School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemReconfiguring racism: youthful dynamics of conflict and conviviality in a culturally diverse, working-class high school( 2017)Youth, diversity and disadvantage are rendered a dangerous mix in contemporary Australia, with concern focused in particular on youth living in Australia’s most multicultural and disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In this milieu, young people, and schools as ‘micropublics’, are often scrutinised as indicators of the health of multicultural societies with schools targeted as sites of intervention. Yet in the shadow of such moral panic, how does racialisation and racism actually feature in the lives of young people as they negotiate culturally diverse shared spaces? Do young people’s practices call for antiracist intervention or is there evidence of transformative ways of living with difference, which unsettles and advances current understandings of racism and conviviality in young lives? Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis explores these questions in the context of peer sociality at Greendale High in Melbourne – a school located in the heartland of current social anxieties about youth, multiculturalism and divisive population growth. While racism and conflict within a social cohesion rubric are positioned as anathema to successful multicultural living, research at the intersections of youth studies and urban multiculture increasingly shows that both conviviality and conflict can co-exist relatively easily within culturally diverse youth spaces. This literature further posits that young people shift between racist and convivial modes of relationality to navigate their complex social worlds. In this thesis I argue that this racism-conviviality binary framing fails to capture some of the diverse logics and practices within a multicultural peer culture. Through tracing when, where and how racialisation emerged in schoolyard conversations, social spaces, friendship dynamics and classroom discussions, this thesis illuminates how expressions of everyday racism and conviviality can be enmeshed in complex, relational, sophisticated and uneven ways. Reconciling dichotomous conceptual frames that position young people as moving back-and-forth between practices of exclusion and openness, I propose an alternative frame – a perverse form of everyday cosmopolitanism – through which to consider young people’s intercultural relations. Evolving from sustained ethnographic attention to Greendale student life, the concept of ‘perverse cosmopolitanism’ compels engaged scrutiny of the concepts of – and relationships between – ‘racism’, ‘conviviality’ and ‘conflict’ for understanding youth sociality. In doing so, I call attention to the limitations of current youth multiculture research, which commonly assumes a racism-conviviality binary a priori. If we are to work against racism, scholars and educators require more flexible and expansive conceptual tools that engage seriously with youth perspectives and young people’s situated rules of play in high school sociality.
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ItemUnity and opposites in Israel’s settler movement: Rabbi Tzvi Yisrael Tau & Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh( 2015)The thesis is motivated by the central question: can deep engagement with the nuances of contemporary settler religious discourse guide a more effective approach to negotiations with and about this group, especially regarding the future of “Judea and Samaria,” or “the occupied territories”? To address this, I investigate two key religious thinkers. The first is Rabbi Tzvi Yisrael Tau, a major religious Zionist intellectual and head of the leading mamlakhti yeshiva Har Ha-Mor, known for his calls for restraint in the face of anti-settlement policies. The second is Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh of Od Yosef Chai, often accused of inciting racism and encouraging aggressive protest tactics, and whose students have been at the vanguard of anti-Arab vigilante violence and the “price tag” campaign of recent years. This investigation reveals Tau’s predominantly monistic worldview, anchored in the “unity of opposites” paradigm at the heart of Avraham Kook’s teachings, and Ginsburgh’s relatively dualistic worldview, anchored in a dualistic interpretation of lurianic Kabbalah. These distinct symbolic worlds help explain the divergent political–historical interpretations, ethics, and political tactics among the rabbis’ adherents. Moreover, the analysis indicated which pro-negotiation arguments may be most persuasive among these different sectors—and which may be useless or disastrous. I show how Tau argues that settlements are a mere detail in Gush Emunim’s project, identifies Jewish unity as a supreme value, and calls for educational outreach in lieu of protests. The thesis contextualizes this stance in Tau’s monistic theosophy, his narrative of geulah (redemption) as a slow, natural process with temporary setbacks (with dialectic roles), and his kabbalistic understanding of Israel as a unified collective entity. Tau’s negative teachings on Palestinians, however, struggle to avoid dualism. I also analyze Tau’s innovative identification of consciousness as the medium through which Jews must advance redemption, which underpins his call for education campaigns. Ginsburgh is a point of contrast. I present a detailed history of public controversies around his Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, and then explore dimensions of his kabbalistic worldview, in which evil is understood as an active force of impurity, expressed on the earthly plane through the Gentile nations vs. Jewish embodiment of the divine. This leads to his profound devaluation of Gentile life. Moreover, he argues that the expulsion of Gentiles and establishment of theocratic government by a Sanhedrin are prerequisites for the arrival of the messiah. Ginsburgh also presents elaborate kabbalistic justifications of impulsive revenge attacks against Gentiles to “defend” Jewish life and honor. This most likely lowers the self-restraint of his Hilltop Youth followers. This leads to the conclusion that Jewish security and unity are the most effective frames through which to encourage reluctant toleration of Israeli–Palestinian negotiations across these sectors. The value and authority of the democratic state may also be an effective frame within the mamlakhti sector, as might human rights discourse. By contrast, arguments focused on economic benefits, Israel’s acceptance in the international community, and the Palestinian right to self-determination lack traction.
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ItemPauline, politics and psychoanalysis: theorising racism in Australia( 1999)This thesis uses a psychoanalytic approach to examine the phenomenon of the rise of the Pauline Hanson and the One Nation political party. Psychoanalysis, as the discipline concerned with developing an understanding of irrationality and the human emotions, is well-placed to tackle issues such as insecurity, resentment and racism. By reviewing the works of a number of psychoanalytic theorists, this thesis suggests ways that they may help us to understand the success of One Nation in Australia. Through this approach, I aim to bring new insights to the study of racism in contemporary Australia. The first part of this thesis consists of a survey of the contentions of six key psychoanalytic theorists. This analysis shows that psychoanalysis affords us an understanding of the subject as a complex being; attached to, and even constituted by, certain images and ideals. In the second section, I suggest ways in which psychoanalytic theory may assist us to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the Pauline Hanson phenomenon. This analysis deals with only a few selected aspects of Hansonism, but to the extent that this can be seen as a synecdoche of the whole, it suggests that the attainment of a full understanding of racism and the human emotions is more complex and difficult task than we often acknowledge.
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ItemModernity, racism and subjectivity( 1995-10)Racism, understood as the form of ideology and the set of social practices based on explicit and implicit notions of biologically determined human ‘races’, is a modern phenomenon. Other major forms of social cleavage together with the ideologies which contribute to and support them, such as those which relate to class and gender, have had a complex relationship with racism. Nevertheless racism needs to be distinguished analytically from each of these, and given its due as a relatively autonomous system. Viewed from the perspective of the systematic patterning of social life, it has institutional backing and support. In the modern West especially, it has organised, and it continues to help organise, significant areas of social domain. It has a history, which includes the history of ideas and of representations of the Other, and it is closely tied to economic production and relations. Though it may be that racism is generated primarily at the social and economic levels, it is experienced psychologically, and psychology plays a role in its reproduction. Racism, then, needs to be examined not only in terms of its social structural features, but at the same time in terms of the involvement of subjectivity in its processes.