Healthy public in all policies

The introduction of the notion of ‘Healthy Public Policy’ in the Ottawa Charter is considered a relevant response to the emerging social-political context of the 1970s and 1980s. It also remains an important, yet volatile, argument for the consideration of policy impact on health. In our analysis, however, those that continued to argue for Healthy Public Policies and those who should develop them have remained naı¨ve about the profound political dimensions of this exercise. Applying insights from the political sciences, we argue that greater levels of connectedness and commitment across civil society, and governance integration between sectors and levels of politicking and action are required for the further success of health integrated policies. The role of communities and the key communicative drivers of the Ottawa Charter (enable, mediate and advocate) need to be strengthened in more astute strategies.

Australia’s position on medicines policy in international forums: Intellectual property protection and public health

Universal access to affordable medicines, which are safe, efficacious and of high quality, and which are appropriately used, depends on national legislation that is in turn constrained by a range of international agreements. This regulatory configuration also affects the profitability of the pharmaceutical industry, domestic and international. Tensions and contradictions between industry profitability and public health objectives relate to access, innovation and regulation.

Celebrity and public persona

Research on celebrity and public persona derives from fundamentally interdisciplinary sources. Although at its core, the study of public personality has been the object of investigations by those more closely associated with media and communication, the key disciplines of sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, political science, social psychology, and even anthropology and history have been part of its analysis. Celebrity identifies the “extra-textual” dimensions of the famous, in which the lives of the renowned are followed, read, and reported. It is a public celebration of individuality that is (but not exclusively) connected to consumer culture and democratic capitalism. Through these larger cultural tropes celebrity has had its strongest affiliations with the contemporary entertainment industries, particularly in terms of how they are covered by the media and the press for further value beyond the cultural forms that are often the origins of stardom—the public individual’s performances in fields such as film, television, sport, and popular music. Celebrity is a site of celebration and derogation in any culture: these public individuals are truly exalted and given a status beyond others, but they are also ridiculed for their believed-to-be unearned credentials for having such a public platform and voice. Moreover, the study of celebrity and public persona is also an investigation into the connection between the populace and these public personalities, where parasocial relations most evident in fandom identify how celebrities embody audiences with an affective connection that is truly powerful in contemporary culture. That power of embodiment and connection that celebrities possess is subsequently exploited by the media industries to promote and sell new connected cultural products. Identifying celebrities as part of a spectrum of public personas links the study of celebrity to the investigation of the celebrated and famed in a variety of professions and fields well beyond entertainment. Thus, the term persona is used in these studies of public personalities to acknowledge the mask that is deployed to present a public version of the self for this external consumption and reading by an audience, a collective, a network, a nation, a citizenry, or a community. Research into public personas has led to related studies of political leadership, self-branding, notoriety in business, and reputation management, and research delves into the presentation of the public self by greater portions of the populace in online cultures. Celebrity and public persona is a field in which research aims to investigate the significance and meaning of various versions of the public self in both contemporary culture and historically.

Will the real Waleed Aly please stand up?: Media, celebrity and the making of an Australian public intellectual

Abstract: Waleed Aly is arguably the most visible and vocal Australian public intellectual from a non-Anglo-Australian background. The ubiquitous Aly is a veritable Renaissance man - he is a television presenter, radio host, academic and rock musician. He is also a former lawyer, and served on the executive committee of the Islamic Council of Victoria. In short, he is the 'go-to' Muslim for commentary on a wide range of political and civic affairs. This article argues that Aly's media profile and celebrity status have as much to do with an Australian cultural imaginary that posits 'whiteness' as an uncontestable normative value as it does with Aly's undoubted skills as a journalist, academic and cultural commentator. It examines Aly's career with reference to Ghassan Hage's concept of 'whiteness' as a form of aspirational cultural capital and various theories of persona and performativity. For Hage, 'whiteness' is not a literal skin colour; rather, it consists of elements that can be adopted by individuals and groups (such as nationally valued looks, accents, tastes, cultural preferences and modes of behaviour). While entry to what Hage calls Australia's 'national aristocracy' is generally predicated on possessing the correct skin tone, it is theoretically possible for dark-skinned people such as Waleed Aly to enter the field of national belonging and partake in public discourse about a range of topical issues. More specifically, the article substantiates its claims about Aly's status as a member of Australia's cultural aristocracy through a comparative discourse and performance analysis of his presentation of 'self' in four distinctive media contexts: Channel 10's The Project, the ABC RN Drive program, ABC TV's Q&A and the SBS comedy-talk show Salaam Caf , which looked at the 'funny side of life as an Australian Muslim' and showcased other multi-talented Muslim professionals of both genders.

Political life writing in Papua New Guinea: what, who, why?

This book aims to reflect on the experiential side of writing political lives in the Pacific region. The collection touches on aspects of the life writing art that are particularly pertinent to political figures: public perception and ideology; identifying important political successes and policy initiatives; grappling with issues like corruption and age-old political science questions about leadership and ‘dirty hands’. These are general themes but they take on a particular significance in the Pacific context and so the contributions explore these themes in relation to patterns of colonisation and the memory of independence; issues elliptically captured by terms like ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’; the nature of ‘self’ presented in Pacific life writing; and the tendency for many of these texts to be written by ‘outsiders’, or at least the increasingly contested nature of what that term means.