School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemCOVID-19, global public health justice, and the culture of organized irresponsibility(Pluto Journals, )This article deploys the language of risk to offer a sociological perspective on the discourse of responsibility in the context of the governance and mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. While current debates about global public health justice often tend to overemphasize the role of legal action as a key measure in today’s global public health justice initiatives, the article argues that lack of adequate legal mechanisms – such as a global statute on public health crimes – constitutes only one barrier to the attainment of global public health justice. By and large, the failed administration of public health during global pandemics will not induce criminal prosecution on a worldwide scale and this is not because of lack of adequate legal channels but mostly because of the way in which world risk society reshapes the meaning of responsibility. The article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic is a manufactured risk that is being dealt with within a culture of organized irresponsibility that obfuscates accountability and liability for risk-creation and risk-management and transforms culpability for such risk-creation and risk-management into acquittal. Effective approaches to global public health justice, then, cannot be limited to the introduction of international legal safeguards but need to include a project for the social redistribution of bads and reallocation of global responsibility for risk-creation and risk-management.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableYou Can Be A Better Customer For LGBTQ+ Hospitality Workers(University of Melbourne, 2024-05-17)Bars, cafes and restaurants often rely on LGBTQ+ workers to make spaces look and feel inclusive, but they can end up facing harassment with no support.
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ItemRisky business: How food-delivery platform riders understand and manage safety at work(SAGE Publications, 2024-01-01)This study explores the issue of workplace safety among food-delivery workers who use platforms like UberEATS and Deliveroo to secure work. Despite the high exposure to hazardous traffic, extreme weather conditions, and unsafe work hours and locations that these workers face daily, safety remains a low priority for both platforms and governments. This study utilizes in-depth qualitative interviews with 14 platform food delivery workers in Melbourne, Australia, to examine how they understand and manage safety risks at work, drawing on a theoretical framework of necropolitics and liminal precarity. The riders are predominantly migrant workers on temporary visas who face corporeal risks influenced by factors such as road conditions, time pressures, and weather. Despite their awareness of these dangers, the study reveals that platform-induced necropower, driven by economic incentives, significantly impacts those heavily dependent on gig economy earnings, ultimately turning safety into a trade-off between making a living and surviving. However, riders also demonstrate agency by mediating risks through experience, knowledge-sharing, and strategic use of the platform's features to resist potentially hazardous conditions.
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ItemNot So Hospitable: Sexual harassment in the Adelaide hospitality industry(Melbourne Centre for Cities, University of Melbourne, 2024-05-15)Sexual harassment in the workplace is, unfortunately, an all-too-common experience for women in Australia, with often devastating impacts for victim-survivors' wellbeing and careers (AHRC, 2022). Like other forms of sexual violence, workplace sexual harassment is highly gendered, with women disproportionately impacted and men overwhelmingly the perpetrators of harassment (AHRC 2020, 2022). Existing research suggests that sexual harassment is more prevalent in certain industries, particularly those that are strongly hierarchical and male dominated (AHRC, 2020). The hospitality industry has been identified as one industry with disproportionately high rates of workplace sexual harassment (UWU, 2023).
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ItemEqual Sharing of Care: Evidence Review(The University of Melbourne, 2024-05-01)Worldwide, societal norms traditionally assign distinct parenting roles to mothers and fathers, shaping their approaches and contributions to childcare. However, new fatherhood is challenging these historical perceptions of parenting by redefining and highlighting men’s capacity to provide nurturing and equally enriching care to young children as women. As this review will show, recent research indicates that the positive impact of engaged fathering extends beyond simply benefiting children and fathers themselves; it also positively affects their partners, communities, and workplaces. To achieve an equal sharing of care, men must step into these roles and become actively engaged fathers who are committed to challenging traditional gender norms and proactively participating in all aspects of caregiving.
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ItemUnderstanding Public Support for Policies Aimed at Gender Parity in Politics: A Cross-National Experimental Study(Cambridge University Press, 2024-03)English: Across the globe, women are underrepresented in elected politics. The study's case countries of Australia (ranked 33), Canada (61) and the United States (66) rank poorly for women's political representation. Drawing on role strain and gender-mainstreaming theories and applying large-scale survey experiments, we examine public opinion on non-quota mechanisms to bolster women's political participation. The experimental design manipulates the politician's gender and level of government (federal/local) before asking about non-quota supports to help the politician. We find public support for policies aimed at lessening work–family role strain is higher for a woman politician; these include a pay raise, childcare subsidies and housework allowances. This support is amplified among women who are presented with a woman politician in our experiment, providing evidence of a gender-affinity effect. The study's findings contribute to scholarship on gender equality and point to gender-mainstreaming mechanisms to help mitigate the gender gap in politics. French: Les femmes sont sous-représentées dans la politique électorale partout au monde. Les pays représentés dans cette étude, l'Australie (classée 33), le Canada (61) et les États-Unis (66), se classent mal en ce qui concerne la représentation politique des femmes. En empruntant à la théorie des contraintes de rôle (« role strain ») et de l'intégration du genre (« gender mainstreaming »), et en appliquant des méthodes expérimentales avec des sondages en ligne incorporant une manipulation expérimentale menées en parallèle aux États-Unis, au Canada, et en Australie, nous examinons l'opinion publique sur les mécanismes hors quotas visant à renforcer la participation politique des femmes. L'expérience manipule le genre de la politicienne/du politicien et son niveau de gouvernement (fédéral/local) avant de poser des questions sur les politiques hors quotas visant à aider la politicienne/le politicien. Nous constatons que le soutien du public pour des politiques visant à réduire les tensions entre le travail et la famille est plus élevé pour les politiciennes; celles-ci incluent l'augmentation du salaire, des allocations pour la garde d'enfants et pour les travaux ménagers. Ce soutien est plus élevé chez les femmes qui lisent la description d'une politicienne dans notre sondage, ce qui témoigne d'un effet d'affinité de genre. Les résultats de l’étude contribuent aux recherches sur l’égalité des sexes et mettent en avant des mécanismes d'intégration du genre pour aider à atténuer l’écart entre les sexes en politique.
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ItemSelf-managed Home Aged Care Support: Research Report(University of Melbourne, 2024)The study investigated the benefits and risks to: i) older people who self-manage their home care package; ii) their support workers; and iii) ways to mitigate these risks. The findings highlighted how older people can successfully self-manage their aged Home Care Package and how risks can be managed. While self-management is not wanted by everyone, those who chose to self-manage reported benefits. These included having more choice and control over their support, especially being able to select support workers. Interviewees felt much safer selecting support workers who matched their needs and interests compared to having unknown rostered agency staff come to their home. Contracted support workers often worked for one consumer for years. Modern technology was an asset that facilitated self-management. Technology assisted with recruiting support workers, scheduling work, managing accounts and payments, and enabling providers to monitor spending and be alerted to any unusual payments or fraud. Self-management occurred within a complex service system where there was inadequate funding for community services and Home Care Packages as well as workforce shortages. These challenges impacted on older people in the study who self-managed and their family representatives. While workforce shortages were a major concern across the sector, most interviewees used informal networks and online recruitment services to find satisfactory workers. However, recruitment was a challenge for some interviewees from time to time. Self-management required consumers and their family representatives to navigate complex family dynamics and manage support workers and other services. Some consumers had the confidence and skills to competently manage these situations after a lifetime of relevant experiences. Others were beginning to develop skills and sometimes felt challenged. Everyone needed access to information and advice from time to time, particularly those developing new skills. Interviewees discussed the need to balance consumer’s protection and care with their right to ‘dignity of risk’, to build their capacity, and to choose their lifestyle. Multiple risks were identified with all aged care services, including self-management. Older people can be vulnerable to perpetrators of abuse from within and outside their families. Their rights can also be overridden subtly by others with well-meaning intent. These include service providers who want to minimise risks, surveillance and tracking technologies that are not transparent, and by families wanting to protect. Strategies to mitigate risks need to be individually tailored, with diverse and individual safeguarding strategies developed. Restrictive strategies should only be imposed when proven necessary and expressly stated with necessary consents provided, if necessary, through appropriate Guardianship mechanisms.
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ItemRecalibrating Minimum Force: Some Unintended Consequences of Tom Swift's 'Electronic Rifle'(Springer Nature, 2024-05-23)This chapter explores some significant impacts of ‘electro-shock’ weapons on the practices and accountability of police. It argues that the introduction of conducted energy weapons (CEWs or ‘Tasers’) has resulted in the recalibration of the traditional policing principle of minimum force. Using evidence from a range of jurisdictions, we explore the way CEWs replace low-level and intermediate force options, rather than the use of deadly force they were initially marketed to reduce. We suggest that the adoption of this type of weapon fractures police conceptions of the use of force continuum. This results in a shift away from ensuring ‘coercive’ force as both threat of use of force and the actual use of force are minimised in model police practice towards the mission to appear ‘non-lethal’, or at least less ‘injurious’. While CEWs carry less risk of serious physical injury when deployed as compared with firearms, the increasing rates and normalisation of threatened use of force and associated threats of severe pain and injury in policing practice comprise a form of ‘weapons creep’ and carry a concomitant risk to police–community relations. We argue the widespread adoption of CEWs in policing has reinforced long-held concerns about ‘weapons drift’ and has consequently impacted police legitimacy for some observers and further served to materially subvert interpretations of the principle of ‘minimum force’ as a useful measure of the reasonableness of police use of force.
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ItemThe value added of solidarity economies: Bureaucratic constructions of value for alternative economic policy in Ecuador(Wiley, 2024)The National Institute of the Popular Solidarity Economy (IEPS) in Ecuador was created to promote an alternative form of economy—the Popular Solidarity Economy (PSE). As a precarious institute with limited funding, IEPS staff worked hard to find alternative ways to support the PSE. In this article, I examine their work through the lens of valor agregado (added value), a commonly used local term for how economic value is created. Government bureaucrats intervened primarily by creating an audience that was interested in the social aspects of the alternative economy. Because valor agregado ambiguously refers to both monetary and social value, it helped the PSE better integrate with the wider economy. With this approach, I offer a potential new path for analyzing government support for alternative economies. By refocusing our attention on key actors' understandings of value creation, anthropologists can sidestep questions of whether alternative economies have been “co-opted” by capitalism and instead examine the necessary interfaces between these alternatives and the mainstream.
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ItemGender-based violence and carceral feminism in Australia: towards decarceral approaches(Springer, 2024-04-08)This article explores the limitations of criminal legal responses to gender-based violence in Australia, specifically sexual assault law reforms and the criminalisation of coercive control. We demonstrate that carceral horizons deployed to address gender-based violence cause further harm to survivors and overshadow diverse perceptions and practices of justice. We suggest that such an approach is inappropriate and dangerous in the Australian context, given the historical and enduring harms of colonisation and the extent to which the actors within and the structure of the criminal legal system perpetrate violence towards Indigenous survivors of gender-based violence. Drawing on insights from research on survivors’ justice needs, survivors’ experiences in the criminal legal system, and abolitionist, transformative, and Indigenous scholarship, we discuss the potential for alternative ways of conceptualising justice responses in the Australian context that move beyond and avoid further perpetuating the harms arising from criminal legal responses to gender-based violence.