Faculty of Education - Research Publications
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ItemEffectiveness, difference and sociological research(Routledge, UK, 2002-12)For Australian sociology of education, Making the Difference (Connell, Ashenden, Kessler and Dowsett 1982) was not just a major argument, and a ‘classic’ point of reference. It was also an event, an intervention in ways of doing research and speaking to practice, a methodology, a textual style. In some respects its influence on the latter dimensions has been even more pervasive and long-lasting than its influence as argument or theory. It seemed, simultaneously, to mark the high point of Reproduction theories of schooling (though its authors did not see it in this way) and also a thoughtful and orchestrated attempt to intervene in the processes. For a considerable time both before and after the publication of the book itself, the research team was a prominent roadshow in Australia, speaking to and writing for many specific audiences: teachers, teacher unions, parents, press. The book itself was designed to be read by a much wider audience than the standard sociological texts, and it succeeded in this aim. Subsequently it has become more commonplace to see research and writing as constructing and powerful practices, not just neutral paths to knowledge or communication, but Making the Difference helped to show other researchers what different ways of embarking on this might look like.
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ItemWho is “us”? students negotiating discourses of racism and national identification in Australia( 2003)This article explores the political beliefs and the forms of reasoning about racism, national identity and Other developed by young Australian women and men from different ethnic and class backgrounds. The interviews on which the discussion is based are drawn from a larger longitudinal study of Australian secondary school students which examines how young people develop their sense of self and social values over time. The present article here has two overall purposes: to add to understandings of how the cultural logic of racism functions in one national setting, and to consider political reasoning about race and ethnicity in relation to processes of young people’s identity positioning. Three main lines of argument are developed. The first concerns students’ positioning of themselves vis a vis the current ‘race debate’ in Australia, and in relation to us as researchers, including their negotiation of the protocols for speaking about ‘race’ and racism. This includes consideration of the methodological and political effects of white Anglo women asking question about racism and ethnicity to ethnic-minority students who are routinely constituted as ‘Other’: what blindnesses and silences continue to operate when posing questions about racism directly? A second and related focus is the range of emotional responses evoked by asking questions about racism and about an Australian politician [Pauline Hanson], who has been prominent in race debates. Third, we examine young people’s construction of ‘us and them’ binaries and hierarchies of Otherness and whiteness. We argue throughout that reasoning about race, national identity and Others, and the taking up of ‘political positions’, is intimately linked to identity formation and to how we imagine ourselves in the present, the past and the future.
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ItemSocial justice and the middle( 2000)‘Social justice’ is not a straightforward concept; and nor is the question of what schools do in relation to it. In this article we want to elaborate a little on the first of these claims, and illustrate the second by choosing to talk about two ‘middle’ or ‘ordinary’ high schools and their apparent impact on the students in them whom we followed in a longitudinal study from 1993 when they were in grade 6 to the present year, when most have finished school.
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ItemWill content regulation encourage ISP rationalisation?(Communications Law Centre, 1999-05)Discusses the Commonwealth governments policy debates surround online content regulation and possible effects on industry structure and competition in Australia.
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ItemPornography, protection, prevarication: the politics of internet censorship(University of NSW Law School, 2000-03)A short article that discusses the development of internet censorship laws in Australia, the politics surrounding them, and the symbolic nature of this legislative regime.
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ItemOnline regulation: not so ground-breaking(Communications Law Centre, 1999-06)Outlines the core elements of the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999.
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ItemDeath of distance or tyranny of distance? The internet, deterritorialization, and the anti-globalization movement in Australia(Routledge, 2001)Much of the analysis of the anti-globalization movement that has emerged in the last five years has focused on the degree to which the Internet has played a crucial role in contemporary social movements. It is commonly argued that the Internet helps create “virtual communities” that use the medium to exchange information, coordinate activities, and build and extend political support. Much of the commentary on the web as a means of political mobilization for social movements stresses the degree to which the Internet compresses both space and time, accelerating the exchange of information among whomever has access to this technology. Equally important in this view is the deterritorialized nature of on-line protest and the diminution in importance of “place” in current anti-globalization campaigns. Certainly this argument features prominently in analyses of the campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in 1997-98 and the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Seattle in November and December 1999. Our examination of the antiglobalization movement in Australia however leads us to a different conclusion: that while the Internet does indeed compress time, it compresses space in a different, and indeed quite variable, way. We examine the way in which Australians protested against the MAI and against the WTO meetings in Seattle, and show the differences in the nature of protest in each case. In the MAI case, the protests were well-organized and national in scope, with the Internet playing an important role in organizing the movement. By contrast, in the case of the WTO, the movement was minor and relatively marginal, with the Internet playing little discernible role in galvanizing protest. We conclude that crucial to an understanding of the differences was the considerable difference in the importance of “place” in each case.