Editorial Introduction: Religion and Postcolonialism

After the beginning there appeared some stranger texts
West’s Orientalism objectified the corpus’s otherness
And Modernity’s philology rendered their syntax as his own;
Thence followed the postmodern disruption of the aporia
Re-citing the alterity and the ousia of the Other’s face;
But it awaited the hybrid-angst of postcolonialism’s site
Whence the interrupted texts begun miming an-other meaning.

Comparing experiences of academic mobility and migration

Academic mobility and accompanying migration have become increasingly evident as manifestations of globalization and internationalization of education worldwide. This paper aims to provide some insights into intercultural communication in academia by comparing experiences of students and academics who partake in academic mobility or/and academic migration. It seeks to reflect on how differences in cultural patterns impact on the integrational experiences and outcomes of academic learning and everyday interactions. Two contrasting cultural patterns of collectivism and individualism are explored, as they are displayed in intercultural interactions among migrants and hosting societies. To expose this contrast effectively, this paper focuses on the Russian-speaking mobile academics and compares their intercultural experiences in academia of two countries—Italy and Australia. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-two academic migrants or/and mobile academics on their experiences, views and perceptions of intercultural integration in two diverse settings. This paper explores diverse aspects of intercultural dialogue and compares perceptions of intercultural integration and feelings of wellbeing. It analyses evolving empirical manifestations of cosmopolitanism in everyday intercultural interactions and argues that postmodern cosmopolitan milieu facilitates intercultural integration and enables knowledge transfer and creation of shared cultural meanings.

Beckett and Bion: The (Im)patient voice in psychotherapy and literature

This book focuses on Samuel Beckett’s psychoanalytic psychotherapy with W. R. Bion as a central aspect both of Beckett’s and Bion’s radical transformations of literature and psychoanalysis. The recent publication of Beckett’s correspondence during the period of his psychotherapy with Bion provides a starting place for an imaginative reconstruction of this psychotherapy, culminating with Bion’s famous invitation to his patient to dinner and a lecture by C.G. Jung. Following from the course of this psychotherapy, Miller and Souter trace the development of Beckett’s radical use of clinical psychoanalytic method in his writing, suggesting the development within his characters of a literary-analytic working through of transference to an idealized auditor known by various names, apparently based on Bion. Miller and Souter link this pursuit to Beckett’s breakthrough from prose to drama, as the psychology of projective identification is transformed to physical enactment. They also locate Bion’s memory and re-working of his clinical contact with Beckett, who figures as the 'patient zero' of Bion’s pioneering postmodern psychoanalytic clinical theories.

Unpacking black boxes: Mechanisms and theory building in evaluation

There is growing interest in the concept of ‘‘mechanism’’ across many areas of the social sciences. In the field of program and policy evaluation, a number of scholars have also emphasized the importance of causal mechanisms for explaining how and why programs work. However, there appears to be some ambiguity about the meaning and uses of mechanism-based thinking in both the social science and evaluation literature. In this article we attempt to clarify what is meant by mechanisms in the context of program evaluation by identifying three main characteristics of mechanisms and outlining a possible typology of mechanisms. A number of theoretical and practical implications for evaluators are also discussed, along with some precautions to consider when investigating mechanisms that might plausibly account for program outcomes.

Theory and Australian foreign policy

An analysis of the theoretical basis of Australian foreign policy, comparing realism and the English School

Revisionist historicism theory and practice: challenging national metanarratives

 This thesis demonstrates the interdependence of theory and practice in re-envisioning Australia’s past: the postmodern methodologies explored in the exegesis inform my fictional reassessment of history. The thesis argues for revisionist historical fiction’s legitimacy in resurrecting lost voices. It looks beyond the colonial archives to reconfigure Australia’s history in more inclusive ways.

US policy toward rogue states: Comparing the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq and North Korea

The George W. Bush administration resorted to war to respond to the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, whereas it virtually ruled out the use of force to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. By utilizing various strands of realist international relations theories, we trace motivations behind the administration's divergent foreign-policy choices toward rogue states. That the United States rushed to war against Iraq while procrastinating on North Korea presents a puzzle to conventional realism, which postulates that great powers observe changes in relative capabilities and respond accordingly. We argue that policy differences should be embedded in discussion of the administration's foreign-policy grand strategy, which sought to sustain the hegemonic status of the United States in the world. Iraq and North Korea had different implications for Bush's grand strategy, thereby calling for different approaches. By tracing the strategic design of the Bush administration, we attempt to provide a more complete account of policy differences toward rogue states, as well as indicate the significant changes in US policy during the George W. Bush administration and since.

Grounded theory and leadership research: a critical realist perspective

The methodology of grounded theory has great potential to contribute to our understanding of leadership within particular substantive contexts. However, our notions of good science might constrain these contributions. We argue that for grounded theorists a tension might exist between a desire to create a contextualised theory of leadership and a desire for scientifically justified issues of validity and generalizable theory. We also explore how the outcome of grounded theory research can create a dissonance between theories that resonate with the reality they are designed to explore, and the theories that resonate with a particular yet dominant 'scientific' approach in the field of leadership studies - the philosophy of science commonly known as positivism. We examine the opportunities provided by an alternative philosophy of science, that of critical realism. We explore how conducting grounded theory research informed by critical realism might strengthen researchers' confidence to place emphasis on an understanding and explanation of contextualised leadership as a scientific goal, rather than the scientific goal of generalization through empirical replication. Two published accounts of grounded theory are critiqued candidly to help emphasise our arguments. We conclude by suggesting how critical realism can help shape and enhance grounded theory research into the phenomenon of leadership. © 2010.

Viewing the leadership narrative through alternate lenses: an autoethnographic investigation

This conceptual-theoretical article revisits the work of Parry and Hansen on the nature of the organizational story as leadership. The present article is written in the autoethnographic style. The original narrative work is re-examined through the lenses of autoethnography, narrative theory, metaphor/discourse, critical realism and conventional quantitative research. The insights provided by this methodological triangulation are examined. The conclusion is that organizational stories will reflect leadership if they are plausible to the intended audience, give all organizational members an empowered part in the story, have a moral to the story, and have a happy ending. The overarching theme that is proposed is of leadership as the generation of individual hope for a better existence.

What is a transmitter?

This article discusses the approach that Yvonne Rainer has taken to conserving her Trio A, a work made originally in 1966 and which has been performed many times since, including now by custodians or ‘transmitters’ of the dance. The discussion is contextualized within the broader frame of the question of whether and how the legacy of modern and postmodern dance might be maintained for the benefit of future dancers and their capacity to develop contemporary dance art – particularly at a time when a generation of seminal artists who also voice their desire regarding these matters is passing away. I use the question ‘What is a transmitter?’ and an alternative notion of ‘translator’, drawing on philosopher Paul Ricoeur, to highlight the complex role of dancer-performers, not only in the creation and performance of work(s) but also in maintaining a repertoire.

Barriers and enablers to learning during team-based clinical simulations: reflective interviews with final year undergraduate nursing students

Background: Contemporary approaches to clinical simulation can enhance educational outcomes. However, simulation approaches do have limitations with possible compromises for learning and teaching. This paper aims to identify barriers
and enablers to learning in simulated clinical settings.
Methods: A generic qualitative design was applied. Semi-structured group video debriefing interviews were held with Australian final-year nursing students who completed three patient deterioration scenarios with a standardized patient.
Audio-recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed to identify emergent themes.
Results: Interviews with 15 teams of three students (n = 45) from three universities were analysed. Learning enablers were ‘Realism of the simulated environment’; ‘Practicing: we should do this at uni’; ‘Learning from reflection and expert feedback’, and ‘How to become competent: know the gaps’. Barriers to learning included ‘Increased stress from inexperience; ‘Expectations when pretending’ and ‘Lack of assistance’. Skills practice in team-based settings with applicable reflection and debriefing was regarded as beneficial. Simulated patients enhanced fidelity but were unable to replicate actual clinical signs. High stress levels were perceived as a barrier to learning.
Conclusions: Applicably designed high fidelity simulations with video-based reflective review offer repeated rehearsal of clinical situations to enable learning. This educational strategy may reduce the time it takes undergraduate students to
reach competency.

After Romanticism, psychoanalysis and postmodernism: new paradigms for theorising creativity

 While Romanticism, psychoanalysis and postmodern theory have provided the dominant paradigms for understanding creativity in the humanities in the past century, this paper argues that interdisciplinary engagement with sociobiology and the cognitive sciences might provide ground-breaking perspectives. Against the ‘supra-rational’, masculinist and solipsistic visions of creativity that have prevailed, the work of the sociobiologist Ellen Dissanayake and of the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio invite new ways of thinking about the role of the feeling body, femininity and mutuality in creative practice. This paper will survey Dissanayake’s and Damasio’s research to explore the possibility and desirability of a paradigm shift when it comes to understanding creativity, with poetry as a strategic focus for its argument. This paper is not interested in putting forward a new methodology for writing poetry but in recognising the embodied condition from which all poetry fundamentally arises.

'Unconscionable mystification'? : rooms, spaces and the prose poem

Since the 19th century, when a number of French writers—most conspicuously Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud—introduced what we may think of as the modern prose poem into European literature, prose poetry has been part of a significant debate about the contemporary usefulness of existing literary modes and genres. While early French practitioners partly used the form to subvert and problematise traditional poetic prosody, once this aim was achieved prose poetry remained a significant contemporary literary form, achieving wide acceptance. In the context of contemporary developments and manifestations of prose poetry, this article discusses John Frow’s comments that texts might “‘perform’ a genre, or modify it in ‘using’ it, or only partially realise a generic form, or … be composed of a mix of different genres” (2015: 11). It also discusses the authors’ Rooms and Spaces project, which explores—and exemplifies through its component of creative practice—ways in which prose poetry may be considered “poetic”; how the forms of prose poetry may be room-like and condensed; or open and highly suggestive (sometimes both at once); how prose poetry is intertextual and polysemous; and how prose poetry frequently conveys a sense of completeness despite tending to be fragmentary. Prose poetry may generically problematic but the authors suggest that this may make it an exemplary post-postmodern form of writing; and that reading prose poetry may provide significant insights into understanding how unstable genre boundaries really are.

The IUCN red list of ecosystems: motivations, challenges, and applications

In response to growing demand for ecosystem-level risk assessment in biodiversity conservation, and rapid proliferation of locally tailored protocols, the IUCN recently endorsed new Red List criteria as a global standard for ecosystem risk assessment. Four qualities were sought in the design of the IUCN criteria: generality; precision; realism; and simplicity. Drawing from extensive global consultation, we explore trade-offs among these qualities when dealing with key challenges, including ecosystem classification, measuring ecosystem dynamics, degradation and collapse, and setting decision thresholds to delimit ordinal categories of threat. Experience from countries with national lists of threatened ecosystems demonstrates well-balanced trade-offs in current and potential applications of Red Lists of Ecosystems in legislation, policy, environmental management and education. The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems should be judged by whether it achieves conservation ends and improves natural resource management, whether its limitations are outweighed by its benefits, and whether it performs better than alternative methods. Future development of the Red List of Ecosystems will benefit from the history of the Red List of Threatened Species which was trialed and adjusted iteratively over 50 years from rudimentary beginnings. We anticipate the Red List of Ecosystems will promote policy focus on conservation outcomes in situ across whole landscapes and seascapes.