School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses

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    The many lives of the Goulburn River : sustainable management as ontological work
    Lavau, Stephanie ( 2008)
    In this thesis I consider what it might be to do sustainable management of the Goulburn River, which meanders through the dry plains of northern Victoria, in Australia. This river touches many lives. It is celebrated as the "lifeblood" of local rural communities and the water supply for the "food bowl" of Australia. Economic development, social well-being, natural environment, and cultural heritage: a diverse array of community values and expectations are embodied in the contemporary management of the Goulburn River. The core theme of sustainable management with which I engage in this thesis is the integration of environment and development. Rather than evaluating sustainable management as more or less successful techniques, or as competing discourses, I interrogate sustainable management of the Goulburn River as ontological work. Using a material semiotic analytic, I tell of the many lives of what we call "the Goulburn River". These multiple river realities are emergent in particular orderings of routines, people, materials and narratives of river management and rural life. Through a series of historical narratives about post-settlement relations with the Goulburn River, I distinguish three modes of enacting river: utilitarian, ecological and sustainable. Utilitarian rivers proliferate throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, through an increasing array of rural industries that seek to progress the nation by improving mechanistic, under-utilised and deficient nature. Ecological rivers gain prominence in the late 20th century, amidst concerns that fragile, living, authentic nature is being threatened by human industry and requires protection. Amidst the recent antagonistic interferences between utilitarian rivers and ecological rivers, I identify the emergence of a new mode of enacting and relating rivers, that of sustainability. Utility and ecology are held in tension, I claim, in the contemporary vision for the Goulburn as sustainable or healthy working river. Through case studies of the sustainable management of the Goulburn River's frontages, flows and fish, I explore the ways in which river practitioners negotiate the ontological difference that is enacted in utilitarian and ecological rivers. Sustainable management, I contend, seeks to remake the relation between these river realities, to shift from an adversarial dynamic of competition to a more convivial dynamic of co-existence. Paddock and wildlife corridor; irrigation water and environmental water; trout fishery and native fish habitat: I argue that these utilitarian rivers and ecological rivers are made to intermingle by "cleaving" ontological difference. I distinguish a series of strategies through which these rivers are being drawn together whilst being held apart. This co-ordination and distribution of multiplicities produces ambiguous entanglements of rivers, which are invoked as sustainable or healthy working river. I thus identify sustainable management as holding together utilitarian rivers and ecological rivers in generative tension, thus sustaining ontological difference (albeit to varying degrees). In doing so, I confront the keen critiques of social science scholars about the vagueness of sustainability, and argue that we need to learn ways of living with ontological ambiguity.
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    Experiencing and transcending a liminal condition : narratives of ailing Polish immigrants in Melbourne, Australia
    Rapala, Slawomir ( 2004)
    In addition to facing problems typically associated with (re)location, migrants must often come to terms with changing bodily states due to disability, illness, ageing and other forms of ailments in locations that may be foreign culturally and linguistically. Ailing immigrants experience two forms of disruptions which result in a double condition of sustained liminality: spatial/social and bodily. Using narratives of ailing Polish immigrants to Australia, this thesis explores these disruptions as well as the strategies through which the participants (re)ground their transformed body/selves in new locations. The project is embedded in a constructivist approach which stresses the importance of the participants' subjective experience of spatial/social and bodily (re)locations, their experience of sustained liminality, and of the strategies they use to transcend this doubly liminal state. Theoretical and methodological concepts which guide this work are elaborated and expanded on in the first sections of the thesis. The next section is devoted to exploring the narratives of the ailing Polish immigrants in order to uncover their spatial social and bodily disruptions and uprootings from familiar locations, and their consequent alienation from their changing body/selves. The final section uses the narratives of the participants to reveal the frameworks within which they attempt to transcend the liminal condition of their ailing immigrant bodies in order to make their locations familiar and their transformed body/selves less alien. This project argues that making sense of new locations is a human experience. For the ailing immigrant, however, the experience is problematic because the transformative movements they are subjected to require a continuous effort to (re)locate their selves within monumentally different spatial/social and bodily contexts. (Re)grounding strategies are a way of making sense of the world and of doing away with the subjective alienation from the self. This thesis recognizes the process of (re)grounding as central to the experience of the ailing immigrants, and argues that the end results of (re)grounding strategies, whether successful or not, are in fact less important than the process itself. Through the (re)grounding process, the self becomes familiar, regardless of its spatial/social or bodily location
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    A failed innovation?: General practitioners in community health centres
    Payne, Lorna ( 1993)
    This paper seeks to examine central policy and practice issues arising out of the presence of doctors in community health centres. The community health program was shaped by the Whitlam era and there were great hopes for its success in delivering new forms of health services. Integral to it was the presence of G.P.'s working from community health centres. The research aims at discovering whether or not community health has successfully incorporated G.P.'s into the program. (From Introduction)
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    From segregated institution to self-managed community: the contribution of community social work practice towards Aboriginal self-management at Lake Tyers/Bung Yarnda Victoria
    Renkin, Peter F. B. ( 2006)
    The central purpose of this thesis was to explore the contribution of community social work practice to a process of planned social change orchestrated by the Victorian Government's Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs during 1970-1971. This process aimed to reconstruct the living conditions of the residential Aboriginal population of Lake TyersrBung Yarnda so that the residents became land owners and managers of their physical, economic and social country. The thesis has sought to analyse the planned social change process that included two components - community development and legislation. The study found that legislation provided the necessary conditions to effect the social change sought by the residents, but the Government's grant of communal land title involved management of a corporate organisation, which conferred unexpected accountability standards and demanded new administrative skills of them. The study also found that the transfer of a new social and economic status required different attitudes and standards of behaviour from the residents, Government and the environment. Social change came with a price for all parties but especially the Aboriginal residents of Lake Tyers. The thesis has assessed the engagement of the community social worker, explored the theoretical ideas that guided the community social worker's practice, and analysed the social planning approach used by the Executive of the Ministry. An autobiographical method was used drawing on primary data from the community . social worker's practice records written during the intervention and collected materials. A content analysis of this data, from the perspective of practice ideas then and now, has facilitated the reconstructed account of what happened. Later historical, sociological, psychological, and community social work practice literature concerning the social and economic development of residential Aboriginal populations, was utilised to provide a contemporary contribution to the analysis of the process. The foundation of the study was the integration of a critical social theoretical approach with the qualitative Indigenous methodology of 'decolonizing methodologies' (Smith 1999). Consequently, the central focus has been the Aboriginal residents', and the community social worker's cultural constructions of a social reality formed by colonisation and racial structure. The study found that the process of social change at Lake Tyers in 1970-1971 was primarily agency-controlled by the Ministry's Executive to ensure the Government's goals were realised; and that the process of locality development played a secondary and restricted role. The thesis has argued that past and present community social work practice knowledge has reflected a dominant Western world view. It has suggested that when formulating community development strategies, planners and practitioners have failed to recognise the fundamental importance of Aboriginal social organisation - the primary group relationships of Aboriginal extended kin networks, the under-development of secondary group relationships, and reliance on tertiary relationships with the state. The national Aboriginal land rights social movement and the organised protest over the future of Lake Tyers have been identified as key factors instigating the process of social change. Specific historical, sociological and psychological concepts have been suggested as crucial to gaining insight into the context that created the seriously under-developed economic conditions of the residents of Lake Tyers in 1970. They include the oppressive nature of the Station regime that ensured the people's livelihood depended on tutelage with the state, stultified individual initiative and squashed leadership, protected residents from experiencing separation of home from work place, limited participation in the market economy, restricted interaction with civil society, and inhibited the formation of a racial community or secondary group to promote social needs and cultural interests. The thesis has argued the need to conceptualise an Aboriginal approach to community social work in which the process of social change is controlled, negotiated and directed by an Aboriginal executive management; where social policies are shaped by Aboriginal people identifying their needs from their distinctive experience of colonisation and cultural adaptation; and where the engagement of a non-Aboriginal practitioner has been sanctioned by the Aboriginal executive.
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    School closures, alienation and crime: an analysis of the social and economic implications of public secondary school closures in north-west Melbourne
    Aumair, Megan ( 1995)
    Between 1992 and 1993 the Victorian State Government announced the closure or amalgamation of more than 255 publicly funded schools around the state (Parents & Friends, 1993; Marginson, 1994: 47). The Coburg/Preston area, located in the inner north-west of Melbourne, lost four public co-educational secondary colleges in the space of a year. 1135 students were affected (Parents and Friends, 1993). Coburg North Secondary College (here on referred to as Coburg Tech) was one of these schools.
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    "You can't let your children cry": filicide in Victoria 1978-1988
    Baker, June Maree ( 1991)
    Child killers, particularly when the perpetrators are the victims' parents, are stereotypically portrayed as "evil" or "crazy" (Wilson,1985:6). Who other than the "mad" or the very "bad" could slaughter their "innocent" offspring? But are these offenders really so aberrant? The social perception of, and response to, these offenders is largely determined by the offenders' sex. In fact, biological determinism is particularly profound in this area. This is a qualitative study of all officially suspected cases of filicide in Victoria between 1978 and 1988. "Filicide" is a particular type of homicide where parents kill their children. The major focus is a gender analysis. In order to identify the relevant issues, and assess the results of this study with other research in this area, a review of the existing literature is necessary. Contemporary official statistics portray filicide as constituting a relatively small proportion of all homicide in Western societies. This ranges from five percent in North America (Resnick,1969:325;Husain & Daniel,1984:596) to ten percent in England (Campion, Cravens & Covan,1988:1143), and eleven percent in Victoria (Polk & Ranson,1989:12). However, the actual incidence of filicide is elusive due to undetected and unreported cases and forensic problems associated with filicide detection. In fact, filicide may be less likely to be detected than other forms of homicide. These issues are discussed in detail in the Methodology chapter. As filicide forms only a small proportion of detected homicides, this may account for its relative neglect in homicide studies. Filicide is nevertheless a significant problem. It demonstrates the darker side of our culture, as does its social response. (From Introduction)
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    Punishment and crime: guilt and grandiosity in the life of Ronald Ryan
    RICHARDS, MICHAEL JOHN ( 1999)
    This thesis examines the life and crimes of Ronald Joseph Ryan, the condemned man at the centre of the most politically divisive capital punishment case in Australia's history and the last man judicially executed in Australia. Ryan was born Ronald Edmond Thompson in Melbourne in February 1925, the son of impoverished working class parents. His father was a violent, alcoholic miner crippled by miners' phthisis and his mother (who, at the time of the birth, was married to another man) was an alcoholic and sometime prostitute. Ryan's childhood was characterised by early traumatic deprivation, parental abuse and neglect. Following a petty theft at age 11, Ryan was removed from his parents and, by court order, made a ward of state and placed in custodial care at an institution for "wayward and neglected' boys. He absconded from his wardship at age 14 and joined his half-brother, later travelling to Balranald, N.S.W., where he worked as a timber-cutter. The period from age 15 to his mid-20s were relatively productive and law-abiding - he was married in 1950 - but aspects of his personality also became more obvious: his gambling compulsion and certain obsessive compulsive behavioural traits. In 1953, now back in Victoria, Ryan was involved in arson of his rented family home in order to claim insurance monies, although he was subsequently acquitted of the offence. Beginning in 1956, a string of forging and "break-and-enter' offences ensued. When arrested Ryan typically confessed, and later court appearances led to his first brief imprisonment for theft in 1956. Further breaking offences followed in 1959 and 1960, in a period in which he was virtually a professional criminal, and he was eventually prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to 8 ½ years imprisonment. While in prison Ryan appeared strongly motivated toward rehabilitation, successfully undertaking further education. He was regarded by prison authorities as an outstanding, high-achieving model prisoner. Released after serving 3 years, Ryan quickly returned to crime, however, and his offences at times involved violence. A series of shop- and factory-breakings and safe-blowings between 1963 and 1964 saw him convicted and returned to prison for 8 years. In 1965 he escaped from Pentridge prison in Melbourne, during which he shot and killed a pursuing prison officer. Following his recapture, Ryan and his co-escapee, Peter Walker, were tried in the Victorian Supreme Court. Ryan was convicted of murder and Walker convicted of manslaughter. Despite exhaustive legal appeals and unprecedented media and community opposition, Ryan's death sentence was not commuted by the Victorian Cabinet and he was hanged on 3 February 1967. Utilising archival records, primary sources and extensive interviews with his family and contemporaries, the thesis presents a biographical account of Ryan's life. It documents the social conditions of Ryan's childhood and institutionalisation and his later criminal and prison history, but more particularly it seeks - through the evidence of his behaviour and his writings - to elucidate his inner life as a way of understanding the contradictions between Ryan as model prisoner and ambitious professional criminal. The thesis advances a hypothesis about Ryan's criminal personality: grandiose in his phantasied criminal role, a prisoner to obsessive rituals and compulsive gambling for much of his life, driven by a compulsion to confess to his crimes, and prone to hero phantasies and acts of rescue and reparation. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, the thesis explores the extent to which Ryan's criminality can be understood as an expression of his unconscious wish for punishment, as derived 'from a sense of guilt' , and shaped by his narcissistic grandiosity.
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    Blue murder: press coverage of fatal shootings of and by police in Victoria
    McCulloch, Jude ( 1994)
    This study is a qualitative content analysis of two newspapers' coverage of three fatal shootings in Victoria in October 1988. The shootings are those of Graeme Jensen, killed by the Armed Robbery Squad on 11 October 1988, and Constables Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre who were killed by offender/s unknown the following day. Qualitative content analysis consists of a detailed reading of a text in order to provide an interpretation by drawing out the latent meaning of the text. In conducting the analysis the overriding concern is not with whether the reports are true or false, but how meaning is created and to what effect. The newspapers studied represent the killing of Graeme Jensen as unproblematic, depicting it as lawful and necessary. Graeme Jensen is represented as a dangerous criminal living outside the community; his death is presented not as a tragedy but as the fulfilment of his life's destiny. Other ways of viewing the shooting, that are at least as well supported by the evidence, are given little space. In contrast, the killing of the two police officers is represented as a terrible crime. The great emphasis given to the brutality of the killings and killers, and the innocence of the police victims, constructs the officers as martyrs whose dead bodies provide the rhetorical base for police demands for greater powers, resources, and harsher punishments. The press coverage of the shootings supports the organisational legitimacy and interests of the police; there is little evidence of competition for meaning within the reports, and alternative viewpoints are only included to give the illusion of a contest.
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    Ministerial advisers in the Victorian Labor government, 1982-1991
    Polis, Ann ( 1993)
    Ministerial advisers were a noticeable feature of the Victorian Labor government from 1982 and were a development from arrangements in the Whitlam era when the Whitlam Government “made provision for each Minister to have a small staff of well-qualified (and well paid) individuals to provide political and expert advice as an alternative to that of the public service”. Alan Oxley says that the public service took some time to adjust to the system. He notes that they were accustomed to “Private Secretaries” who made appointments and “Press Secretaries” who handled the mysterious world of the media and occasionally countermanded advice from the public service on the distasteful grounds of political expediency.” They were concerned with the potential for the erosion of their prerogative as the legitimate source of advice to the ministers. Halligan and Power contend that the ministerial adviser has been one of the most prominent additions to executive branches over the last two decades. They observe that: “The political executive has used advisers to increase its power by extending the scope of influence of the ministerial office. This has served to enlarge the partisan element within the executive. The adviser can exercise a major influence on policy processes – if not always on the content of policy – and this is extremely important for providing a minister with a means for sustaining his or her authority” and point out that while partisan advisers had existed before Whitlam they “became the norm under his government.” The advent of advisers had the potential to change the balance between the political and the bureaucratic arenas in government.
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    High-tech hot spot or sleepy backwater? Innovation and the importance of networks
    Wear, Andrew ( 2008)
    This paper draws on evidence from Victoria to examine why more innovation takes place in some areas than in others. In so doing, it explores the relationship between innovation and networks. Despite a large number of recent government policy statements on innovation, there has been very little attention paid to the spatial dimensions of innovation. The literature on innovation increasingly points to the important role played by local and regional networks in driving innovation. Innovation is the result of the production, use and diffusion of knowledge, and this demands collaboration involving networks of individuals, organisations and institutions. To test the theory of a connection between networks and innovation across regional Victoria, patent data is used as a proxy measure for innovation. This data is then cross-referenced with various social and economic data sets. The analysis reveals that innovation in Victoria is substantially concentrated in ‘hot spots’ such as inner Melbourne. In some parts of Victoria very little innovation takes place at all. This research has found that all things being equal, more innovation will take place in those areas in which there is a greater density of informal networks. However, not all types of networks are positive, and they are more important in provincial areas than in big cities. Innovation clearly has a spatial aspect, and innovation policy needs to give particular attention to the requirements of provincial areas.