Gendered (s)explorations among same-sex attracted young people in Australia

This paper seeks to import a more complex understanding of gendered subjectivity into discussions of young people and homosexuality, and is based on an Australian national survey (n=749) of same-sex attracted youth (SSAY) aged between 14 and 21. Results revealed significant gender differences with regard to patterns of sexual attraction, behaviour and identity labels among participants. For the young men in the study, there was more congruence between feelings of gender a-typicality, same-sex attractions and same-sex behaviours. Overall, young women displayed more fluidity with regard to their sexual feelings, behaviours and identities. Young women were more likely to be engaged in private explorations of lesbianism, concurrent with participation in heterosexual sex and relationships. Young women were also grappling with more limited and emotionally risky opportunities for sex with other girls who were already known to them as friends. The invisibility of lesbianism as an identity or practice led to confusion about what feelings meant for the future in the arena of lived experience. The paper concludes that more research is needed into the impact of gender on the development of young people's experiences of homosexuality, particularly the manner in which invisibility and lack of social acceptance of a full spectrum of sexual diversity may disadvantage young women's emotional health and well-being.

Disorganization theory; explorations in alternative organizational analysis

Contents: Paradigm plurality and its prospects -- Organizational knowledge : production and consumption -- Escaping the confines of organization theory / with Ian Atkin -- Actor-networks and sociological symmetry / with Christine McLean -- Fluidity and identity / with Beverly Metcalfe -- Time and temporality -- Decoration and disorganization / with Stella Minahan -- Governmentality and networks -- Actor-networks, research strategy and organization / with Nick Lee -- Rethinking triangulation -- Critical retrospective research -- Concluding remarks : a future agenda for alternative organization studies.

Remaking the body : explorations in the sociology of embodiment

As embodied social agents our lives are preoccupied with the production and reproduction of bodies. Making, unmaking and remaking our embodiment are ongoing activities. Eating, exercise, washing, grooming, dressing, for example, are activities in which the body engages in routine tasks of bodily management. Such activities can be seen as everyday rehabilitation. The study explores the impact of major physical impairment on embodiment, and on the processes involved in re-embodiment after catastrophic injury or disease. The experiences of the people in this study dramatically highlight the continuous, but largely taken for granted processes involved in our embodiment. Four analytical strands are interwoven throughout the study. The first strand relates to the frailty and vulnerability of the human body, characteristics which are epitomised by the bodies of the informants in this study. The second strand engages with key aspects of the context in which re-embodiment takes place, namely a context replete with crisis, danger, fear, uncertainty and risk. The third strand projects into the future in considering the ongoing project of self. The fourth strand addresses the institutional and social impediments which may confine vulnerable bodies and limit the exploration of more expansive bodies. The study is situated within the general theoretical approach of the sociology of the body. While recognizing the powerful impact of social discourse in the production of bodies, the study focuses on the critical role of embodiment in the reconstitution of self. The people in this study have experienced profound bodily change, but although this damage has disrupted, it has not annihilated their embodied selves. The people still possess and occupy their bodies. It is the obduracy of embodiment which directs the processes involved in remaking the body.

Ground truthing : explorations in a creative region

Australia’s evocative Mallee region is rich with histories, impressions and geographical complexities. It is also a microcosm of a world in turmoil.

Ground Truthing allows the Mallee to speak: to show its nurturing and renewable self. In searching for the creative principles that bring the Mallee into being, Carter digs, plots and weaves a poetic passage. A Wotjobaluk man, 'Jowley', the poet John Shaw Neilson and pastoralist William Stanbridge are among characters that give creative access to the region. Their voices mingle with those of vanished peoples and an ecological future crying out for renegotiation.

Through this spatial history of the Mallee, we see that regions contain 'the region of regions' that is the creative key to the production and sustenance of all places.

Jaisa Desh, Waisa Vesh? Explorations on the representations of Adivasis in popular Hindi cinema

This article seeks to discuss specific examples of Adivasi representation in Indian cinema, particularly popular Hindi cinema (as opposed to ‘art’ or ‘parallel’ cinema), and the ways in which it has distilled and codified the representations of ‘other’ groups for a mass audience. Mainstream Hindi cinema, even in its postcolonial phase, has not provided images of Adivasis that reflect their reality. This ‘constructed reality’ of the cinema in which Adivasis exist remains the widespread (mis)understanding of their cultures. It is this cinematic marginalization and cultural stereotyping that will be explored further. This article is a preliminary exploration and will look at particular examples of representation in Hindi films, including Naagin [Female Cobra] (Nandlal Jaswantlal, 1954), Madhumati (Bimal Roy, 1958), Yeh Gulistan Hamara [This Flower Garden of Ours] (Atma Ram, 1972), Lal Salaam [Red Salute] (Gaganvihari Boratte, 2002) and Chak De! [Come On! India] (Shimit Amin, 2007). The aim is for this exploration to provide a foundation for further research into Adivasi representation and the wider discourses of power, politics and inequality in Indian society.

Just schooling : explorations in the cultural politics of teaching

How are classroom relations influenced by the language that teachers use and the stories they tell about their students? Just Schooling is an exercise in the cultural politics of teaching. It invites teachers and interested others to rethink what they know about social justice and to rework how they engage in the practices of teaching (what they say and do), particularly in relation to how these influence the lives of students. Informed by a recognitive view of social justice, Just Schooling analyses the various discourses and ideologies mobilized in classrooms that implicitly and explicitly determine what is understood by (i) the nature and centrality of language, (ii) the purposes and meaning of education, and (iii) the diversity of students, particularly with respect to their gender, race and social class but also their learning dis/abilities. Throughout, the authors argue for a democratization of classroom relations, beginning with students' and teachers' personal lives and connecting these with wider contexts, as a way of addressing the advantages and disadvantages traditionally reproduced by schooling.

From "try it and see" to strategic exploration: characterizing young children's scientific reasoning

This article explores ways of characterizing different dimensions and levels of scientific reasoning in early elementary school children, in the context of open explorations. The article focuses on children's performance on three probes which involve using evidence to generate and evaluate knowledge claims. A number of dimensions have been used to characterize children's approaches to exploration and knowledge construction, which demonstrate the interrelationship between conceptual knowledge and scientific reasoning. Children differed markedly across these dimensions, yet individual children were relatively consistent in their approach to the tasks. The major differences in performance are linked to fundamental distinctions in the way ideas are viewed in relation to evidence.

A longitudinal study of children`s developing knowledge and reasoning in science

The growth in science understanding and reasoning of 12 children is being traced through their primary school years. The paper reports findings concerning children’s growing understandings of evaporation, and their changing responses to exploration activities, that show the complexity and coherence of learning pathways. Children’s responses to identical explorations of flight, separated by two years, are used to explore the interactions between conceptual knowledge and scientific reasoning, and the manner in which they change over this time. The paper discusses the particular insights afforded by a longitudinal study design, and some attendant methodological issues.

Playful learning : Melville's artful art in Moby-Dick

It remains one of the great ironies of American literary history that Melville's Moby-Dick struggled so long for critical and popular recognition. It is a peculiar text (but, then, so are Hawthorne's novels), a romance of the whale fishery that involves such explorations of language itself, of words, metaphor, symbol, allegory and the processes (and significance) of narrative construction. This article analyses its 'peculiarities' as fundamental indicators of Melville's 'playful art' to argue the usefulness of a concept of 'play' to its appreciation. That Moby-Dick is allusive and multi-layered is well known. But for what apparent purpose and to what effect? Here, a claim is made that Melville simultaneously constructs and deconstructs meaning by demonstrating that things ('in complex subjects') never come simply or singly. The later Barthes and Derrida become part of this ship's crew and Moby-Dick is a postmodernist novel avant la lettre.

A focus on teaching in online pedagogy

As the Internet continues to grow in popularity and educational institutions feel the need to have a presence online, 'learning and teaching online' has become somewhat of an IT cliché. In many cases course material is made available online and it is left up to the learner to learn. The claims made for online courses promise considerable cost savings after the initial establishment period, and opportunities to provide education to a larger, globalised marketplace. For students, online learning is thought to allow more flexible study options, and the opportunity to work and study at the same time (Bell, et al 2002, p. 27).

In this paper we question the assumption that online teaching is merely making course material available on the World Wide Web. We report on our study of what is involved in the act of teaching online and on the research that led to the development of the 'mobile teaching facility' to enable a focus on teaching in the online environment. We reflect on how a group of academic staff are responding to online teaching. Details of professional development workshops, hardware and software solutions and working with the complexities of pedagogy will also be discussed. This paper is about our findings, recommendations and plans for future explorations.

Spirituality and sexual abuse: issues and dilemmas for survivors

Sexual abuse profoundly affects survivors to the extent that they are unable to maintain previously held viewpoints or ways of being, including those relating to their spirituality. Certainly the experience has considerable potential to complicate the spiritual lives of survivors. For Christian survivors, this may include how they perceive and relate to both themselves and God as well as affect participation in sacraments such as eucharist and reconciliation. Spiritual traditions often promote the embracing of silence, but this may be problematic for survivors who have been silenced and unable to give expression to their experiences. Similarly, socialization resulting in beliefs that Christians should always forgive and/or never be angry needs to be overcome. While negotiating these pitfalls may result in explorations of spirituality being even less straightforward for survivors of sexual abuse than it is for others, a transformative spirituality within a Christian framework can be realized.

The body keeps the score

American animator Robert Breer has been credited in introducing the first visual bomb to cinema in his loop film Image by Images I (1954), Two abstract animated films by Robert Breer are examined: 69 (1968 5 minutes) and Fuji (1974 10 minutes). Using Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective, though these films are not representational or photographic in the traditional sense it is argued that they are still able to talk to us about real experiences because ‘the lived perspective, that which we actually perceive, is not a geometric or photographic one.’(Merleau-Ponty, 1964b: 14) 69 provides a metaphor for a system that collapses and Fuji as an articulation of that embodied seeing required for train travel. It is argued that Breer’s work in its explorations of style ahead of content is research into an act of viewing that offers a contemporary simulation of the impact of a traumatic experience on the body. Just as one cannot grab each object in the landscape at the speed of train travel nor can one grab or understand each frame that is presented to the retina of a Robert Breer film. What is required to attain “stillness” is a more dissociated way of looking that allows the images to wash over you. Such a “stillness” may be more about suppression than contemplation and could involve a process of metamorphosis.

In the realm of the hackers

In the late 1980s, Melbourne was the hub of the computer underground in Australia, if not the world. The hackers who formed the underground were not disgruntled computer professionals or gangs of organised criminals. They were disaffected teenagers who used their basic home computers to explore the embryonic Internet from inside their locked, suburban bedrooms. From this shadowy world emerged two elite hackers known as Electron and Phoenix, who formed part of an alliance called The Realm. In the Realm of the Hackers charts Electron's journey from his initial innocent explorations to his ultimate obsession. It vividly recreates the climate of the 1980s, before there was public access to the Internet. The program takes us headlong into the clandestine, risky but intoxicating world of the computer underground to uncover not only how the hackers did it but why.