Conflict and seduction in the public sphere

In a critical but sympathetic reading of Habermas’s work (1984, 1987a, 1987b, 2003), Luke Goode (2005) recently sought to rework his theory of deliberative democracy in an age of mediated and increasingly digital public spheres. Taking a different approach, Alan McKee (2005) challenged the culture- and class-bound strictures of Habermasian rationalism, instead pursuing a more radically pluralist account of postmodern public spheres. The editors of this special section of Media, Culture & Society invited us to discuss our differing approaches to the public sphere. Goode holds that the institutional bases of contemporary public spheres (political parties, educational institutions or public media) remain of critical importance, albeit in the context of a kaleidoscopic array of unofficial and informal micro-publics, both localized and de-territorialized. In contrast, McKee sustains a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ toward the official, hegemonic institutions of the public sphere since they tend to exclude and delegitimize discourses and practices that challenge their polite middle-class norms. McKee’s recent research has focused on sexual cultures, particularly among youth (McKee, 2011). Goode’s recent work has examined new social media spaces, particularly in relation to news and public debate (e.g. Goode, 2009; Goode et al., 2011). Consequently, our discussion turned to a domain which links our interests: after Goode discussed some of his recent research on (in)civility on YouTube as a new media public sphere, McKee challenged him to consider the case of pornographic websites modelled on social media sites.1 He identifies a greater degree of ‘civility’ in these pornographic sibling sites than on YouTube, requiring careful consideration of what constitutes a ‘public sphere’ in contemporary digital culture. Such sites represent an environment that shatters the opposition of public and private interest, affording public engagement on matters of the body, of intimacy, of gender politics, of pleasure and desire – said by many critics to be ruled out of court in Habermasian theory. Such environments also trouble traditional binaries between the cognitive and the affective, and between the performative and the deliberative. In what follows we explore the differences between our approaches in the form of a dialogue. As is often the case, our approaches seemed less at odds after engaging in conversation than may have initially appeared. But important differences of emphasis remain.

The ethical demands of settler colonial theory

This article explores the strengths and limitations of settler colonial theory (SCT) as a tool for non-Indigenous scholars seeking to disturb rather than re-enact colonial privilege. Based on an examination of recent Australian academic debates on settler colonialism and the Northern Territory intervention, we argue that SCT is useful in dehistoricizing colonialism, usually presented as an unfortunate but already transcended national past, and in revealing the intimate connections between settler emotions, knowledges, institutions and policies. Most importantly, it makes settler investments visible to settlers, in terms we understand and find hard to escape. However, as others have noted, SCT seems unable to transcend itself, in the sense that it posits a structural inevitability to the settler colonial relationship. We suggest that this structuralism can be mobilized by settler scholars in ways that delegitimize Indigenous resistance and reinforce violent colonial relationships. But while settlers come to stay and to erase Indigenous political existence, this does not mean that these intentions will be realized or must remain fixed. Non-Indigenous scholars should challenge the politically convenient conflation of settler desires and reality, and of the political present and the future. This article highlights these issues in order to begin to unlock the transformative potential of SCT, engaging settler scholars as political actors and arguing that this approach has the potential to facilitate conversations and alliances with Indigenous people. It is precisely by using the strengths of SCT that we can challenge its limitations; the theory itself places ethical demands on us as settlers, including the demand that we actively refuse its potential to re-empower our own academic voices and to marginalize Indigenous resistance.

Welfare surveillance, income management and new paternalism in Australia

This article discusses the situation of income support claimants in Australia, constructed as faulty citizens and flawed welfare subjects. Many are on the receiving end of complex, multi-layered forms of surveillance aimed at securing socially responsible and compliant behaviours. In Australia, as in other Western countries, neoliberal economic regimes with their harsh and often repressive treatment of welfare recipients operate in tandem with a burgeoning and costly arsenal of CCTV and other surveillance and governance assemblages. Through a program of ‘Income Management’, initially targeting (mainly) Indigenous welfare recipients in Australia’s Northern Territory, the BasicsCard (administered by Centrelink, on behalf of the Australian Federal Government’s Department of Human Services) is one example of this welfare surveillance. The scheme operates by ‘quarantining’ a percentage of a claimant’s welfare entitlements to be spent by way of the BasicsCard on ‘approved’ items only. The BasicsCard scheme raises significant questions about whether it is possible to encourage people to take responsibility for themselves if they no longer have real control over the most important aspects of their lives. Some Indigenous communities have resisted the BasicsCard, criticising it because the imposition of income management leads to a loss of trust, dignity, and individual agency. Further, income management of individuals by the welfare state contradicts the purported aim that they become less ‘welfare dependent’ and more ‘self-reliant’. In highlighting issues around compulsory income management this paper makes a contribution to the largely under discussed area of income management and welfare surveillance, with its propensity for function creep, garnering large volumes of data on BasicsCard user’s approved (and declined) purchasing decisions, complete with dates, amounts, times and locations.

The vanishing endpoint of settler colonialism

In this paper, we interrogate the way that narratives about the unfolding of settler colonialism through time are encoded in recent Australian Indigenous policy frameworks. We argue that the postcolonial image of a single transformative moment of radical political break is embedded in Australian policy frameworks, but is deployed in ways that fuse this idea with the moment of colonial completion and in so doing assist the colonial project. By merging the moment of decolonisation and the moment of colonial completion, temporal narratives mobilise conservative and progressive settler voices towards colonial goals. We identify three recent policy approaches: reconciliation, neoliberal contractualism and intervention, and interrogate the narratives of the present and future that they reflect and deploy. We argue these unacknowledged stories of the colonial future must be contested, so that debates about how settler and Indigenous people might live together differently across time are not foreclosed.

Aboriginality and the Northern Territory intervention

This thesis examines the construction of Aboriginality in recent public policy reasoning through identifying representations deployed by architects and supporters of the Commonwealth’s 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response (the intervention). Debate about the Northern Territory intervention was explicitly situated in relation to a range of ideas about appropriate Government policy towards Indigenous people, and particularly about the nature, role, status, value and future of Aboriginality and of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders. This project involves analysis of constructions of Aboriginality deployed in texts created and circulated to explain and justify the policy program. The aim of the project is to identify the ideas about Aboriginality deployed by the intervention’s architects and supporters, and to examine the effects and implications of these discourses for political relationships between Indigenous people and settlers in Australia. This thesis will argue that advocates of the Northern Territory intervention construct Aboriginality in a range of important ways that reassert and reinforce the legitimacy of the settler colonial order and the project of Australian nationhood, and operate to limit Aboriginal claims. Specifically, it is argued that in linking Aboriginality to the abuse of Aboriginal children, the intervention’s advocates and supporters establish a political debate about the nature and future of Aboriginality within a discursive terrain in which the authority and perspectives of Indigenous people are problematised. Aboriginality is constructed in this process as both temporally and spatially separated from settler society, and in need of coercive integration into mainstream economic and political arrangements. Aboriginality is depicted by settler advocates of intervention as an anachronism, with Aboriginal people and cultures understood as primitive and/or savage precursors to settlers who are represented as modern and civilised. As such, the communities seen as the authentic home or location of Aboriginality represent a threat to Aboriginal children as well as to settlers. These constructions function to obscure the violence of the settler order, provide justification or moral rehabilitation for the colonising project, and reassert the sovereignty of the settler state. The resolution offered by the intervention’s advocates is a performance or enactment of settler sovereignty, representing a claim over and through both the territory of Aboriginal people and the discursive terrain of nationhood.

A theoretical framework for designing and evaluating strategies to identify cases of serious child abuse and neglect

A central dimension of the State’s responsibility in a liberal democracy and any just society is the protection of individuals’ central rights and freedoms, and the creation of the minimum conditions under which each individual has an opportunity to lead a life of sufficient equality, dignity and value. A special subset of this responsibility is to protect those who are unable to protect themselves from genuine harm. Substantial numbers of children suffer serious physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and neglect at the hands of their parents and caregivers or by other known parties. Child abuse and neglect occurs in a situation of extreme power asymmetry. The physical, social, behavioural and economic costs to the individual, and the social and economic costs to communities, are vast. Children are not generally able to protect themselves from serious abuse and neglect. This enlivens both the State’s responsibility to protect the child, and the debate about how that responsibility can and should be discharged. A core question arises for all societies, given that most serious child maltreatment occurs in the family sphere, is unlikely to be disclosed, causes substantial harm to both individual and community, and infringes fundamental individual rights and freedoms. The question is: how can society identify these situations so that the maltreatment can be interrupted, the child’s needs for security and safety, and health and other rehabilitation can be met, and the family’s needs can be addressed to reduce the likelihood of recurrence? This chapter proposes a theoretical framework applicable for any society that is considering justifiable and effective policy approaches to identify and respond to cases of serious child abuse and neglect. The core of the theoretical framework is based on major principles from both classical liberal political philosophy (Locke and Mill), and leading political philosophers from the twentieth century and the first part of the new millennium (Rawls, Rorty, Okin, Nussbaum), and is further situated within fundamental frameworks of civil and criminal law, and health and economics.

Re-theorizing the “digital divide”: Identifying dimensions of social exclusion in contemporary media technologies

The digital divide is the disparancy in access to information, in the ability to communicate, and in the capacity to make information and communication serve full participation in the information society. Indeed, the conversation about the digital divide has developed over the last decade from a focus on connectivity and access to information and communication technologies, to a conversation that encompasses the ability to use them and to the utility that usage provides (Wei et al., 2011). However, this conversation, while transitioning from technology to the skills of the people that use them and to the fruits of their use is limited in its ability to take into account the social role of information and communication technologies (ICTs). One successful attempt in conceptualizing the social impact of the differences in access to and utilization of digital communication technologies, was developed by van Dijk (2005) whose sequential model for analyzing the divide states that: 1. Categorical inequalities in society produce an unequal distribution of resources; 2. An unequal distribution of resources causes unequal access to digital technologies; 3. Unequal access to digital technologies also depends on the characteristics of these technologies; 4. Unequal access to digital technologies brings about unequal participation in society; 5. Unequal participation in society reinforces categorical inequalities and unequal distributions of resources.” (p. 15) As van Dijk’s model demonstrates, the divide’s impact is the exclusion of individuals from participation. Still left to be defined are the “categorical inequalities,” the “resources,” the “characteristics of digital technologies,” and the different levels of “access” that result in differentiated levels of participation, as these change over time due to the evolving nature of technology and the dynamics of society. And most importantly, the meaning of “participation” in contemporary society needs to be determined as it is differentiated levels of participation that are the result of the divide and the engine of the ever-growing disparities. Our argument is structured in the following manner: We first claim that contemporary digital media differ from the previous generation of ICTs along four dimensions: They offer an abundance of information resources and communication channels when compared to the relative paucity of both in the past; they offer mobility as opposed to the stationary nature of their predecessors; they are interactive in that they provide users with the capability to design their own media environments in contrast to the dictated environs of previous architectures; and, they allow users to communicate utilizing multi forms of mediation, unlike the uniformity of sound or word that limited users in the past. We then submit that involvement in the information society calls for egalitarian access to all four dimensions of the user experience that make contemporary media different from their predecessors and that the ability to experience all four affects the levels in which humans partake in the shaping of society. The model being cyclical, we then discuss how lower levels of participation contribute to the enhancement of social inequalities. Finally, we discuss why participation is needed in order to achieve full membership in the information society and what political philosophy should govern policy solutions targeting the re-inclusion of those digitally excluded.

Moving on (part 2): Power and the child in curriculum history

This paper is the second in a two-part series that maps continuities and ruptures in conceptions of power and traces their effects in educational discourse on 'the child'. It delineates two post-Newtonian intellectual trajectories through which concepts of 'power' arrived at the theorization of 'the child': the paradoxical bio-physical inscriptions of human-ness that accompanied mechanistic worldviews and the explanations for social motion in political philosophy. The intersection of pedagogical theories with 'the child' and 'power' is further traced from the latter 1800s to the present, where a Foucaultian analytics of power-as-effects is reconsidered in regard to histories of motion. The analysis culminates in an examination of post-Newtonian (dis)continuities in the theorization of power, suggesting some productive paradoxes that inhabit turn of the 21st-century conceptualizations of the social.

Teaching about deliberative politics: Case studies of classroom–community learning projects in four nations

Theories of deliberative politics position grass-roots community members as more than spectators of politics, and instead recognize their capacity for political engagement by discussing and evaluating options in order to make decisions about issues affecting community life. The processes and products of journalism can assist deliberative politics by providing community members with information resources that are vital for understanding the root causes of problems, weighing up competing claims, forming networks around shared concerns, reaching decisions and undertaking action. This article presents the findings of case studies of four community–classroom projects--one each from Australia, New Zealand, the United States and South Africa--that develop the capacity of journalism students to be effective contributors to deliberative politics. The research points to the importance of learning activities that prepare students to work in diverse communities, map significant community places and structures, identify leaders and stakeholders, engage in respectful dialogue about problems and perspectives, and appreciate community frames and values.

The phenomenology of utopia : reimagining the political

This thesis argues that the end of Soviet Marxism and a bipolar global political imaginary at the dissolution of the short Twentieth Century poses an obstacle for anti-systemic political action. Such a blockage of alternate political imaginaries can be discerned by reading the work of Francis Fukuyama and "Endism" as performative invocations of the closure of political alternatives, and thus as an ideological proclamation which enables and constrains forms of social action. It is contended that the search through dialectical thought for a competing universal to posit against "liberal democracy" is a fruitless one, because it reinscribes the terms of teleological theories of history which work to effect closure. Rather, constructing a phenomenological analytic of the political conjuncture, the thesis suggests that the figure of messianism without a Messiah is central to a deconstructive reframing of the possibilities of political action - a reframing attentive to the rhetorical tone of texts. The project of recovering the political is viewed through a phenomenological lens. An agonistic political distinction must be made so as to memorialise the remainders and ghosts of progress, and thus to gesture towards an indeconstructible justice which would serve as a horizon for the articulation of an empty universal. This project is furthered by a return to a certain phenomenology inspired by Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Ernesto Laclau. The thesis provides a reading of Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin as thinkers of a minor universalism, a non-prescriptive utopia, and places their work in the context of new understandings of religion and the political as quasi-transcendentals which can be utilised to think through the aporias of political time in order to grasp shards of meaning. Derrida and Chantal Mouffe's deconstructive critique and supplement to Carl Schmitt's concept of the political is read as suggestive of a reframing of political thought which would leave the political question open and thus enable the articulation of social imaginary significations able to inscribe meaning in the field of political action. Thus, the thesis gestures towards a form of thought which enables rather than constrains action under the sign of justice.

Gender and political leadership : moving beyond stereotypes

This short paper suggests that the categories of ‘transformational’ and ‘transactional’ leadership styles ( see Burns 1972) may provide analytical purchase on the question of whether current women leaders have radically different styles and approaches to the earlier second wave feminist generation. The two cases chosen for this paper are the senior women in the Labor and Liberal Parties – Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop. The evidence – explored below – indicates there are strong transactional qualities to both women leaders.

Searching for a feminist voice : film festivals and negotiating the tension between expectation and intent

International Film Festivals play a vital role in shaping filmmakers’ careers. This paper presents some initial findings from a current major research project, highlighting the significance of particular festival programming of emerging female directors from developing nations. Some filmmakers showcased at festivals actively privilege the voices of women in their films as a means of commenting on pressing cultural and political issues. Ironically, other filmmakers do not subscribe to the label of “feminist” or “woman filmmaker”, even if their respective films represent a strongly coded woman’s point of view. Tensions also arise inevitably when scrutinising women filmmakers from developing nations within a first world film festival context. The expectations of the researcher, the festival, film critics and audiences inevitably must negotiate with the original intentions of the filmmaker. This paper explores the significance of women filmmakers in attendance at the Brisbane International Film Festival (2009) and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2010).

Composing maternal identities : the living realities of mothers with young adult-children in twenty-first century Australia

There is an abundance of books available on the topic of motherhood and mothering; the majority of these books focus on the vulnerability of babies and young children and the motherwork such vulnerability demands. In particular they focus on what it is right to do in the interests of the child, and particularly his or her growth and development. Such a focus is consistent in Western culture with modern moral frameworks where understandings of goodness have been assimilated to dimensions of human action rather than dimensions of human being, selfhood, or specific forms of life. As Charles Taylor has observed, much modern moral philosophy has focused =on what it is right to do rather than the nature of the good life‘ (1989, 13). The master narratives of motherhood and the prevailing social discourses of intensive1 and sacrificial2 mothering exemplify this view as such narratives and discourses depict =what mothers are expected to do [and] how mothers are supposed to be‘ (Nelson 2001, 140). From such infant/child-focused accounts a canonical maternal identity can be discerned; arguably, it is a restricted one. The majority of these books fail to address questions related to what it means be a mother in particular situated, existing, living realities. For instance, ask a mother with young children what being a mother means to her and she may speak of the challenges she faces balancing paid employment and her role as a mother, or the impact of the demands being made on her time and energy. However, ask a mother with young adult-children3 what being a mother means to her and she may speak in similar tones, but she may also speak in differing tones. For example, a "mature" mother may speak of the "empty nest", the "crowded house" and/or "its revolving front door". She may speak of issues related to the vulnerability of the long term marriage, elder care, or grandparenting, or even disillusionment and disenchantment. The purpose of this research is to explore the identity challenges and prospects of some mothers with young adult-children aged between 18 and 30 years of age in twenty-first century Australia. In interpreting the identity challenges and prospects this particular cohort of mothers encounter in their ordinary, everyday living, a diverse and particular range of maternal experiences.my own included5.have been traced, along with the social and ethical meanings ascribed in them. With an understanding and appreciation of voice as the medium which connects one's inner and outer worlds, this research illuminates the plurality of voices and the multiple layers of meaning in each of these mother's particular living and existing realities. Specifically, this research addresses the narrowly constructed, canonical maternal identity through a critical exploration and reflection on stories, shared in a research context, of the living realities of a group of self-identified "mature", middle-class, Australian mothers with children aged between 18 and 30 years of age6. By appraising the broader familial, historical, social, cultural, institutional, and, importantly, moral contexts in which these mothers are situated, 'thick descriptions' (Geertz 1973, 27)7 of maternal identities, and the challenges and prospects these mothers are negotiating, are provided. In terms of its ethical orientation, the frameworks which support and frame this research reject, repudiate and contest (Nelson 2001) the reduction of ethical concerns to individual or intellectual problems or dilemmas to be solved through the application of a theory derived from reasoned thinking. In dismissing deductive and =theoretical-juridical‘8 approaches, the individualistic orientation entrenched in contemporary Western moral thinking, expressed in the notion of '"what ought I to do" when faced with a problem, issue or dilemma of practical urgency' (Isaacs & Massey 1994, 1), is simultaneously rejected, repudiated and contested (Nelson 2001). In countering such understandings, this research reorients us to the illumination and articulation of who it is good to be, for each of these mothers, in allegiance with those goods which guide and inspire her orientations towards living a good life—a life which embraces and enhances the flourishing of herself and her significant others. With an understanding and appreciation that 'mind is never free of precommitment[—t]here is no innocent eye, nor is there one that penetrates aboriginal reality' (Bruner 1987, 32), this thesis is written with the voices of other interlocutors9. These interlocutors include the voices of my research participants whom I refer to as "research interlocutors", my textual "friends" — those scholars whose work resonates strongly with my orientations—as well as the myriad other voices that speak to mothers, for mothers and about mothers, such as those found in popular and mainstream press and culture. Sometimes these voices resonate; other times dissonance may be heard. In situating this research within these complementary frameworks, this research invites readers to join with me in considering, appreciating and appraising the narrow construction of maternal identity. I seek for this engagement, like the engagements with my research interlocutors, to be 'a meeting of voices, an authentic dialogue that is inclusive of the voices of all concerned participants' (Isaacs 2001, 6). I hope that the voices in this thesis resonate with yours (although, at times, you may feel some dissonance) and that together we can draw closer to the accounting, re-counting and re-stor(y)ing of maternal identities; like concentric circles of witness, the dialogue, ...will thus be expanded rippling into corners where one might both imagine, and least expect. Possibilities, then, are vast; the future exciting (Smith 2007, 397). This research is also shaped and guided by maternal scholarship, a relatively new field of inquiry known as 'motherhood studies' (O'Reilly 2011, xvii) which has its origins within the broader terrain of feminist scholarship. As a work of maternal scholarship, this thesis draws upon and continues the tradition of examining motherhood as it is experienced 'in a social context, as embedded in a political institution: in feminist terms' (Rich 1995, ix). It values mothers, their experiences, their stories, their lives. As such, this research is oriented towards 'matricentric feminism', a particular form of feminist inquiry, politics and theory which is consistent with and receptive to feminist frameworks of care and equal rights (O‘Reilly 2011, 25). A number of complementary conceptual frameworks have been engaged in this research with the thesis presented in three parts: the pre-figurative, configurative and re-configurative. As my particular living experiences provided the initial motivation for this research, an account of the challenges I experienced as a mother with young adult-children are outlined as a Prelude to this thesis. Attention then turns to Part One – Pre-figuring Maternal Identities in which the contextual, conceptual and methodological foundations underpinning this research are explored and outlined. In Chapter One, the prevailing cultural narratives and social discourses supporting and shaping the construction of the canonical maternal identity are outlined. Next, in setting the scholarly context, the critiques — arising from feminist and maternal scholarship — of motherhood as a patriarchal institution, mothering as experience, and mothering as work, are explored. As this research engaged with participants who are embedded in particular middle-class, heterosexual, familial and cultural structures, an exploration of family life cycle theory and main stream media accounts are also incorporated. The terrain in which "mature" mothering within an Australian context is experienced is also outlined, including the notions of "empty nests" and "crowded houses", grandparenting, elder care and women's midlife transition. Chapter Two gives an account of the conceptual ontological, ethical, identity and narrative frameworks underpinning this research. In setting the context for rich interpretations, the characteristics of being human10 are outlined before attention turns to our embodiment and embeddedness in our shared human condition11. From this point, attention then turns to understanding the moral form of human living12. In appreciating the vulnerability inherent in our shared human condition, the ways in which we may experience trouble in our lives is noted. The framing of identity constitution13 as complex, multi-faceted, relationally negotiated and composed is then outlined, followed by an understanding of why narrative is a valuable interpretive tool for interpreting and understanding human experiences. This chapter concludes with an appreciation of the ethical significance of storytelling. The research methodology is then outlined in Chapter Three. The rationale underpinning the adoption of the narrative interviewing technique of in-depth interviewing is explored. In exploring these methodological frameworks, the recruitment and interview processes involved in gathering and interpreting the recorded transcripts of ten Australian mothers with young adult-children are outlined. The method of analysis known as the Listening Guide14 best complements the multi-layered, pluri-vocal nature of narrative accounting. The final section of Chapter Three outlines The Guide, with one mother's recorded transcript used to illustrate this method's step-by-step process. Having gathered an understanding and appreciation of the pluri-vocal, multi-layered nature of narrative and identity constitution, the tone of this thesis changes in Part Two . Configuring Maternal Identities. This section consists of Chapters Four and Five and seeks to find meaning in, and make sense of, the differences and commonalities across these particular accounts. Chapter Four explores the living realities of four Australian mothers with young adult-children: Poppy, Honey, Lily and Heather. In presenting a thick description of these mothers' situated realities, the frameworks.the familial, social, cultural, historical and institutional backgrounds.which have supported and shaped each mother's experiences are illuminated. Simultaneously revealed through these particular accounts are the plurality of goods focusing and moving each mother to the moral form of life, a life of meaning and purpose. The harms challenging some mothers' moral motivations are also revealed in this chapter. Specifically illustrated in Chapter Four are the unique and qualitative differences of particular maternal identity configurations. Chapter Five reveals the commonalities amongst all of the research interlocutors' accounts. This chapter contests the individualistic orientation of many contemporary accounts of motherhood which are aimed at defining or contesting what a "good" mother ought to do. By turning away from such individualistic orientations, the chapter does not seek to define 'the content of obligation' (Taylor 1989, 3) but rather seeks to illuminate and articulate a richer, deeper understanding and appreciation of maternal be-ing and be-coming - that is, who it is good to be, for each of these mothers - in allegiance with those goods that focus and inspire her moral motivations. Part Three - Re-Configuring Maternal Identities, which is comprised of Chapter Six, draws this thesis to a close. In this final chapter, the preconceptions, conditions and aspirations for this mother-centred account of the living realities of a small, local cohort of mothers are reiterated. The insights gathered from the rich, descriptive accounts are illuminated and articulated, and the chapter closes with some suggestions for future research. In a Postlude, I reflect on how this research has been a transformative learning experience in my own life.an experience in which I have been able to not only deeply understand and appreciate the challenges and disorientation I was experiencing but also to identify and reorient my stance in relation to the good. In a practical sense, by offering thick descriptions of the living realities of this cohort of "mature" mothers, this research challenges the canonical maternal identity and questions its relevance for, and effect on, "mature" mothers' identity constitution. By bringing to light the complex existing realities of these particular mothers, this research critiques the canonical maternal identity by illustrating that each mother's life and her identity constitutions are complex, relationally negotiated and composed and that motherhood is an enduring way of being. Through these illustrations, this research engages with and extends understandings of difference feminism. This research, however, not only rejects, repudiates and contests (Nelson 2001) the narrowly defined canonical maternal identity. By illuminating and articulating the goods which shape and inspire these "mature" mothers' motherwork, this research offers a matricentric account which is consistent with and respectful of the particular, situated realities—the broader familial, social, institutional, but most importantly, moral values and frameworks—in which each mother‘s life is embedded and her motherwork oriented. By understanding and appreciating the complex and multiple webs of relationships in which each mother exists, this matricentric re-stor(y)ing of maternal experiences not only understands and appreciates the unique nature of each mother‘s existing realities, it is oriented to the continuing enhancing of the shared pursuit of the good which underpins particular maternal practices and particular maternal ways of being.