The quest for authenticity in the west – negotiating the self in late modern cultures

Across western culture in the late modern era a number of phenomena have emerged that seek to challenge mainstream consumer capitalism and its effects on everyday lifestyles. Two of these movements labelled as Seachange (Amenity Migration) and Downshifting have grown steadily in popularity within the public sphere and also academic discourse. In this thesis these phenomena are investigated further using a Durkheimian platform for theoretical interrogation. It is argued that while previous research accomplishes much in the investigation of Seachange and Downshifting, there is a significant gap in theoretical explanation and synthesis that requires filling. Thus in this research, it is argued that the concept of self-authenticity assists in the fulfilment of this aim. It is shown here that authenticity guides the construction, negotiation and experience of the phenomena which serves to authenticate the self. It is further argued however that Downshifting and Seachange reflect a wider theme of the self where the individual seeks protection from the profane impacts of advanced capitalism. Subsequently, the thesis aims not only to reveal the underlying principles which feed each phenomenon, but also relate them back to a wider cultural narrative of the sacred self.

Genetics and the transformation of the personal

The shared nature of genetic information presents new challenges for legal understandings of the self. Within traditional legal discourses the individual is conceptualised as separate and autonomous. In contrast, the genetic individual is understood as inherently relational. This paper analyses the transformation of our understandings of the personal. The transformative processes are assessed through discussion of the changing meanings of privacy in the context of genetic information within families; changing views over access to information about biological parentage by children conceived through assisted reproductive technology; preimplantation genetic diagnosis and the changing context of reproductive decisionmaking.

Implementing the self-management threshold learning outcome for law : some intentional design strategies from the current curriculum toolbox

There is a growing awareness of the high levels of psychological distress being experienced by law students and the practising profession in Australia. In this context, a Threshold Learning Outcome (TLO) on self-management has been included in the six TLOs recently articulated as minimum learning outcomes for all Australian graduates of the Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB). The TLOs were developed during 2010 as part of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council’s (ALTC’s) project funded by the Australian Government to articulate ‘Learning and Teaching Academic Standards’. The TLOs are the result of a comprehensive national consultation process led by the ALTC’s Discipline Scholars: Law, Professors Sally Kift and Mark Israel.1 The TLOs have been endorsed by the Council of Australian Law Deans (CALD) and have received broad support from members of the judiciary and practising profession, representative bodies of the legal profession, law students and recent graduates, Legal Services Commissioners and the Law Admissions Consultative Committee. At the time of writing, TLOs for the Juris Doctor (JD) are also being developed, utilising the TLOs articulated for the LLB as their starting point but restating the JD requirements as the higher order outcomes expected of graduates of a ‘Masters Degree (Extended)’, this being the award level designation for the JD now set out in the new Australian Qualifications Framework.2 As Australian law schools begin embedding the learning, teaching and assessment of the TLOs in their curricula, and seek to assure graduates’ achievement of them, guidance on the implementation of the self-management TLO is salient and timely.

An exploration of The Virtues Project: Ontological, educational and cross-cultural inquiries into a moral education program within a Mongolian school setting

This thesis explores The Virtues Project's ontological, educational and cross-cultural dimensions taking Charles Taylor's philosophical perspective of an anthropological account of the self and a phenomenological account of moral life and engagement. The experience of Mongolian schoolteachers implementing this moral education program is analyzed using a narrative inquiry method. The globally attractive project appears in moral education and virtues ethics research and surveys, yet no critical evaluation has been undertaken. Its conceptual features are appraised from a Taylorean perspective. The Listening Guide analysis of teacher experiences is presented in two narratives. The first is about the teachers' implementation experiences of moral flourishing as selves, in relationships and in community. The second is about their experience of becoming Mongolian in their modern day context. In conclusion, the project is coherent, constructive and potentially suitable cross-culturally.

Irrational addicts and responsible pleasure seekers: Constructions of the drug user

Historically, drug use has been understood as a problem of epidemiology, psychiatry, physiology, and criminality requiring legal and medical governance. Consequently drug research tends to be underpinned by an imperative to better govern, and typically proposes policy interventions to prevent or solve drug problems. We argue that categories of ‘addictive’ and ‘recreational’ drug use are discursive forms of governance that are historically, politically and socially contingent. These constructions of the drug problem shape what drug users believe about themselves and how they enact these beliefs in their drug use practices. Based on qualitative interviews with young illicit drug users in Brisbane, Australia, this paper uses Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality to provide insights into how the governance of illicit drugs intersects with self-governance to create a drug user self. We propose a reconceptualisation of illicit drug use that takes into account the contingencies and subjective factors that shape the drug experience. This allows for an understanding of the relationships between discourses, policies, and practices in constructions of illicit drug users.

Boys 'doing' and 'undoing' media education : new possibilities for theory and practice

The purpose of this study is to investigate how secondary school media educators might best meet the needs of students who prefer practical production work to ‘theory’ work in media studies classrooms. This is a significant problem for a curriculum area that claims to develop students’ media literacies by providing them with critical frameworks and a metalanguage for thinking about the media. It is a problem that seems to have become more urgent with the availability of new media technologies and forms like video games. The study is located in the field of media education, which tends to draw on structuralist understandings of the relationships between young people and media and suggests that students can be empowered to resist media’s persuasive discourses. Recent theoretical developments suggest too little emphasis has been placed on the participatory aspects of young people playing with, creating and gaining pleasure from media. This study contributes to this ‘participatory’ approach by bringing post structuralist perspectives to the field, which have been absent from studies of secondary school media education. I suggest theories of media learning must take account of the ongoing formation of students’ subjectivities as they negotiate social, cultural and educational norms. Michel Foucault’s theory of ‘technologies of the self’ and Judith Butler’s theories of performativity and recognition are used to develop an argument that media learning occurs in the context of students negotiating various ‘ethical systems’ as they establish their social viability through achieving recognition within communities of practice. The concept of ‘ethical systems’ has been developed for this study by drawing on Foucault’s theories of discourse and ‘truth regimes’ and Butler’s updating of Althusser’s theory of interpellation. This post structuralist approach makes it possible to investigate the ways in which students productively repeat and vary norms to creatively ‘do’ and ‘undo’ the various media learning activities with which they are required to engage. The study focuses on a group of year ten students in an all boys’ Catholic urban school in Australia who undertook learning about video games in a three-week intensive ‘immersion’ program. The analysis examines the ethical systems operating in the classroom, including formal systems of schooling, informal systems of popular cultural practice and systems of masculinity. It also examines the students’ use of semiotic resources to repeat and/or vary norms while reflecting on, discussing, designing and producing video games. The key findings of the study are that students are motivated to learn technology skills and production processes rather than ‘theory’ work. This motivation stems from the students’ desire to become recognisable in communities of technological and masculine practice. However, student agency is not only possible through critical responses to media, but through performative variation of norms through creative ethical practices as students participate with new media technologies. Therefore, the opportunities exist for media educators to create the conditions for variation of norms through production activities. The study offers several implications for media education theory and practice including: the productive possibilities of post structuralism for informing ways of doing media education; the importance of media teachers having the autonomy to creatively plan curriculum; the advantages of media and technology teachers collaborating to draw on a broad range of resources to develop curriculum; the benefits of placing more emphasis on students’ creative uses of media; and the advantages of blending formal classroom approaches to media education with less formal out of school experiences.

The role of the internet and digital technologies in the struggle for recognition of the forgotten Australians

Our contemporary public sphere has seen the 'emergence of new political rituals, which are concerned with the stains of the past, with self disclosure, and with ways of remembering once taboo and traumatic events' (Misztal, 2005). A recent case of this phenomenon occurred in Australia in 2009 with the apology to the 'Forgotten Australians': a group who suffered abuse and neglect after being removed from their parents – either in Australia or in the UK - and placed in Church and State run institutions in Australia between 1930 and 1970. This campaign for recognition by a profoundly marginalized group coincides with the decade in which the opportunities of Web 2.0 were seen to be diffusing throughout different social groups, and were considered a tool for social inclusion. This paper examines the case of the Forgotten Australians as an opportunity to investigate the role of the internet in cultural trauma and public apology. As such, it adds to recent scholarship on the role of digital web based technologies in commemoration and memorials (Arthur, 2009; Haskins, 2007; Cohen and Willis, 2004), and on digital storytelling in the context of trauma (Klaebe, 2011) by locating their role in a broader and emerging domain of social responsibility and political action (Alexander, 2004).

Google Glass as a technique of self and the revitalisation of the monad

As the boundaries between public and private, human and technology, digital and social, mediated and natural, online and offline become increasingly blurred in modern techno-social hybrid societies, sociology as a discipline needs to adapt and adopt new ways of accounting for these digital cultures. In this paper I use the social networking site Pinterest to demonstrate how people today are shaped by, and in turn shape, the digital tools they are assembled with. Digital sociology is emerging as a sociological subdiscipline that engages with the convergence of the digital and the social. However, there seems to be a focus on developing new methods for studying digital social life, yet a neglect of concrete explorations of its culture. I argue for the need for critical socio-cultural ‘thick description’ to account for the interrelations between humans and technologies in modern digitally mediated cultures.

Storytelling and new media technologies: Investigating the potential of the ABC's Heywire for regional youth

This thesis investigates an instance of audience participation within the Australian public service media institution, the ABC. The case study for this research – the ABC’s ‘Heywire’ project – is a regional youth storytelling project, an online platform, and an example of the potentials as well as the limitations of personal narrative and digital technologies for incorporating the voices and self-representations of audiences. By investigating 'Heywire', this thesis illuminates the exciting opportunities and also some profound challenges that arise when public service media institutions invite their audiences to participate as content creators and storytellers.

An investigation into the barriers to the implementation of automation and robotics technologies in the construction industry

The rising problems associated with construction such as decreasing quality and productivity, labour shortages, occupational safety, and inferior working conditions have opened the possibility of more revolutionary solutions within the industry. One prospective option is in the implementation of innovative technologies such as automation and robotics, which has the potential to improve the industry in terms of productivity, safety and quality. The construction work site could, theoretically, be contained in a safer environment, with more efficient execution of the work, greater consistency of the outcome and higher level of control over the production process. By identifying the barriers to construction automation and robotics implementation in construction, and investigating ways in which to overcome them, contributions could be made in terms of better understanding and facilitating, where relevant, greater use of these technologies in the construction industry so as to promote its efficiency. This research aims to ascertain and explain the barriers to construction automation and robotics implementation by exploring and establishing the relationship between characteristics of the construction industry and attributes of existing construction automation and robotics technologies to level of usage and implementation in three selected countries; Japan, Australia and Malaysia. These three countries were chosen as their construction industry characteristics provide contrast in terms of culture, gross domestic product, technology application, organisational structure and labour policies. This research uses a mixed method approach of gathering data, both quantitative and qualitative, by employing a questionnaire survey and an interview schedule; using a wide range of sample from management through to on-site users, working in a range of small (less than AUD0.2million) to large companies (more than AUD500million), and involved in a broad range of business types and construction sectors. Detailed quantitative (statistical) and qualitative (content) data analysis is performed to provide a set of descriptions, relationships, and differences. The statistical tests selected for use include cross-tabulations, bivariate and multivariate analysis for investigating possible relationships between variables; and Kruskal-Wallis and Mann Whitney U test of independent samples for hypothesis testing and inferring the research sample to the construction industry population. Findings and conclusions arising from the research work which include the ranking schemes produced for four key areas of, the construction attributes on level of usage; barrier variables; differing levels of usage between countries; and future trends, have established a number of potential areas that could impact the level of implementation both globally and for individual countries.

Third-sector discourses and the future of (un)employment : skilled labor, new technologies, and the meaning of work

In this paper we analyse a 600,000 word corpus comprised of policy statements produced within supranational, national, state and local legislatures about the nature and causes of(un)employment. We identify significant rhetorical and discursive features deployed by third sector (un)employment policy authors that function to extend their legislative grasp to encompass the most intimate aspects of human association.