Australian Mainstream Research Articles

Growing Up Our Way

In this study, we attempted to explore the experiences and beliefs of Aboriginal families as they cared for their children in the first year of life. We collected family stories concerning child rearing, development, behavior, health, and well-being between each infant's birth and first birthday. We found significant differences in parenting behaviors and child-rearing practices between Aboriginal groups and mainstream Australians. Aboriginal parents perceived their children to be autonomous individuals with responsibilities toward a large family group. The children were active agents in determining their own needs, highly prized, and included in all aspects of community life. Concurrent with poverty, neocolonialism, and medical hegemony, child-led parenting styles hamper the effectiveness of health services. Hence, until the planners of Australia's health systems better understand Aboriginal knowledge systems and incorporate them into their planning, we can continue to expect the failure of government and health services among Aboriginal communities.

Where are you from? Identity construction and experiences of ‘othering’ in the narratives of Sudanese refugee-background Australians

This article discusses collective identification among Sudanese refugee-background residents in Australia. The discursive data is drawn from semi-structured interviews through which identity self-categorizations and self-labelling were explored. In addition, mini-narratives about their experiences of intergroup communication with mainstream Australians were analysed in depth. In these narratives, the main topic was the story of being confronted with the question ‘Where are you from?’. This article applies positioning theory to the narrative accounts and discusses how participants position themselves in the story world as well as in the interactional world. The findings demonstrate that Sudanese Australians have a strong ethnic self-concept and a strong desire to obtain an Australian identity. However, their stories reveal that they are positioned as outsiders by mainstream Australians.

Mediated Multiculturalism: Newspaper Representations of Sudanese Migrants in Australia

While multiculturalism has been central to the Australian political and social landscape since the 1970s, it has been recently challenged, with the (re)emergence of discourses of ‘social cohesion’ and ‘integration’. In this paper, we engage with these contests by focusing on newspaper coverage of Sudanese Australians around the time of the 2007 Federal Election. We ask: how did the Australian print media represent Sudanese people during this period? In addition, what do such representations suggest about contemporary media discourses around multiculturalism? Drawing on a content analysis of 203 newspaper articles published in The Age, The Herald Sun and The Australian, we argue that dominant media discourses are both influenced by and contribute to integrationist agendas that situate Sudanese Australians as outsiders to the Australian mainstream, thereby providing a significant challenge to contemporary multiculturalism.

A Study of Australian Muslim Youth Identity: The Melbourne Case

Australia is the home of 340,393 Muslims and they constitute about 1.7% of the total national population of 19,855,287 million people.1 Muslims have migrated to Australia from several Muslim countries on their own will for a better life. The Australian government also welcomed the immigrants because it needed labor for a sustainable economy. However, in times of crisis, for example, after the 9/11 incident the media and some politicians positioned the Muslims as the “Other”. In December 2005 there was a riot at Sydney's Cronulla beach between some Lebanese-Australians and the mainstream Australians but the politicians and the media sided with the wider society. In September 2006, when the Egyptian-born Mufti al-Hilali presented a controversial sermon in Arabic in which he depicted scantily-dressed women as uncovered meat and blamed them for inciting men to rape, the rhetoric of “us” and “them” was final. The racial profiling of Muslims through the Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 has also caused unease in the society. Against this backdrop I interviewed 14 Muslim youths of diverse backgrounds, 15–17 years in Melbourne and tried to gain an understanding of their identity. Overall, the participants appeared to be peaceful, and their bicultural skills strengthened their Australian citizenship.

A war about meaning: A case study of media contestation of the Australian anti-terror laws

Following the 9/11 attacks on the USA, the Howard government introduced extensive amendments to the criminal act within Australia. The Australian mainstream media has been criticized for its ineffective contestation of the controversial legislation, effectively becoming ‘seduced’ by the Howard government's discourses around post-9/11 insecurity. This article examines the representation of the ‘anti-terror laws’ by the Australian government and mainstream newspaper media. I argue that competing editorial practices in mainstream newspapers diluted the possibility of effective contestation of the laws. More broadly this article will illustrate that discourses around the media's traditional role as the ‘fourth estate’ often does not account for the various internal and external influences and constraints placed upon journalistic practice.

Reclaiming the Wasteland: Samson and Delilah and the Historical Perception and Construction of Indigenous Knowledges in Australian Cinema

Reclaiming the Wasteland: Samson and Delilah and the Historical Perception and Construction of Indigenous Knowledges in Australian Cinema

Differences in psychological morbidity among Australian and Chinese caregivers of persons with dementia in residential care

The aim of the present study was to determine the effects of culture on caregiver psychological morbidity among informal caregivers of institutionalised persons with dementia in three different populations: (1) Shanghai, (2) Australian-Chinese and (3) Australian mainstream (non-Chinese). Caregivers and residents with dementia were recruited from (1) a dementia hospital in Shanghai, (2) three ethno-specific Chinese nursing homes in Sydney and (3) four mainstream nursing homes in Sydney. Psychological morbidity was assessed using the Geriatric Depression Scale, mental health component (MHC) of the RAND-36 Health Status Inventory and a guilt scale. There were no significant differences between the three groups as measured by the guilt scale and MHC. Shanghai caregivers had higher mean depression scores than Australian-Chinese caregivers (p < 0.001), who in turn had higher mean depression scores than Australian mainstream caregivers (p = 0.015). Higher depression scores were found to be inversely associated with the caregiver's education level and physical health status, and associated with increased frequency of nursing home visits, but not with levels of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). Levels of depression in caregivers of institutionalised persons with dementia differ by culture and country of residence.

Perspectives on Reconciliation &amp; Indigenous Rights

This paper provides an overview of discourses of the movement for national reconciliation prevailing within the Australian socio-political context since the inception of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991, to the national apology delivered by the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on 13th February 2008. It provides an framework for the various discourses of reconciliation, by exploring and analysing the accrued meanings to such terms such as ‘genuine’, substantive or ‘true’ reconciliation; the Howard’s Government’s ‘practical reconciliation’ and the Rudd government’s great attempt at ‘symbolic’ reconciliation in the national apology to Indigenous Australians. In the changing political context in Australia today this paper revisits the debates on reconciliation, and endeavours to locate the movement solidly within a human rights framework that includes first nation rights. This requires an examination of the roots of the reconciliation movement including community attitudes to reconciliation and the nature of the peoples’ movement as well as the differing perspectives of policy makers, politicians and of course, Indigenous peoples. It asks crucial questions about the progress of reconciliation and the type of reconciliation mainstream Australians will accept. In truth therefore, was the ‘National Apology’ a grand symbolic gesture by mainstream Australia to maintain the status quo and divert our eyes from the more searching questions of the ‘unfinished business’ of ‘substantive’ reconciliation which encompasses first nations rights for Indigenous peoples.

Bridging the Survival Gap Between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians: Priorities for the Road Ahead

The life-expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians remains one of contemporary Australia's most enduring health divides. The reduction of observed health outcome disparity between population groups based on measures of socioeconomic status, geography, or ethnicity stands as a key target of coordinated societal and health system reform. CVD remains the principal cause of death among all Australian population groups, including Aboriginal males and females, and is the primary contributor to the 17-year life-expectancy gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. This paper discusses the challenges inherent, from the perspective of broader policy frameworks and health system reform, to reducing disparity between population groups within Australia, and outlines the opportunities for change that could contribute benefit to Aboriginal and mainstream Australians in regards to reducing the burden of CVD and related conditions. Further, through mapping adverse outcomes to acute cardiac events it seeks to discuss several key targets for reform that may serve to reduce health disparity between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.

Out of a Digital Chrysalis: NIHNMF (Pronounced nymph–The National Indigenous Health and New Media Forum)

In conjunction with the Creating Futures conference, the inaugural meeting of the National Indigenous Health and New Media Forum (NIHNMF--pronounced as 'nymph') was held at the Tanks Gallery in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. This paper describes the background to this innovative meeting of media minds. It also explores an emerging vision for addressing Indigenous health disparities through digital inclusion to overcome the 'digital divide' between mainstream and Indigenous Australians that constrains the delivery of appropriate health promotion to this health priority population.

Masculine Moves: The Measure of a Man

This paper problematises embedded notions of masculine and feminine embodiment within the contexts of contemporary Australian mainstream popular culture. Drawing on Bourdieu's (1990: 56) theory of ‘habitus’ as non-consciously performed practices ‘… internalised as second nature and so forgotten’; personal reflections as artist, choreographer and teacher; and a brief analysis of the male body in the television program, So You Think You Can Dance Australia (TEN Network, 2008), the author questions and considers the development of habitual ways of perceiving particular forms of male embodiment as aesthetic and attractive, and other forms as un-aesthetic. Further, the impact of the author's own experiences as actor/ dancer and choreographer are considered in relation to his work as a director and choreographer of ‘the bodies of male and female students’ in school productions. Through this paper, the author conjectures about the potential for the drama classroom to be a site in which embodied gender inequities may be challenged and deconstructed.

Evolving restoration principles in a changing world

Evolving restoration principles in a changing world

‘Tomorrow comes when tomorrow comes’: Managing Aboriginal Health within an Ontology of Life‐as‐Contingent

ABSTRACT The authors have worked in Australian Aboriginal communities within the Wiradjuri area of central‐western New South Wales. Examining what appear to be distinctive Aboriginal approaches to time, we argue that these stem not from a different notion of time as such but, rather, from the relationship between the social and the self which places a distinctive value on the use and management of time. One way to access the dynamic between time and self is to realise that life is understood as fluid and contingent rather than predictable. This continually subverts the idea that time is measurable and controllable; that life is lived within domesticated sedentary space; and that planning ahead and self‐discipline are virtues. Yet these are notions central to practices associated with contemporary health care. A majority of health care providers, whether Aboriginal or not, are trained in the Australian mainstream health system and may consequently underestimate the implications of different ways in which a person acts on the temporal/spatial dimensions of her life, and how this influences ways in which she manages time in relation to her health and well‐being. Temporal concepts, such as ‘planning’, ‘discipline’, ‘future’, ‘boredom’, or ‘patience’, as well as that of the ‘long‐term’ with regard to managing illness or money, interact with the ways in which Aboriginal people experience themselves as ill or in need of health care, influencing how they act on medical advice. We argue that the key to understanding the use of time lies not in the concept of time per se but in what is involved in developing a responsive social self when the time/space dimensions of the day to day are informed by a fluid and thus contingent ontology of that day to day.

Macro‐, Meso‐ and Microeconomic considerations in the delivery of social services

PurposeIn the wake of public service liberalisation in many OECD countries, economic interventions into the purpose and implementation of social policies have gained a lot of interest in recent years. The prime aim of this paper is to describe the nature of these interventions. The paper examines the reasons for pursuing elusive efficiency objectives in the conduct of public policy, rationales for purchaser‐provider splits, evaluation of cost‐quality relationships, service costing and pricing, and the influence of “external” economic variables.Design/methodology/approachThe paper breaks the analysis of public policy down to three layers of economic interventions: macroeconomics (allocative efficiency, intervention rationales and macroeconomic environment), mesoeconomics (economics of delivery in “social industries”) and microeconomics (agent behaviour, contracting, pricing and evaluation). Each level of economic intervention is illustrated with examples, mainly taken from Australian public policy and mainstream social economic research.FindingsSome of the most critical questions in policy implementation (outsourcing, pricing, contracting and agency problems) can be traced back to economic reforms. Experiments with new modes of service delivery are driven by a changing economic context, yet the efficiency gains from these innovative approaches may come at the expense of service quality.Practical implicationsChanging macro‐, meso‐ and microeconomic variables profoundly alter the parameters of service delivery. Designers and managers of service delivery systems need to be aware of – and skilled in – the practical application of economic principles, concepts and methods.Originality/valueExcept for the health sector, there is a lack of consistent research on the interrelationships between the standard economics toolkit and the delivery of public services. Yet the two are profoundly intertwined. The paper helps distinguish these relationships by putting together elements of conceptual analysis and fieldwork.

‘We are Family’: The Use of Family Tropes in Refugee/Advocate Talk

This paper explores the ways in which the language of family is used to define the relationship between advocates and the refugees they are helping to settle. Using extracts from interviews with members of the community of Albany, a rural centre 400 kms south of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, terms such as ‘child’, ‘the boys’, and ‘mother’, are identified and their functions explored. The use of the terms simultaneously constructs and reproduces ideas about what ‘family’ should be, while making sense of an otherwise dominant/subordinate relationship between the advocates and refugees. As a corollary, the use of this language has a political function, signifying the possibilities for very close relationships between mainstream Australians and newcomers, which contrasts with widespread negative constructions of refugees as alien ‘Others’. Using a broadly ethnomethodological approach, which utilizes Goffman's notion of framing and Sacks’ ‘membership categorization analysis’, this paper focuses on the positive functions of the use of the language of family in a non-familial context.

Discourse of identity in the world waiting to be made

This paper addresses the nature of Australian and Asian identity through an examination of the novel, The World Waiting to be Made, by Simone Lazaroo, the story of a young woman born in Singapore of Malaccan heritage but growing up in Perth, Western Australia. Acutely aware of the Asianness which sets her apart from mainstream Australians, the unnamed narrator in this first person novel struggles to establish a sense of herself at different periods of time, demarcated in this paper as her childhood, her adolescence and her adulthood. The story in Lazaroo’s first novel is of an outsider—a Eurasian young woman from a mixed Portuguese and Chinese background, born in Singapore but with ancestors in Malaysia, fighting to find a place where she can belong, with the narrator trying to change her appearance and behaviour at various stages of her life to conform to what she perceives as genuinely Australian. Having failed to establish her own identity in Australia, the narrator travels back to her father’s family in Singapore and Malacca, where acceptance is no easier than in Australia, although for different reasons, until she meets her Uncle Linus in Malacca, highly respected in the family as a bomoh, or wise man with special powers. Erik H. Erikson’s psychological definition of “identity”, together with traditional critical analysis of literary meaning, provides a theoretical framework to approach the issue of individual identity in relation to national culture in The World Waiting to Be Made. The analysis highlights the narrator’s frustration and struggle against ethnic displacement and marginalization, which she chooses to fight against with different pseudo identities—an Australian self, and mysterious Asianness. Finally these false identities lead to the total loss of herself—until she meets her Malaccan Uncle and claims a new identity. The World Waiting to Be Made, as Kate Temby states, “provides a sensitive searching of questions of nationality, ethnicity and identity as it charts the multiple journeys of its nameless Eurasian narrator.” (Westerly No.4, Summer, 1994, p.148.)

Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?

Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?

Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media

Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media

Stereotypes and the autobiography of a fictional author: Helen Demidenko's ethnic performance in the light of her short story “other places”

Helen Darville's performance as Helen Deraidenko caused a major literary scandal in Australia in 1995. Her fictional identity went beyond a pseudonym or a persona and included an ethnically categorised bodily representation. Her performance relied upon self‐categorisation processes as much as upon outgroup and ingroup stereotyping. The former shows in her short story's depiction of ethnic minority life in contemporary Australia, a depiction for which Demidenko claimed autobiographic authenticity, and which she additionally used to vindicate her controversial novel. The latter can be traced in responses towards her texts as well as her performance, across political affiliations and both by so‐called ‘genuine’ ethnics and the Australian cultural mainstream.

TRAVEL BEHAVIOR AND MIGRANT CULTURES: THE VIETNAMESE IN AUSTRALIA

This article examines the influence of cultural factors on the travel behavior of Vietnamese migrants (Viet kieu) resident in Australia, with particular reference to return visits to Vietnam. A conceptual framework of cultural influence on migrant travel behavior is proposed to explain the relationships between migrant adapted culture and travel behavior. The findings suggest that the Viet kieu maintain certain traditional Vietnamese cultural values and Confucian ideals, while actively adopting behavioral characteristics from mainstream culture during their gradual integration into the adopted society. Significant differences in cultural and travel behavioral characteristics are evident between the Viet kieu, their relatives in Vietnam, and mainstream Australians. Such differences appear to have some connection with the individualism of the West and the collectivism of the East. Issues of identity, rootlessness, belonging, and the relationship between past and present are associated with the decision to travel and subsequent experience of travel to the homeland. The article concludes by discussing implications for future studies.