A Catalyst for Culture: Early Child Development and Education in Japan

A popular Western perception of Japan is that it is an eminently homogeneous and conformist society. However, both conformity and homogeneity, recognized even by the Japanese themselves, coexist with the concept of individuality, which is valued in a manner unique to its culture. In order to come to a deeper understanding of that dynamic, it is important to comprehend the specifics of child rearing and education within Japanese society. Based in part on the author's observational fieldwork conducted while in Japan in 1994, the thesis explicates the manner in which various core relationships exhibit the socialization of an individual that occurs within the home during a child's first few years. Furthermore, the text incorporates research in both primary and secondary historical materials. The author displays the manner in which educational issues such as the development of the Japanese education system and the dynamics of the elementary years serve to demonstrate the importance of functioning within a group. This is further clarified through an examination of elementary school texts, which also reveal underlying moral messages of profound importance in Japanese society. The seemingly contradictory issues of becoming an individual yet performing as a member of a group are pulled together by the idea that culture provides the guidance by which an individual becomes an active member of society. In Japan, individuality and group conformity are not mutually exclusive. Within the context of Japanese society, individuality is inextricably linked to group orientation.

You know how I know you're gay? : masculinity and homophobia in mainstream comedy

You Know How I Know You're Gay?: Masculinity and Homophobia in Contemporary Mainstream Comedy is a three-part senior scholars project that consists of a critical analysis of homophobic humor in contemporary mainstream comedy, an original feature-length comedy script entitled Don 't Be that Freshman, and a DVD of selected scenes from Don't Be that Freshman. The critical analysis first establishes the existence of homophobic humor in mainstream comedy and then links this homophobia to masculine anxiety, applying the ideas set forth in Michael Kimmel's essay, "Masculinity as Homophobia," to contemporary, mainstream, homosocial comedies. The paper goes on to examine audience reactions to this homophobic humor, focusing on audience members who enjoy these movies, yet consider themselves to be accepting of homosexuality and against homophobia. I discuss ways of resistance and the importance of opposing homophobic humor, and finally, I look at comedy as a potentially transgressive medium that could be used to fight homophobia and social inequality. The critical analysis, therefore, leads into Don't Be that Freshman, a film that uses progressive humor to oppose homophobia and expose the potential dangers and pitfalls of conforming to social constructions of gender. Don't Be that Freshman is a film about three pairs of college roommates in their first semester at college who become each other's first friends on campus. It is a character-driven comedy that attempts to normalize non-heterosexual sexual orientation and gender non-conformity, to advocate a type of living that does not conform to problematic social constructions and cultural ideologies, and at the same time to appeal to a mainstream audience. The film version is twenty-five minutes long and consists of ten scenes from the script.

External public piano examinations in Malaysia : social and symbolic significance

The thesis investigated the social and symbolic significance of acquiring a 'music education' through the taking of piano tuition and external public music examinations. It aimed to discover why the learning of the piano and the certification of musical attainment are so prevalent and revered among Malaysian music students. Its purpose was to unravel the socio-cultural raison d'etre of this approach to music education through the creation of a metatheoretical schema, which is premised upon the theories of symbolic interactionist, George Herbert Mead, music analyst, Heinrich Schenker and social theorist, George Ritzer. Central to the argument in this instance is the symbolic significance associated with the act of playing the piano. The investigation attempted to determine if this 'act' conveyed a symbolic meaning that is peculiar to a specific cultural vista. It further examined the degree to which this practice represented both a validation and a sense of conformity to social norms in the continuity and stability of an expanding middle class society in Malaysia. The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) is the largest of the five main external public music examination boards that operate in Malaysia. Since 1948, over one million candidates have enrolled for ABRSM examinations in Malaysia and a team of approximately thirty ABRSM examiners visit Malaysia for three months every year. The majority of the candidates are pianists. Given such large numbers of piano candidates, one might expect a healthy development of musical talent in the country with aspiring pianists eager to demonstrate their musical prowess. However, this does not seem to be the case. On the contrary, there appears to be a curious lacuna between the growing number of students who enrol for external public music examinations and the seemingly lack of interest in public music making and the honing of general musicianship skills. The thesis hence examined the symbolic meaning of this socio-musicological phenomena.

Playing the Agnes : Hester Thrale-Piozzi and Frances Burney

Guided by the feminist intention of reasserting the importance of neglected female writers, I have used this work to re-examine the lives and texts of eighteenth-century diarists Hester Thrale-Piozzi and Frances Burney. Adopting an interdisciplinary methodology, I draw on both literary and non-literary material to examine the effect of familial and social patriarchy in eighteenth-century England. Using the diaries, journals and letters of Hester and Frances, I ask why female conformity to masculine domination was expected, and how violence was used to extract subserviant behaviour from women. Beginning with gossip, and encompassing social, editorial and physical abuse, I use the medical profession's manipulation of female vulnerability to exemplify the way society legitimates violence to ensure female ductility. Moving beyond this physical aspect, I then examine the psychical, and question the existence of a ‘self’ which is vulnerable to external manipulation. By diverging from the influence of Freudian psychology, and developing a form of Jungian feminism, I propose the existence of an essential female Self which transcends the constraints of societal expectations and physical violence. In this work, both Hester and Frances emerge as physically and psychically strong entities who were forced to adopt socially conformist personae to survive.

The saving and investment nexus for China : evidence from cointegration tests

The saving and investment nexus as postulated by Feldstein and Horioka (FH) (1980) is revisited. The saving investment correlation for China is estimated over the periods 1952-1998 and 1952-1994, the latter culminating in a period of fixed exchange rate regime. Amongst the key results, it is found that saving and investment are correlated for China for both the period of the fixed exchange rate and the entire sample period. With high saving-investment correlation, the results suggest that the Chinese economy is in conformity with the FH hypothesis. This is a valid outcome, for in China capital mobility was fairly restricted over the 1952-1994 period as indicated by the relatively low foreign direct investment.

Social recognition and freedom in Axel Honneth's critical theory

The thesis examines Honneth's claim that forms of misrecognition cause undue suffering and considers the extent to which we are vulnerable to and independent of misrecognition. It formulates a sixfold classification of our responses to misrecognition - stoicism, withdrawal, conformity, reification, deconstruction, and humanism, - and thereby an alternative ethics of recognition.

Scalpel slaves or cyborgs? : cosmetic surgery and embodied identity

This thesis explores individuals' experiences of cosmetic surgery in Melbourne. The research conducted with recipients of cosmetic surgery is a complex and ambiguous practice simultaneously encompassing pain and pleasure, agency and constraint, empowerment and conformity. By providing a more nuanced representation of people's experiences of such surgery, the thesis envisions a subjectivity that may better account for individuals' active and lived relationship to their bodies.

Does ERA spell the end to the era of IS methodological pluralism?

Methodological pluralism has been slowly developing in Information Systems. However, this development is fragile and only interpretivism has made any inroads into the major journals. Further, the form of interpretivism that has made inroads is informed by grounded theory and we suggest largely based on CAQDAS. We argue that the new Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative and other pressures to publish will stymie this budding but fragile methodological and research pluralism. The pressure to publish and the list of ranked journals will lead to greater conformity in methodology and in research areas and we conclude that pluralism will be under threat. We suggest some ways that journals and conference organisers may respond, to increase or maintain pluralism and how we will research pluralism further.

In the name of the Father : God in Lacan, Judaic or Christian?

This essay challenges the widespread notion that Lacanian psychoanalysis represents a 'Christianing' of psychoanalysis. It argues that Lacanian psychoanalysis brings to psychoanalysis a broadly "Averroist" attitude towards religion which develops out of and transcends Freud's position in Totem and Taboo. For Lacan, religious texts are an invaluable source of pre-psychoanalytic insight or another regal road into the champ Freudien: the dynamic of human beings' desire, in its co-conformity with language and Law. The text focuses on trying to decipher the missing content of the Names of the Father seminar: the seminar that "does not exist" (Miller, 2006) beyond its opening, esoteric and dramatic session. The force of doing this will be to show how much, and how fundamental, the things are that Lacan thinks the bible, and the first Abrahamic monotheism in particular, can teach us about human subjectivity and the instance of the Law that shapes it - insights which go to explain Freud's unmistakable attachment, despite himself, to the civilizational importance of his fathers.

Carnaby Street undressed

Carnaby Street Undressed is a story of fashion, music and eye opening insights into London's Carnaby Street in its 1960s heyday, told by the owners of the fashion shops that defined the iconic Street, and the popular musicians who were part of the “the scene”. This includes The Who lead sing Roger Daltrey, Donovan, Frank Allen from the Searchers, Gary Leeds from The Walker Brothers, and Peter Noone from Herman’s Hermits. The film is the story of a generation that rebelled against the grey conformity of the 1950s with a cultural revolution emanating from Carnaby Street from where it spread across the globe changing fashion and music forever. This a story about a street of firsts: the first time music was played in a shop, the first time men and women's clothes were sold in the same shop, the first time there was fashion for children, the first time the national flag was used as a fashion item, and the first time clothes had colour - lots of bright colours. The film reveals the cultural, philosophical and practical background and responses to these innovations.

Secondary English in the Australian curriculum: Tasmanian teachers’ perceptions of implementation – a conceptual overview

Australian school curricula are currently being reformed with the nation-wide introduction of the Australian Curriculum, designed to bring national subject content and assessment standard conformity through the detailing of the “core knowledge, understanding, skills and general capabilities [that are deemed] important for all Australian students” (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2008). The reform and implementation of any curriculum requires well- structured planning, and at the school level, curriculum implementation requires the input of teachers – the frontline stakeholders. Research suggests that the implementation of a new curriculum requires concentrated support to ensure that teachers are able to work and progress through professional learning effectively (Mulford, 2008; Australian Curriculum Coalition, 2010). This chapter is presented in two parts: a discussion about the incoming Australian Curriculum: English, and an outline of a proposed qualitative case study that will examine English teachers’ perceptions of the implementation of the Australian Curriculum: English in Tasmania.

Normative gender coercion and its subversion: an autoethnography of a quest for recognition

In an attempt to shed light on non-normative gender performance, such as transgender, androgynous, sex-change or transcendent, I look at my own challenges, day-to-day tensions and the delicate balances between social subjugation, social construction and the intense searching for safe non-conformist practice. This chapter uses phenomenonological autoethnography to examine and critique the interplay between the coercive cultural forces that impacted on my life and my gender non-conformity. The commentary and interpretation on my many attempted gender performance schemes, both failed and successful, in delivering personal agency, evidence a path of living a nonconformist life in a gendered world.

The ‘Australian Girl’ and the domestic ideal in colonial women’s fiction

The vast majority of novels and periodicals read by colonial Australian girls were written and published in Britain. ‘Daughters of the Southern Cross’ were more likely to have access to the Girl’s Own Paper by subscription or to imported fictions that had proven popular with British girl readers than any locally produced depictions of girlhood. From the 1880s, however, Australian authors produced several milestone fictions of girlhood for both adult and juvenile audiences. Rosa Praed's An Australian Heroine (1880) and Catherine Martin’s An Australian Girl (1890)  gave voice to the lived experience of Australia for young women, and their publication in Britain contributed to an emergent reciprocal transpacific flow of literary culture.

Two canonical Australian novels that focus on the maturation of girl protagonists who live on bush homesteads were also published in this period. Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians (1894) and Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (1901) feature intelligent girls who are not able to be effectively socialised to embrace domesticity. Turner’s Judy Woolcot is distinct among her six siblings as a plucky girl who instigates trouble, while Franklin’s aspiring writer Sybylla Melvyn is informed that ‘girls are the helplessest, uselessest, troublesomest little creatures in the world.’

The 1890s saw an agricultural depression in Australia that only fuelled the urban perpet-uation of the idealised and nationalistic bushman myth in literary and popular culture. The ubiquity of the myth problematised any attempt to situate women heroically within the nation outside of the home. British fictional imaginings of Australian girls lauded their lack of conformity and physical abilities and often showed them bravely defending the family property with firearms. In contrast, Australian domestic fiction, this chapter argues, is unable to accommodate bracing female heroism, postulating ambiguous outcomes at best for heroines who deviate from the feminine ideal.

Judy’s grandmother describes her ‘restless fire’ as something that ‘would either make a noble, daring, brilliant woman of her’, or ‘would flame up higher and higher and consume her’. Turner does not allow Judy’s unconventionality to prosper. Instead, she is killed by a falling gum tree while saving the life of her brother, leaving the future fulfilment of the domestic ideal to her sister, Meg, whose subsequent story occupies Little Mother Meg (1902). Franklin’s Sybylla expresses her inability to be content with the simple pleasures of keeping a home, and this informs her decision to reject a marriage proposal from a wealthy suitor. The novel’s indeterminate conclusion does not allow fulfilment of Sybylla’s writing aspirations, situating her outside the feminine ideal yet not affirming the merits of her desire to reject married life.

While Sharyn Pearce suggests that Judy’s tragic end follows a narrative pattern that sup-ports the glorification of male heroes and renders ‘over-reaching women’ as ‘noble failures’, the novel might also productively be read within the context of other fictions featuring girl protagonists of the period, such as Praed and Martin's novels. This chapter makes the case that Turner and Franklin’s thwarted heroines critique the containment of Australian girls to the banalities of the home by exposing the negative and uncertain outcomes for those who desire the freedoms and aspirations permitted to boys and men. Unlike British fictions that champion adventurous girls, these Australian fictions critique the continuation of gendered restrictions in the colonies by proposing that girls who desire excitement and independence ‘should have been…boy[s]’ (as Sybylla’s mother remarks).

Values, attitudes, and frequency of meat consumption: predicting meat-reduced diet in Australians

Reduced consumption of meat, particularly red meat, is associated with numerous health benefits. While past research has examined demographic and cognitive correlates of meat-related diet identity and meat consumption behavior, the predictive influence of personal values on meat-consumption attitudes and behaviour, as well as gender differences therein, has not been explicitly examined, nor has past research focusing on 'meat' generally addressed 'white meat' and 'fish/seafood' as distinct categories of interest. Two hundred and two Australians (59.9% female, 39.1% male, 1% unknown), aged 18 to 91 years (M = 31.42, SD = 16.18), completed an online questionnaire including the Schwartz Values Survey, and measures of diet identity, attitude towards reduced consumption of each of red meat, white meat, and fish/seafood, as well as self-reported estimates of frequency of consumption of each meat type. Results showed that higher valuing of Universalism predicted more positive attitudes towards reducing, and less frequent consumption of, each of red meat, white meat, and fish/seafood, while higher Power predicted less positive attitudes towards reducing, and more frequent consumption of, these meats. Higher Security predicted less positive attitudes towards reducing, and more frequent consumption, of white meat and fish/seafood, while Conformity produced this latter effect for fish/seafood only. Despite men valuing Power more highly than women, women valuing Universalism more highly than men, and men eating red meat more frequently than women, gender was not a significant moderator of the value-attitude-behavior mediations described, suggesting that gender's effects on meat consumption may not be robust once entered into a multivariate model of MRD attitudes and behaviour. Results support past findings associating Universalism, Power, and Security values with meat-eating preferences, and extend these findings by articulating how these values relate specifically to different types of meat.