Feeling it: understanding Korean adoptees' experiences of embodied identity

This paper examines the ways in which transnational Korean adoptees experience identity as an embodied subjective process that is simultaneously contested and objectified by social perceptions of their bodies in their adoptive countries and South Korea. To analyse these lived experiences, I draw primarily on embodiment theories such as Budgeon’s (2003) sociological concept of ‘body as event’ and Csordas’ (2002) cultural phenomenological view of the body not as an object but as a ‘subject of culture’. To analyse processes of (re)embodiment, I draw on Ahmed’s (2007) concepts of ‘space’ and ‘whiteness’. Based on ethnographic data in South Korea and semi-structured interviews with 22 adult Korean adoptees, this paper demonstrates how Korean adoptees’ embodied identities are lived in relation to racialised experiences of belonging and Otherness.

Louise Lightfoot and Rajkumar Priyagopal Singh: the first Manipuri dance tour of Australia, 1951

Manipur, a small state in the North-Eastern corner of India, is traditionally regarded as the home of gandharvas (the celestial dancers). Manipuri is one of the 11 dance styles recognized by the Ministry of Culture of India that have incorporated various key techniques mentioned in the ancient treatises like the Natya Shastra and Bharatarnava and has been placed under 'a common heritage' called Indian classical dance forms (shastriya nritya) - Bharata Natyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Manipuri, Mohiniyattam, Odissi, Sattriya, Chhau, Gaudiya Nritya, and Thang Ta. In 1951 Louise Lightfoot, the 'Australian mother of Kathakali' dance, visited the remote mountain state of Manipur to learn more about Manipuri dance. Soon she was successful in persuading and bringing eminent exponents of Manipuri dancing style Jagoi, Rajkumar Priyagopal Singh and Lakshman Singh, to tour Australia. Priyagopal, with the help of Lightfoot and their international tours, to some extent, de-provincialized and also popularized the Manipuri dance and paved the way for other dancers from North-eastern region of India in the International art world. Through this paper I attempt to highlight the contribution of Lightfoot in the promotion of Manipuri dance and in Australia. I here also engage explicitly with Priyagopal and Lightfoot's unusual dance collaboration and trace the historical journey and reception of a Manipuri dance in Australia. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

The depoliticisation of accountability processes for land-based grievances, and the IFC CAO

Many development finance institutions have responded to calls for accountability for social and environmental harms associated with their lending by creating Independent Accountability Mechanisms (IAMs). We argue that IAMs can, at their best, provide relief for those concerned with the nature of the implementation of development projects, thereby addressing what we call immanent complaints about social and environmental impacts. However, IAMs are poorly placed to address what we call contestational grievances: those that entail a rejection of core tenets of the lending institution's development model. Such contestational grievances frequently arise when communities and their supporters reject the commodification of land and associated displacement of people and their livelihoods. Analysis draws on the International Finance Corporation Compliance-Advisor-Ombudsman (IFC CAO)'s handling of a complaint about the palm oil company Wilmar in Indonesia. We argue that because the CAO is institutionally embedded within the IFC, it shares its normative grounding with the institution it holds to account, and therefore risks organising and legitimating accountability failures related to contestational land-based grievances.

Selective enumeration of dairy based strains of probiotic and lactic acid bacteria

Reliable methods for selective enumeration of probiotic and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are required for improving the functional food quality of probiotics. Various methods were evaluated for selective enumeration of seventeen LAB and probiotic strains. Tested sugars failed to select any species however, improved recovery of total LAB count. The strains were viable and physiologically active within a range of oxygen tension levels, temperature and acidic conditions. Prior methods showed varied results such as De Man Rogosa Sharpe containing bile (MRSB), MRS containing nalidixic acid, paromomycin, neomycin sulphate and lithium chloride (MRS-NPNL), M17 and L. casei (LC) agar failed to select Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium, starter LAB and L. casei strains respectively. However, LC agar appears appropriate for L. paracasei and MRSB for yoghurt starter bacteria in the absence of L. reuteri and L. rhamnosus. The study suggests selective potential of culture media largely depends on target species.

Qualitative observation in a clinical setting: challenges at end of life

This paper explores the methodological challenges associated with undertaking qualitative observation in the clinical setting at end of life. The authors reflect on their experiences of using non-participant observation to explore the nursing care delivered to dying patients in acute hospital wards. The challenges of observation as a method, clearly defining the participant group and involving vulnerable populations, such as the dying patients and their families, will be discussed. Consideration is also given to defining and working within the observational field, the researchers' dual roles, cost versus benefit, impact of culture, religion and ethnicity, and the determination of research limits/boundaries, with reflections from the authors' own experiences used to exemplify the issues.

Fostering cultural diversity in Australia: a case study of teaching, learning and assessing African musical arts

Australia is forged by ongoing migration welcoming a range of cultures, languages and ethnicities thus celebrating a diverse range of musical arts. In this multicultural society, music and dance may serve as a positive medium to transmit and promote social cohesion. I argue that the inclusion of innovative and immersive practice of African music in particular where authentic teaching and learning is facilitated may help foster understandings of culture in educational settings and the wider society. As a migrant forming part of the African Diaspora in Melbourne, I am strongly connected to my ancestral homeland (South Africa) when teaching African music to Australian tertiary students. Having gained ethical clearance to undertake the two research projects at Deakin University in Melbourne (Attitudes and perceptions of Arts Education Students: preparing culturally responsive teachers and Pre-service teacher attitudes and understandings of Music Education), I discuss tertiary students experience in relation to the teaching and learning of African music within higher education courses. Drawing on interview, questionnaire, observation notes, anecdotal feedback and narrative reflection, I employ Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to analyse and code the data into themes. By offering a discussion of assessment and evaluation, I explore and invite international dialogue in regards to how best we can prepare, assess and evaluate our students to improve the quality of musical arts education.

Staircases, pyramids and poisons: the immunitary paradigm in the works of Noel Pearson and Peter Sutton

The recent focus on the category of culture provoked by Peter Sutton's The Politics of Suffering (2009) has revived questions of the meaning and utility of indigenous alterity in Australia. The end of the liberal consensus, contemporary with a declared end of ideology in Australian Indigenous† public policy, has been doubled in post-ethnic academic work harbouring a renewed suspicion of what Dombrowski (2010, 21: 129-140) has called indigeneity's distinctive sympathy. Within a cultural economy of commensurability, the fact that political claims are often contingent on the indigenous people themselves maintaining sufficient alterity to warrant the special treatment afforded them is taken by some as proof of voluntarism and bad faith. In order to gauge this immanent reorientation of indigeneity in Australia, this paper surveys the works of two prominent figures in policy debates-the anthropologist Peter Sutton and indigenous public intellectual Noel Pearson-who have both argued that remote Indigenous communities suffer from a cultural pathology. This paper presents a conceptual critique of their popular press works between 2000 and 2011. Within the context of post-ethnic government policy after self-determination and scholarship after identity, this paper contends that we are witnessing the (re)appearance of an equalitarian humanism which proposes, following Esposito [2008 (Orig. pub. 2004)], to immunize indigenous polities and the settler-colonial state against the historical frames and alterity of indigeneity.

Impact of oxygen levels on human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell expansion

Oxygen levels are an important variable during the in vitro culture of stem cells. There has been increasing interest in the use of low oxygen to maximize proliferation and, in some cases, effect differentiation of stem cell populations. It is generally assumed that the defined pO2 in the incubator reflects the pO2 to which the stem cells are being exposed. However, we demonstrate that the pO2 experienced by cells in static culture can change dramatically during the course of culture as cell numbers increase and as the oxygen utilization by cells exceeds the diffusion of oxygen through the media. Dynamic culture (whereby the cell culture plate is in constant motion) largely eliminates this effect, and a combination of low ambient oxygen and dynamic culture results in a fourfold increase in reconstituting capacity of human hematopoietic stem cells compared with those cultured in static culture at ambient oxygen tension. Cells cultured dynamically at 5% oxygen exhibited the best expansion: 30-fold increase by flow cytometry, 120-fold increase by colony assay, and 11% of human CD45 engraftment in the bone marrow of NOD/SCID mice. To our knowledge, this is the first study to compare individual and combined effects of oxygen and static or dynamic culture on hematopoietic ex vivo expansion. Understanding and controlling the effective oxygen tension experienced by cells may be important in clinical stem cell expansion systems, and these results may have relevance to the interpretation of low oxygen culture studies.

Studies to prevent degradation of recombinant fc-fusion protein expressed in mammalian cell line and protein characterization

Clipping of recombinant proteins is a major issue in animal cell cultures. A recombinant Fc-fusion protein, VEGFR1(D1-D3)-Fc expressed in CHOK1SV GS-KO cells was observed to be undergoing clippings in lab scale cultures. Partial cleaving of expressed protein initiated early on in cell culture and was observed to increase over time in culture and also on storage. In this study, a few parameters were explored in a bid to inhibit clipping in the fusion protein The effects of culture temperature, duration of culture, the addition of an anti-clumping agent, ferric citrate and use of protease inhibitor cocktail on inhibition of proteolysis of the Fc fusion were studied. Lowering of culture temperature from 37 to 30 °C alone appears to be the best solution for reducing protein degradation from the quality, cost and regulatory points of view. The obtained Fc protein was characterized and found to be in its stable folded state, exhibiting a high affinity for its ligand and also biological and functional activities.

Australian multicultural policy: social cohesion through a political conception of autonomy

This article provides an account of the governance discourses informing Australia’s multicultural policy history. The article problematises the liberal ideologies informing these discourses – as essentialising the cultural identity of minority groups within exclusionary values about what constitutes the common good. Highlighting the ongoing imperative of questioning current frames for understanding and approaching multiculturalism, the article strengthens existing research that calls for alternative models that support a political conception of autonomy. The key argument is that social cohesion, unity and solidarity can be engendered through this conception where a situationally defined, rather than essentialised, view of culture enables recognition and legitimising of a proliferation of voices and versions of national identity and the common good.

Supporting minority women and girls: key frames of reference and understanding for educators

Recent high-profile rape cases in Australia involving Muslim and Indigenous minority groups have heightened contention around issues of culture, gender and justice. The article critically examines the culturalising of rape as an ethnic minority issue in the public and legal discourse associated with these cases. This examination problematises the western-driven narratives about minority women that undergird and make possible this culturalising and foregrounds Muslim and Indigenous feminist priorities concerning issues of gender equity and justice. Against this backdrop, the article draws parallels between the inferiorising of ethnic minority culture in dominant legal and public discourse and the reductionism of culture in education discourse. Towards realising the equity mandates of national schooling policy, the article outlines key frames of reference and understanding about culture, gender and justice necessary for enhancing educators’ support for ethnic minority women and girls.

Cultural reductionism and the media: polarising discourses around schools, violence and masculinity in an age of terror

This paper provides a media analysis of three interrelated sets of newspaper articles dealing with youth, schooling and violence. Understanding the media as a dominant and powerful cultural text that creates the realities it describes, the paper takes a critical view of the ‘standpoint’ of recent media representations of the Cronulla (Sydney, Australia) riots, gang violence in schools, and issues of education amid broader concerns with security in an ‘age of terror’. The paper draws attention to the polarising media discourses that demonise young Muslim men as the ‘other’—violent and dangerous—and advocate for ‘ethnic’ integration of this ‘other’ over ‘progressive education’ or ‘multiculturalism’. Such reductionist sociology is presented as highly problematic in its homogenising and inferiorising of minority cultures and in its silencing of particular issues imperative in understanding and addressing contemporary expressions of violence. The paper calls for a more nuanced interpretation of issues of culture and violence that, in particular, acknowledges how masculinity politics are implicated in current manifestations of violence.