School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemFeels like home : young people's lived experiences and meanings of home(University of Melbourne, 2008)
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ItemFactors affecting the utilization of post acute care by the elderly in Singapore(University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemSelf-regulation : a conceptual frame for intervention with young offenders within the justice system in Singapore(University of Melbourne, 2006)
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ItemSelf-regulation : a conceptual frame for intervention with young offenders within the justice system in Singapore(University of Melbourne, 2006)
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ItemRegulating the risks of elder abuse in Australia : the changing nature of government responses(University of Melbourne, 2008)This thesis presents a policy analysis of Federal and State Government responses to elder abuse utilising three data sources, an extensive literature review, analysis of key government documents and interviews with expert stakeholders. Historical, sociological and criminological frameworks are used to explore contemporary responses to the abuse and neglect of older Australians. Modelling undertaken to estimate the current and projected scale of elder abuse predicted that there were 87,000 cases in 2007, that there would be 120,000 by 2017 and 200,000 by 2037. The ageing of the Australian population justifies the development of a more concerted and nationally co-ordinated strategy. Despite considerable contest between prevention and protection advocates, Australian Governments since the mid 1990s have adopted a fairly comprehensive and consistent policy framework involving prevention, investigation and case management, access to justice, legal and financial protections for older people without mental capacity, regulation and sanctions. This thesis argues that these six elements are likely to form the basis of future development and explores the utility of the responsive regulation thesis in such development. Several gaps in existing responses are identified, namely the lack of victim support services, the inadequate funding base, the low level of community and professional education and ambiguities about agency response responsibilities. Reforms needed over the next decade to address these gaps are identified.
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ItemClass, subjectivity, and the political in Pakistan: bridging the practice-theory divide in comparative political theory( 2019)In recent times, comparative political theorists have issued a call for pluralising political theory by going beyond the discipline’s primary reliance on the canon of western political thought. A key feature of this call has been to furnish new methods of studying non-western intellectual traditions with a focus on texts and their interpretation. This thesis supports the call for comparative political theorising but critically engages with methodological debates within comparative political theory (CPT). This thesis problematises the analytical focus on texts within CPT by challenging the predominance of textual scholasticism in comparative theorising. Consequently, this thesis argues for a greater focus within comparativist circles on real-world politics, practices, actions, protests, and lived experiences as tied to different subjectivities in post-colonial contexts. In particular, the thesis outlines, and makes the case for, a practice-based approach to CPT by drawing on fieldwork conducted amongst middle class lawyers in Pakistan who took part in the Lawyers’ movement (2007-2009). The thesis critically unpacks practices which underpin constructions of subjectivity within the Lawyers’ movement by drawing on stories, narratives, and lived experiences of lawyers who participated in the movement. Specifically, the thesis investigates meanings that lawyers attach to their participation in protests and delineates the limitations associated with idealisation of the rule of law, and subsequent imaginations of the political, in post-colonial Pakistan. The thesis concludes by outlining the contributions that a practice-based approach can make to the broader field of CPT by charting the advantages of going beyond binaries of ‘East’ and ‘West’ as well as ‘Western’ and ‘Non-Western’ to critically engage with relations of power that manifest themselves in real-world politics and constructions of the political in post-colonial settings.
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ItemWitch Camps in Northern Ghana: Contesting Gender, Development and Culture( 2019)This thesis examines the intersection between witchcraft and socio-economic development in Ghana. Scholars note that there has been an increase in witchcraft beliefs, practices and accusations in a number of post-colonial societies such as Ghana. This presents many challenges for how socio-economic development and modernity are understood and approached. The use of witchcraft to navigate, enhance and protect individual socio-economic circumstances is well-noted by many scholars not only in relation to Ghana but also a number of other societies, especially in parts of Africa. Debates in Ghana centre on cases of encampment of individuals, primarily women, who are accused of witchcraft. The thesis is based on an extended period of fieldwork in northern Ghana and the analysis of secondary data, including government reports and media accounts to highlight the divergent views and tensions associated with the so-called ‘witch camps’. The primary data collected involved participant observation during fieldwork in the Gnani witch camp, interviews with community members, staff of non-government organisations involved in providing services to camp communities and a number of government officials who are engaged at the local level with the camps. This thesis aims to provide a nuanced account of the divergent views of witchcraft and witchcraft accusations, as well as paying significant attention is also paid to the lived experiences of encamped women. Women, most of whom are elderly and poor, are disproportionately accused of practicing witchcraft and compelled to reside in witch camps due to ostracism, livelihood insecurity and in some cases threat to life. Understanding their life circumstances is especially important for highlighting the ways in which gender, age, socio-economic development, kinship and social relationships are implicated in witchcraft accusations. Overall, this thesis highlights the tensions between local realities and standardised development approaches that nominally include culture in their planning but ultimately view it as a barrier to development. The thesis argues for a rethinking of approaches to development that do not fully take into account the potential of culturally specific solutions to social inequalities. It also contributes to a better understanding of the limits associated with the neo-liberal paradigm of socio-economic development that is overwhelmingly promoted by government, NGOs, and external development actors and whereby local realities, experiences and understandings of development are rarely taken into consideration.
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ItemNo Preview Available‘Framing’ Negotiation: Participant perspectives on industry-Indigenous agreement-making in the resource extraction context( 2019)This thesis examines industry-Indigenous agreement-making with a focus on the diamond mine industry in Northern Canada. Agreement-making is posited as a platform for Indigenous voices and viewpoints, a mechanism to generate greater Indigenous autonomy in land and resource decision-making. To date, evaluations of agreement-making and its potential to engender autonomy, have mostly concentrated on parameters set by legal and policy architectures, and on outcome evaluation. Structural parameters and contextual factors at the meso political level are drawn into and inform negotiation as the ‘microprocess’ that shapes interaction and the outcomes produced. Despite this, insufficient attention is paid to parties’ engagement ‘on the ground’. This thesis helps to fill this gap. It contends that negotiation, namely parties’ actual interaction, is a critical site of agreement-making’s transformative potential. This study defines autonomy as agency and authorship within engagements. Arguably, ‘meaningful negotiation’ - being an equality of standing and opportunity for Indigenous voices and viewpoints - is required for this form of autonomy to be realised. ‘Meaningful negotiation’ must provide a generative platform in which parties can assert their values, understandings and practices and where these diverge, an ability to accommodate polysemy. The history of Indigenous-settler engagements reveals significant challenges in bringing about ‘meaningful negotiation’. Past settler-Indigenous engagements over land and resources have marginalised Indigenous peoples. These precedents reveal the imposition of Anglo-settler values, understandings and practices and unequal relations of power between these groups. Indigenous peoples have struggled to assert their autonomy through historic treaties and the formal recognition of international and domestic rights and recognition. Contemporary agreement-making has arisen to mediate ongoing settler-Indigenous conflict over land and resources. Proponents locate agreement-making within a valued ‘politics of recovery’ to contest and transform the status quo. Others, informed by settler-colonial and critical Indigenous theory, explicitly reject it as ‘redefining without reforming’. This thesis adopted a participant-based case study of the Impact Benefit Agreements of the diamond mining industry in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It examined the negotiation space through participant accounts, drawing on 28 qualitative interviews and primary and secondary document analysis. Its conceptual approach was informed by frame theory; ‘frames’ map where divergences arise and how these are mediated between the ‘sides’ negotiating. The study finds a number of factors worked to inhibit ‘meaningful negotiation’. This revealed itself as an inability to accommodate the most extreme points of divergence in values, understandings and practices. While some participants perceived the potential for greater autonomy within the negotiations of industry-Indigenous agreement-making, this proved contingent on the nature and scope of these divergences and their respective prospects for mediation.
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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.