Sexy and sovereign? Aboriginal models hit the ‘multicultural mainstream’

Long argued by post-colonial scholarship, Indigenous sexualities have been variously cast as pathological and abject, or fetishized and exotiziced. In the Australian context, Aboriginal sexualities have never been granted a normalized, agentic visibility in the white Australian imaginary. Since the 1990s, however, there has been an increase of ‘sexy’ Aboriginal ‘stars’ in the Australian media. This newfound visibility invites fresh questions about race, beauty, appropriation and resistance, most particularly in ways that centres Aboriginal narratives: What does it mean to be visible and ‘mainstreamed’ in a media that ‘values diversity’, whilst denying sovereignty for Indigenous people? This question is significant in the Australian context, but also has relevance for rethinking race, sexuality and media representations in colonial contexts internationally. The paper explores this newfound exposure through the voices of two Australian Aboriginal women, Samantha Harris and Magnolia Maymaru. These women have come to national and international fame as celebrated models in a fashion industry priding itself on becoming more inclusive and multicultural. It focuses on their responses to journalists over the course of their careers, as well as how the stories construct beauty and Aboriginality. I draw on Indigenous feminist scholars, particularly the work of Irene Watson, who foreground the subject of sovereignty and remind us that discourses of multiculturalism have a charged meaning for Indigenous people. I also draw on the insights of Elizabeth Povinelli who considers how sexuality intersects with discourses of empire, and how Indigenous people employ ‘creative engagements’ with liberal multiculturalism. Positioning sovereignty and multiculturalism side by side, I reflect on how Samantha and Magnolia enact a sovereign sexuality, and what this might look like. Rather than fix colonial alterity or reproduce multicultural ‘inclusions’, their narratives skirt, sidestep and ‘dance’ with the discourses constructing their lives, attending to race while transcending its colonial limits.     

Mediating affect in John Pilger’s Utopia: ‘the good life’ as a structure of whiteness

ABSTRACT

This article proposes that whiteness should be thought of as an affective structure, theorizing whiteness in terms of optimism, possessive subjectivity and multiculturalism. The article shows how the optimism of ‘the good life’ [Berlant, L., 2011. Cruel optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] is linked structurally to whiteness in the construction of the Australian nation-state. In this context, Utopia [2013. Film. Directed by John Pilger. Australia: Antidote Films] specifically identifies whiteness as an affective structure. The article develops by unpacking this claim. First, I consider how the affective structure of the Australian nation-state is encountered through the mutual mediation of ‘media’ and ‘place’. I focus on the example of the film's journey to Rottnest Island – formerly an island prison, now the destination of holiday makers – to highlight how the optimism of arrival links whiteness to the present. Second, I develop an analysis of the affective surfaces of whiteness by analyzing the film's encounter with ‘White Man faciality’ [Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1987. A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press] and Indigenous ‘slow death’ [Berlant, L., 2011. Cruel optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press]. Through producing a series of faces, Utopia portrays whiteness as a deflective surface that propagates the ‘onto-pathology’ of white Australia [Nicolacopoulos, T. and Vassilacopoulos, G., 2014. Indigenous sovereignty and the being of the occupier: manifesto for a white Australian philosophy of origins. Melbourne: Re.press]. Utopia also portrays whiteness as an absorptive surface in which Aboriginal self-possession – including, in the form of life – disappears. The film emphasizes the loss of Aboriginal life through illness and suicide linked to incarceration, overcrowding and state-induced impoverishment. The article concludes by locating media (including Utopia) within the tension between absorption and deflection as a tension between the different spatial actions of the affective relations that mediate whiteness.     

Teaching cultural humility for social workers serving LGBTQI Aboriginal communities in Australia

ABSTRACT

It is well documented that colonization and subsequent repressive policies have wrought devastating changes in the lives of Aboriginal people in Australia. Social workers are an essential group for improving social justice and self-determination for Australian Aboriginal people. The Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) acknowledges that Aboriginal people make a unique contribution to the life of the nation and mandates that social work educational programs provide culturally responsive content that acknowledges the value and contributions of Aboriginal people. Social work educators need to embed this content without reinforcing stereotypes or being tokenistic. This is a challenge when teaching about intersecting identities, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and intersex (LGBTQI) Aboriginal people. We outline the terms used in this space and propose that cultural humility is an acceptable framework to consider. We introduce key conceptual terms used in LGBTQI Aboriginal communities. Finally, we provide recommendations for engaging with LGBTQI Aboriginal peoples.     

Experiences of health service providers establishing an Aboriginal-Mainstream partnership to improve maternity care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in an urban setting

Australian policy encourages multiagency partnerships between hospitals and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations to improve the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Service planners remain unsure about how to implement such partnerships in maternity care, and there is a lack of appropriate tools designed to gauge the state of such partnerships for the Australian Indigenous context. In 2013, two Aboriginal health services and a major tertiary hospital partnered to deliver best practice maternity care to Indigenous families in Brisbane, Australia. A participatory action research approach underpinned this study. Semi-structured qualitative interviews and focus groups were conducted with 21 of the partnership staff. All interviewees emphasized the partnership’s commitment to improving long-term health and wellbeing for Indigenous families. Strategic planners were more likely to report a positive partnership than staff involved in service delivery who had diverse views. This highlights the challenges of change management when conducting such a significant service redesign in this cross-cultural context. We detail changes made within the partnership in response to the findings and provide suggestions for future development of an evaluation tool to review the state of Aboriginal-Mainstream Partnerships.     

‘When you have no law you are nothing’: Cane toads,social consequences and management issues

In this article we demonstrate that Yanyuwa people have detailed biological knowledge of their northern Australian environment, which is culturally defined and embedded within their relationships to country, resources and each other. Through a case study of the impact of Bufo marinus (cane toads) on Yanyuwa culture and everyday life, we argue that Aboriginal management strategies and Aboriginal peoples’ intimate knowledge of species and environment need to be understood as both legitimate and fundamental when engaging in management initiatives in Australia. We demonstrate that for Yanyuwa people emotional engagement with their environment is underpinned by a morality of social and environmental relations and that ‘memory’ is pivotal to this engagement. We conclude by briefly delineating how the adoption of a ‘moral ecology’ perspective goes some way to addressing issues pertinent to discursive encounters at cultural management frontiers.     

The Impact of Long–term Visitor Migration on Projections of Australia's Population

In 1999 and 2000, net long–term visitor migration to Australia exceeded net permanent migration for the first time. A shift in Australia’s migration entry from permanent settlers to long–term visitors has many implications. This paper focuses on the longer–term demographic impacts of this change. In conventional projections of Australia’s population, particular levels of annual net overseas migration are assumed and there is an implicit assumption that these levels represent permanent migration. The question addressed in this paper is: if permanent residents and temporary residents of Australia are treated as two separate populations, does this change the outcomes of population projections? The paper uses a new projection model that divides the Australian population into these two components. Each population is projected separately with provision for movement from the visitor population to the permanent population. Visitors who do not convert to permanent residence are “tagged” with their expected year of departure and are taken out of the population in that year. They are also assumed to have a zero birth rate (because any births they have will leave with them). A conventional population projection based on 1999 levels of annual net overseas migration (88,000) results in an Australian population of around 25 million in 2050. In contrast, a “standard” projection, which is also based on 1999 migration levels, but considers permanent movements (50,000 net annually) and long–term visitor movements (125,000 annual arrivals) separately results in a population of 23 million by 2050. Other projections are carried out in which specified net migration targets are met through varying either the level of net permanent–resident migration, the level of long–term visitor arrivals, or the rate of conversion of long–term visitors to permanent residence. The central conclusion of the study is that dividing the Australian population into two parts, permanent residents and long–term visitors, and projecting them separately into the future makes a considerable difference to the results of population projections.     

Bonding and attachment of Australian Aboriginal children

In New South Wales, Australia, there is an increasing emphasis in the children's court on bonding and attachment assessments to determine whether or not a child remains with their carers. Aboriginal children and young people are over nine times more likely than other children and young people to be in out‐of‐home care. There is a paucity of information on culturally appropriate assessments of Aboriginal children in relation to bonding and attachment. Most assessments on the Australian indigenous families are based on the dominant Australian community's perception of what constitutes competent parenting. The question arises as to whether we are making psychologically and ethically sound decisions about whether or not a child remains with their Aboriginal carers based on evidence that is culturally appropriate for Western families but culturally inappropriate for the indigenous families. It is argued that the core hypotheses of attachment theory such as caregiver sensitivity, competence and secure base have to be based on the Australian Aboriginal people's cultural values. The aims of this paper are to explore the current practice on the bonding and attachment assessment of Aboriginal children using a dynamic eco‐systemic approach in the assessment of bonding and attachment of the indigenous people, with an emphasis on the historical, cultural and spiritual contexts. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Re-signing: A Cultural-Historical Study of Signs for Supporting Young Children’s Development of Emotion Regulation

Recent cultural-historical literature stresses the need for understanding the role of signs in emotional development. This article examined how the signification of children’s emotions in everyday parent–child interactions creates the conditions for the emergence of intrapersonal emotion regulation. Four families with children ages 3–6 years were studied in Australia. Findings indicated that parents’ re-signing supported the emergence of children’s intrapersonal emotion regulation. We argue that the cultural line of emotional development needs to be foregrounded and the process of development theorized, thus contributing to better understandings of the process, rather than the product of children’s development of emotion regulation.     

‘Think imperially’: Indian journalists’ goodwill visits to White Australia, 1927 and 1947

ABSTRACT

Academic research on the White Australia Policy has spanned the history of Asian migration and policy-making initiatives in Australia. However, the role of popular transnational media images and stories of the past that inform the socio-cultural understanding of Australia–India cross-cultural relations has been under evaluated. In this paper, using unexplored archival material from popular newspaper reports and columns, I will examine the ‘goodwill visits’ of two Indian journalists, K. K. Lalkaka and Sir R. Srinivasa Sarma, to Australia in 1927 and 1947. By assessing the role of these two journalists, this paper will highlight transnational issues such as migration, ethnicity, race, class and trade between the two countries. Borrowing from Vineet Thakur’s research highlighting the role of first diplomats in the pre-independence era India, this article will contribute to the field of history in Indian diplomatic studies and historiography of Australian–Indian cross-cultural relations.     

Hearing the stories of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social workers: challenging and educating the system

Hearing the stories of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social workers highlights the powerful influence that cultural identity has on their practice. Their identity is continuously negotiated alongside a professional social work identity that is dominated by Western discourse. The tensions that these social workers experience in their practice is revealed in the findings of a qualitative research project conducted by an Indigenous and a non-Indigenous practitioner and researcher. The researchers spoke to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social workers engaged in diverse areas of practice across Australia. Their stories reveal a complex range of cultural and professional challenges. These include the difficulties encountered when working with their own kinship networks and the need to constantly negotiate personal and professional boundaries. The paper concludes with some thoughts about how the practice of Indigenous social workers can provide valuable lessons for Australian social work.     

From International Solidarity to Migrant Activism: Critical Junctures in Philippine–Australian History

This essay examines the social and political contexts of the establishment of the first Philippine Australian Solidarity Group (PASG) and then its subsequent demise in the face of intra-group and external challenges. The demand to decolonise the conduct of solidarity within the PASG was more than a case of alleged racism, but a symptom of two intersecting phenomena. There was the growing population of immigrants who sought to find an identity in Australia through activism. Their solid political agenda, thus, intersected with the need to re-evaluate the structure and political agenda of PASG as an ‘old’ social movement. Drawing from the critical junctures in Philippine–Australian social movement, the essay sheds light on the risks of a centralised political body with a ‘diverse’ membership but also the benefits of responding to challenges to continuously re-write the rules of activist engagement, thus to re-invigorate the politics of resistance.     

Inventing Mastery: Patriarchal Precedents and the Legal Status of Indigenous People in Australia

The paper discusses some aspects of Aboriginal legal status in Australia from the perspective of survival, transformation and reinvention of early modern legal codifications of household mastery. Traces of masters' and husbands' entitlement to the labour of servants, children and wives, as well as their magistracy over household dependents, not only survive in today's laws and social relations; at times, they have been reinvented in a process which reversed the presumed movement from contract to status. The original dispossession of Australia's Indigenous peoples by British settlers set the stage for a particularly destructive instance of such process. Its legacy continues to shape contemporary struggles for Aboriginal rights.     

The barbarism of civilization: cultural genocide and the 'stolen generations'

Norbert Elias suggested that 'civilization' involves the transformation of human habitus so that violence of all sorts is gradually subjected to greater and more sophisticated forms of management and control, whereas 'decivilization' encompasses processes which produce an increase in violence and a breakdown in the stability and consistency of on-going social relations. What remains unexplored is the extent to which 'civilizing offensives', the self-conscious attempts to bring about 'civilization', have revolved around essentially violent policies and practices. This paper examines the systematic removal of indigenous Australian children from their families, largely for the social engineering purpose of the gradual and systematic annihilation of Aboriginal cultural identity. At the time, these policies and practices were constructed by most observers as contributing to the 'welfare' of Australian Aborigines, and this intersection of welfare and violence raises the possibility that civilization and decivilization, rather than being different processes which may or may not run alongside each other, interpenetrate each other so that, under certain circumstances, societies are 'barbaric' precisely in their movement towards increasing civilization. It may also be possible to describe the move away from the systematic removal of Aboriginal children since the 1970s as itself part of a civilizing process, an increasing recognition of the human rights of Australian Aborigines and of the inhumanity of those policies and practices. The paper concludes by addressing the implications for theories of civilization and decivilization, as well as more generally for our contemporary understanding of what it means to be a 'civilized' modern citizen.     

Women and the Emergence of the NAACP

This article discusses contributions of women to the emergence of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Using network analysis, the author studied affiliations between African American and White women who signed “The Call,” a petition calling for a national conference to obtain civil rights for African Americans. These links led to the origin of one of the most successful organizations in the fight for equality. Their experiences reflect the segregation and conflicts of the era. They also suggest strategies for facing cultural issues today. Teaching about social work history, its legacy of reform, and its commitment to social justice gained from the social movements of the Progressive Era can help social work students, most of whom are women, understand how social change can occur.     

Nordic cultural studies — An introduction

ABSTRACT

Histories of representation of Blackness are quite distinct in Australia and in America. Indigenous Australian identities have been consistently ‘fatal’, in Baudrillard's use of that term. So, while Black American representation includes intensely banal images of middle-class, materialistic individuals, such histories are largely absent in the Australian context. This implies that the few such representations which do occur — and particularly those of everyday game shows such as Sale of the Century and Family Feud — are particularly important for presenting a trivial, unexciting version of Aboriginality. This also clarifies the distinction between American and Australian versions of Blackness, and suggests that the latter set of representations might be more usefully viewed in relation to Native American rather than Black American images. The status of indigeneity might prove to be more relevant to Australian Aboriginal representation than the previously favoured identity of skin colour (Blackness).     

Dreams and aspirations of mobile young Aboriginal Australian people

This article explores the dreams and aspirations of mobile young Aboriginal Australian people aged between 13 and 25 years, who move in, out and through remote, regional and urban locations. Considering dreams and aspirations in the context of cultural difference is the central focus of this article, which uses a critical and deconstructive approach to the Eurocentric conceptualisation of youth policy terminology in Australia. Participatory and ethnographic techniques were used for this research study which engaged directly with mobile young Aboriginal Australian people. Through exploring the dreams and aspirations of this cohort of participants, this study challenges popular stereotypes depicting young Aboriginal Australian people as delinquent and disengaged. All young participants in this study expressed the dream of wanting to contribute positively to society. Aspirations for the future were expressed and formed by a set of values which were found not to reflect dominant cultural assumptions of successful transitions into adulthood.     

‘Aboriginal mass culture’: a critical history

In Australia, some Aboriginal art objects are celebrated as fine art of great cultural, aesthetic and economic value, while the vast majority are judged to be stylistically derivative and intrinsically compromised by overtly mercenary market forces. This article introduces the concept ‘Aboriginal mass culture’ as a means for understanding the significance of the often maligned forms of the Aboriginal art and culture industry in Australia and to address the problem of why it continues to be difficult to demarcate the space of Aboriginal fine art. While a canonical and connoisseurial art history approach must disavow the vast majority of ‘Aboriginal art’, this article embraces a sociological perspective and turns an analytical eye upon the Aboriginal art and culture industry in its entirety, treating it as a phenomenon of visual culture that mediates Indigenous/non-indigenous relations within national public culture. It offers a critical history of ‘Aboriginal mass culture’ from the market for ‘Aboriginalia’ in the post-Second World War era through to the unruly Aboriginal art market of the present day. In so doing, it illuminates some of the drivers of these cultural forms across commercial, governmental and civil society domains. Its analysis reveals the way in which ‘Aboriginal mass culture’ manifests the unique social and economic circumstances that underpin Aboriginal art practices and the ways in which Aboriginal art is entangled with a redemptive political and civic project in Australia that has sought to affirm a resilient Indigenous presence and stimulate new visions of nationhood, heritage and intercultural fellowship.     

A Movement’s Legacy: Southern Echo and the Continued Struggle for Racial Justice in the Delta

Recent research has complicated popular understandings of the civil rights movement, calling into question its timeline, key players, and biggest victories. Scholars have highlighted the role of community organizing, arguing that capacity-building and leadership development were the movement’s real wins. Yet little research has examined how contemporary organizers view and use this history in their current work. Drawing upon interview and observational data from a qualitative case study, this article explores how one Delta organization, Southern Echo, responds to the movement of the 1950s and 1960s in its organizing today. We argue that Echo organizers and leaders see the civil rights movement as an ongoing struggle, and we show that Echo adopts a critical stance in analyzing past civil rights work; Echo’s structure and strategies are a direct response to this history. Our analysis offers a new, critical perspective to understandings of the civil rights movement.     

Bringing the Media in: Newspaper Readership and Human Rights*

Cross‐national studies examining human rights outcomes have seldom considered the role of the news media. This is unfortunate, as a large body of work in media studies suggests that the news industry effectively educates citizens, shapes public attitudes, and stimulates political action. I juxtapose these two literatures in a cross‐national context to examine the print media’s impact on a state’s human rights performance. First, examining micro‐level evidence from the World Values Survey, I show that an individual’s level of media consumption, including newspaper readership, is positively associated with participation in human rights organizations. Next, I present macro‐level evidence regarding the aggregate effect of a society’s newspaper readership on its human rights record. Analyzing an unbalanced dataset with a maximum of 459 observations across 138 countries covering four waves during the 1980–2000 period, I use ordered probit regression to examine the relationship between a state’s newspaper readership and its Amnesty International rating. I find that newspaper readership exerts strong, positive effects on a state’s human rights practices net of other standard predictors and temporal/regional controls. Moreover, the effect of readership is robust to a number of alternative specifications that address concerns with ceiling effects, measurement bias, influential observations, sample composition, mediation, endogeneity, and the impact of alternative forms of media consumption (i.e., the Internet and television).