Relocating the personal : a critical writing pedagogy

Addressing the current and growing interest in the personal, the self, and the autobiographical not only in the teaching of writing, but also across many disciplinary and subject fields, Relocating the Personal describes a rich array of practical approaches to teaching the personal in settings where it has been excluded." "The author argues for the teaching of writing as a political project in schools and communities, and for a notion of the personal which is not simply equated with voice. The construct of narrative is preferred, because it allows teachers to examine all personal writing as a representation and not the same thing as the writer's life. Strategies are developed for examining how experience is portrayed and how it might be written differently, with material effects on both the personal text and the writer's person.

The book incorporates the latest theories of critical and genre literacy as it develops four teaching cases in different education contexts (secondary, undergraduate, graduate, and adult/community).

Rudd’s presidential politics vs Gillard’s Westminster wisdom : who will win out in the style battle?

It is fitting that Kevin Rudd’s official campaign for a return to the Labor leadership commenced in the United States, for his political project is one forged in the image of what many Australians imagine American presidential politics to be like: populist, and based on a direct appeal to the people in a way that bypasses parliamentary politics.

Within/against: feminist theory as praxis in higher education research

This chapter will explore how different feminist theories and theorists have informed what counts as research, what is defined as a research issue, and methodological approaches to research in higher education. It will consider the theoretical and methodological tools feminist academics have mobilized in order to develop more powerful explanations of how gender and other forms of difference work in the relation to the positioning of the individual, higher education and the nation state within globalized economies. It pays particular regard to the feminist political project of social justice.

Social work research : ethical and political contexts

Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book bridges the gap between theory and reality by discussing a range of research paradigms and placing them in the context of professional social work. It also discusses the political and ethical contexts that are intrinsic to social work practice.

Standards-based accountability : reification, responsibility and the ethical subject

Over the last two decades, teachers in Australia have witnessed multiple incarnations of the idea of ‘educational accountability’ and its enactment. Research into this phenomenon of educational policy and practice has revealed various layers of the concept, particularly its professional, bureaucratic, political and cultural dimensions that are central to the restructuring of educational governance and the reorganization of teachers’ work. Today, accountability constitutes a core concept of neoliberal policy-making in education, both fashioning and normalizing what counts as teacher professionalism in the ‘audit society.’ This article focuses specifically on the recent introduction by the Australian Federal Government of standardised literacy testing in all states across Australia, and raises questions about the impact of this reform on the work practices of English literacy teachers in primary and secondary schools. We draw on data collected as part of a major research project funded by the Australian Research Council, involving interviews with teachers about their experiences of implementing standardised testing. The article traces the ways in which teachers’ work is increasingly being mediated by standardised literacy testing to show how these teachers grapple with the tensions between state-wide mandates and a sense of their professional responsibility for their students.

Mediating teacher professional identity : The emergence of humanness and ethical identity

Over the past couple of years, international vocational education and training has been much debated at the nexus of the commercialisation of vocational education and social justice for international students. This nexus has significantly affected the professional identity and responsibilities of teachers who are directly involved in providing vocational education and training for international students. Drawing on a research project funded by the Australian Research Council, this paper offers an alternative lens on vocational teachers' process of mediating professional identity in response to the flow of international students and the commercialisation of vocational education. It employs the logic of relationality as a conceptual framework to interpret teachers' journey of identity re-construction. The humanness and ethical dimensions of identity have been at the heart of the teachers' negotiation over the kind of teachers they are and to which they aspire. The teachers in this research draw on humanness and ethical dimensions to engage in critical reflection of their own teaching practices, their interaction with international students and the socio-political context shaping international vocational education and training. They perceive their professional responsibility not only in relation to the facilitation of students' development of vocational skills and knowledge, but also the provision of pastoral care for international students and the advocating for social justice for this student cohort.

Orphan DNA: Indigenous samples, ethical biovalue and postcolonial science in Australia

Thousands of blood samples taken from Australia’s indigenous people lie in institutional freezers of the global North, the legacy of a half-century of scientific research. Since those collections were assembled, standards of ethical research practice have changed dramatically, leaving some samples in a state of dormancy. While some European and American collections are still actively used for genetic research, this practice is viewed as unethical by most Australian genetic researchers, who have closer relationships with indigenous Australians and postcolonial politics. For collections to be used ethically, they require a ‘guardian’ who has an ongoing and documented relationship with the donors, so that consent to further studies on samples can be negotiated. This affective and bureaucratic network generates ‘ethical biovalue’ such that a research project can satisfy Australian ethical review. I propose in this article that without ethical biovalue, collections become ‘orphan’ DNA, divorced from a guardian and often difficult to trace to their sources. Such samples are both orphaned and functionally sterile, unable to produce data, scientific articles, knowledge or prestige. This article draws on an ethnographic study of genetic researchers who are working in indigenous communities across Australia. I present tales of researchers’ efforts to generate ethical biovalue and their fears for succession; fears that extend to threats to destroy samples rather than see them orphaned, or worse, fall into the wrong hands. Within these material and affective  networks, indigenous DNA morphs from biological sample to sacred object to political time bomb. 

Ethical issues and lessons in the voices of Pacific children project

Knowledge of the needs and experiences of children with disability living in Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea (PNG) is limited and that which does exist, does not focus on data collected directly from children themselves. This project aims to establish a method of data collection to determine the self-reported needs and priorities of children living with disability in Vanuatu and PNG. The project involves a multi-staged capacity building approach between two Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs): PNG Assembly of Disabled Persons (PNGADP) and the Disability Promotion and Advocacy Association Vanuatu (DPA); and Save the Children and Deakin University. The research is funded by an Australian Development Research Award and is being undertaken between 2013 and 2015. The research will collect data from up to 50 children with disability aged between 5 and 18 years in each country.

The political economy of maritime industry non-reform in interwar Australia: the establishment of the Maritime Services Board of New South Wales

From the First World War Australian port administration came under criticism from exporters, shipping companies and the Commonwealth government, all of whom argued that port authorities charges imposed an excessive burden on exporters. They sought the replacement of public port authorities by trusts representative of business interests. The campaign for port administration reform also diverted farmers from criticism of shipping freights and to secure their acquiescence in anti-competitive practices in the shipping industry. The formation of the Australian Overseas Transport Association in 1929 was the culmination of this campaign. Elite conservative political support for such anti-competitive practices reflected a belief that competitive capitalism was inherently unstable. The Scullin Labor of 1929-31 government abandoned Labor's earlier hostility to shipping companies to support cartelisation. Conservative state governments, in a more competitive electoral position than their federal counterparts and under greater financial pressure, deflected business calls for port administration reform. Business groups expected the NSW conservative government elected in 1932 to reform port administration towards a representative model, but the Maritime Services Board established in 1935 merely rationalised existing administrative structures. In the 1980s international economic instability legitimated the project of microeconomic reform, particularly in the maritime sector, but in the interwar period a different balance of capital, labour and the state meant that economic isolationism rather than integration was the policy outcome.

Biography and the project of labour history: Marxist anticipations and Australian examples

The popularity of biography among the general public and historians has been despite a theoretical ambivalence among historians about the validity of the project. This has particularly been the case for labour historians who aspire to write the history of a class rather than that of individuals. This article identifies two divergent traditions within labour biography, broadly defined as reflection on the role of the individual in historical movements. One, uniting traditional Marxists and labourists, regards individuals as no more than the symbol of a class. Examples are Karl Kautsky and in Australia Fin Crisp. Another, unites activist revolutionaries and revisionist social democrats, and argues that the individual can make a difference. Examples include Trotsky and in Australia the young Evatt and Gordon Childe. Political disillusionment encouraged both Childe and Evatt to move towards the determinist position. This article suggest that recent discussions of the inherently divided nature of the self may offer an alternative to both these positions.

The neglect of racism as an ethical issue in health care

Race and racism has been increasingly implicated in known disparities in the health and health care of racial, ethnic and cultural minorities groups. Despite the obvious ethical implications of this observation, racism as an ethical issue per se has been relatively neglected in health care ethics discourse. In this paper consideration is given to addressing the following questions: What is it about racism and racial disparities in health and health care that these command our special moral scrutiny? Why has racism per se tended to be poorly addressed as an ethical issue in health care ethics discourse? And why, if at all, must racism be addressed as an ethical issue in addition to its positioning as a social, political, cultural and legal issue? It is suggested that unless racism is reframed and redressed as a pre-eminent ethical issue by health service providers, its otherwise preventable harmful consequences will remain difficult to identify, anticipate, prevent, manage, and remedy.

The sustainable farm families project: changing farmer attitudes to health

Farm health and safety has focussed on strategies such as injury prevention, audits and fulfilling legislative responsibilities. We know farmer injuries mask deeper health issues such as higher rates of cancer, suicides, cardiovascular disease and stress. The relationship between occupational health and safety and farming family health has not been investigated by other researchers either nationally or internationally. The Sustainable Farm Families (SFF) project attempts to make this connection in order to address the unacceptable rates of premature death, higher morbidity and injury on Australian farms.

The SFF focuses on the human resource in the triple bottom line and is working with farmers, families, industry, and university to collaboratively address and improve the health and well being of farming families. Based on a model of extension that engages farming families as active learners where they commit to healthy living and safe working practices the SFF is proving to be an effective model for engaging communities in learning and change. Health education and information is delivered to farming families using a workshop format with participants reporting positive impacts on their farming business. The SFF project sits across generations and sexes and has a high level of support with the overwhelming majority of participants saying they would recommend the program to others.

This paper discusses the progress of the research outlining the design of the project, the delivery and extension processes used to engage 321 farming families to date. The paper presents key learning’s on intersectoral collaboration, engaging farmers and families in health and the future for this project extending into agricultural industries across the nation.

Three key learnings: (1) The increased health risks faced by farmers and their families need social and political attention. (2) Joint ownership and collaborative partnerships where all partners have a key role within the development and delivery of the project to their relevant representative groups enables resources to be shared and encourages greater in-kind support to augment funding received. (3) Farming families are keen to understand more about their health and farmers who participate in health education programs based around industry collaboration with high levels of individual participation will engage with health professionals and obtain an improved health status if programs are presented to them in personally engaging and relevant ways

Bare life in second life : Giorgio Agamben's politics in performance

This paper describes and analyzes the necessary misreadings of Giorgio Agamben’s account of ‘bare life’ in a recent performance in Melbourne, Australia. The ‘Bare Life’ project deals with Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers with reference to Agamben’s work on sovereign power and uses the on-line second life world as both a metaphor for the refugee’s desire for a new life, and a literal site of performance. The development showing explored the interactions between live performance and second life avatars in real time. This paper deals with the philosophical, ethical and practical problems that emerged during the development, and argues that the ‘misreading’ is an inevitable, but useful part of finding ways to embody philosophical and political ideas in performance.

Strategic significance of the island state of Sri Lanka

The study is focused on an analysis of the major diplomatic documents from the mid eighteenth century to the present as regards Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was known till 1972. The objectives of the study are to identify the issues underlying these diplomatic documents. These include the political and strategic factors and other subsidiary issues like trade and commerce relevant at the time these treaties, agreements, and proposed treaties were formulated. It is also a geopolitical study as it relates to Sri Lanka's geographical position in the Indian Ocean, and her possession of the Trincomalee Harbour on its east coast, which is one of the great natural harbours of the world. Over the centuries this harbour has had significant strategic value for naval deployments. The case study of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries studies the diplomatic documents against the political and strategic background for the French Revolution and actions of Napoleon, and the Anglo/French rivalry, spreading from Europe to North America and Asia. In the twentieth century the environment for studying the place of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean was created by the Russian Revolution, the failure to keep the peace of Versailles after World War I, the conflict and horrors of World War II which led to the disintegration of European colonial empires in Asia and Africa, and the tensions generated by the Cold War. A study of the documents would reveal that in international relations what matters is the ability of a party to promote its interests, and this depends on its power. This realist approach contrasts to the idealist approach where policies are based on moral and ethical principles. For the realist the states should follow to protect their interests and to survive. To achieve this is to strive for a ‘balance of power’. To do so is to form a favourable alliance system. As the documents examined cover a period from the mid-eighteenth century to the later part of the twentieth century, they reflect the changing technologies that have had an influence on naval and military matters. For example, this period witnessed great changes in technology of energy utilized to propel warships, from wind, to steam, to fuel and finally to nuclear power. These changes had an influence in determining strategic policies involving weapon systems and communications within a global and regional setting. The period covered was the beginning of the process described a ‘globalisation’. Its idea is not unique to this century; there were many attempts, in various times of history, to integrate societies within a global context. Viewed in this light, the Anglo-French rivalry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the indication of a global naval strategy, in which Sri Lanka was a major factor in the Indian Ocean region. This process was associated with the phenomena called the ‘expansion of Europe’. It covered all the oceans of the world and in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries led to the founding of the largest maritime empire the world has ever seen: The British Empire. After World War I, the British naval strength (the basis of the British Empire) and her consequent position as a great power, was challenged by other powers like the United States of America and Japan. After World War II, the US Navy was supreme: and there was a close alliance between Britain and the USA. The strength of the US/British alliance was based on the navy and its bases, which were spread throughout the globe; to project power, and act as deterrence and balancing force. Sri Lanka, due to her strategic position, was a part of this evolving process, and was tied to a global strategy (with its regional connotations) from the eighteenth century to the present.