School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemThe many lives of the Goulburn River : sustainable management as ontological work( 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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ItemExperiencing and transcending a liminal condition : narratives of ailing Polish immigrants in Melbourne, Australia( 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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ItemFrom segregated institution to self-managed community: the contribution of community social work practice towards Aboriginal self-management at Lake Tyers/Bung Yarnda Victoria( 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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ItemHigh-tech hot spot or sleepy backwater? Innovation and the importance of networks( 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.