Tracking the nomadic life of the educational researcher :- what future for feminist public intellectual(s) and/in the performative postmodern university

Is the idea of the liberal university dead, has the post modern university any chance of being emancipatory, has the theory practice divide merely collapsed in an era of 'new knowledge work', or has the university just become one aspect of market state and global capitalism. Knowledge based economies simultaneously locate universities as central to the commodification and management of knowledge while the legitimacy of the university and the academic as knowledge producers is challenged by post modernist, feminist, postcolonial and indigenous claims within a wider trend towards the 'democratisation of knowledge' and a new educational instrumentalism and opportunism. What becomes of the educational researcher, and indeed for their professional organizations, in this changing socio political and economic scenario? Is our role one of policy service or policy critique, technical expert or public intellectual? In particular what place is there for feminist public intellectuals in a socalled era of post feminism and public-/private convergence? The paper draws on recent debates around the nature of knowledge based societies, trends in relations between policy and educational research, and draws upon feminist and critical perspectives to mount a case for the importance of the postmodern university and the public intellectual.

Will the real Waleed Aly please stand up?: Media, celebrity and the making of an Australian public intellectual

Abstract: Waleed Aly is arguably the most visible and vocal Australian public intellectual from a non-Anglo-Australian background. The ubiquitous Aly is a veritable Renaissance man - he is a television presenter, radio host, academic and rock musician. He is also a former lawyer, and served on the executive committee of the Islamic Council of Victoria. In short, he is the 'go-to' Muslim for commentary on a wide range of political and civic affairs. This article argues that Aly's media profile and celebrity status have as much to do with an Australian cultural imaginary that posits 'whiteness' as an uncontestable normative value as it does with Aly's undoubted skills as a journalist, academic and cultural commentator. It examines Aly's career with reference to Ghassan Hage's concept of 'whiteness' as a form of aspirational cultural capital and various theories of persona and performativity. For Hage, 'whiteness' is not a literal skin colour; rather, it consists of elements that can be adopted by individuals and groups (such as nationally valued looks, accents, tastes, cultural preferences and modes of behaviour). While entry to what Hage calls Australia's 'national aristocracy' is generally predicated on possessing the correct skin tone, it is theoretically possible for dark-skinned people such as Waleed Aly to enter the field of national belonging and partake in public discourse about a range of topical issues. More specifically, the article substantiates its claims about Aly's status as a member of Australia's cultural aristocracy through a comparative discourse and performance analysis of his presentation of 'self' in four distinctive media contexts: Channel 10's The Project, the ABC RN Drive program, ABC TV's Q&A and the SBS comedy-talk show Salaam Caf , which looked at the 'funny side of life as an Australian Muslim' and showcased other multi-talented Muslim professionals of both genders.

'Very inflated rhetoric polysyllables and so on': the public intellectual and jargon in the academy

The public intellectual, by their very definition, aims to reach a large sector of the public or publics. This requires proficiency, or at least the capacity to communicate in a variety of forms. As a large proportion of the public, to which the public intellectual appeals, is an online or cyber public, the importance of blogs in a computer-literate public cannot be under-estimated. The immediacy of the blog and the way in which an online presence facilitates immediate communication between the public and the public intellectual through the posting of comments online allow for a broad recognition of the intellectual in the public arena. My arguments will hinge on my interviews with contemporary American public intellectuals (Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Todd Gitlin, Camille Paglia and Stephen Greenblatt) and their views on communication in a society experiencing a decline in the publication of print media.

Situating public intellectuals

The concept of the public intellectual has always been a somewhat contestedterm. This article serves as both an introduction to the debates around what it constitutes and an entry point into how the new media environment is producinga different configuration of the public intellectual. Through key thinkers who have addressed the idea of the public intellectual internationally and those who havefocused on the Australian context, this essay positions the arguments made bythe authors in this special issue. Via a short case-study of TED, the conferenceand online idea-spreading phenomenon, it argues that the contemporary moment is producing and privileging a different constellation of experts as celebrities that match the exigencies of online attention economy. A shifted conception of the public intellectual is beginning to take shape that is differently constituted, used and situated, and this article helps to define the parameters for further discussion of these transformations.

Understanding the emerging contemporary public intellectual: Online academic persona and The Conversation

At its core, the power of the public intellectual is the capacity to make ideas move through a culture. This article looks at what kind of academic persona – that is, what kind of public self whose original status comes from intellectual work and thinking – navigates effectively through online culture and communicates ideas in the contemporary moment. Part of the article reports on a research project that has studied academic personas online and explores what can be described as ‘registers of online performance’ that they inhabit through their online selves. The research reveals that public intellectuals have to interpret effectively that online culture privileges what is identified as ‘presentational media’: the individual as opposed to the media is the channel through which information moves and is exchanged online, and it is essentially a presentation of the self that has to be integrated into the ideas and messages. From this initial analysis/categorisation of academic persona online, the article investigates the online magazine The Conversation, which blends journalism with academic expertise in its production of news stories. The article concludes with some of the key elements that are part of the power of the public intellectual online.

Tracking the nomadic life of the eductional researcher: what future for feminist public intellecturals and the performative university?

Is the idea of the liberal university dead, has the postmodern university any chance of being emancipatory, has the theory–practice divide merely collapsed in an era of 'new knowledge work', or has the university just become one aspect of market states and global capitalism? Knowledge-based economies locate universities as central to the commodification and management of knowledge, while at the same time the legitimacy of the university and the academic as knowledge producers is challenged by postmodernist, feminist, post-colonial and indigenous claims within a wider trend towards the 'democratisation of knowledge' and a new educational instrumentalism and opportunism. What becomes of the educational researcher, and indeed their professional organisations, in this changing socio-political and economic scenario? Is our role one of policy service, policy critique, technical expert or public intellectual? In particular what place is there for feminist public intellectuals in a so-called era of post feminism and public–private convergence? The paper draws on feminist and critical perspectives to mount a case for the importance of the public intellectual in the performative postmodern university.

Melbourne's indigenous plants movement : the return of the natives

This thesis examines Greater Melbourne’s indigenous plants movement from the 1930s to the early twenty first century. It demonstrates the important scientific and educational role of the public intellectual, Professor John Turner, and of the Melbourne University Botany School which he led for thirty five years. The case study of the movement within the City of Sandringham and its successor the City of Bayside reveals how the inhabitants of an urbanised are responded to threats to the indigenous trees and wildflowers of their neighbourhood, stimulating botanists to assist them and using political means in order to achieve their conservation objectives. The thesis draws upon a range of local archives, conservation literature and private papers.

Tránsito desda la higiene hacia la salud pública en Colombia en el contexto de las internacciones internacionales =The transition from hygiene to public health in Colombia in the context of international interactions

[No Abstract]

Public libraries in Ballarat : 1851-1900

This thesis analyses the development of the Ballarat East Free Library (1859), the Ballarat Mechanics’ Institute Library (1859) and the City of Ballaarat Free Library (1878) within the broader context of public librarianship in Victoria between 1851-1900. Mechanics’ Institute libraries and free libraries represent the major derivatives of a nineteenth-century library model that emphasised the pursuit of lifelong learning, private reading and the enjoyment of genteel recreational facilities. The circumstances that led to the formation of an Institute and a free library in Ballarat in, 1,859 provide a unique opportunity to analyse the public library model for two reasons. These libraries were established in a remarkable goldfield city that enjoyed a number of economic and cultural advantages and secondly, the Ballarat Mechanics’ Institute Library and the Ballarat East Free Library experienced such spectacular growth that by 1880 they were two of the largest public libraries in Australia. However, it is argued that this growth cycle could not be sustained due to a combination of factors including low membership levels, limited funding for recurrent expenditure purposes, and heightened dissatisfaction with the book collections. Libraries began to stagnate in the late-1880s and the magnitude of this collapse in Ballarat, and throughout the colony, was subsequently confirmed with the publication of a national survey of Australian libraries in 1935. The ‘Munn-Pitt’ report found that public libraries had provided a better service in 1880 than at any other time in the next six decades. Four conclusions are drawn in this comparative analysis of the Ballarat Mechanics’ Institute Library, the Ballarat East Free Library, and to a lesser extent, the City of Ballaarat Free Library, between 1851-1900. Firstly, is it shown that the literature places considerable emphasis on the formation of public libraries but is far less critical of the long-term viability of the public library model as it evolved in Ballarat and throughout the colony in the nineteenth century. Secondly, whilst Ballarat and its library committees benefited from the city's prosperity and the entrepreneurial zeal of its pioneers, these same library committees were unable to overcome the structural flaws in the public library model or to dispel the widespread belief that libraries were elitist organisations. As a consequence, membership of the major libraries in Ballarat never exceeded 4% of the total population. Thirdly, it is acknowledged that an absence of records relating to book borrowing habits by individuals limits is a limiting factor, but this problem has been addressed, in part, by undertaking a comparative analysis of collection development policies, invoices, lists of popular authors and books, public comment and the book borrowing patterns of a number of comparable libraries in central Victoria. These resources provide a number of insights into the reading habits of library patrons in Ballarat in the late-nineteenth century. Finally, this thesis focuses on the management policies and practices of each library committee in Ballarat in order to move beyond the traditional explanation for the demise of nineteenth-century libraries and to propose an alternative explanation for the stagnation of public libraries in Ballarat in the mid-1880s. The traditional explanation for the demise of colonial libraries was the sudden reduction in government funding in the 1890s, whereas this thesis argues that a combination of factors, including the unresolved tensions with regard to libraries collection development policies, committee and municipal rivalry, and increasing conservatism, had already damaged the credibility of Ballarat’s libraries by the mid-1880s. It is argued that the intense rivalry between library committees resulted in an unnecessary duplication of services and an inadequate membership base. It is also argued that the increasingly conservative, un-cooperative and uninviting attitudes of these library committees discouraged patronage and as a direct consequence, membership and daily visitor rates of the free and Institute libraries in Ballarat plummeted by 80% between 1880-1900.

Crisis in Clio's family : a study of the discipline of Australian economic history 1918-1965

This thesis presents an intellectual history of the historiography of Australian Economic History between 1918 and 1965. More specifically, it is a contribution to a relatively novel area of research into 'disciplinary history’. It takes as its basic analytical material the four books widely used for significant lengths of time for undergraduate teaching during the period of the study. The thesis consists of five main chapters, plus an appendix which surveys the institutional development of Australian Economic History and provides the empirical basis for the selection of the works named above. After a brief introduction and overview, the next four chapters consist of a detailed study of one of these works, the historical context in which each was written, and an intellectual biography. The fifth chapter is largely theoretical and conceptual. It analyses the epistemological bases of History and Economics and explores the implications of different models of knowledge for the relationship between Economic History and its two antecedent disciplines, History and Economics. Current perceptions of the state of the discipline in Australia and overseas are also examined. There are three main propositions advanced and their implications explored in the fifth chapter. First, that changes which occurred in Australian Economic History during the period 1918-1965 shifted the discipline from the broad area of History to the broad area of Economics. Second, that the inherent tension and fundamental differences between the two disciplinary areas of History and Economics have profound and complex implications for Australian Economic History at a number of levels and in a number of areas. The third proposition posits that the paradigm shift of the 1950s/1960s in Australian Economic History, and the paradigm shift of the 1960s/1970s in Economic History respectively have resulted in crisis. The final part of the chapter summarises the contents of the preceding chapters, and draws some conclusions based on those detailed studies.

The historical roots of public diplomacy and their significance for India

Traces the evolution of the practice and conceptualisations of public diplomacy, especially with reference to India's recent ventures in this field