The event, the subject, and the artwork into the twenty-first century

Partly guided by Alain Badiou's controversial Century and its interpretation of the events and art of the last century, this book opens debates about these for the twenty-first century.

Keystone media: the Australian and Indigenous affairs

This article conceptualises The Australian as the nation’s ‘keystone media’ on Indigenous affairs.Nielsen’s term ‘keystone media’ captures the critical importance of particular news outlets that play what he terms an outsize role in defining the state and structure of wider media and politicalenvironments. The article analyses the factors at play in The Australian’s sponsorship of a particular political agenda for this complex field of social policy. The argument is illustrated through an examination of Indigenous health coverage from 1988 to 2008, textual analysis of 137 columnswritten by Noel Pearson, and research interviews with key actors in the Indigenous policy realm, including journalists, public servants and Indigenous commentators. Through this examination of its reporting and collaboration with Pearson, we contend The Australian has advanced a range of neoliberal and interventionist policies to government and the public.

Theoretical passages and boundaries : the indigenous subject, colonialism, and governmentality

Theoretical paternalism and the convenience of working within ‘accepted’ frameworks have appropriated the Indigenous subject within the boundaries of colonial relations. The establishment of post-colonial theory as one of the only ‘acceptable’ frameworks for exploring the Indigenous subject has limited the subject’s theoretical development within the binary of coloniser/colonised. Breaking from this tradition, the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, ethics and care-ofthe-self will be used as a template for expansion. This paper will explore the passages of the Indigenous subject in theoretical development. It will examine the significance of post-colonial and settler colonial theories in the conceptualisation of the subject, and consider the transformations that occur when the borders established by these theories are crossed. The paper will therefore be comprised of four sections. The first will address the value and limitations of post-colonial and settler colonial theory. The second will posit reasons and implications for why theoretical neglect has occurred. The third will present and critique the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, ethics and care-of-the-self. Applying Foucault’s concepts to examples of Indigenous offenders in the settler societies of Australia and New Zealand, the final section will examine the impact of the Indigenous subject in Western thought and institutional practice.

The mutual cultivation of subject and object in architecture

The relationship of the migrant figure and the house has been explored in previous research on the migrant house. In addition, the relationship between the migrant house and 1ts perception and representation within the local and national communities within the immigrant-receiving city has been analyzed. The approach and theoretical frameworks for this research involved an understanding of the relationship between the human subject and the object of architecture. Given that much poststructuralist theory has attended to the rethinking of human subjectivity and to rethinking the humanbody, traditional conceptualizations of the relationship between human subject and Object m architecture also need to be re-examined. This paper thus presents an exammatlon of one approach to this relationship, focusing on the exploratory and creative work of the late John Hejduk. Hejduk's Vladivostok presents an assembly of figure-objects that together are a literary metaphor for both society and the city. The paper Will argue that the human subject is imagined within an already ordered architectural sett1ng, and that the human subject cannot be thought prior to and outside the stage of architecture. Rather than searching for a causal or determining relat1onsh1p between subject and object this conceptual underpinning between the subject and object asks for an understanding of the dynamic and animated cultivation between them. In examining Hejduk's entry on the 'subjecUobject' in Vladivostok, the paper Will present an account of the mutual responsiveness that arises between human beings and architecture. It will argue that culture and subjectivity is internal rather than external or marginal to architecture.

It comes with the territory: 'remote' Indigenous reporting for mainstream audiences

Mainstream news coverage of ‘remote’ Indigenous Australia is arguably one of the most distinctive forms of Australian journalism practice. While there has been considerable scholarly interest in news media representations of ‘remote’ Indigenous people, little research has been done until now on the logic or operations of this reporting specialisation. This monograph presents a Bourdieuian analysis of the subfield based in the insights study participants offered in interviews undertaken as part of The Media and Indigenous Policy project. It analyses the reporting subfield through an investigation of the practices participants say shape the way white, mainstream journalists understand their role, its possibilities and limitations. Reporting specialists spoke of the geographical and ontological distances they have to negotiate in dealing with Indigenous and government sources, as well as the ways in which they are constrained by institutional pressures. They attribute many of the difficulties with covering ‘remote’ Indigenous issues to factors linked with these physical and cultural distances.

Avoiding the subject media, culture and the object

"This is a collection of inter-related essays on the postmillennial mediascape. Focusing on the neglected significance of the object within today's discourse networks, Avoiding the Subject extends the formal possibilities of cultural criticism by highlighting feedback loops between philosophy, technology, and politics. Students and teachers of visual culture, critical theory, cultural studies, film theory, and new media will find a wealth of ideas and insights in this fresh approach to the electronic environment."--BOOK JACKET.

Linkages: Mabo and the sentencing of indigenous offenders

The ground breaking decision by the High Court of Australia in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) overturned the principle of terra nullis as a legal fiction. It paved the way for a reconsideration of property law. Mabo arguably has significance beyond native title and property law to other areas of the law. This article examines the 'linkage' between the decision in Mabo and the criminal law and, in particular, the punishment of indigenous persons, it addresses the following question: Can a significantly distant temporal and physical act of dispossession as was recognized in Mabo have any relevance to contemporary questions of the punishment of indigenous persons?

A comparison of the sources and nature of body image messages perceived by indigenous Fijian and European Australian adolescent girls

Australian and Fijian adolescent girls reported on the influence that sociocultural factors, including parents, peers, and the media, had on their body image attitudes. It was expected that messages that promote a thin body would be less prevalent among Fijians, as their cultural traditions place more importance on robust body sizes. An inductive thematic analysis of the girls’ semi-structured interviews indicated that both Fijian (n = 16) and Australian (n = 16) girls (aged 13–17) reported messages from similar sources, which included parents, siblings, and friends/peers. Australian girls consistently reported messages that reinforced thinness. On the other hand, Fijian girls reported messages that emphasized both thinness and robustness. The discussion focuses on the conflict between Western ideals and cultural Fijian traditions and the implications for culturally sensitive interventions.

The recruitment and retention of Indigenous criminal justice agency staff in an Australian state

In Australia, as in other countries that have experienced colonisation, indigenous people are massively overrepresented in all stages of the criminal justice system. If criminal justice agencies are to provide culturally responsive and effective services to this group, it is important that they employ significant numbers of indigenous staff across all levels of their organisations. Despite the positive intentions of many justice agencies to increase the proportion of indigenous staff members they employ, the numbers remain low. In this article, we explore some of the possible reasons for this by reporting the results of focus groups conducted with existing indigenous justice agency employees. The employees raised a number of issues relevant to recruitment and retention. These are discussed in terms of their potential value in improving justice agency indigenous recruitment and retention strategies.