School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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ItemDemocratic constitutions, disobedient citizens: conflict and culture in Habermas’ political theory( 2023-12)This thesis reads Habermas’ political theory in light of his arguments about civil disobedience. I argue that the concept of civil disobedience stands in as a model of democratic conflictuality that is otherwise absent from Habermas’ formal political theory. The idea of social conflict within boundaries, formed not by legality but by a democratic ethos, is the basis of what I term ‘disobedient citizenship’, a concept implicit in Habermas’ theory that nonetheless displaces his model of procedural civic patriotism as the cultural centre of democratic politics. I argue that Habermas' central programmatic claim that ‘democracy and the rule of law are internally related’ can be revisited from this perspective. In addition, his writings on religion and interstate relations indicate that the notion of disobedient citizenship is central to spaces of ‘complementary freedoms’ that are constituted by a culture of tolerance, rather than procedural secularism or international law. The thesis argues that both conflict and tolerance are core values in his democratic theory. The thesis therefore presents a critical but sympathetic reading of Habermas’ ‘unwritten monograph’ on political theory. It argues that the modernity of democracy emerges in Habermas’ work not primarily through epistemic or cognitive rationality, but rather through the openness with which the democratic imagination approaches disagreement and conflict, evaluates and sets limits to it.
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ItemDecoding Discrimination: Unraveling Gender Bias in Semi-Automated Recruitment( 2023-08)This thesis examines the complex issue of gender bias in recruitment, focusing on the potential discrimination perpetuated by predictive technologies. It investigates the extent to which semi-automated hiring systems discriminate against women and the use of feminine language in recruitment settings, highlighting the ethical implications and accountability for potential discriminatory outcomes. While previous studies have explored subconscious biases and the effectiveness of anonymizing applicant names (i.e., blind hiring - Goldin & Rouse, 2000), this research goes beyond surface-level indicators to investigate the discrimination arising from subtle cues, feminine indicators and language usage in CVs. The study is grounded in classic sociological perspectives, highlighting scholarly works of Goffman (1998), West and Zimmerman (1987), Correll, Benard and Paik (2007) as well as Acker (1990), and couples them with computational approaches to unbox the algorithms and analyze gender discrimination within the hiring process. It examines how recruitment algorithms replicate prevailing gender biases and scrutinizes the construction of gender in curriculum vitae (CVs) using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Additionally, the study explores the effects of caregiving gaps in men and women's CVs and examines the interplay between gender composition in occupations and gender bias in semi-automated recruitment processes. The research findings presented in this study yield noteworthy scholarly contributions on several fronts. Firstly, they provide compelling evidence to substantiate the claim that semi-automated hiring systems can exhibit discriminatory tendencies when evaluating CVs, when confronted with gender indicators such as gender-indicating names. This empirical insight serves to underscore the potential biases inherent in such systems and highlights the need for proactive measures to identify, mitigate, and rectify these discriminatory practices. Secondly, the study effectively elucidates and categorizes gendered keywords that algorithms tend to prioritize as predictive markers of gender. This identification and classification of key linguistic elements employed by algorithms offer valuable insights into the underlying mechanisms driving gender-based discrimination within semi-automated hiring processes. Furthermore, the research findings shed light on how susceptible semi-automated hiring systems are, not only to the effects of gendered names, but also to feminine traits. This observation underscores the nuanced nature of discriminatory biases embedded within these systems, extending beyond mere gender identifiers to encompass broader societal expectations and stereotypes associated with femininity. Importantly, the study uncovers how the presence of caregiving roles, traditionally considered feminine responsibilities, can adversely impact job candidates, particularly when observed in men applicants. This reveals the intersectionality between gender, caregiving roles, and employment prospects to illuminate the challenges faced by individuals who do not conform to traditional gender norms and underscores the barriers they encounter in the hiring process. Lastly, the research findings dispel the notion that semi-automated hiring systems inherently discriminate against women and feminine language. Rather, these systems tend to perpetuate and replicate existing gender imbalances observed within occupations characterized by different gender compositions. This insight emphasizes the crucial role of these automated systems in perpetuating societal disparities and underscores the imperative for interventions aimed at fostering more equitable hiring practices.
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ItemThe women on the hill : an ethnographic study of deinstitutionalization(University of Melbourne, 1995)
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ItemFeels like home : young people's lived experiences and meanings of home(University of Melbourne, 2008)
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ItemFactors affecting the utilization of post acute care by the elderly in Singapore(University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemSelf-regulation : a conceptual frame for intervention with young offenders within the justice system in Singapore(University of Melbourne, 2006)
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ItemSelf-regulation : a conceptual frame for intervention with young offenders within the justice system in Singapore(University of Melbourne, 2006)
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ItemThe status of women in Islam : a case study of Pakistan(University of Melbourne, 1999)
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ItemRegulating the risks of elder abuse in Australia : the changing nature of government responses(University of Melbourne, 2008)This thesis presents a policy analysis of Federal and State Government responses to elder abuse utilising three data sources, an extensive literature review, analysis of key government documents and interviews with expert stakeholders. Historical, sociological and criminological frameworks are used to explore contemporary responses to the abuse and neglect of older Australians. Modelling undertaken to estimate the current and projected scale of elder abuse predicted that there were 87,000 cases in 2007, that there would be 120,000 by 2017 and 200,000 by 2037. The ageing of the Australian population justifies the development of a more concerted and nationally co-ordinated strategy. Despite considerable contest between prevention and protection advocates, Australian Governments since the mid 1990s have adopted a fairly comprehensive and consistent policy framework involving prevention, investigation and case management, access to justice, legal and financial protections for older people without mental capacity, regulation and sanctions. This thesis argues that these six elements are likely to form the basis of future development and explores the utility of the responsive regulation thesis in such development. Several gaps in existing responses are identified, namely the lack of victim support services, the inadequate funding base, the low level of community and professional education and ambiguities about agency response responsibilities. Reforms needed over the next decade to address these gaps are identified.
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ItemBeyond the clinical dichotomy: a phenomenological examination of echolalia from the parent perspective to inform educational and clinical policy and practice( 2023-12)Historically, echolalia has been defined as the repetition of words, phrases, sounds and noises. In practice, echolalia has predominantly been siloed within the fields of speech pathology and behavioural psychology. This form of speech has been frequently reported in Autistic school-aged children (and is observed in other conditions such as Downs Syndrome, certain speech aphasias, dementia, and Giles De La Tourettes, amongst others) but has also been observed to occur in adulthood. Within the literature are two paradigms that have sought to examine echolalia. One paradigm, termed “developmentalism”, understands echolalia to hold important communicative and non-communicative functions. This perspective seeks to develop communicative echolalia towards more self-generated speech while maintaining that non-communicative echolalia holds important emotional-regulatory purposes. The alternative paradigm, termed “behaviourism”, perceives echolalia to be non-communicative and seeks to supress or abate echolalia. Behaviourism also seeks to modify instances of echolalia for emotional-regulatory purposes because of the perceived negative social factors. These paradigms, which are clinically orientated and academically constructed, have created a dichotomous literature. That is to say, the literature has given little consideration to any alternative perspectives that may exist. So, too, is the literature relatively silent on those who experience echolalia across a variety of different environments and contexts, such as parents, teachers, and other caregivers. Practice wise, clinicians, largely guided by literature, come to approach echolalia through either one of the two paradigms. Ironically, parents, who arguably have the greatest exposure to the echolalia of their children and who are intimately involved in intervention programs, have rarely been asked their perspectives in a research context to contribute to inform policy and practice. This research sought to step outside of the clinical dichotomy to provide a voice to parents and develop new insights to inform educational policy and clinical practice based on their experiences of echolalia. Employing a hermeneutical phenomenological methodology, 133 parents (of 134 people with echolalia) undertook semi-structured interviews. These data were subject to multiple analyses, such as thematic analysis, hermeneutic and transcendental phenomenological analysis, and grounded theory. The program of inquiry presents a series of studies which, using the same participants and their responses, analyse the data in different ways. Across all studies, it was found that not all parents experience echolalia in the same way as clinicians. That is, the parent experience is different. Specifically, some parents understand echolalia as something that fuses current perspectives, while others are not yet able to ascribe to a particular understanding due to their child’s relatively young age. It was also found that some parents describe and define echolalia in a different way than that proposed in clinically orientated literature. Here, parents shared six concepts they understand as essential to use when formulating a definition of echolalia from within the parental perspective. The proposed definition is one that does not align itself with any prevailing dichotomous perspective and instead broadens our understanding of what might constitute the possible functions, structures and contexts surrounding echolalia. Essentially, the proposed parent-informed definition means that echolalia can be defined in a variety of different ways, with parents experiencing these different ways within the ecosystem of echolalia. In addition to proposing a new definition of echolalia, experiences of echolalia emerged from the research inquiry whereby some parents have clear roles to play, such as advocating for their child in the community, as a part of their experience. Alongside this, some parents viewed their child’s echolalia through a neurodiversity-affirming lens in which they pushed back against any therapeutic approaches in favour of celebrating their child’s individual difference. The parent experience provided new ways of thinking about echolalia in such a manner that a new parent-informed taxonomy of echolalia is proposed. Essentially, the prevailing clinically orientated, and academically constructed understandings of echolalia, were not sufficient in scope to explain the multifaceted, complex parent experience of echolalia. The new ways of thinking about echolalia informed by parents have important implications for policy and professional practice. In practice, when consulting with parents (and people with echolalia), clinicians and teachers need to be open to a wide variety of different perspectives on echolalia and seek to incorporate these in a collaborative approach. Further, practitioners need to be aware of refraining from delivering discipline-driven intervention (either behavioural or developmental) in the first instance, and instead seek to understand the totality of the parent experience and consider these in their practice, be it in the formulation and delivery of therapy in a clinic setting, or the design of pedagogy and implementation of curriculum for the classroom.