Kurdungurlu got to drive Toyota : differential colonizing process among the Warlpiri

This thesis is based on fieldwork I carried out between December 1987 and June 1989 while living with the residents of a small Warlpiri Outstation Community situated ca. 75 km north-west of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia. Colonialism is a process whereby incommensurate gender regimes impact differently on women and men and this is reflected in the indigenous response which affects the socialization of Western things. The notion of the indigenous KIRDA-KURDUNGURLU reciprocity is shown to be consistent with a gender system and to articulate all exchange relations as pro-creative social relationships. This contrasts with the Western capitalist system of production and social reproduction of gendered individuals in that it does not ascribe gender to biological differences between women and men but is derived from a land based social division between Sister-Brother. Social relationships are put under great strain in an effort to socialize Western things for Warlpiri internal use, I argue that the colonization of Aboriginal societies is an ongoing process. Despite the historical shift from a physical all-male frontier to the present day cross-cultural negotiations between Aborigines and Non-Aborigines, men still privilege men. The negotiation process for ownership of a Community Toyota is the most recent phenomenon where this can be observed. Male privilege is established by linking control over the access to the Community Toyota with traditional rights to land. However, the Toyota as Western object has a Western gender identity as well. By pitting women against men it engages people in social conflict which is brought into existence through an organisation of Western concepts based on an alien gender regime. But Western things, especially the Community Toyota, resist socialization because the Warlpiri do not produce these things. Warlpiri people know this and, to satisfy their need for Western things, they engage them in a process of social differentiation. By this process they can be seen actively to maintain the Western system in an effort to maintain themselves as Warlpiri and to secure the production of Western things. This investigation of the cultural response to Western influences shows that indigenous gender relations are only maintained through a socially stressful process of socializing Western things.

Images of embodied old age in contemporary Japan

Since the late 1980s, representations of Japanese national identity and Japanese old age have been deconstructed. Images of the resilience of traditional cultural and social institutions are shown to have over-emphasized social and cultural homogeneity, elided social differentiation and inequality and minimized the significance of historical transformation. Key institutions of the postwar modernization project, including the patriarchal seniority system and household structure, are being transformed through globalization and feminization. This thesis focuses on the problem of representing individual and collective ageing in Japan in the context of modernization. Research is focussed on the contradictions, within essentialist representations of Japanese collective and individual identity, between socially constructed policy forms of old age and collective identities. Contemporary trends towards individualization and diversification of identities, and discourses on the ageing/information society, indicate cultural distance between an instrumentally rational administration and the life world of old people. Research explores the concept of embodiment through its significance in debates on postmodernization of the lifecourse in accordance with the structural shifts towards a postindustrial structure. This study examines representations of old age in broader social and cultural processes. Images of the social and cultural trajectory of the lifecourse draw attention to the embodiment of individual identities and ultimately generational cultures in contemporary social and cultural spaces. This research is the result of analyses of old age, which have been informed by postmodern theory. It in turn informs sociological theorizations of cultural representations of old age in contemporary societies.

Understanding the symbolic capital of intercultural interactions: a case study of international students in Australia

Intercultural interaction plays an important role in contributing to international students’ learning and wellbeing in the host country. While research on international students’ intercultural interactions reveals multifaceted aspects of personal and social factors, there is a tendency to consider language barrier and cultural differences as individual factors that constrain their interactions with the institutional community. Drawing on 105 interviews with international students in Australian vocational education and training and dual sector institutions, this paper examines international students’ intercultural interactions in host institutions and the factors that act as enablers or inhibitors for intercultural interactions. It highlights the social and structural conditions in creating symbolic capital of elitist Anglo-Australian culture and English language, and social differentiation. This paper offers insights into understanding the legitimacy of such elitism, in hope that future conceptualisation, research and practices of intercultural interactions may locate international students within their cultural diversity.

Arts curriculum reform : social and cultural reproduction in Victorian schools

This thesis examines the implementation of the government educational policy document The Curriculum and Standards Framework. I examined the historical and political motivation behind the development of this document and how it introduced a pervasive new initiative of outcomes based education and accountability based on economic rationalism. In particular I examined the implications this new approach had for visual arts education and the subsequent changes to the arts curriculum. This has entailed the introduction of the aesthetic appreciation of the arts as an outcome of the CSF: The Arts. I applied Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction in education which draws predominantly on a Weberian view and a theory of practice. Bourdieu discusses differential educational achievement according to cultural capital stating education requires certain forms of cultural capital that are not equally distributed among the classes. This therefore impedes or enhances life chances according to social class i.e. educational qualifications become a commodity in the labour market and other social fields. I examined how aesthetic appreciation of the arts has evolved historically as a form of social distinction. This entails an abstract element of arts discourse, which demands a certain linguistic competence, and familiarisation, which Bourdieu claims, is developed in the family, as 'cultural capital' this is further perpetuated in schools. The likely outcome is that the introduction of aesthetic appreciation in arts education i.e the demand to 'write about' and 'talk about' art, will perpetuate class inequality due to social and cultural difference. The study has been to examine the practices of arts education in four schools and the extent to which aesthetic appreciation was implemented in the visual arts. Data was collected by case study methods of observation, questionnaire and interview and was interpretive in both quantitative and qualitative methods. I analysed the data based on class differentiation by socioeconomic divisions and examined the school ethos and attitude towards the Arts along with differentiation in cultural capital between student population. I also found teacher and student habitus played a vital role in the implementation of the CSF. This is because habitus can cause resistance to change due to the division between the formulation of the curriculum in the bureaucratic order and the practice of teachers in classrooms. My thesis interprets education as a form of social reproduction, perpetuating the existing social order. However, as Bourdieu asserts and I agree education is a form of symbolic power as it conceals its social function under the guise of neutrality and the technical functional premise. Therefore, this thesis aims to make transparent how the education system serves the interests of the dominant group through curriculum policy. Consequently, it becomes clear how education has far reaching social implications where the distinctions of class are perpetuated through cultural reproduction.

Dynamic advertising under vertical product differentiation

We investigate a dynamic advertising model where product quality is endogenous. In the differential game between single-product firms, there exists a parameter range where the low-quality firm uses a more efficient advertising technology and earns higher profits than the rival. Moreover, we show that equilibrium qualities are the same under duopoly, multiproduct monopoly, and social planning, the only distortion being concerned with the output levels.

Lessons from Alison: a narrative study of differentiation in classroom teaching

Teaching is challenging in part because, although school structures are to some extent modelled on industrial approaches in which the ‘raw materials’ are assumed to be very similar, human beings are endlessly diverse. Understanding the many differences amongst students, and treating these differences as teaching resources rather than deficits, is a powerful approach. This paper draws on teacher interviews and classroom observations collected during a two-year study of two regional Queensland schools to explore issues of ‘recognition’, ‘distribution’ and social justice. It uses narrative vignettes from a single classroom to provide an occasion for reflection on the part of the reader on how schooling can better meet the needs of students, and outlines six pedagogical practices for effective classroom teaching.

The politics of differentiation in schools

In many English-speaking countries, teachers are encouraged to differentiate their classrooms, and in some cases, through various policy mechanisms. This encouragement is often accompanied by threats and sanctions for not making the grade. By exploring the ways in which one education system in Australia has mandated differentiation through an audit of teacher practices, this book provides a timely engagement with the relationship between differentiated classrooms and social justice. It covers tensions, for instance, between providing culturally-appropriate classrooms, including constructing engaging and relevant curricula, and lowering expectations for students who have traditionally been marginalised by schooling. The data for this book has been collected from the same group of teachers over a period of three years, and offers detailed insights into how a particular politics of differentiation has played itself out in the context of a ‘global reform movement’ that has focused on improving student outcomes.