School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemMotherhood Statements: A discursive institutionalist analysis of the implementation of breastfeeding policy in Victoria( 2018)This thesis investigates the role of discourse in policy implementation in policymaking contexts characterised by few formal policy institutions. It does this by analysing the case study of the implementation of breastfeeding policy in the state of Victoria, using a discursive institutionalist framework specifically adapted for understanding policy implementation. Data about the case study was gathered through review of a corpus of breastfeeding policy documents and through semi-structured interviews with 19 key implementers of breastfeeding policy. The interview data was processed using a mixed deductive inductive coding approach based on grounded theory. The data was analysed through the lens of Schmidt’s (2008, 2011) discursive institutionalism, incorporating concepts from implementation theory. Several significant findings resulted from the data analysis. Firstly, it was found that in policymaking contexts with a few formalised policy institutions, discourse produces new institutions which mould how actors implement policy. The two types of new institution which have emerged in the Victorian breastfeeding sector are breastfeeding policy – an intertextual construct produced through the interrelationships of the mass of texts used by implementers – and the role descriptions of the non-public service actors involved in implementing breastfeeding policy. The findings showed these roles could be formalised, as in job descriptions of healthcare professionals, or informal, as in norms about being a good mother. Secondly, it was found that informal institutions are discursively arranged into relationships with each other, where one group defined by an institution is allowed to act in prescribed ways towards another group defined by an institution. The relationships between these groups are therefore power relations, and emerge out of attempts to solve the ‘problem’ of women failing to establish or maintain breastfeeding – a problem which is constituted by a conflict between individuals’ experiences and discursive ideals. As actors attempt to solve this problem, ideational structures proliferate in the form of narratives which explain the problem and proffer solutions to it. However, sometimes these narratives conflict with each other, producing additional discursive problems which must then be solved in turn. The most common solution to these problems involved prescribing courses of actions two institutionally defined groups may take with respect to each other. Further, it was found that, in addition to Schmidt’s (2008, 2011) identification of ‘communicative’ and ‘coordinative’ discourses, a ‘public’ discourse could be identified, where actors in the public sphere (who may be media figures or members of the public) speak to political actors about public policy, its purpose, and its effectiveness. This thesis is the first study to apply discursive institutionalism specifically to a problem of policy implementation. It therefore represents a new extension of critical policy theory into implementation studies. As detailed above, it generates a number of new findings about how policy implementation happens in institutional voids, which may also be applicable to other policymaking contexts. This thesis has also generated insights about how policy implementation happens that can form the basis of future theory-building of policy implementation as a discursive process.
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ItemBigData: Can virtue ethics play a role?( 2015)Big Data is a term for masses of information that is usually heterogeneous, usually from multiple sources, in multiple formats and at a scale of at least terabytes, and often substantially larger. It may be a data stream, or an assemblage of exiting large, not necessarily homogeneous datasets; both often contain large personal data content and thus can invoke ethical issues. As a result of rapid disintermediation of wide areas of the economy and daily life, and the growing data and information intensity that has both enabled this and is creating many fresh forms of Big Data on a real time basis, it is important to ensure that the implications are understood by the communities affected. This had not occurred until recently in the areas of government surveillance (Mathews & Tucker, 2014), and when it did had a massive impact across the world. Expectations were changed (See Fig.1) and the emergent power asymmetries emphasized. Concerns over the ethical and power implications are now reverberating, with Australia moving to consolidate ever stronger asymmetric information powers over the community (http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search _Results/Result?bId=s969), and the term ‘Snowden Effect’ has now achieved currency (https://freesnowden.is/frequently-asked-questions/).
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ItemRemembering wartime rape in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina( 2018)Remembering Wartime Rape explores the complicated history of rape during the Bosnian war (1992-1995) and the collective efforts of local populations to (dis)remember the painful legacies of violence over more than two decades since the close of conflict. The organised sexual assaults of more than 20,000 women and girls was a defining characteristic in the history of Bosnia’s bloody secession from the former Yugoslav federation and the memories of such violence continue to influence the post-war recovery of communities throughout the small Balkan state. The research draws on intimate accounts of women’s suffering over the four years of conflict as well as personal stories of survival in the aftermath of the violence to provide a thick description of the place of rape narratives in Bosnia’s post-conflict memoryscape. Ethnographic data was collected over an extended period of 21 months in the two key fieldwork locations of Selo and Gradić in the Republika Srpska. The distinctive political, economic, religious, and social contexts in each community produced different dominant mnemonic threads as well as many and varied ways of collectively managing the sensitive local histories of war rape. The public discourse on the subject is, thus, explored through different notional frames as they emerged organically in each site over the course of fieldwork. The dissertation specifically employs the theoretical schemata of public secrecy (Taussig, 1999) and its relevance to the sensitive task of memory making in the village of Selo, and the grey zone (Levi, 1989) and its bearing on the recollections of women concentration camp survivors in the town of Gradić. In adopting these two principal thematic frameworks, Remembering Wartime Rape focuses on the discursive processes through which memories of sexual violence from the recent conflict are selected, shaped, and institutionalised in each of the key communities. It questions the ways in which women survivors are represented or erased in the crafting of official histories and the consequences of such for fostering social solidarity and division among those with competing versions of the ‘truth’. In doing so, the research considers which elements of women’s experiences of rape are more easily remembered and which are excluded or deliberately ‘forgotten’, which are grieved, and which are valorised, what complex reality is simplified as a result, and what broader purpose these interpretations serve. The research concludes with a discussion of the importance of enhancing current methodologies to explore more thoroughly the limits and the possibilities for both collective and personal mourning and for re-imagining social worlds in the aftermath of an immense disruption such as war. In exploring the messiness of the Bosnian memoryscape two decades after the close of conflict, the dissertation refrains from any attempt to establish a singular metanarrative of war rape and, instead, seeks to evoke a sense of the ineffable experience of living alongside memories of sexual violence in their countless manifestations and of the meanings and creativity always inherent in both individual and collective approaches to suffering, survival, and post-war reconstruction.
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ItemCivil society organisations and human rights in ASEAN: the case of Indonesia( 2018)ASEAN’s progress in human rights has been a puzzling issue, especially given the Association’s rapid transformation after the Cold War. While seemingly demonstrating a formal institutionalisation of human rights, ASEAN progress does not entail any real regional mechanism for guaranteeing human rights protection, signalling a significant gap in its rhetoric and action. In understanding this empirical puzzle, many scholars often focus on evaluating the process of diffusion of norms that originate from outside the region to ASEAN member states. Often underplayed in these accounts are the political dynamics from wider relevant actors within the region that influence norms institutionalisation process. As such, it is important to move beyond state-centric analysis and to dissect myths associated with the process of norm dynamics. This thesis asks: how do civil society organisations (CSOs) engage with ASEAN in shaping the institutionalisation of human rights norms in the region? To answer this question, this thesis focuses on the case of Indonesia and adopts a Bourdieu-inspired constructivist International Relations (IR) perspective in making sense of the nature of institutionalisation of human rights norms in ASEAN and investigating power relations among Indonesian CSOs, Indonesian officials and ASEAN in socialising human rights norms. This thesis argues that the institutionalisation of human rights in the region is significantly shaped by the ASEAN doxa, which comprises existing normative dispositions and Southeast Asian diplomatic mechanisms. Moreover, there are three notable patterns of Indonesian CSOs’ engagement with the process, namely supportive (exemplified by CSIS), critical (exemplified by KontraS) and adaptive (exemplified by HRWG). These patterns contribute to Indonesia’s position on regional human rights issues and the nuanced context where ASEAN human rights institutionalisation process continues to show a gap between rhetoric and action.
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ItemLegitimacy, authority and global governance institutions: a case study of the International Monetary Fund( 2018)Global governance institutions play an increasingly important and influential role in global politics. Despite a growing focus in the literature on global governance institutions’ legitimacy, the applicability of both standard conceptions and newer theories of political authority and political legitimacy to these actors remains an unresolved issue. In this thesis I address this shortcoming in the literature by engaging in an investigation of the authority and legitimacy of global governance institutions. I demonstrate the incompatibility of standard conceptions of political authority and legitimacy with the current roles of these actors in the international political order. Drawing on Stephen Perry’s (2013) task-efficacy account of legitimacy and Martha Nussbaum’s approach to social justice, I provide accounts of, and standards for, authority and legitimacy. I contend that the promotion of the condition for subjects’ wellbeing, understood as Nussbaum’s ten capabilities, is a sufficiently good or valuable end to justify public authority. Finally, to test the applicability of the proposed account of legitimacy, I undertake a case study of the International Monetary Fund to investigate the ways real world global governance institutions exercise political authority, establish the usefulness of my proposed definition of legitimacy, measure the IMF’s efficacy and consider areas for reform.
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ItemReframing graffiti writing as a community practice: sites of youth learning and social engagement( 2018)This study investigates how graffiti writing is learnt and how graffiti writers experience this learning. Drawing on the concept of communities of practice, it frames graffiti as a skillful and aesthetic practice that is learned in a communally- situated context. This shifts the focus from graffiti as a stigmatised practice to a demonstration of the expert knowledge that young men develop over time through their engagement with a learning community. The research consisted of semi-structured interviews and observations of graffiti practice with eleven male graffiti writers. The thesis argues that graffiti writing involves a wide range of cognitive, social, emotional and bodily skills. These skills coalesce at the site of practice where they in turn inform the learning of novice graffiti writers. This thesis shows that the way writers experience the learning of graffiti occurs within a highly masculine space that can serve to exclude women’s participation. By developing an understanding of the lived experiences of male graffiti writers, this research contributes new knowledge about youth cultural practice as a site of learning and production.
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ItemQueering constructivist international relations: questioning identity-based human rights norms in sexual orientation-based refugee law( 2018)Since the late 1980s, many norms relating to the recognition of sexual orientation-based rights have come to be accepted and institutionalised at the international level. One of these, based on developments in multiple jurisdictions since the late 1980s, has been the institutionalisation of the norm of sexual orientation-based claims to asylum. This has been accompanied by an ever-growing series of procedural norms relating to assessing sexual orientation-based claims in the refugee status determination process. At the same time, constructivist international relations scholars have been developing theory on norm institutionalisation and implementation. Scholars such as Amitav Acharya have explored how norms can be adapted when they reach the regional level, developing the notion of ‘norm localisation’. More recently, constructivist scholars Alexander Betts and Phil Orchard have argued that the institutionalisation of international norms ‘ultimately only [has] significance insofar as they translate into practice’. They have, therefore, brought their analysis on norm institutionalisation and implementation processes down to the domestic level.
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Item‘Female performers on a male stage’: can social media reignite the Women’s Liberation Movement?( 2018)This thesis uses radical feminist political theory to investigate whether women’s use of social media can reignite the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM). In doing so, the thesis provides the first internal critique of contemporary radical feminist digital organising strategies. Emerging in the late 1960s across Western democracies, radical feminist communication in the WLM was characterised by face-to-face organising in small women-only groups and the development of an autonomous print culture. More recently, the time-space compression facilitated by social media has unleashed an avalanche of celebratory rhetoric championing the new opportunities now available to women to digitally connect across geographical borders and instantly raise their voices against male dominance. On this basis, some scholars have now claimed that digital space has propelled feminism into a fourth wave. This claim is curious from a radical feminist perspective, because social movement studies, feminist media studies and critical internet studies scholars have yet to critically analyse how the shift away from face-to-face communication and the adoption of male-controlled and algorithmically curated digital platforms is helping or hindering women’s ability to revive a revolutionary feminist movement. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 26 feminist activists across the USA, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, as well as archival and digital primary activist materials, this thesis is the first academic work to critically analyse how male power in digital space is shaping women’s ability to raise their consciousness, build feminist theory, and engage in politically-informed feminist praxis. I argue that the use of social media for feminist communication prevents women from reviving a strong, woman-centred liberation movement because they remain physically separated from each other whilst also placed under male surveillance. Feminist organising on social media is subject to male approval; not only does social media expand male access to both individual women and feminism's strategic directions, but it also impedes women’s ability to advance a feminist ethic of engagement based upon collectivity. Instead of providing a space conducive to the development of new forms of engagement between women outside of male control, social media forces feminists to work within a male infrastructure and pursue an ethic of engagement based upon antagonism, individualism, mistrust and celebrity worship.
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ItemWorlds of care: fathering children with disabilities( 2018)This thesis, based on fieldwork in North America, explores worlds of disability, both personal and shared, as they are felt and come into being for fathers caring for children with disabilities. I argue that while disability gains meaning from social and cultural context, for parents it is lived as a bodily experience of disruption. The demands of caregiving, then, shake parents from their everyday, habitual worlds, and launch them upon a new subjective trajectory whereupon they struggle to remake a self in the context of care and disability that is biographically coherent. In this thesis, I engage existential themes of creativity, choice, facticity, tension, communication, and morality, and attend to the interwoven temporal and relational dimensions of existence, asking how it is that parents re-orient their lives after having a child that is neither expected nor typical and negotiate their day-to-day existence with and through others? This thesis adopts an auto-phenomenographic methodology to present a second-person phenomenology of disability. As such, I explore my own experiences of disability in the context of caregiving alongside those of my participants in contributing to our understanding of embodied care. This thesis builds an argument for understanding our shared embodied existence and the corporeal and existential grounds that constitute possibilities for giving care and impressing upon the world in new ways. This thesis presents disorientation and caregiving as experiences that have the potential to heighten parents’ sensitivity to others and motivate a changed sense of relatedness to the world.