School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemThe Analytic Possibilities of 'Culture' in a Post-Prison Context(Elsevier BV, 2014)This paper is focused on the use and usefulness of ‘culture’ as an analytical tool, in the context of prisoners’ return to the community. Whereas the analytic dimensions of the culture concept have been explored in anthropological circles, its criminological applications have been limited. While the growth of ‘cultural criminology’ signifies a resurgent interest in ethnography, subjectivity, lived experience and the phenomenological, for instance, it can be argued that its concept of culture lacks explanatory or analytical power. This paper considers the analytic possibilities of ‘culture’ as a tool for uncovering aspects of the post-imprisonment experience. It draws on interviews with released prisoners and post-release support workers, conducted for PhD research on the post-release experience of men in Victoria, to illustrate how culture applied in this way can illuminate processes underpinning and constituting the cycle of reimprisonment, or what Halsey (2006) has termed the ‘reincarceration assemblage’. Seeing culture as both a ‘product and producer’ (Sampson & Bean, 2006) of this assemblage reveals elements which contribute to the continuation of the cycle, and which can counteract efforts – on the part of ex-prisoners themselves and society more broadly – towards reintegration and reduced reoffending. A cultural perspective can thus provide a way of understanding men’s experience of getting out and staying out of prison, and how penological thinking may make use of such a lens.
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ItemSubmissions to the 2020 Convention(AGPS, 2008)
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Item'Well, that just complicates matters': The prevalence of long-term poverty in a rural Victorian community, and its interface with enactments of social and health policy directives through government agencies.(Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association inc., 2015-12-21)This paper discusses aspects of a recent anthropological research project, broadly focused on use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in a rural Victorian community. Participative research facilitated an in-depth understanding of the lives and character of residents of the community, in terms of their experience of entrenched poverty, and the relationship of this circumstance to personal and family hardships, impacted further by formalised enactments of moral health policy directives and institutionalised duty-of-care, through government agencies, including the Department of Human Services, the mental health system, and decision-makers in the welfare sector. In a community where little employment is available within reasonable travelling distance, the most impoverished persons encountered during the research were sole-parents and their children, who are specifically affected by recent changes to welfare payment rates designed to stimulate their increased effort to find gainful employment. Building from simple structuring frameworks developed from anonymous quantitative appraisal of a poor segment of the community, and numerical tally of known community members and interviewees with mental health problems, the paper unpacks richly descriptive ethnographic data from the stories of research participants, particularly highlighting narratives about lives lived in the long-term role of sole-parents, and through the eyes of mentally ill persons. Recent ‘improvements’ in policy approaches – addressing the seeming worklessness of sole-parents, the need to accommodate children when family problems arise (often targeting Aboriginal, migrant, mentally ill, and sole-parent families), and the exercise of powerful and increasingly legalised sanctions that subjugate and control the experience of mental illness, for the benefit of sufferers, families and communities – provide an effective government-citizen interface that serves to complicate the life experiences of impoverished Australians, and seemingly overlooks attempts at realistic, supportive solutions. This problem was starkly apparent even in a relatively trouble-free yet poor community without imposed ‘income management’.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableMinutes of Evidence: Raising Awareness of Structural Injustice and Justice(James Cook University, 2012)
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Item'This is Africa': Filmic Negotiations of Crime, Justice and Global Responsibility(University of Sydney, 2011)
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ItemA comparative analysis of (yet beyond) international retirement/second home programmes in Southeast Asia(World Cultural Tourism, 2015)
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ItemVoters’ attitudes towards asylum seekers and the 2013 Australian federal election(American Poli, 2015)
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ItemMotivations, Concerns and Experiences: Residential Tourism in Southeast Asia(World Cultural, 2012)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe causes and consequences of political trust: Evidence from two survey experiments(Australian Political Studies Association, 2014)
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ItemSelfies at Funerals: Remediating rituals of mourning(Association of Internet Researchers, 2014)