School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemTracing non-biomedical therapeutic knowledge: social-network lives in action( 2021)This thesis investigates the performance of non-biomedical therapeutic knowledge as situated knowledge on the internet. Non-biomedical therapeutic knowledge is defined as medical knowledge that exists in separation, but not isolation from, scientific biomedical knowledge. By tracing the social-network lives of non-biomedical therapeutic knowledge, the thesis examines the influences of digital technologies on the propagation of knowledge that exists in the margin of scientific knowledge, as well as the implications of this digitally-enabled propagation on non-biomedical cultural formations as living practices. Assemblages of mediated knowledge emerge as a result of encounters between digital technologies, non-biomedical knowledge, and the people who practice and receive non- biomedical therapies. From static texts to live-streaming videos, social-network enactments replicate existing social dynamics in the propagation of marginalised knowledges, provide channels for social support through casual and ephemeral interactions, transform human experiences with downtime in tending to the sick body, and, through facilitating in vivo conceptions of space, enable the persistence of these marginalised medical practices. In studying the resultant melange of digital artefacts left behind by their actors and the emergent social-network properties arising from their relations, this thesis uses a mix of quantitative computational and qualitative digital methods. Although each digital expression lends itself to particular analytical and methodological approaches, whose engagements produce conclusions of different epistemological standpoints, these conclusions nevertheless complement each other in the overall inquiry of assembling the social-network lives of non-biomedical knowledge. In choosing Vietnam as the local case, I offer a thorough examination of non- biomedical knowledge on the internet in context as a point of contrast, reference, or comparison for other sites and situations. Binding the empirical findings presented in this thesis together are themes of social-network accomplishments as contingency, the politics of in/visibility in social-network labour as patchwork, and the social-network emergence of multiple space-time.
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ItemParadoxical Representations of Vietnamese Women in Propaganda: The Communist Party of Vietnam and Conflicting Visions of Women During the Vietnam War (1955-1975)( 2021)This thesis examines the paradoxical representations of Vietnamese women produced by the Vietnamese Communist Party (CPV) between 1955-1975. Through analysis of the changing representations of women, it questions the Party's commitment to gender equality. Furthermore, it challenges the assumption in previous scholarship that the Vietnam War was a period of increased rights and revolutionary change, and instead suggests that Vietnamese women were circumscribed by the persistence of Confucianism in CPV propaganda.
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ItemNostalgia and the warzone home: American and Australian veterans return to Việt Nam, 1981-2016( 2018)From 1981 to 2016, thousands of Australian and American veterans returned to Việt Nam. In this comparative oral history investigation, I examine why veterans returned and how they reacted to the people and places of Việt Nam—their former enemies, allies, and battlefields—as the war receded further into history and memory. Tracing veterans’ returns through economic, cultural, and political shifts in Việt Nam, Australia, and the US, I identify three distinct periods of return: contact, normalization, and commemoration. These periods reflect the changing meanings of “Vietnam” in Australia and the US and describe the relationship of veterans to the contemporary, peacetime space of Việt Nam. Very different narratives about the war informed Australian and American returns: Australians followed an Anzac tradition of battlefield pilgrimage, whereas for Americans the return constituted a radical, anti-war act. Despite these differences in timing and nationality of return, commonalities emerged among them: veterans returned out of nostalgia for a warzone home, responding to the “needs of the present” by turning back toward “Vietnam.” When veterans arrived in Việt Nam, they found that their warzone home was unrecognizable, replaced with unfamiliar places, politics, and people. Returnees faced conflicting challenges and rewards. Many reported that seeing Việt Nam at peace diluted their memories of war, and brought them a measure of relief. Yet this peacetime reality also disrupted their wartime connection to Vietnamese spaces. Returnees navigated this challenge by drawing from the same wartime narratives that had informed their returns. Consequently, anti-war and Anzac memories shaped how returnees interpreted and interacted with peacetime Việt Nam as returnees recaptured their sense of belonging to the warzone home by relying on familiar stories about a suddenly unfamiliar place. Thus while the return experiences challenged returnees’ wartime memories, the return did not change their views so much as reinforce existing perspectives. Furthermore, while returning to Việt Nam helped many veterans to put “Vietnam” behind them, there was not total separation between war and country. As the numbers of returnees rose and expatriate-veteran enclaves emerged, the wartime narratives through which veterans navigated the return took on greater impact, collapsing time through space through nostalgic practices to relocate the warzone home.