What health services within rural communities tell us about Aboriginal people and Aboriginal health

There is a growing body of literature within social and cultural geography that explores notions of place, space, culture, race and identity. When health services in rural communities are explored using these notions, it can lead to multiple ways of understanding the cultural meanings inscribed within health services and how they can be embedded with an array of politics. For example, health services can often reflect the symbolic place that each individual holds within that rural community. Through the use of a rural health service case study, this paper will demonstrate how the physical sites and appearances of health services can act as social texts that convey messages of belonging and welcome, or exclusion and domination. They can also produce and reproduce power and control relations. In this way, they can influence the ways that Aboriginal people engage in health service environments – either as places where Aboriginal people feel welcome, comfortable, secure and culturally safe and happy to use the health service, or as places where they utilise the service provided with a great deal of effort, angst and energy. It is important to understand how these complex notions play out in rural communities if the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people is going to be addressed.

Narratives for novices : is there a place for edgy texts in edgy NAPLAN communities?

The genre of narratives has become the genre of choice in many classrooms since the introduction of NAPLAN into Australian schools. Yet, Knapp and Watkins (2005) argue that narratives are the least understood of all the genres. Despite wide-spread acceptance that narratives serve the social purpose of entertaining, they can also be more edgy, offering a powerful social or information role. This paper considers the effects of exposing novices to less standard realms of social discourse and disciplinary knowledge vis-a-vis a more clinical treatment focused on ‘standard’ narratives. I argue that we should not shy away from the challenges of edgy narratives just because our students are novice readers. The same holds true for our work in communities on the edge, that is where poverty, multiculturalism or multilingualism and systemic failure are the norm. I am part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant (LP 0990289) working in such a community. Like many such situations, teachers in these communities are caught in the fray of establishing a dialogue between the culture of federally mandated performance orientated reforms and the cultures and discourses of the lives and future needs of their students (see Exley & Singh, in press).

The Hindraf saga : media and citizenship in Malaysia

In the early part of 2008, a major political upset was pulled off in the Southeast Asian nation of Malaysia when the ruling coalition, Barisan Nasional (National Front), lost its long-held parliamentary majority after the general elections. Given the astonishingly high profile of political bloggers and relatively well established alternative online new sites within the nation, it was not surprising that many new media proponents saw the result as a major triumph of the medium. Through a brief account of the Hindraf (Hindu Rights Action Force) saga and the socio-political dissent nursed, in part, through new media in contemporary Malaysia, this paper seeks to lend context to the events that precede and surround the election as an example of the relationship between media and citizenship in praxis. In so doing it argues that the political turnaround, if indeed it proves to be, cannot be considered the consequence of new media alone. Rather, that to comprehensively assess the implications of new media for citizenship is to take into account the specific histories, conditions and actions (or lack of) of the various social actors involved.

New Media and Public Communication: Mapping Australian User-Created Content in Online Social Networks

Presentation describling a project in data intensive research in the humanities. Measuring activity of publically available data in social networks such as Blogosphere, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube

Health promotion in palliative care : the case for conceptual congruence

This article provides a critical review of the literature relevant to the conceptual foundations of health promoting palliative care. It explores the separate emergence and evolution of palliative care and health promotion as distinct concerns in health care, and reviews the early considerations given to their potential convergence. Finally, this article examines the proposal of health promoting palliative care as a specific approach to providing end of life care through a social model of palliative care. Research is needed to explore the impact for communities, health care services and policy when such an approach is implemented within palliative care organisations.

Digital constitutionalism and the role of the rule of law in the governance of virtual communities

This project proposes a new conceptual framework for the regulation of social networks and virtual communities. By applying a model based upon the rule of law, this thesis addresses the growing tensions that revolve around the public use of private networks. This research examines the shortcomings of traditional contractual governance models and cyberlaw theory and provides a reconstituted approach that will allow public constitutional-type interests to be recognised in the interpretation and enforcement of contractual doctrine.