School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemExplaining PICTA, PACER and Cotonou : trade policy in the Pacific 1996-2006(University of Melbourne, 2009)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableUniversal visions : neuroscience and recurrent chrrcteristics of world palaeoart(University of Melbourne, 2009)Palaeoart includes a diverse range of art-like manifestations, predominantly comprising rock art and portable art objects, datingfrom the Pleistocene right through to the Holocene. A fascinating aspect of palaeoart is that striking commonalities or parallels may be observed world-wide. These parallels include a range of recurrent abstract-geometric motifs and patterns, figurative subjects and themes. Similarities in the ways in which this content is executed may also be found. Despite various attempts, these commonalities have not yet been adequately explained. Positioned within a structuralist framework, this thesis considers recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as a means of understanding them. Specifically, it examines the role of human perceptual-neurophysiological universals in governing palaeoart production, and argues for a basis of artistic parallels in aspects of the evolved neurobiology shared by all normal humans. The rock art of hunter-gatherer societies constitutes more than 90 per cent of known prehistoric art, and the scope of the study is limited to palaeoart attributed to pre-European contact, pre-literate hunter- gatherer societies. The temporal scope of the study varies with the evidence discussed. The approach taken is partly informed by recent studies that have used neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to reveal brain activation patterns associated with the perception of different types of visual stimuli. It is further informed by a wide range of additional neuroscientific and perceptual experimentation data relevant to palaeoart imagery. The value of considering human universals as a means of answering the questions how and why the same forms recur in palaeoart around the world is addressed. The approach provides a sound alternative to simplistic interpretations such as cultural diffusion based solely on visual resemblances between the arts of widely separated regions. The examination of palaeoart in light of neuroscientific data has major implications, ultimately revealing underlying reasons for the production of certain types of imagery. Abstract-geometric motifs and patterns, animals and parts of animals, and the human body and its parts are all shown to have special roles in visual information processing. It is found that shared aspects of the human nervous system influence conscious and unconscious preferences and decisions made in the process of creating graphic imagery, and that this has given rise to cross-cultural similarities in palaeoart. Recurrent forms in palaeoart are shown to be precisely those visual stimuli that are particularly powerful triggers of neural activity and correspond with prominent areas of the visual brain. These forms of visual imagery stimulate inherent neural mechanisms that have developed during human evolution specifically for the analysis of biologically significant aspects of the visual world. Palaeoart can thus be regarded as a kind ofneuro- perceptual mirror demonstrating attributes and principles characteristic of human beings.
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ItemThis is how we live now : the lifestylization of home(University of Melbourne, 2008)
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ItemColonising Yolngu defence : Arnhem Land in the Second World War and transnational uses of indigenous people in the Second World War(University of Melbourne, 2008)The thesis examines the involvement in World War II of the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land, in the context of colonialism in the Northern Territory, and with comparative attention to the war experiences of the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea. and the Native American Navajo. Yolngu participated in the war through various avenues, including the provision of labour for white Australian war initiatives. Most notably Yolngu served as auxiliaries to non-indigenous military units such as the North Australia Observer Unit, and they also participated in the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit, which was exclusively Aboriginal apart from its leadership. Rather than representing widespread white Australian appreciation of Yolngu skills or recognition of Yolngu equality, the military employment of Yolngu continued structures of ideas and practices inherent in settler colonialism in the north. The military authorities, with government endorsement, organised Yolngu to utilise their skills in defence of the colonial project that was of itself simultaneously robbing Yolngu of their land and rights. Yolngu had their own motivations to work alongside white military, and for the most part participated willingly. Analysis of oral testimony points to their courageous efforts and, unlike the non-indigenous documents, positions Yolngu as central actors in Arnhem Land during the war. Comparative analysis of other colonised indigenous peoples' involvement in World War ll�Pacific Islanders in similar units in Papua and New Guinea, and Navajo Codetalkers in the United States�highlights the existence of common colonial practices that existed transnationally, alongside indigenous peoples' own sense of agency. This study re-centres indigenous people in war narratives while demonstrating at the same time how governments' reliance on indigenous skills and labour in times of crisis did not represent a fundamental change in relations, although for white authorities there were, eventually, unanticipated outcomes from the war for indigenous peoples.
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ItemA spectroscopic and chromatographic study of the photochemical properties of daylight fluorescent paint( 2009)Daylight fluorescent pigments fade rapidly, accompanied by a chronology of colour change. Fluorescence is a photo-physical phenomenon which involves emission of light from an excited state. Fluorescent dyes thus have a high susceptibility of being promoted to an excited state; a characteristic in the case of organic fluorophores which infers vulnerability toward photo-bleaching. Multiple organic fluorescent dyes are routinely incorporated into a given daylight fluorescent pigment, to either additively fluoresce or interact through energy transfer. The organic fluorescent dyes employed invariably differ in photo-stability, and upon loss of each species of fluorophore an abrupt colour change is observed. The collective result of this fading behaviour is that in a short period of time a daylight fluorescent paint layer will be of a different hue, devoid of luminosity. As consequence it is almost impossible to colour match a faded daylight fluorescent paint layer without the hues diverging asynchronously, or ascertain the original palette of a daylight fluorescent artwork after a protracted period of time. The predicament is exacerbated by the fact that there is no standard method in cultural material conservation, of documenting daylight fluorescent colour in a painting photographically or colorimetrically. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the photochemical behaviour of daylight fluorescent pigments, to ensure best practice in the preservation of artworks that contain daylight fluorescent paint. Fluorimetrie and chromatographic analysis of the DayGlo daylight fluorescent pigment range at the constituent dye level, prior to and during an accelerated light ageing program formed the basis of the experimental. Given the limited selection of fluorescent dyes suitable for daylight fluorescent pigment manufacture, it is anticipated that the results attained for the DayGlo range will be applicable to all daylight fluorescent media encountered in cultural material. Experimental data revealed the manner in which the fluorescent dyes behind each DayGlo daylight fluorescent pigment were formulated, and provided explanation for the 1colour changes observed upon fading. A prognosis of when and why a daylight fluorescent palette experiences hue shift and the implications this has for display is presented. Methodology for imaging daylight fluorescence, identification of the constituent fluorescent dyes in a daylight fluorescent pigment and colour matching a daylight fluorescent paint layer are presented and applied in-situ, to case studies possessing a daylight fluorescent palette.
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ItemA relational approach to global justice : psychology and the world order( 2008)Theories of justice have traditionally focused on determining fundamental principles to guide the formal institutional structures of societies. As such, they apply almost exclusively to people holding powerful decision-making positions in formal institutions. A relational approach, in contrast, presents a bottom-up approach to justice based on the increasing interrelation between members of the global population. This approach addresses the roles and responsibilities held by the population at large in working toward a thin conception of global justice based on three fundamental goals: to preserve the liveability of the planet, to reduce poverty, and to overcome conflict without violence. This thesis identifies two socio-cultural obstacles that are restraining progress on the three basic goals of global justice: the identity obstacle, and the efficacy obstacle. The identity obstacle refers to psychological research linking justice concerns to social identity perceptions, and implies that duties of global justice may include a shift in the way people view themselves and others. The efficacy obstacle refers to post-industrial paradigms that separate humans from the natural world, dividing the 'social' from the 'natural' sciences, and ultimately leading to a paradoxical illusion that humans are, as a species, masters of our domain but yet, as individuals, are powerless to change injustices in political and economic systems. Duties of justice may, therefore, also include recognition of people's embedded place in nature, including their ability to alter their environmental and social systems. Overcoming these two socio-cultural obstacles by fulfilling the duties of global justice generated by them requires more than a simple conscious choice. No matter how much one may agree with the arguments for identity and efficacy duties, one cannot simply decide to change one's perceptions of oneself and the world. For this reason, the final section of the thesis explores research from a variety of academic disciplines to develop practical methodologies for psychologically enabling identity and efficacy duties. These methodologies include participation in certain forms of interpersonal contact with members of different social groups, creating cultural narratives to enhance feelings of connectedness to nature, developing efficacy-granting parenting skills, and a number of other social-cultural techniques that the population at large can employ to encourage progress on the three basic goals of global justice.
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ItemA genealogy of the construct of sex addiction in psycho-medical discourse in post-World War II United States of America( 2008)Sexual excess is one of an increasing list of ‘excessive’ behaviours which have in recent times been pathologised by the psycho-medical establishment, increasing regulation and control of spheres previously accepted as ‘normal.’ This study analyses the genealogy of the events, institutions, organisations and individuals in post-World War II United States of America to the present which made it possible to think scientifically and nosologically about ‘excessive’ male sexual behaviour as ‘sexual addiction.’ The grass-roots twelve-step ideologies of Alcoholics Anonymous in the mid-1970s gave birth to twelve-step programs for ‘sex addicts’ predicated on admitting powerlessness over sex and lust rather than over alcohol as the key to recovery as the first step. The publication of Patrick Carnes’ Out of the Shadows: Understanding and Treating Sexual Addiction in 1983 created the academic concept and discourse of sex addiction, which in turn paved the way for widespread scientific debate and investigation of the concept. The AIDS phenomenon offered a platform for many groups to highlight their own causes amid the chaos of illness and death. The sex addiction movement was one such group which made use of the hysteria by pathologising homosexuality and the gay lifestyle as symptomatic of ‘sexual addiction.’ This forged an inexorable conceptual nexus between sexual addiction and AIDS and death motifs, thereby legitimising the concept of sexual addiction as a harmful and often fatal disorder. Analysis of psycho-medical and public discourse on the sex lives of two American presidents, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, in two different eras revealed changing understandings of male sexual excess. Journalistic mores, socio-cultural values and psycho-medical ideologies (or the lack thereof) played a great role in pathologising Clinton’s behaviour while leaving Kennedy’s, at the time of his presidency but not so in the decades following it, unscathed. This study has far-reaching implications because sex is an issue affecting and involving people from all walks of life, irrespective of gender, race, colour, creed or religion. Analyses demonstrated how the sexual addiction movement’s assault on traditional conceptions of masculinity predicated on promiscuity as a rite of passage or envied and admired behaviour has precipitated a convergence of the genders in respect of prescriptive sexual behaviour. The pendulum of power is subtly shifting from males embracing notions of sexual liberation and sexual self-determination to mental health professionals whose new diagnostic labels pathologise and stigmatise.
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ItemCompromise and conflict in the fight to end legalized abortion in the United States, 1971-88( 2008)This thesis examines the growth of organized opposition to abortion in the United States, and charts the fortunes of the right-to-life movement at a national level during the 1970s and 1980. Anti-abortionists emerged as a social movement in response to changes in the law, and after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision they struggled to present themselves as a coherent lobby group. The 1970s were thus a time of fluidity and experimentation, as right-to-lifers contemplated different approaches and argued over how best to end legalized abortion. Activists engaged in legislative efforts, political lobbying, and education initiatives, all the while teasing out what exactly it meant to be opposed to abortion. The movement at this time rejected the ideas of absolutists and instead aimed to be as broadly representative of American society as possible. Rather than clearly aligning themselves with the Left or the Right side of politics, the movement pursued a politics of moderation. This status quo was challenged, however, by the resurgence of conservatism in the late 1970s. As the social conservatives of the so-called “New Right” began to intervene in the abortion debate, right-to-lifers found themselves having to respond to a worldview that spoke only in terms of absolutes. After Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency in 1980, anti-abortionists needed to negotiate a political landscape in which they ostensibly had access to power and yet were repeatedly disappointed by the action (or inaction) that came from the White House. This thesis contends that in the 1980s, the relationship between right-to-lifers, the “New Right,” and the Reagan administration was often marked by disappointment and compromise. As the decade drew on, right-to-life leaders increasingly tempered the types of demands they made of the White House and of Republicans in general, and this climate eventually meant that the kinds of activists that rose to prominence within the movement were conservative and the ideas they espoused absolutist.
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ItemThe ethical challenges associated with medical internship and residency( 2009)Internship and residency are the first years following graduation from medical school. Interns and residents work in hospitals as the junior members of hierarchical medical teams. To date there has been little systematic philosophical work that focuses specifically on this group. Instead, in ethical discussions, interns and residents tend to be included either with medical students or with their more senior colleagues. In this thesis, I argue that interns and residents differ from both medical students and more experienced doctors in ethically important ways. Their working context requires them to play multiple roles simultaneously, including doctor, subjugate team member, learner, and hospital employee. The demands of these multiple roles create a set of ethical challenges for junior doctors that is unique to their professional stage. Further, the potentially conflicting demands of these multiple roles limit the ways in which junior doctors can act in response to the ethical difficulties that they encounter. I thus propose that the ethical challenges associated with medical internship and residency can be fruitfully understood as role virtue conflicts. Aiming to produce a work of empirically-informed moral philosophy, I investigate junior doctors‟ ethical issues using a combination of literature review, semi-structured interviews, and philosophical analysis. In-depth interviews with fourteen Melbourne-based junior doctors formed a central element of this project, in order to ensure the project‟s focus on pressing practical issues. On the basis of these interviews and my review of research findings about junior doctors across various disciplines, I develop a typology of the kinds of ethical challenges associated with internship and residency. These include being involved in treatment perceived as futile, seniors discouraging disclosure of errors, and reporting unrostered hours. In addition to the typology of ethical issues, I develop and use a role-based framework as a way of analysing the ethical challenges faced by interns and residents. The method of ethical analysis that I propose conceptualises the good junior doctor as good qua four roles, each with a differing set of role virtues. I argue that this role-based framework both reflects and engages with junior doctors‟ specific position of agency and thus captures a fuller range of moral considerations than do other possible modes of analysis.