The “inclusion” of students with vision impairments: generational perspectives in Australia

In this paper I draw upon findings of a recent qualitative project conducted in Queensland, Australia in which all actors – the researcher and 5 participants aged 13-17 years — were linked together by our shared experiences of being students with impaired vision (VI) and who were educated in inclusive secondary schools in Australia during the last two decades. The narrative demonstrates the alienating legacy of two everyday routines of schooling, the placement and the daily commute. In the paper I show how referential knowledge acquisition of a trans-identity research alliance can reveal barriers to inclusion that might be ordinarily overlooked. Theoretically I map the research relationship formed between myself and participants using both Foucault’s analysis of how human beings are made subjects (1982) and Bourdieu’s understanding of reflexive interviewing in qualitative research (1998). The empirical contribution of this paper is to demonstrate how special education discourses render subjects more “special” than the sum of their actual impairments, and methodologically to highlight the role of qualitative inquiry in the field of inclusive schooling.

Down the methodological rabbit hole: thinking diffractively with resistant data

This article, part of a larger study, began with an inquiry into the ways a small group of preteen boys and girls with diagnosed eating disorders discussed their ideas and attitudes about healthy bodies in individual interviews. Despite applying some of the usual analytic procedures, the data yielded little of significance in relation to body and health discourses, or to gender differences. We therefore wondered whether our underlying epistemological lenses and methodological toolkit had prevented us from seeing and hearing what was happening with this particular cohort. By shifting from a predominantly feminist post-structuralist, socio-cultural approach to one more inflected with varieties of feminist post-humanism and post-qualitative thinking, the data came differently into focus, and invited closer consideration. Employing a diffractive analysis then allowed some fresh, unexpected salience in the data to become more apparent.

The green economy agenda: business as usual or transformational discourse?

This analysis of the emergence since 2008 of the green economy agenda and the related idea of ‘green growth’ focusses upon the articulation of these discourses within key international economic and environmental institutions and evaluates whether this implies the beginning of an institutional transformation towards an ecologically sustainable world economy. The green economy may have the capacity to help animate a transition away from current socially and ecologically unsustainable patterns of economic growth only if notions of green growth can be discursively separated from green economy, strong articulations of green economy become dominant, and alternative measures of progress to gross domestic product are widely adopted. The concept of ‘rearticulation’, found in post-structural discourse theory, is proposed to guide this transition. This offers a framework to reconstruct notions of prosperity, progress, and security whilst avoiding direct and disempowering discursive conflict with currently hegemonic pro-growth discourses.

Schooling for self-determination through a justice politics of Indigenous representation

This paper presents data from a study of secondary school for girls, the majority of whom identify as Indigenous Australian. ‘Gamarada’ High School is located in a suburban area of Queensland (Australia) and was established to provide quality education for disadvantaged girls. The paper draws on student and teacher interview data from a broader study that was concerned with examining how the school addressed the economic, cultural and political dimensions of Indigenous girls’ disadvantage. The focus here is on issues of political justice in relation to Indigenous representation and, more specifically, how such representation at the school supports the key Indigenous equity priority of self-determination. Feminist post-colonial theories are drawn on to argue the importance of educators engaging with a politics of representation that initiates theory from the social location of Indigenous experience, reflects an anti-racist/anti-colonial agenda and recognises and values the central role relationality plays in Indigenous lives.

Structural adjustment and change in the Australian life insurance industry post demutualization

Deregulation of financial markets has been an important platform for government policy in recent times. It has been a catalyst in the expansion of financial sector. The experience of Australian life insurers during this period represents an interesting case study into the impact of regulatory transition. The lifting of restrictions changed the institutional environment within which life insurers operated. In doing so it precipitated changes in strategies and organizational structures of these financial intermediaries. An information cost framework is used to analyse the consequences of deregulation and its implications for the Australian life insurance industry in emerging global financial markets.

Gender inequality and education : changing local/global relations in a ‘post colonial’ world and the implications for feminist research

This article explores the relationship between education reform and gender equity, both within and between nation states. Utilising feminist critical policy analysis and post-colonial theory, it examines how education reform over the past decade has impacted on gender equity, and how educational reform is itself gendered. It considers the nature of gender restructuring; maps significant shifts in gender equity policy in the wider context of educational and social inequality debates; and through an analysis of recent research on gender identity, schooling and leadership argues that gender can no longer be privileged when identifying and responding to educational inequality. Key assumptions underpinning how social change and education reform delivers equity are questioned, concluding with feminist theorising about how social justice may inform equity policy and practice in culturally diverse educational contexts.

Gender inequality and education: changing local/global relations in a ‘post-colonial’ world and the implications for feminist research

This chapter explores the relationship between education reform and gender equity, both within and between nation states. Utilising feminist critical policy analysis and post-colonial theory, it examines how education reform over the past decade has impacted on gender equity and how educational reform is itself gendered. It considers the nature of gender restructuring, maps significant shifts in gender equity policy in the wider context of educational and social inequality debates and, through an analysis of recent research on gender identity, schooling and leadership, argues that gender can no longer be privileged when identifying and responding to educational inequality. Key assumptions underpinning how social change and education reform deliver equity are questioned, concluding with feminist theorising about how social justice may inform equity policy and practice in culturally diverse educational contexts.

The implementation of feminist law reforms: the case of post-provocation sentencing

In 2005 the Australian State of Victoria abolished the controversial partial defence of provocation. Part of the impetus for the reforms was to challenge provocation’s victim-blaming narratives and the defence’s tendency to excuse men’s violence against intimate partners. However, concerns were also expressed that these narratives and excuses would simply reappear at the sentencing stage when men who had killed intimate partners were convicted of murder or manslaughter. This paper analyses post-provocation sentencing judgments, reviewing cases over the 10 year period since the reforms in order to determine whether these concerns have been borne out. The analysis suggests that at the level of sentencing outcomes they have not, although at the level of discourse the picture is more mixed. While sentencing narratives continue to reproduce the language of provocation, at the same time, post-provocation sentencing appears to provide opportunities for feminist judging – picking up on the spirit of the reforms – which have been taken up by some judges more than others.

Customer repurchase intention: a general structural equation model

This paper develops a general service sector model of repurchase intention from the consumer theory literature. A key contribution of the structural equation model is the incorporation of customer perceptions of equity and value and customer brand preference into an integrated repurchase intention analysis. The model describes the extent to which customer repurchase intention is influenced by seven important factors – service quality, equity and value, customer satisfaction, past loyalty, expected switching cost and brand preference. The general model is applied to customers of comprehensive car insurance and personal superannuation services. The analysis finds that although perceived quality does not directly affect customer satisfaction, it does so indirectly via customer equity and value perceptions. The study also finds that past purchase loyalty is not directly related to customer satisfaction or current brand preference and that brand preference is an intervening factor between customer satisfaction and repurchase intention. The main factor influencing brand preference was perceived value with customer satisfaction and expected switching cost having less influence.

Floristic and structural characteristics of a coastal heathland exhibiting symptoms of Phytophthora cinnamomi infestation in the eastern Otway Ranges, Victoria

The floristics and structure of heathland vegetation exhibiting symptoms of Phytophthora cinnamomi Rands infestation was assessed at two sites in heathlands at Anglesea, Victoria. There were significant effects in both floristics and structure. Thirteen heathland species were significantly less abundant in diseased areas and 23 species were more abundant. Diseased (infested) vegetation, when compared with non-diseased areas, had less cover of Xanthorrhoea australis and shrub species and a greater cover of sedges, grasses and open ground. Structural differences were observed between heights 0 and 0.6 m, with a decline in cover recorded in diseased vegetation. Non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination of the floristic data showed a clear separation of diseased and non-diseased vegetation and that changes in floristic composition post-infestation were similar at both sites. Although there was some evidence of regeneration of X. australis, the recovery capacity of other susceptible species at Anglesea is unknown. The long-term consequences of loss of species and structure in the eastern Otways mean that the vegetation is unlikely to return to former status, especially if the pathogen continues to reinfect.

Disinterested truth: legitimation of the doctrine of tenure post-Mabo

This article argues that it is time for the complete abolition of feudal tenure in Australian land law and its replacement with an allodial model better able to promote proprietary independence, equality and cultural neutrality. The article considers the questionable constitutional legitimacy of adopting strict feudal tenets in a territory already inhabited by indigenous occupants. It goes on to examine the various legitimation devices that the courts have utilised to sustain the feudal construct and the effect that Mabo has had upon feudal orthodoxy. In particular, the article outlines why post-Mabo tenure is incapable of embracing a pluralist land system; it is suggested that the Eurocentric character of feudal tenure and the structural impediments associated with the acceptance of a non-Crown title prevent it from ever being able to effectively integrate native title into the structure of property law. In light of this, the article argues that post-Mabo tenure lacks both legal and social legitimacy and the 'disinterested' perpetuation of this system must be brought to an end. The article argues that the time has well and truly come to replace feudal tenure with an allodial model based broadly on the system that has developed in the United States but with particularised adaptations. The removal of the Crown and its associated cultural assumptions from the land framework would, it is argued, allow land interests to develop according to their individual cultural origins. This would create a more responsive and balanced system better equipped to embrace the developments of contemporary common law jurisprudence.

The influence of procedural and interactional justice, and disconfirmation on customers post recovery satisfaction evaluations

This study examines the influence of distributive and interactional justice and disconfirmation on customers’ postrecovery satisfaction evaluations, and in so doing, combines, for the first time, two existing instruments to operationalise the interactional justice construct. Using Structural Equation Modelling, the findings suggest that while both disconfirmation and justice are important predictors of satisfaction, distributive justice has the greatest influence. The research presented here reports on a section of a larger experiment-based study examining how customers’ postrecovery satisfaction evaluations are influenced by the way in which the organisation responds to the failure.

Subcultural capital and the female 'underclass'? A feminist response to an underclass discourse

It is often argued that economically marginalized young women occupy a school and post-school underclass, and that this underclass has a particular culture associated with it. Such views provoke a profound ambivalence in many of those who work with such young people. On the one hand, they are anxious to acknowledge the culture of the communities to which marginalized young women belong. On the other hand, they wish to avoid the pernicious implications of underclass theories that suggest disadvantage is the result of the culture and values of marginalized social groupings. This paper offers an overview and feminist critique of the structuralist and cultural or behaviourist strands of underclass theory. It focuses particularly on the work of Charles Murray, a major proponent of the culturalist perspective and the representation of the single mother in this discourse. It then considers how a less punitive theorization of marginalized cultures might be achieved by drawing on and adapting concepts from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology. The paper reflects on how such ideas might serve as a way of exploring how gender impacts on the forms of cultural capital available to young women in difficult economic circumstances.