Migrant Houses in the village Zavoj, Republic of Macedonia, 1988-2010

The focus of this data is on the transformation of the village Zavoj in the Republic of Macedonia, due to emigration from the village, recorded through the architectural changes to the houses in the village. The village had become by default a place for the accommodation of elderly people who did not want to join their offspring abroad in the cities of immigration, or in the fringe suburbs of nearby towns.

The data documents the ‘material history’ of the houses, and constitutes a longitudinal research project tracing the transformation of the architectural fabric of the village since 1988. It includes visual documentation such as photographs and drawings, and includes the houses as HOUSE-STATES as follows:

House-Traditional: Vernacular architecture still in use and maintained as a dwelling.
House-Construction: Buildings that are still being constructed, the house as ongoing construction site.
House-Fragment: An eMigrant house-fragment is juxtaposed with the vernacular dwelling. Typical and affordable techniques of single brick cavity and reinforced concrete structure are evident in the new fragment.
House-Closed: Many new houses have only one door and one window, height, size and volume are minimal; and are closed a lot of the time.
House-Ruin: Vernacular traditional dwellings that are deteriorating. Traditional vernacular dwellings are rarely renovated, reconstructed or repaired.

The data is complemented by several field-work methods including participant observation, interviews, documentation of the village as a totality, recording of oral histories and myths, festivities, and archival statistical research about the vicinity.

This dataset comprises photographic documentation, sketch/drawing documentation, digital interview recordings, and interview notes.

Post-war migrant built heritage in Melbourne : from assimilation to multiculturalism

If place identities are created by ascribing subjective meaning to sites and buildings it follows that diverse groups will consider place meaning differently. This poses a challenge for the selection and interpretation of heritage sites in plural societies where notions of architectural significance are likely to conflict. Basing heritage policy on the premise of a shared heritage is particularly challenging when the cultural traditions of the past underlie definitions of architectural significance in a more culturally diverse present. This paper presents an introduction to research exploring the inclusion of twentieth century migrant built heritage in Australia. Through selected examples of recently recognised heritage sites in Melbourne, the paper considers how migrant heritage is included and what this reveals about the cultural traditions underlying Australian heritage discourses. The inclusion of migrant places suggests that there is an initial shift in heritage discourses where notions of architectural significance have expanded to include the history of post-war migration. However, the examples raise questions about the nature of cultural inclusivity in heritage frameworks.

Aesthetic anxieties : the problem of defining the migrant house in Australia

The interest of this paper concerns the problem about the migrant house – why has it been so difficult to define? In order to examine the problem of the lack of literature on the migrant house it is important to look at the literature on the Australian house, and to examine how the migrant house is positioned or not included in this literature. It will approach this through what is accepted as discourse analysis, but with a particular position informed by the work of Stuart Hall on representation.

Mobile texts and migrant audiences : rethinking literacy and assessment in a new media age

This article highlights the importance of rethinking literacy assessment in a digital and global world. Although pressures currently abound to narrow conceptions and practices of literacy, especially in an era of high stakes testing, digital multimodality and connectivity offer the potential for new ways of thinking, representing, and communicating, as well as new avenues for participating in relationships across social, geographic, and cultural difference. We explore the challenges of redesigning assessments so that they better take into account children's multiliterate capabilities. In so doing, we offer examples from our work in afterschool contexts that demonstrate how we have grappled with the complexities of assessment in new times.

Return to pre-injury health status and function 12 months after hospitalisation for sport and active recreation related orthopaedic injury

Background Hospitalised sport and active recreation injuries can have serious long-term consequences. Despite this, few studies have examined the long-term outcomes of these injuries. The purpose of this study was to establish whether patients hospitalised with orthopaedic sport and active recreation injuries, have returned to their pre-injury levels of health status and function, 12 months post injury and identify factors associated with poor outcomes. The present work was a cohort study with retrospective assessment of pre-injury status and prospective assessment of outcome at 12 months post injury.

Methods Adults with orthopaedic sport and active recreation injuries, captured by the Victorian Orthopaedic Trauma Outcomes Registry were recruited to the study. Pre-injury and 12-month outcomes were assessed using the 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) and the extended Glasgow Outcome Scale. Differences in pre-injury and post-injury SF-36 scores were examined and demographic, injury, hospital and physical activity variables were assessed for associations with outcome using multivariate linear regression.

Results Of the 324 participants 98% were followed-up at 12 months post injury. At 12 months, participants reported a mean 7.0-point reduction in physical health (95% CI 5.8 to 7.8) and a 2.5-point reduction in mental health (95% CI 1.2 to 3.0), with 58% (95% CI 52.6% to 63.4%) reporting reduced function. Sporting group (p=0.001), Injury Severity Score >15 (p=0.007) and high pre-injury vigorous activity levels (p=0.04), were related to poorer physical health outcomes.

Conclusions At 12 months post injury, most participants reported large reductions in physical health and reduced function. This information is important for furthering our understanding of the burden of sport and active recreation injury and setting priorities for treatment and rehabilitation.

Monumental vision : a confrontation with the image of the Eternal Return

"Monumental Vision” is a nuanced summary of Nietzschean nihilism and the Eternal Return as rite of passage for free subjects and as condensed image of speculative intelligence proper. Utilizing Gerhard Richter’s “Sheet 692” from Atlas, a series of photographs of the mountains and lake at Sils Maria, Switzerland, as summary judgment of the limit imposed by this condition on all systems of representation, this form of vision discloses the chiasmus embedded in consciousness itself. In constantly revisiting Sils, the very location where Nietzsche “suffered” the vision of the Eternal Return, Richter has engaged repeatedly this origin for what has come into his work via Nietzsche – that is, an elective veil that refuses all compromises with transcendence until such is merged with immanence.

As situated amidst modernist “ideology as intellection”, and subsequent nascent forms of anti-modernism, the Eternal Return as image also signals the return of the Kantian “aesthetic-teleological” synthesis in non-discursive or purely visual agency. As an elective form of aesthetic vision, and as image of time insofar as it registers an overwhelming externality (Other) that nominally swallows and empowers the subject at once, this excoriating sense of universal praxis underwrites artistic and architectural production of the highest order, renegotiating concepts of the paradigmatic.

Utilizing Georg Simmel’s late work on Rembrandt (1916) and his encounter with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (1907), the essay suggests that by the 1920s the avant-garde premises of modernism had already come under attack by an ahistorical and synoptic vision here denoted “monumental vision,” which also contains the imprint of eschatological time (invoking a schism present in rationality as such). The two readings of this image perpetrated by Karl Löwith in Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same (Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen, 1935), or the cosmological and the ethical, while considered irreconcilable by Löwith, have since the 1960s been recalibrated through the figure of the event to pose possible scenarios out of the stalemate of the confrontation between Self and Other (ipseity and alterity) buried within this image as limit. In this manner, the image of the Eternal Return stands at the boundary between two forms of time (or two worlds) and signals the irreducible confrontation present in speculative thought and the necessity of closure through an aesthetic vision that produces a unitary field for all creative acts.

Notably, Nietzsche’s startling vision from Zarathustra suggests that the limit imposed by the Eternal Return is also a mask for an austere condition within subjectivity closely resembling the conundrum of Fichte’s I facing I, or thought turned toward thought itself (absolute subjectivity as cipher for Being). In Alenka Zupančič’s reading, in The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two (2003), the Eternal Return effectively contains a secret formal function that grinds all “error” to dust – a highly suggestive interpretation that also neutralizes the schism introduced by Löwith between the cosmological and the ethical.

The return

Face to Face Exhibition

Everyone’s life is so different : the experiences of young Australian adults who return home

The article focuses on the experiences of young Australian adults who return to their parent's homes. It cites several factors that lead young people to return home such as unemployment, divorce and parenthood. It uses qualitative interviews of 22- to 30-year-olds as basis of young adults' experiences. It argues that the decision of returning home is not a failure, but a positive choice in living arrangement.

Opportunities or obstacles? understanding the challenges faced by migrant women entrepreneurs

Purpose - Applying theories of entrepreneurship, the paper aims to identify the factors - with theoretical explanations - that act as barriers to migrant women entrepreneurs (MWEs), particularly women from developing countries starting businesses in developed economies. The paper further explores which barriers also have the potential to act as enablers.

Design/methodology/approach - The relationship between immigration, ethnicity, gender and entrepreneurship has received little theoretical attention. Linking these discourses, the paper theoretically develops a framework of the possible barriers or enablers faced by MWEs.

Findings - The paper reinforces earlier research that MWEs are not a homogenous group; the problems they face are multifaceted, and MWEs from developing countries are the most disadvantaged of entrepreneurs. It identifies multiple factors - human capital, culture, family, institutional factors, gender and social capital- as possible barriers for MWEs. Findings further indicate, that among those barriers, culture, family, social capital and gender have the potential to play a dual role for MWEs, by acting either as a barrier or an enabler. Findings also highlight the overarching and predominant influence of culture – as explained by cultural theory -acting as a barrier for MWEs from developing countries.

Research limitations/implications - Given the increasing potential of MWEs, the paper provides implications for not only addressing the barriers but also viewing the barriers as ways to promote entrepreneurship among such minority groups. It further stresses a needs-based approach to customizing policies to benefit the diverse group of MWEs. Limitations: This is a theoretical paper. Empirical research is needed to test the framework and its different dimensions. Given the diversity of MWEs and the factors that shape their entrepreneurial endeavours, it is difficult to develop a single framework to encompass the complexity of the situation. Nevertheless, the proposed framework provides useful insights into the barriers or enablers that MWEs face, along with theoretical explanations and, thus, acts as a springboard for future research.

Originality/value - By providing a theory-based framework of the barriers or enablers faced by MWEs, along with policy implications, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the phenomenon of migrant women entrepreneurship.

Migrant stones : stonewalling with ghost muscle

A series of events: workshop in the collective memory and response to the stones of SW Vic, followed by a stone walling workshop led by professional stone wallers, and the construction of a permanent section of stone wall on the foreshore of Lake Bolac.