Reconstructing Aboriginal identity : a social-political case-study in curriculum change

This paper locates the development of Aboriginal Studies curricula within the context of Aboriginal political activism and 20th century reconstruction of Aboriginal identity in Australia. It is suggested that the incorporation of the reconstructed Aboriginal identity in Aboriginal Studies curricula institutionalised a radical conceptual change. Using the senior secondary Aboriginal Studies curriculum as an example, it is argued that unresolved tensions exist in the syllabus, the conceptualisation of community and the social process of identity formation inherent in recent reconstructions of Aboriginal identity. The question posed is whether these tensions will ultimately act as a form of oppression for Aboriginal people in the cross-cultural environment of contemporary Australia.

Reinforcing the myth : constructing Australian identity in 'reality TV'

The current incarnation of ‘reality TV’ in Australia has a strong focus on the portrayal of everyday life. Although based on ‘real’ situations or people, there is a clear tension between ideas of authenticity and performance.  As a global phenomenon, ‘reality’ formats are produced for local audiences by highlighting aspects of the national culture and identity, with format popularity directly linked to identification and affirmation of the spectacle of ‘reality’. This paper will analyse the use of popular Australian myth in ‘reality’ formats by charting narrative and character construction as an ‘illusory everyday’, with reference to Bondi Rescue (Cordell Jigsaw). The paper will examine the representation of Australian identity through both myth and construction in ‘reality TV’ as the perpetuation of a cultural simulation. Implications for research on the genre and the industry are also discussed.

Understanding exercise uptake and adherence for people with chronic conditions : a new model demonstrating the importance of exercise identity, benefits of attending and support

Understanding the factors influencing uptake and adherence to exercise for people with chronic conditions from different ages, genders and ethnicities is important for planning exercise services. This paper presents evidence supporting a new model of exercise uptake and adherence applicable to people with chronic conditions from diverse socio-demographic backgrounds. The study is based on 130 semistructured interviews with people with chronic conditions, including both those who did and those who did not attend exercise services, and supporters of those who attended. Analysis followed the guidelines of ‘framework analysis’. Results show that three factors were particularly important in influencing adherence behavior: (i) exercise identity, (ii) support and (iii) perceived benefits of attending. Social and cultural identities impacted on willingness to exercise, importance of exercise and perceived appropriateness of exercising. Having at least one supporter providing different types of support was associated with high levels of attendance. Those people who valued the social and psychological benefits of attending were more likely to be high attenders. The new model illustrates interaction between these three factors and discusses how these can be taken into account when planning exercise services for people with chronic conditions drawn from diverse socio-demographic groups.

Defining national identity? Visiting the architectural spaces of the Museum of Scotland

National Cultures construct identities by producing meanings about the nation with which we can identify, meanings which are contained in the stories which are told about it, memories which connect its present within its past, and images which are constructed of it. A museum, the repository of a nation’s culture, which connects the past to the present through recounting stories about the artefacts of past cultures is clearly significant in representing the culture of a nation.

This paper explores the architectural spaces of the new Museum of Scotland, which opened in Edinburgh in November 1998. The museum has opened at a crucial time in Scottish history. The Scottish cultural renaissance is manifested in the increase in cultural production and call for Scottish cultural institutions. Parallel to this renaissance are political developments with the re-creation of a Scottish Parliament in 1999. When the idea of ‘Scotland’ is itself in a state of flux, the stories of the nation told in the museum, which attempt to give a sense of location, a connection between the individual and the nation are especially important.

Thus, issues of identity and ‘self’ are crucially important in understanding the contemporary museum. Within this, the relations between the production of these narratives and their consumption by the public are little understood. The majority of studies have concentrated, although not exclusively, on the production of museum displays, primarily with the "politics and poetics" of display. This paper analyses the relationship between producer and consumer within the Museum of Scotland, attempting to reconnect the forces of production and consumption. In doing so, it focuses primarily on the differing conceptions of the ability of the Museum to be able to narrate the nation.

Based on interviews both with museum staff and with visitors to the museum, it argues that an understanding of the relationship between the museum and Scottish national identity can only be considered through an understanding of the tension between the producers’ intentions and the way in which consumers conceptualise the museum as a space for "telling the nation".

Traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions and intellectual property law in the Asia-Pacific region

Contents

* The international debate about traditional knowledge and approaches in the Asia-Pacific region / Christoph Antons
* How are the different views of traditional knowledge linked by international law and global governance? / Christopher Arup
* Protection of traditional knowledge by geographical indications / Michael Blakeney
* An analysis of WIPO's latest proposal and the Model Law 2002 of the Pacific Community for the Protection of Traditional Cultural Expressions / Silke von Lewinski
* The role of customary law and practice in the protection of traditional knowledge related to biological diversity / Brendan Tobin
* Can modern law safeguard archaic cultural expressions? : observations from a legal sociology perspective / Christoph Beat Graber
* Branding identity and copyrighting culture : orientations towards the customary in traditional knowledge discourse / Martin Chanock
* Being indigenous' in Indonesia and the Philippines / Gerard A. Persoon
* Indigenous heritage and the digital commons / Eric Kansa
* Traditional cultural expression and the internet world / Brian Fitzgerald and Susan Hedge
* Cultural property and "the public domain" : case studies from New Zealand and Australia / Susy Frankel and Megan Richardson
* The recognition of traditional knowledge under Australian biodiscovery regimes : why bother with intellectual property rights? / Natalie Stoianoff
* Protection of traditional knowledge in the SAARC region and India's efforts / S.K. Verma
* The protection of expressions of folklore in Sri Lanka / Indunil Abeyesekere
* Traditional medicine and intellectual property rights : a case study of the Indonesian jamu industry / Christoph Antons and Rosy Antons-Sutanto.

Reaping identity meanings from an agrarian past : southern harvesters of commercially cultivated regional heritage

Extending knowledge of the cultural shaping and variegating of white identity that occurs through the commercial diffusion of identity myths, we examine the reception of Southern identity myths promoted in the oppositional narratives of New South commercial media. We characterize oppositional narratives as texts which operate by eliciting an interpretive reading that devalues rather than supports the surface narrative, and explain the duplicitous text as one intended to seduce a dominant power, while empowering and bolstering identity of a marginalized group. After elaborating how oppositional discourse can serve to reinforce the identity frame constructed by regional media producers, we report on a study examining how urban and rural Southerners read and respond to this discourse. Our findings highlight mediators in the relationship between individuals’ oppositional readings and their alignment of identity in a manner responsive to it.

The use of Western brands in asserting Chinese national identity

Chinese consumers employ Western brands to assert competing versions of Chinese national identity. These uses emerged from findings that Chinese form meanings of Western brands, drawing from select historical national narratives of East-West relations: the West as liberator and Western brands as instruments of democratization; the West as oppressor and Western brands as instruments of domination; the West as subjugated and Western brands, by their own subjugation, as symbolically erasing China’s past humiliations; and the West as partner and Western brands as instruments of economic progress. Our emergent theory elaborates processes by which Western brands are shaped by macrolevel, sociohistorical forces to motivate consumers’ responses to them as political action tied to nation making.

Cultural diversity, cultural heritage and human rights : towards heritage management as human rights-based cultural practice

The present article investigates the linkages between conserving cultural heritage, maintaining cultural diversity and enforcing human rights. While there seems to be a growing awareness of these linkages in international heritage and human rights circles, they remain poorly understood by many heritage practitioners who see their conservation work merely as a technical matter. The article argues that it is essential for practitioners engaged in heritage conservation projects to understand the broader economic, political and social context of their work. However, heritage scholars and teachers, too, need to recognise that there can be many motives behind official heritage interventions, that such action is sometimes taken primarily to achieve political goals, and that it can undermine rather than strengthen community identity, cultural diversity and human rights. Such a reorientation is an extension of the paradigm shift in which heritage is understood as cultural practice. In this more critical heritage studies discipline human rights are brought to the foreground as the most significant part of the international heritage of humanity.

Hybrid perspectives : defining the relativity of culture and identity through migration experiences

This paper examines how culture and identity can be relatively defined through hybrid perspectives in relation to migration experiences. Addressing and portraying definitions of culture and identity is crucial in understanding how notions of such issues connect and initiate the migrant subject through new experiences, perspectives and ways of being. In enunciating the transitions from home to a new place, and elaborating on the rupture of an inherited culture and grounded identity, I refer to them through self-reflexive perspectives. The search for meaning through appraisals of cultural lineage and linguistic capital through a Diaspora, a post colonial history and lived life experiences from my home country, pre-empts the ambivalent and hybrid status in defining culture(s) and identit(ies). It is crucial to recognise how challenges for adaptation to new culture, language, societal norms, and differences in class, nationality, race and gender play specific roles in the migrant experience. My current experiences of migration to Australia are narrations of encountered difficulties, fears, inhibitions, new aspirations, perceptions and perspectives, which map an ‘identity crisis.’ From this narrative structure, I investigate through my ongoing PhD study, how my artistic expression and representations progress towards experiences, and themes that metaphorically reflect, inspire and enact the hybrid structures of culture(s) and identit(ies). Explored reflexively my representations suggest how the ‘liminal space’ or the ‘third space,’ (Bhabha, 1990) express transitions about the ‘self’ and my artistic expression, which enable further reflection and positions to emerge and extend to metaphorical expressions.

Dismantling Baathist Iraq : foreign occupation and cultural destruction

This paper examines the systematic efforts to dismantle or destroy the symbolic dimension of the Baathist regime in Iraq since 2003. It argues that while the Baath were undeniably cruel and oppressive, they did undertake one of the twentieth century’s most robust attempts to utilise the political power of historical memory to create a unified Iraqi national identity. However, while many have examined the militaristic or bureaucratic dimensions of de-Baathification, no such attempts have been made to examine the destruction of the symbols and monuments of the Baathist state and the consequences it has had for Iraqi national identity. This paper addresses this paucity and concludes that with the symbolic destruction of the Baathist state has come a near complete erosion of the Iraqi brand of nationalism that the Baath had managed to promulgate to varying degrees of success since the late 1960s.

Teaching primary science : emotions, identity and the use of practical activities

This paper uses cultural historical activity theory to examine the interactions between the choices primary teachers make in the use of practical activities in their teaching of science and the purposes they attribute to these; their emotions, background and beliefs; and the construction of their identities as teachers of science. It draws on four case studies of science lessons taught over a term by four exemplary teachers of primary science. The data collected includes video recordings of science lessons, interviews with each teacher and some of their students, student work, teachers’ planning documents and observation notes. In this paper, we examine the reflexive relationship between emotion and identity, and the teachers’ objectives for their students’ learning; the purposes (scientific and social) the teachers attributed to practical activities; and the ways in which the teachers incorporated practical activities into their lessons. The findings suggest that it is not enough to address content knowledge, pedagogy and pedagogical content knowledge in teacher education, but that efforts also need to be made to influence prospective primary teachers’ identities as scientific thinkers and their emotional commitment to their students’ learning of science.

Cultural understanding of health and adjustment to cardiovascular disease among the Greek elderly

The onset of chronic illness is a major lef event that presents serious challenges for the individual at a micro and macro level. The way in which adaptation to such illness occurs is closely related to cultural and linguistic factors that are an integral part of personal identity. This study presents the health beliefs of elderly Greek Australians and they way in which they understand health and disease. The process by which this population conceptualizes CVD and seeks medical care is discussed in the context of their specific cultural views and attitudes towards illness.

Myths and absent signifiers in representations of Aboriginal identity in Australian cinema

This article examines how meaning is always articulated in the ideological and political structures of society. This becomes apparent when evidencing articulated Aboriginal representation in Australian cinema, which signifies a representation on screen expressive of the ideological and political structures of the historical time periods in which the films were produced. Meaning, which is the relationship between the signifier and its signified, includes both denotation and connotation. Specific connotators can load a sign with multiple meanings leading to a chain of connotations.  The connotations of Aboriginal identity in Australian filmic narratives are influenced by a chain of additional signified, those of: socio-cultural variables and dominant discourses. This article analyses these chains of connotations through an examination of myths and absent signifiers in filmic representations of Aboriginal identity. The films investigated are: Jedda (Charles Chauvel 1955), Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg 1971), Night Cries (Tracey Moffatt 1990) and Rabbit Proof Fence (Philip Noyce 2002).

Film, representation and the exclusion of Aboriginal identity: examples from Australian cinema

Throughout the latter half of the past century cinema has played a significant role in the shaping of the core narratives of Australia. Films express and implicitly shape national images and symbolic representations of cultural fictions in which ideas about Indigenous identity have been embedded. In this paper, exclusionary practices in Australian narratives are analysed through examples of films representing Aboriginal identity. Through these filmic narratives the articulation, interrogation, and contestation of views about filmic representations of Aboriginal identity in Australia is illuminated. The various themes in the filmic narratives are examined in order to compare and contrast the ways in which the films display the operation of narrative closure and dualisms within the film texts.

Learners’ motivation and identity in the Vietnamese EFL writing classroom

The study reported in this paper explores issues of motivation and learners’ identity in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classroom in Vietnam from the perspectives of the learners. It was conducted with thirty English-major students at a university in central Vietnam. While relevant literature appears to place much emphasis on students’ extrinsic motivations related to institutional needs, their linguistic needs, and social needs in learning EFL writing, students are not only concerned with these but more significantly, with their intrinsic motivations such as their interest, passion and inspiration, which are linked to their personal and cultural needs in writing. Students in this study show their potential to write independently, creatively and passionately if they are really motivated. This reflects an image of students who are able and ready to write with a sense of authorship in a foreign language, which is different from how they appear to be in the routine described with writing as imitating the model and developing some preconceived ideas. The research also suggests that decisions about appropriate methods and materials for teaching writing in the study context need to be based on a comprehensive interpretation of not only the visible signs or visible needs mainly shaped by institutional requirements and social expectations but also what is deep inside students’ act of writing in a foreign language involving their own cognitive and affective process embedded in their unrecognised needs.