Positive psychology and the demise of defamation

Defamation is one of the more complex and fluid areas of the law and varies considerably across the Australian jurisdictions. There are moves to unify defamation law. The threshold issue that is raised in any such process is whether there is in fact a justification for continuation of defamation law. Recent advances in happiness studies and positive psychology suggest that the chief interest protected by defamation law, reputation, is over-rated and is not in fact conducive to human well-being. What others think of us is not relevant to our well-being. Anecdotally it seems that people spend much time and energy in a bid to impress others in the hope that they will grow in the estimation of others and the world at large. Hence, the results of the studies into human well-being so far as reputation is concerned may appear counter-intuitive. Nevertheless, the studies are far more convincing than lay assumptions. People are often wrong about what is in their interests. This is recognised in the concept of regret. Individuals yearn for some things, but sometimes when they acquire them they discover that the journey was wasted. Reputation is one such thing. Defamation law perpetuates the myth that reputation is intrinsically important. Defamation should be abolished. In its place, a new cause of action should be introduced whereby damages are awardable for misleading and deceptive communications which cause damage to the individual who is the subject of the communication. This cause of action should be modelled on the misleading and deceptive conduct provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth).

Place, progress and memory : McGlashan and Everist at Geelong College

Building in an historical setting engages the problem of progress and authentic dialogue between tradition, contemporaneity and visions of a future. Since 1960, McGlashan and Everist have been the sole architects for Geelong College's Talbot Street campus, established in 1871. They have designed its master plans and all new buildings and alterations to the existing eclectic stock. As modernists with a task providing no opportunity for stylistic coherence in an age of universality, the architects were caught between protecting the College's perceived authenticity by continuing its historicist links with English collegiate architecture on the one hand, and their own modernist ethic on the other. Adopting what Frampton has called in his essay, 'Critical Regionalism', an 'arriere-garde' position (an 'identity-giving culture' rather than reversion to the past or to the 'Enlightenment myth of progress'), the architects avoid overt display of nostalgic historicism, modernist tectonics and populism. This paper asks whether and to what extent they have been capable of an authentic dialogue. Have they created an existential place in an 'architecture of resistance' as Frampton would have it, attending sufficiently to 'identity-giving culture' and the future? What is the role of implacement in the problematic of 'progress' in this context and how might it have affected a particular approach and the outcome?

Who is the 'lovable larikan'? : an historical inquiry using biography and autobiography

Every profession has its myth that defines its self-identity and work culture. For nursing, it's Florence Nightingale; for theatre, Homer and Shakespeare; for medicine, Hippocrates. Australian journalism too, has its myth - that of the hard-working, hard-drinking, aggressive and defiant 'Lovable Larrikin'. But unlike other professions, Australian journalism's 'myth' cannot be pinned down to one historical figure. It is therefore difficult to investigate the 'real' story behind the myth. Using an open-coding analysis of biographical and autobiographical material, this paper aims to detect larrikin-like characteristics among early Australian journalists (Colonial era to, and including, the interwar period), to identify significant people and events that developed larrikinism as a specific Australian journalism identity.

Portals of the mind

The idea of a gateway or portal to another world is common in myth and fantasy, and, obviously, far older than the use of the same notion in computing. While computing portals take researchers to other domains of data, the use of portals in myths is often far more complex. In creation myths, the passing of portals has immense consequences for humankind, as in Adam and Eve's expulsion from their carefree existence in the Garden of Eden (unleashing the world's woes upon their descendants), and in the carrying away of Persephone by Pluto into the Underworld (leaving a legacy of cold and sunless months each year). In other types of myths, and in the fantastic tales they have bequeathed, portals provide heroes with strange and wonderful adventures, and with experiences that leave heroes irrevocably changed. This article will now explore these types of portals in more detail.The idea of a gateway or portal to another world is common in myth and fantasy, and, obviously, far older than the use of the same notion in computing. While computing portals take researchers to other domains of data, the use of portals in myths is often far more complex. In creation myths, the passing of portals has immense consequences for humankind, as in Adam and Eve's expulsion from their carefree existence in the Garden of Eden (unleashing the world's woes upon their descendants), and in the carrying away of Persephone by Pluto into the Underworld (leaving a legacy of cold and sunless months each year). In other types of myths, and in the fantastic tales they have bequeathed, portals provide heroes with strange and wonderful adventures, and with experiences that leave heroes irrevocably changed. This article will now explore these types of portals in more detail.

Bastard moon : essays on Chinese-Australian writing

A timely collection of essays and interviews which starts by exploding the myth that the earliest Chinese immigrants to Australia 'suffered in silence' and ends on a question of crucial relevance to contemporary cultural studies: How do people of various races and cultures, especially intellectuals from Third World cultures, face a globalised future increasingly dominated by Western forces and Western systems of thought?

Ulster-New Zealand migration and cultural transfers / Brad Patterson

Books
Medievalism and the Gothic in Australian Culture. Edited by Stephanie Trigg.

What If? Australian History as It Might Have Been. Edited by Stuart Macintyre and Sean Scalmer.

Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand's Pasts. Edited by Tony Ballantyne and Brian Moloughney.

The Myth of the Great Depression. By David Potts.

Memory, Monuments and Museums: The Past in the Present. Edited by Marilyn Lake.

Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective. Edited by Marilyn Lake and Ann Curthoys.

Island Ministers: Indigenous Leadership in Nineteenth Century Pacific Islands Christianity. By Raeburn Lange.

Texts and Contexts: Reflections in Pacific Islands Historiography. Edited by Doug Munro and Brij V. Lai.

Day of Reckoning. By Lachlan Strahan.

Appropriated Pasts: Indigenous Peoples and the Colonial Culture of Archaeology. By Ian J. McNiven and Lynette Russell.

Recognising Aboriginal Title: The Mabo Case and Indigenous Resistance to English-Settler Colonialism. By Peter H. Russell.

Black Glass: Western Australian Courts of Native Affairs 1936-54. By Kate Auty.

Edward Eyre, Race and Colonial Governance. By Julie Evans.

Gender and Empire. By Angela Woollacott.

Uncommon Ground: White Women in Aboriginal History. Edited by Anna Cole, Victoria Haskins and Fiona Paisley.

Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia. By Regina Ganter, with contributions from Julia Martinez and Gary Lee.

Botany Bay: Where Histories Meet. By Maria Nugent.

A Man of All Tribes: The Life of Alick Jackomos. By Richard Broome and Corinne Manning.

Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia's First Black Settlers. By Cassandra Pybus.

Over the Mountains of the Sea: Life on the Migrant Ships 1870-1885. By David Hastings.

Ulster-New Zealand Migration and Cultural Transfers. Edited by Brad Patterson.

From Paesani to Global Italians: Veneto Migrants in Australia. By Loretta Baldassar and Ros Pesman.

Ways of Seeing China: From Yellow Peril to Shangrila. By Timothy Kendall.

East by South: China in the Australasian Imagination. Edited by Charles Ferrall, Paul Millar and Keren Smith.

Arthur Tange: Last of the Mandarins. By Peter Edwards.

Kin: A Collective Biography of a Working-Class New Zealand Family. By Melanie Nolan.

Ida Leeson A Life: Not a Blue-Stocking Lady. By Sylvia Martin.

Will Dyson: Australia's Radical Genius. By Ross McMullin.

Francis De Groot: Irish Fascist Australian Legend. By Andrew Moore.

South by Northwest: The Magnetic Crusade and the Contest for Antarctica. By Granville Allen Mawer.

From Woolloomooloo to 'Eternity': A History of Australian Baptists. 2 vols. Volume 1: Crowing and Australian Church (1831-1914), Volume 2: A National Church in a Global Community (1914-2005). By Ken R. Manley.

The contagious magic of James Cook in Captain-Cook's cottage

It is widely known that the so-called Cooks' Cottage in Fitzroy Gardens, relocated from Yorkshire to Melbourne in 1934, was never inhabited by Captain James Cook. Yet a subliminal nationalism, sustained by the ancient traditions of contagious magic, feeds the conviction that the dwelling must be directly connected to Australia's foundation hero — a relic that the great man touched — or else it is meaningless. This paper tracks a sequence of managerial–interpretive strategies derived from a chronology of knowledge systems to make meanings at the cottage. It introduces evidence of the original shape of the building in its Great Ayton location, and observes the consequences on management and interpretation of an older demolition and consequent rebuilding of only half the cottage in Melbourne. Much turns on changing ideas about authenticity, as management strategies fail to engage the popular taste for a hero via the magic of faith. The result is a set of opposing principles in presenting the cottage: the role of the historical record as it has enlarged, and the desires of visitors who expect a simple connection between myth and materiality.

Resisting assimilation : the mild aesthetics and wild perceptions of the migrant house

The physical adaptation, remaking and maintenance, or building of the house plays a significant role in immigrants’ sense of belonging to a community, especially in contexts of first generation elderly immigrants with minimal English language skills. Psychoanalytic theories propose that objects are integral to a subject’s identity, but that the path of effect between the subject and object is not causal or direct, rather it goes via the unconscious. This paper seeks to examine the relationship between immigrants and their houses through these theories adapting them to an analysis of the houses. It draws its data from field research of three elderly immigrant households. The iconography of the house has always been perceived as central to the analysis of dreams, here the thesis is that the house is the most significant object of the immigrant because it mediates the many worlds inherent to the migrant’s imaginary landscapes. The analysis will seek to understand this role of the house.

Secondly, while many houses in which migrants live can barely be differentiated in clear physical ways from the typology of houses built in Australia, the perception that they are different is a strong myth. At the least it has resulted in very little, if any, study of this vernacular of new Australian houses. It would be easy to argue that to build a house in Australia is the most important mode of assimilation because a way of life is intrinsically set by this suburban paradigm. But for the reason of this perception of difference I will explore an idea about ethnic aesthetics as a mode of resisting assimilation. In writing on taste in his seminal book, Distinction, the sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, has argued that taste is a way of classifying people into classes, race, culture, but it is also a way for dominant and ruling classes to resist challenges from other parties, and maintain a particular hierarchy of society. In this case those other parties are ethnic communities in Australia whose tastes are not always the same as that of the dominant Anglo-Celtic community.

What is a presentational media regime? The contemporary breakdown in systems of representation

Foundational to both the operation and legitimation of our traditional media is the idea of representation: in some sense the images of television, the sounds of radio, the narratives of film, and the various public personalities stand in or in place of ourselves. Likewise our contemporary political system function as an elaborate representational system, where regions, "seats", electorates, the nation, and the nationstate are represented by individuals, parties and symbols. Although, there are differences between and among modern nation-states as clearly different political and cultural agendas are at play, the interplay of contemporary media, culture and politics has produced what can be called a 'representational regime' that more or less operates globally, albeit fragmented into national and regional groupings.

This paper explores the initial stages in the breakdown of this system of representation that has allowed a certain organization of culture and politics to expand and develop over the last two centuries. It acknowledges that central to this regime is something Nick Couldry has identified as "the myth of the mediated centre" (Couldry, 2003). What the paper argues, and therefore differs from Couldry's conclusion, is that there are cracks in the glue that holds the system together and they are emerging in the uses of new media. Through an exploration of presentational media - that is, media that is more involved with the presentation of the self for public/private and networked consumption than traditional media's effort to embody their audience in its narratives - the paper reaches for conclusions that identify a more elaborate legitimation crisis looming in our political and cultural worlds.

Fleshed sacred : the carnal theologies of Nick Cave

Contents: Cultural contexts. The light within : the 21st century love songs of Nick Cave / Jillian Burt ; Planting seeds / Clinton Walker ; Nick Cave and the Australian language of laughter / Karen Welberry ; Nick Cave, dance performance and the production of masculinity / Laknath Jayasinghe -- Intersections. An audience for antagonism / Chris Bilton ; And the ass saw the angel : a novel of fragment and excess / Carol Hart ; Red right hand : the cinema and Nick Cave / Adrian Danks ; Grinderman : all stripped down / Angela Jones -- The sacred. From mutiny to calling upon the author : Cave's religion / Robert Eaglestone ; Oedipus wrecks : Cave and the Presley myth / Nathan Wiseman-Trowse ; Fleshed sacred : the carnal theologies of Nick Cave / Lyn McCredden ; The moose and Nick Cave : melancholy, creativity and love songs / Tanya Dalziell.

Small rural emergency departments are not simply cut-down large urban emergency departments

 It is important to understand how small rural emergency departments work. They are a significant fraction of a state’s medical system. Although they each see only a few thousand patients a year, as a group they are likely to treat more emergency patients than the largest city hospital. It is a myth that they only deal with minor ailments. 

Giorgio de Chirico and the idea of enigmatic imagery : the innocence of becoming

My paintings emerge from within a context best explained by reference to Nietzsche's perspectivism. That is an intellectual attitude that deprivileges rationalism and accommodates scepticism or unknowing as an acceptable starting point From this standpoint art/language can be seen as being in a state of becoming rather than as representing a state of being. This thesis aims to demonstrate, not only by a philosophical encounter with Giorgio de Chirico's work: ie. his use of myth, his Nietzschean perspectivism and his enigmatic interpretation of figuration, that the most helpful context and understanding of my work can be realied. De Chirico's art, like Nietzsche's philosophy seeks in its processes to explore the possible unity of Dionysian aesthetic force with the Apollonian. Neither Nietzsche nor de Chirico considered within a post-Socratic world that this unity was realizable. Nevertheless they both share in their respective art forms a need to represent the relentless struggle to enact the disjunction of the two aesthetic forces in a secular world. The artist’s enigmatic imagery is characterized by a consideration of appearance and reality and it is for this reason that the work was selected as a model for investigating the nature of enigma. His use of seemingly straightforward, ordinary images suggests a sense of accessibility, yet at the same time they are irreducible to knowing and my own image-making was greatly expanded by investigating these concerns. I am not arguing that de Chirico was influenced by Nietzsche but instead that Nietzsche's philosophical point of view and his use of poetic language to express these views lay in discovering the qualities and substance of the Dionysian spirit As well as working within a Nietzschean world-view set out in The Birth of Tragedy, de Chirico has also drawn on the Italian unification, specifically the Risorgimento and the lineage of these political and mythical figures were endemic to his art and they interface the with his use of the Apollonian-Dionysian disunity first explored by Nietzsche. The focus of the exegesis will be to present the poetic and philosophical use made of the latter in de Chirico’s art It is anticipated that this philosophical encounter with the aesthetic, social and political world of de Chirico will, not only assist in interpreting his life's work anew, but will also provide a context in which my paintings of enigma might be interpreted.

Correlates of screening mammography for Italian and Anglo-Australian women

The first aim of the research was to determine the applicability of certain variables from the Health Belief Model (HBM), the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), the risk dimensions from the Psychometric Paradigm, the Common-Sense Model of Illness Representations and the Locus of Control to Italian women’s beliefs and behaviours in relation to screening mammography. These models have predominantly been derived and evaluated with English-speaking persons. The study used quantitative and qualitative methods to enable explanation of research-driven and participant-driven issues. The second aim was to include Italian women in health behaviour research and to contrast the Italian sample with the Anglo-Australian sample to determine if differences exist in relation to their beliefs. In Australia many studies in health behaviour research do not include women whose first language is not English. The third aim was to evaluate the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria’s (ACCV) Community Language Program (CLP) by: (a) identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the program as seen by the participants; and (b) assessing the impact of the program on women’s knowledge and beliefs about breast cancer, early detection of breast cancer, self-reported and intended breast screening behaviours. The CLP is an information service that uses women’s first language to convey information to women whose first language is not English. The CLP was designed to increase knowledge about breast and cervical cancer. The research used a pre-test-intervention-post-test design with 174 Italian-born and 138 Anglo-Australian women aged 40 years and over. Interviews for the Italian sample were conducted in Italian. The intervention was an information session that related to breast health and screening mammography. Demographic variables were collected in the Pre-Test only. Qualitative open-ended questions that related specifically to the information session were collected in the Post-Test phase of the study. Direct logistic regression was used with the participants’ beliefs and behaviours to identify the relevant variables for language (Italian speaking and English-speaking), attendance to an information session, mammography screening and breast self-examination (BSE) behaviour. Pre- and Post-Test comparisons were conducted using chi-square tests for the non-parametric data and paired sample t-tests for the parametric data. Differences were found between the Italian and Anglo-Australian women in relation to their beliefs about breast cancer screening. The Italian women were: (1) more likely to state that medical experts understood the causes of breast cancer; (2) more likely to feel that they had less control over their personal risk of getting breast cancer; (3) more likely to be upset and frightened by thinking about breast cancer; (4) less likely to perceive breast cancer as serious; (4) more likely to only do what their doctor told them to do; and (5) less likely to agree that there were times when a person has cancer and they don’t know it. A pattern emerged for the Italian and Anglo-Australian women from the logistic regression analyses. The Italian women were much more likely to comply with medical authority and advice. The Anglo-Australian women were more likely to feel that they had some control over their health. Specifically, the risk variable ‘dread’ was more applicable to the Italian women’s behaviour and internal locus of control variable was more relevant to the Anglo-Australian women. The qualitative responses also differed for the two samples. The Italian women’s comments were more general, less specific, and more limited than that of the Anglo-Australian women. The Italian women talked about learning how to do BSE whereas the Anglo-Australian women said that attending the session had reminded them to do BSE more regularly. The key findings and contributions of the present research were numerous. The focus on one cultural group ensured comprehensive analyses, as did the inclusion of an adequate sample size to enable the use of multivariate statistics. Separating the Italian and Anglo-Australian samples in the analyses provided theoretical implications that would have been overlooked if the two groups were combined. The use of both qualitative and quantitative data capitalised on the strengths of both techniques. The inclusion of an Anglo-Australian group highlighted key theoretical findings, differences between the two groups and unique contributions made by both samples during the collection of the qualitative data. The use of a pre-test-intervention-post-test design emphasised the reticence of the Italian sample to participate and talk about breast cancer and confirmed and validated the consistency of the responses across the two interviews for both samples. The inclusion of non-cued responses allowed the researcher to identify the key salient issues relevant to the two groups. The limitations of the present research were the lack of many women who were not screening and reliance on self-report responses, although few differences were observed between the Pre- and Post-Test comparisons. The theoretical contribution of the HBM and the TRA variables was minimal in relation to screening mammography or attendance at the CLP. The applicability of these health behaviour theories may be less relevant for women today as they clearly knew the benefits of and the seriousness of breast cancer screening. The present research identified the applicability of the risk variables to the Italian women and the relevance of the locus of control variables to the Anglo-Australian women. Thus, clear cultural differences occurred between the two groups. The inclusion of the illness representations was advantageous as the responses highlighted ideas and personal theories salient to the women not identified by the HBM. The use of the illness representations and the qualitative responses further confirmed the relevance of the risk variables to the Italian women and the locus of control variables to the Anglo-Australian women. Attendance at the CLP did not influence the women to attend for mammography screening. Behavioural changes did not occur between the Pre- and Post-Test interviews. Small incremental changes as defined by the TTM and the stages of change may have occurred. Key practical implications for the CLP were identified. Improving the recruitment methods to gain a higher proportion of women who do not screen is imperative for the CLP promoters. The majority of the Italian and Anglo-Australian women who attended the information sessions were women who screen. The fact that Italian women do not like talking or thinking about cancer presents a challenge to promoters of the CLP. The key theoretical finding that Italian women dread breast cancer but comply with their doctor provides clear strategies to improve attendance at mammography screening. In addition, the inclusion of lay health advisors may be one way of increasing attendance to the CLP by including Italian women already attending screening and likely to have attended a CLP session. The present research identified the key finding that improving Anglo-Australian attendance at an information session is related to debunking the myth surrounding familial risk of breast cancer and encouraging the Anglo-Australian women to take more control of their health. Improving attendance for Italian women is related to reducing the fear and dread of breast cancer and building on the compliance pattern with medical authority. Therefore, providing an information session in the target language is insufficient to attract non-screeners to the session and then to screen for breast cancer. Suggestions for future research in relation to screening mammography were to include variables from more than one theory or model, namely the risk, locus of control and illness representations. The inclusion of non-cued responses to identify salient beliefs is advantageous. In addition, it is imperative to describe the profile of the cultural sample in detail, include detailed descriptions of the translation process and be aware of the tendency of Italian women to acquiesce with medical authority.

Ned Kelly wallpapers: Spring variation 2008

The simple abstractions of the Ned Kelly Wallpaper Series attempt to take some of the puff out of the larrikin myth that surrounds the Ned Kelly figure These paintings destabilise the heroic expressionist gesture (beloved of Sidney Nolan) as modest pattern - as one of the many avaìlable patterns of history

Public space : its mythopoetic foundations and the limits of the law

Drawing on William Dawes' unpublished notebooks on the Indigenous languages spoken around Sydney Cove at the time of white settlement, this article hopes to provoke critical reflection on the limits of the law. Dawes' record of communication with Patyegarang documents a transaction that was both political and erotic, both about the law and in defiance of it. In performances that were gestural as well as verbal, they marked out a middle ground where the laws governing both of them were placed in parentheses and new, provisional, rules of exchange improvised. This article notices the existence of this middle ground, and marks its disappearance in subsequent legal discourse about the status of Indigenous people. Ultimately, it offers a reflection on the laws that govern the meeting place which the middle ground underwrites. That is, before public space became fixed for the legally binding discourse of politics, it was mobile and self-constituting. Is this simply a myth or is it a mythopoetic mechanism for rethinking the grounding of law in Australia? If it is the latter, then the next step will be to establish a middle ground of exchange with Indigenous law-giving systems.