What's On at UWA

Presentation 1: Title: Assembling, Deploying, and Contesting Social Impact Bonds in Australia

Speaker: Jacob Broom

Research Proposal Presentation)

Presentation 2: Title: The Political Economy of Post-Crisis Financial Stability Governance: A case study of macroprudential framework implementation in Australia

Speaker: Peter Thomsett

(Chapter Presentation)

Family violence and violence against women remain a major issue globally and in Australia. This affects migrant communities, including Muslim families, in Australia. In this presentation, Rachel Mathewson will outline the Home Affairs provisions and support provided for visa-holders affected by family violence. The information is practical and explains when and how people contact the Department and the types of information required.

Rachel Mathewson is the Assistant Director of the WA Community Engagement team with the Department of Home Affairs. She has worked in the Department since 2007 in a variety of roles from Learning and Development, Student Visas and Refugee and Humanitarian.

ENTRY: Free, but please RSVP to [email protected]

Abstract: This talk has three main sections: 1. An outline of the main sedimentary processes controlling coastal and marine archaeological sites, with a focus on Australia's NW shelf. This is relevant because it is a critical control upon much archaeological work in NW Australia, but it is poorly dealt with or, at worst, ignored. 2. A critique of the ongoing mis-use of radiocarbon dates as data in studies of past human demography. 3. An analysis of why these and other critical issues can become overlooked by some in archaeology, with a view of how it can be resolved to improve the quality of everyone's research.

Bio: In western Europe and Australia, Piers Larcombe has had 30 years of fun in sedimentary research, trying to understand how sedimentary systems work. His aim is that research and applied studies should use more information about the relevant physical systems.

What are the realities and challenges of community-led, on-country language-revitalisation/maintenance of Martu languages in the Western Desert today?

After graduating from the ANU in 2015 with Honours in Language Studies, Duke (Garry Earl-Spurr) moved to the East Pilbara in mid-2016 to work as an applied linguist for Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa (KJ) – a Martu organisation that aims to keep country and culture strong, and to build sustainable Martu communities. Since then, KJ’s language program has been steadily gaining momentum as language increasingly becomes integrated into all facets of KJ’s work.

Duke will speak about the realities and challenges of working as an applied linguist and a part of KJ’s Martu language team on the revitalisation and maintenance of Martu languages in the Western Desert. He will discuss the integral role of language in underpinning the fundamental and amorphously intertwined Martu aspirations of strong culture, right-way land-management, and sustainable community development.

Key themes will include: Language policy & management; working and learning together in a cross-cultural setting; language and caring for country; language and cultural empowerment; language and sustainable development in the Western Desert; intergenerational transmission; decolonisation; and Western Desert Languages.

Presentation 1:

In the wake of choice: Perth’s autonomous women’s engagement with the discourse of choice via post-abortion narratives presented by Dorinda ’t Hart.

Pro-abortion discourse generally presents abortion as an unproblematic event in the course of a woman’s reproductive life. However, pre-field discussions with women confirm that an abortion experience is a significant episode in an individual’s life and not easily forgotten. Further, current research tends to present some women as autonomous agents who have unobstructed access to abortion services while empirically examining barriers to access for those women who are considered less autonomous. However, this research fails to examine the intersection of women’s perceived autonomy and the internalisation of social norms that guide and inform a woman’s abortion decision. Via this research project, I aim to engage with women’s post-abortion narratives, shared through in-depth interviews throughout Perth. Through the recruitment of those women who consider themselves to be autonomous, I seek to understand each woman’s engagement with the discourse of choice and their ongoing negotiation of meaning of their abortion experience.

Dorinda ’t Hart is a PhD student in Anthropology and Sociology.

Presentation 2: Growing older overseas: How older Vietnam-born people are experiencing ageing and aged care in Australia presented by Hien Thi Nguyen.

Older Vietnam-born people (OVP) make up the sixth largest migrant community in Australia; however, they are under-researched. To help address this gap in the literature, this study will examine OVP’s experiences of ageing and aged care, using qualitative research methods, including ethnographic interviews, participant observation, social media fieldwork, video recording, and social network analysis tools guided by an interpretive phenomenological paradigm and grounded theory. The central research question is “How are Vietnam-born parent migrants and parent visitors experiencing ageing and aged care in Australia and what is the role of their local, virtual and distant support networks?”. The research will be conducted in Perth and Melbourne, cities which have a large number of older Vietnam-born residents (ABS, 2016b). The research will target two groups: (i) parent migrants and (ii) parent visitors that represent a mix of past and recent Vietnamese migration to Australia.

Hien Thi Nguyen is a PhD student in the Anthropology and Sociology Discipline. Her research interests include domestic and transnational migration, ageing and aged care, women and gender and new media.

All across social sciences and humanities, “home” has emerged as a unique research topic, despite its inherent ambiguity, as it bridges a variety of divides - public vs private, material vs immaterial, descriptive vs prescriptive, “us” vs “them”. However, under conditions of displacement and large-scale migration home is no more what it used to be. From an apparently natural background to people’s lives, it turns into something to be achieved, or recovered, from scratch. Struggling for an adequate and ideally better home, successfully or not, is a process that irremediably parallels migrant life trajectories. Likewise, retaining some aspects of all that used to stand for home, while adapting to the views, emotions and practices associated with home in the countries of destination, is critical to migrant and refugee integration over time. Whether for practical purposes or in a more existential sense, coping with home anew is part and parcel of the migrant condition. Parallel to that, home - as a set of emplaced relationships and emotions, not just a place - is a key analytical tool for researching migrant trajectories and the attendant social transformations. Based on an original sociological understanding of home, and on the European Research Council HOMInG project, this lecture invites you to appreciate the significance of home for displaced and migrant people, as an often unaccomplished experience and as a balancing act between past, present and future. The methodological implications and the policy relevance of research on home and migration will also be discussed, against the backdrop of “homing” as a universal and often unmet human need.

Paolo Boccagni’s main areas of expertise are international migration, transnationalism, social welfare, care, diversity and home. His current research is on home-making and home-feeling processes, as a critical question for the everyday negotiation of boundaries between native and foreign-born populations. As the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Starting Grant project HOMInG and of MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca) HOASI (Home and Asylum Seekers in Italy), Paolo is leading a team of seven postdoctoral researcher fellows, doing multi-sited fieldwork on the experience of home among migrants and refugees in nine different countries. Based on these large-scale collaborative projects, Paolo is elaborating on “homing” as a lifelong set of processes through which individuals and groups try to make themselves at home. In recent years he has also done fieldwork on the ways of framing and approaching immigrant and refugee clients among social workers; on the lived experience and the sense of home of international students; on the built environment, material cultures and thresholds of domesticity in refugee reception initiatives.

Please RSVP online via www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/boccagni

Ensure that your literature searching is effective, efficient and thorough. Learn how to:

Develop a search strategy; identify relevant, scholarly information sources and; use tools and techniques to track the literature related to your research. This session has a Humanities and Social Sciences focus.

People of Chinese cultural heritage has been part of the history of Western Australia since the proclamation of the Swan River Colony. They in the past were subjected to certain policies, which were legal but arguably unjust in light of contemporary societal attitude towards equality and fairness. Such policies included the poll tax (also known as the “head tax”), tonnage restrictions, exclusion from goldfields, and the dictation test. The project intends to study the period from the beginning of British settlement to the time around the abolition of the White Australia Policy. Through a cross-disciplinary approach, the project intends to examine in detail, these policies and their impact on people of Chinese cultural heritage in Western Australia during that period.

People of Chinese cultural heritage were subjected to similar policies in other countries and other Australian states around the same time. In recent decades, many of these jurisdictions including New Zealand and Victoria have issued apologies for their past policies concerning their people of Chinese cultural heritage.

During the preliminary research of this project, it is apparent that there are ample literature on the people of Chinese cultural heritage and their experiences during the 1800s and 1900s in Western Australia. There are also an abundance of literature related to the apologies which have been made in the past. However, there is little evidence of any discussion on whether the policies of the governments of Western Australia towards its people of Chinese cultural heritage should be debated. From an academic point of view, it is of significance to address that.

It is worth noting that if there is ever going to be any public debate about this, such debate should be up to all West Australians and West Australians alone.

This project aims to, through a comparative approach, combine the studies of the history concerning the people of Chinese cultural heritage in Western Australia, the apologies delivered to people of Chinese cultural heritage in other jurisdictions for similar policies, and the apologies made to other groups of Australians to analyse whether an apology should or should not be made for its policies towards its people of Chinese cultural heritage in the past. It should always be remembered that this project is about examining whether or not a state apology is appropriate, not about finding ways to justify an apology.

Interested Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers whose research engages with themes of migration, home, identity and belonging are invited to attend a special research workshop with Professor Paolo Boccagni. Participants will give brief presentations summarising their research on these themes for discussion with Professor Boccagni and their academic peers.

About the Presenter

Paolo Boccagni is an associate professor in Sociology at the University of Trento, Italy. His main areas of expertise are international migration, transnationalism, social welfare, care, diversity and home. His current research is on homemaking and home-feeling processes, as a critical question for the everyday negotiation of boundaries between native and foreign-born populations. As the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Starting Grant project HOMInG and of MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca) HOASI (Home and Asylum Seekers in Italy), Paolo is leading a team of seven postdoctoral researcher fellows, doing multi-sited fieldwork on the experience of home among migrants and refugees in nine different countries. Based on these large-scale collaborative projects, Paolo is elaborating on “homing” as a lifelong set of processes through which individuals and groups try to make themselves at home. In recent years he has also done fieldwork on the ways of framing and approaching immigrant and refugee clients among social workers; on the lived experience and the sense of home of international students; on the built environment, material cultures and thresholds of domesticity in refugee reception initiatives. Paolo has published in over 30 international peer-reviewed journals in migration studies, diversity, housing, social policy and research methods. Recent publications include Migration and the Search for Home. Mapping Domestic Space in Migrants’ Everyday Lives (Palgrave, 2017) and the articles “Aspirations and the subjective future of migration” (Comparative Migration Studies, 2017), “At home in home care: Contents and boundaries of the ‘domestic’ among immigrant live-in workers in Italy” (Housing Studies, 2018), “Ambivalence and the social processes of immigrant inclusion” (with P. Kivisto,International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 2019).

Please RSVP online via www.ias.uwa.edu.au/masterclass/boccagni

This year the Update tackles the important question of belonging, with the theme ‘Belonging in Western Australia: Addressing Migrant and Refugee Inclusion’. Each year around 200,000 people move permanently to Australia, and many more come temporarily for work or education – how are we, as a community, meeting their needs and ensuring they feel they ‘belong’ in Australia? Our program brings together policy makers, not-for-profits, communities and academics to explore questions such as: What does belonging look like? What are migrants’ and ethnic minorities’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion? How can services support belonging? To what extent is Australia’s migration system inclusive? How can we create inclusive spaces for migrants? What are the roles of schools, local councils, the media, and service organisations in generating belonging? Keynote Prof Paolo Boccagni (University of Trento), will speak on “Migrant Home-making: Insights from Europe”, and a range of representatives from community, government and academia will discuss experiences of belonging and unbelonging, and programs designed to promote inclusion, including arts, sports, media, local government and education based interventions.

Traditional forms of craftsmanship and craft production are types of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), and their survival has been challenged by urbanisation, industrialisation, and globalisation. This urgency motivates my doctoral research on heritage craft production in China, with the aim of balancing the sustainable development of profit-driven modern craft industries with the long-term conservation of the significant ICH. During my fieldwork in Jingdezhen which is the Porcelain Capital of China, a large number of interviewed porcelain craftsmen spoke highly of stateowned porcelain factories (SPFs) that operated from the mid to late 20th Century which was the period of centrally planned economy (CPE) in China. Based on grounded theory analysis of in-depth interviews with 14 former factory workers, the study concludes that the CPE in China has profoundly promoted the transmission of porcelain craftsmanship in Jingdezhen in breadth and depth. This study is thus an interrogation of whether experience can be drawn from SPFs for better ICH preservation contemporarily.

This paper begins with a critique of the marginality concept proposed by von Braun and Gatzweiler in Marginality: Addressing the Nexus of Poverty, Exclusion and Ecology due to its neglect of dimensions of local agency. It then proceeds to consider Scott’s rethinking of peripheral societies in Southeast Asia, as enunciated in The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009), which does emphasise local agency. However, in its terrestrialist agrarian bias and its overriding concern with evasion of the state in its construction of Zomia, it obscures a fuller understanding of the interplay of agency and constraint. The presentation re-evaluates aspects of Scott’s framework with regard to the very different dynamic of downstream states in outer Indonesia, emphasising the importance of market demand from outside those states (the’ X Factor’). It highlights the ways in which upriver smallholders are able to maintain an autonomous sphere of subsistence production while also engaging in commodity production, drawing on Dove’s analysis in The Banana Tree at the Gate: A History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo (2012). It then examines how the Zomia hypothesis must be further modified when considering the relation of mobile maritime communities to the marine-oriented states of archipelagic Southeast Asia, such as the Sulu Sultanate. The paper then presents an analysis of more recent trends in the analysis of mobile maritime communities in this region, focusing upon the Orang Laut and Bajau (Bajau Laut/Bajo/Sama Dilaut), who continue to occupy interstitial positions, particularly in the border areas of the interfaces of Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia. This section draws on my own field work among various Bajau communities in Sabah and the Orang Seletar of the Johor-Singapore interface. It concludes by emphasising the necessity to consider how global forces continue to affect the interaction of contemporary nation-states with their marginal communities.

Greg Acciaioli teaches in Anthropology and Sociology and Asian Studies at The University of Western Australia. His research for the last decade has concentrated upon contestations regarding national parks in Indonesia and Malaysia. He also works on such topics as the Indonesian Indigenous people’s movement and farmer innovations in agriculture under new regulatory systems in Indonesia. This seminar draws on his research among stateless Bajau Laut in Sabah, east Malaysia, and the Seletar, an Orang Laut population found in Singapore and Johor, peninsular Malaysia.

Italy’s extension of mandatory vaccination in 2017 was a response to a public health crisis many years in the making. Vaccination rates had been in steady decline for half a decade, culminating in a measles epidemic. With existing studies demonstrating the role of vaccine hesitancy, this study sought to understand policy decisions made within the Italian public health bureaucracy between 2012 and 2017 to try and stem the vaccine confidence problem. Semistructured interviews with five key informants inside or close to government were qualitatively analysed using a theoretically informed schema to make sense of governance failures in realms of knowledge (epistemology) and action (the work of governing). Italian public health officials lacked crucial knowledge regarding the population, including how it was getting its vaccine information and what strategies might work to address hesitancy. Limited financial resources also constrained their capacity in a context of austerity. A credibility gap for government ensued, which officials sought to plug by constructing Italians as in need of firm instruction by mandatory vaccination. Mandatory vaccination can be understood as a form of control that ‘modulates’ people’s access to institutions – in this case the pre-school system. The alternative mode of governance is ‘discipline’, which uses institutions to educate, communicate and instil social norms. During the study period, Italy’s vaccination governance employed a disciplinary approach, but ineffectively. The resort to mandates in 2017 can be understood as a failure of this disciplinary approach, triggered by a series of unfortunate events that were thwarted by governance capacity gaps. The explicit control of mandates are improving Italy’s vaccination coverage rates, but the important work of discipline should not be left neglected. Effective and ethical governance to future-proof vaccine acceptance requires that the unfinished work of discipline be resumed and maintained.

At the Movies was a movie reviewing program that ran on the ABC between 2004 and 2014. Prior to that it was known as The Movie Show on SBS. Its presenters Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton co-hosted the programs for a total of 28 years. This presentation reports on research into At the Movies, based primarily around a content analysis of the broadcast transcripts of the program, which are an unusual kind of script, and rarely analysed. The presentation will discuss some of the challenges of analyzing these documents in Nvivo. The session will also explore the problem of drawing links between research into film reviewing, screenwriting, and screen culture, drawing on Bourdieu’s work to link these fields. This presentation represents a Sabbatical report of work done in semester 1 2019. All welcome

Various countries, including Indonesia, have developed environmental education (EE) to create environmentally responsible citizens in response to the growing challenges of environmental degradation and destruction caused by humanity. While there are many individuals who show irresponsible behaviour toward the environment, there are also individuals who are engaged in pro-environmental behaviour (PEB). Some of them may be the pioneers, the first ‘green’ individuals, who face opposition from their neighbours, especially if their pro-environmental action is considered to transgress the norms of the community. I used the term positive environmental deviants (PED) to describe such people. Learning from them may help to revealing the factors influencing their engagement in responsible environmental behaviour. Therefore, this study will explore the possibilities for using the Positive Environmental Deviance approach to improve EE in Indonesia. I will also use the Significant Life Experiences (SLE) concept to delve into the life history of the positive deviants to find what experiences influenced them to take up PEB. SLE is a retrospective exploration of the life of people who demonstrate environmental activism. I will carry out my study in several sites where I can find cases of PED. A qualitative approach, using interviews and participant observation, will be employed.

Resti Meilani is a PhD student in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia.

Abstract

This talk will bring together findings from two studies at Curtin University on the impact of allowing learners to plan for a communicative task in their first language (L1) as opposed to their foreign language (L2). The relative benefits will be discussed in terms of fluency and idea units used in an oral problem-solving task. Seventy-two Japanese university EFL learners were randomly assigned to one of two planning conditions. Dyads in each group were given 10 minutes to plan the content of a problem-solving task in the respective languages before individually performing a timed 2.5-minute oral problem-solving task in English. Data took the form of transcribed planning discussions and transcribed task performances. Task performances were coded for fluency based on Levelt’s (1989, 1999) model of speech processing, whereas all data were coded for idea units based on Hoey’s (1983, 2001) problem-solution discourse structure (situation, problem, response, evaluation). As expected, L1 planners spoke less fluently than L2 planners, monitoring their language output more in terms of number of replacements and reformulations. Also as expected, L1 planners generated more ideas connected with all four dimensions of problem-solving discourse. Contrary to expectations, however, the advantages of L1 planning in terms of task content did not transfer to L2 use. L1 and L2 planners’ were highly comparable in terms of ideas units used on the subsequent L2 task, and L2 planners were advantaged in some respects. Implications for future research and pedagogy aimed at facilitating transfer from L1 to L2 performance will be discussed.

References

Hoey, M. (1983). On the Surface of Discourse. London: George, Allen and Unwin.

Hoey, M. (2001). Textual Interaction: An Introduction to Written Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge.

Levelt, W. (1989). Speaking from intention to articulation. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Levelt, W. (1999). Producing the language: A blueprint of the speaker. In C. Brown and P. Hagoort (Eds.), The neurocognition of language (pp. 83-122). New York: Oxford Press.

Short bio

Craig Lambert is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of Education at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. His specialization is in task-based language teaching (TBLT), and his research has focused on learner needs, materials design, motivation, fluency and syntactic development.

Fibromyalgia is a neurosensory condition characterised by widespread pain, stiffness and non-restorative sleep. Individuals often also experience cognitive difficulties commonly termed fibro-fog, and altered sensory and visceral states associated with a chronically activated autonomic stress response. However, these sensory and visceral experiences are poorly understood in the Western biomedical model. Alongside similar and often related conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis, multiple chemical sensitivity and irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia is frequently listed under the category of MUS – ‘medically unexplained symptoms’. From its earlier incarnations under the names neurasthenia, fibrositis and psychogenic rheumatism, it has remained a controversial condition in relation to whether it should be viewed as an organic illness of body or an inorganic illness of mind. This fundamental schism in Western biomedicine has greatly limited insight into the cultural and neurophysiological processes that underlie the development of fibromyalgia. Trauma, stress, accidents and viral illnesses are all common precursors, and research is increasingly elucidating epigenetic factors whereby environmental triggers alter gene expression, leading to the onset of post-traumatic pain and autonomic dysregulation. In this paper I share some of the experiences of my research participants in navigating the challenges of living with fibromyalgia and the frequent invisibility of their lifeworlds to others. I consider what has gone wrong in medical perceptions of the condition, and how peoples' sensory and visceral symptoms offer clues that may also be channels for healing. How might redundant dichotomies be replaced by more helpful approaches and, more broadly, how might there be a re-synchronisation of culture and homeostasis that engenders human well-being?

Sally Robertson is a PhD student in Anthropology and Sociology at The University of Western Australia. Her research interests include the relationship between culture and physiology, cross-cultural insights into different approaches to health and illness, neuroanthropological insights into sensory experience and human adaptation, interspecies connectivity, and creative approaches to healing trauma and restoring well-being

Join researcher Dr Catherine Archer, and dig deep into the social impact of social media. Social media has only been part of our lives for little more than 15 years and yet it has irrevocably changed and challenged some of society’s major institutions regarded in the past as “untouchable”. “Social media allows citizens to be the source of ideas, plans and initiatives in an easier way than ever before” says Eileen Guo of Impassion Media. Social movements are now adept at garnering support through hashtags, live-streaming, likes and engagement, to name just a few tactics. Our growing love of social media is not just changing the way we communicate – it’s changing the way we are governed, and the way we live in society. This seminar, presented by social media researcher Dr Catherine Archer, will unpick the approaches of activists and advocates on social media, using case studies and a hands-on approach that digs deep into the social impact of social media.

Electoral reform is a hot issue in the United States, particularly since the election of President Donald Trump. This presentation will examine how US reformers are seeking to introduce distinctively Australian institutions such as compulsory voting, preferential ballots and independent electoral boundaries as a means of combating polarization and improving legitimacy in American politics. It will focus in particular on the recent adoption of preferential voting in Maine’s 2018 mid-term Congressional elections, the first time ‘our’ system has been used for national elections in US history.

Ben is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences at UWA, working on research and engagement in a range of policy and international issues across the Indo-Pacific. He was formerly Dean of the Sir Walter Murdoch School at Murdoch University, and prior to that head of the Policy and Governance Program and Director of the Centre for Democratic Institutions at the Australian National University (ANU), and has also worked with the Australian government, the United Nations and other international organisations, and held visiting appointments at Harvard, Oxford, and Johns Hopkins universities. As a political scientist, he has authored or edited seven books and over 100 scholarly papers, and received financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the United States Institute of Peace, the East-West Centre, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Australian Research Council.

Muslims in India have lived alongside Hindus peacefully for many centuries. Yet in the contemporary period some politicians have orchestrated division for political ends, for example, during the Godhra-Gujarat riots in India in 2002 in which there were many Muslim casualties. Critics allege that the ruling party in Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and its leader Chief Minister Narendra Modi (now the Prime Minister of India) were responsible for the Godhra-Gujarat riots.

Within the framework of identity politics in India, where religion seems to dominate the social, economic and political spheres, this paper examines how the 2002 Gujarat riots impacted on Muslims in Gujarat. This paper is based on interviews with Muslims (aged 15 years and over) that I conducted in Ahmedabad, Gujarat in 2012. I will examine Muslims’ experiences during the riots and in the aftermath of the riots. I conclude that, in the era of identity politics when Muslims form a disadvantaged minority, national and international policy makers should promulgate policies that would improve social cohesion and intercommunal understanding in India in general, and Gujarat in particular.

Biography Nahid Afrose Kabir, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of English and Humanities, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, USA, and holds Adjunct Professor positions at Edith Cowan University, Perth and at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia.

Nahid Kabir is the author of Muslims in Australia: Immigration, Race Relations and Cultural History (Routledge 2005); Young British Muslims: Identity, Culture, Politics and the Media (Edinburgh University Press 2012); Young American Muslims: Dynamics of Identity (Edinburgh University Press 2014); and Muslim Americans: Debating the Notions of American and Un-American (Routledge 2017). In addition, she has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters.

ENTRY: Free, but please RSVP to [email protected]