School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications

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    The Australian Dominative Medical System: A Reflection of Social Relations in the Larger Society
    Baer, H (WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC, 2008-12)
    This paper posits a working or tentative model of medical pluralism, a pattern in which multiple medical sub‐systems co‐exist, or what I term the Australian dominative medical system. I argue that whereas the Australian medical system with its various medical sub‐systems was pluralistic, that is more or less on an equal footing, in the nineteenth century, by the early twentieth century it became a plural or dominative one in the sense that biomedicine came to clearly dominate other medical sub‐systems. This paper also explores the growing interest of biomedicine and the Australian Government in complementary medicine to which Australians have increasingly turned over the course of the past three decades or so.
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    Fire, flood, fish and the uncertainty paradox
    MINNEGAL, M ; DWYER, P (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008)
    When the planet was created, the areas of the greatest biodiversity also happened to be the areas where mankind wants to reap the best reward of resources. It is not actually that complicated when you think about it, because where there is biodiversity happens to be where the resources are and it is where we happen to want to get them from. As it happened, the uranium was put in the middle of Kakadu and gold is in places where it is hard to get out. I think the creator of the universe decided to make things very interesting for environment ministers down the track. That is the reality… It is only a natural thing. (Senator Ian Campbell, Federal Minister for the Environment; Hansard 2006: 68–69)
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    Police and thieves, gunmen and drunks: Problems with men and problems with society in Papua New Guinea
    Macintyre, M (AUSTRALIAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOC, 2008-08)
    The image of the ‘man with a gun’ is pervasive in Papua New Guinea and connotes not only the state's capacity to use force, but that of men to resist and subvert state control. At the same time, the association of beer and marijuana with both modernity and violent masculine behaviours provides the context, the justification and the forms of homosocial activities involving violence. In this paper, I explore the ambiguities surrounding guns as instruments of state force and as symbols of masculine autonomy in so‐called ‘weak states’ by examining some stories about the ways that guns are acquired for illegal activities. In particular, I shall discuss the ways that guns and beer are instruments of violence and potency for police, tribal warriors and criminals as well as some of the means whereby men gain access to new forms of power. Drawing on ethnographic research with young men in New Ireland Province, the paper will deal specifically with the ways that adolescent boys construe ‘modern masculinity’.
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    Refusing to sing: Gender, kinship and patriliny in macedonia
    Schubert, V (Wiley, 2005-01-01)
    The issue of whether formal kinship structures and sentiments reflect the reality of social relations was of particular concern to specialists at the height of the kinship debates in the 1960s and 1970s, as it continues to be in some contemporary studies. So too, the classifications ‘patrilineal’ or ‘matrilineal’ have clearly been shown to be problematic given that there are multiple levels of discourse and relational and ideational realities in any given society. For many contemporary kinship specialists in fact no simple correlation can be made between type of descent system and actual social relations, especially relations between men and women. However, some anthropologists continue to argue that patrilineal kinship systems are somehow indicative of control or domination by men or, put inversely, of women's lack of power and authority. It is argued in this paper that even where the formal kinship structures and ideological discourses are dominated by agnation as appears to be the case in south Slav societies generally, and Macedonian in particular, this is not automatically mirrored in gender relations between men and women. In short, there is a long leap from patriliny to patriarchy.
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    The politics of the gap: Indigenous Australians, liberal multiculturalism, and the end of the self-determination era
    Kowal, E (WILEY, 2008-09)
    ABSTRACT Since the 1970s, “self‐determination” has been the dominant trope for expressing national aspirations for Indigenous Australians. Through the principles of self‐determination, the liberal multicultural state has attempted to deliver postcolonial justice to its first peoples. In this new century, the sheen of the self‐determination era has faded. Once heralded as the antidote to the racist assimilation era, it is now depicted as the cause of social ills. In this article, I draw on an ethnographic study of White antiracists working in Indigenous health in northern Australia to analyze the brand of liberal rationality that dominated the discourse of the self‐determination era. By engaging with a “tribe” of White people who identify with the aims of the self‐determination era, we can decipher the logic of self‐determination as an instrument of the liberal state and better understand the internal contradictions and ambiguities that have led to its recent demise.
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    The Sydney riots
    Dawson, A (BERGHAHN JOURNALS, 2006-06)
    This article describes the recent Sydney riots and the commentary surrounding them. The author demonstrates how, through processes of ‘analytical et nic cleansing’, ‘ethnic homogenization and specification’, and ‘blame displacement’, the Lebanese Muslim community, a target of the initial rioters, came to be victimized in commentary on the riots. While the riots may not have been particularly significant in themselves, the commentary surrounding them provides an important window onto the state of cultural politics in Australia at a specific juncture in time when multi-culturalism is simultaneously hegemonic but subject to attack from Australia’s ruling federal political regime. The author claims, moreover, that the victimization of Lebanese Muslims is indicative of a particular current process in which a discourse of multi-culturalism, engendered largely by its liberal advocates and drawing on the scholarly works of anthropologists and other social scientists, is utilized to undermine multi-culturalism as a form of social policy and organization.
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    Social change and agency among Kubo of Papua New Guinea
    DWYER, P ; MINNEGAL, M (Wiley Blackwell, 2007)
    An account of the history and actions of one man is used to show how agency was central to processes of social change among Kubo people of the interior lowlands of Papua New Guinea. Through a thirteen‐year period, a growing awareness of, but little exposure to, ‘Western’ modes of living challenged earlier certainties, created desires, and suggested alternatives. Modernity thus provided the context for change. But modernity is not itself a process of change. By drawing from ambiguities inherent in pre‐existing structures (or discourses) or createdde novothrough encounters with previously unimagined possibilities, and by favouring one or another of the multiple trajectories legitimized by those ambiguities, people were causally implicated in changing the conditions of their own existence. Those changes entailed a shift from a predominantly relational epistemology to an increasingly categorical epistemology. Résumé Dans cet article, le récit de la vie et des actes d'un homme servent à montrer comment l'intentionnalité (agency) a été essentielle dans les processus de changement social chez les Kubos des basses terres intérieures de la Papouasie‐Nouvelle‐Guinée. Sur une période de treize ans, la connaissance accrue qu'ils ont eue des modes de vie « occidentaux »– tout en y étant peu exposés – a remis en question des certitudes antérieures, créé des désirs, et suggéré des alternatives. La modernité a ainsi créé le contexte du changement, sans être en elle‐même un processus de changement. À partir des ambiguïtés inhérentes aux structures (ou discours) préexistantes ou crééesde novopar la découverte de possibilités jusqu'alors inimaginables, et en privilégiant l'une ou l'autre des multiples trajectoires légitimées par ces ambiguïtés, les Kubos ont été impliqués dans une relation causale de changement des conditions de leur propre existence. Ces changements ont entraîné le passage d'une épistémologie principalement relationnelle à une épistémologie de plus en plus catégorielle.
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    Ritual and reflexes of lost sovereignty in Sikka, a regency of Flores in eastern Indonesia
    Lewis, ED (Brill, 2008)
    In 1993 some among the Sikkanese population of the town of Maumere on the north coast of Flores in eastern Indonesia attended a ritual to reconcile the members of two branches of the family of the rajas of Sikka, a dynasty that had once ruled the district. The two branches had fallen out over differences in opinion about the last succession to the office of raja a few years before the end of the rajadom in the late 1950s. A description of the ritual, which was conducted in an urban rather than a village setting, and an analysis of the performance demonstrate much about the persistence of elements of the old Sikkanese religion in modern Sikkanese society. The contemporary Sikkanese are Christians and the regency of Sikka is part of the modern Indonesian nation-state.
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    The drive for legitimation in Australian naturopathy: Successes and dilemmas
    Baer, HA (PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 2006-10)
    Whereas naturopathic physicians have either "licensure" or state-mandated "registration" in 13 US states and four Canadian provinces, naturopaths in Australia have thus far failed to obtain "statutory registration" in any political jurisdiction, despite the fact that chiropractors and osteopaths have done so in all Australian states and territories, and acupuncturists and Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners have done so in the state of Victoria. Ironically, naturopathy and various other complementary medical systems are taught in many public tertiary institutions. This essay presents an overview of the development and the current socio-political status of naturopathy in Australia and its redefinition in some contexts as "natural therapies" and "natural medicine" or even as the major component of complementary medicine. It also examines reasons why the Australian state has come to express an interest in naturopathy along with other complementary medical systems.