To hold up prisms: Australian and Canadian indigenous publishing for children

Bradford discusses Thomas King's exhortation to writers that is directed specifically to Canadian First Nations writers, which captures the importance of language as the primary means by which individual and group identities are formed. He mentions the important contribution that Indigenous publishers make to children's literature.

Exploring the extent and nature of the diversity of the doctoral population in Australia : A profile of the respondents to a 2005 national survey

Although there is general agreement that diversity is a feature of doctoral education in Australia, there are various forms and levels of diversity, many of which are not captured by analyses that rely on categories for analysing the doctoral education population that are those commonly used in education at the undergraduate level, such as sex, age, mode of study, type of enrolment, citizenship, and Broad Field of Study, etc. These categories primarily reflect concerns to do with funding and issues of participation and equity. Our analysis of data from a national survey of doctoral candidates carried out in 2005 as part of a Linkage Grant project “Reconceptualising the doctoral experience’, suggests that not all of these categories are relevant to critical concerns for doctoral education. Nor do analyses at a macro-level represent the particularity of the doctoral experience. They can mask the reality of a highly variable student population, and one that is not necessarily represented accurately or helpfully by ascribing group identities.

'Aussies' and 'wogs' and the `group in-between': year 10 students' constructions of cross-cultural friendships

This paper reports on an aspect of a small, empirical study that explored how cross-category friendships were constructed among an ethnically diverse cohort of Year 10 students in an Australian school. The students, who self-identified as having friendships across gender and ethnic boundaries, were interviewed in focus groups. Young men and young women, in speaking of their cross-cultural friendships, generally stressed commonalities among rather than differences between groups of friends. Nevertheless, students identified two predominant peer groups and used the terms 'aussie' and 'wog' to name them. Some of the male students appeared to be more keen than many of the females to mark themselves out as belonging to one or the other of these groups. This paper will discuss how these terms are utilised among these students to construct particular identities. On one level, this naming signified differences of choice, with reference to styles of music, clothing, jewellery, hair and entertainment. Is this an attempt to reclaim and rework previously racist descriptors into more egalitarian terms by young people? The meanings and sense that students make of such traditionally racist terms and how their use reflects and challenges wider cultural discourses of difference are discussed. How 'sameness' is constituted around shared experiences rather than common cultural backgrounds is also considered.

One career, two identities : an assessment of gay men`s career trajectory

Most of the research on career development of sexual minorities focuses on lesbians. Gay men, on the other hand, have received little attention in the literature as it is assumed that they face fewer difficulties in career development because they are men. This paper redresses this gap by presenting an analysis of the impact of sexual identity on the career development of gay men, drawing on both a literature review of the literature on sexual identity, gay organizational studies and career development and the results of a recent interview study. In accord with other literature, the study demonstrates that gay men, like other sexual minorities, are confronted with a conflict between personal and career needs, and have to deal with society's expectations and intolerance towards homosexuality. Suggestions are given for research that will lead to a deeper understanding of the career decisions and attitudes of gay men.

(Re)examining identities: working with diversity in the pre-service teaching experience

Australia, like the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), continues to experience a mismatch between the cultural backgrounds and socio-economic class of teachers and those of the students they work with. This article reports on a study that explored how a group of Australian teacher-education students understand their own ethnic and socio-economic class identities and how they work with students of ethnic and class backgrounds different from their own. Analysis of data from interviews and focus groups with the student-teachers is presented to highlight how they make sense of difference and how they take up the challenges of teaching for diversity. The paper raises issues and concerns regarding how diversity and difference might be addressed in teacher education.

Working with 'diverse bodies, diverse identities': an approach to professional education about 'diversity'

The complexity and diversity of populations in contemporary Western societies is becoming a significant public policy issue. The concept of 'diversity' has come to represent cultural, ethnic, racial and religious differences between the 'dominant group' and immigrant and indigenous populations. 'Diversity training' is amongst many strategies being implemented to address social and economic objectives in complex societies. This paper discusses and critically evaluates a professional education programme, 'Diverse Bodies, Diverse Identities', that is offered to human service practitioners and social work students in Victoria, Australia. It is concluded that a range of approaches is needed to address 'diversity' in contemporary societies.

Greening political risk: transnational advocacy networks and the World Bank Group

Significant increases in direct private investment in developing countries in recent decades have also led to increased interest in political risk insurance. Of importance to transnational advocacy networks are the environmental and social impacts of guaranteeing loans for private sector projects in developing countries with weak or no social or environmental safeguards. This article examines how transnational advocacy networks have attempted to influence political risk insurers to become sustainable development guarantors through a case study of the World Bank Group’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). Analyzing how advocacy networks influenced MIGA’s projects, policies, and accountability institutions enables greater understanding of how to ‘politicize finance.’ It also assesses the likelihood of shaping political risk insurance identities to become sustainable development guarantors. The outcomes of such an analysis however, question the extent to which politicizing finance necessarily leads to further greening of the international development lending process.

Song as an honest signal of past developmental stress in the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris)

Bird song is a sexually selected male trait where females select males on the basis of song quality. It has recently been suggested that the quality of the adult male song may be determined by nutritional stress during early development. Here, we test the 'nutritional–stress hypothesis' using the complex song of the European starling. Fledgling starlings were kept under experimental treatment (unpredictable short–term food deprivations) or control conditions (ad libitum food supply), for three months immediately after independence. We measured their physiological and immune responses during the treatment and recorded song production during the following spring. Birds in the experimental group showed increased mass during the treatment and also a significantly suppressed humoral response compared with birds in the control group. There was no difference between the groups in the cell–mediated response. Next spring, males in the experimental group spent less time singing, sang fewer song bouts, took longer to start singing and also sang significantly shorter song bouts. These data support the hypothesis that both the quality and quantity of song produced by individual birds reflect past developmental stress. The results also suggest the 'nutritional–stress hypothesis' is best considered as a more general 'developmental–stress hypothesis'.

Symptoms, ill-health and quality of life of the members of a Porton Down veterans' support group

Background There has been a Human Volunteer Programme at the British chemical weapons research facility at Porton Down since the First World War, in which some of the participants were exposed to chemical warfare agents.

Aim To identify any striking specific morbidity patterns in members of the Porton Down Veterans Support Group (PDVSG).

Methods A self-completed postal questionnaire was prepared including health immediately after the visits to Porton Down, subsequent diagnoses and hospital admissions, symptoms in, and after, the first 5 years after the visits, fatigue symptoms and current quality of life, measured using the SF-36.

Results Responses were received from 289 of 436 (66%). Results reported here relate to 269 male respondents of mean age 66.8 years. Sixty-six per cent reported their first visit to Porton Down in the 1950s. The most common diagnoses or hospital admissions reported were diseases of the circulatory system. In the first 5 years after their visits the most common symptoms were headache, irritability or outbursts of anger and feeling un-refreshed after sleep. In the later period, most common symptoms were fatigue, feeling un-refreshed after sleep and sleeping difficulties. Sixty-five per cent met the definition for a case of ‘fatigue’. Current quality of life dimensions were consistently lower than age-specific estimates from general population samples.

Conclusions Members of the PDVSG responding to this survey reported poorer quality of life than the general population. Despite there being no clear pattern of specific morbidities, we cannot rule out ill-health being potentially associated with past experience at Porton Down

Performing masculinity and leadership : male academics' work practices and identities

In this thesis, a folio comprising a major dissertation and three elective tasks, issues including masculinity(ies), identities, leadership and academics’ work practices are considered against a backdrop of change in the higher education sector. Narrative research methods are applied throughout the folio. The first elective, a discussion and commentary arising from an interview with an experienced practitioner in gender education, amounts to a feasibility study for the dissertation, whereas the second elective experiments with the use of computer mediated communication as a means of interviewing a small number of male academics about their inclusive teaching practices. Primarily curiosity-driven research, the conclusion is drawn that computer mediated communication, if used at all, ought provide a complementary, not primary means of data collection. The third elective conveys the life story of an Asian-Australian academic who expresses different masculinities according to the social settings in which he finds himself. The conclusion is made that there is neither a single colored masculinity nor a single working class masculinity. The milieux of race and class need to be considered together. The research described in the major dissertation was undertaken with a group of eleven male academics from a number of rural and metropolitan universities – men who were thought by their colleagues and peers to practice collaborative approaches to leadership. Whereas the majority of the men practised what could be described as transformational approaches to leadership, a small number exploited the process of collaboration mainly for their own protection. Very few of the men engaged in discourses of gender. One of the principal conclusions reached in the paper is that there are ramifications for future leadership training that universities offer so that it becomes more relevant and socially inclusive. Another main conclusion relates to the intimidation reported by some of the men in the study, and that there are implications for universities in the way they protect their employees from such incidents. A third significant conclusion is that there is some way to go before gender is integrated into the discourse of male academics. Until this can occur, limited opportunities exist for alliances to be formed between most male academics and feminist academics for the advancement of socially just workplaces.

Intersection of autonomy and social control : negotiating teenage motherhood

Contrary to popular belief, teenage mothers are a declining proportion of birthing women; however they receive much negative public attention. Of particular public concern is the high cost of supporting teenage mothers, in terms of financial, health and welfare resources. Historically, the typical founding mother of white Australia was single, but post-war changes in the family structure incorporated the expectation that children be born into two-parent households with the male as the breadwinner. Policy changes in the seventies saw the introduction of the Sole Parents Pension which meant that many birthing teenage women could choose to keep their infants rather than have a clandestine adoption or an enforced marriage. The parenting practices of teenage mothers have been criticised for being less than optimal, and mother and child are reported as being disadvantaged cognitively, psychosocially, and educationally. One widespread nursing service which provides support for new mothers in Victoria is the Maternal and Child Health Service; however, teenage mothers appear reluctant to use such services. Why this should be so became an important question for this research, since little is known about the parenting practices of teenage mothers. This study therefore sought to explore mothering from the perspective of five sole supporting teenage mothers each of whom had a child over six months of age. The research methodology took an interpretive ethnographic approach and was guided by feminist principles. The data were collected through repeated interviewing, participant observation, informal discussions with key informants, field notes and journalling. Data analysis was aided by the use of the software, program NUD-IST. It was found that the young women in this study each chose to give birth with full realisation that their existence was dependent on the Welfare State. Unanticipated, however, were the many structural barriers which made their lives cataclysmic, but these reinforced their determination to prove themselves worthy and capable mothers. The young women negotiated motherhood through a range of social supports and through maternal practice. Unquestionably, their social dependency on the welfare system forced them into marginal citizen status. Moreover, absolute and intrinsic poverty levels were experienced, brought about by inadequate welfare payments. Formal support agencies, such as the Maternal and Child Health nurses were rarely approached to provide childrearing support beyond the initial months following birthing, since the teenagers' basic needs such as shelter, food and clothing took precedence over their parenting needs. Additionally, some nurses were perceived to hold judgmental attitudes towards teenage mothers. It was far easier to forestall confrontation with nurses and the other 'older' women clientele by avoiding them. Thus XI they turned to charitable agencies who provided a safety net in the form of emergency supplies of money, food, or equipment. Informal networks of friends provided alternative modes of support when family help failed to materialise. The children, however, provided the young women with an opportunity to transform their lives by breaking free of the past, and by creating a new, mature existence for themselves. Despite being abandoned by family, friends, lovers and society, in the privacy and isolation of their own homes, they attempted to provide a more nurturing environment for their children than they themselves had received. Each bestowed unconditional maternal love on the child and were rewarded through the pleasures of watching their children grow and develop into worthwhile individuals. The children became the focus of their attention and their reason for living. In the course of their welfare dependency, the young women became public property, targets of surveillance, and were subjected to stigmatising and condescending public attitudes wherever they went. In this way, it was evident that they were an oppressed group, but each found ways of resisting. Rather than focussing on their oppressive or disabling lives, or dwelling on their disadvantaged status, the young women sought their identities as mature women through motherhood and by demonstrating that they could do this important job well. Through motherhood their lives had meaning and a sense of purpose. The thesis concludes that motherhood in the teenage years is difficult. However, if appropriate supports are made available, teenage mothers need be no different from non-teenage mothers. But with state resources shrinking, and their own resources limited, teenage mothers are disadvantaged. In some ways, this study showed that all levels of support were inadequate, although those provided through the charitable organizations were seen to be the most appropriate. This reflects the current policy of economic rationalism adopted by most Western liberal democracies in the 1980s and 1990s and no less by the former Keating Labor Government in Australia.

Social identities and law students' writing

This paper argues that social identities, discursively speaking, consist of ‘positions’ that are individuated by distinctive linguistic features. These include distinctive patterns of representation indicated by clause structure and type, a set of priorities for attending to what is important indicated by thematic structure, and an orientation to the represented world and to self as indicated by modality, propositional attitudes and tense. A social identity comprises an array of these often contradictory ‘positions’ associated with a social or professional role. A person’s identity is constituted dynamically by the way they ‘reconcile’ the various positions that make up the social identity, and also, as Archer and Ivanic argue, by the way they reconcile a social with a personal or autobiographical identity. It is argued that this process of reconciliation gives clues about identity formation in the traces it leaves in grammatical texture.

This paper uses a simulated letter of advice to a client written by a group of first year law students to explore the discursive construction of social or professional identity. This letter is poorly written and full of grammatical mistakes and infelicities. It is argued that the mistakes provide a linguistic trace of the students’ struggle to reconcile the conflicting roles and positions they occupy as authors of the letter. In particular the students’ problems result from a struggle to reconcile their multiple positions as: students writing for assessment by a tutor about a legal problem, as a simulated firm of solicitors advising to a client, and as potential litigators anticipating the future course of events in their simulated moot court appearance.

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.