Andrew Bolt isn't a racist, but ...

The Coalition's push to make changes to the Racial Discrimination Act was in part a response to a court ruling that Andrew Bolt had breached the Act over his comments about Aboriginal Australians. Here, Chelsea Bond revisits the newspaper columnist's treatment of Aboriginality, explaining that race is more than skin deep.

Locating Indigenous Australia within community development practice : clients, consumers or change makers?

The philosophical promise of community development to “resource and empower people so that they can collectively control their own destinies” (Kenny 1996:104) is no doubt alluring to Indigenous Australia. Given the historical and contemporary experiences of colonial control and surveillance of Aboriginal bodies, alongside the continuing experiences of socio-economic disadvantage, community development reaffirms the aspirational goal of Indigenous Australians for self-determination. Self-determination as a national policy agenda for Indigenous Australians emerged in the 1970s and saw the establishment of a wide range of Aboriginal community-controlled services (Tsey et al 2012). Sullivan (2010:4) argues that the Aboriginal community controlled service sector during this time has, and continues to be, instrumental to advancing the plight of Indigenous Australians both materially and politically. Yet community development and self-determination remain highly problematic and contested in how they manifest in Indigenous social policy agendas and in practice (Hollinsworth 1996; Martin 2003; McCausland 2005; Moreton-Robinson 2009). Moreton-Robinson (2009:68) argues that a central theme underpinning these tensions is a reading of Indigeneity in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, behaviours, cultures, and communities are pathologised as “dysfunctional” thus enabling assertions that Indigenous people are incapable of managing their own affairs. This discourse distracts us from the “strategies and tactics of patriarchal white sovereignty” that inhibit the “state’s earlier policy of self-determination” (Moreton-Robinson 2009:68). We acknowledge the irony of community development espoused by Ramirez above (1990), that the least resourced are expected to be most resourceful.; however, we wish to interrogate the processes that inhibit Indigenous participation and control of our own affairs rather than further interrogate Aboriginal minds as uneducated, incapable and/or impaired...

Curriculum movements in science education

"The Latin meaning of the word “curriculum” as the race course for athletic sports is a good place to start to describe the use of this word in science education. It conjures up senses of contest and of challenge that have been part of the science curriculum since its earliest beginnings in schooling. Curriculum also had a Latin meaning associating it with the “deeds and events for developing a child to an adult” that also finds resonance in how the teaching and learning of science has in some places and some occasions been conceived. It is this sense of the prescription of an intended curriculum – what is to be taught and learnt in science – that this entry discusses the science curriculum’s movement over time. Others in education, and indeed in science education, use the word “curriculum” much more widely to include the pedagogies in classroom practice, the many other explicit and implicit experiences that ..."--Publisher website

Literacy, place, and pedagogies of possibility: Working against residualization effects and deficit discourses in poor school communities

Australia has a long history of policy attention to the education of poor and working-class youth (Connell, 1994), yet currently on standardized educational outcomes measures the gaps are widening in ways that relate to social background, including race, location and class. An economic analysis of school choice in Australia reveals that a high proportion of government school students now come from lower Socio-Economic Status (SES) backgrounds (Ryan & Watson, 2004), indicating a trend towards a gradual residualisation of the poor in government schools, with increased private school enrolments as a confirmed national trend. The spatial distribution of poverty and the effects on school populations are not unique to Australia (Lupton, 2003; Lipman, 2011; Ryan, 2010). Raffo and colleagues (2010) recently provided a synthesis of socially critical approaches towards schooling and poverty arguing that what is needed are shifts in the balances of power to reposition those within the educational system as having some say in the ways schooling is organized. ‘Disadvantaged’ primary schools are not a marginal concern for education systems, but now account for a large and growing number of schools that serve an ever increasing population being made redundant, in part-time precarious work, under-employed or unemployed (Thomson 2002; Smyth, Down et al 2010). In Australia, the notion of the ‘disadvantaged’ school now refers to those, mostly public schools, being residualised by a politics of parental choice that drives neoliberalising policy logic (Bonner & Caro 2007; Hattam & Comber, forthcoming 2014; Thomson & Reid, 2003)...

Claire Renzetti (2013) Feminist Criminology. London, UK:Routledge

Feminist Criminology, a recent addition to the suite of slimline Key Ideas in Criminology Series (Routledge), captures and retrospectively unpacks the complexity, diversity and essence of feminist criminology. Claire Renzetti provides a rich, engaging and thought‐provoking account, taking the reader on a journey encompassing the historical, legal, sociological and psychological dimensions that examine the context, synergies and disjunctions among past, present and future feminist criminologies. Her unique approach considers the micro and macro dimensions of, and impact within, the discipline, academy, criminal justice system and society more broadly. Emphasising the fluidity underpinning feminist perspectives, Renzetti contends that ‘there is no single unitary perspective in criminology’, with feminist criminology offering ‘a diverse collection of theoretical perspectives and methods’ (p. 99). Opting for the path less travelled and rejecting the marginalising of feminist criminology with the notional ‘add and stir’ approach, Renzetti advocates moving beyond a tolerance approach to one that embeds analyses of gender, ‘race’ and class within mainstream criminological research paradigms. Charting the development of feminist criminology from the 1970s to the present, Renzetti offers ‘an assessment of criminology’s potential for shaping the future of our discipline’ and the practice of criminal justice (p. 1). Feminist Criminology is organised into five chapters, each progressing concise summaries of feminist approaches, contributions to criminological practice, and shifting academic landscapes; the text concludes with an appraisal of future directions for feminist criminology.

Playing Pranks: Traditions, communities & co-creative cultural performance practice

Pranks, hoaxes and practical jokes are co-creative cultural performance practices that appear across times, contexts and cultures. These practices include everyday play amongst families, friends and coworkers, entertainment programs such as Prank Patrol, Punked or Scare Tactics, and aesthetic and activist pranks perpetrated by situationist artists, guerrilla artists, and, most recently, culture ‘jammers’ or ‘hackers’ intent on turning capitalist systems back on themselves. Although it can, in common usage, describe almost any show off behaviour, a prank in the strictest definition of the term is a performance that deploys a very specific set of strategies. It is an act of trickery, mischief, or deceit, that must be taken as real, and momentarily cause real fear, anger or worry for an unwitting spectator-become-performer, who is meant to play along until the trick is revealed and their response can be represented back to the prankster, other spectators, or society as a whole, either for the sake of entertainment or for the sake of commentary on a cultural phenomenon. A prank, in this sense, deliberately blurs the boundaries between daily and dramatic performance. It creates a moment of uncertainty, in which both the prankster’s ability to be creative, clever, or culturally astute, and the prankee’s ability to play along, discern the trick, discern the point of the trick, and, in the end, be duped, be a good sport, or even play/pay the prankster back, are both put to the test. In this paper, I consider a number of pranking traditions popular where I am in Australia, from the community-building pranks of footballers, bucks parties and ‘drop bear’ tales told to tourists, to the more controversial pranks of radio shock jocks, activists and artists. I use performance, spectatorship and ethical theory to examine the engagement between prankster, pranked spectator, and other spectators, in this most distinctive sort of community-driven performance practice, and the way it builds and breaks status, social and other sorts of relationships within and between specific communities.