor Choices’: Cicero, Tony Abbott and the Agency of Poverty

In an ABC documentary broadcast in 2001, the Federal Employment minister Tony Abbott made the following comment:

"But we can’t abolish poverty because poverty in part is a function of individual behaviour. We can’t stop people drinking. We can’t stop people gambling. We can’t stop people having substance problems. We can’t stop people from making mistakes that cause them to be less well-off than they might otherwise be."

Abbott here partially attributes the responsibility of poverty to the ‘poor’. This attitude is particularly striking to a contemporary historian of the ancient world as it evokes a discursive strategy that also proved to be useful in an earlier period. Cicero, an important public figure in the Roman republican era, also represents poverty within a moral framework. In Ciceronian texts, poverty is often constructed as both a result and a reflection of its performer’s actions and personal characteristics. Abbott's and Cicero's discourses of poverty are indicative of a similar metanarrative of marginality. This paper examines how particular notions of ‘poverty’ are created discursively in the late Roman republic. Poverty’s performativity was drawn upon as a mechanism of marginalisation by the Roman elite; Abbott’s remarks alert us to similar interpellations in today’s vastly different social context.

Department of Ancient History

Macquarie University. NSW. 2109.

Theorising power relations in critical social work?

This paper explores how the current critical social work literature in Australia, is using Foucault’s insights on power to theorise power relations. I am interested in how specifically Foucault’s insights on power, are used in the critical social work literature to theorise potentially alternative, critical, radical or empowerment practices. I seek to identify how using Foucault’s work could assist critical social work to articulate where to focus its change energies.

School of Social Sciences

Southern Cross University

Coffs Harbour campus

"David v Goliath": Australian Jewish perceptions of media bias in the reporting of the current conflict between Israelis and Palestinians

This paper seeks to show how the notion of ’media bias’ has functioned in much Jewish discomfort and anger with how the second or Al Aqsa intifada has been represented by mainstream Australian and global media. My objective is not to demonstrate that this reporting in general favours one side of this conflict over the other, nor that there is an unproblematic position of balance which could be attained. Rather, I utilize the concept of media frames to problematise responses by Jewish and other audiences regarding Palestinians being represented by the media sympathetically as the ‘underdog’, and accusations of media bias against Israel. I examine the work that the metaphor "David and Goliath" has accomplished over the longer period of the Arab/Israeli conflict and how it has framed the conflict for both media and audiences. Finally, I draw on Judith Butler’s writing on ‘explanation and exoneration’ in relation to what could be spoken of, and heard by Americans in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, to suggest that a similar discourse exists in relation to how Israeli and Palestinian violence can be spoken of, from the perspective of Israel. I argue that the accusations of media bias against Israel circulate around a sense that the Israeli and Jewish narrative frame has been to some extent decentred by sections of the international media and other bodies.

Centre for Cultural Research

University of Western Sydney

"I’m dropping out of uni – it’s just not what I thought it would be like…" –

The influence of student self-awareness on self-efficacy and university attrition

Do heightened levels of student self-awareness of their abilities, traits, talents and potential lead to more informed and confident study, career and life choices and thus indirectly relate to lower attrition rates in universities? Anecdotal and previous research evidence suggests many students appear to ‘fall into study’ without really considering the programs to which they are best suited. These students lack direction, often initially basing their program and/or course choice on ‘hunches’, parent, peer and societal suggestions and expectations as opposed to informed decisions based on congruence between their personal characteristics and program options. Many universities today experience high attrition rates with statistics showing that a considerable percentage of first year students change their program or leave tertiary study completely. This paper proposes the importance of the concept of self-awareness in relation to students being made aware of their academic and personal strengths and weaknesses and therefore enabling them to hone strengths, improve weaknesses, or learn ways to compensate. This paper suggests that inclusion of self-awareness into models of student self-efficacy and attrition has foreseeable benefits to individual students as well as higher education institutions.

Joanne Boyd

School of Psychology;

University of South Australia

GPO Box 2471, ADELAIDE SA 5001

The social construction of health in Indigenous communities: International Case studies

The health of Australia’s Indigenous people is said to be worse than that of the developing world. Similar statements can be found in the literature repeatedly without very little other than anecdotal evidence. The indicators, used to compare Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with the developed world are statistics which have very different catalysts to the figures in developing countries. Although the living conditions that Australian indigenous groups endure are often similar and sometimes worse, it has been noted that people in the developing world die of diseases of poverty whereas Indigenous Australians die of diseases of affluence. Just why the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health in a 1^st world country is comparable to that of the developing world is unclear.

The study on which this paper is based seeks to outline the ways in which health is constructed across indigenous communities internationally to identify why indigenous health is so different to that of the developing world. Indicators used include the WHO’s ‘Healthy Cities Project’, and the socio economic determinates of health. A multi-methodological approach has been necessary to collect the data as many obstacles, both bureaucratic and personal have impeded progress. However, some interesting global, social and political similarities have begun to emerge.

School of International Studies,

University of South Australia

The Psychology of Cultural Loss: terms of cultural change in North Central Namibia

This paper, which forms part of my PhD thesis, is concerned with the psychology of cultural loss associated with practices, policies and colonial powers of the past in North Central Namibia, a region which has survived apartheid, colonialism and war. My thesis goes on to look at how the terms of cultural change continue to be renegotiated in contemporary Namibia and the significance of contemporary agents of change such as Government and Non-Government Organisations. This paper, however will look at the historical agents of change and the effects they have had on both physical cultural practices and psychological cultural identification. I will present this from the position that culture, dynamic and evolving in nature, can never be "lost", however with the discontinuation of certain cultural practices and rituals, there exists an emotional sense of separation and lack of continuity with the past which has dramatically effected notions of identity.

University of Technology, Sydney

Social Capital in Natural Resource Management - is there a role for government?

This paper identifies the two primary alternative concepts of social capital – the first being Durkheimiian in its emphasis on social capital’s strength in group integration, and the second based on rational choice theory, which focuses on the outcomes from autonomously acting agents. Through examining the paradigm of social capital in terms of the elements considered essential for building and realising community capacity, and its relevance to Australian rural communities, this paper explores the relevance of each to government policy. The importance of social capital is commonly agreed as being its contribution to a community’s ability to increase their capacity to adapt to changing environments. The majority of social capital literature focuses on the concept generated by rationalist choice theory, that it is created, maintained and accessed wholly through the actions of individuals in the community, independent of government processes. The existing perspectives of social capital rarely entertain the role of government in the process of facilitating, generating and activating social capital in the community. In fact the ideological appeal of the individualistic approach to social capital, in some quarters of government, is that it claims that there is no role for government; constituting a cheaper manner by which to develop community capacity than through state intervention.

This paper will explore the arguments for research into the role of government in the generation and activation of social capital in communities. The exploration of the social capital paradigm in this context is important to fully understanding the potential capacity of government to assist Australian communities adapt to changing access to resources and economic opportunity.

Dept. of Sociology

Faculty of Arts

Australian National University

kate.brooks@anu.edu.au

Through her ethnographic research into the funeral industry in Adelaide, the author explores the power relations around body disposal and funerals. In an ideal world people realise that there is no ‘right’ way to carry out the ritual and that bereaved people can choose and control how a funeral is conducted. However, because we in the West are so careful to avoid ‘dead’ whilst we are living, once ‘dead’ enters our lives we are hard put to know what to do, how to act, and certainly have difficulty taking control. It is the knowledge that the funeral consultants have to hand that gives them influence over the bereaved and leads to an imbalance of power relations. It is this imbalance that forms the topic of this essay, with an exploration of the way that the Baby-boomer generation appears to be countering this.

Centre for Research into Education, Equity and Work,

School of Education,

University of South Australia,

pam.carden@unisa.edu.au

Rethinking the Sacred: A Case Study of Sacred Space in a Charismatic Church in Singapore

Studies on religion have often understood categories of the "sacred" and the "profane" as being in a bipolarised, dialectical relationship, rooting much research from such a foundation. Rather than taking these definitions as taken-for-granted, this paper will attempt to understand and demonstrate how these trusted distinctions are increasingly blurred and conflated in the empirical context of Charismatic Christianity in modern, urban Singapore, illustrating this point through the questioning and re-conceptualization of the notions of sacred space via the focus on one empirical example of a somewhat unique Charismatic church in Singapore. In understanding how members negotiate notions of "sacred" and "profane" space and produce meanings about them, I will attempt to raise crucial theoretical issues with regard to such faithful understandings, contending that a more critical understanding of many of the basic taken-for-granted, a priori assumptions and definitions of the notions of the "sacred" and the "profane" would be sociologically more feasible particularly when expanding this understanding to larger questions of definitions of religion altogether.

Department of Sociology

National University of Singapore

Addressing Inequality & Poverty Alleviation?

A Critique of Fiji’s Affirmative Action Policies.

Affirmative action programmes for the indigenous Fijians have been a fact of public policy in Fiji. Such programmes continue on the basis of the myths created at independence. The aim of this paper is to present a critique of affirmative action policies in Fiji addressing three significant myths upon which it is based: (1) that indigenous Fijians are the group that suffers the highest levels of poverty and therefore that they need government assistance in terms of education, business and employment; (2) that other ethnic groups like the Indians do not need such programmes when in fact poverty studies have highlighted that Indians have the highest percentage of poverty; and (3) that women as one of the disadvantaged groups in Fiji do not need such programmes because it is believed that the benefits of the existing programmes would trickle-down to the members of the household including women and children, at least indigenous Fijian women. The findings of this study show that redistribution of income through current affirmative action policies not only proves ineffective in ensuring income equality among indigenous Fijians, but actively discriminates against the poor across ethnic lines.

The Australian National University

Faculty of Arts

School of Social Science

"We Have Gills for Dream-Life"

University Research in a Democratic Society, Located Within a World Characterised by Unpredictable Futures.

Today increased contact between diverse peoples is creating new opportunities for collaboration, as well as escalating the likelihood of conflict. Technological advances are making higher standards of living possible and yet more and more people are suffering in poverty and oppression. Unstable world circumstances threaten not only the survival of numerous societies, cultures, and individuals but also the ecological viability of the planet. Although formidable in the unpredictability of its outcomes, this instability opens opportunities for the development of new and exciting relationships. In turn development of those relationships can support processes which result in the creative innovation needed to imagine and build an equitable democratic future.

Current university environments including the research environment do not seem to provide a culture conducive to the integration of the spectrum of research methodologies that would ultimately support broad based collaborative practice. Nor do universities appear capable at this time of managing creative innovation effectively. This paper discusses the potential for universities to support the creation of a ‘just’ and ‘democratic’ future. How these institutions can prepare for a relevant role is discussed in light of Nelson Mandela’s 10 December 1993, Nobel Peace Prize address, in which he declares "Peace and prosperity, tranquillity and security are only possible if these are enjoyed by all without discrimination."

University of South Australia Underdale, SA 5032

jan.coker@unisa.edu.au

"Her loyalties are uncertain": loyalty and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Television reflects emotion as it is lived by the audience. In order to make television a powerful medium which appeals to audiences, emotions felt and expressed by the characters must resonate with lived experience. Consequently, television provides an excellent vehicle to study the way emotion works in society and this article establishes the theoretical rational for this use of television. Loyalty is a very common theme in television drama. This article explores the construction of loyalty on television by focusing on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I argue that loyalty has five distinct aspects: it is socially constructed; it guides behaviour; provides identity; is conflicted; and operates at a number of layers.

School of Social Sciences

Australian National University

Performance Indicators and Nonprofit Family Welfare Services: The Politics of Caring in the NSW Community Services Grants Program

The shift from ‘funding community services’ to ‘purchasing welfare outputs’ brings the operations of non-government service providers under the scrutiny of evolving models of public sector accountability. This research paper examines the fledgling performance measures for family welfare services funded under the New South Wales Community Services Grants Program. The measures raise questions about the scope of performance indicators in social services; in particular, whether (and how) indicators can capture less tangible, relational aspects of social service work. This has implications for how the ‘caring’ sectors can attract resources, and for how governments and community organisations might forge authentic service partnerships.

Political economy

Faculty of Economics and Business

University of Sydney

Natasha.Cortis@student.usyd.edu.au

This research is jointly supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant

and UnitingCare Burnside.

The Role of Self-Help Support Groups in Fostering Social Capital among Young People with Mental Health Issues.

This paper argues that Self-Help Support Groups (SHSGs) have an important role in fostering social capital among young people with mental health issues. This is explored in a recent study, which investigated what these groups have to offer young people with mental health issues. Through a qualitative research design, the group experiences of 53 young people with mental health issues were explored. Although their mental health and group experiences varied, they collectively spoke of themes indicative of social capital. They suggested that prior to group involvement, social capital was somewhat lacking in their lives. This changed consequent to their involvement in a SHSG. They reported a sense of connectedness with people they could identify with, and had opportunities to gain self-understanding. The benefits of group involvement not only permeated their personal lives, but also influenced their interactions with people who were not part of the SHSGs. Although existing literature on social capital offers a number of theoretical understandings, there are a couple of dominant conceptualisations. The present findings suggest limitations with these dominant conceptualisations. For this reason, the present study was used to extend current theoretical understandings of social capital, with particular reference to the involvement of young people with mental health issues in SHSGs.

University of Western Sydney

and Mental Health Association of New South Wales

a.dadich@uws.edu.au

‘Structure’, ‘agency’ and Connell’s social theory of gender

Contemporary theories of gender relations have given rise to a dualism of structure and action. On the one hand, structural understandings of gender, such as Gayle Rubin’s notion of ‘sex/gender system’, present gender as a complex structure of social relations but they fail to examine its connection with social practices. On the other hand, more activist theories of gender, and most notably Judith Butler’s grasping of gender as ‘performatively constituted’, see gender as a ‘practice’ or a ‘performance’ but they fail to develop a notion of structure. I will argue that R. W. Connell’s social theory of gender reconciles this dualism through a critical application of Anthony Giddens’ ‘theory of structuration’. For Connell, gender is a ‘body-reflexive practice’, a practice that constantly refers to, but it is not determined by, the body. Gender practice is then linked to a concept of ‘gender structure’ through the notion of ‘onto-formativity’, that is through the idea that gender practices are constitutive of gender structures. Once constituted through practice, gender structure becomes the medium or the condition of subsequent practices in that it establishes a ‘situation’ to which further practice always responds.

Sociology Program

The University of Sydney

ddem2195@mail.usyd.edu.au

International Graduate School of Management University of South Australia

Email julia.deroeper@unisa.edu.au

Abstract

This paper summarises the preliminary findings of qualitative research into the role story plays in the lives of eighteen ordinary Australian teenagers. Discussing their favourite stories, their heroes and role models, and their hopes for the future, it is clear that the plots and characters of stories play a central role in these young peoples’ understanding of the world around them, and of their own place in it. There appears to be a significant difference between the number of girls and boys who are read to at home when they are young, and there is a clear association between being read to, feeling happy, and learning things like creativity and imagination. There is also the possibility of a subsequent association between imagining a fantasy life, and having the determination to turn an imagined career into reality.

The teenagers’ thoughts about the difference between American and Australian entertainment reveal an unmistakable separation between ‘them’ and ‘us’, suggesting that young Australians are very far from imagining themselves in the ‘fifty first state’, and there is an almost universal desire to see, hear and read more Australian stories.

Creating Space for Children in Government - a qualitative research journey in progress

The purpose of my research is the exploration and development of the concept of 'the State as parent' as a unifying paradigm for both the aggressive overhaul, and the evolution, of protective, and other, services for children. This is informed inter alia by systems theory, psycho/social child developmental theories, and a brief analysis of the current legal framework for child service provision. Whilst the research is specifically grounded by the Western Australian political, legal and practice environment, it will contribute to the international debate on the status of children and delivery of child services.

As a researcher my task is the conceptualisation of the nexus between the legal, psycho/social and systemic implications arising from the notion of the corporate parent, in order that the epistemological relevance of this to child care and protection services will be rendered transparent and accessible. Articulation of the implications of this research will support professional and public debate regarding the system for supporting the welfare of children, and its ontological and epistemological foundations. Such debate will, in turn, provide the groundwork for development and change in philosophical and legal structures of the future.

The development of the concept of 'the State as Parent' will be informed by the analysis of interviews conducted with experts in related fields. Data collection has only recently commenced and its analysis is not addressed in this article.

Social Work and Social Policy

University of Western Australia

amartin9@bigpond.net.au

Theoretical meaning in relation to real world objectivity.

The relationships between language and reality, and consequent philosophical differences of opinion regarding the nature of meaning, provide a theoretical background for a research study. Problems identified within environmental discourse provide a suitably manageable vehicle from which to study the phenomenon of meaning. A multi-faceted approach will be used to study the usage and meanings of specific terms relevant to environmental research, management and policy-making, with discourse analysis as the initial method by which to identify some instances of use. The semantic differential technique will provide a graphic depiction of semantic relationships via representation of the various concepts in a semantic space. The implicit association test will then provide an additional measure of evaluative associations, including those of the specific concepts that are relevant to environmental discourse as well as differences between explicit and implicit semantic associations that are identified by subjects from within different groups. The conceptual expression of most interest is values, together with the contextually modified terms natural values, cultural values, and environmental values. Self-selected subject samples will include those involved in environmental research, management and fieldwork, policy-making, and members of the general public.

James Cook University Cairns Campus

A place of pleasure or danger?

The Australian bush in the lives of nineteenth-century colonial women

The writing of nineteenth-century Australian history is concerned with the notion of male settlers’ relationship with the land. The way colonial women perceived the Australian bush, however, often goes unnoticed. This paper sets out to explore the great variety of attitudes British gentlewomen held towards their immediate bush environment. Their life-writings will be analysed to find out how the Australian bush catered for their needs of recreational activities and influenced their enjoyment of everyday life. Australia’s mild climate was perfectly suitable for outdoor activities. Many gentlewomen enjoyed taking a stroll and going for a ride. The bush also provided an excellent setting for social gatherings such as picnic parties and kangaroo hunting. The bush was not always a pleasant place, though. Stories of snakes, Aboriginal attacks and lost people abounded throughout the nineteenth century and pointed out just how vigilant people had to be during their time in the bush. Droughts, floods and bushfires posed a constant threat not only to people’s lives but also to their property and stock. This paper will argue that colonial gentlewomen had a dual vision of the Australian bush and considered it a place of pleasure as well as danger.

Monash University

The Manipulation of Public Opinion via Notions of National Identity in the United States and Australia

Although the United States and Australia share many cultural, geographical and historical similarities, they became nations through very different circumstances. American national identity is based on formal notions of freedom and democracy and its social values are considered to be vital elements of these principles. Its distinctiveness, institutions, history and historical documents have traditionally defined its social values and national identity. Australia’s national identity, on the other hand, is less well-defined and has developed in a more laissez faire fashion. It is based on social rather than institutional traditions and invokes concepts of mateship and a fair go that are also reflected in Australian social values. This paper will demonstrate the ways in which the current political leaders in the United States and Australia exploit the link between social values and national identity in order to influence public opinion.

American Studies Department

Flinders University of SA

Second career pre-service teachers in Toronto: A study of their biographical profiles, motivations and perceptions of teaching after a first career

This paper investigates the perceptions and motivations of a small sample of twelve career changers to teaching. The aim was to explore why individuals enrolled at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) located in Ontario Canada, had left their careers and entered the field of teacher education for intending primary school teachers.

This research is in the first half stage of a cross-national comparison, which aims to explore the motivations and perceptions of becoming a primary school teacher in later life after a first career. Relevant literature in the field, pilot studies and current findings suggest that becoming a teacher after a well established career can be problematic. The primary data collected was gathered from interviewing a twelve highly motivated second career pre-service teachers over a three-month period. The interviewees had volunteered to be part of the study and were between the ages of 36 – 53 years and enrolled in two highly academic entry level accelerated programs for graduates. The interviewees had previous undergraduate degrees and numerous years’ experience working in a variety of other careers.

The themes discussed in this article develop as a result of both current literature in the field and present findings. The themes are presented in the following format: the problematic nature of becoming a teacher after a first career, the present ‘climate’ of career changing, the profile of second career teachers, the current trend in career changing, the ‘dangers’ of not knowing their motivations, the motivation to teach, career changing to teaching: a sign of the times? Accelerated course formats for graduates and paraprofessionals, and findings and concluding thoughts.

This paper offers insights into the field of graduate teacher education by understanding the second career pre-service teacher’s unique transferable insights and perspectives.

methe001@oci.stu.mq.edu.au

Making a Street for the People? Rundle Mall, public art, and expertise

This paper uses examples of the planning and design of Rundle Mall, a pedestrianised shopping street in the City of Adelaide, to ask how discourses on public art might operate in enabling, maintaining or disrupting everyday practices and socio-spatial relations. Drawing on governmentality approaches, the urban environment is considered as a site of contestation and negotiation rather than as a unified space firmly controlled by particular organisations (Adelaide City Council), individuals (planners, engineers, architects) or interests (property developers, retail traders). Rundle Mall provides a site from which to examine the production and circulation of discourses on public art for the ways in which various experts seek to attain the authority to shape urban spaces and intervene in the lives and conduct of urban inhabitants. Following Deutsche, this research asks in what ways might public art be seen to either assume or disrupt the task of imposing coherence, order and rationality on urban space ‘so that docile and useful bodies are created by and deployed within it’? (R Deutsche, 1996, Evictions: art and spatial politics, MIT Press.)

South Australian School of Art,

University of South Australia

"A surprisingly active little creature": the foetus in contemporary and historical imaginings.

In the late twentieth century, the foetus took on a life of its own. New technologies, in particular ultrasound, have changed our relationship to the foetus. Ultrasound imaging has focussed our gaze on the foetus, drawing our attention away from the seemingly absent mother. Within the ultrasound frame, the foetus is seen as autonomous, individual and complete – a body and existence separate from the woman.

This paper will consider our contemporary understanding of the foetus though an examination of the historical construction of the unborn child. A consideration of medical attitudes towards the foetus in Australia from 1880 to 1925 will show that the foetus was not simply a natural and obvious body, but one that had to be "discovered". This new interest in the pregnant woman and her foetus was fundamental to medical care in this period. By tracing this discovery, and the rise of antenatal care, we can examine scientific and medical attitudes towards mothers and children, as well as the foetus itself.

This analysis will inform and illuminate more current constructions of the foetus, and indicates profound continuities between the historical, medical framework and more recent socio-legal conceptualisations of the pregnant woman and her foetus.

Department of Modern History

Macquarie University

Global Warming, It Doesn't Rate

This work discusses the link between television and Global warming. The paper argues that an important component in understanding ecological problems such as Global warming, is to appreciation how ecological problems are positioned within Western mass media; of interest here is television. The paper suggests that Western hegemony is physically, technologically and philosophically alienated from the empirical corporeal world studied and storied by environmental scientists and commentators. It is claimed that due to this alienation, our cinematic/televisual screen-induced society unwittingly perpetuates processes that underscore Global warming.

University of Western Sydney.

Are artists social entrepreneurs?

The idea of throwing artists, entrepreneurship and social phenomena together is inspired by Schumpeter’s theory of entrepreneurship – that creative activity is the essence of the entrepreneurial act. This paper looks at the artist in a social setting and aims to contribute to the discourse in cultural policy. The paper also attempts an exploration of the power discourse inherent in the political-economy of cultural production.

The body of the work deals with the artist from the perspective of Bourdieu and cultural theory and from the perspective of cultural economics as an agent of society and the economy. The paper then looks at the historical notion of entrepreneurship from a theoretical perspective including the work of Schumpeter and Drucker. The definition of social entrepreneurship is also considered as a concept and a movement in the current business and not-for-profit literature.

The paper seeks to draw possible links in the discourse and questions whether social entrepreneurship is a vantage from which the artist can straddle the artistic, cultural, socio-political and economic realms.

Arts & Cultural Management Program

International Graduate School of Management

University of South Australia

‘Educational Renovation’: Analysing the relationship between education policy and urban renewal in Islandton, London

This paper is based on a case study of ‘Islandton’ in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It uses an analysis of interview data from a range of educational administrators, school principals, and community workers, to explore educational policy developments that target ‘crisis populations’ in an area of urban disadvantage. This area is also undergoing processes of urban renewal.

It is argued that central government policy of ‘Excellence in Cities’ resulting in the creation of educational priority zones in this disadvantaged urban area has been reinterpreted, and applied by, those working with ‘crisis populations’. It is proposed that the result is the practice of what is termed ‘educational renovation’.

Subsequently, the concept of ‘educational renovation’ is tentatively applied as an analytical tool to explore the spatial relationships between schools and areas undergoing urban renewal. This concept is premised on the suggestion that educational policy change in areas of urban renewal has ramifications for both schools and the areas surrounding the schools.

School of Education

Australian Centre for Educational Studies

Macquarie University

Government regulation of activism varies according to the welfare regime type and can be understood as a strategy of social risk management during high modernity. The discursive location of drug policy concerns in narratives of social dislocation and reintegration resonates with "third way" social capital building strategies, perhaps a welcome shift from the muscular rhetoric of "Tough on Drugs". Public policy can work to either support the building of social capital among drug users or to actively undermine it. The forms of participation in society that are envisioned for drug users under social capital strategies warrant further exploration.

Centre for Research in Education, Equity and Work,

University of South Australia

Resisting technological change: What's the big issue?

Abstract: Debates about new technologies are now a common part of Western cultural life. More importantly, political resistance to new technologies is frequently dismissed as evidence of an irrational technophobia. The term ‘Luddite’ is often applied in these situations as some kind of euphemistic shorthand meant to be evocative of feelings of hatred against machines. Using such an expression is apparently designed to demonstrate a generalised anti-technology attitude. Labelling of those who try to resist particular technological changes as Luddites is so prevalent in the current environment that the term is also embraced as a badge of political courage and pride by people who are against new technologies. Yet what does it mean to be a Luddite? This paper looks at one present-day interpretation of the history of the Luddites to demonstrate that resisting the machine is not, nor ever has been, about a straightforward anti-technology point of view.

School of Sociology

The University of New South Wales

The political identity of Thai women bar workers – is there a resistance?

This paper will discuss the political identity of Thai women bar workers and the impact, which globalization has had on constructing and maintaining this identity. The Thai bar workers’ identity is socially constructed, ascribed to reflect international political power relations and economic dominance. This identity categorizes who these women are, and why they are in the employment that they are. However some women, I would argue, are challenging this ‘imposed and static’ identity as they creatively engage in sex work to empower themselves, and deconstruct the dichotomy.

An aspect of globalization is that it embodies a spatial organization of social relations. With this in mind, the Thai government, under the auspice of international financial organizations, reconstructed the country as a tourist destination, which seems to be a major factor in the maintenance of bar women's political identity. This paper will explore how the political identity of the women bar workers is being "turned on its head" through the women’s quest for economic enhancement and personal freedom. What emerges out of this phenomenon is that the bar workers are actively engaging in the process of globalization.

School of Social Sciences

Australian National University

Judy.Hemming@anu.edu.au

Secrecy, Silence and Sexual Violence in International Criminal Proceedings

Sexual atrocities during World War II occurred on a massive scale, yet neither the Nuremberg or Tokyo tribunals examined victim testimonies of rape and sexual assault, nor was sexual slavery of "comfort women" addressed. This effectively denied justice and agency to all survivors of sexual violence, and represents a cultural and historical tragedy. The silence surrounding such flagrant sexual atrocities had the effect of transferring humiliation and shame onto the survivor, instead of on the perpetrator where it rightfully belonged.

This textual absence can be starkly contrasted with attempts at gender integration and the groundbreaking examination and conviction of sexual crimes within both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). For the first time in history, the documentation of war crimes against women and the collection of narratives have surfaced through the presence of victims within the international legal realm. The provision of space, voice and platform for sexual violence survivors symbolises an unprecedented progression within international jurisprudence, and has supposedly "broken the silence" on this issue. However, despite this momentum, sexual assault continues to be shrouded in secrecy. This paper will examine historical and contemporary events; namely it will explore the absence of representation and the silence surrounding sexual violence survivors within a historical context, and then compare and contrast the current efforts of contemporary international war crimes trials.

Department of Criminology

The University of Melbourne

Skilled Migration: Behind the Success Story

A Critical Look at Current Australian Literature on Migrant Employment Experiences

Since the beginning of mass migration to Australia in the post-war period, migration policy has shifted from targeting low skilled ‘factory fodder’ to the present emphasis on highly skilled, professional migrants. Current literature on migrants’ employment experiences highlights the successful labour market outcomes of recent, mostly skilled migrants. The Howard Government has embraced the current ‘success story’ literature, claiming that it vindicates its migration policy. However, this paper argues that this ‘success story’ is misleading in that it is based on a narrow conception of migrant experiences. Even among recent arrivals with high levels of occupational skills and English language ability, there is evidence that migrants’ human capital is not being fully utilised or rewarded in the Australian labour market. Additionally, the dominance of research focusing on recent migrants overshadows the experiences of earlier cohorts of migrants, who are typically not as successful in the labour market.

Political Economy,

School of Economics and Political Science

University of Sydney

The Military, Masculinity and the Civilising Process: the Taming of the Warrior?

Norbert Elias argued that once the monopoly of physical force passed to central authorities, the pleasure of physical attack became restricted to those legitimised with this power by the central authority and thus, wider society became increasingly pacified. While the monopolisation of violence meant that the warrior role remained necessary, even within these temporal and spatial enclaves in civilised society physical force became more impersonal, leading less and less to affective expression with the immediacy and intensity of the medieval phase.

While the transformation of aggression cultivated in the everyday life of civilised society is not simply reversed in these enclaves, direct physical combat between men has given way to a mechanised struggle demanding a strict control of the affects. It is this issue of the increasingly complex process of the technological and organisational rationalisation of the means of destruction and the extent to which the Warrior has been ‘civilised’ by this process that this paper will explore.

Sociology

School of Social Sciences

Australian National University

kim.hosking@anu.edu.au

Between ‘Social Cognition’ and ‘Social Knowledge’: Retrieving ‘Sociology of Cognition’ as a New Synthetic Space of Study

This paper starts with a general terminology of the term "cognition" and then reviews the social theories which have, implicitly or explicitly, addressed the cognitive aspects of social life. In this review I focus on theoretical approaches which target the "cognition" as their major subject of argument whether under the rubric of this term or under any other synonym terms. While there has been no reason to restrict or reduce "cognition" to any level of analysis, prevailed dissension between science and humanities has dismantled its presumable totality into dichotomic and even confrontational levels of analysis: more importantly, macro/micro, subjective/objective, agentic/structural, and everyday life/institutional levels. Through the review, we can recognize two major supposedly opposite fronts in dealing with cognition and knowledge: (1) realist determinism; (2) subjectivist constructionism. This division has prevailed in social science until recent challenges by critical realism and synthesizing trends since last decade. As far as the definitions of social reality (the basic ontological assumptions) among theories are fragmented and differentiated, the conception of cognition as a social reality is also fragmented. This seems normal, but while the number of integrative and synthetic developments in defining social reality has grown increasingly during two last decades, this trend has lingered on dealing with cognition. Extending attempts have mostly focused on the possible links between levels while less recognizing an ‘autonomous existential bases’ of cognition as a multilevel phenomenon beyond the mind. As I will argue there are good prospects to (re)construct the concept of cognition within a multidimensional and comprehensive model in which the contradictory whole of concept and its autonomous existential bases are well recognized. I will call for retrieving "sociology of cognition" based on a new concept, "societal cognition". Societal cognitions are dynamic structures which are procedurally under deconstruction and reconstruction by different social forces (cognizants) and simultaneously determine the capability of all affected social agents to cognize their own social world.

School of Social Science

Faculty of Arts

The Australian National University

Work-based Learning as counter hegemonic practice? – examples from the community sector.

In the climate of the "entrepreneurial university" partnership is a key feature. New approaches that challenge ideas about traditional learning in are framed in a much more "industry centred" view of the world. Work-based learning (WBL) is one strategic manifestation of this trend, using work as curriculum to achieve organisational as well as individual academic goals.

WBL has rapidly increased in recent years, especially in countries where micro-economic reform has pushed for stronger links between higher education and industry. Consistent with these reforms is the location of WBL, most often, within corporate models of higher education/industry partnership.

This paper presents PhD research into a particular example of WBL in the community services sector, based on an industry partnership between University of Western Sydney (UWS) and a peak Community Services Organisation.

The research presented here is on the specific interests of students as stakeholders in the WBL partnership. In particular it highlights some issues for discussion on the application of WBL in the community sector. Aspects include the significance of organisational change, organisational shift and the management WBL in "non-traditional" sectors. This paper argues that these issues present consequences for WBL development in the community sector, particularly in relation to stakeholder interests in WBL partnership.

Centre for Learning and Social Transformation (CLAST)

University of Western Sydney

As a biographical essay and literature review, this paper explores what modernity meant to my mother, Vân, through the fables, poems and novels that influenced her world perspective and those of many other Vietnamese. After a reflexive introduction that is set in the author’s kitchen and dining room, the first analytical section examines some of the traditional narratives that were prominent in Vân’s early life including the Tale of Kiều. The second section follows the vein of feminine resistance evident in characterizations of Lady Triệu, the Trưng sisters and the poems of Hồ Xuân Hưong. The third section compares and contrasts the plots and messages within modern Vietnamese novels from the Self-Strength Literary Group with Vân’s experiences of modern life and marriage. In each section emphasis is placed on how, as a young adult, my mother interpreted and adopted these narratives in her everyday existence. Overall, this paper de-centers modernity to the personal level, demonstrating and celebrating the existence of a unique and complex modernity. Mum’s story counters the totalizing notions of civilization and progress that in Việt Nam and elsewhere have proven to be so horrifyingly inadequate in terms of delivering liberation and enlightenment. It also provides insights into how we might construct more humane and productive relationships between East and West, female and male, and mother and son.

Department of Political Science & International Relations

School of Social Sciences

The Australian National University

Kim.Huynh@anu.edu.au

‘The eyes/ayes have it’ Reconciliation by Stages: Imagining Democracy through Scaffolded Original Performance Creation

Through drama experiences both students and educators can engage in exploring the community’s identity, which is reflected in part in its attitudes, beliefs and actions while also having the opportunity to affirm, enhance or modify one’s own identity. Original performance creation seeks to allow the participants to scrutinize society’s democratic values and to explore ideas for the confirmation or the transformation of these values. It also seeks to open the space for thinking about fostering changes in our social world and re-envisioning the democratic imagination. This is particularly true when original performance creation focuses on issues such as Reconciliation between Indigenous and non Indigenous people.

This presentation explores the potential of original performance creation as a change agent on the issue of reconciliation and suggests ways in which perceptions about transformation can be ascertained through the use of ‘dramatic oralysis’ as a research tool.

Centre for Research in Education, Equity and Work (CREEW)

Room C110, Building C, Education,

University of South Australia

A sociological view of clinical trials

In my day job I am a Research Assistant at the Graduate School of Integrative Medicine, in the space where my life used to be I am a part time Masters of Applied Social Research at Monash University.

My research project will explore the experiences of participant who have completed a clinical trial.

This project is two phases, phase I an anonymous questionnaire asking general questions about the impact of the trial. Phase II is a semi-structured interview, exploring the issues identified in the questionnaire and the experiences of the participants.

This project will acknowledge the value of understanding the experiences of the participants, shifting the focus away from the scientific findings. By understanding the experiences of the participants’ I will gain the insights into their experiences that would otherwise be lost. Insights that may provide valuable information into how clinical trials can be improved in the future.

The approach of interdisciplinary research can broaden the perspective of the findings of clinical trials. The scientific findings reported in the medical literature are only one part of the total picture that could be explored. It is my intention to identify the benefits in applying social research methods to clinical trials.

School of Political and Social Inquiry

Monash University, Clayton Campus

mjohnson@swin.edu.au

Space Denied: The Regency Novels of Georgette Heyer

In spite of her achievement as the creator of a genre and after a career spanning more than fifty years, Georgette Heyer has been consistently overlooked or ignored by serious critics and academia. A best-selling author of historical fiction from the age of nineteen, Heyer gave no interviews, made no public appearances, signed no autographs and gave her fans a minimum of biographical details in a twenty-line paragraph for Who's Who. The only biography of Heyer is based on letters to her publisher dating from 1945 when she was in her forties and already a household name. As a result very little is known about Heyer's formative years - how she came to write, her literary aspirations, her attitude to history, her research and her passion for privacy. However, recent research has uncovered a wealth of material dating from Heyer's first contract in 1921 through to the early 1940s that offers fresh insights into her writing life and her eventual creation of the Regency novel. This paper seeks to 'create a space' for Heyer within the canon of historical fiction on the basis of this new information and will argue for a greater recognition of her achievements as a writer of history and as the creator of a genre.

History Department

University of Melbourne

Child Abuse and Neglect in Australia: Prevention Strategies and Issues of Accessibility

Child abuse and neglect is a serious issue affecting the welfare of a significant minority of Australian children. Statutory child protection authorities are being increasingly overwhelmed by reports of suspected cases of abuse, with the number of notifications nationally rising to 137, 938 in 2001-2002.

In response to the growing awareness of child abuse, services are being funded to attempt to tackle and prevent this abuse. The levels of prevention and types of child abuse prevention services currently in operation in Australia will be outlined. In order to be effective in preventing child abuse and neglect it is imperative for these services to be accessible for those families and children most in need of the service. However, there is currently little documented information available about how families locate, gain access to and use, child abuse prevention services. In order to start to address this knowledge gap, a small exploratory/pilot study was conducted to attempt to gain further understanding about issues of accessibility and how families, with a child at risk of being maltreated, avail themselves of services designed to prevent this maltreatment.

For this study, 32 practitioners currently involved in the provision of child abuse prevention services in both NSW and VIC were asked to complete an interview and questionnaire about the nature of their service, neighbourhood characteristics, methods of program implementation, recruitment practices which it was hypothesised could impact on how clients avail themselves, engage with and use prevention services. The results of this study will be outlined as well as possible practical and policy implications derived from the findings.

University of Melbourne

Re-creating the homelandscape: mushroompicking in Belanglo

For most Australians the mere mention of the word Belanglo conjures up gruesome images of Ivan Milat and the backpacker murders. Belanglo seems synonymous with murder, with television footage of forensic teams uncovering the human remains of British, German and Australian hitchhiking backpackers. At the very least it—along with other pine plantations—is viewed as a sterile, monocultural and essentially ‘un-Australian’ ecosystem useful only for the timber industry and maybe the occasional trailbike rider or 4WD enthusiast. But for the Polish community of Sydney, Belanglo State Forest is a mushroom picking and picnicking paradise, each autumn attracting thousands of visitors. Mushroom picking is a popular pastime in Poland but in the Australian environment familiar edible wild mushrooms can generally only be found in plantations of Pinus radiata. Belanglo forest being among the most accessible pine plantations from Sydney, it has in particular developed into somewhat of a mecca for the Polish community.

This paper seeks to explore the concepts of ethnoscape and nostalgic landscape through reference to the Polish immigrant community and what amounts to the re-creation of the Polish forest and the memories associated with it in the Australian setting. Through their patronage of pine plantations such as Belanglo, Polish-Australians have in effect transformed public land managed predominantly for timber production into an ethnic space that not only provides recreation but catapults community members back into the past, into the forested landscapes of the homeland left behind. These observations are at odds with the bulk of popular and academic discourse, as well as with public policy. Much of the scientific literature sees the formation of ethnic space and ethnoscape as urban phenomena centred on localities where immigrant ethnic groups are concentrated. This study, however, argues that they can also occur in natural, public spaces well beyond the suburb or city as a result of the search for familiar forms of recreation and a landscape that most closely resembles the landscapes of ‘home’.

Human Geography

School of Geosciences

University of Sydney

Coping With Conspiracy Theories and How to Step Outside of the Academic Square:

Looking Beyond ‘Pluralistic Consensus’ while Avoiding the ‘Paranoid Style’.

For many academics, dealing with so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ can be extremely confrontational. Since the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ itself is full of connotations that imply some level of paranoia or anti-establishment thinking, academics have a tendency to avoid such confrontations through fear of being seen as paranoid or anti-establishment. However, once this fear has been overcome, some of the more plausible conspiracy theories can be very challenging. While a challenge they indeed are, this paper argues that to commit time and resources into their investigation is not for the feint-hearted and that such tasks will not suit everyone. This paper explores why academics should become involved in such research and how obstacles may be overcome. It will argue that academics have a certain responsibility in the twenty-first century to undertake such tasks and, in particular, those academics that teach and write not only have a responsibility to seek the truth, but they also have an obligation. The paper does not attempt to discuss the theory of ‘conspiracy theories’ but, rather, argues that certain events of an historical nature need to be researched and documented, but have not been because they have, for various reasons, been labelled ‘conspiracy theories’.

Flinders University of South Australia

Lessons from the Tower of Babel

The biblical story of the Tower of Babel has been repeated many times throughout history as novel and complex projects fail to meet their lofty goals. Research at the University of South Australia's System Engineering and Evaluation Centre (SEEC) is examining factors other than technical and managerial deficiencies or inappropriate processes, which could lead to failure in novel and complex development projects. The research starts with the observation that complex projects are implemented by several interacting teams of people. The research is focussed on how those teams function within their prescribed areas of responsibility to generate new knowledge and agreed meanings and how that new knowledge and meanings are transferred to other associated teams. This paper describes the operations of a team dealing with a novel and complex problem set in terms of individual learning, group collaborative learning, communities of practice, leadership and structure. The research to date indicates that technical and managerial competence, structure, and process are necessary, but not sufficient for project success. A social environment, which supports the generation and dissemination of new knowledge with agreed context specific meanings, is also critical to success. Two examples from the current research are described.

Systems Engineering & Evaluation Centre

University of South Australia

The Modernising of Herbal Medicine: Medical Hegemony and the Rhetoric of Danger

Western herbal medicine as both a practice and a product, has a socio-cultural and political history of marginalisation in Australia. Its marginalised status has been perpetuated by a biomedical hegemony which was successfully established in Australia by the medical profession and its political allies by the early twentieth century . Since the Anglo-European colonisation in Australia, however, the usage and attitudes towards this healing modality by the colonisers have undergone some interesting and dynamic transformations, which have been driven by institutional elites, governments, and media. These institutional as well as market forces (the ‘cultural apparatus’) have effectively created a very dominant and powerful paradigm – the biomedical paradigm – in Australian culture, which is typically resistant to non-orthodox modalities that pose a threat to its power and legitimacy. In this paper I will explore the way in which the biomedical paradigm has responded to the increasing popularity of herbal medicine, and biomedicine’s attempts to re-assert its legitimacy through elite medical discourse about herbal medicine in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) from 1968 to 2002. Analysis of 54 articles and letters appearing in the MJA during this period reveals the construction of a rhetoric of danger about herbal medicines, which serves as a tool of legitimation for the privileged position and authoritative practices of biomedical practitioners.

School of Natural and Complementary Medicine

Southern Cross University

The Possibilities of Critical Ethnography in Exploring Community Participation in Multicultural Training for Mental Health Workers.

This paper focuses on my work in choosing and developing a qualitative approach for research in the areas of multicultural mental health, professional education and training and community participation. My interests in the study concern the nature of professional knowledge on health care and multiculturalism and its development and transmission via training and education processes in the mental health arena. Within this space, I am interested in the role that community members, or consumer's, play in sharing their knowledge and participating as teachers in the education of health professionals. This interest is reflected in the growing number of Australian projects advocating mental health consumer involvement in the training process and how this might be facilitated. In my pursuit of a theoretical approach for this study, I wanted a focus on the politics of knowledge production and how various forms of rationality may regard and value the narrative, experiential knowledge of community members. My explorations of hermeneutics (e.g., Gadamer), critical hermeneutics (e.g., Habermas), critical, feminist and post structuralist ethnography have provided me with some interesting insights and dilemmas in approaching this topic. In detailing these, I would like to present some emerging preferences for a research paradigm and accompanying set of methodological practices.

School of Nursing and Midwifery

Division of Health Sciences

University of South Australia

Hybridity and the Quest for Identity: Japanese Migrant Women in Sydney

The objective of this study is to explore the lifeworlds of Japanese migrant women in Sydney. The migration experience is not just a simple question of how migrant women accommodate, adapt or assimilate host cultures, but how transnational forces impinge on the (re)construction and (re)negotiation of identities of migrant women. In this paper, I link the concepts of transnational social spaces, cultural identity and hybridity to unravel the complexity of society, culture and identity in the experiences of Japanese migrant women. This is based on prelimnary findings of a study of the migration strategies and cross-cultural experiences of Japanese migrant women in Sydney.

School of Sociology

University of New South Wales

Dollars and Sense: Understanding Money and Familial Relationships

The paper explores the meanings of and attitudes towards money in the context of the family. It argues that money is taken as a social entity, an intermediary that illuminates the negotiation and perpetuation of familial relationships. Employing a social constructionist approach in studying two families, the meanings of familial money are analysed via various domains such as filial piety, marriage, and the role of the state in the appropriation of familial money, by traversing both dyadic and triadic familial relationships. The paper reiterates the various senses and meanings of money in family relationships, highlighting that money exchanges between familial members remain as sensitive processes, where familial pecuniary behaviour stem from either subscription to, or adaptation of certain "family" and "gender" ideologies.

Department of Sociology

National University of Singapore

Predicting academic dishonesty in a sample of Australian university students

The present study investigated the dishonest academic behaviours of Australian university students (N = 954) and their relationships with demographic factors, advise provided to students, academic self-efficacy, and academic orientation. It was hypothesised that higher levels of dishonesty would be associated with low learning-orientation, high grade-orientation, low academic self-efficacy and non-receipt of information about the rules of cheating and plagiarism. Statistical analyses revealed high levels of three types of self-reported academic dishonesty: cheating, plagiarism and falsification. Demographic variables, academic orientation and academic self-efficacy were found to have differential predictive value for the three types of dishonesty, underlining the argument that it is misleading to measure academic dishonesty as a uni-dimensional construct. The results are discussed in terms of implications for strategic interventions and university policy formulation.

School of Psychology

University of South Australia

Helen.Marsden@unisa.edu.au

Reconceptualising Social exclusion: A Critical Response to the Neoliberal Welfare Reform Agenda and the Underclass Thesis

The application of free-market principles to welfare reform in Western industrialised nations is underpinned by contentious assumptions about human behaviour. In the post-war era, welfare policies largely considered disadvantage and exclusion as structural problems of the economy and society generally; disadvantaged individuals were considered ‘victims’ of their environment. More recently, conservative contributors have re-emphasised disadvantage and exclusion as largely due to behavioural problems of the ‘undeserving poor’, manifest in what is believed to be an ‘underclass’. Critics of the current welfare reform agenda have voiced their concerns about the individualist assumptions that underpin it but their response to date is insufficient because they have generally neglected human agency and have failed to acknowledge individuals as capable actors. While there has been a revival of interest in human agency, greater recognition of agency in debates about welfare is required to mount a credible critique of the conservative assumptions about human behaviour in order to develop a more sensitive theory of the activities of the poor. One of the ways in which this may be achieved is by reconceptualising the concept of social exclusion and highlighting a ‘strong’ rather than a ‘weak’ version.

School of Social Work & Social Policy

University of South Australia

"He needs someone to hold him": Kanyirninpa, the power of ‘holding’ for young Aboriginal men today

Young Aboriginal men of the western desert seek to be ‘held’ and ‘grown up’ by older men. This experience, an essential part of Aboriginal desert culture, can prove elusive for many young men today with serious implications for their health and wellbeing. While many continue to find the Ceremonies associated with men’s Law essential to this experience and their becoming adult men, they can struggle to have this experience outside of Ceremonial times. Some young men seek to be ‘held’ in new and creative ways: it can attract them to football and prison or away from petrol sniffing. It can lead them to be ‘grown up’ by non-Aboriginal men. Whatever path they take, young desert men continue to seek being ‘held’ by older men in the company of other men.

Centre for the Study of Health and Society

School of Population Health

University of Melbourne

Class, Soap Opera and National Mythology

The nature of soap opera as focussing on what Robert Allen terms "domestic concerns", in particular the private sphere and family, has resulted in soap operas from different countries having distinct national characteristics. In my paper, I wish to look closely at the very different class structures and aspirations found in soap operas from the UK, the US and Australia and the way that this reflects the dominant "dream" or class mythology of each nation. While UK soaps tend to hold to a very rigid class structure, Australian soaps embrace egalitarianism, a dominant myth of Australian society. Meanwhile, the characters in US soaps are pursuing (and often achieving) the American Dream which suffuses popular culture from the "land of opportunity".

Department of History

Australian National University

Paucity Management Goes Global – The Effect of Neoliberal Economics on Rural, Community Welfare Organizations.

Competitive financialisation has been an inevitable outcome of economic neo-liberalism and economic rationalism. For the community welfare sector, the resultant situation is a complex one. At a macro level, peak organizations in the community welfare sector, have tried to influence policy decision-making of governments in order to offset potential negative ramifications for their member organizations and affiliations. At a micro level, managers within these member organizations are becoming adept at balancing competing needs. They must address continually, those tensions between balancing, trading off, professional standards and ethical practice. In terms of globalization being viewed as a ‘borderless’ phenomenon, it is more than likely that this kind of management, with links to the concept of paucity management, is practiced everywhere in the world. This kind of management, for example, is reflected in the global concerns of organizations that involve themselves in debates on sustainability and market economy during an economic downturn.

The rural community welfare sector is seen as an appropriate environment in which to undergo applied research and showcase the epistemic existence of paucity management. This sector has a myriad of service delivery types, a multi-purpose status within communities, anomalies in funding arrangements and business partnership networks, and is in a constant state of reviewing management structures to respond effectively to governance guidelines and constant government recommendations. This Paper analyses some of the factors impacting management behaviour that could conceivably sit within a paucity management model, since the government’s push for partnership arrangements between the different sectors.

Centre for Learning and Social Transformation

University of Western Sydney

Outside Influence: The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Development of Australian Museums 1932-1945

Museum development in Australia prior to 1945 is a poorly understood aspect of Australian history. One of the major factors influencing museum development at this time was the Carnegie Corporation of New York and its President F.P.Keppel. Contrary to published opinion new research shows that the influence of the Carnegie Corporation in Australia was wide-ranging and long lasting. In 1936 the President of the corporation gave $50,000 US, to Australia for development of public programs in museums and galleries. Direct grants, grants-in-aid and other activities sponsored by the Corporation enabled museums to implement new display techniques, send staff overseas to gain experience in different museums and to implement programs designed to increase the usefulness of museums to the public. This paper describes one of the most significant influences in the development of museums in Australia while at the same time adding to our knowledge of the history of Australian culture in the first half of the 20th century.

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

University of The Sunshine Coast

Museum_guy@hotmail.com

You Don’t Speak For Me:

In search of a holistic community focussed research methodology for working cross-culturally with Indigenous communities in Australia

This paper will critically analyse a range of qualitative research methodologies in the context of their relevance to cross-cultural research in Indigenous contexts and posit a model for collaborative community -based cross-cultural research. It will examine some of the cultural, ethical, political and epistemological issues around cross-cultural research and the role of the non-Indigenous researcher in a collaborative cross-cultural research setting with Aboriginal communities in Australia.

These considerations will be contextualised within the researcher’s field of enquiry, namely, Indigenous community health promotions and the use of participatory theatre interventions in these settings to promote community dialogue, wellbeing and action.

It will also explore a range of dilemmas around conducting cross-cultural research with indigenous communities in Australia.

University of Western Sydney

celiamoon@bigpond.com

Creating space for the end of a fairytale: Australian media coverage of the break-up of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.

The Australian media devoted an enormous amount of space to coverage of the break-up of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. Using a cultural studies approach and drawing on both quantitative and qualitative methods, this paper examines the extent and preoccupations of this coverage. Coverage of the break-up on the covers and in the letters pages of the popular Australian women’s magazines The Australian Women's Weekly, Woman's Day, New Idea, Who Weekly, and NW is analysed. Nicole and Tom’s representation of their relationship after their split on the talk shows Oprah, Parkinson and The Ray Martin Show is also discussed. The paper argues that during their relationship Nicole and Tom were frequently represented as a public example of a ‘fairytale’ romance. Their break-up consequently challenged the ideal of romantic love and created a space in popular culture for anxieties about this ideal to be voiced.

Centre for Gender, Sexuality and Culture

School of Humanities

Australian National University

Discourses of Humanitarianism and International Relations: Conquest, Colonialism and Kosovo

The discourse of ‘humanitarianism’ has played a significant role in the theory and practice of America at war, particularly in recent decades. This paper will critically examine the development of this discourse as a central feature of modernist theory and practice in international relations. Further, it will argue that the discourse of humanitarianism, has developed through a combination elements of liberal theory, with a purported concern for ‘human rights’, and classical state-centric power politics demands. The first part of the paper will examine the early development of the ideas of humanitarianism in the context of the conquest of America in the 16^th Century. In particular, the conceptual pair of ‘civilisation’ and ‘barbarism’ will be examined, along with the just war debate, which were covered in some detail in the works of Bartholome de Las Casas. His legacy to contemporary humanitarianism and international relations will then be considered, with particular focus on the humanitarian interventions of the 1990s. The bombardment of Kosovo provides the most obvious recent example of this, but much of the rhetoric that was utilised to justify interventions that were often destructive and ineffective during the 1990s can also be seen accompanying the current war on terror. In this context, this paper will argue that humanitarian intervention, far from being a break with traditional forms of interstate conflict, can be located very clearly within an evolving Western hegemonic structure which adopts a violent approach to difference in order to maintain and expand a sense of self in an apparently ‘anarchical’ world.

Department of Political Science and International Relations

School of Social Sciences

Faculty of Arts

Australian National University

jeremy.moses@anu.edu.au

"The life-long battle of health": The cultural politics of reading health magazines

The neoliberal policy of ‘devolving’ health care responsibility from governments onto individuals has created the demand for a new consumer health industry, including private health insurance, weight-loss services, and a whole range of other products and services, including health magazines. This paper offers a cultural studies’ analysis of reader letters from six Australian health magazines, from both the ‘commercial’ and ‘community’ media sectors, to consider how they represent the lifestyle obligations of their health media audiences. Although both sectors are committed to media health advocacy, letters in the commercial magazines (Good Medicine, Men’s Health, Nature & Health) tend to define health as an attribute of the rational individual, reliant upon behavioral and consumer choices, whereas letters in the community magazines (Talkabout, The Professional, User’s News) complicate this definition, locating health within a cultural context that is subject to economic, political and environmental constraints.

National Centre in HIV Social Research

University of New South Wales

Two Visions of Globalisation: An Account of the America's Cup Harbour and South Auckland

A comparison of Auckland’s American Express Viaduct Harbour and the southern suburb of Otahuhu yields a compelling illustration of the paradoxes and complexities of globalisation. On one hand, the American Express Viaduct Harbour, home until very recently to the America’s Cup fleet, is a product of global economic excess. The harbour is a playground for business and aristocratic elites (and those wishing to bask in reflective glory) who conspicuously consume global super-brands. On the other hand, the southern suburb of Otahuhu, depicted in the film Once Were Warriors, represents a very different image of globalisation, one typified by economic hardship, unemployment, and mass migration. However, simple responses of these two very different spaces do not produce a complete picture. This article has been constructed through images of the Viaduct Harbour and Otahuhu observed during the lead-up competition to the America’s Cup, the Louis Vuitton cup, in January 2003. By reviewing the contradictions and paradoxes on these two areas of Auckland we can better appreciate the complex and intricate influence of global forces that are rarely clear, simple, or easily definable .

Centre for Social Change Research

School of Humanities and Human Services

Queensland University of Technology

How Do You Write? Taking Stock of Writing in Doing a PhD in the Social Sciences.

Arguably the most important part of the PhD process, writing is often neglected as a focus of supervision and in the content and practice of research methods units. The myth (or quiet hope) that we can write and write well is entrenched in the culture of the PhD. Yet it is the inability to write, and keep on writing, that sees a large percentage of postgraduate students never complete their projects. In this paper I ask the postgraduate student "How do you write?" I look at the obstacles students face in getting started and in continuing to write - deconstructing the writing experience, and mythology in relation to that experience, from the student's perspective. Being aware of and understanding how and why we write (and don't write) can lift barriers that constrain us.

Centre for Applied Social Research,

Faculty of the Constructed Environment,

School of Social Science and Planning,

RMIT

Toward Sustainability: Creating the Space for an ‘Ecological Liberalism’.

This paper will attempt to ‘create a space’ for consideration of ‘the new liberalism’ as an ideological vehicle for the sustainable society. It will firstly consider the emergence of environmentalism in the context of post-war economic crises and the subsequent importance of ‘neoliberal’ hegemony for environmental policy making via the emergence of ‘free market’ environmentalism. Secondly, it will examine radical environmental analyses which, while insightful as ‘critique’, tend to remain utopian and therefore marginal to the policy-making processes necessary to secure sustainability. Finally, the paper will explore the territory between free market environmentalism on the one hand, and radical utopias on the other. It is here that alternative strands of liberalism are considered to be important and after establishing that contemporary political liberalism is limited in what it can contribute to the sustainability debate, the paper argues that historical new liberalism appears to offer a promising foundation upon which to build an ‘ecological liberalism’.

Discipline of Political Economy

School of Economics and Political Science

University of Sydney

This paper is driven by the question: What accounts for the variable incidence of Aboriginal pastors and evangelists in the Australian Lutheran Church? Three regions are compared in this study. In Central Australia, after 125 years of contact, about 6,000 Aborigines, including Western Arrernte, Pintupi/Loritja, Alyawarr and Pitjantjatjara, currently identify as Lutheran. They still speak their own languages and are served by 24 pastors and about 20 evangelists. On Cape York Peninsula the Lutherans have worked since 1886 with the Gugu Yimidhirr and others removed from their land. Many of the 2,500 Aboriginal Lutherans here now use English as their first language. There is one retired pastor, four retired evangelists, and several currently active leaders in the church there. In South Australia a mission was commenced among the Gugatha, Mirning and Wirrangu people at Koonibba in 1901. English was used from the outset, and there has not yet been an officially recognised Aboriginal church leader in this community.

A descriptive historical survey suggests that a greater degree of cultural continuity in the Aboriginal community leads to a higher incidence of Aboriginal leadership in the church. Areas of cultural continuity considered are initiation, language, kinship, and relationship to traditional land.

School of Political and Social Inquiry

Monash University

The term ‘breakdown’ is treated in two senses – both as the commonly used ‘nervous’ or ‘mental breakdown’ and as a descriptor for the onset of psychiatric illness. This paper describes the background (both theoretical and experiential) to proposed research into the reconstruction and reconstitution of the ‘self’ as understood by those whose lives are radically changed through the experience and examines concepts of self and identity in this context. Literature emphasizing the ‘absence of voice’ of people with physical disabilities provides a background to the invisibility and stigmatization of individuals who suffer mental disablement. In a broadening of the theoretical perspectives of sociology of the body, the relationship between body, mind and self in mental disablement is seen as an unexplored area of sociology. Gaps in service provision, principally a lack of understanding of the real meaning of the person’s experience and factors necessary for the reconstruction of selfhood are postulated. Proposed research through listening to the stories, thoughts and feelings of individuals and the implications for mental health service policy and provision are outlined.

The Medicalised Birth: An Examination into Risk Society and the interrelation of health, technology, perfection and responsibility.

In various hospitals and obstetric waiting rooms women are confronted with dozens of leaflets and posters which warn them about all kinds of hazards which they face during their pregnancy and impending birth. These women are told about invisible killers lurking in their ignorance. Yet, blame is allocated to those who fail to inform themselves about the risks we face. Risk, according to the works of Beck and Giddens has become a force of social change. It can be seen to actively shape our concept of health, desire for perfection, and our relationship to technology and responsibility. It is these themes which are noticeably absent from previous research in the area of sociology of childbirth and can provide insight into the agency of women who seek medical intervention during pregnancy and childbirth. To understand sociologically the embracement of medical intervention during pregnancy and childbirth, this article will first give a cursory background to the cultural context of childbirth in Australia and afterwards the literature on risk will be employed by addressing the above mentioned themes.

School of Applied and Human Sciences

University of Western Sydney

A.Garrety@uws.edu.au

Interpreting Change in Australian Higher Education: A Case Study of the Australian Photonics Cooperative Research Centre

How do we make sense of the multiplication of voices and conflicting interests in Australian higher education? For the past 15 years the sector has experienced unremitting change and is currently facing another process of 'reform' in the Nelson Review. There is real concern for the future of teaching and research. Some in the sector ask the question: 'Is the University Finished?' and express a nostalgic wish to return to the certainties of the past and the valuing of knowledge for its own sake rather than for its commercial return. Others embrace the opportunity inherent in the production of knowledge in the context of its use as well as the uncertainties of economic engagement with society. Meanwhile the policy settings of both sides of politics increasingly link the sector to the national interest in a competitive global economy.

This paper argues that analysis should focus on the connections between higher education and the users of the knowledge it produces in research and distributes in teaching. In other words that the diversity of engagement of higher education with society has reached the point where it is no longer possible to distinguish the internal from the external. In a case study of one such set of interconnections, the Australian Photonics Cooperative Research Centre, it was found that while the teaching/research nexus was under strain, perhaps to the point of breaking, under the emerging arrangements the two were recombining in innovative and encouraging ways. While the lessons from this case study cannot be generalised they do inform policy formulation, organisational management and the understanding of the processes of change in Australian higher education.

Sociology

School of Social Sciences

Australian National University

Paul.Preston@anu.edu.au

Rethinking the Creative Space: Feminism and the woman artist.

This paper addresses the difficulties encountered by Western feminists in attempting to position women meaningfully within the histories of art. In the context of recently discovered documentation concerning the life of one woman, Alice Marion Ellen Bale, it explores the problems inherent in attempting to reconstruct the life of an artist ‘overlooked’ in the mainstream art histories of twentieth century Australia. It discusses the misconceptions that may arise from categorisations and conclusions made on the basis of limited primary source material, and the distortions consequent on the imposition of today’s understandings and values on those of a different period. The effect these problems may have, not only on the current reputation of the artist concerned, but also the expectations of future critics and students, is considered and evaluated. In the light of a new and better understanding of an artist, previously obscured by the ambivalence of critics unable to reconcile the contradictions of her life and work, it argues for a more flexible discursive space in which a conscious and self-reflexive skepticism replaces the masculinist assertion of absolute truth with open-ended ongoing research.

School of Architecture and Building

Deakin University

Women Workers' Organising: Creating Identities to Generate Solidarity

This paper investigates the politics of identity through which women workers have engaged in labour and gender struggles in Southeast Asia during the past decade, in order to gain a better understanding of the various relationships between and among women’s and labour struggles. Several women workers’ organizations have sprung up in the region, whose goal is to defend women workers’ rights and to promote gender equality. Why do women workers organize collectively in spite of manifold obstacles? I argue that feminist writings on labour organising do not explain adequately variations in women’s mobilisation, because feminist conceptualisations of women’s identity are incomplete. I argue that we have to investigate how personal identity converges with collective identity to explain variations in mobilising and in the shapes and outcomes of women workers’ struggles. This leads me to discuss social identity theory and what it can contribute to feminist studies of labour and social protest. Through a case study of Thailand, I show that understanding identity construction is vital for women workers to be able to manage sustained mobilisation and active participation. I conclude by linking processes of identity construction to some possible consequences for building women’s solidarity across multiple differences.

Political Science and International Relations

Australian National University

Annemarie.Reerink@anu.edu.au

Marx, ethical consumption and need

The considerable influence of Marx’s work in the social sciences has left a curious space for those writing about consumption in general, and especially for those with an interest in ethical consumption specifically.
For Marx, under capitalism, with the humanly created world of goods, ‘The extension of products and needs becomes the ingenious and calculating slave of inhuman, artificial and imaginary cravings’. Such artificial appetites played, for Marx, a significant role in sustaining the capitalist system, consoling people on a superficial material level for the lack of fulfilment of their more intrinsically ‘real’ needs. It was through the fulfilment of this more intrinsically ‘real’ type of need that Marx believed that we express the essential quality of being human – as an active human engagement with the material world represented, for Marx, ‘a potential intensification of the dialectical development of subjects and objects’.
This understanding of Marx’s work is pivotal to interpreting his critique of capitalism, it seems straightforward, and so is often reiterated on an almost taken for granted level. Yet it is an interpretation which has also been particularly influential in sustaining an unsympathetic theoretical treatment of consumption. Marx himself however, celebrated the material gains achieved under capitalism, and celebrated the concomitant developing richness of human needs. To the extent need can be expressed through consumption, how then, following the train of Marx's thought, is it possible to differentiate between what represents, under capitalism, the developing richness of needs of which he approved, those more intrinsically civilising, human and real needs, and those which are fraudulent or misshapen?
This paper seeks to address these questions through a close consideration of Agnes Heller’s The Theory of Need in Marx. and argues that her work inadvertently reveals certain tensions and inconsistencies around Marx's understanding of needs and consumption, particularly evident when considered in relation to ethical consumption as a phenomenon.

University of New South Wales

c.reynolds@unsw.edu.au

Foucault and Capitalist rationality: A reconstruction

Philosophy Programme

School of Communication and Critical Enquiry

La Trobe University

New Learning through Popular Culture and Information Communications Technology (ICT):

A Perspective of Critical Literacy in the 21st century

Malaysian learners and educators have been grappling with the issue of declining proficiency of the English language among graduates. This concern is manifested on several levels. The public and private sector inform through and with the media about the ability of graduates in interpersonal skills, critical thinking and in voicing their opinions substantially in the English language. With Vision 2020, the Malaysian Government has taken drastic measures to address this situation in preparing the nation towards being a leading industrialized country in the Asian and global arena. This paper explores some of these concerns about critical literacy in language education through reference to work on the uses of popular culture and information communications technology. Specifically, I describe how popular culture and information communication technology play a significant part in shaping learners’ identity , how it has been used as pedagogical resources for critical literacy and language education and the pedagogic potentials it has in educational contexts in the Asian, specifically Malaysian scenario. My commitment is to engage in exploring the possibilities of these meaning-making resources in teaching critical literacy in the ESL context. Malaysian learners are capable of harnessing these meaning-making resources as powerful, affective means for generating multiliteracies which can improve their skills in filtering information and making sense of the culture around them.

The Globalism Institute

Department of Language and International Studies

RMIT

marilyn_rmit@yahoo.com

What On Earth Is Happening To Religion?

For most of the twentieth century, the prevailing wisdom among sociologists of religion as well as among other branches of social inquiry, was that religions was in terminal decline. It was anticipated that under the impact of the secularising forces of modernization, religious belief and practice would inevitably decline and cease to have significant impact in modern society. But something has gone wrong with the script. The dramatic impact of September 11 and Bali has drawn attention to the resurgence of Islam. In Africa, Christianity, particularly in its Pentecostal form, has undergone dramatic growth, and even in the USA research has demonstrated that, far from declining, religious belief and practice is showing signs of robust vitality. However, a different scenario is found in other places such as Australia and Europe. A fierce controversy is raging in sociology with different theories being put forward to explain the divergent phenomena. This paper explores these divergent views in search of a coherent sociological explanation for the phenomena.

School of Political and Social Inquiry

Department of Sociology

Monash University,

‘Turtle-hunters extraordinaire’: Yanyuwa women, Indigenous knowledge and management of country.

Drawing on fieldwork with Yanyuwa people from the Borroloola area (Northern Territory) it is argued that any land, sea or resource management endeavours in this region must take account of the inextricable bond between Indigenous knowledge and gender. Like gender differences, women’s Indigenous knowledge is socially and culturally constructed, and passed on from one generation to the next. Indigenous knowledge systems are premised on observation and classification of local environments and systems of self-management that govern resource use. These bodies of knowledge are available to those members charged with specific ritual, resource management and production responsibilities. I will demonstrate that Yanyuwa Indigenous knowledge systems are inherently gendered (but not inflexible) and that gendered spaces are created. Whilst Yanyuwa women have to cope with an ever declining resource base and lack of access to their country, they continue to play crucial roles in maintaining livelihoods, cultural continuity and cohesion. To conclude, current land, sea and resource management initiatives by Yanyuwa women will be discussed, concentrating on the local and gendered nature of their choices for management action.

School of Social Sciences, Anthropology, Archaeology, Criminology and Sociology,

University of Queensland

s3155290@student.uq.edu.au

Reflexivity and the Price of Epistemological Security

A measure of reflexivity is central to any social scientific research that aspires to, or purports to be the result of, scientific or academic rigour. However, the idea of reflexivity is somewhat ambiguous in the social sciences. It varies substantially in degree and meaning according to the methodological stance of the social researcher - from the benign introspection of positivism to the radical constitutive reflexivity of foundational ethnomethodology. The idea of reflexivity also varies according to the question of its appropriate locus. Should this be the social researcher her- or himself as 'research instrument', or, as Pierre Bourdieu argues, the social sciences themselves, along with their limits and biases? Debates concerning reflexivity are typically informed by the perceived need for 'epistemological vigilance', or, the need to defend and/or improve social scientific practice. This sentiment is laudable. However, it neglects the political nature of social scientific practice and, in particular, the impact of the social sciences upon their 'subject matter'. In this paper, I consider briefly some of the implications of this negligence. I do so largely through a critique of Bourdieu's strong programme for reflexivity in the social sciences. I argue that, despite his notion of reflexivity as a transformative institutional practice, Bourdieu's commitment to a critical theory methodological stance does not allow him to deal adequately with the above problem. In short, I argue, it is insufficiently reflexive.

School of Social Science

Faculty of Arts

Australian National University

Stereotypes of the aged highlighting their inferiority and incapacity are rooted in the idea that They are not like Us, or more precisely, we are not like them. What are the cues which identify the Other, and lead to negative inferences regarding physical capacities and social and cognitive competencies? In this focus on deficits, what is it that we are or have which makes us normal? When did they lose it? In denying that they are like us now, are we suggesting that they never were? If youth and age are binary opposites, how do we leap from one to the other? Or if there is a continuum, how can we stop sliding downwards? If we deny a Self to the Other, what does it mean for our own ageing?

This paper, with specific reference to intergenerational communication, will consider perceptions of the superiority of communication skills and strategies of younger people, and look at reasons for widely held negative beliefs about the interest or worth of older people as conversation partners. It will also consider the implications and effects of patronising and infantilising speech registers frequently employed by carers in medical and aged care settings.

Centre for the Study of Health and Society

Department of Public Health

University of Melbourne

William Got the Winery and Ann Got the Dinner Set:

An Historical Investigation of the Contribution of Women to the Wine Industry of the Barossa Valley 1836-2003.

From the European settlement of the Barossa Valley to the present day, most wine writers, whose accounts have been written from a dominant male ideology, have consistently ignored the significant part that women have taken in the South Australian wine industry. An examination of primary sources provides evidence of the long and continued participation of women in wine making. Interviews with women who currently work in vineyards and wineries complete the picture of their involvement in the wine industry. The early German settlers in the Barossa Valley brought with them a culture of winemaking, while the English immigrants often needed to acquire the necessary interest and expertise. The socially structured ideology of a gendered division of labour, meant that males worked out of doors, while women were responsible for the domestic tasks in the house and the land around it, known as the home paddock. This paper investigates the long and unacknowledged history of women in the wine industry of the Barossa Valley.

This paper draws on research undertaken as part of a doctoral thesis which uses a case study approach to investigate the impact of school culture on the higher education aspirations of secondary students in one of the most educationally disadvantaged regions in Australia, the outer northern suburbs of Adelaide. Bourdieu developed a theory of reproduction in education in which he used the concepts of field, capital and habitus to explain how the environment in which people are raised, their conditions of cultural and material existence, shape their attitudes, their means of interpreting the world, and their capacities to engage with academic discourse (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). Using the voices of students who have enrolled at the University of South Australia from the three schools in my case study, I am applying Bourdieu’s theoretical approach to explore and analyse the ways in which student aspirations are shaped and to explain why some students feel like "fish out of water" if and when they get to university.I argue that it is the disjunction between the habitus of the students at the disadvantaged schools and the higher education sector, particularly in some disciplines and campus environments, which contributes to the low participation rates and level of discomfort for the students who do enrol at university. It is important for universities to address this disjunction if they are serious about increasing the successful participation of students from low socio-economic backgrounds.

Centre for Education, Equity and Work

School of Education

University of South Australia

Tufvesson, Ingrid

This paper presents frequently cited contentions by women in Euro-American spaces regarding the exclusion and marginalisation of racialised women. The central discussion investigates the importance of the feminist epistemic community, pursuing a pro-active women's agenda, which is seen in this discussion, to also demand accountability and a collective collaborative engagement. Discussions on the matter have provoked heated debate at various junctures, which have led to new understandings and many misunderstandings. The disparities, however, as accounted for by racialised and ethnicised women in Euro-American spaces continues. This failure to transcend the current impasse is seen as disloyal to the "women's cause" and it places women's academic activist integrity in question. Universalistic egalitarian discourse and rhetoric within policy research has long sustained itself upon the ensured hegemony of those

who shape policy and research. The multi-layered exclusion spoken about in this paper purports that in Australia and Sweden multiculturalism has an Achilles heel, which lies in the silencing and exclusion of dissenting voices. Until academic feminism has found a way to obliterate this asymmetry of power and participation, the 'women's movement' remains shamed by practices much like those used by normative man to suppress women.

The feminist epistemic community, which advocates to be striving for the liberation of all women, has to be seen meeting its rhetoric with action. The twenty-first century should not be allowed to see the continuance of the shameful practices that have marred the women's liberation and feminist agenda with regard to gendered racism, socio-economic classism, etc. Black/of Colour/ "Third World"/ Indigenous/ethnic minority women have

been dissatisfied for a long time and it is time for action.

Women's Studies and the School of Social Science & Policy

University of New South Wales

ingrid.tufvesson@student.unsw.edu.au

Eyes wide open? The media of international relations and the War on Iraq

The technology of the news media today enables society to watch with near instant relay unfolding events around the world. The role of the news media in communicating events like the war on Iraq to societies is paramount and contributes significantly to the information that people believe they know. This discussion will focus on two issues. Firstly it will examine conflicting models of media worldwide, and secondly it will explore the characteristics of the liberal western media and its role within the war on Iraq. The key questions that this discussion will highlight are whether the liberal western media differs so drastically from development media and whether it truly enables people to view events like the war on Iraq with "eyes wide open"?

University of South Australia

twombly@bigpond.com

Creating Space Between the Rock and a Hard Place: Contemporary Australian Indigenous Music and the Art of Resistance

Within traditional sociology, the political potential of mass-mediated contemporary cultural forms has largely been overlooked. In regard to popular music, a critical analysis of the production of Australian indigenous rock music is presented. This paper is concerned with how indigenous Australians practise ‘bi-culturality’ – drawing on time-honoured values and beliefs of indigenous cultures that are substantially distinct from those held by the dominant cultural group – to construct arenas of empowerment to express resistance to domination and oppression. This innovative practise is conceptualised as the embodiment of both a ‘residual’ and an ‘emergent’ cultural practice (Williams, 1980), and empirical evidence of a lively ‘culture of resistance’ (Mitchell and Feagin, 1995), whereby Indigenous musicians appropriate and transform the contested terrain of the cultural sphere toward promoting progressive social change. Dedicated to a better understanding of the dialectic between individual agency and social structure, my aim is to illuminate subversive elements not immediately evident within the sphere of popular cultural production through this case study.

Faculty of Arts, Deakin University, P.O. Box 423,

Warrnambool, VIC 3280

Email: bomba@deakin.edu.au

Social relationships in the contemporary workplace

Globally in the last few decades, there have been massive changes in the work place. While few employees may have benefited from these changes, the reality for most is that they have led to a rise of job insecurity and work intensification. Based on interviews with 47 people in different types of workplaces, I have explored the impact of the changing nature of work on friendships and social relationships in the workplace. In this paper I have focused on how work intensification, job insecurity and teamwork have influenced social relationships in the workplace. Some argue that teamwork and the importance of instrumental relationships in the workplace have undermined genuine social relationships and more collective forms of solidarity. Findings from this study suggest that genuine, more collective social relationships did exist in the workplace but the extent to which they were able to exist was undermined by work intensification and job insecurity. The development and maintenance of social relationships in the private sphere were also constrained as a result of work intensification and networking.

‘By Diggers Defended, By Victorians Mended’: Assuaging Grief in Post WWI Victoria.

Despite the fact that sixty thousand Australian soldiers died as a result of WWI, there have been few in depth inquiries into the ways those Australians who remained at home during the war attempted to cope with such overwhelming loss. Melbourne’s ‘adoption’ of the ruined French town of Villers Bretonneux in the early 1920s, and the financial assistance lent by Victorians to facilitate the post war reconstruction of the town, could no doubt be explained away as simply a continuation of the voluntary work undertaken by wealthy, conservative Victorians during the war. But there is also evidence to suggest that support for the adoption was much more widespread than such an explanation allows for, and that many were motivated to help the town for emotional reasons. Indeed the significance of Villers Bretonneux as a place of death and/or burial of the men of the Australian Imperial Force is integral to determining the motivations behind the help given to the townsfolk by Victorians.

History and Politics Programme

University of Wollongong

The first purpose of this paper is to (like many other researchers have done before me) highlight the broad social importance of the transition from welfare state to neo-liberal governmentality that occurred over the past fifty years. This represented a significant alteration in the way power is regulated in society. The second aim is to emphasise the usefulness of Foucault’s concepts of governmentality and technologies of government in analysing this trend. Through Foucault’s perspective the complex nature of power relations can be understood and false dichotomies, such as universal notions of weak/powerful, can be avoided. Essentially, this perspective usefully informs an understanding of how the way the space within which power imbalances occur is constructed and how the nature of this space influences power relations.

School of Social Sciences

Australian National University

Adrian_Webster@isic.org

For many academics and researchers the pursuit of career opportunities requires relocating on a temporary basis within and between nations for periods of between 1-5 years, dependent on the terms of the employment contract. The experience of uncertainty regarding continued employment and residential location, and repeated relocations for employment purposes, disrupts individuals’ sense of self and belonging to people and place. This paper investigates the tensions between the sense of belonging to a country of origin and other locations of temporary residence, and the sense of new beginnings and disconnection negotiated with each relocation by temporary migrants. Temporary migrants identified two types of home, namely ‘truly home’ and ‘home for the time being’ and their experiences indicate it is not uncommon to have more than one ‘home for the time being’ because of multiple employment related relocations. The notion of multiple ‘homes for the time being’ and associated senses of belonging and a yearning for security not necessarily linked to a culture/nation-state of origin distinguish the temporary migrant experience from the majority of diasporic and transnational analyses based on bistatal experiences of home and belonging.

University of Queensland

Framings and Hauntings: Experiences of Internet-Based Media

Although the rhetoric of the Internet promises informational cornucopia, a variety of ambiguities and confusions arise when accessing websites that make its potential somewhat unrealised. The material status of Internet media is ambiguous. Added to this are lack of properly applied design conventions and the apparent transience of the media themselves. Internet media also suffers from textual diglossia, in which the media we access is Oframed¹ by technical information that we don¹t understand. Finally, one effect of hyperlinking is that individual works on the Internet can lack discrete identity. As the user proceeds from one link to the next, media works seem to contaminate each another, ontologically and semantically. A combination of ambiguous materiality and the blurring of boundaries between Internet media makes each work haunted by the other media that the user has visited. As a result the framing of Internet media may seem more solid than the media itself. My argument will be illustrated by works of Internet art that explore the framing and haunting of Internet media.

RMIT

geniwate@ozemail.com.au

Regulating the Environmental Release of Genetically Modified Organisms: Exploring the Space Between Science and Politics.

While the commercialisation of transgenic crops is occurring at an astoundingly rapid rate, the impact of releasing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment remains the subject of ongoing international debate. The need to regulate the release of these organisms amidst a highly polarised debate has seen the importance of "science-based policy" often espoused. These espousals assume that giving science an authoritative position in policy making will limit deliberation to 'the facts' and that scientific certainty will create rational policy. In this paper I will discuss the science-based regulatory approach taken towards decisions regarding the environmental release of transgenic crops and highlight some of the challenges to the validity of this approach emerging from the social sciences. I will then use the case study of Bt cotton and, specifically, the question of its non-target impacts, to propose that ecological uncertainties have been concealed in Australia's regulation of the environmental release of this transgenic crop. I will conclude by discussing how this concealment of ecological uncertainties highlights the political nature of using science to legitimise regulatory decisions and suggest that the space between science and politics is rarely, if ever, clearly distinct.

Biological Sciences / Science and Technology Studies

University of Wollongong

The Myth of Research as a Linear Process: The Reality of ‘Doing’ Grounded Theory Research.

This paper is a reflexive piece exploring the novice researcher’s experience of using a non-linear methodology within a PhD structure that encourages linearity. The notion of research as a linear process is considered within the context of a Glaserian grounded theory approach. According to Glaser (1992) the focus for grounded theory research, the problems and the questions regarding the problem emerge from the data as a natural by-product of open coding, theoretical sampling and constant comparative analysis.

The authors PhD project exploring how practitioners of traditional systems of medicine are situating themselves in the context of contemporary biomedicine, is used to illustrate the non-linear application of the Glaserian grounded theory method. In particular the inter-relationships between various aspects of the grounded theory research process as they have emerged to date within the author’s research project are considered. These aspects include the development of the research question, the theoretical approach, and the way in which data is generated and analysed.

Division of Health Sciences

University of South Australia

Tourism Queensland’s catchphrase, ‘Beautiful One Day, Perfect the Next’ has successfully promoted and marketed the state of Queensland since 1986. A further catchphrase, ‘The Coast with the Most’ succinctly defines the Gold Coast as Queensland’s favoured holiday playground, offering tourists not only beauty and perfection but also - by implication - much more than any of Queensland’s other tourist destinations.

Alluring images of young, sexy, good-looking, athletic people having fun in the sun frequently appear in televised advertisements and brochures, promoting the Gold Coast as a vibrant, fantasy playground, offering an escape from the restraints of everyday life into a liminal holiday landscape of fun and excitement. These images successfully reinforce one of the Gold Coast’s most stereotypical representations as a landscape of ‘sun, surf, sand and sex’.

Currently, there is a growing body of academics exploring the nexus between cinematic representations/televised images and the city. They are investigating the strong impact that cinematic images have on our collective imaginations; particularly the way we envisage certain cities. This paper explores two Gold Coast produced celluloid representations – the television series, ‘Pacific Drive’ and the movie ‘Muriel’s Wedding’ – teasing out the manner in which they assist in both reinforcing and contradicting certain stereotypical impressions that have been constructed about the Gold Coast.

Griffith University, School of Arts

One God, one Language, one Nation -

Race and politics of the German Lutheran Mission in New Guinea.

The place: New Guinea - the time: 1930 - the main players: Lutheran missionaries

In 1930, after nearly a decade of intense fighting over the introduction of a lingua franca for the mission field missionary Fritz Oertel accused Georg Pilhofer, deputy superintendent of the Lutheran Mission Finschhafen of waging a political campaign. What Pilhofer wanted was, so Oertel, setting up a nation within the nation, a theocracy in opposition to the Australian Administration. And the Australian government, which controlled the ex-German colony New Guinea as a C-Mandate of the League of Nations would not tolerate any form of disloyalty. Pilhofer's response, backed by the mission's home directorship, was to threaten Oertel. If he did not acquiesce, he would be taken off his station.

Today the most repeated argument, put forward most recently for example by Barry Hill in his book on Ted Strehlow (Broken Song) is that Lutheran cultural and linguistic practices showed a remarkable sensitivity and respect for indigenous culture. This paper wants to debate this view by having a closer look how far 'cultural sensitivity' went, and how it was linked to German racial theories and political visions and ambitions.

Australian National University

The Problems Envisaged in Writing a History of the New Left Movement in Australia, 1956-1975

This paper will outline the origins, characteristics and development of ‘New Left’ politics in Australia, the focus of the author’s PhD research. It will discuss the intended methodology for the study and consider a number of problems envisaged in completing this work. While many books have been published on post-war activism in Australia, there is currently no overarching narrative of the New Left, representing a clear gap in our twentieth-century historiography. The fact that the movement has not been the focus of any previous study does, however, point to the need to explain why this work should be done. Has the project been seen as too large? Alternatively, is the Australian movement seen as largely derivative of what happened overseas? If the latter is the case, is introducing new materials that confirm existing narratives an adequate reason for three years of research? Another concern for the author is how to balance what is effectively a collective intellectual biography with a discussion of the counter-culture of the period, which both reflected and impacted upon the movement. Finally, the paper will discuss how a narrative and analysis of the Australian New Left can be seen as relevant today.

University of Western Australia