Indigenous populations in New World nations share the common experience of culture contact with outsiders and a prolonged history of prejudice and discrimination. This historical reality continues to have profound effects on their well-being, as demonstrated by their relative disadvantages in socioeconomic status on the one hand, and in their delayed demographic and epidemiological transitions on the other. In this study one aspect of aboriginals’ epidemiological situation is examined: their mortality experience between the early 1980s and early 1990s. The groups (...) studied are the Canadian Indians, the American Indians and the New Zealand Maori (data for Australian Aboriginals could not be obtained). Cause-specific death rates of these three minority groups are compared with those of their respective non-indigenous populations using multivariate log-linear competing risks models. The empirical results are consistent with the proposition that the contemporary mortality conditions of these three minorities reflect, in varying degrees, problems associated with poverty, marginalization and social disorganization. Of the three minority groups, the Canadian Indians appear to suffer more from these types of conditions, and the Maori the least. (shrink)

DUREY A, WYNADEN D, THOMPSON SC, DAVIDSON PM, BESSARAB D and KATZENELLENBOGEN JM. Nursing Inquiry 2012; 19: 144–152 [Epub ahead of print]Owning solutions: a collaborative model to improve quality in hospital care for Aboriginal AustraliansWell‐documented health disparities between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter referred to as Aboriginal) and non‐Aboriginal Australians are underpinned by complex historical and social factors. The effects of colonisation including racism continue to impact negatively on Aboriginal health outcomes, despite (...) being under‐recognised and under‐reported. Many Aboriginal people find hospitals unwelcoming and are reluctant to attend for diagnosis and treatment, particularly with few Aboriginal health professionals employed on these facilities. In this paper, scientific literature and reports on Aboriginal health‐care, methodology and cross‐cultural education are reviewed to inform a collaborative model of hospital‐based organisational change. The paper proposes a collaborative model of care to improve health service delivery by building capacity in Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal personnel by recruiting more Aboriginal health professionals, increasing knowledge and skills to establish good relationships between non‐Aboriginal care providers and Aboriginal patients and their families, delivering quality care that is respectful of culture and improving Aboriginal health outcomes. A key element of model design, implementation and evaluation is critical reflection on barriers and facilitators to providing respectful and culturally safe quality care at systemic, interpersonal and patient/family‐centred levels. Nurses are central to addressing the current state of inequity and are pivotal change agents within the proposed model. (shrink)

This article reinterprets a recentexploratory study of the academic freedom ofAustralian social scientists in an increasinglycommercialised university environment. Thestudy revealed that academics are experiencingseveral conditions that undermine academicfreedom: the intensification of work at theexpense of quality; pressure to choose `safe'research topics; the erosion of intellectualcapital and student standards; and increasingcorporate governance. We position thesefindings within the transition to `Mode 2'knowledge production, arguing that thisprovides a more appropriate basis forreconceptualising the traditional concept ofacademic freedom and renegotiating its socialpractice.

Nostalgic, socially privileged ideals of childhood have actively contributed to the formation of Australian national identity, as well as modern subject-formations more broadly. This paper argues that, while such nostalgia has been drawn on for normative ends—in the service of the management of the modern individual—nostalgia also has the power to disrupt our conceptions of the normal. In the context of the contemporary “crisis” of childhood particularly, opportunities to reconstitute ideals of “childhood” and “family” differently have become available to communities (...) such as Aboriginal Australians, who previously have been denied access to these nostalgic forms. (shrink)

In the last third of the twentieth century, humanists and social scientists argued that attention to genetics would heighten already‐existing genetic determinism, which in turn would intensify negative social outcomes, especially sexism, racism, ableism, and harshness to criminals. They assumed that laypeople are at risk of becoming genetic essentialists. I will call this the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” This model has not accurately predicted psychosocial impacts of findings from genetics research. I will be arguing that the failure (...) of the model can be traced to its inability to recognize the complexity of laypeople’s attitudes; its incorrect theory of how beliefs, attitudes, and discourse function; and its blindness to how academics’ own interests can override the available evidence. More specifically, I suggest that the substantial data about laypeople’s deployment of genetics supports what I will call the “laypeople are strategic essentialists model” better than the “laypeople are genetic essentialists model.” The strategic essentialists model holds that people tend to store multiple categories, including multiple causal forces, that they deploy “strategically” to serve context‐dependent goals. It will be difficult for academics to reorient ourselves to model laypeople as sophisticated strategic essentialists rather than as naïve genetic essentialists. Perhaps a little shift, however, will be of value. (shrink)

SummaryThe variability of three behavioural risk factors for heart disease—heavy alcohol and tobacco consumption and physical inactivity—was assessed in an Australian Aboriginal community, where heart disease death rates were high. Prevalence levels were assessed by comparison with those experienced by all adult Australians and by evaluating whether Aboriginal rates were influenced by underlying sociodemographic conditions. Relative risk ratios, odds ratios and logistic regression analysis were used.A total of 159 males and 114 females participated. Compared to all (...) Australians, Aborigines are significantly more likely to drink five or more drinks on a drinking day, to be current smokers, and not to participate in vigorous exercise. In the Aboriginal community, univariate analysis indicates that: the odds of being a heavy drinker are significantly higher for those in unsatisfactory health; odds of being a current smoker are significantly higher for those in unsatisfactory health or unemployed; odds of not participating in vigorous exercise are significantly higher for those in unsatisfactory health, unemployed or without secondary education. Multivariate analysis shows that risk of being a heavy drinker is independently associated with sex, age, and health status; risk of being a current smoker is associated with health and employment status. The risk of not participating in vigorous exercise is significantly related to all sociodemographic variables examined. Reasons for these associations are discussed. (shrink)

In 2007 th eAustralian government declared that remote Aboriginal communities were in crisis and launched the Northern Territory Intervention.

ABSTRACT “Lockdown!” has articulated our collective and individual fear response to the novel coronavirus. Two regnant specialized discourses fostered by the academy—science and ideology critique—could not redirect this inadequate response nor generate their own adequately broad and focused social responses. This suggests the desirability of the academy adding phronesis as a goal for its pedagogical practices.

The human propensity for casting our social worlds as "us against them" is perhaps the primary impediment to deep and broadly inclusive understandings of the workings of rhetoric. Many decades ago, Kenneth Burke assailed that barrier with regard to Adolf Hitler. Surrounded by the satisfactions of vituperation against the leader of one of the world's most heinous social movements, Burke begged his readers to make space for understanding how Hitler's rhetoric brought about what it did. Philippe-Joseph Salazar's Words (...) Are Weapons makes a similar contribution for our era. He asks us to resist the gratifications generated by dismissing as "Islamaphobic" any critical analysis of what he calls "caliphal"... (shrink)

The second edition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education: An Introduction for the Teaching Profession prepares students for the unique environment they will face when teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students at early childhood, primary and secondary levels. This book enables future teachers to understand Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education within a social, cultural and historical context and uses compelling stories and practical strategies to empower both student and teacher. Updated with the Australian (...) Curriculum in mind, this is a unique textbook written by highly regarded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander academics. Each chapter opens with a powerful anecdote from the author, connecting the classroom to real-world issues. This updated edition has also been expanded to include information on fostering the unique talents of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people and allows the reader to reflect on classroom practices throughout. (shrink)

It is well recognised that medicine manifests social and cultural values and that the institution of healthcare cannot be structurally disengaged from the sociopolitical processes that create such values. As with many other indigenous peoples, Aboriginal Australians have a lower heath status than the rest of the community and frequently experience the effects of prejudice and racism in many aspects of their lives. In this paper the authors highlight values and ethical convictions that may be held by (...) Aboriginal peoples in order to explore how health practitioners can engage Aboriginal patients in a manner that is more appropriate. In doing so the authors consider how the ethics, values, and beliefs of the dominant white Australian culture have framed the treatment and delivery of services that Aboriginal people receive, and whether sufficient effort has been made to understand or acknowledge the different ethical predispositions that form the traditions and identity of Aboriginal Australia. (shrink)

Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change. By Celeste Michelle Condit.

Are there any Aboriginal rights? If there are, then what kind of rights are they? Are they human rights adapted and shaped to the circumstances of indigenous peoples? Or are they specific cultural rights, exclusive to members of Aboriginal societies? In recent liberal political theory, aboriginal rights are often conceived of as cultural rights and thus as group rights. As a result, they are vulnerable to at least three kinds of objections: i) that culture is not a (...) primary good relevant to the currency of egalitarian justice; ii) that group rights are inimical to the moral individualism of liberal democratic societies; and iii) that pandering to group interests provides incentives for abuse and undermines the conditions required for promoting liberal egalitarian outcomes. My argument is that a successful defense of aboriginal rights will tie them to the promotion of the equal freedom of Aboriginal people, both in the formal and substantive senses, and thus to improvements in their actual wellbeing, both as ‘peoples’ and individuals. But rights and norms interact in complex ways, and the translation of particular individual and social goods into the language of rights is always fraught with difficulty. (shrink)

Using an institutionalist, supply-side framework, the article describes and assesses the industrial relations reform agenda of the Australian labor movement between 1983 and 1996. Five institutional conditions for diversified quality production are identified, each of which was tackled to some extent in Australia. The article finds the strategy did not yield the benefits promised. Economic performance was average, union density fell steeply, and institutional supports for union membership and bargaining are threatened. Union misjudgments and an unfavorable historical and institutional (...) legacy, in particular the weakness of workplace bargaining structures, explain much of the Australian situation. Furthermore, the union supply-side reform agenda needs to be placed in its proper context. Without complementary policies affecting aggregate demand, innovation and industry policies, and finance reform, supply-side intervention can have only a limited impact. Unions in a neoliberal political economy are not strong enough to force through industrial restructuring alone. (shrink)

Having identified previously the Peircean Category Firstness as the semiotic basis for Australian Aboriginal culture, this paper examines the “lens” of Firstness as it is manifest in a variety of aboriginal cultures worldwide. By studying the semiotic contours of religion, language, social organization, and art, we find systemic prioritization of Firstness in its various manifestations, across a wide range of aboriginal cultures from Australia to the Indian Subcontinent to aboriginal Siberia and the New World. Shamanic (...) culture, despite its ethnic and geographic variety, may therefore be represented as a semiotic type – and, in addition, one that, in its pristine form, is nearly extinct. (shrink)

Insights into the problem of our relation to language Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought: A Rhetoric in Transition reflects the present transitional nature of rhetoric and society. Its purpose is to relate the rhetorical theory of Burke to the theories of four major European philosophers--Jürgen Habermas, Ernesto Grassi, Foucault, and Jacques Derrida--as they discuss the nature of language and its central role in society. This book describes a rhetorical world in transition but not a world in chaos. It points (...) to the centrality of symbolism in theories of language and rhetoric and illustrates Burke's influence as a pivotal things and theorist in the communication arts and sciences, suggesting that the observations regarding shifting paradigms and perspectives made by other scholars are indeed emergent in the realm of rhetoric. It also regards the powerful impact of language and symbolic action in both the critique and construction of human knowledge and augurs a central role for rhetoric in the intellectual and social transformations of this and the next century. (shrink)

The transformation of universities from public institutions to transnational business enterprises has met with less resistance in Australia than elsewhere. Yet this transformation undermines the founding principles of Australian democracy. This democracy emerged in opposition to the classical form of free market liberalism that the neo-liberals have revived. The logical unfolding of social liberalism in Australia underpinned the development of both the system of wage fixing and the idea of public education as conditions for democracy. The lack of (...) resistance to the destruction of democracy, as it was originally understood in Australia, by successive neoliberal governments has been due largely to the decadent state of Australian universities. These had come to be dominated by a crude form of empiricist utilitarianism, making Australia peculiarly vulnerable to the ideologues of global free markets and the power of transnational corporations who have sought to transform language to equate the dominance of all facets of life by markets as a defence of democracy. Only through a recovery of the philosophical tradition upon which Australia was founded and the development of this tradition through process metaphysics, it is argued, can genuine democracy and Australia’s public institutions, be defended. (shrink)

There is substantial literature on fetal alcohol spectrum disorder research involving Aboriginal children, but little related literature on other common neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism spectrum disorder or cerebral palsy for this population. As part of our work in cross-cultural neuroethics, we examined this phenomenon as a case study in Canada. We conducted semi-structured interviews with health researchers working on the frontline with First Nation communities to obtain perspectives about: reasons for the lack of ASD and CP research (...) within the Aboriginal context, the potential ethical and social implications of this disparity, and recommendations for change. Participants reported that the major barriers to engage in ASD or CP research are under-reporting and under-diagnosis of these conditions in Aboriginal communities, difficulties in establishing trust between community members and researchers, challenges in accessing children living under the care of child welfare services, and lack of support from universities and funding agencies to encourage community partnerships. They further perceived threats to justice as the population is denied the benefits of ASD and CP research, and stigma related to the possible over-representation of FASD in the population. The adoption of strength- and community-based practices to improve engagement and address disparities, and to create health databases with prevalence rates that are representative of all forms of disability in both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations are critical steps to close these gaps. (shrink)

This essay discusses fire as a significant factor shaping Australian social and cultural life. It focuses first on the climate-change induced emotions such as eco-anxiety and anger that can be tied with the Australian landscape, and then moves on to a discussion of the presence and function of fire in selected contemporary Australian poetry. The reflection on the poetics of trauma in the second part of the essay is accompanied by a discussion of solastalgia connected with land dispossession as (...) an experience of the First Nations expressed in the Aboriginal literature in English. (shrink)

Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change. By Celeste Michelle Condit.

Aboriginal fringe-dwellers in Central Australia emphasize their independence of the white-dominated world around them. Because of differences in their means of support, men and women have developed variations on this perspective of independence and personal power. Men present themselves in terms of their white employers and base their personal collateral on those links. Women stress their ability to care for their families without help from others and present themselves as able to play all social roles in the Central (...) Australian world. This image of woman as universal actor places moral premiums on the protection of domestic interests at the expense of wider gender, ethnic, or class interests. These ideas are explored through analysis of the life story of one woman, Katy Mayhew. Although obtained in an interview setting, the occasion of Katy's story became a life event through which she, her daughter, and her “sisters” reflected upon their lives as Aboriginal women in Central Australia. It is argued that life events are particularly appropriate ways for people to reflect on the meaning of their mundane, everyday lives in contexts such as Aboriginal Australia, which are dominated by bureaucratic frames, processes, and power. (shrink)

Australia is a suburban nation, with 85 percent of the 20 million people clinging to the coastal fringes of the world's largest island and oldest continent. This article explores Australian suburbia as the `third space' that mediates urbanism to `nature'. It draws on the thought of George Seddon, an important initiator of ecological history, regional geography and sub/urban politics in Australia. Seddon's insights on Australian ecosystems and Australian interpretations, namings, perceptions and shapings of their natural environment since the beginning of (...) European colonization in 1788 are used to think about the `nature of suburbia', `nature in suburbia' and suburbia in Australian `nature'. Its central argument is that nature is always culturally mediated and that the dominant ecological imaginary in Australia is suburban. The suburbs are the sites of economic, ecological and cultural trafficking about nature. It is argued here that the `bush', at least since the Second World War in Australia, has been more determinative of the suburban social imaginary than the `city'. In recent years, the meaning of the `bush' has transmuted from the `country' into the `wilderness', and from a valorization of the historic settlement process to myths of pure, aboriginal nature unadulterated by human imaginings and interventions. Though the meanings of the `bush' have changed in each case, its interpreter and maker is the socialized gardener of suburbia. The future of Australian nature is to be played out in the suburbs. (shrink)

In many parts of the world, homework is a form of labour characterised by precariousness, lack of regulation, and invisibility and lack of protection of the workers who are often amongst the world's poorest and most exploited. Homework is spreading, due to firm practices such as outsourcing. The analysis and understanding of complex corporate networks may assist with the identification and protection of those most at risk within the supply chain network. It can also expose some of the key ethical (...) issues and dilemmas of supply chain management and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Based on a case-study of the Australian FairWear Campaign (FWC), this article identifies an ethical network that aims to increase corporate accountability (CA) via greater transparency in corporate supply chains and improve work conditions for homeworkers and increase their recognition in the supply chain. (shrink)

Australia and Papua New Guinea share a number of important social, cultural, and historical features, making a sustained comparison between the two especially productive. This situates the ethnography of the two areas within a comparative framework and examines the relationship between indigenous systems of knowledge and place - an issue of growing concern to anthropologists. The essays demonstrate the manner in which regimes of restricted knowledge serve to protect and augment cultural property and the proprietorship over sites and territory; (...) how myths evolve to explain and culturally appropriate important events pertaining to contact between indigenous and Western societies; how graphic designs and other culturally important iconic and iconographic processes provide conduits of cross-cultural appropriation between indigenous and non-indigenous societies in today's multicultural nation states. (shrink)

Bourdieu’s concept of habitus clivé illuminates Indigenous Australians’ experiences in tertiary environments for both Aboriginal students and Aboriginal staff. Habitus formed through family, schooling and social class is also shaped by urban, regional or rural upbringing, creating a durable sense of self. Aboriginal people in Australia live in all of these places, often in marginalised circumstances. Bourdieu’s more specific concept of habitus clivé, or divided self, is less well known than habitus, but offers value in (...) giving expression to Indigenous people’s experiences within a dominant White society. The complexity of participation and educational change is explored here through the experiences of three authors’ intersecting positionalities within the Australian academy. Developing more nuanced scholarly language reduces the imposition of perspectives that see Indigenous people as objects within western frameworks. Scholarly understanding and respect for Australia’s first peoples’ concepts and cultural practices would engage more appropriately and fairly with Aboriginal knowledge and society. Habitus clivé chronicles one version of habitus that can be changed or be reconfirmed but not easily or by fiat. Understanding the concept can be learned, however. Educational opportunity, glorified in today’s higher education, means little for Aboriginal people without long-term strategies addressing existentially and culturally split habitus. (shrink)

Then newly elected Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, made a historic statement of “Sorry” for past injustices to Australian Indigenous peoples at the opening of the 2008 federal parliament. In the long-standing absence of a constitutional ‘foundational principle’ to shape positive federal initiatives in this context, there has been speculation that the emphatic Sorry Statement may presage formal constitutional recognition. The debate is long overdue in a nation that only overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius and recognised native title (...) to lan with the High Court’s decision in Mabo in 1992. This article explores the implications of the Sorry Statement in the context of reparations for the generations removed from their families under assimilation policies (known since the Bringing Them Home Inquiry as the Stolen Generations). We draw out the utility of recent human rights statutes—such as the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT)—as a mechanism for facilitating justice, including compensation for past wrongs. Our primary concern here is whether existing legal processes in Australia hold further capacity to provide reparation for Australian Indigenous peoples or whether their potential in that regard is already exhausted. We compare common law and statutory developments in other international jurisdictions, such as Canada, as an indication of what can be achieved by the law to facilitate better legal, economic and social outcomes for Indigenous peoples. The year 2008 also saw Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper express his apology to residential school victims in the Canadian Parliament, providing thematic and symbolic echoes across these two former colonies, which, despite remaining under the British monarchy, both forge their own path into the future, while confronting their own unique colonial past. We suggest that the momentum provided by the recent public apology and statement of “Sorry” by the newly elected Australian Prime Minister must not be lost. This symbolic utterance as a first act of the 2008 parliamentary year stood in stark contrast to the long-standing recalcitrance of the former Prime Minister John Howard on the matter of a formal apology. Rather than a return to a law enforcement-inspired “three strikes and you’re out” approach, Australia stands poised for an overdue constitutional and human rights-inspired “three ‘sorries’ and you’re in”. (shrink)

Long before the origins of agriculture human ancestors had expanded across the globe into an immense variety of environments, from Australian deserts to Siberian tundra. Survival in these environments did not principally depend on genetic adaptations, but instead on evolved learning strategies that permitted the assembly of locally adaptive behavioral repertoires. To develop hypotheses about these learning strategies, we have modeled the evolution of learning strategies to assess what conditions and constraints favor which kinds of strategies. To build on (...) prior work, we focus on clarifying how spatial variability, temporal variability, and the number of cultural traits influence the evolution of four types of strategies: (1) individual learning, (2) unbiased social learning, (3) payoff-biased social learning, and (4) conformist transmission. Using a combination of analytic and simulation methods, we show that spatial—but not temporal—variation strongly favors the emergence of conformist transmission. This effect intensifies when migration rates are relatively high and individual learning is costly. We also show that increasing the number of cultural traits above two favors the evolution of conformist transmission, which suggests that the assumption of only two traits in many models has been conservative. We close by discussing how (1) spatial variability represents only one way of introducing the low-level, nonadaptive phenotypic trait variation that so favors conformist transmission, the other obvious way being learning errors, and (2) our findings apply to the evolution of conformist transmission in social interactions. Throughout we emphasize how our models generate empirical predictions suitable for laboratory testing. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines discursive change in Australia from 1950 to 2010 through the lens of critical whiteness studies. Using textbooks as records of dominant narratives, I evaluate discourses of whiteness and Aboriginality in Australian history textbooks over this period of substantial social change. I show that overt discourses of white exceptionalism and Aboriginal deficiency are only present in the earliest decades of my sample. However, these discourses persist in later decades in ‘polite’ forms, maintaining the racial status quo (...) while enabling whites to be positioned favourably. I argue that discursive change only becomes embedded in textbooks if it bolsters the status of whites, evidencing Bell’s thesis of interest-convergence. (shrink)

The Affect of good artworks can be difficult to explain or describe, particularly in relation to conceptual art. The experiential process of engaging with an artwork involves the spectator perceiving the physical art object as well as receiving a concept. For an aesthetic experience to result, or for the viewer to be affected, the artist must be skilled and the receiver must adopt the relevant attitude. Many theorists argue that the correct attitude to adopt is one that is objective and (...) ‘disinterested’. I argue that a ‘loving’ attitude, in the Iris Murdoch / Martha Nussbaum sense derived from an ethics of care / virtue ethics framework is also appropriate when engaging with art in order to achieve an aesthetic affect. This open, caring attitude requires the receiver to be receptive to the concepts contained within the work as well as its formal features. If the concepts implored are ethical or social, a disinterested attitude may impede the appropriate up-take of intended affect. Therefore, I argue that pure aesthetes are misguided when they take their ‘disinterested’ attitude too far and argue that ethical judgements do not apply to art qua art. If the artist is making an ethical point, or if the concept involved relies on ethics, then a caring critique is not a contradiction in terms; the viewer is encouraged to adopt multiple perspectives in order to get closer to an objective whole. I will explore the notion of affect through the art of a contemporary, conceptual Western Australian artist, Steven Morgana. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Disturbances and Dislocations: Understanding Teaching and Learning Experiences in Indigenous Australian Women’s Music and DanceSarah H. WattsElizabeth Mackinlay. Disturbances and Dislocations: Understanding Teaching and Learning Experiences in Indigenous Australian Women’s Music and Dance (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007).Elizabeth Mackinlay, a lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, documents her unique pedagogical approaches and ways of thinking about the teaching and (...) learning of music and dance in her book, Disturbances and Dislocations: Understanding Teaching and Learning Experiences in Indigenous Australian Women’s Music and Dance. A university-level anthropology course dealing with the music and dance traditions of Australia’s Yanyuwa women was the setting for this “ethnographic case study” (p. 17). Through this course, Mackinlay sought to help students connect Indigenous Australian performance practices to social and political issues while fostering awareness of gender issues and learning processes within Indigenous Australian music and dance performance contexts. These objectives were met through a distinctive approach—by disposing of the strict lecture class format and bringing the field into the classroom. Disturbances and Dislocations documents the experiences of Mackinlay, her students, and several Yanyuwa women who come together as part of the course to engage in hands-on, authentic music and dance exchanges that bring the Yanyuwa women’s voices to the fore. [End Page 90]From the very beginning of the book, Mackinlay highlights her unique point of view as author of this work. She is a “white, middle class, educated woman” (p. 15) researching the experiences of and teaching university-level courses relating to Indigenous Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, a cultural background that is not her own. She is a political, educational, and ethnic outsider to the groups of peoples she studies. The wife of an Aboriginal man and mother to Aboriginal children, she is afforded links to the Yanyuwa people that provide her with a measure of status as a family member within the community. The dichotomy of being at once an insider and an outsider in the Yanyuwa community lends a fascinating level of complexity to Mackinlay’s exploration and analysis of the presence and impact of Yanyuwa culture-bearers in her classroom. The warmth, honesty, and openness with which she addresses her unique role in this learning exchange is engaging to the reader, and allows her personal situation to add humanity and life to the words on the page.The eight-chapter book commences with an introductory section that reflects upon her personal experiences in engaging in scholarship relating to Indigenous Australian issues. Additionally, the reader is introduced to the site of the ethnography, her classroom, in which her personal and professional lives intertwine. The next chapter further establishes the context of the ethnography by discussing a pilot project that laid foundations for the main study presented in the book. In this 1999 pilot project, a group of Mackinlay’s students, largely white women, participated in hands-on music and dance workshops under the guidance of Mackinlay and several Yanyuwa women. Student responses from this pilot project indicated that they felt awkward at times, but valued the time spent with the Yanyuwa guests and wished for more of these types of class sessions. Mackinlay determined that this cultural exchange could be even richer if more class time could be dedicated to it, an important observation for her own work, and also for others who seek to furnish cultural encounters for students.The fourth chapter delves into a theoretical discussion of the meanings of the inclusion of the study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in contemporary classroom settings. Issues of political positioning, representation of Indigenous voices, identity, and “speaking from and of in-between spaces” (p. 64) as one with a foothold in both white and Indigenous worlds are all addressed, engaging the reader in Mackinaly’s own complex journey of coming to terms with her own teaching and scholarly pursuits. It is refreshing to the reader that Mackinlay acknowledges her unique viewpoint as facilitator of this course and this research study. While she is an authority in this realm, she highlights her own backgrounds and biases, her individual lens... (shrink)

BackgroundDefensive practice occurs when physicians provide services, such as tests, treatments and referrals, mainly to reduce their perceived legal or reputational risks, rather than to advance patient care. This behaviour is counter to physicians’ ethical responsibilities, yet is widely reported in surveys of doctors in various countries. There is a lack of qualitative research on the drivers of defensive practice, which is needed to inform strategies to prevent this ethically problematic behaviour.MethodsA qualitative interview study investigated the views and experiences of (...) physicians in Australia on defensive practice and its contribution to low value care. Interviewees were recruited based on interest in medico-legal issues or experience in a health service involved in ‘Choosing Wisely’ initiatives. Semi-structured interviews averaged 60 min in length. Data were coded using the Theoretical Domains Framework, which encapsulates theories of behaviour and behaviour change.ResultsAll participants (n = 17) perceived defensive practice as a problem and a contributor to low value care. Behavioural drivers of defensive practice spanned seven domains in the TDF: knowledge, focused on inadequate knowledge of the law and the risks of low value care; skills, emphasising patient communication and clinical decision-making skills; professional role and identity, particularly clinicians’ perception of patient expectations and concern for their professional reputation; beliefs about consequences, especially perceptions of the beneficial and harmful consequences of defensive practice; environmental context and resources, including processes for handling patient complaints; social influences, focused on group norms that encourage or discourage defensive behaviour; and emotions, especially fear of missing a diagnosis. Overall, defensive practice is motivated by physicians’ desire to avoid criticism or scrutiny from a range of sources, and censure from their professional peers can be a more potent driver than perceived legal consequences.ConclusionsThe findings call for strengthening knowledge and skills, for example, to improve clinicians’ understanding of the law and their awareness of the risks of low value care and using effective communication strategies with patients. Importantly, supportive cultures of practice and organisational environments are needed to create conditions in which clinicians feel confident in avoiding defensive practice and other forms of low value care. (shrink)

We are very confused in Australia about the point of entry to adulthood, with different age ranges for different government programs existing side-by-side. Under the Federal Labor Government's Youth Homeless allowance, it was possible for children as young as 13 years to live independently with only minimal supervision from State Welfare departments. In 1989 The Burdekin Inquiry into youth homelessness together with a series of well publicised failures by child welfare authorities was partly responsible for a new protocol by the (...) Federal-State Council of Social Welfare Ministers which increased the level of supervision of young ‘independent’; children, and thereby appeared to raise the threshold age for adulthood. The most important mechanism for the transition to independence and to adulthood is work and the level of youth unemployment (triple the national average between 15–19 years) is also extending dependency and thus, childhood. The trend towards the extension of childhood dependency received formal sanction through the Coalition Government's Youth Allowance which now makes it possible for a child to remain dependent on his or her parents until age 25 years. (shrink)

Reviews : Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: Black Response to White Dominance, 1788-1980, George Allen & Unwin Paul Wilson, Black Death, White Hands, George Allen & Unwin.

We investigate the performance and risk of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) equity funds in the Australian market and find no significant difference between the returns of SRI and conventional funds. In an extension to prior literature, we examine the impact of the number of positive, negative and total screens funds impose on performance and risk. We find little evidence of positive or negative screening impacting total return, but find weak evidence that funds with more screens overall provide better risk-adjusted performance. (...) Positive screening significantly reduces funds’ risk. However, negative screening significantly increases risk and reduces funds’ abilities to form diversified portfolios. (shrink)

Encountering Aborigines: A Case Study: Anthropology and the Australian Aboriginal details the concerns in contemporary anthropological research of aboriginal Australians.

A large proportion of nursing home residents in developed countries come from ethnic minority groups. Unmet care needs and poor quality of care for this resident population have been widely reported. This systematic review aimed to explore social conditions affecting ethnic minority residents' ability to exercise their autonomy in communication and care while in nursing homes. In total, 19 studies were included in the review. Findings revealed that ethno‐specific nursing homes create the ideal social condition for residents (...) to express their care needs and preferences in a language of choice. In nonethno‐specific nursing homes, staff cultural competence and nursing home commitment to culturally safe care are crucial social conditions that enable this group of residents to fulfil their autonomy in communicating and in participating in their care. In contrast, social conditions that undermine residents' ability to express their care needs and preferences include low levels of staff cultural awareness and cultural desire, negative attitudes towards residents and limited organisational support for staff to improve culturally responsive and culturally safe care. In conclusion, it is important to optimise the social conditions to support ethnic minority residents to communicate their care needs and preferences. (shrink)

Many believe that nanotechnology will be disruptive to our society. Presumably, this means that some people and even whole industries will be undermined by technological developments that nanoscience makes possible. This, in turn, implies that we should anticipate potential workforce disruptions, mitigate in advance social problems likely to arise, and work to fairly distribute the future benefits of nanotechnology. This general, somewhat vague sense of disruption, is very difficult to specify – what will it entail? And how can we (...) responsibly anticipate and mitigate any problems? We can't even clearly state what the problems are anticipated to be. In fact, when we move from sweeping policy statements to more concrete accounts, nanotechnology seems to bifurcate into two divergent streams: one is fairly continuous with current developments, extending extant science in a quantitative way; the other is radically new, and includes science fiction-like dreams of molecular manufacturing and assemblers, with their utopian scenarios of absolute plenty. In these cases, “disruption” takes on the valence of Huxley's brave new world. (shrink)

Here we consider two ways that nanomedicine might be disruptive. First, low-end disruptions that are intrinsically unpredictable but limited in scope, and second, high end disruptions that involve broader societal issues but can be anticipated, allowing opportunity for ethical reflection.

This paper examines a historical case of conceptual change in mathematics that was fundamental to its progress. I argue that in this particular case, the change was conditioned primarily by social processes, and these are reflected in the intellectual development of the discipline. Reorganization of mathematicians and the formation of a new mathematical community were the causes of changes in intellectual content, rather than being mere effects. The paper focuses on the French Revolution, which gave rise to revolutionary developments (...) in mathematics. I examine how changes in the political constellation affected mathematicians both individually and collectively, and how a new professional community—with different views on the objects, problems, aims, and values of the discipline—arose. On the basis of this account, I will discuss such Kuhnian themes as the role of the professional community and normal versus revolutionary development.Author Keywords: Carnot; Monge; Kuhn; Revolution; Conceptual change. (shrink)