Australian Way Research Articles

Knowledges “In the Land”? A Process Phenomenological Reading of Deborah Bird Rose’s “Exploring an Aboriginal Land Ethic”

Abstract Inspired by a (process) phenomenological reading of Deborah Bird Rose’s 1988 article “Exploring an Aboriginal Land Ethic,” and drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s claim that knowledge is “in the hands,” this paper explores the intersection of Merleau-Ponty’s embodied, process phenomenology and Indigenous Australian place-based ontologies. Rather than the moral demands or consequences of adopting an “Aboriginal land ethic,” the present paper is concerned with the ontological and epistemological – or, broadly speaking, the phenomenological – underpinnings of such a land ethic. Contra Rose’s claim that, in the Western tradition, we “have very little idea of what a non-human-centred cosmos looks like and how it can be thought to work,” it is argued that Merleau-Ponty’s fundamental thought provides us with a viable pathway towards a non-human-centred phenomenological ontology that, somewhat paradoxically, is nevertheless grounded in the lived body. It is suggested that such an approach is compatible with, and complimentary to, the traditional Indigenous Australian ways of being and knowing outlined by Rose.

Cultural Adaptation and Integration of the Vietnamese Community in Australia

The Vietnamese community in Australia has faced numerous challenges during its integration into Australian society. Starting with language barriers and cultural differences, the community has had to navigate a complex set of social, economic, and political factors to establish its position in the country. Despite these obstacles, they have maintained their cultural identity while embracing the Australian way of life. One of the most significant contributions of the Vietnamese community to Australian society has been their ability to bring about fresh perspectives and opportunities for cultural exchange. The younger generations of Vietnamese Australians, in particular, have been instrumental in highlighting the values of inclusivity and multiculturalism. They have been at the forefront of promoting cultural diversity and understanding and acceptance of different communities. Our research aims to systematically document the adaptation and integration of the Vietnamese community in Australia across different periods. We employ qualitative methods to analyse the various factors that have contributed to the success of the Vietnamese community in Australia. By doing so, we hope to provide a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by the Vietnamese community during their integration into Australian society.

‘The Australian way’: the gendered and racial logics of Scott Morrison’s climate change narratives

ABSTRACT Scott Morrison’s government was consistently accused of taking inadequate climate change action, despite facing sustained domestic and international criticism. However, there has not yet been sustained scholarly attention paid to the relationship between Morrison’s championship of the coal industry, the specific masculinity of Morrison’s leadership style, and the ways in which climate change was narratively constructed by Scott Morrison as Prime Minister. This research argues that gendered and racialised logics underpinned the climate change policy and rhetoric of the Morrison Government. This is demonstrated through an analysis of three narratives that were consistently articulated by Morrison, demonstrating Morrison’s unwavering defence of fossil fuel industries and the specific Australian exceptionalism of his climate inaction. This paper further recognises that specific expressions of political masculinity may continue to hinder meaningful climate change action in the future.

One People? A Visual Language of Australian Citizenship

After World War II the legal category of Australian citizenship was created through the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948, but continued to overlap with British status. A ‘new language’ of photography actively constituted ideas about Australian citizenship through three interlocking discourses centring on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a new assimilationist policy for Australia’s Indigenous people, and a migration program which advanced a powerful visual language of whiteness. The universalising language of the ‘family of man’ took on distinctive vernacular forms as officials sought to define an ‘Australian way of life’ through new photographic formats, including pamphlets, highly-illustrated periodicals, and media stories. As mapped by these visual projects, the universalising and inclusive rhetoric of human rights shaped international aspirations as well as Australian assimilation policy during these postwar years, yet both featured notable ‘blind spots’, or exclusions, that define the limits of citizenship.

Social security conditionality as a corrective to ‘flawed consumption’: the use of the cashless debit card to reframe Australian norms of social protection

ABSTRACT This article explores discursive legitimation of intensified conditionality in Australian social security policy, by the association of responsible consumption with a revised construction of Australian identity. Discursive rationalization of the use of cashless debit cards to constrain consumption choices by citizens is situated in representations of Australian identity and social citizenship. Against growing empirical evidence of a lack of conclusive efficacy and emergent social harms, political rationalizations for the card’s introduction assert a normative Australian way of life that frames card users as ‘flawed consumers,’ lacking in the characteristics of imagined Australian citizenship. The compatibility of this imagined Australian identity with the values of market liberalism completes the substitution of market citizenship for its antecedent welfare state conception of citizenship based on rights. In this substitution, the idea of a right to social protection is subordinated to conditional support that promotes the sentiment that social welfare is ‘un-Australian.’

Psychosocial, cultural, and academic challenges to Saudi Arabian students in Australia

This study investigated the perceptions of Saudi Arabian medical disciplines students undergoing training in various institutes of Australia regarding psychosocial, cultural, and academic challenges. This cross-sectional study was from March 15 to June 15, 2019. Data were collected by an online questionnaire. It consisted of questions regarding demographic, psychosocial, cultural, and academic challenges. Two hundred nineteen students studying in Australia responded to our questionnaire. Of the total 219 students, 13(6.0%) were undergraduate, 167(76%) were postgraduate, and 39(18%) were Ph.D. students. For most students (171[79.2%]), Australia was the country of choice for studying. Most of them were satisfied with their academic performance and adjustment to the Australian way of living. Most of the students (180[82.2%]) showed satisfaction over the availability of fair chances of their religious practices in Australia. Few of them faced difficulties coping with the Australian climate (25[11.4%]), homesickness (59[26.9%]), and food and dietary sources (44[20.1%]). Students were overall satisfied with the student advisory system (156[71.2%]), university assessments (147[67.2%]), and available research facilities (170[77.6%]). Among participants, 77 (35.1%), 119(54.3%), and 23(10.5%) students indicated that they wished to stay in Australia only until completion of their studies, temporarily and permanently, respectively. Our findings showed that Saudi students in Australia had strong psychosocial well-being, cultural integration, and academic success. Most of them were satisfied and adjusted well to Australian culture.

The Australian way of energy transfer

The Australian way of energy transfer

Shrine: War Memorials and the Digital Age

Shrine: War Memorials and the Digital Age

From White Nation to White Caution: Non-Indigenous Reflections on Indigenous Difference

ABSTRACTBased on interviews with 31 non-Indigenous Australians during 2015–2017, this article argues that there is no “typical” non-Indigenous Australian way of talking and thinking about Indigenous Australia. Rather, a more plausible reading of our data is that non-Indigenous Australians are experiencing, in a self-aware and cautious way, the ascendancy of the idea that the Indigenous/non-Indigenous distinction is culturally, morally and politically significant. While interviewees varied in their views about Indigenous difference, their awareness that Indigeneity poses relatively new and compelling questions for Australians was evident in their reflexive ways of talking, as they took up a position in (what they evoked or implied as) a field of non-Indigenous opinion. We propose a model of the orthodoxy that defines this field. Reviewing previous research on non-Indigenous Australians’ everyday attitudes and opinions about Indigenous Australians, we seek to replace accounts that postulate non-Indigenous thinking as a singular edifice. We present popular discourse as the self-aware taking of positions, in known or imagined fields of opinion.

Her Majesty’s newest subjects: official attempts to assimilate non-English speaking migrants in post-war Australia

Following World War Two, Australia accepted large numbers of Europeans as part of a mass immigration program that would completely change the face of the nation. Key to the acceptance of these non-English speaking migrants was the policy of assimilation and the expectation that new arrivals would blend into the ‘Australian way of life’. Although learning English was a fundamental requirement to assimilation, so too was an understanding of Australian history and civics. This article examines the role of national events, the Jubilee of Federation, Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation and the 1954 Royal Tour in the attempted assimilation of new arrivals. It argues that the Department of Immigration looked to these events not only to assimilate migrants, but also to assist in the ‘conditioning’ of the Australian public towards the acceptance of this significant shift in immigration policy and the arrival of large numbers of non-English speaking migrants.

Students’ identification and expression of relations between variables in linear functions tasks in three curriculum contexts

ABSTRACTResearching students’ responses to tasks at different year levels and in varied curriculum contexts can provide insights that relate their understandings to prior learning experiences and teaching approaches. In this article, we discuss evidence of students from three curriculum contexts (English, Australian, and Israeli) (n = 350) ways of attending to the functional relationship between two variables at different levels of secondary school in their responses to two linear functions tasks. We found that the students from an English national curriculum context were more likely than the other cohorts to focus only on the dependent variable when presented with a table of values. With a figural pattern generalization task, no examples of invalid proportional reasoning were found among student responses from the Israeli curriculum context, unlike those in the English and Australian curriculum contexts. A high percentage of the Year seven-eighths responses from the Israeli curriculum context evidenced symbolic generalization whereas several responses from the Australian curriculum indicated explicit descriptive, but not symbolic, generalization. Twenty teachers also participated in the study. Analysis of national curriculum content and task examples from each context, along with the teachers’ expectations of their students’ responses to the tasks and described teaching approaches for linear functions, led to our exploration of possible reasons for differences and similarities found among the responses. We suggest possible implications for teaching and learning linear functions and avenues for further research.

Animals Australia and the Challenges of Vegan Stereotyping

Animals Australia and the Challenges of Vegan Stereotyping

Managing belief and speech as incipient violence: ‘I’m giving you the opportunity to say that you aren't’

ABSTRACTThis article argues that the spectre of ‘radicalised’ Muslim youth rejecting and threatening the ‘Australian way of life’ drives policy responses targeting young people in a biopolitical regime that is fundamentally about containing the political agency of Muslims and people of colour on the one hand, and containing political activism more broadly, on the other. In this article I offer a close reading of three key policy documents used in schools to make the argument that one of the fundamental goals of Australia's countering violent extremism (CVE) regime is the production of self-governing Muslim subjects who tailor their thoughts, beliefs and ideologies to the state's vision of religiosity, political agency, society and nation. I argue that despite policy-makers’ insistence that the war on terror criminalises violence not radical beliefs or speech, CVE's preventative, presumptive, disruptive mandate looks for potential danger, not actual danger. This ‘potentiality’ is located in suspected or actual disassociation from so-called normative Australian values and identity and renders problametic action and speech and belief.

Unspoken Barriers: An Autoethnographic Study of Frustration, Resistance and Resilience

Immigration, cultural capital, cultural hybridity are the contributing players within my autoethnographic research as a second-generation daughter of southern Italian migrants from the post war era. This autobiography of my lived experience identifies contributing influences of arrested development within my educational and life trajectory and explores theoretical frameworks as key comparative indicators for my thwarted stages of psychosocial development. My identity and role as a female is further explored within the construct of a determined and culturally hybrid adolescence in an effort to answer research questions of identity and role confusion. My narratives situate my life as a daughter, student, and future wife living an existence of cultural hegemony acknowledging the non-existence of a bicultural relationship between my family and the Australian way.

The Influence of the Australian Dietary Guidelines on Culinary Textbooks Used in Education over the Last 30 Years

ABSTRACTCookery the Australian Way (CAW), a key culinary textbook, was evaluated to determine whether recipes reflected the prevailing dietary guidelines, specifically to limit saturated fat, added salt, and sugar. Seven-hundred recipes from Editions 3 to 8 were analysed using FoodWorks® 7. Saturated fat, total sugars, and sodium/100 g and per serve was compared using SPSS® (Version 22). A 43% reduction in sodium/100 g in soups and a 50% reduction in sodium/100 g for meats and poultry domain was observed in the 31 years from Editions 3 to 8. A 38% reduction in saturated fat/100 g was observed in the meats and poultry domain across the same time period. Dessert recipes showed a smaller but significant reduction in saturated fat/serve and mixed results for sugar. These observations suggest some modification to reflect dietary guidelines occurred. Cookery texts used in education should incorporate nutrition and reflect dietary guidelines. This series is a positive example for other publishers.

Bringing a Taste of Abroad to Australian Readers: <em>Australian Wines & Food Quarterly</em> 1956–1960

Bringing a Taste of Abroad to Australian Readers: <em>Australian Wines & Food Quarterly</em> 1956–1960

The Life Story Experience of "Migrant Dentists" in Australia: Potential Implications for Health Workforce Governance and International Cooperation.

Background: The migration of dentists is a major policy challenge facing both developing and developed countries. Dentists from over 120 countries migrate to Australia, and a large proportion are from developing countries. The aim of the study was to assess the life story experience (LSE) of migrant dentists in Australia, in order to address key policy challenges facing dentist migration. Methods: A national survey of all migrant dentists resident in Australia was conducted in 2013. Migrant experiences were assessed through a suite of LSE scales, developed through a qualitative-quantitative study. Respondents rated experiences using a five-point Likert scale. Results: A total of 1022 migrant dentists responded to the survey (response rate = 54.5%). LSE1 (health system and general lifestyle concerns in home country), LSE2 (appreciation towards Australian way of life) and LSE3 (settlement concerns in Australia) scales varied by migrant dentist groups, sex, and years since arrival to Australia (chi-square, P < .05). In a logistic regression model, migrants mainly from developing countries (ie, the examination pathway group) faced greater health system and general lifestyle concerns in their home countries (9.32; 3.51-24.72) and greater settlement challenges in Australia (5.39; 3.51-8.28), compared to migrants from well-developed countries, who obtained direct recognition of qualifications. Migrants also are more appreciative towards the Australian way of life if they had lived at least ten years in Australia (1.97; 1.27-3.05), compared to migrants who have lived for less than ten years. Conclusion: Migrant dentists, mainly from developing countries, face challenges both in their home countries and in Australia. Our study offers evidence for multi-level health workforce governance and calls for greater consensus towards an international agenda to address dentist migration. Better integration of dentist migration with the mainstream health workforce governance is a viable and opportunistic way forward.

Development of life story experience (LSE) scales for migrant dentists in Australia: a sequential qualitative-quantitative study.

The integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches introduces new avenues to bridge strengths, and address weaknesses of both methods. To develop measure(s) for migrant dentist experiences in Australia through a mixed methods approach. The sequential qualitative-quantitative design involved first the harvesting of data items from qualitative study, followed by a national survey of migrant dentists in Australia. Statements representing unique experiences in migrant dentists' life stories were deployed the survey questionnaire, using a five-point Likert scale. Factor analysis was used to examine component factors. Eighty-two statements from 51 participants were harvested from the qualitative analysis. A total of 1,022 of 1,977 migrant dentists (response rate 54.5%) returned completed questionnaires. Factor analysis supported an initial eight-factor solution; further scale development and reliability analysis led to five scales with a final list of 38 life story experience (LSE) items. Three scales were based on home country events: health system and general lifestyle concerns (LSE1; 10 items), society and culture (LSE4; 4 items) and career development (LSE5; 4 items). Two scales included migrant experiences in Australia: appreciation towards Australian way of life (LSE2; 13 items) and settlement concerns (LSE3; 7 items). The five life story experience scales provided necessary conceptual clarity and empirical grounding to explore migrant dentist experiences in Australia. Being based on original migrant dentist narrations, these scales have the potential to offer in-depth insights for policy makers and support future research on dentist migration.

Porn &lt;i&gt;Suck&lt;/i&gt;s: The Transformation of Germaine Greer?

Porn &lt;i&gt;Suck&lt;/i&gt;s: The Transformation of Germaine Greer?

Assimilation through play: migrant hostel play centres in post-War Australia

ABSTRACTIn post-war Australia, the provision of facilities for migrant and refugee children to ‘play’ in migrant accommodation centres was an essential element of government policy. Through an examination of photos and related archival material, this paper will consider how play was used as a means of introducing newly arrived young children to the English language and the Australian way of life. The paper will outline how play centres moved from hastily established, overcrowded child-minding centres, often run by untrained staff, in the late 1940s to well-organised, supervised play centres in the 1950s. It will then consider how, through songs, stories, and special activities, migrant and refugee children from diverse backgrounds mixed and learnt how to be ‘New’ Australians. Finally it will argue that a key aspect of the work of these centres was the assimilation not only of the children but also of their families, in particular their mothers.