Subversion or socialization? Humor and carnival in Morris Gleitzman's texts

Like their counterparts elsewhere, Australian children favour humorous novels; comedic writers consistently dominate the preteen and early teen fiction market in Australia. Regardless of its popularity, however, in comparison to more serious writing, humorous literature has received little critical attention. Of the studies aimed at this area, most have tended to concentrate on the various stages of development in childrens preferences for humor, its strategies, forms and appeal, with very few examining the ideological assumptions informing particular texts. Yet, this article argues, humorous books are no less concerned with culture, value and meaning than any other kind of fiction for children. As Morris Gleitzmans texts illustrate, by highlighting the cultural processes involved in the construction of language and meaning, inviting readers to play with ideas about language, social roles and behaviors, and creating characters who act in ways which are oppositional to usual socializing expectations, humorous literature, especially in carnivalized forms, has the potential to problematize unquestioning acceptance of various ideological para-digms, values, social practices and rules.

The 'Australian settlement' and Australian political thought

Arguments for reshaping political agendas invariably begin from an appraisal of past errors and achievements. Paul Kelly's notion of the 'Australian Settlement' attempts such a task. Kelly identifies a particular ideological and institutional tradition in Australian politics that dominated much of the twentieth century and that is now deemed to have broken down. This article accepts that the notion of a Settlement provides certain insights into the evolution of Australian political thought. Nonetheless, the paper takes issue with the specific content of Kelly's version of the 'Australian Settlement' and indicates how it may be reformulated. It argues that, to the extent that we can speak of a 'Settlement' in Australia, it was one reached on a wider range of key conflicts or cleavages than those to which Kelly refers.

Race, identity and education achievements among Arab-Australian students

This paper discusses the challenge of managing cultural diversity in secondary schools, focusing on key structural, ideological, cultural, attitudinal and identity factors affecting the educational experiences and outcomes of Australian students from Arabic-speaking background (ASB). Recent research indicates that there are complex processes at play that hinder the ability of non English-speaking background (NESB) students to access constructive and meaningful education, and that such processes need further systematic investigation. It has also been argued that Australian schools are failing the test of social equity and that the dominant approach to curriculum and pedagogy does not meet the needs of the growing numbers of students from divergent cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. This paper focuses on identifying the social, cultural and attitudinal factors that affect the educational achievements of ASB students within a broad multidimensional approach to multicultural education. By linking thorough empirical research and innovative theory with practical, tested plans of action, this study proposes an in-principled approach to multicultural education that is extendable to a variety of schooling contexts while retaining its core focus on effecting positive learning outcomes. The key objectives of the larger study upon which this paper is based are to (a) address the disadvantages and barriers faced by NESB young people, particularly ASB young people, in achieving positive educational outcomes; (2) increase their chances for better life opportunities and self fulfilment; and (3) develop a good practice model for diversity management in Victorian schools. This latter objective will complement Victorian Government policies on cultural diversity and multicultural education.

Few choices under work choices

This paper sets out the history of the philosophical understanding held by the major political parties towards the governance of the Australian industrial relations system. In so doing it notes there has been a long legacy of socialist and conservative political and ideological support for mediating industrial conflict through the institutional agencies provided by conciliation and arbitration tribunals. The discussion notes the erosion of this legacy under the recent ascendancy of neo-liberal political and neo-classical economic thought, an ascendancy that has seen a significant retreat of state responsibility for mediating relations between the two sides of industry in the name of improving business productivity and national economic outcomes. The passing of the Workplace Amendment (Work Choices) Bill 2005 is the latest legislative manifestation of this thinking. This paper challenges the labour market assumptions and expectations of the Bill by arguing that equality in bargaining power between the two sides of industry in the manner afforded by conciliation and arbitration tribunals is essential for any genuine and lasting prosperity to exist between labour and capital.

Foucault's 'What is an author' : towards a critical discourse of practice as research

A vexed issue for many artistic researchers is related to the need for the artist/researcher to write about his or her own work in the research report or exegesis. In the creative arts, the outcomes that emerge from an alternative logic of practice are not easily quantifiable and it can be difficult to articulate conclusions objectively given the emotional and ideological investments and the intrinsically subjective dimension of the artistic process. How then, might the artist as researcher avoid on the one hand, what has been referred to as 'auto-connoisseurship', the undertaking of a thinly veiled labour of valorising what has been achieved in the creative work, or alternatively producing a research report that is mere description or history?

In this paper I suggest that a way of overcoming such a dilemma is for creative arts researchers to shift the critical focus away from the notion of the work as product, to an understanding of both studio enquiry and its outcomes as process. I’d like to draw on Michel Foucault’s essay ‘What is An Author ‘ to explore how we might move away from art criticism to the notion of a critical discourse of practice-led enquiry that involves viewing the artist as a researcher, and the artist/critic as a scholar who comments on the value of the artistic process as the production of knowledge.

Foucault’s essay provides artistic researchers with a template for more objective and distanced discourse on the practice-led research process and its writing. It allows researchers to locate themselves within contexts of theory and practice and provides an analytical framework though which researchers might locate themselves and their work within the broader social arena and field of research, As I will show with reference to the work of Donna Haraway and a number of commentaries on Pablo Picasso’s Demioselles d’Avignon, an application of Foucault’s ideas need not negate those subjective and situated aspects of practice as research.

Misuse of the term 'stakeholder' in public relations

This article queries the relatively recent adoption of the term 'stakeholder', borrowed from the UK political and the US business management spheres, in public relations academic writing. The article concludes that these spheres use the term in a normative or ideological manner that has worrying implications. The term frames people as having a pre-existing relationship with the governments or business organisations which name them as such. This process of incorporation prejudges and potentially obscures the real relations of groups of people vis-à-vis governments and business organisations which they may wish to have nothing to do with. An argument is mounted for the defence of the term 'publics'. It is pointed out that a key originator of stakeholder theory opposes the notion of 'publics' as closer to a notion of an uncontrolled audience. The article argues that the notion of 'publics' is more fitting than the notion of 'stakeholders' if public relations is about acknowledging this uncontrollability, and to do with advising organisations about their positioning in the democratic milieu. On the other hand, the notion 'stakeholders' may be the right one if public relations is simply aimed at immediately shaping people's behaviour, irrespective of longer term and wider political implications.

Capitalism run wild: Zizou Corder`s lion boy and Victor Kelleher`s dog boy

While capitalism has long made highly efficient ideological use of Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' principle to justify ruthless business practices, this appropriation of animal metaphor has taken on new and considerably more problematic resonances in the wake of globalization. At a time when the negative consequences of corporate greed are becoming more apparent, as inequalities widen and power is shifted beyond governments and their borders, there is a spate of children's novels that explicitly challenges this new world order.

The re-emergence of the public accountancy profession in China: a contextual analysis

Little has been published on the professionalisation projects in non-English speaking countries. In particular, where these countries operate under a non-capitalist environment, the role of accountants and their professionalisation process have been relatively under-explored. This paper seeks to contribute to addressing this apparent gap by choosing the public accountancy profession in China as the subject matter of the research. This paper draws on Gramsci's concept of hegemony to examine the circumstances leading to the re-emergence of the public accountancy profossion in China. In particular, the paper attempts to understand the political ana' ideological influence upon the professionalisation process of the Chinese accountants. To this aim, the paper examines the social and cultural environment of China highlighting the importance attached to propagating the political ideology by the hegemonic ruling class in the history of China. The paper concludes that while the re-emergence of the CPA profession is a by-product of the government's push for economic reconstruction, the real contextual factor that led to the revival of the public accountancy profession is the political ideologies, which were propagated by the ruling political force in an attempt to establish hegemony.

Work choices : a fair go gone

This paper sets out the history of the philosophical understanding held by the major political parties towards the governance of the Australian industrial relations system. In so doing it notes the legacy of socialist and conservative ideological underpinnings of political support for industrial mediation in the form of conciliation and arbitration tribunals. The discussion notes the recent abrogation of this legacy under the political ascendancy neoclassical economic thought. It challenges the labour market assumptions upon which this thought is based, and in so doing argues against the asserted merits of the proposed Workplace Amendment (Workchoices) Bill 2005.

Old Tom, new Tom

This presentation will Involve a discussion of Canadian fringe artist Mike Hoolboom's experimental narrative Tom (2002 75 minutes, Digital Video) The presentation will Include a short excerpt and stills from the film Tom is a biography of experimental filmmaker Tom Chomont who tells of his struggle with HIV and Parkinson's disease and disarmingly recounts confronting memories of infanticide, incest, fetishism and death It is how these revelations are innovatively processed through excerpts of Chomont's films, home movies, photos, Images lifted straight form Video Busters, archival and found footage that is so telling it is as If the surface of cinema itself is the body that is being marked and reconstituted and "the personal" forever changed by the Infection of this material Into our psyche.

This work is offered as exemplary evidence of the strong link between an experimental non-narrative cinema that flourishes In North America and new media art

The presentation will touch on the following areas:

> The Innovative marking out of the self In terms relevant to a new media practice.
> The correspondence between this film and media theorist Arthur Kroker's Ideas about panic bodies and excremental culture.
> An examination of erasure and loss In non-narrative forms.
> The historical context of Hoolboom's work as part of a North American experimental tradition and as a shared non-narrative tradition With New Media.

The presentation Will conclude With some comments about the relationship between experimental film and new media In this country and how the failure to Identify this relationship constructively here may have contributed to the current "death of the new" The concept of new media and New Australian Will be contrasted to attain some Insight Into the Ideological underpinnings of "Creative Nation".

Families divided : culture and control in small family business

In this article, we explore the dynamics of control, compliance and resistance using two case studies where ‘family’ has symbolic, material and ideological significance. While the ‘family’ metaphor is often invoked to suggest a normative unity and integration in large organizations, we investigate the use of shared understandings of divisions (Parker 1995) and difference, as well as unity and similarity, in constituting organizational culture in two small family-owned firms. Diverging from mainstream family business research, we adopt a critical and interpretative approach that incorporates employee perspectives and explores how forms of control and resistance need to be understood in relation to their local contexts. We also argue that organization studies could benefit from revisiting progressive assumptions that equate developments in forms of organization with forms of organizational control.

A spill-over theory of international trade unionism

This paper use neo-functionalist and institutionalist theories of geo-political integration to develop a theory of international trade unionism. In brief, the theory asserts that the type of international ‘context’ in which international trade unions operate presupposes the types of ‘imperatives’ that will dominate their interests and concerns. These imperatives are taken to operate along one of three dimensions - industrial, political and ideological, and are seen as evolving in accordance with the ‘logic of spill-over’ in global and sub-global integration processes. Using this interpretation the discussion provides reasons as to why ideological imperatives have historically dominated international trade union thinking, the only exception being regional trade unions operating in Europe, which have evolved beyond the ideological to embrace industrial and political imperatives in their modes of organisation and operation.

Anglo-Indians in Hollywood, Bollywood and arthouse cinema

Apart from a few disparaging remarks about offensive stereotypes by Anglo-Indian writers and politicians such as Gloria Jean Moore, Frank Anthony and Gillian Hart, critics have paid very little attention to the representation of “mixed-race” Anglo-Indians in the cinema. Drawing on screen theory and recent theories of cinema spectatorship, this essay provides a comparative analysis of how Hollywood, Bollywood and arthouse films represent Anglo-Indians. More specifically, it analyses three paradigmatic films: Bhowani Junction (1956), Julie (1975), and 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981). Combining formal analysis of narrative structure, mise-en-scegravene and genre with historical analysis, the paper examines the ideological work performed by these texts, which use Anglo-Indians to dramatise specific political conflicts in India such as those generated by the British partition of India in 1947 and the more recent issue of globalisation.

Maistre avec de Sade: Zizek contra de maistre

It is possible to argue that the first world is presently living through a period of radical global reaction against the social democratic consensus of the twentieth century. In this context, the use of Slavoj Zizek's Lacnaian theory of ideology to critique the traditions of thought which inform this reaction becomes a vital task. In this paper, I use Zizek's Lacanian theory of ideology to critically analyse de Maistre's remarkable work: particularly his 'Considerations on France'. Zizek's emphasis on the role of the Real in ideology, it is argued, allows us unique purchase on de Maistre's ideological position. It allows us to show, furthermore, how reactionary conservatism does not 'conserve' the symbolic Other of the discourse of the master, since it is animated by fear and trembling that the symbolic can no longer hold in conditions of secularisation. In this context, the proximity of de Maistre with de Sade emerges as something that goes beyond superficially similar celebrations of the role of violence in human affairs. What is minimally at stake in reactionary thought per se, this paper argues, is the attempt to reground lost authority in the unmediated Real, a procedure in which the laying down of the law verges into the need to divide and sacifice others for the Jouissance of the Other. In this way, Lacan's comment that right-wing intelectuals are knaves who, if pushed, are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve power is vindicated and also elaborated. For De Maistre, the paper shows, was nothing if not a
collosally royal knave

Guest editorial

An examination of Australian media reports over the last twelve months on the subject of Indigenous arts suggests a number of significant contradictions. Indigenous affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone called Aboriginal arts ‘Australia’s greatest cultural gift to the world’ (Australian, 24 January 2006), while the always-controversial expatriate Germaine Greer argued that much Indigenous art was in fact poor quality and ‘a big con’ (West Australian, 13 December 2005). Curators at France’s Musee du Quai Branly dedicated a wing of the new gallery to Aboriginal art. Yet many Indigenous leaders – including David Ross from the Central Land Council and Hetti Perkins, curator of Indigenous Arts at the Art Gallery of NSW – continue to publicise the widespread exploitation of Aboriginal artists in Central Australia by unscrupulous art dealers (Northern Territory News, 22 December 2005). Former head of the Northern Land Council and former Australian of the Year, Galarrwuy Yunupingu, who twenty years ago presented Bob Hawke with the painting Barunga Statement in celebration of the government’s commitment to a treaty, recently threatened to take the painting back from Parliament House in protest against ‘successive governments’’ neglect of Indigenous policy (Sydney Morning Herald, 21 January 2006). And in the performing arts, Richard Walley drew attention to the lack of professional recognition of Indigenous performing artists (Australian, 24 January 2006).

Such contradictions within the management and marketing of Indigenous arts have persisted for several years, and it was in response that this special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Arts and Cultural Management was initiated. As guest editors, we sought to present research that examines, more deeply and constructively, the marketing of Indigenous arts in Australia both historically and in the present. What emerges from this collection of five papers is a familiar scholarly theme: a tension between the ‘periphery’ and the ‘centre’, between outback and city, between larger and smaller Australian states and between Australia and other nations.

Jonathan Sweet’s ‘UNESCO and cultural heritage practice in Australia in the 1950s’ looks at the evolving relationship between Australia and the United Nations through an analysis of a significant touring exhibition: Australian Aboriginal Culture. Sweet pinpoints the 1950s as a period in which Australian museology’s approach to Indigenous cultures gradually changed, and in which Australian participation in UNESCO through the exhibition helped shape the ideological position UNESCO advocated. His article provides a useful historical contrast against which the following four articles may be read.

Chapman, Cardamone, Manahan and Rentschler look at local and contemporary issues in Indigenous arts marketing. Katrina Chapman’s ‘Positioning urban Aboriginal art in the Australian Indigenous art market’ investigates perceptions about contemporary urban Aboriginal art, concluding that the estrangement – and indeed stereotyping – of urban and traditional art creates a false set of values that urban artists are challenging. Similarly, Megan Cardamone, Esmai Manahan and Ruth Rentschler contrast perceptions of Aboriginal arts from the northern and south-eastern states, identifying crucial misconceptions that contribute to the value system applied to these arts. As Ruth Rentschler is a joint editor of this issue, the review process for this article has been managed by Katya Johanson as co-editor.

Two case studies of marketing the arts – which look at different artforms and in opposite sides of the country – then follow. Jennifer Radbourne, Janet Campbell and Vera Ding’s ‘Building audiences for Indigenous theatre’ analyses research on audiences and potential audiences for Kooemba Jdarra – Brisbane’s Indigenous performing arts company – to identify the ways in which audience attendance may be encouraged.

Finally, Jacqui Healy’s ‘Balgo 4-04’ provides a close examination of a unique art exhibition: a major commercial exhibition of the kind usually seen in Sydney and Melbourne, held in an arts centre in the middle of the Tanami Desert and retailing directly to collectors.

The editors are grateful to Warlayirti Artists Art Centre for permission to use the photographs that accompany Jacqui Healy’s article. We would also like to thank the contributors, Jo Caust for the opportunity to present this special issue, and Pearl Field for her assistance in putting it all together.