Police and Vietnamese-Australian communities in multi-ethnic Melbourne

This paper explores practical solutions to sensitive community policing issues, drawing on an Australian case study of relations between police and Australian-Vietnamese communities. The paper summarizes initial research on the attitudes of Australian-Vietnamese community members and police to one another and to security and crime. Despite three decades of community policing, there is only limited communication flow between Vietnamese-Australian citizens including offenders and victims and police. The question is whether partnership policing can fill the gap. For police, this involves understanding not only ethnic distinctiveness but also intergenerational issues, tensions within cultural groups, and changing complex forms of membership and affiliation.

Migration, citizenship and intercultural relations : looking through the lens of social inclusion

Migration, Citizenship and Intercultural Relations reflects on the tensions and contradictions that arise within debates on social inclusion, arguing that both the concept of social inclusion and policy surrounding it need to incorporate visions of citizenship that value ethnic diversity. Presenting the latest empirical research from Australia and engaging with contemporary global debates on questions of identity, citizenship, intercultural relations and social inclusion, this book unsettles fixed assumptions about who is included as a valued citizen and explores the possibilities for engendering inclusive visions of citizenship in local, national and transnational spaces.

A participatory model for ethnic audience development for the arts

This paper aims to investigate strategies to increase ethnic minority group consumers' participation in arts performances in Australia. Our findings are based on focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with participants from ethnic minority groups, namely, Greek, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indian in Australia. The findings indicate that a mixed cultural/arts events and culturally specific events are the most favoured forms for attracting participation from culturally diverse audiences. Further strategies are to provide more arts and cultural education for minority and
mainstream cultures, and appropriate marketing activities to minority groups could increase arts participation of ethnic consumers. Our research will contribute to further understanding of ethnic marketing literature and cross-cultural marketing for the arts sector.

Traditional environmental knowledge and community perceptions in sustaining the forest environment : case study of Minahasa ethnic community in the surrounding of Lake Tondano, North Sulawesi - Indonesia

The idea of sustainable development is distinct from the idea of restoring or conserving nature. This concept is embedded in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (1992) which Indonesia and several countries around the world have signed. Sustainable development seeks to interlace humans and nature, while restoration (especially at the large scale) often allows nature to be addressed separately, sometimes out of remorse for the damage caused by humans. In terms of attaining sustainable natural resource development, the opportunities offered by traditional ecological knowledge documentation are considered essential in enabling the achievement of sustainability because most of these Indigenous and/or local communities are situated in areas where many species have been historically cultivated and used in a sustainable way for thousands of years. The skill and techniques of these local communities can provide valuable information for the global community to evaluate current environmental policies. Such research and evaluation is often robustly and best undertaken through ethnoecological methodological paradigms. This paper examines the traditional environment knowledge of the Minahasan ethnic community, who live in the surrounds of Lake Tondano in the North Sulawesi, together with the Minahasan conscious and unconscious actions in conserving their forest ecology in addition to their knowledge of culture about forest protection in the region. In particular, contemporary use of traditional environmental knowledge is examined in terms of its relevance to in traditional resource management and land use planning, as avenues to better curate and manage natural resources through informed regional planning strategies and mechanisms.

Book review : The handbook of research on ethnic minority enterprise

The Handbook of Research on Ethnic Minority Enterprise, by Leo-Paul Dana. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2007. ISBN 9781843768340

An entrenched bill of rights : a protection for the rights of minorities

This paper is concerned with the question of whether Australia would be better served by the inclusion of an entrenched Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia. In particular, attention will focus on the abuses of minorities that are all but certain to arise in any society that is based on majoritarian rule. This paper will also examine the question of whether an entrenched Bill of Rights would serve as an effective safeguard against such abuses, especially where the rights of unpopular minorities are involved. The analysis to follow is undertaken against the backdrop of the efficacy, or the lack thereof, of the Constitution of the United States in preventing such abuses, and particularly that portion of the American Constitution that is known as the Bill of Rights.

Honk against homophobia : rethinking relations between media and sexual minorities

The theory of “symbolic annihilation” or “symbolic violence” has been used in academic literature to describe the way in which sexual minorities have been ignored, trivialized, or condemned by the media. This article aims to de-center research from issues of media representation to consider the capacity for minority groups to proactively use new media and its various avenues for interactivity, social networking, and feedback to fight social exclusion. This work suggests that new media has become a space in which the nominally marginal in society may acquire “social artillery”—a term used to describe how sexual minorities utilize their expanding and more readily accessible social connections in digital space to combat instances of homophobia. The research draws on the results of an inquiry into the relation between media and a regional youth social justice group in Australia tackling homophobia. The research demonstrates that the group is becoming increasingly adept and comfortable with using a cross-section of media platforms to fulfill their own objectives, rather than seeing themselves as passive subjects of media representation. This article argues that this sets an example for other socially excluded groups looking to renegotiate their relation with the media in regional areas.