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Past events
Launch of the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies

2009
 

Deepening Australian histories of place

Prof Ann McGrath. Presented by the Hawke Research Institute and the David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research. 13 November, City West Campus. How should the history of Australia be told? What are the problems that continue to prevent an ancient, Indigenous history becoming part of Australian history? Where would the legends that David Unaipon collected fit into such a story? After spending time with scientists and Indigenous custodians in the Willandra Lakes/Lake Mungo region, the possibilities and difficulties of writing an ancient history of Australia – or at least selected regions in Australia – start to become clear.

Professor Ann McGrath is Head of the History Program, and inaugural director of the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. She has worked for many years in the field of Indigenous Australian history and the history of colonialism. Her best-known publications include Born in the cattle: Aborigines in cattle country (1987), Creating a nation (co-written with Pat Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake and Marian Quartly), and edited volumes such as Contested ground: Australian Aborigines under the British Crown (1994), Aboriginal workers (with Kay Saunders and Jacky Huggins, 1995), and Writing histories: imagination and narration (with Ann Curthoys, 2000). Professor McGrath has previously worked in Darwin, at Monash University and the University of New South Wales. She was Program Director of Society and Nation at the National Museum of Australia during its opening years, 2000–02. She has worked on a range of significant public enquiries and legal cases, including Northern Territory land claims, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Gunner and Cubillo case. She was Advisor to Hilton Cordell Productions for The Colony reality television series.

Kane RaceIn conversation:
Pleasure consuming medicine

Dr Kane Race, University of Sydney. 12 November, City West Campus. It is usual to think of pleasure and medicine as polar opposites, one always ruling out the other. In this paper Dr Race asks what may be gained by bring them into better articulation. He draws from the gay community responses to HIV/AIDS, as well as the increasingly blurred distinction between licit and illicit drugs. A queer inquiry into pleasure and medical governance not only illuminates the ideological role that the illicit drug user fulfils for the neo-liberal state, but may also generate new, more effective, practices of care.

Dr Kane Race is a senior lecturer in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. He has published widely on how new medical technologies developed in response to HIV have affected gay sexual and political cultures and everyday life. He is the author of Pleasure consuming medicine: the queer politics of drugs, recently released by Duke University Press.

Dr Kane Race also led a masterclass on 12 November for postgraduate students and early career researchers who wanted to know more about publishing journal articles and academic books.

Smarter schools: CoAG National Partnerships round table

Co-presented by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, HRI, and the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, 9 November  City West Campus.

Panel members:

Recently the Council of Australian Governments (CoAG) agreed to three new 'Smarter Schools' National Partnerships which aim to improve the outcomes for students and the skills and qualities of teachers and school leaders. These three national partnerships are for literacy and numeracy, improving teacher quality, and low socioeconomic-status school communities. The federal government funding commitment with co-contributions from the South Australian government and non-government education sectors aims to bring about systemic and sustained educational reforms. A commitment to collaboration between the three schooling sectors in South Australia means that there is widespread interest in related matters.

The uses and misuses of economics: reflections of a recovering economist

Professor Barbara Pocock
Hawke Research Institute Professorial Lecture. Part of UniSA's Gift of Knowledge Lecture Series. 3 November, City West Campus. For the last century economics has reigned supreme in government and public life. But blind spots, ethical vacuums and excessive hubris have led economics and economists to make awful mistakes. This lecture will consider the price of the preoccupations and misapplications of economics in the twenty-first century and its contribution to some of our more important problems. In the context of the global financial crisis in particular, economic theory has a lot of explaining to do. This lecture will consider the implications of some of this for how we live, work and care for each other, and how we create sustainable lives.

Prof Pocock is Director of the Centre for Work + Life at the Hawke Research Institute. She initially trained as an economist and has been researching work, employment and industrial relations for over 25 years. She has worked in a range of industries – in banks, on farms, in unions, for governments – and has advised politicians. Her research includes gender politics at work, the regulation of industrial relations systems and effects on inequality. At present Prof Pocock is studying the changing nature of work and its intersections with changing household and social life, with Australia as her primary focus.

Engaged research: engaging communities

A seminar with Dr Peter O'Connor, Assoc Prof Tess Lea and Dr Jennifer Germon, 3 November, City West Campus. A key feature of applied cultural and social research is how best to work with communities to further well-being and respect. In the long tradition of engaged research it is also imperative that such engagements should draw on both empirical and theoretical ideas. In this workshop we will focus on three team projects that have intervened in different communities. We will discuss the problems associated with engaged research and the benefits that may flow to communities and to researchers. There will be time to discuss aspects of projects in progress, so please come and workshop your ideas.

Dr Peter O'Connor has an extensive publication record including texts on drama education and numerous chapters and articles in refereed journals and books. He has served on the editorial boards of two international drama education journals: he is currently on the international editorial boards for RiDE (Research in Drama Education) and IDEA/Applied Theatre Researcher, an online journal hosted by Griffith University. He has been an invited keynote presenter at conferences in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong and Jamaica. Peter was an advisor to the Hong Kong SAR government on the establishment of drama in education in the primary and secondary sectors.

Associate Professor Tess Lea graduated with an Honours degree in anthropology and women's studies at the Australian National University. Tess worked as a professional bureaucrat and policy officer in Canberra and in 1995 she returned to her birthplace Darwin, eventually to work as a ministerial advisor to the Minister for Health and Community Services. During this time, Tess co-authored a review of Indigenous education with the late Bob Collins (Collins and Lea 1999), before completing a PhD in anthropology through the University of Sydney. An invitation to work with Professor Ken McKinnon in his overhaul of the former Northern Territory University led to Tess founding the applied research school, the School for Social and Policy Research, in late 2003. As director, she has set the school's agenda for a myriad of successful research projects involving education, health and social policy. SSPR is renowned for its robust methodological and progressive approach of applied research to promote and support forward thought, action, and critique of systems and policy in northern and remote Australia.

Dr Jennifer Germon has more than a decade's experience working in the community sector in disability support and domestic violence services. She has a BA and MA in sociology and a PhD in gender studies. Her forthcoming book, Gender: a genealogy of an idea (forthcoming Dec 2009), offers a conceptual history of gender as an ontological category. Jennifer was lead author of the NSW DET commissioned research report entitled, Towards respectful relationships: developing cultures of respect in schools (with Prof Elspeth Probyn, A/Prof Peter O'Connor and Drs Clifton Evers and Michael Moller).

Childhood, consumption and sustainability: mission impossible?

Dr Susan Nichols and Katie Maher, 23 October, Magill Campus. 'Children's personal consumption choices: engaging children and their families in investigating and changing decision-making processes about what they consume' is a pilot study conducted as part of a suite of research projects supported by the organisation Zero Waste. This presentation reported on research that identifies and begins to describe a new territory where the fields of childhood, consumption and sustainability intersect. Based on a wide-ranging literature review, we bring together research and theory in the fields of anthropology, marketing, communication and media studies, environmental studies, education, geography and sociology. By charting ideas across these fields, we identify themes, conflicts and opportunities and highlight some exciting findings suggesting ways towards sustainable consuming childhoods.

Dr Sue Nichols is a senior researcher specialising in early childhood and family studies in the Centre for Literacy Policy and Learning Cultures in the Hawke Research Institute . She is chief investigator for the Children's Personal Consumption project and also teaches in the Graduate Certificate Early Childhood Leadership program. Katie Maher is a research assistant for the Centre for Research in Education and has contributed to several projects including Children's Personal Consumption. She has a history in community aid including working for Save the Children in China.

Playing by whose rules?

Catharine LumbyA masterclass with Prof Catharine Lumby, 20 October, City West Campus. In this seminar, Professor Catharine Lumby used her research and education work with the National Rugby League, with whom she has worked for the past five years, as a case study in applied cultural and gender studies. She explored the opportunities and hazards of working with organisations managing controversial issues that are the subject of public debate. She also considered how this type of applied research figures in the emergent research landscape in the humanities and social sciences.

Professor Catharine Lumby is the Director of Journalism and Media Research at the University of NSW. She was the Foundation Chair of the Media and Communications Department at the University of Sydney. She is the author of seven books and numerous book chapters and journal articles. Professor Lumby is a well-known public commentator who has worked as a news reporter, feature writer and columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Bulletin magazine. She sits on the Education and Welfare Committee and the Research Committee of the National Rugby League, advising them on gender issues. She is also a member of the Advertising Standards Board. She has been awarded five Australian Research Council grants and is a member of the ARC Cultural Research Network. Her latest book is The porn report (Melbourne University Publishing, 2008) co-authored with Alan McKee and Kath Albury. 

Negotiating the other: one more effort to exorcise the colonial evil spirit

Professor Ghassan Hage. 13 October 2009, City West Campus. This seminar offered a reflection on 'ungovernable spaces'. These are spaces that are produced by and yet cannot be governed from within specific forms of governmentality. Ungovernable spaces condense the limitations of a system of governmentality while being at the same time an open space of potentiality. Ungovernable spaces offer the possibility of a multiplicity of new forms of social relations. In particular, the seminar looked into the ungovernable spaces produced by the current western–Muslim encounter, arguing that they are the product of multicultural governmentality and as such embody its dead ends and limitations. Professor Hage is interested in the colonial origins of these dead ends and limitations. He showed how these limitations are embodied in the paradigm of 'recognition'. He showed how an anthropology of 'ungovernable' places offer us an alternative paradigm that is less haunted by the colonial imagination: this is the paradigm of 'negotiation'.

Professor Ghassan Hage is a Fellow of the Australian Humanities Association, and he is the University of Melbourne's Future Generation Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory. He joined the University of Melbourne in 2008 after fifteen years of teaching and researching at the University of Sydney. As a Future Generation Professor he works at fostering interdisciplinary research across the university. He has researched and published widely in the comparative anthropology of nationalism, multiculturalism, racism and migration. His work fuses approaches from political economy, phenomenology and psychoanalysis. He is a well-known expert in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. For many years and until Bourdieu's death he was an associate researcher in the latter's research centre at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. His current ARC-supported fieldwork is on the experience and circulation of political emotions concerning the Arab–Israeli conflict among Muslim immigrants in the western world. He is also working on 'The Politics of Negotiation' as a critical way of re-conceiving intercultural relations.

Elspeth Probyn's professorial lectureIn the interests of taste and place

Elspeth Probyn, Hawke Research Institute Professional Lecture Series, Part of UniSA's 2009 Gift of Knowledge Lecture Series, 24 September, City West Campus. In recent times what and where we eat and how and where it is produced have become hot topics. From the global obesity epidemic, to worries about the use of land to grow bio-fuel, food has never been so bewildering. As production and supply chains separate where food is produced from where it is consumed, the analysis of globalisation, gender, class, ethnicity, place and taste are becoming vital. Drawing on a case study, this lecture elaborated on a theoretical framework capable of comprehending all these aspects at the intersection of cultural studies, the sociology of economics and science studies.

Professor Probyn is Co-Director of the Centre for Post-colonial and Globalisation Studies in the Hawke Research Institute and is a newly appointed Research Chair at the University of South Australia. She brings with her a history in teaching media and cultural studies as well as sociology, literature and gender studies in the USA and Canada. She is the editor of Emotion, Society & Space and has published widely on questions of identity, belonging, emotions and place. Professor Probyn is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and has held several prestigious appointments, including the Mellon Distinguished Scholar.

You can watch a vodcast of the lecture or listen to a podcast from the UniSA 'Gift of Knowledge' site.

The 2009 Inaugural Edward Said Memorial Master Class
When two become one: the collision of identities in a (post-?) colonial context

Held jointly by the University of Adelaide's School of History and Politics and the Hawke Research Institute, 18 September. Led by Prof Saree Makdisi from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). This Inaugural ESM Master Class focused on the intriguing questions that arise in the transition from colonial to postcolonial experience. How can the conflicting historical narratives of the colonist and the colonised be reconciled? To what extent is a culture's identity compromised by tolerating or even accepting the culture of the other in a shared nation? Are some acts of oppression beyond forgiveness, and does it matter when two cultures must find a future in one nation? Professor Makdisi addressed these questions within the paradigm of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict and the hypothetical case of a post-conflict Arab/Jewish nation. The same questions, however, linger in South Africa, Australia and many other postcolonial nations.

Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California in Los Angeles, UCLA. He has published widely on his area of expertise, British romanticism, and is a regular contributor on contemporary Arab politics and culture. Widely published in his academic area, Makdisi has also written many commentaries on Palestine for publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, London Review of Books and the San Francisco Chronicle. In 2008 Makdisi published his book Palestine inside out: everyday occupation. The book combines the personal experiences of daily life under occupation with an analysis of how the occupation functions as a whole. He is the nephew of the late Edward Said and the grandson of Anis Makdisi, a distinguished professor of Arabic at the American University of Beirut.

Global feelings? Feeling global? The role of emotions in the 21st century

Hawke Conversation Series: scholarly thinking about how we act in a globalised world
A public forum presented by the Hawke Centre and the Hawke Research Institute

Professor Elspeth Probyn (UniSA) in conversation with Professor Sara Ahmed (Goldsmiths College London). 1 September, City West Campus. Remember the death of Diana, 9/11 and the Bali bombings? Emotions have perhaps never been so present in the public sphere. From the fear, terror and sadness following tragic events such as 9/11, the Bali bombings, and the ever-present threat of 'home-grown' terrorism to the anguish following the 'natural' disasters of the 'Asian' tsunami we have perhaps never felt so many public feelings. Of course another threshold moment was the grief-filled aftermath of Princess Diana's death – seemingly felt around the world. And many would argue that the ever-increasing role of reality TV and associated genres (chat shows, etc) has enabled or taught us all how to feel in public ways. In this first session of 'In Conversation', leading international scholars Sara Ahmed and Elspeth Probyn discussed the extent to which these assertions about globalised emotions hold true. Is the ability to feel emotions a universal ability? Or do certain emotions distinguish us culturally or by gender and ethnicity?

Doctoral Research Brown Bag Lunch

Reflections on Foucault and post-PhD wisdom

26 June, Magill Campus, Dr Ian Goodwin-Smith, Lecturer, School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy. Ian presented a version of a paper delivered the day prior at the Foucault conference. He discussed some of the merits and pitfalls of the concepts he advocated in the paper in terms of getting some traction as an ECR, and he also shed some light on why anyone would want to run a conference or do any of the things that might be seen as outside a researcher's job description. Anyone who has finished a PhD will have a pretty clear sense of what they would have done differently and how they could have made the whole ordeal easier. But there's also the business of how they could have harnessed the process more to make their futures easier as well. This presentation included pointers about keeping an eye on an academic future while you're in the academic present.

Dr Ian Goodwin-Smith is a lecturer in social theory and social policy at the University of South Australia. His research interests orbit around postcolonial theory and social policy; and he has a particular interest in new theoretical directions for progressive politics with a focus on culture, social identity, subjectivity and social democratic citizenship, as well as an interest in critiques of expertise and professionalism.

Doctoral research brown bag lunches showcase the diversity of research conducted by early career researchers in the Hawke Research Institute and give current HDR students the opportunity to learn from the wisdom of recent graduates around strategies for successful writing, maintaining motivation, the supervision process and more.

Foucault: 25 years on

The Centre for Post-Colonial Studies and Globalisation marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Michel Foucault with a conference to reflect on the influence of his work. 25 June, Magill Campus

Twenty five years after his death, reflecting on Foucault is an enormous task. His influence permeates disparate and innumerable fields and informs so much of our thinking, along with that of many great theorists who have followed him. Foucault's influence is one of ramifying and far reaching interdisciplinary complexity, but he draws us together too, providing a common theoretical baseline to diverse disciplinary endeavours. He shows us the connections between things. Just as his life and his work connects up theoretical pursuits as diverse as queer theory and postcolonial studies, so his influence draws together and draws bridges between theorists. In so doing, Foucault's legacy muddies the theoretical waters, forcing strange synergies and theoretical configurations. Growing from the murky ferment of French colonial history, the father of poststructuralism's story is as complex as that encounter, and his legacy is as mutating, unsettling and transformative.

Proceedings
Conference program (PDF 653 kb)

Food cultures, markets, belonging and citizenship in the cosmopolitan city

A two-day symposium presented by the Urban Futures Research Cluster of the Hawke Research Institute and the School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia, 18–19 June 2009, FLC Building, Arthur Lemon Avenue, Underdale SA.

Invited speakers included:

Cosmopolitan postcolonial cities increasingly are characterised by fear of difference. This fear can be sensed in retreats from public space and in erosions of social exchange. Paradoxically, such fear coincides with a fascination with, and consumption of, difference. At the forefront of this paradox are food practices. Food – its production and consumption – is, simultaneously, a common human condition and a complex marker of difference. Food is both ubiquitous and unique. This symposium traced ways in which people from ethnically diverse communities use food and its meanings to negotiate intercultural reciprocity and citizenship. Moments of exchange provide scope for analysing the potential of everyday practices to acknowledge and bridge difference, and to foster an ambivalent collective sense of belonging. The symposium also focused on food's public spaces – food markets, hawker centres, food halls, cafeterias, cafes and other informal 'eating places' in the city – as critical ones for the dynamics of encounter, exchange and identity making.

Doctoral Research Brown Bag Lunch

The architectural nervous system: racial fear, home security and the urban decline of postwar America...
and the PhD in future tense: forward planning for research futures

Dr Gilbert Caluya, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Post-colonial and Globalisation Studies, 29 May, Magill Campus. Home security has become a natural part of our daily lives, influencing not only the architecture of our homes but our psyches. This brief presentation traced the emergence of home security (as a discursive and material technology) through the architectural and design discourse of 'defensible space' and 'crime-prevention through environmental design'. It argued that these 'design solutions' emerged as a response to the discourse of urban decline in postwar America that tied race, crime and the city. The PhD experience is hectic for most of us – chasing paper trails that lead nowhere, watching data slip through our fingers, or collecting data that don't offer up their meanings, and of course writing, editing and re-writing. Throughout this hectic process it's easy to forget to think about what happens next. This workshop looked at forward planning as a way of managing your PhD as a preparation for future research careers.

Dr Gilbert Caluya is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Post-colonial and Globalisation Studies, Hawke Research Institute, UniSA. He has previously lectured in the Gender and Cultural Studies Department, University of Sydney where he recently completed his PhD 'Terror's Territories: Fear, Politics and Everyday Space'. He has published articles and book chapters in the fields of cultural geography, diaspora studies, cultural studies and queer studies. His current research interests include: affect, senses and the body; the cultural politics of intimacy; the politics and philosophy of everyday security; and Muslim diasporas.

Doctoral research brown bag lunches are a forum to showcase the work of early career researchers in the Hawke Research Institute and an opportunity for current HDR students to learn from the wisdom of recent graduates around strategies for successful writing, maintaining motivation, the supervision process and more.

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Doing multidisciplinary research: strategies and tactics

Presenters: A/Prof Suzanne Franzway, International Studies; /Prof Judy Gill, Education; A/Prof Julie Mills, Civil Engineering; Prof Rhonda Sharp, Economics. 20 May, Magill Campus. The development of successful long-term multidisciplinary research collaboration is not something that happens easily or quickly. Since 2001 we have collaborated in research projects related to women in engineering, in both the professional workplace and education contexts. What is unusual about this particular research group is the widely varying discipline backgrounds of the members. The group comprises professors in feminist economics, sociology, education and civil engineering. The collaboration has faced numerous challenges in terms of geography, methodology, availability, finding a common language and understanding, differing practice in the various disciplines with respect to writing for publication and what grants count. This presentation identified four inter-related themes that have emerged from our reflections on our experience of gender-based multidisciplinary research.

Researching with RAE and the REF: living in the British research family

Professor Graeme Harper, Bangor University, UK
Public lecture presented by the Division of Education, Arts and Social Sciences in conjunction with the School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, Poetry and Poetics Centre and the Hawke Research Institute. 6 May 2009, Magill Campus. 2008 saw the final British Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The next research assessment in British academia will be called the Research Excellence Framework (REF), and its shape is just beginning to be defined. What has been the experience of the RAE? What are some of the individual arts and humanities experiences, institutionally, personally and in terms of departments and subjects? As a case study, how has creative writing fared? What changes does the REF bring, and how might Australian creative industries academics benefit from the British experience as the new ERA assessment exercise is rolled out here?

Professor Graeme Harper is Professor of Creative Writing, Director of the National Institute for Excellence in the Creative Industries, and Director of Research in the College of Arts and Humanities, at Bangor University, UK. An appointed member of Britain's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), he's also the creative writing member on the UK National Steering Committee on Practice-Led Research and Chair of Higher Education at the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE), the British subject association for creative writing. Since 2007 he has been Director of the International Centre for Creative Writing Research (ICCWR), a worldwide symposium, and he is Director of Creative Lab, an interdisciplinary research centre focusing on creativity. A former member of the European Commission's Culture and Education 'Panel of Experts', he's been honoured with a second professorship at the University of Bedfordshire, UK for his work in creative writing, and elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society of Medicine. He was a 'trial RAE' assessor at three British universities in the lead up to RAE 2008.

How to be a good academic writer, or how to save trees and eschew terminological obfuscation

Kate Leeson and Paul Wallace, Editors, Hawke Research Institute, 5 March, Magill Campus. Kate and Paul spend their lives helping academics write well, and they are all too familiar with academics' common mistakes and writing problems. These problems include long, rambling sentences, overuse of jargon, failure to adapt one's writing for one's audience, and random placement of commas and other punctuation marks. In this seminar Kate and Paul helped writers know their audience and communicate with them clearly. They also gave a refresher course on grammar, covering those common errors.

Notes on 'How to be a good academic writer' (Word 71 kb)

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2008
 

Intersections seminar

Hope, the future and marginalised youth

Emeritus Prof Alison Mackinnon, Assoc Prof Peter Bishop and Dr Simon Robb. 28 November, Magill Campus. Throughout the western world there is anxiety about marginalised and disaffected youth. This anxiety provokes a range of approaches, from tighter laws and regulations through to now well-known social inclusion initiatives. Policies and approaches that seek to engage marginalised youth in education, training and the workforce need to inspire in them a sense of hopefulness about the future, but how do young people at risk actually understand terms like 'hope' and 'the future'? What makes at-risk young people hopeful? What do they understand 'hope' to mean? What do they see when they think about the future? This presentation stemmed from a three-year Australian Research Council Linkage project (2006–2008) 'Doing social sustainability: the utopian imagination of youth on the margins', which investigated how young people and their teachers understand hopefulness and the future. The researchers talked with students in class, encouraged them to draw, interviewed them and gave them a camera to take photographs of places, people and things that they associated with hopefulness and the future.

Alison Mackinnon, Emeritus Professor with HRISS, has made significant contributions to the fields of education, cultural and policy studies. She has published widely on the history of education, particularly of women and girls, and in current educational and social policy. The importance of this contribution has been recognised by awards such as the 1997 NSW Premier's Literary Award for literary and cultural criticism for Love and freedom (CUP, 1997). Prof Mackinnon is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Peter Bishop is Associate Professor in Communication and Cultural Studies, and has published extensively on contested meanings and representations of place, identity and memory in western cultures, particularly Australia and the UK. He brings a critical perspective to questions about hope and utopia. His book The myth of Shangri-la, which charts the creation and decline of one of the most significant modernist western utopias, has been widely acclaimed to be a seminal text. His latest book is Bridge (Reaction Books, 2008). Simon Robb is a Research Fellow at HRISS. With a background in English studies, his research interests focus on youth, crime and representation. Author of The hulk (2003), an experimental history and extended study of reformatory practices in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Adelaide, Simon has published in the area of social sustainability, education and the knowledge economy; with the Electronic Writing Research Ensemble, and has written and produced radio features for ABC Radio National.

Directions forum

Conversing with ARC assessors and readers

28 November, Magill Campus. Emeritus Professor Alison Mackinnon, Professor Barbara Comber, Associate Professor Helen Nixon and Associate Professor Gerry Bloustien talked about how ARC grant applications are assessed, what assessors look for in grants and how to work towards become an ARC reader.

Intersections seminar

On being (in)capable of pretence: voice, gesture, silence

René ten Bos, Professor of Philosophy and Organizational Theory, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. 19 November, Magill Campus. Non-philosophers and philosophers seem to agree that animals cannot pretend, simulate, perform or act – that an animal is not capable of drama or theatre. Dogs do not feign, Wittgenstein famously claimed, and many dog owners would most likely agree. This might eventually lead us to conclude that the animal is morally superior to the human beast. We, human beings, are routinely outperformed by our animal 'brothers' and 'sisters' as far as honesty, fairness and integrity are concerned. In this seminar I will trace the philosophical argument that underpins the belief that animals cannot act, lie and so forth. The journey will start with some comments that are outside of philosophy: what do poets, artists and biologists have to say about animal acting? Is it possible? What did Wittgenstein have in mind when he argued that animals cannot pretend or act? Is this merely a sentimental slip or is there some coherent argument behind it? The question has also been on the mind of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Derrida and Foucault. I will show that the idea that animals cannot pretend is intimately connected to the idea that they cannot speak, at least not in the way we human beings do. This will raise some questions about the 'language' of human and beast. Is the fact that humans can hide behind language and are therefore open to the possibility of pretending evidence that animal communication is superior to human language? The question of what living creatures – human and beast – can do with voice has haunted philosophy since the Greeks. I will claim, however, that the philosophical predilection for voice and language has grossly ignored the fact that most living creatures – human and beast – pass away their lives in silence. So the question should not only be what they can do with voice but also what they can do without it. I will suggest that the gesture forms a bridge between silence and voice. Somewhere on this bridge lies the origin not only of ethics but also of aesthetics.

René ten Bos is Professor of Philosophy and Organizational Theory at Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He has published widely in both Dutch and English on political and moral philosophy; business ethics; epistemological morality/ies; organisational defacement; managerial melancholia; the work of Agamben, Derrida, Foucault and Sloterdijk; social in/exclusion; space, water and nature in journals such as Social Epistemology, Society & Space, Organization, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie and Theory, Culture & Society. He is the author of a number of books, including Fashion and utopia in management thinking (Benjamins, 2000), For business ethics (Routledge, 2006, together with Campbell Jones and Martin Parker), Philosophy and organization (Routledge, 2007, together with Campbell Jones), and Het Geniale Dier (Boom, 2008). His most recent work contemplates the philosophical dimensions of human–non-human animal relations.

Philosophers Cafe 2008

Home-grown creations

Shelley Dunstone. 11 November, Caledonian Hotel, North Adelaide. Shelley Dunstone is an innovative thinker, author and a former lawyer who specialised in commercial litigation. Add to this list a wealth of experience in training, marketing, career advising, recruiting and business consulting and you have an impressive portfolio. In this session Shelley described some marvellous South Australian innovations, and led a discussion about the nature of human ingenuity. The Philosophers Cafe is presented by the North Adelaide Community Centre and HRISS. It is a relaxed event that takes philosophy out of the academic setting and encourages free exchange of ideas between diverse participants.

Doctoral Research Brown Bag Lunch

The PhD as professional development: the long and the short-term of the PhD

Dr Kirrilly Thompson, Research Fellow, Human Factors Group, Centre for Sleep Research, UniSA. 31 October, Magill Campus. Writing a doctoral dissertation is the central aspect of gaining a PhD by thesis. It is a difficult skill that usually takes at least three years to develop. It is also a one-off experience. You are unlikely to ever write another and neither is it likely to be a skill requested in a job and person specification. Moreover, it has a smaller audience outside of your immediate family than within. Nevertheless, there are many ways of maximising, streamlining and strategising the PhD experience so that you graduate with broader skills than the ability to write a dissertation. This is essential for being competitive in the academic marketplace and gaining employment. In this session, I discussed ways of seeing the PhD as professional development beyond fulfilling the requirements of a degree and strategies to put this view into action. I drew from my own experience as a PhD candidate in anthropology where the application of my research into bullfighting from horseback in southern Spain is not immediately obvious. The driving argument of my presentation came from my personal realisation that seeing the PhD as professional development is crucial to progressing and finishing the thesis, whilst providing benefits for the future stages of an academic career.

Kirrilly conducted 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in southern Spain from 2000 to 2001 researching bullfighting from horseback. She graduated in 2007 from the University of Adelaide with a thesis titled 'Performing human–animal relations in Spain: an anthropological study of bullfighting from horseback in Andalusia', in which she argues that the bullfight from horseback is a performance of the fluidity of the human–animal boundary.

Intersections seminar

Tamil Tigers: sacrificial symbolism and dead body politics

Assoc Prof Michael Roberts, Department of Anthropology, University of Adelaide. 30 October, Magill Campus. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) affirms that it will set up a 'secular state'. This has been widely accepted in the international academic circuit. This assent is facile and reflects the arid, rational world in which so many scholars dwell. Their own universe of being is blind to the depths of religiosity and superstition that permeate Asian life-worlds. In Asia there is considerable cross-pollination in religious practice that enables Saivites, Buddhists and Christians to draw upon their various deities for support. 'Secularity' cannot be evaluated without reference to the conditions of experience within any society. This entails attentiveness to the 'embodied practices' of ordinary folk, especially those practices resorted to during moments of uncertainty. I addressed this issue here by a focus on such LTTE activities as the Pongu Thamil (Tamil resurgence) pageants and the state rituals for their dead (the maaveerar, or 'great heroes'). My focus was upon iconographic evidence interpreted in the light of a secondary reading of contemporary work by anthropologists in India and Sri Lanka. As such, my study is rooted in empirical material and is not post-empiricist.

Michael Roberts is a Sri Lankan Australian and a Rhodes Scholar who has taught at the Dept of History at Peradeniya University and Dept of Anthropology, University of Adelaide. He is now an Adjunct Associate Professor at the latter institution. His special interests are in cultural anthropology and historical sociology. His research work tends to straddle the field of politics, history and culture, mainly with reference to Sri Lanka. His expertise encompasses social mobility, social history, agrarian and tenurial issues, peasant protest, popular culture, urban history, caste in South Asia, practices of cultural domination, and issues in ethnicity and nationalism. He has ventured occasionally to write on Indian socio-political history, Australian myth making and the sociology of cricket. His latest works are Sinhala consciousness in the Kandyan period, 1590s–1818 (2004) and the anthology called Essaying cricket: Sri Lanka and beyond (2006), both distributed by Vijitha Yapa Publications, Colombo.

Intersections seminar

Analysing education policies in a globalised world: theoretical and methodological considerations

Prof Bob Lingard, School of Education, University of Queensland. 27 October, Magill Campus. This paper considered the significance and implications of globalisation for approaches to education policy analysis, theoretically and methodologically. Its purpose was to argue a case for how education policy analysis should be conducted today in the context of globalisation. A common definition of policy is one derived from Easton: policy as the 'authoritative allocation of values'. Such a definition and each of its component parts have been challenged by globalisation, with implications for policy analysis. The paper considers the significance of researcher 'positionality', defined in a number of ways, including intellectual and spatial locations, to doing education policy analysis in the context of globalisation and post-national pressures. Such reflexivity about researcher positionality rejects a stance of epistemological innocence and recognises the need to reject any easy assumption of a society–nation or social–nation homology. Such reflexivity also means a rejection of any approach which reifies globalisation. I argued and illustrated through specific education policy examples that globalisation has implications for our research approach to education policy and that the policy cycle in education (contexts of influence, text production and practice) needs to be globalised.

Bob Lingard is a Professorial Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Queensland. Until recently he was the Andrew Bell Professor of Education at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include globalisation and education policy, sociology of education, school reform and critical pedagogies and gender and schooling. His most recent book (2007), co-edited with Jenny Ozga, is The RoutledgeFalmer reader in education policy and politics. He has two books in press: Transforming learning in schools and communities (Continuum), co-edited with Jon Nixon and Stewart Ranson, and Educating boys: beyond structural reform (Palgrave), co-authored with Wayne Martino and Martin Mills. He is currently completing a book with Fazal Rizvi for Routledge, entitled Globalizing education policy.

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Professorial Lecture

The lie of history and the poetics of human habitats

Prof Alan Mayne, Research SA Chair and Professor of Social History and Public Policy, HRISS. 24 October, City West Campus. There are ambiguities in this lecture's title, and deliberately so, because innovative and effective historical interpretation begins with ambiguities. And, building upon those ambiguities, it is sustained by its 'situated' character: by its focus on specific temporal, spatial and imaginary worlds. Thus it uncovers fresh clues – surviving within the idioms of folk memory, for example, or the vernacular inscriptions of people in a landscape – about a widening range of places in the past and the lives that were played out within them. It exposes the pretence of many historians to understand the past unambiguously as it 'really was'. However, good history's deep poetics are situated not only in the knowledge of the past that can be gleaned using these temporal, spatial and imaginary planes; its interpretations must also attempt to influence progressive policy making in the present. In most human habitats in the early twenty-first century life choices are circumscribed by extreme and entrenched social disadvantage. Some 40 percent of the world's population now live below the World Bank's poverty measuring stick of $US2 a day. This must surely shape the poetics of history in 2008.

Alan Mayne is particularly interested in the historical echoes (for example The imagined slum, University of Leicester Press, 1993) and archaeological tracings (for example The archaeology of urban landscapes, Cambridge University Press, 2001) of urban disadvantage, and in the cultural attachments (for example Hill End: an historic Australian goldfields landscape, Melbourne University Press, 2003) of people to place.

Intersections seminar

'In-between' Asia and Australia: on the politics of teaching English as the 'Other'

Assoc Professor Aaron Koh, Department of English, Hong Kong Institute of Education. 16 October, Magill Campus. This presentation mobilised story-telling, also known broadly in educational research as 'narrative inquiry', to narrate my lived experience of teaching English as a minority academic in two Australian universities. Positioning myself as living 'in between' two cultures and as an 'Other', I told my story of how I have been 'racialised' and 'Othered' because I do not look White, and my spoken English is distinctly accented; hence, my legitimacy to teach English is held suspect. While some themes that arise from this piece of story-telling may resemble other scholarly work that has appeared in the field of TESOL and ethnicity and education, I bring to this emerging field a new theoretical methodology that combines post-colonial concepts and story-telling, what I call 'post-colonial autobiography'. My story has a happy ending: running away from Australia to Hong Kong to teach English has reaffirmed my cultural capital as I morph into a different 'Other'.

Aaron Koh is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. He has also previously taught in Australia and Singapore. His research interests are globalisation and education, cultural politics of education and cultural studies in education.

Intersections seminar

Up the Zambezi without a paddle: an emerging understanding of new approaches to humanitarian aid

Katrin Macmillan, 20 October, Magill Campus. Katrin Macmillan's work in international human rights advocacy has led her to investigate the principles of global civic participation and of rigorous and effective humanitarian action. Too often the approach centres on 'parachuting in' aid and development projects in a quasi-colonial manner, without real exchange, learning or engagement with the community that the aid purports to serve. Resources and energy are likely to be diverted into serving the interests of donor and recipient elites. Emerging approaches to ethical and effective human rights practice centre on community building, self-governance and economic self-sufficiency. The challenge is to link such on-the-ground initiatives to the channels of financial and intellectual capital, technology, policy and advocacy in developed countries and international agencies in a way that builds long-term sustainable local outcomes.

Katrin Macmillan is a producer whose work is increasingly focused on using the arts and media to achieve social justice. She has produced political plays in London, New York and Australia. In New York she has produced a city-wide political arts festival and has coordinated events for the UN, NYU Center for Global Affairs and New York Public Library. A Founding Director of Dispatches, a proposed war and foreign correspondence news agency, Katrin will head its NGO adjunct Staying on the Story (SOS). She is also a Founding Director of the New York Theater Project. Most recently she was the Director of Development and Producer of 'Speak Truth to Power', a program of the Robert F Kennedy Memorial, where she worked to galvanise public support for international human rights through cultural, educational, web-based programs, theatre and events. Currently Katrin is working with Dr Geoff Wells as Academic Visitor to the International Graduate School of Business at UniSA.

Philosophers Cafe 2008

Sustaining biodiversity

Assoc Prof David Paton. 7 October, Caledonian Hotel, North Adelaide. David Paton is an ecologist at the University of Adelaide in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. He is an objective and outspoken scientist with a passion for the conservation of natural systems. The Philosophers Cafe is presented by the North Adelaide Community Centre and HRISS. It is a relaxed event that takes philosophy out of the academic setting and encourages free exchange of ideas between diverse participants.

Intersections seminar

First-term Labor and the question of identity

Mark Butler MP. 9 October, Magill Campus. Since the Hawke-Keating economic reforms, the central point of difference in the national ideas debate has not been a clash of economic ideas or of Left and Right in a traditional sense. The point of difference – the clash – has reorientated itself along an alternative axis defined by the social more than the economic, and by conservative versus progressive imaginings of appropriate national identity. Those issues of identity occupied as much of a role under Howard as they did under Keating, playing out as the ubiquitous three R's of Australian politics for a decade or more: reconciliation, the republic and refugees. But the injustices of Howard's vision were ultimately unsustainable, and in 2007 a Rudd Labor government was elected. Rudd articulated a progressive social agenda and a new national vision. It was, and remains, a vision in which social justice is taken seriously. But what, under Rudd, are the politics of identity? We have seen a bold start in Indigenous issues, detention, the republic and a reengagement with our neighbours and our future. But are these a hodgepodge of ad hoc policies, or is there a vision being played out here? How will the Rudd government articulate and coherently engage with the question of national identity as it progresses through its first term?

Mark Butler MP was elected to the federal parliament in 2007, representing the Electorate of Port Adelaide. Before entering parliament Mark worked in the South Australian Branch of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union (LHMU), in which he led campaigns in industries including hospitals, cleaning, child care, aged care, the wine industry and hotels. Mark served as the youngest ever President of the ALP in South Australia in 1997–98 and has been a member of the ALP National Executive and Executive Committee since 2000. Mark has recently served as a Director of the South Australian Tourism Commission, as a Member of the Premier's Wine Industry Council, a Member of the Premier's Social Inclusion Board, Chair of the Gaming Care Advisory Committee, and UniSA's Centre for Work + Life Advisory Committee.

Doctoral Research Brown Bag Lunches

Generations: what do we know?

Peter D Nixon, PhD candidate, School of Communication, UniSA. 26 September, Magill Campus. This presentation considered international and UniSA statements about the links between sustainability and intergenerational relationships, and the contributions of history and social science to our understanding of generations. Recent developments that have the potential to advance our understanding will be reviewed. The presentation refered to some recent ideas in social theory concerning social formations, social mechanisms and creativity. The presentation concluded with discussion about Domiciliary Care SA, which is an organisation rich in intergenerational relationships and well-placed to contribute to research in this area. Peter Nixon has been employed by Domiciliary Care SA since 1985, and has undertaken diverse roles in social work, case management, supervision, research, and teaching and agency management. Peter is also an Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Social Administration and Social Work at Flinders University.

Reclaiming the centre: art, technology and community in outback South Australia and the Northern Territory

A symposium presented by the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies, the Hawke Centre and Santos. 19 September, City West Campus. Flyer and program (PDF 569 kb)

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Conversing about methodologies of space and place

11 September 2008, Magill Campus. Three presenters, Prof Alan Mayne, Research SA Chair and Professor of Social History and Public Policy in the Hawke Research Institute; Dr Christine Garnaut, Senior Research Fellow, Director of the Architecture Museum and Portfolio Leader: Research in the Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design (LLS School); and Dr Lia Bryant, Deputy Director, Hawke Research Institute and Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Work and Social Policy discussed a research methodology that they have used to uncover and build understandings of space and place.

This discussion ranged across the interface between the Social Sciences and the Humanities in order to problematise some of the assumptions about how historical landscapes can be understood. I considered history, historical archaeology, material culture analysis, and cultural landscape studies. I drew especially upon some of my work on household analysis, the relic landscapes of gold mining, and the Waralungku art movement in the Northern Territory.

Buildings, suburbs, towns and cities contribute to our built environment and are central to our everyday lives. This presentation introduced methods for built environment research from the perspectives of planning and architectural history. It drew on my work on the planning and design history of urban and rural planned places and on items in the collection of the Architecture Museum in the Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design at the University of South Australia.

In this presentation drawing on the work of Bryant and Livholts (2007) I outlined approaches to memory work used in social research and the ways in which we have used these methods. I retold memories about the gendering of space that have been powerful in the context of travel particularly in taxis and to unfamiliar spaces. In addition, I also told memories about the trangression and disruption of space by use of telephone. In this presentation I explored the potential of memory work to contribute to reflexive research practice and to inform understandings of spatiality and gender, and in particular to explore how gendered spaces come into being.

Philosophers Cafe 2008

Planet of slums? Getting real with the war on poverty

Prof Alan Mayne, 9 September, Caledonian Hotel, North Adelaide. Former HRISS director Alan Mayne is a historian who has studied 19th and early 20th century urban poverty in Britain, North America and Australia. Alan is now collaborating with researchers in India to apply historical lessons to present-day poverty-alleviation programs. The Philosophers Cafe is presented by the North Adelaide Community Centre and HRISS. It is a relaxed event that takes philosophy out of the academic setting and encourages free exchange of ideas between diverse participants.

Intersections seminar

Migration and hospitality in a globalised world

Prof Susan Petrilli, University of Bari, Italy, 8 September, Magill Campus. The widespread phenomenon of migration characterises globalisation today. This discussion focused on the following areas: global communication and migration; homologues between Europe and Australia; migration and the 'whiteness' question; migration between White Australia Policy and multiculturalism; multiculturalism and alterity; migration as a weak point in the logic of identity. Susan Petrilli is Professor of Semiotics in the Department of Linguistic Practices and Text Analysis, University of Bari, Italy. She teaches Semiotics, Semiotics of Text and Media Semiotics. Her principal research areas include sign theory, subject theory, theory of meaning and language, communication theory, problems of ideology, translation theory, and literary theory.

Intersections seminar

Testimony and the ethics of witnessing: after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa

Adjunct Professor Kay Schaffer, 28 August, Magill Campus. Nearly a decade has past since the opening of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in March 1996. The TRC provided a model of restorative justice and reconciliation to the world through its processes of telling, listening and healing through forgiveness. The two-fold mission of the TRC involved not only uncovering the 'truth' of the past but also the ethical reception of testimony by listeners. After the TRC, the government initiated a number of memorialisation projects designed to re-write the nation's history and pay tribute to the heroes of the struggle, such as the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, as well as many local community memorials and public monuments. These public memory sites, mainly political in motivation, address the TRC's first goal of uncovering the 'truth' of the past and creating a new memory archive for the nation. The second goal of ethical witnessing, especially by white listeners, requires an ethic of care and recognition of difference within the nation, beyond the realm of politics. Addressing the latter form of memorialisation and witness, this presentation examined the work of Antjie Krog, Kopano Ratele and Nosisi Mpolweni-Zantsi from the University of the Western Cape, who returned to the unfinished business of the TRC in regard to the seemingly incoherent testimony of Mrs Notrose Nobomvo Konile; their project bearing witnesses to what Derrida might call an act of hospitality. Kay Schaffer is an Adjunct Professor in the Hawke Research Institute at UniSA, and in Gender Studies at the University of Adelaide. Her areas of interest include human rights and civil liberties, as well as Indigenous and gender issues.

Professorial Lecture

Literacy practices in a participatory culture

Prof Victoria Carrington, UniSA Research Chair and Professor in the HRISS Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures, 22 August, City West Campus

This lecture examined the link between literacy, identity and culture. Using a range of texts produced and used both online and offline, it examined the implications of the shift towards a 'participatory culture'. The 'hidden curriculum' of this emerging cultural frame values particular skills sets, knowledges and practices around a range of media. This lecture suggested that the out-of-school literacy practices – those practices that involve the use of technologies to produce texts of various textures within a social context – of many young people reflect the contours and requirements of this participatory culture rather than those rewarded by school-based curricula. Interestingly, many of these new practices and skills are somewhat different from those inculcated via traditional print-based literacy socialisation. Thus, a move in the direction of new forms of participation has implications for the ways in which young people construct identity around their use of media, text and literacy, but, importantly, it also has implications for the ways in which we, as educators, conceptualise the literacy curriculum and the pedagogies we deploy.

Victoria Carrington's research interests include new literacies and literate practice, digital technologies, and youth and participatory cultures. Until joining HRISS in 2007, she was Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) in the Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth (UK) and a Unit of Assessment Coordinator for the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. She has also worked with universities in Queensland and Tasmania. Victoria writes extensively in the fields of sociology of literacy and education and has a particular interest in the impact of new digital media on literacy practices both in and out of school. Recent publications include 'Txting: The end of civilization (again)', Cambridge Journal of Education, 35(2), 2005; 'The uncanny, digital texts and literacy', Language and Education, 2006; and the monograph Rethinking middle years: early adolescents, schooling and digital cultures (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2006). 

Philosophers Cafe 2008

Education in the modern society

Brian Cunningham, 12 August, Caledonian Hotel, North Adelaide. 'We have a skills shortage not a people shortage. Our real challenge is to turn the substantial untapped and underused pool of people available right now into the high-skilled workforce we need.' Brian Cunningham is the former CEO of Port Power Football Club and is now the CEO of DFEEST. The Philosophers Cafe is presented by the North Adelaide Community Centre and HRISS. It is a relaxed event that takes philosophy out of the academic setting and encourages free exchange of ideas between diverse participants.

Intersections seminar

Resourcing early learning in an emerging market economy: observations from Beijing

Dr Sue Nichols, 31 July, Magill Campus. The changing Chinese socioeconomic landscape is producing new developments in ideas and practices relating to child rearing and parenting. Sue Nichols has been conducting international collaborative research investigating the circulation of knowledge about young children's learning and development, and recently visited Beijing as a guest of the Chinese Academy of Social Science to explore the early childhood scene. In this lecture, she offered observations on the impact of middle-class models of child rearing; the One Child Policy; the privatising of provision; the globalisation of the early learning market; and the internet, on the resourcing of early learning in Beijing. Sue Nichols is a researcher with the Centre for Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures in the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies. Dr Nichols is currently Chief Investigator on an ARC Discovery project titled 'Parents' Networks: the Circulation of Knowledge about Children's Literacy Learning'.

Audio streaming of Sue Nichols' presentation (requires Windows Media Player)

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Intersections seminar

Socialism and ecological crises: a view from China

Dr Jie Xu. 29 July, Magill Campus. I develop Marx's theory to explore how capitalism has caused ecological crises in the world. In contrast to political economy and neo-classical economics I argue that there is a relationship between China's ecological crisis and socialism, and attempt to come to an understanding of how capital logic influenced a socialist revolution. Although China is a socialist country, it is deeply influenced by the lure of economic growth, a concept derived from capitalism. Under a planned economy, the central government took a one-sided approach to understanding socialism and believed that it was synonymous with economic growth. In this paper I stress that the central government should be held responsible for ecological crises that occurred before the 1970s. However, because of the low level of industrialisation and consumption the ecological crisis was not very serious at that time. The most serious ecological crises which occurred after the market economy reform are explained by the way capital logic controlled social production, distribution, consumption and government policy. Government, enterprises and citizens are all responsible for the crisis afflicting the environment. The ecological crises in China highlight the paradox of contemporary socialist revolution. Xu Jie (Cindy) is Associate Professor in Economics at the Northeast Forestry University (NEFU) in China where her key area of research is political economy. Jie is currently a visiting scholar with the Hawke Research Institute's Research Centre for Gender Studies, researching political and economic influences on gender and the environment.

Improving literacy on a system-wide basis

Prof Ben Levin, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Presented by HRISS and the Department of Education and Children's Services. 9 July, Magill Campus. This session looked at the requirements to improve literacy outcomes across a large number of schools. Effective change requires not only clear goals and a clear sense of priorities; it also requires a carefully developed infrastructure of support, capacity building at all levels, strong leadership teams and carefully targeted resources. Using the examples of England (1997–2003) and Ontario (2004–2008), Ben examined what is required to create real, sustainable improvement in student outcomes across an entire education system.

Prof Levin is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Education Leadership and Policy. He has just completed two and a half years as Deputy Minister of Education for the Province of Ontario. He is a native of the City of Winnipeg who holds a BA (Honours) from the University of Manitoba, an EdM from Harvard University and a PhD from OISE. Ben's career in education extends over many years, starting with his efforts while in high school to organise a city-wide high school students' union and his election as a school trustee in Seven Oaks School Division at the age of 19. Since then, he has worked with private research organisations, school divisions, provincial governments, and national and international agencies, as well as building an academic and research career, all in connection with education. He has held leadership positions in a wide variety of organisations in the public and non-profit sectors.

Hope: the utopian imagination of young people on the margins

Migration Museum, 29 February – 30 June 2008. Curators: Simon Robb and Catherine Manning. This exhibition documented responses by 'young people at risk' to ideas about hopefulness and the future. It was part of the Adelaide Festival of Arts 2008 and an outcome of the HRISS Linkage project 'Doing social sustainability: the utopian imagination of youth on the margins'.

Doing social sustainability

Simon Robb. Doctoral Research Brown Bag Lunch, 27 June, Magill Campus. Simon talked about his experience of life after the PhD, as a researcher in general and, in particular, regarding life on the ARC project 'Doing social sustainability'. Dr Simon Robb is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at HRISS, and a key researcher on the ARC Linkage Project 'Doing social sustainability: the utopian imagination of youth on the margins' (2006–2008). Simon completed his PhD in the Department of English at the University of Adelaide, and has worked as a researcher at UniSA since 2002. A writer and academic, he has published in the areas of social sustainability, the knowledge economy and fictocriticism. Doctoral Research Brown Bag Lunches are aimed at postgraduate students, researchers and supervisors. They are a forum to showcase the diversity of research conducted by early career researchers in HRISS and a space for informal discussion about the process of higher degree research.

The History and Future of Social Innovation Conference

Adelaide, 19–21 June 2008. Conference website. Call for papers (PDF 24 kb). This conference was supported by the Government of South Australia, including Adelaide Thinkers in Residence, the Department of Education Employment Science and Technology, the Department of Education and Children's Services and the History Trust of South Australia, together with the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies, the University of South Australia, Adelaide University, and Flinders University. The conference was a product of Dr Geoff Mulgan's time as an Adelaide Thinker in Residence. The aims were to examine key issues and trends in social innovation and the factors that may influence or inhibit innovation. The breadth of the conversation will be wide-ranging, from abstract discussions about innovation, to practical considerations; from building effective cross-sectoral coalitions for innovation, to creating strategies for supporting best socially innovative practice.

2008 Publication Workshop Series

Presented by Emeritus Professor Barbara Kamler, School of Education, Deakin University

Doctoral Publication Workshops, 22 February, 28 March and 6 June
This series of three workshops recognised the increasing pressure doctoral students face in having both a publication record and a thesis by the time they graduate. The goal was to help participants develop a draft article that could be submitted to an international peer-reviewed journal. The workshops included input on publication strategies and a guided process of peer review to help writers focus and develop their articles-in-progress.

Early Career Academic Publication Workshops, 2 February, 28 March and 6 June
This series of three workshops was designed to help early-career academics produce quality writing for high-profile international refereed journals. Participants developed a strategic publication plan, which mapped out three articles for the year, and then worked on one article so that it was ready to submit to a target journal. The workshops used a guided process of peer review that simultaneously provides detailed feedback on drafts in progress and builds a lively research culture among those who participate.

Intersections

Indian divide on economic growth: globalization perspective

Dr Rakhee Bhattacharya, 15 May, Magill Campus. India in the post-globalised era has been a 'shining' example of a fast-growing globalised economy; an economic power-horse and a gigantic experiment in democracy and secularism that holds out a beacon to the entire world. Increasing expertise in information technology along with an expanding knowledge economy have boosted worldwide connectivity, leading to increasing openness and collaboration in trade, commerce and economic activities between different nations. While this has enhanced growth and development, it has also engendered threats of polarisation and disparity. For India to succeed in carrying out the socioeconomic agenda of development, she has to look inward, beyond her expanding club of billionaires, to the 'other India' that has the highest number of malnourished children in the world, where 350 million people live on less than $1 a day and where a quarter of a billion people still can't read or write properly. Side by side with fighting the war on terror, she has to fight – and win – the more important wars on education, poverty, inequality, ill-health and sustainability of environment. A large section of the population is still marginalised due to caste, class, gender and other discriminations. Keeping India in mind, I looked at the issue of disparities in Australia as a comparative analysis; whether such development disparity also poses any challenge to a developed nation like Australia and, if so, in what form and to what degree? Finally, I looked for an alternative theoretical perspective, where the role of governance needs a revisit to face such challenges of development disparity. 

HRISS working paper no. 37, Two Indias: the results of India's experiment with globalisation, is based on this presentation.

Rakhee Bhattacharya, an economist by profession, is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the School of International Studies, UniSA, under a 2008 Endeavour Research Fellowship through the Australian government. She is employed in the Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata. Her research interests, experience and publications encompass development, disparity, poverty, regional economies and the economy of insurgency. Her present research areas at Kolkata include the economic dynamics of India's northeast, and India's regional economic cooperation with Southeast Asia.

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The research imagination in a world on the move: what is it, who has it and how might you get it?

HRISS and DivEASS 2008 Higher Degree Research Seminar for doctoral students, honours students and supervisors
Presenter: Prof Jane Kenway, Faculty of Education, Monash University. 7 May, Magill Campus. What does the notion of the imagination mean in the everyday world of university research? Is all research an act of the imagination? What might it mean to globalise the research imagination? In this talk, I will illustrate the ways in which the imagination is mobilised in globalising research practice by sharing with you the thought of highly imaginative scholars from philosophy, sociology, anthropology, geography, literature, education and politics. These are Arjun Appadurai, Homi Bhabha, Raewyn Connell, Doreen Massey, Aihwa Ong, Fazal Rizvi and Saskia Sassen. Their thoughts are derived from the interviews we conducted with them for our book Globalising the research imagination (Routledge). These scholars' thinking on globalisation is influential and inspirational. They provide compelling and creative insights into what it might mean to globalise the research imagination. In particular, I will highlight their views on what the research imagination is and what its globalisation means for research students and their supervisors.

Jane Kenway is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. With a long history in the Australian education system, she has taught at both primary and secondary, country and city schools; but for most of her career she has been a teacher and researcher in universities. Professor Kenway has a strong interest in educational reform, curriculum and issues of justice. More broadly her research expertise is in the politics of educational change in the context of wider social, cultural and political change. Publications include the jointly edited books Globalising the research imagination (Routledge, in press), Masculinity beyond the metropolis (Palgrave, 2006); Haunting the knowledge economy (Routledge, 2006), Consuming children: education–advertising–entertainment (Open University Press, 2001), Innovation and tradition: the arts and humanities in the knowledge economy (2004) and Globalising education: policies, pedagogies and politics (2005) (both Peter Lang, New York).

Professorial Lecture

The political economy of superannuation in Australia

Prof Rhonda Sharp, Professor of Economics, HRISS. 11 April, City West Campus. Since the early 1990s, superannuation has been promoted by successive governments as the pathway to better retirement incomes for all Australians. But is this the case? Making superannuation the main form of retirement income savings has had a number of consequences. One has been the development of a large and powerful private funds industry with assets over 1 trillion dollars. Another has been to impose an annual cost to the federal government budget in the form of revenue forgone in taxation concessions. Furthermore, shifting retirement funding to superannuation savings has had a different impact on different people. Women, because of their relatively lower lifetime earnings, tend to accumulate less superannuation while a small percentage of high income and asset holding men are favoured to avail themselves of the generous superannuation tax concessions. This lecture traced the rise of superannuation as a central component of Australia's retirement incomes policy and examined its gender- and class-based assumptions and impacts. It questioned whether the policy changes announced in the 2006 federal budget will lead to better retirement incomes for all Australians.

Throughout her career Prof Sharp has applied her knowledge to relevant social and economic problems. She has contributed to SA policy debates as a member of several government boards and committees, including the SA government's Task Force on Public Sector Superannuation (1987–90). She is known internationally for her work on incorporating a gender perspective into policy and government budgets and has been an advisor to international agencies including the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Commonwealth Secretariat, AusAid, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community and the Asian Development Bank. She has advised governments in South Africa, Indonesia, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Korea, Sri Lanka and Barbados. In 2007 Professor Sharp was an invited member of the United Nations Expert Group on Financing Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment. Her publications include Budgeting for equity (UNIFEM, 2003); and with Ray Broomhill, Shortchanged: women and economic policies (Allen and Unwin, 1988).

Intersections

Virtual performance, problems, pitfalls and potential: using Secondlife as a site-specific performance space

Joff Chafer, senior lecturer and Research Fellow, Performing Arts Department, Coventry University, UK, 3 April, Magill Campus. This seminar looked at how Secondlife is, and might be, used as a space for performance, what problems there are in using this virtual space, pitfalls that may be encountered along the way and future potential. Joff was working on several performance projects, including looking at creating performance in recreated real life theatre spaces such as Greek and Roman amphitheatres, renaissance stages etc. Joff Chafer trained as an actor at Middlesex University and on completion joined the Trestle Theatre Company, which specialises in mask work. He stayed with the company for 18 years in various capacities and ended up as joint artistic director. Joff still freelances for various companies including Shakespeare's Globe and Theatre sans Frontieres, making masks and puppets and directing movement. He also has his own company, Bootworks, specialising in short performances for audiences of one. He has been lecturing at various UK universities since 2000. Since 2006 Joff has been involved with the development of Coventry University's presence in Secondlife, and is currently working on various projects investigating the possibilities of performance in this virtual world.

Intersections

Crossing borders: feminism, intersectionality and globalisation

Nancy Naples, Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies, University of Connecticut, 27 March, Magill Campus. This talk considered how borders shape our vision of social justice in an increasingly global context. How have activists and activist scholars challenged the borders that are maintained to create divisions among us? How do activist scholars negotiate the boundaries of academic feminism and feminist activism and between local and transnational politics to generate more inclusive theoretical perspectives, coalition building and social justice movements? This talk also focused on the limitations of cross-border activism and whether, and in what ways, intersectional social justice movements and interdisciplinary scholarship can overcome these limitations. How do boundary-maintaining strategies within and external to academia and transnational politics affect our world view and our ability to develop creative approaches to analyse and contest inequality, oppression and violence?

The text of this seminar is available as HRISS working paper no. 36.

Nancy Naples is Professor of Sociology and the Women's Studies Advisor at the University of Connecticut, US, where she teaches sociology of gender; qualitative methodology; gender, politics and the state; and feminist theory. Currently researching sexual citizenship in comparative perspective, her key areas of interest include the relationship between the state, market, other social institutions and citizenship to determine how social actors are affected by and resist extra-local economic and political structures and policies. Currently Professor Naples is working on a book that investigates the link between global economic change, social policy and community-based social restructuring in rural US; other publications include Feminism and method (2003), Women's activism and globalization (2002), Grassroots warriors (1998), Community activism and feminist politics (1998), and 'Deconstructing and locating survivor discourse: dynamics of narrative, empowerment and resistance for survivors of childhood sexual abuse' (2003, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(4): 1151–85).

Intersections

From the dung heap to self-reliance: women's economic empowerment through the self-help movement in India

Prof Veena Poonacha, 6 March, Magill Campus. Organising women into self-help groups (SHGs) is seen as an answer to some of the socioeconomic problems assailing poor households. This case study of the attempts of a group of women to gain economic self-reliance through the SHG-bank linkages in a village close to the city of Mumbai in India raises questions about the causes of poverty, options available to women and the necessary interventions. The discussion focused on the Gandhian model of development as a suitable alternative. Veena Poonacha is a Professor in and Director of the Research Centre for Women's Studies, SNDT Women's University, Mumbai, India. Prof Poonacha was a visiting scholar to HRISS as a 2007/08 Senior Fellow under the Australia-India Council Visiting Fellowship scheme. Her current research is on domestic violence and Indian diaspora communities in Australia; but Veena is perhaps best known for her highly regarded work on women in rural communities in India.

The text of this paper is available as HRISS working paper no. 38.

Directions

Internationalise your research or perish...???

Rhonda Sharp with HRISS researchers Victoria Carrington, Rob Hattam and Margaret Peters, 28 February, Magill Campus. Internationalising research is a goal of the research policy of this university. But what does this mean in practice? What are the implications for national and local research programs? This seminar examined the diverse ways in which HRISS researchers 'internationalise' their work at different stages of their careers and the role internationalisation should play in their research trajectory and the strategic directions of the institute. Drawing on the working party report, Internationalising the research of the Hawke Research Institute by Margaret Peters and Rhonda Sharp, a panel of researchers discussed the internationalisation of social science and humanities research from their lived experiences, and the benefits and constraints of internationalising one's research. They canvased emerging issues in the form of policy changes and new opportunities for internationalising research.

Intersections

Causality: an individualisation and contextualisation approach to shelter reconstruction in post-tsunami Aceh, Indonesia

Gokhan Ayturk, 7 February, Magill Campus. Mr Ayturk presented the outcomes of a field trip in Banda Aceh, Indonesia in November 2007, aimed at analysing contextual and individualised factors affecting post-2004 Asian Ocean Tsunami shelter reconstruction. A wide range of contextual factors affected the disaster response in Aceh, including societal structure, gender, livelihoods, governmental capacity, aid actors' capacity and the chosen method of shelter reconstruction (e.g. whether it is community-based or not). However, such contextual factors affect each person, each household, each shelter site, and each district differently, thus shaping divergent outcomes. This requires both academia and the aid actors not to overlook the very essence of any given context: its individuality. The presentation highlighted these contextual factors through several case studies on community-based shelter reconstruction, gender, livelihoods and disaster response standards. It also covered the future of political economy and conflict in Aceh, the role of the local coordinating agency BRR (Aceh and Nias Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Board), and several unaddressed problems such as ownership and property rights.

Gokhan Ayturk holds a BA in International Relations from Ankara University, Turkey and a MSc in Social Policy and Planning in Developing Countries from the London School of Economics. He now holds an Australian Government International Postgraduate Research Scholarship, and is currently working on post-tsunami disaster response and shelter reconstruction in Banda Aceh, Indonesia under the supervision of Dr Shamsul Khan and Dr Giancarlo Chiro at the School of International Studies, UniSA. He has also worked in youth policy making and training organisations at peak national and European levels, and he has been a member of the Advisory Council on Youth of the Council of Europe.

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2007

Directions

The 2008 RAE: The view from a modern university

Professor Victoria Carrington, 31 May, Magill Campus. The presenter reflected on her role as the Unit of Assessment coordinator for Education (Unit 45) at a modern university in the UK, a position providing insight into the role the RAE has played in university and faculty politics and the shaping of academic identities.

Intersections

'Ayurveda going global': future perspectives and challenges

Dr Shantala Priyadarshini, Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions, 14 June, Magill Campus. An introduction to Ayurveda, the Indian system of medicine, branches of specialisation, and its status around the world today. Why are people globally searching for more than the conventional system of medicine? Like many traditional systems of medicine, Ayurveda, is a holistic, time-tested, personalised medicine which has been accepted for centuries as a way of living, and for its preventive and curative aspects. The challenge is to develop modern, international standards for medicines and practitioners that have originated in varied cultural settings within a framework that can be universally understood. Policy makers and medical researchers should understand that the evaluation of traditional systems of medicine, and its inherent standards, will need intercultural multi-centric research.

Experiences in post-tsunami reconstruction

A workshop organised by HRISS and the Centre for Building and Planning Studies, 18–19 June, City East Campus

Fatherhood in a changing world

19 June, City West Campus. Fatherhood has become a contested political issue, often cast in terms of crisis. Sometimes the policy debate focus on fathers as a threat to women and children, sometimes it revolves around the importance of making men into active and engaged fathers. This seminar explored fatherhood in different social and political contexts and added new perspectives to questions of fatherhood and gender relations in policy and practice.

The field of fatherhood: crossings of the terrain

An interdisciplinary mini-conference to promote scholarly dialogue about fatherhood in research, theory, policy and practice. 19 June, City West Campus. This mini-conference included presentations and plenty of discussion. It covered: Where have we come from and where are we heading in research on fathering? What can we learn from different disciplinary perspectives, eg sociology, gender studies, cultural studies, psychology, indigenous studies, policy analysis? What might an interdisciplinary research agenda on fatherhood look like?

Intersections

The 'citizen father' in Sweden and Australia

Roger Klinth, 21 June, Magill Campus. Examined why, when and how fatherhood ended up on the political agenda in Australia and Sweden. Roger Klinth is a historian from Linköping University, Sweden who was based at HRISS from July 2006 to July 2007. During his year at HRISS he collected Australian material on fatherhood politics and cultural images of fatherhood in order to make comparisons between Sweden and Australia, two democratic welfare states with quite similar cultural traditions but quite different political approaches to social and family policy.

Directions

What's next in my research trajectory?

Prof Alan Reid, Prof Barbara Pocock, Ass Prof Pat Buckley, 21 June, Magill Campus. Focused on strategic decision making and planning.

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Intersections

The culinary sensory logic of Mexican working-class women

Dr Meredith Abarca, 25 June, City West Campus. Presented by HRISS in conjunction with School of Art and Cultures of the Body Research Group (CotB), School of Communication. This seminar explored the material, cultural and philosophical implications grounded within the sensory knowledge found in the act of cooking. Dr Abarca suggested that sensory knowledge as a subject of intellectual and cultural inquiry ties to the ethnographic approach by which she has been gathering Mexican and Mexican-American working-class women's food stories for over ten years: charlas culinarias (culinary chats). Dr Meredith Abarca is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Texas at El Paso, and is author of Voices in the kitchen: views of food and the world from working-class Mexican and Mexican American Women.

Intersections

Before the black box: production in pre-conventionalised digital spaces

Ass Prof Jennifer Rowsell, 28 June,  Magill Campus. Black boxing is a process of naturalising highly contested beliefs, making them more acceptable as common notions. We have lost the rhetorical and material debates that once challenge these now-accepted beliefs. Despite ongoing innovations, digital spaces are becoming increasingly conventionalised. Jennifer Rowsell is an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education in New Jersey, USA. Jennifer is currently international Partner Investigator on an ARC Discovery Grant with Sue Nichols, Helen Nixon and Sophia Rainbird studying parent information networks in Australian and US communities.

Intersections

Young people's story of crime: violence, culture and crime

Mike Presdee, 5 July, Magill Campus. Young people are more controlled, more regulated, more surveilled, than at any time in the history of 'youth'. Indeed, it is not absurd to suggest that the social life of young people has been criminalised. This paper considered the growing criminalisation of young people and the meaning of anti-social behaviour and violence within contemporary youth culture, whilst urging politicians, policy makers and policy workers to listen to young people's story of crime and the narration of their lives. Mike Presdee is Director of Criminology at the University of Kent, UK. He has been a Royal Marine Commando, a homeless expatriate living on the streets in Canada, a tax officer and school teacher. He is the author of Cultural criminology and the carnival of crime, and co-editor of Cultural criminology unleashed.

Philosophers Cafe

Debating matters nuclear: what should SA do?

Haydon Manning, Associate Professor, School of Political and International Studies, Flinders University
10 July, Caledonian Hotel, North Adelaide. The Philosophers Cafe is open to everyone and encourages freedom of thought and discussion between diverse participants. 

Inaugural Lecture

Afterlives of post-colonialism: reflections on theory post 9/11

Prof Pal Ahluwalia, Research SA Chair and Professor of Post-colonial Studies, 1 August, City West Campus. The world of Antiquity and the Middle Ages was replete with monsters and satyrs. Modernity and civilisation is also shadowed by monstrous figures which constitute 'discontent' and 'the abject'. This paper examined the question of representation and the manner in which the figure of the monster has reappeared since the events of 9/11. It discusses the way production about the 'other' has been disciplined and policed and offers some reflections on theory in order to consider how a post-colonial ethical stance might offer a better way to engage in the production of non-coercive knowledge. 

Intersections

The Complexities of Reading Capital

Dr Catherine Compton-Lilly, 2 August, Magill Campus. Dr Compton-Lilly presented two case studies of adult GED students and their kindergarten-aged children. She applied the construct of 'capital', as described by Pierre Bourdieu (1986), to the children's and adults' reading practices. Catherine Compton-Lilly is an Assistant Professor in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin Madison. She is the author of Reading families: the literate lives of urban children (Teachers College Press, 2003) and Confronting racism, poverty and power (Heinemann, 2004). Her most recent book, Rereading families (Teachers College Press, 2007), follows the families from her first book into grades four and five.

Peace, conflict and mediation in the Asia-Pacific region

A one-day seminar presented by the Centre for Peace, Conflict and Mediation, 2 August, City West Campus

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Philosophers Cafe

Making a difference

Jane Lomax-Smith, Minister for Education & Children's Services; Minister for Tourism & Minister for the City of Adelaide
14 August, Caledonian Hotel, North Adelaide 

Critical Urban Futures

Over and under: new bridges and the reinvention of the city

Assoc Prof Peter Bishop, 24 August, City West. Bridges have long been integral technologies for the formation of cities. They integrate previously discrete places into a city and enable a city to colonise surrounding country. Bridges facilitate flow and circulation both within the interior of cities and through ever widening networks from the national to the global. This talk addressed contemporary developments in which city bridge design has led in two seemingly opposed directions. On the one hand mega-spans have begun to create vast super cities. On the other hand small, boutique, primarily footbridges are forms of structural art that are integral to reinvigorating or gentrifying run-down and neglected places in the city. Peter Bishop has researched, published and taught extensively around the topic of place. Before moving into the social sciences in the early 1970s he worked as a civil engineer and has a book, Bridge, due to be published later this year. 

Doctoral Research Brown Bag Lunches

The self-reflexive nature of PhD research

Janette Hancock, 31 August, Magill Campus 

Intersections

The digital divide: the material culture of early reading in homes and schools

Prof Jackie Marsh, 10 September, Magill Campus. In this paper, I draw from an analysis of the material culture of early reading in two classrooms for children aged 4 to 5 in England in order to explore the way in which reading and the novice reader are constituted within these educational institutions through the resources provided. I contrast this with the material culture of early reading in homes, which is analysed through data arising from a number of studies of young children's engagement with media and new technologies in the home. In addition to an examination of the reading resources and artefacts physically present in homes, the analysis pays attention to increasingly popular virtual worlds for young children, such as 'Club Penguin' and 'Barbie Girl'. Drawing from a theoretical framework that attends to the relationship between material culture, ideologies and social practices, I argue that the offline and online worlds of homes and schools offer very different spaces for young readers. Jackie Marsh is Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield. Her interests include the role and nature of popular culture, media, and new technologies in young children's early literacy development, both in and outside school. Her most recent project was 'Digital Beginnings', a national survey of 0–6 year-olds' use of popular culture, media and new technologies in the home and early years settings. 

Philosophers Cafe

A caring society: are we over the hill?

John Brydon, Associate Professor of Systems Technology, UniSA and commercial arbitrator and mediator
11 September, Caledonian Hotel, North Adelaide. 

CREEW and Critical Urban Futures present an African double seminar

Popular education and learning in South Africa

Dr Salma Ismail, 14 September, Magill Campus. This seminar explored the relationship between pedagogical practices (learning) and social transformation in a low-cost community housing project whose membership consists of poor African women. The women learners in this social movement are activists and one of their aims of learning is to enable them to obtain social goods from the state. Salma argued that popular education can make significant inroads to change poor women's living conditions and status but the gains made are not always sustainable. She argued that in times of neo-liberalism, in particular socio-political contexts, the contradictions in popular ideologies are heightened and the pedagogies slide to accommodate more dominant ideologies. The argument was explored through case study research from 1992–2003 in a housing social movement. Salma Ismail is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Higher Education and Development (CHED) at the University of Cape Town, and a member of the Higher and Adult Education Studies and Development Unit (HAESDU). Dr Ismail has designed and taught courses in adult education and development; social movements; professional and policy studies; and adult learning theory and facilitating learning. Her research is in the field of adult learning in social transformation.

Critical Urban Futures

The wonder of the African market: post-colonial inflections

Prof Pal Ahluwalia, 14 September, Magill Campus. The African market, a site denigrated by colonialism, is rapidly becoming a dominant register through which to understand the cultural exchanges that are so vital to the practice of everyday life. The African market, for so long forgotten in favour of the village and 'tribe', is being reclaimed, liberated, and is fast-emerging as the new site of the symbolic production of the post-colony. It is here that Africans brutalised by the new colonial administrations – the World Bank and the IMF, through structural adjustment programs – are able to engage with the world. It is market consumption that evokes both wonder and resonance that links perhaps the most marginalised constituency, African subjects, to the processes of contemporary globalisation as they navigate their own modernity. Pal Ahluwalia is Professor of Post-colonial Studies at the University of South Australia and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California San Diego. His interests lie in the areas of African studies, and social and cultural theory, in particular, post-colonial theory and the processes of diaspora, exile, migration and the complexities of identity formation. His work is internationally renowned for breaking down disciplinary boundaries and challenging orthodoxy.

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Intersections

Canadian multiculturalism: a study of identity, image and ideology in picture books with pre-service teachers

Roberta F. Hammett, 20 September, Magill Campus. This seminar presented an overview and preliminary findings from a cross-Canada study exploring aspects of visual literacy and identity formation in Canadian multicultural picture books with pre-service teachers. The research draws on theories of critical multiculturalism and on transactional theories of reading. Picture books, through the interplay of text and image, offer particularly rich contexts for readers to engage with and to interrogate subjectivity, representation and ideology. Preliminary findings highlight the pedagogical, performative and ideological potential of bringing picture books into classrooms. In this practitioner enquiry, student teachers were encouraged to consider aspects of critical literacy related to their readings of the picture books, to reflect on the potential of the books for the classroom, and to explore their own understandings of Canadian identity as represented in the texts. Roberta F. Hammett is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's, Canada. She teaches and researches literacies, with a particular emphasis on their intersections with gender, identities, ICT, secondary education, teacher education, media, community and teacher professional development.

Doctoral Research Brown Bag Lunches

Maintaining motivation: developing sustainable work practices for thesis and beyond

Dr Danielle Every, Research Assistant, Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies. 28 September, Mawson Lakes Campus. Danielle discussed her doctoral work, 'The politics of representation: a discursive analysis of refugee advocacy in the Australian parliament', and also maintaining motivation: developing sustainable work practices for thesis and beyond.

Philosophers Cafe

The arts: engaging the community

Douglas Gaultier, CEO and Artistic Director, Adelaide Festival Centre Trust
9 October, Caledonian Hotel, North Adelaide.

Intersections

Globalisation and the new individualism

Anthony Elliott, Chair of Sociology, Flinders University, and Visiting Research Professor, Open University, UK. 18 October, Magill Campus. This seminar addressed the theme of identity in the wake of the globalisation debate. Recent socioeconomic research on global electronic off-shoring was reviewed in the light of the great globalisation debate, and its implications for identity were assessed. After considering the theories of individualisation and isolated privatism, the thesis of a 'new individualism' sweeping the expensive, polished cities of the West was introduced. Case studies from the New Individualism Project on instant self-transformation, set within a culture of the reinvention craze, were reviewed. The seminar concluded by looking at the consequences for identities of (1) increasing speed of social processes; and (2) economic transformations associated with advanced globalisation.

Critical Urban Futures

Splintering space, fracturing place?

Dr Matthew W Rofe, 19 October, City West Campus. The human landscape is extremely complex. It is generated imaginatively through social, economic and political forces and is given concrete form through its physical creation. It is called into existence through the exercise of power and the presence of sheer will. The landscape is contested and this process is seemingly unending as it is continually recontested by various groups and key urban actors. This paper explored the notion of struggles over landscape, its meaning, uses and form as 'splintering'. The term splintering is used to refer to a process of urban development and underdevelopment that fractures the meaning of places and their relationship with each other. What happens when the interpretation of meaning and value or, to use the aforementioned phrase, 'substance' differs between various key stakeholders? What happens when one set of stakeholders perceive only space when in fact there is a vibrant place? In these instances the splintering of space has devastating impacts upon opposing social groups and the communities they constitute. Dr Matthew Rofe trained as an urban geographer. The central theme of his research involves unravelling the complexity of human landscapes and the often conflicting meanings that are attached to place. While the majority of Matthew's research has been urban based, pertaining to the critiquing of discourses of global city development and the power imbalances embodied both between and within global cities, he has recently commenced applying urban-based theories of revitalisation and place making to rural contexts. This approach draws from a wide range of theories addressing issues such as culture, consumption, community, globalisation and localisation. Dr Rofe has also conducted research into residential segregation, gated communities, sexuality, masculinity and identity performance amongst subcultural groups.

Doctoral Research Brown Bag Lunches

Managing a part-time PhD and publishing along the way

Ianto Ware, HRISS research assistant, 26 October, Magill Campus. Ianto discussed his doctoral work on the textual medium of zines, how to manage a part-time PhD and publishing along the way.

Intersections

Trust beyond boundaries: reconstructing Gandhian non-violence in the framework of dialogic democracy

Dr Rabindranath Bhattacharyya, 8 November, Magill Campus. Non-violence is at the root of all trust, since lack of violence creates an assurance for the person interacting in any given situation to cooperate with others. But this illustrates only its negative sense. M. K. Gandhi's ethical formulation of ahimsa showed that the concept of non-violence has a more positive meaning, since it remains actively engaged in creating a situation that may lead to emancipation from fear, thus cultivating the capacity for sacrifice of the highest type in order to be free from fear. In realising a predominantly non-violent state Gandhi believed in the swaraj of the masses – a form of democracy that would come through a non-violent and truthful means of resistance – and satyagraha, where the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest and which would emphasise decentralisation as its main pillar. In the era of globalisation, for the development and sustenance of such non-violent and decentralised democracy, the postcolonial world needs mutual tolerance and social reflexivity as a condition of both day-to-day activities and the persistence of larger forms of collective organisation. Dr Rabindranath Bhattacharyya is an Australia-India Council Australian Studies Senior Visiting Fellow with HRISS, and currently Reader in Political Science at the University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India. A lecturer in postgraduate political science and specialising in public administration, his areas of interest include trust, social capital and democratic governance. Dr Bhattacharyya co-edited the book Essays on international terrorism (2006, Kolkata, Levant Books).

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Concepts of education and processes of genocide

Phyllis Grace Steeves. 15 November, Magill Campus. History reveals that educational theories and policies have been useful tools of genocide. This presentation explored the field of education and some of its concepts/theories to identify how such concepts may, individually and collectively, facilitate genocide. Phyllis Grace Steeves is a Cree Metis woman with strong roots in the community of Lac. Ste. Anne, Alberta, Canada. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta where she is enrolled in the PhD specialisation Indigenous Peoples Education in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Alberta. She obtained a Master in Philosophy, International Peace Studies, at Trinity College University of Dublin, Ireland in 2003. Phyllis worked in the non-profit sector for well over a decade in the field of literacy education, initially in an Indigenous organisation and most recently in a mainstream association.

Academic identity (re)construction through learning new practices – World Cafe event

Thursday 22 November, Magill Campus. Supported by the Division of EASS and HRISS. Facilitated by Dr Tom Stehlik, Dr Deborah Churchman and Dr Sharron King from UniSA and visiting scholar Dr Anne Herbert from Helsinki School of Economics. With various imperatives to change the way we think about academic work – eg external factors such as the RQF and DEST requirements, internal factors such as the new Teaching and Learning Framework – academic staff are challenged to reconstruct their identities as teachers, researchers and knowledge workers. This workshop provided a forum to discuss these and other issues related to academic identity (re)construction through experiencing the World Cafe methodology for conferencing and dialogue. As a form of teaching and research practice, World Cafe offers alternative ways of gathering and sharing information as well as working towards strategic problem solving and innovative change. The participants discussed 'questions that matter', including: 'Is academic work becoming arbitrarily homogenised?', 'Is academic work sustainable?', 'What is research for social sustainability?', 'What is the difference between the role of "academic" and "academic developer"?' and 'What will the next generation of academic staff be like?'

Doctoral Research Brown Bag Lunches

The metaphorical mirror: the role of cultural texts in the construction of adolescent girls' 'envisionings' of womanhood

Dr Lana Zannettino, HRISS postdoctoral fellow, 30 November, Magill Campus. This session included a discussion of the supervision process, and writing and 'self'.

Intersections

Does 'the internet' really exist? And why is it relevant to cultural studies?

Professor Lelia Green, 10 December, Magill Campus. This seminar examines the proposition that 'the internet' is now too diverse and fragmented to be considered a singularity; perhaps in a way that reflects the arguments made about the fragmentation of the public sphere. Gamers, bloggers, fan-fiction creators, social networkers: all of them can be said to create their own internet in their own image. These issues feed self-reflexively into a broader consideration about the nature of cultural studies: what is it about the internet on the one hand, and Muslim Australians' perceptions of fear, terror and 'the other' that make both subjects legitimate areas of interest for the cultural studies researcher; and is this necessarily a personal position on the part of the cultural studies researcher?

Lelia Green is Professor of Communications (in the field of Cultural Studies) and Associate Dean, Research and Higher Degrees, in the Faculty of Education and Arts at Edith Cowan University, Perth.  She is the author of Technoculture (Allen & Unwin, 2002) and co-editor of Framing Technology (Allen & Unwin, 1994).  Professor Green has held ARC Discovery Grants on 'The Internet in Australian Family Life' and 'Muslim Australians' and broader-community Australians' perceptions of fear, terror and "the other"'; along with two Linkage grants to set up and investigate an online community for recovering heart patients, www.heartnet.com.au, in addition to examining the communications culture of public transport Transit Officers. 

Intersections

State responses to religious diversity: low-trust societies and the management of religion

Professor Bryan Turner, National University of Singapore. 20 December, Magill Campus. Prof Turner argued that the western liberal model or the so-called Westphalian model of religious tolerance – religion is a matter of private conscience, the state if secular, religious symbols are banned from public display, identity rests on secular citizenship – is under considerable strain. The secular state dilemma is that the economy needs migrant labour which produces cultural diversity but the state increasingly seeks to impose its sovereignty which in turn is based in cultural homogeneity. In a period of renewed emphasis on security there is a tendency to create social enclaves. With enclavement social capital declines, there is also a decline in trust and states have to depend increasingly on formal and bureaucratic means of control and surveillance. The more we talk about transparency and accountability, the less we depend on trust. What has been called 'the audit society' is in fact a low-trust society. Religion becomes especially problematic since religious identities are almost always transnational. The lecture considered a typology of 'the management of religions' from neglect and indifference, enclavement and state management. The lecture concluded by offering an overview of problems confronting Southeast Asia and Australia in terms of state and religion.

Bryan Turner is Professor of Sociology in the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, an honorary professor at Deakin University and an adjunct professor at Murdoch University. He recently published two books with Bardwell Press, Oxford: Religious diversity and civil society and Rights and virtues. His academic interests include the sociology of citizenship, medical sociology and social theory.
 

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