Performing the 1950s New Australian

As a tentative beginning to locating a particularly local Australian brand of a post-colonial materialist (formalist) cinema this paper contextualises the recycling and re-samplings of mainstream industrial cinema that I have recently undertaken. I aim to place this practice within emerging discourses of hybridity, crossing-borders and a Global Cinema. This research speaks to my earliest experiences of migration into Australia, of becoming Australian, unfolding in my 50s childhood and enunciates the pressures my parents’ migration placed on them. The focus of this work articulates the somewhat emptied and gutted voice of the New Australian, a 50s term for the assimilated migrant (CAB 1948) of which the Dutch were considered exemplar performers, good white New Australians, who neatly left their Dutch identity at the door but who never-the-less witnessed the ambiguities of the ideologies they implicitly embraced.

Differences in primary health care delivery to Australia's Indigenous population : a template for use in economic evaluations

Background Health economics is increasingly used to inform resource allocation decision-making, however, there is comparatively little evidence relevant to minority groups. In part, this is due to lack of cost and effectiveness data specific to these groups upon which economic evaluations can be based. Consequently, resource allocation decisions often rely on mainstream evidence which may not be representative, resulting in inequitable funding decisions. This paper describes a method to overcome this deficiency for Australia’s Indigenous population. A template has been developed which can adapt mainstream health intervention data to the Indigenous setting.

Methods The ‘Indigenous Health Service Delivery Template’ has been constructed using mixed methods, which include literature review, stakeholder discussions and key informant interviews. The template quantifies the differences in intervention delivery between best practice primary health care for the Indigenous population via Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHSs), and mainstream general practitioner (GP) practices. Differences in costs and outcomes have been identified, measured and valued. This template can then be used to adapt mainstream health intervention data to allow its economic evaluation as if delivered from an ACCHS.

Results The template indicates that more resources are required in the delivery of health interventions via ACCHSs, due to their comprehensive nature. As a result, the costs of such interventions are greater, however this is accompanied by greater benefits due to improved health service access. In the example case of the polypill intervention, 58% more costs were involved in delivery via ACCHSs, with 50% more benefits. Cost-effectiveness ratios were also altered accordingly.

Conclusions The Indigenous Health Service Delivery Template reveals significant differences in the way health interventions are delivered from ACCHSs compared to mainstream GP practices. It is important that these differences are included in the conduct of economic evaluations to ensure results are relevant to Indigenous Australians. Similar techniques would be generalisable to other disadvantaged minority populations. This will allow resource allocation decision-makers access to economic evidence that more accurately represents the needs and context of disadvantaged groups, which is particularly important if addressing health inequities is a stated goal.

Doing without school! Spaces becomes places? Adolescent identity and engagement

This thesis highlights the failure of mainstream education to meet the diverse needs of some adolescent students. The interwoveness of identity, engagement and learning are significant, as it discusses the underlying assumptions that operate in many educational institutions, and that serve only a portion of adolescent populations.

The value of circles and the dangers of straight lines

This article focuses on how respectful learning relationships based on reciprocity between a Anglo-western raised educator and South Sudanese Australian students and graduates in social work and welfare courses in a regional location have (re)shaped the development of a research process. A reflective critique is intertwined with a description of my search (as an experienced practitioner but new researcher) for an appropriate ethical cross cultural framework for researching and advocating with a small ethnic population in a regional location. This includes a description of the process of exploring the need for, and positioning of, changing and re-creating relationships between the ‘researcher(s)’ and the ‘researched’ as co-authors; co-researchers; collaborators and participants to address issues of selfdetermination and power in the context of cross cultural research, education and human rights. The motivation to research seems a pivotal part of ethics in cross cultural research. As an educator I became concerned that the courses I taught in, and my own teaching practices, were (unintentionally) discriminatory. There appeared to be a lack of acknowledgement and/or action regarding the ingrained Western whiteness permeated and privileged knowledge and approaches in the construction and delivery of courses. I did not think I was adequately responding to, recognising or incorporating the different knowledge’s, strengths and needs of South Sudanese Australian students and graduates. There was a lack of fit between the academic rhetoric of human rights and diversity and my/our educator practice. This article explores the ‘corralling’ effect of mainstream research culture with attention to its potential for seduction and corruption that tends to separate the passion from the researcher, the researcher from the researched, and the actual issue(s) of concern ….from everyone.

Media gets its mojo on

People everywhere have the means to create and publish mobile content, but as mainstream media begins its catch up the possibilities of a mobile led communications revolutions has never been greater. This articel discusse a new form of creating user genereted stories (UGS) using mobiles. Whether it's in remote communities or being used by frontline journalists, mojo is an accessible technology and skill set that closes the  gap between the three major spheres of communication: community, education and professional media.

Masculinity theory in applied research with men and boys with intellectual disability

Researchers in intellectual disability have had limited theoretical engagement with mainstream theories of masculinity. In this article, the authors consider what mainstream theories of masculinity may offer to applied research on, and hence to therapeutic interventions with, men and boys with intellectual disability. An example from one research project that explored male sexual health illustrates how using masculinity theory provided greater insight into gendered data. Finally, we discuss the following five topics to illustrate how researchers might use theories of masculinity: (a) fathering, (b) male physical expression, (c) sexual expression, (d) men's health, and (e) underweight and obesity. Theories of masculinity offer an additional framework to analyze and conceptualize gendered data; we challenge researchers to engage with this body of work.

Maintenance of cultural identity

The aim of this qualitative study is to explore the transmission of health beliefs among three generations of Greek families in Melbourne, Australia and the way they understand both health and disease as an aspect of cultural maintenance in the context of the larger Australian society. More specifically this paper will discuss the extent to which the immigrant generation has created a memory culture and how this has affected the sense of cultural identity of the first and second generation Greek Australians. Unlike the mainstream Australian community, the Greek population has so far maintaned a traditional framework due to the importance they ascribe to both culture and traditions that have been handed down from from the immigrant generation to the first and second generation Greek Australians. However, it is not only the immigrant generation that holds on to these traditions. More and more the first and second generation Greek Australians are set on maintaining their Hellenic heritage, and many community organizations in Melbourne, Australia are now largely supported by the younger generations. The results of this study have practical applications in elucidating how the memory culture that has been created by the immigrant generation may impact this cultural group’s conceptualization of health and the potential this may have to impact the use of health care by providin insight into the role of culture in forming individual or group conceptulizations of health in this community.

White tribe: echoes of the Anzac myth in Cronulla

Since the publication of Fiske, Hodge and Turner’s Myths of Oz: Reading Australian Popular Culture (1987), Australian Cultural Studies has turned to the beach as a primary site for examining national identity and the myths of Australian culture. In the text the beach is read as a liminal site between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’, represented respectively by lifesaver and surfer. The meanings of anti-authoritarianism attached to the surfer are significant to the reading. And yet Fiske, Hodge and Turner also locate a heritage of authoritarianism, discipline and civic duty in the figure of the lifesaver: 

'Lifesavers have drills, march-pasts and patrol squads, while exercising a conservative pastoral interest in their members’ moral health. They are agents of social control. Further, they see themselves as servants of the community, sacrificing their weekends for others—a tradition of sacrifice dear to a nation which twice voted no to conscription in the Great War.' (Fiske et al. 1987, 64–65) 

Bloods, Crips and Southern Cross Soldiers: we are all gangbangers now!

This paper presents findings from the author's PhD thesis exploring violent youth subcultures in Australia. It addresses whether growing uncertainties around issues of cultural identity and belonging in an era of risk has produced more defensive models of DIY youth culture at a local scale. Theoretically, the author examines whether globalisation has unsettled normative youth subject positions associated with the nation-state, problematising conventional logics of youth cultural formation (i.e. which view questions of race and racism through a white/black, mainstream/subculture binary). As Beck (1992;1999) argues, the de-bounding influence of globalisation has led to an ambivalent set of relations where forms of youth identity have become freed from the nation-state and class based forms of community and must be self-organised. In particular, he argues that this has produced cosmopolitan subjects and social movements as well as ‘counter-modern’ subjects and cultures. This paper applies Beck’s theories alongside theories focused on global/local influences on youth culture to an ethnographic study of two violent youth subcultures in Australia, these being the white ‘patriotic’ youth formation which emerged in the Cronulla riots and youth gang formations in Melbourne’s western suburbs. In doing so the author examines the extent to which violent youth subcultures in Australia can be regarded as strategic responses intended to restore forms of collective cultural belonging at a local scale vis a vis ‘the global’ and its destabilizing influences.

Russia’s anti-gay laws: the politics and consequences of a moral panic

The issue of LGBT rights in Russia first properly came to mainstream international attention in March 2012, when the St Petersburg Duma passed a law prohibiting “public acts aimed at the propaganda of sodomy, lesbianism, bisexualism and transgenderism amongst minors“. The law provoked an international outcry, including calls for tourists to boycott St Petersburg, sister-cities to consider cut off ties with Russia’s “window on Europe”, and condemnation from the EU, with the European Parliament passing a resolution noting that it was “gravely concerned by developments which restrict freedom of expression and assembly on the basis of misconceptions about homosexuality and transgenderism” and calling on Russia and other countries considering the adoption of similar legislation to “demonstrate, and ensure respect for, the principle of non-discrimination”.

Security in uncertain times: policies for increasing the popularity of life annuities among retirees

Life annuities offer retirees an assured income stream for as long as they live. This makes it surprising that they are unpopular in most markets where their purchase is not compelled by government policy. With the numbers of retirees in the population set to increase dramatically, this low take-up rate of life annuities could exacerbate financial insecurity. Consequently, it is in society’s interest to implement non-coercive policies that increase annuitization levels. Although there is research that has focused on the possible causes of low annuitization rates, much of this research falls short of suggesting comprehensive strategies for persuading retirees to annuitize their savings.

A systematic narrative review of consumer-directed care for older people: implications for model development

Consumer-directed care is increasingly becoming a mainstream option in community-based aged care. However, a systematic review describing how the current evaluation research translates into practise has not been published to date. This review aimed to systematically establish an evidence base of user preferences for and satisfaction with services associated with consumer-directed care programmes for older people. Twelve databases were searched, including MedLine, BioMed Central, Cinahl, Expanded Academic ASAP, PsychInfo, ProQuest, Age Line, Science Direct, Social Citation Index, Sociological Abstracts, Web of Science and the Cochrane Library. Google Scholar and Google were also searched. Eligible studies were those reporting on choice, user preferences and service satisfaction outcomes regarding a programme or model of home-based care in the United States or United Kingdom. This systematic narrative review retrieved literature published from January 1992 to August 2011. A total of 277 references were identified. Of these 17 met the selection criteria and were reviewed. Findings indicate that older people report varying preferences for consumer-directed care with some demonstrating limited interest. Clients and carers reported good service satisfaction. However, research comparing user preferences across countries or investigating how ecological factors shape user preferences has received limited attention. Policy-makers and practitioners need to carefully consider the diverse contexts, needs and preferences of older adults in adopting consumer-directed care approaches in community aged care. The review calls for the development of consumer-directed care programmes offering a broad range of options that allow for personalisation and greater control over services without necessarily transferring the responsibility for administrative responsibilities to service users. Review findings suggest that consumer-directed care approaches have the potential to empower older people.

The role of effective partnerships in an Australian place-based intervention to reduce race-based discrimination

Localities Embracing and Accepting Diversity (LEAD) is an ongoing place-based pilot program aimed at improving health outcomes among Aboriginal and migrant communities through increased social and economic participation. Specifically, LEAD works with mainstream organizations to prevent race-based discrimination from occurring. The partnership model of LEAD was designed to create a community intervention that was evidence-based, effective, and flexible enough to respond to local contexts and needs. LEAD's complex organizational and partnership model, in combination with an innovative approach to reducing race-based discrimination, has necessitated the use of new language and communication strategies to build genuinely collaborative partnerships. Allocating sufficient time to develop strategies aligned with this new way of doing business has been critical. However, preliminary data indicate that a varied set of partners has been integral to supporting the widespread influence of the emerging LEAD findings across partner networks in a number of different sectors.

Representing and learning in science

In this book we argue for an approach to representational work in school science learning and teaching that engages participants, is epistemologically sound, aligns with knowledge-building practices in the discipline, and draws on extensive classroom study. We review in this chapter current research agendas around student representational work in science learning, including the assumptions, rationale and research practices of these agendas. We do this (a) to clarify precisely what we see as the diversity of current mainstream thinking and practices around representational activity, and (b) to articulate what is distinctive about our own contribution, noting the traditions, influences and prior research we draw on. We begin by noting the current dominant role of image generation and analysis in much contemporary science, and its implications for science in schools.

Expatriate skills training strategies of Chinese multinationals operating in Australia

Recent years have witnessed a phenomenal growth in outward foreign direct investment (FDI) by Chinese multinationals. In contrast to their developed country counterparts, Chinese multinationals lack experience in foreign expansion and international operation. Although there has been increasing academic attention placed on Chinese outward FDI, little research on expatriate skills training of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) has been conducted. Since the mainstream research focuses on expatriate pre-departure training rather than on learning during assignment, this study aims to bridge this gap by exploring how Chinese MNEs cope with expatriate training and skill enhancement when operating in an advanced economy such as Australia. The study utilises cross-level, in-depth interviews to analyse expatriate training in seven Chinese multinationals. Drawing on social learning theory, some patterns of Chinese expatriate skills training strategies are revealed, such as internationalisation as learning, the use of subsidiaries as a training tool, and learning as belonging.