School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemConsuming Chance: The Ethics and Enchantments of Promotional Competitions( 2023-09)Promotional competitions are a ubiquitous form of marketing in Australia and Britain, employed to incite sales, increase brand consideration, and build market research databases. While the lure of prizes such as cash, cars, holidays, and free products encourage millions of people to enter these competitions casually and infrequently, some people, known as ‘compers’, enter regularly and diligently. This thesis explores and analyses the ethics and enchantments of compers and the broader historical, commercial, and cultural context in which this practice occurs. Based on ethnography amongst compers from Australia and Britain between late 2017 and early 2023, interviews with marketers and advertisers, and auto-ethnography, I propose that regularly entering promotions competitions is akin to ‘consuming chance’. In other words, through entering competitions compers invite possibility and magic into their lives and, in effect, ingest chance. As an omnipresent yet often unrecognised feature of contemporary capitalist life, I argue that chance is a distinctly modern construct, which can suspend, widen, and absorb ideas about how the future is made, influenced, and decided. Consuming Chance is intended as an intervention into dominant anthropological ways of understanding chance, consumerism, and capitalist life. Rather than evidence of millenarian capitalist trends of abundance without effort (cf. Comaroff and Comaroff 2000) I demonstrate how compers conceive of their practice in terms of vocation, duty, and responsibility. This Weberian reading is then subverted, and I argue that far from disenchantment, opportunities to consume chance can provide magico-religious experiences. Rather than an ‘iron cage’ of rationality, modernity has become re-enchanted, due to the prevalence of chance in everyday life (cf. Weber 2005 [1904]).
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ItemModest expectations: masculinity, marriage, and the good life in urban China( 2022)There is a sense that there is a crisis unfolding in China. Marriage rates are dropping, divorce rates are rising, the birth rate is in decline, and a new population of rural ‘bachelors’ and urban ‘leftover women’ has surfaced. This new culture of singlehood is perceived as a ‘crisis of marriage’, precipitating a moral panic over how to address a problem that is often described by the state as a threat to social stability and order, as well as the advancement of the nation. This thesis explores the intersection of these so-called ‘crises’ facing Chinese society: a crisis of marriage, a crisis of masculinity, and a crisis of mobility. Since China’s ‘opening up and reform’ in 1978, extraordinary social, economic, and political change have occurred. Gender and sexual relations have also undergone significant transformation, subsequently contributing to this ‘marriage crisis’ in China today. How single rural men living in the city respond to this marriage crisis is a core concern of this thesis. In the gendered aspects of this crisis and the associated moral panic, single rural men have become a flash point in China for discussions about marriage, social organisation, the rural–urban divide, gender relations, class, and mobility. The demise of the rural economy and the rapid transformation of the urban economy have produced significant changes in gender roles and institutions in contemporary China. This thesis focuses on the impact of these socio-economic shifts on rural men who migrate to cities. Rural to urban migration has a long and well-documented history in China. The most recent wave of migration has been accompanied by changes in the nature of work and social organisation that have exacerbated the ‘marriage crisis’ particularly for rural men in urban settings. For rural men living in urban China, marriage represents a modest aspiration for a good life, expressed through the concept guo rizi (passing the days). The desire to marry and have children is however constrained by rural men’s experiences in the city. Their occupations, lack of social networks, new forms of dating and matchmaking and increasingly unattainable ‘bride-price’ demands, work together to undermine their desirability as potential husbands and fathers and entrench inequalities of wealth and power between rural and urban men. The ways rural men struggle with, negotiate, and imagine their futures is the subject of this thesis. I argue that the increasing socio-economic precarity of rural men and their largely unrealised desires to marry and have children demonstrate a fundamental reconfiguration of Chinese masculinity and mobility in urban China today and the social impact on central Chinese institutions. This thesis explores the lives of migrant delivery drivers (kuaidi and waimai) and tertiary-educated professionals who have migrated from the countryside to the city. In this thesis, I endeavour to make these men visible by investigating how they navigate the urban marriage market and avoid becoming ‘leftover’. What I have found is that their shared struggles in the marriage market and efforts to fulfill the ideals of manhood are indicative of how rurality continues to be experienced as an inhibiting factor for single rural men in Chinese cities, regardless of their education, income, or material assets. The nature of these men’s lives led me to question how such men are affected by changing social, cultural, and economic structures within the marriage market and the broader context of crisis that currently pervades Chinese society.
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ItemThe Life of Human Rights: An Everyday Approach to Understanding Human Rights in an Australian Parliamentary Enquiry on the Involuntary Sterilisation of People with Disabilities( 2022)This research questions how ‘human rights’ are used in a parliamentary inquiry on the coercive or involuntary sterilisation of people with disabilities in Australia. Throughout three chapters, the thesis breaks down ‘human rights’ as a concept and as a practical approach in development programming. Chapter two delves into the multiple understandings of rights in the development literature and incorporates contributions from legal anthropology and the field of the social studies of science and technology to understand human rights in the development context. Chapter three proposes an “ethnography in the archives” as a methodological design that pushes disciplinary boundaries to understand the value of documents and arguments in how different stakeholders inside and outside of the development field engage with issues such as the coercive sterilisation of people with disabilities. Finally, chapter four offers an analysis derived from 82 documents presented in the parliamentary inquiry in Australia. This chapter shows this thesis’s main argument: That human rights differ from what this research calls ‘everyday rights’, which are the claims articulated by people drawing upon their lived experiences rather than human rights treaties or arguments. This argument sheds light on how development practice often faces a gap between what the stated outcomes are in terms of Human Rights-Based Approaches and the practical realities of rights claims.
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ItemA case of gender governance: the family court of Australia’s regulation of young people’s gender affirmation( 2020)Legal institutions govern gender: they shape and regulate how their subjects can be gendered and, in doing so, control how gender can manifest. This thesis interrogates how the Family Court of Australia governed gender through its regulation of young people’s gender-affirming hormone use. Between 2004-2017, in Australia, people younger than eighteen needed to obtain authorisation from the Family Court before they could use hormones manually—that is, before they could use hormones other than those that their bodies produced automatically—to affirm their gender. By analysing the 76 “reasons for judgment” that judges published in response to applications for this authorisation, this thesis explicates how the Court judged the legitimacy of its subjects’ manual hormone use. My analysis finds that the Court’s judgments were structured by three primary categories of discourse: discourses on the ontology of gender, the epistemology of gender, and the teleology of manual hormone use. Upon interrogating each discourse in turn, I argue that the Court’s judgments tethered the legitimacy of its subjects’ manual hormone use to the promise that this would help them to become normatively gendered. In this way, the Court’s regulation worked to ensure that subjects could only use hormones manually to avert, rather than affirm, manifestations of queerness. By launching a critique of the Court’s discourses on ontology, epistemology, and teleology and the mechanism of gender governance that they enacted, this thesis contributes to the broader scholarly project of documenting and challenging the means through which States curb the possibilities for queer modes of life.
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ItemWomen Politicians, Gender, Nation, and Democratisation: A Political Ethnography of Serbia and Kosovo( 2020)This is an ethnography of women politicians in the ‘politically sensitive environments’ (Browne and McBride, 2015, p. 34) of Serbia and Kosovo/a. It investigates the ways in which women imagined, constructed, and politicised national and gender identities as they actively engaged with politics in the context of the as yet understudied process of democratisation. This research highlights a profound paradox. In navigating between national and gender identities and everyday work in the nationalist contexts of Serbia and Kosovo/a, women politicians attained a certain degree of agency and emancipation. Despite the ongoing context of democratisation, however, the discourse remained fundamentally patriarchal and, therefore, subordinating for women. Even as they centred themselves in the present democratic political context, women continued to draw on the primordial and ancient elements of their ethnies/nations in the form of blood, roots, myths, symbols, and rituals as a means of politicising their own positions. In order to prove their invaluable contributions to their ethnies/nations, women politicised traditional gender roles and narratives. I argue that the lack of recognition and the continued undervaluing of women’s contributions have influenced the politicisation of gender and national identities in the process of democratisation and steered women towards the hierarchical organisation of ethnie over gender identity. Women politicians predominantly politicised their biological roles as reproducers, mothers, sisters, educators, and contributors to the ethnie in pursuit of greater gender equality with their men. The ongoing democratisation process in the Western Balkans opened space for greater political participation of women. It did not, however, automatically make this political space safe. Traditional gender and ethnie roles as well as patriarchal narratives still dominated political space and affected women’s political strategies. For these reasons, women are constantly required to negotiate between different ethnie and gender demands in order to survive in politics.
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ItemThe making of masculinities: gender performances and reimagined sexual decision-making among heterosexual men in Northern Thailand( 2019)Research has found that gender is not biological; rather, it is a social construction (Butler, 1993; Connell, 1995); gender performances are thus continuously constructed through everyday interactions, discourses, and institutions. Drawing on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis analyses men’s constructions of manhood through sexual decision-making within the backdrop of Northern Thailand, a vibrant and emerging socio-scape where the traditional interlaces with the transnational. First, this research describes the various means through which men assert sexuality to perform hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities. Next, this thesis shows that men negotiate their gender identities through homosociality, often emphasizing sexuality to perform manhood within and for homosocial circles. This thesis then discusses women’s complex roles in enabling and challenging men’s performances of masculinities, arguing that relationality is a vital aspect of masculine performances. Finally, this research demonstrates that digital technologies have enabled Thai individuals to negotiate their gender performances in accordance with a range of global gender ideologies. Through an examination of these factors, this research contends that gender equality can be improved by Thai men and women through reconstructing gender performances; thus, one-on-one sexual interactions serve as sites where gendered relationships are re-imagined.
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ItemBrave new world: exploring the non-academic career pathways of women astronomy PhD graduates( 2019)Policies designed to retain women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) tend to focus on the idea of the leaky pipeline, a model for retaining women by minimising the structural barriers that force them to leave. Retention during doctoral candidature and early career is seen as necessary for increasing women’s participation at higher levels within the sciences, and to create management and institutional equity and change. Problematically, however, this policy approach, and its focus on structural problems within the sciences, fails to consider the complexity of women’s lives, and minimises the levels of agency attributed to decision-making processes, particularly in relation to leaving their field of study. The expectation that, having attained a PhD in the sciences, women will automatically wish to stay in the academic STEM pipeline is limiting. Current doctoral programs fail to adequately recognise the importance of non-academic career pathways as legitimate career options outside the academy. This thesis addresses one of the fundamental assumptions about PhD education and policy; that women who undertake a PhD want to pursue academic careers and that non-academic careers are potentially a second choice. Through a case study of women who have engaged in doctoral research in Australia, this thesis argues that measures put in place by gender equity policies tend to benefit those who are directly employed in academic research, while ignoring the female graduates who move out of academia. By focusing resources only on retaining women in postgraduate programs, institutions are in fact restricting women’s science careers by limiting training opportunities and providing inadequate information on non-academic career choice, which in turn creates a perceived stigma about leaving the academy. By applying a feminist lens to a qualitative sociological study, this thesis examines the experiences of PhD educated women astronomers as they narrate their pathways into and out of academia. It sheds a particular light on transitional experiences and demonstrates the importance of agency in work-related decisions and the complex factors that influence women's career choice. This thesis concludes that moving beyond a linear understanding of the pathways of women in STEM, towards an understanding of how women navigate complex labour market pathways outside the expected academic norm, will enable the development of better policy and programs to support women interested in the STEM fields.
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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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ItemGender and the feminisation of poverty: the case of single parenthood in Ghana( 2018)The issue of single parenthood and how it might contribute to a better understanding of the feminisation of poverty has been relatively unexplored in development studies. This is especially the case with regards to single parenthood within the context of Africa and societies such as Ghana. Based on fieldwork conducted in Ghana, this thesis demonstrates how a sociocultural approach can be used to unpack the complexities of the gendered nature of poverty. By exploring the increasing rate of single parenthood in contemporary Ghanaian society, this research provides the opportunity to both synthesise and critically interrogate the universal validity of the assumptions underpinning the ‘feminisation of poverty’ thesis. Though the research confirms that, as in most societies, women are relatively more disadvantaged than men, the particular nature of the inequalities, and thus the development strategies required for addressing them, necessitate a more nuanced approach. The thesis highlights the extent that cultural specificity is necessary to consider alongside the differential experiences of both men and women as single parents. This is especially necessary given the often taken for granted assumptions that tapping into social capital can serve as a useful tool in addressing the feminisation of poverty. As argued here, social capital, or more specifically social relations, is not only gendered, but also highly individual and complex. Further, I argue that the gendering of poverty is greatly dependent on the complex array of broader societal norms, roles and identities; and the extent to which these are formalised or normalised by the state. This is particularly important given the differential experiences of poverty by single mothers and fathers in relation to inheritance, work, remarriage, and custody and care arrangements for children in Ghana.
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ItemSocial acceleration and gendered time: exploring the socio-temporal structure of everyday life for working sole parents( 2016)This thesis explores two key areas of scholarship in the sociology of time: theories of social acceleration in modernity and conceptualisations of gendered time. Macro theories of social acceleration emphasise the impact of social changes in paid work and leisure practices, rarely considering caring-time or caring practices. At the same time, feminist theories of gendered time, or ‘women’s time’, highlight that men and women may experience time differently; principally through responsibility for caring. Additionally, the research emphasis has been on middle-class, dual-income couples’ experiences of time. Nonetheless, while quantitative research clearly shows that combining paid work with caring responsibilities is critical in both processes of acceleration and conceptualisations of ‘women’s time’, there has been minimal consideration of how social acceleration and gendered time may intersect. This research seeks to address these shortcomings by exploring the socio-temporal structure of everyday life for Australian working sole parents and contrasting their practices and experiences with theoretical conceptualisations of time in contemporary society. Working sole parents who manage both paid work and the care of their children often without a partner’s support provide a heightened example of the intersection of paid work and care, and a valuable perspective on the socio-temporal structure of everyday life which has received limited scholarly attention. Using an empirically grounded approach based on in-depth qualitative interviews with 17 working sole mothers and 10 working sole fathers, this thesis provides a nuanced understanding of the processes that underlie both the gendering and acceleration of time. This study finds that while the temporal dimensions of paid work may be becoming more fluid, this does not necessarily apply to caring institutions and parenting practices. Caring practices are embedded in a complex web of emotional and moral concerns and are highly relational and interdependent, yet at the same time, they are enmeshed in institutional times and institutionalised practices which are routine, synchronised and often focused on clock-time. This finding diverges from conceptualisations of ‘women’s time’ as fluid, circular and contrary to clock-time. It also suggests that the theorised progressive erosion of socio-temporal structures in contemporary society is more pertinent to the practices of paid work and leisure than to the practices of caring. This thesis contends that caring practices are temporally different from paid work and leisure practices, and that they have a significant impact on the socio-temporal structure of daily life for many social actors, particularly mothers. When everyday practices are interrogated and caring-time is recognised as a separate analytical category, it is evident that the practices which embody these times are not necessarily changing in the same way as workplace and leisure practices. This thesis argues that as long as macro-level theories of temporality overlook caring practices, they will not incorporate the multiple times that exist in many women’s (and some men’s) everyday lives.