Learning to engage with human rights in heritage

Cultural heritage should not be seen merely as a technical matter or from a narrow visitor management point of view but rather as cultural practice—a form of cultural politics dominated by ruling regimes and social groups in which decisions are made about the future of and access to scarce resources. Several scholars have sought to push this approach further by arguing that heritage studies should take on the protection of human rights as a core consideration in the processes of identifying, inscribing, conserving and interpreting cultural heritage. This paper builds on these previous works to explore what the shift to a rights-based management approach in the World Heritage system might mean for various stakeholders in the heritage protection enterprise as they learn to meet this challenge and to find ways to support people’s right to access, enjoy and maintain cultural heritage. Reaffirming the need to maintain a strong relationship between theory and praxis, the paper draws into the discussion heritage practitioners, decision makers in governments and government agencies, scholars and educators. Of these, the principal emphasis in this paper is on educators who are seen to have a fundamentally important role in developing a critical understanding of the cultural heritage concept, how heritage is created, used and misused and how conservation approaches and programs sit within the broader context of community attitudes and aspirations and governmental responsibilities. A distinction is made between teachers in universities and trainers offering short courses more focused on specific employer needs. The paper focuses on World Heritage but refers to both tangible and intangible aspects. It shows how current moves to establish a rights-based approach to the management of World Heritage sites connects with moves elsewhere in global governance, most notably in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Simulated jury decision making in online focus groups

Purpose – A significant issue in jury research has been the use of individual jurors to analyse jury decision-making. This paper aimed to examine the applicability of computer-mediated communication to a mock jury deliberation study.

Design/methodology/approach – Groups of three to five Australian residents anonymously attended a secure chat room and participated in a semi-structured discussion about a simulated child sexual assault scenario. Deliberation transcripts were analysed thematically using NVivo. A hermeneutic framework was used to analyse the deliberation transcripts.

Findings – Five interrelated themes were revealed, each reflecting the tools online juries used to communicate, create meaning, and arrive at a verdict. Electronic jury deliberation promoted an understanding of how people make sense of child sexual assault cases in Australia today.

Originality/value – This study advanced the understanding of online decision making in a child sexual assault scenario. It demonstrated that knowledge of how juries deliberate and create meaning could improve our understanding of how verdicts are achieved. Electronic mock juries are a valuable adjunct to traditional jury deliberation studies because they are cost effective, time efficient, and offer wider recruitment opportunities.

The musical and social benefits of community choir membership in Melbourne (Australia)

Zonal banning and public order in urban Australia

In recent years, Australian governments of various ideological persuasions at local, state and territory and federal levels have introduced a range of zonal governing techniques to manage the flow of people in urban spaces. Zonal governance involves the identification and formal declaration of a specific urban geographic region to enable police and security personnel to deploy special powers and allied forms of surveillance technologies as a supplement to their conventional public order maintenance functions.

Despite the impetus towards open flows or movement within sovereign territories or larger territorial groupings, such as the European Union, considerable governmental effort has been directed towards the use of new forms of criminal law to re-territorialize urban space through new administrative, property law and regulatory measures. These low-level spatial demarcations introduce various supplementary police powers and discretionary procedures that enhance surveillance within a declared area to increase the level of contemporary urban security. Of particular concern is the legal right to ban or exclude “undesirable” individuals and groups from entering or using certain designated urban zones, to prevent antisocial or violent behavior usually associated with alcohol consumption.

To date, most discussion of the impact of banning and related surveillance measures focuses on illegal migration through ports of entry into sovereign nations and the commensurate burdens this creates for both citizens and non-citizens to authenticate their movements at national geographic borders. This logic is permeating more localized forms of regulation adopted by Australian local and mid-tier state and territory governments to control the movement of people in and out of major event sites and in the urban night-time economy.

A survey of recent reforms in the state of Victoria reveals how this new logic of mass-surveillance aims to promote greater levels of urban security while reshaping the conventional order maintenance functions of both the public and private police. This chapter describes these procedures and their impact in sanctioning the efficient screening of people to promote order in specific zones within the contemporary Australian urban environment, at the expense of more progressive and inclusive crime prevention initiatives. We focus on two exemplars of the intensification of surveillance through zonal governance techniques: ‘major events’ and ‘designated alcohol zones’.

Debating the capacity of information and communication technology to promote inclusion

This chapter begins with an exploration of the digital divide in the Australian context. This discussion is followed by an examination of online education, professional development and the capacity of ICT to enhance the well-being of practitioners. The chapter then focuses on the use of ICT in human services and the rise of computer mediated self help and support groups. The potential for ICT to promote and extend political participation is also explored as well as the role of ICT in global development. Throughout, the potential for inclusion and exclusion is highlighted, using examples and critical analysis for exploring the inclusionary and exclusionary capacity of ICT.

What's important in defining quality of life for older people? An exploratory study of the views of older South Australians

Background
Cost-effectiveness analyses of interventions for older adults have traditionally focused on health status. There is increasing recognition of the need to develop new instruments to capture quality of life in a broader sense in the face of age-associated increasing frailty and declining health status, particularly in the economic evaluation of aged and social care interventions which may have positive benefits beyond health. 

Group and team processes in organisations

During recent decades, organisations have shifted towards team-based structures to enhance organisational performance, and research has shifted to investigate these new work structures. This chapter explores team and group process research in organisations. The initial focus of this chapter is to define groups and teams. Types of teams and team development theory will also be briefly discussed. Several theories of group dynamics will then be presented. The input-process-output framework, which explains the relationships between variables in team research, will provide structure to the ensuing discussion of team-related variables, such as individual and team-level characteristics, team and group processes and team performance. A frequent goal of group and team-based research is to understand how to improve team effectiveness and thus performance. Team performance is therefore included in this framework as an important outcome variable. This framework is then extended and a contemporary way of categorising team-based research in organisations is presented. In addition, the potentially important role of moderating variables in team research will also be discussed.