School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemWho is a Liberian Anyway? The claim for formalised identity by diaspora Liberians( 2022)This thesis examines Liberia’s complex history as a unique settler colony and the ramifications of this history for current attempts at constructing a collective identity. More specifically, it analyses diaspora Liberians’ claim for formalised identity and how Liberians in-country perceive these claims. I use the country’s dual citizenship debate as a lens through which to interpret the intricate narratives around how identity and belonging are being constructed in the post-war era. The project draws on document analysis and in-depth interviews with respondents from civil society, academia, government, media, and other professionals living in Liberia and the diaspora. The thesis contributes to knowledge by re-theorising Liberia’s formation as a settler colonial project and argues for the recognition of Americo-Liberians as colonisers. Liberia is often seen as yet another conflict-ridden African country that was never colonised. In fact, Liberia was colonised by Black settlers from America who established the nation-state in 1847. I draw on settler colonial theory to show that when the Americo-Liberians dispossessed and marginalised the Africans they met upon arrival, they established the antagonisms and enduring unequal structures that ultimately led to Liberia’s civil wars. I argue that the systemic inequality established by the settler regime continues to inform and shape contemporary debates over who can legitimately claim Liberian identity. The second part of the thesis seeks to understand a long, contentious debate about dual citizenship. Many Liberians recognise the economic benefits of allowing dual citizenship. They welcome the potential investments and skilled labour that dual citizens might contribute to Liberia’s post-conflict reconstruction and development agenda. And yet, there is widespread resistance to dual citizenship. This apparently illogical opposition is understandable in light of Liberia’s history as a settler society that entrenched inequalities to privilege the settler class. At the heart of the debate are conceptions of Liberianness. Diaspora Liberians are marginalised in both their home and host countries. They consider dual citizenship a practical strategy that formalises their Liberianness and provides them and their children a route back to their real home. In-country Liberians fear being colonised by a small, privileged group and purposefully conceptualise Liberianness as an exclusionary tool. I argue that structural inequality due to historical injustices and current poverty levels have eroded conditions of trust in Liberia’s political systems. Thus, the shifting and contested meanings of Liberianness that play out in the debate result from this lack of trust, generating conflictual and unstable expectations about the future behaviour of elites and the implications of this for the ordinary Liberian. Ultimately, when we consider the invisibility and enduring nature of settler colonialism, even in a supposedly post-colonial Liberia, we can understand the anxieties of in-country Liberians and why they may see dual citizenship as a recolonising tool and diaspora Liberians as the new settler-colonisers.
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ItemSeeking the state from the margins: From Tidung Lands to borderlands in Borneo( 2020)Scholarship on the geographic margins of the state has long suggested that life in such spaces threatens national state-building by transgressing state order. Recently, however, scholars have begun to nuance this view by exploring how marginal peoples often embrace the nation and the state. In this thesis, I bridge these two approaches by exploring how borderland peoples, as exemplars of marginal peoples, seek the state from the margins. I explore this issue by presenting the first extended ethnography of the cross-border ethnic Tidung and neighbouring peoples in the Tidung Lands of northeast Borneo, complementing long-term fieldwork with research in Dutch and British archives. This region, lying at the interstices of Indonesian Kalimantan, Malaysian Sabah and the Southern Philippines, is an ideal site from which to study borderland dynamics and how people have come to seek the state. I analyse understandings of the state, and practical consequences of those understandings in the lives and thought of people in the Tidung Lands. I argue that people who imagine themselves as occupying a marginal place in the national order of things often seek to deepen, rather than resist, relations with the nation-states to which they are marginal. The core contribution of the thesis consists in drawing empirical and theoretical attention to the under-researched issue of seeking the state and thereby encouraging further inquiry into this issue. I elaborate my findings along a trajectory consisting of two broad parts. First, the entrenchment of the border in the social life of the region. I show that the question of the state is inextricable from the question of what it is to be Tidung. I suggest that for many contemporary Tidung people, the transition to a national political order has come to be considered the most preferable among several plausible alternatives. People have sought to establish positive relations with the nation-states within which they live on either side of the state-drawn border, in the absence of an impetus from their respective central governments. They increasingly acquiesce to the circumscription of their mobility and social lives by the international border. Secondly, life in the light of this national division. I demonstrate that Tidung engagements with Dayak identity in Kalimantan index a shift toward exclusively Indonesian registers of ethnic identification; conversely, Tidung engagements with Malay identity in Sabah index a shift toward exclusively Sabahan registers of ethnic identification. I elaborate on this national division by analysing vernacular understandings of transboundary floods, which function as a commentary on international asymmetry from the borderland. Finally, I examine a recent campaign for a new autonomous district in Kalimantan (Indonesia), suggesting that the latter indexes the point at which borderland transgression becomes a resource for national integration such that vernacular and central political projects converge.
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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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ItemA longing just to be: British Muslim negotiations of belonging and identity in the multicultural 'Real'( 2015)This thesis explores how young Muslims in Britain are negotiating belonging and difference in light of the so-called ‘failure’ of multiculturalism in Europe, a fate that has been linked to their supposed failed integration. It has been suggested that the continued existence of radically different practices by Muslims highlights an ‘illiberality’ about multiculturalism, since the latter is alleged to license these practices. The thesis presents findings of content and critical discourse analyses of 503 articles from national newspapers in Britain examining the media’s representations of Muslims around the period of the London bombings, together with interviews undertaken with 40 British Muslim youths – 30 in 2008 and 10 in 2015. It is argued that while Muslim ‘differences’ are recognised, their negative representation signifies that there exist limits to what can be tolerated in multicultural states. It is argued that the alleged failure of multiculturalism is a reflection of multiculturalism’s inherent liberality rather than illiberality. The fact that (perceived) radical difference beyond the spaces allotted by liberalism cannot be tolerated represents the failure of multiculturalism.
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ItemInside/Outside: migrants' construction of home in the domestic kitchen( 2012)This thesis explores the everyday lives of middle class, inner suburban first- and second-generation migrants to Melbourne through their activities in the kitchen. It speaks to current and past work on multiculturalism, food culture and identity in order to develop an exploration of the ways in which migrants create senses of belonging, self, and home in the contexts of cultural difference and diversity. It looks at the ways in which migrants use the kitchen as a space of becoming. It also addresses how a migrant constructs personal ideas of what it means to be Australian in order to place him or herself in relation to it. The process of migration often engenders both a fragmentation of identity and a fragmentation of sense of belonging - the ways in which migrants return to totalities of self through activities in the kitchen are the main focus of this thesis. Additionally, it shall be looking at the influence of the outside world on the home and how this affects the process of becoming that a migrant goes through in his or her new country. This process requires pragmatism with regards to identity construction and performance – a negotiation between the home and host nation and between the past and present. Migrants often use activities in the kitchen to creatively recreate the past and, in doing so construct a sense of ‘homeliness’. This involves developing and reaffirming networks and relations through which a migrant can develop a space in which to belong. Furthermore, it shall be exploring ideas surrounding individualism and agency in creating identity as well as how the negotiation between creativity and reproduction in producing meals speaks to the creativity of identity performance that exists within an individualist framework. Additionally it shall look at what happens when control over identity performance and self-representation on the part of the individual is lost.
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ItemRe-visualising new arrivals in Australia: journey narratives of pre-migration and settlement( 2012)Prior to migration, migrants and refugees have complex and diverse lived experiences. These experiences form an intrinsic part of their migration journeys, affecting their settlement pathways and shaping their identities. In re-visualising migrants and refugees as ‘new arrivals’, I focus on their migratory journeys as part of a continuum spanning departure, journey and settlement. Honing in on pre-migration I contextualise the sites of departure that two groups of new arrivals, South Sudanese Australian former refugees and Indian Australian former migrants, have inhabited prior to arrival. In doing this I bring attention to the uniqueness of pre-migration and the important place it has in people’s lives. Drawing on qualitative interviews with twenty-five research participants I illustrate the significant resources, agency and networks that new arrivals bring with them from sites of departure. I highlight how issues of mobility; the maintenance of family links as expressed through remittances, transnational marriages and the desire to return; and community transformation, influence the settlement terrain in ways not previously understood. This thesis connects pre-migration with settlement to show the ways in which pre-migration remains a continuous presence in people’s lives as they settle in Australia. Re-visualising new arrivals demands reciprocity, recognition and improved understandings of the unique role and prevailing influence of pre-migration.
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ItemEpistemological blind spots and the story of I: returning the vulnerable i to the rational I( 2011)In prioritising the use of the rational “I” we limit what we can know both about ourselves and about the world around us. I trace the history of the scientific revolution that turned its gaze from the Christian God and installed man (sic) as his replacement, the history and the philosophy of science that critiqued the way we use reason, postmodernism that asks why prioritise reason at all, poststructuralism that questions the very significance of language and meaning, the feminist movement that identified the rational I as a masculinist self and the New Age movement that forwarded the creation of a spiritual self amidst a modernist outlook. I explore these schools of thought so as to engage my modernist rationalist self and yours in conversations and practices, that author ways to understand, feel, be and do my body that are not necessarily condoned by my culture, the modern Western philosophical tradition, or this current moment in history. I use three autoethnographic case studies to access new ways to be, feel and do in the world that were foreign to me as a rationally situated human being. These are set in an ashram in India – to access the spiritual dimension I marginalised by turning toward science; an acting course – to access the emotional dimension I marginalised by practicing the so-called impartiality of reasonable being; and Tantric bodywork – to access my body as a site of epistemology that I marginalised by prioritising my rational mind.
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ItemConsuming trust: herbal food and drink and its place in contemporary China( 2011)Deeply grounded in the traditional notions of health and medicine, herbal food and drink have been used in China for centuries. Being part of its ‘traditional’ approach to well-being, however, the consumption of herbal food and drink is increasing in contemporary Chinese society and further reflects various meanings and perceptions relating to individual's engagement with modernity and their places in the rapidly changing social and cultural context. This thesis investigates the meanings of herbal food and drink in contemporary China and the extent to which it is reinvigorated by, and reflective of, the rapidly changing circumstances that the country finds itself in. By drawing on results of fieldwork in China across ten cities/ regions, the thesis identifies and relates consumption patterns in association with herbal food and drink with meanings attached to modernity, well-being, and both collective and individual Chinese identity. The findings of the research revealed a recurrent reference by people to ‘trust’, ‘intimacy’, and ‘natural’, which are not only grounded in the particular Chinese cultural imagination in relation to food, but, more importantly also indicative of how people’s perception on the contemporary cultural and social context and their place within it. To this end, the argument presented in this thesis is that the symbiotic relationship between ‘trust’, ‘intimacy’ and herbal food and drink is a resource for people to cope with anxieties brought on by rapid change in contemporary Chinese society because of the inherent links people make between herbal food and drink and notions of stability, tradition and their ‘unique’ Chinese identity. Given that there has been a series of food scandals in the past decade, coinciding with China’s policy of opening up to economic development, that a ‘moral panic’ over food safety emerged , it is not surprising that perceived risks of health are connected to much broader and significant concerns relating to the modern condition. Moreover, continual reference to the well-being of the body, ‘trust’, ‘intimacy’, and the ‘naturalness’ of herbal food and drink have been excessively employed as a kind of coping strategy for the anxieties that contemporary life poses for people as they navigate rapid change by drawing on the familiar and trusted symbols of balance and well being that are traditionally associated with Chinese food. That is, the call for well-being and a ‘balance’ of body is symbolic of a call for a similar kind of balance in life in a rapidly changing society and embeds with political economy implication. To reiterate, the linkage between knowledge and practice of herbal food and drink with ‘traditional’ Chinese culture is extensive, and, at the individual level, demonstrates a lived-experience associated with a particular way of being, identity and family belonging. Further, the prosperity of the herbal industry is indeed built on exploiting such close associations with intimacy, trust and continuity. As such, the interplays among tradition and modernity, collective and individual identities, and the patterns of herbal food and drink are enormous. This study on herbal food and drink can contribute to a better appreciation of how consumption serves as a linkage between agency and structure, between that in the hands of people to navigate, challenge or reject such as what they consume as opposed to that which lies beyond their influence.