Thriving amid the performative demands of the contemporary audit culture: a matter of school context

The predominant focus in this paper is on issues of school context and, in particular, on the dimensions of context at a large English comprehensive school that enable it to thrive within the current demands of the contemporary audit culture. Featuring interview data gathered from a number of senior educators, the paper draws on Braun et al’s (Braun, A., S. Ball, M. Maguire, and K. Hoskins. 2011. “Taking Context Seriously: Towards Explaining Policy Enactments in the Secondary School.” Discourse: Studies in the Politics of Education 32 (4): 585 -596) heuristic device for thinking about the ‘situated’, ‘professional’ and ‘external’ dimensions of context at the school. This device supports an analysis of the school’s intake (in particular the high cultural and class related aspirations of parents and students) and its values (namely the school’s traditional ethos of academic and behavioural excellence). The central argument of the paper is that these contextual dimensions contribute significantly to the school’s capacity to forge a worthy school identity within the current hyper-accountable and competitive environment where academic achievement (along increasingly narrow and conservative lines) and maintaining standards in relation to this achievement are utmost priorities.

Popular Appeal : Books and Films in Contemporary Youth Culture

Now is an opportune moment to consider the shifts in youth and popular culture that are signalled by texts that are being read and viewed by young people. In a world seemingly compromised by climate change, political and religious upheavals and economic irresponsibility, and at a time of fundamental social change, young people are devouring fictional texts that focus on the edges of identity, the points of transition and rupture, and the assumption of new and hybrid identities. This book draws on a range of international texts to address these issues, and to examine the ways in which key popular genres in the contemporary market for young people are being re-defined and re-positioned in the light of urgent questions about the environment, identity, one's place in the world, and the fragile nature of the world itself. The key questions are: what are the shifts and changes in youth culture that are identified by the market and by what young people read and view? How do these texts negotiate the addressing of significant questions relating to the world today? Why are these texts so popular with young people? What are the most popular genres in contemporary best-sellers and films? Do these texts have a global appeal, and, if so, why? These over-arching themes and ideas are presented as a collection of inter-related essays exploring a rich variety of forms and styles from graphic novels to urban realism, from fantasy to dystopian writing, from epic narratives to television musicals. The subjects and themes discussed here reveal the quite remarkable diversity of issues that arise in youth fiction and the variety of fictional forms in which they are explored. Once seen as not as important as adult fiction, this book clearly demonstrates that youth fiction (and the popular appeal of this fiction) is complex, durable and far-reaching in its scope.

Are Australia’s universities in deficit? A tale of generic managers, audit culture, and casualisation

Managerial changes to Australian universities have had considerable impact on employees. In this paper we consider some of these changes and apply a theory known as the democratic deficit to them. This theory was developed from the democratic critique of managerialism, as it has been applied in the public sector in countries with Westminster-type political systems. This deficit covers the weakening of accountability through politicisation, the denial of public values through the use of private sector performance practices, and the hollowing out of the state through the contracting out and privatisation of public goods and services, and the redefinition of citizens as customers and clients. We suggest that the increased power of managers, expansion of the audit culture, and the extensive use of contract employment seem to be weakening the democratic culture and role of universities in part by replacing accountability as responsibility with accountability as responsiveness.

The logics of good teaching in an audit culture: A Deleuzian analysis

This article examines the attempted reform of education within an emerging audit culture in Australia that has led to the implementation of a high-stakes testing regime known as NAPLAN. NAPLAN represents a machine of auditing, which creates and accounts for data that are used to measure, amongst other things, good teaching. In particular, we address the logics of a policy intervention that aims to improve the quality of education through returning ‘good teaching’. Using Deleuze’s concepts of series, events, copies and simulacra, we suggest that an attempt to return past commonsense logics of ‘good teaching’ as a result of NAPLAN is not possible. In an audit culture as exemplified by NAPLAN, ‘good teaching’ is being reconceptualized through those practices and becomes unrecognizable. Whilst policy claims to improved equity and quality are admirable, this article suggests that the simulacral change to logics of good teaching may actualize something very different.

Who's counting? Legitimating measurement in the audit culture

What gives legitimacy to the numbers that constitute the measurement techniques of the audit culture? We argue that the audit culture’s blind application of numbers to people as if there was no moral or ethical dimension to the calculation rests on a military discourse resi-dent in mathematics. This argument is based on the genealogy presented in this paper, which uncovers a regime of measurement-by-number, sedimented as legitimate through an associa-tion with military power. We claim that this military measurement-by-number is a dubious technique of government on which the audit culture relies for its highly questionable authori-ty.

Transnationalism and Identity: the Concept of Community in Ghanaian Literature and Contemporary Ghanaian Culture

In my thesis, I use anthropology, literature, and adinkra, an indigenous art, to study Ghanaian concepts of community from an interactive standpoint. While each of these disciplines has individually been used to study the concept of community, the three have not previously been discussed in relation to one another. I explore the major findings of each field—mainly that in anthropology, transnational informants find communities upheld; in literature, transnational characters find the opposite; and in adinkra, there are elements of both continuity and dissolution—to discuss Ghanaian constructs of community in the transnational world. Throughout time, there have always been transnational individuals and concepts, but as globalization continues, transnationalism has become an ever-more vital topic, and combined with the common anthropological discussion of tradition and modernity, its influence on developing countries, like Ghana, is significant. Therefore, in my thesis, I explore how differing conceptions of community present themselves in each discipline, and how those divergences create a new understanding of place and identity.

Chinese Whiteness: The Discourse Of Race In Modern And Contemporary Chinese Culture

This thesis chronicles the development of western forms of race and racism in China. It then studies contemporary China using theories derived from whiteness studies in order to explain the unique position that whites (Caucasians) have in China today. In Chapter I, I break down the definition of race and introduce a foundation for a whiteness studies approach to research. In Chapter II, I analyze how Chinese classified themselves and other humans prior to the western system of race. In Chapter III, I chronicle the introduction of western forms of race and racism to China, and the appropriation of these concepts to suit Chinese goals. In Chapter IV, I approach cultural phenomenon in contemporary China by situating them in their historical traditions as well as by approaching them as displaying an internalized racism and white privilege. Finally in the Conclusion, I postulate on what China¿s contemporary racial system means for China.

Contemporary Cuban Culture: Notes on Alternative Thinking, Lecture by Madeline Cámara Betancourt

This flyer promotes the event "Contemporary Cuban Culture: Notes on Alternative Thinking Lecture by Madeline Cámara Betancourt ". Credit for image on flyer: Baruj Salinas, Punta Cana VI, 1999.

Contemporary Cuban Culture: Notes on Alternative Thinking, Lecture by Madeline Cámara Betancourt

Dr. Madeline Camara Betancourt gives a lecture that considers several key cultural, political, and literary events as "crossroads" that have generated alternative thoughts in the quest for a Cuban identity after 1959.

Humanizing the facade of the public commercial building in a contemporary American culture

The projects studied for this thesis show that the more the façades match the values, tastes, and needs of its target individuals, the more frequently the place will be visited. They endow it with a sense of place and uniqueness and create an emotional bond with the individuals. The intent of this research was to derive a framework of principles to be used in the design of façades, and to establish a relationship between the facade, human scale, urban context, and building. The methodology for developing this framework is based on the analysis of building façades from the Renaissance to current examples of New York Times Square. The principles were generated from strategies of the case studies analyzed. Principles of monumentality, symbolism, and iconography were used to perceive façades as essential forms of architecture. The scale of facades emphasizes human dimensions. In turn, the façade is a device of communication to inform individuals, and its impact on retelling culture for a city.

‘It’s like Spiderman… with great power comes great responsibility’: school autonomy, school context and the audit culture

This paper explores issues of school autonomy within the context of the performative demands of the audit culture. The focus is on a case study of Clementine Academy, a large and highly diverse English secondary school. Specific situated, professional, material and external factors at the school were significant in shaping Clementine’s response to and take-up of the policy of academisation (a key reform within broader government mandates to create an increasingly autonomised education system). Factors such as the school’s intake and history, its ethos and values, its access to human and economic resources and its status and power as an outstanding school supported its confident and ‘morally’ focused take-up of this policy. Clementine’s privileged position in relation to these factors enabled the school to mediate and challenge some of the negative effects of the audit culture. This paper highlights the significance of considering these contextual factors in understanding the different ways in which schools are currently engaging their autonomy to cope with the demands of the audit culture.

High Culture as Subculture : Brisbane's Contemporary Chamber Music Scene

The aim of the dissertation is to discover the extent to which methodologies and conceptual frameworks used to understand popular culture may also be useful in the attempt to understand contemporary high culture. The dissertation addresses this question through the application of subculture theory to Brisbane’s contemporary chamber music scene, drawing on a detailed case study of the contemporary chamber ensemble Topology and its audiences. The dissertation begins by establishing the logic and necessity of applying cultural studies methodologies to contemporary high culture. This argument is supported by a discussion of the conceptual relationships between cultural studies, high culture, and popular culture, and the methodological consequences of these relationships. In Chapter 2, a brief overview of interdisciplinary approaches to music reveals the central importance of subculture theory, and a detailed survey of the history of cultural studies research into music subcultures follows. Five investigative themes are identified as being crucial to all forms of contemporary subculture theory: the symbolic; the spatial; the social; the temporal; the ideological and political. Chapters 3 and 4 present the findings of the case study as they relate to these five investigative themes of contemporary subculture theory. Chapter 5 synthesises the findings of the previous two chapters, and argues that while participation in contemporary chamber music is not as intense or pervasive as is the case with the most researched street-based youth subcultures, it is nevertheless possible to describe Brisbane’s contemporary chamber music scene as a subculture. The dissertation closes by reflecting on the ways in which the subcultural analysis of contemporary chamber music has yielded some insight into the lived practices of high culture in contemporary urban contexts.

All of My Blood is Red: Contemporary Metis Visual Culture and Identity

This thesis explores notions of contemporary Metis identity through the lens of visual culture, as articulated in the works of three visual artists of Metis ancestry. I discuss the complexities of being Metis with reference to specific art works by Christi Belcourt, David Garneau and Rosalie Favell. In addition to a visual culture analysis of these three Metis artists, I supplement my discussion of Metis identity with a selection of autoethnographic explorations of my identity as a Metis woman through out this thesis. The self-reflexive aspect of this work documents the ways in which my understanding of myself as a Metis woman have been deepened and reworked in the process of conducting this research, while also offering an expanded conception of contemporary Metis culture. I present this work as an important point of departure for giving a greater presence to contemporary Metis visual culture across Canada:

Apocalyptic Discourse in Contemporary Culture: Post-Millennial Perspectives of the End of the World

This interdisciplinary collection of essays focuses on critical and theoretical responses to the apocalypse of the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century cultural production. Examining the ways in which apocalyptic discourses have had an impact on how we read the world’s globalised space, the traumatic burden of history, and the mutual relationship between language and eschatological belief, fifteen original essays by a group of internationally established and emerging critics reflect on the apocalypse, its past tradition, pervasive present and future legacy. The collection seeks to offer a new reading of the apocalypse, understood as a complex – and, frequently, paradoxical – paradigm of (contemporary) Western culture. The majority of published collections on the subject have been published prior to the year 2000 and, in their majority of cases, locate the apocalypse in the future and envision it as something imminent. This collection offers a post-millennial perspective that perceives "the end" as immanent and, simultaneously, rooted in the past tradition.