Whose hometown? Reception of Bruce Springsteen as an index of Australian national identities

Focusing on the cultural landscape of the mid-1980s, this paper explores the Australian experience of Bruce Springsteen. Australian author Peter Carey’s short story collection, The Fat Man in History, anticipates two phases of Australia’s relationship to the United States, phases expressed by responses to Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. (1984) and the 1986 blockbuster Crocodile Dundee. Springsteen’s album was received by an Australian audience who wanted to be like Americans; Crocodile Dundee, on the other hand, provided a representation of what Australians thought Americans wanted Australians to be. This paper argues that the first phase was driven by emergent technologies, in particular the Walkman, which allowed for personal and private listening practices. However, technological changes in the 1990s facilitated a more marked shift in listening space towards individualization, a change reflected in Springsteen’s lyrics.

Dialogical ethics in a global society : cultural difference and answerability

Debates about multiculturalism are common to many late-modern societies today. Globalization has triggered a massive flow of people across state borders, challenging and changing assumptions about national identities and cultural politics. How to deal with difference without reducing it to sameness is becoming one of the main issues discussed by policy-makers, researchers and educators. This paper argues for the importance of turning to dialogical ethics before developing and implementing largescale political strategies in managing differences. It draws on the ideas of Bakhtin and Levinas to transcend the notion of ‘caring at a distance’ that is embedded in the neo-liberal construction of moral selfhood. As an alternative, the emphasis is made on spatial proximity – on ‘face-to-face’ relations with alterity – to conceptualize the dialogical self who is both responsive to and responsible for the Other. Bakhtin’s philosophy of the act and Levinas’ ethics of responsibility are mutually enriching in thinking about the role of the dialogical self in building a pluralistic society. The paper concludes with the implications of dialogical ethics for multicultural education.

Counting as citizens: Recognition of the Nubians in the 2009 Kenyan census

This article uses the case of the Nubians in Kenya as an ethnic minority, and the 2009 Kenyan census as a particular form of recognition, to engage in a particular aspect of the debates surrounding the politics of recognition: the perceived competitive nature of the relationship between national and subnational groups, in this case ethnic groups. Using data obtained during a 6-month qualitative study conducted over the census period, this paper evaluates the response of some members of the Nubian community to their participation in the census, focusing on its most controversial question, ‘What tribe are you?’ The article concludes that the dynamic between ethnic and national identities and allegiances, when the former are recognized, can be the site of agency, participatory citizenship, and therefore also democratic equality, action and interaction.

Try walking in my shoes: empathy and portrayals of mental illness on screen

How is mental illness represented in film and television? What emotions are elicited from the viewer? How have these portrayals changed over time? And what are the implications of these portrayals for mental health awareness in the community?This interdisciplinary symposium brings together academics, filmmakers, mental health practitioners and consumers to explore these and other questions concerning the portrayal of mental illness on screen. Across two days of screenings, lectures, panels and workshops, we will discuss a range of representations of mental illness, from early cinema to Hollywood studio films, from ethnographic documentaries to television programs. The symposium has a particular focus on women’s mental health and the portrayal of mental illness in Australian films.A key theme of the symposium is the emotion of empathy. If sympathy suggests feeling for someone (that is, feeling sorry for them), empathy is distinguished by feeling with them. This sharing of emotion gives us valuable insight into how things are with another person. This insight can lead to a greater understanding that reduces stigma and discrimination, and helps us to see ‘the other’ as an equal human being. That is why empathy is such an important concept in philosophy, politics, psychology and human rights education.Cinema and television are powerful media that can take the audience on an imaginative journey and tap into our potential to empathise with another human being. Our speakers will examine the ways in which the viewer’s empathy is elicited (or not) by these screen portrayals of mental illness, as well as the benefits and limitations of an empathetic relationship between viewer and character. In this way, the symposium contributes to the broader discussion initiated by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions about the ways in which emotions shape individual, community and national identities.We welcome discussion of these issues from all participants – both speakers and audience members – and we look forward to a dialogue that is open-minded and sensitive to all involved. We hope this will be the start of many more conversations on this important issue that affects us all.

Making sense of difference? Teaching identities in postmodern contexts

How do teachers make sense of ethnic and classed differences? Frequently students from non-mainstream cultures and of lower socio-economic status are constructed in the literature and through practice as ‘deficit’ and consequently become marginalised. A range of short-term, ‘quick fix’ policy and curriculum approaches have aimed to address the ‘problems’ of those ‘othered’ from the mainstream due to their perceived difference. These have had little effect on improving educational results for students of specific ethnic and/or class backgrounds whose outcomes remain below the national average.

Poststructural theories offer opportunities to think about how teachers are positioned within discourses of identity. Our research (and others’) suggests the need for teachers to interrogate their assumptions about class and culture and how these are played out in their pedagogical relationships with students.

In this paper we report on a small research project that investigates the professional practices and personal beliefs of teachers. Empirical data from this study will build knowledge about how difference is constructed and diversity is ‘taken up’ by teachers as they engage with secondary students who have Language Backgrounds Other Than English and who are economically disadvantaged.

Exploring the extent and nature of the diversity of the doctoral population in Australia : A profile of the respondents to a 2005 national survey

Although there is general agreement that diversity is a feature of doctoral education in Australia, there are various forms and levels of diversity, many of which are not captured by analyses that rely on categories for analysing the doctoral education population that are those commonly used in education at the undergraduate level, such as sex, age, mode of study, type of enrolment, citizenship, and Broad Field of Study, etc. These categories primarily reflect concerns to do with funding and issues of participation and equity. Our analysis of data from a national survey of doctoral candidates carried out in 2005 as part of a Linkage Grant project “Reconceptualising the doctoral experience’, suggests that not all of these categories are relevant to critical concerns for doctoral education. Nor do analyses at a macro-level represent the particularity of the doctoral experience. They can mask the reality of a highly variable student population, and one that is not necessarily represented accurately or helpfully by ascribing group identities.

Miners, diggers, ferals and show-men : school–community projects that affirm and unsettle identities and place?

Many contemporary sociologists suggest that a feature of modern life is that the practices and identities associated with 'place' are eroded. The local no longer matters in everyday life as it once did. Some national governments are persuaded of the possibility of an urban dystopia of Orwellian dimensions, and have found a response in theories and rhetorics of social capital, citizenship and communitarianism. They have instituted strategies to address an imaginary of harmonious local communities. In this paper I examine one such government intervention and show how four schools in Tasmania, Australia, took up the invitation to strengthen ties with their local communities. The projects reveal that the local still exists and matters, but they also hint at other possibilities. I argue that by working with a 'place-based' curriculum to assist young people in building local networks and engaging productively with their local neighbourhoods, schools might provide important resources for identity-building and learning.

Defining national identity? Visiting the architectural spaces of the Museum of Scotland

National Cultures construct identities by producing meanings about the nation with which we can identify, meanings which are contained in the stories which are told about it, memories which connect its present within its past, and images which are constructed of it. A museum, the repository of a nation’s culture, which connects the past to the present through recounting stories about the artefacts of past cultures is clearly significant in representing the culture of a nation.

This paper explores the architectural spaces of the new Museum of Scotland, which opened in Edinburgh in November 1998. The museum has opened at a crucial time in Scottish history. The Scottish cultural renaissance is manifested in the increase in cultural production and call for Scottish cultural institutions. Parallel to this renaissance are political developments with the re-creation of a Scottish Parliament in 1999. When the idea of ‘Scotland’ is itself in a state of flux, the stories of the nation told in the museum, which attempt to give a sense of location, a connection between the individual and the nation are especially important.

Thus, issues of identity and ‘self’ are crucially important in understanding the contemporary museum. Within this, the relations between the production of these narratives and their consumption by the public are little understood. The majority of studies have concentrated, although not exclusively, on the production of museum displays, primarily with the "politics and poetics" of display. This paper analyses the relationship between producer and consumer within the Museum of Scotland, attempting to reconnect the forces of production and consumption. In doing so, it focuses primarily on the differing conceptions of the ability of the Museum to be able to narrate the nation.

Based on interviews both with museum staff and with visitors to the museum, it argues that an understanding of the relationship between the museum and Scottish national identity can only be considered through an understanding of the tension between the producers’ intentions and the way in which consumers conceptualise the museum as a space for "telling the nation".

Students' understandings of religious identities and relations: issues of social cohesion and citizenship

The focus in this article is on issues of social cohesion and citizenship as they relate to students' understandings of religion and religious identity. The article draws on data gathered from a study conducted at a highly diverse English comprehensive school and is set amid broader anxieties about religion, community disharmony and national identity in the United Kingdom. The high levels of religious diversity at the school were seen as supporting social cohesion - enabled in this context through students' understandings of religion and religious identities as socially contingent and supportive of a sense of agency. These understandings are aligned with a sophisticated and inclusive citizenship - one that is productive of democratic alliances and political agency and necessary in disrupting the narrow and problematic understandings of religion that can lead to social disharmony and conflict.