‘Our own Hurricane Katrina’: Aboriginal disadvantage and Australian national identity

Since Prime Minister Howard's declaration in 2007 that child sex abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities was Australia's ‘own Hurricane Katrina’, the trope of natural disaster has been a regular feature of print and television media coverage of Indigenous affairs in Australia. The effect of this rhetorical strategy is to separate what happens to Aboriginal people from the fabric of ‘mainstream’ Australian cultural and political life; to render it alien and unconnected to the relative privilege enjoyed by other Australians. This strategy also produces peculiar temporal effects by erecting a cordon sanitaire around Australian history and the national identity that it supports. Howard's comparison of Aboriginal disadvantage with Katrina, if read alongside his politicization of the teaching of Australian history, demonstrates an unwillingness to incorporate systemic injustice toward Indigenous people within the composition of that history. This article interrogates the relationships between the manifold understandings of Aboriginal disadvantage and attempts to commemorate its violent history, as these aspects of Australian life are both integrated and refused by national identity narratives. Specifically, the paper reinterprets the trope of natural disaster as a means of comprehending Indigenous disadvantage and Australian identity by drawing on Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history. Benjamin's understanding of activism as a constructive retrieval of the past will be developed to reconnect catastrophe to history, and to enable an exploration of responsibility for that history as an integral condition of contemporary Australian identity.     

Mixed matters in Australia

ABSTRACT

Mapping attitudes toward intermarriage – who is and who is NOT considered an acceptable mate – offers an incisive means through which imaginings of belonging – ethnicity, nationhood, citizenship, race, and culture – can be critically evaluated. Looking specifically at Australia, despite a growing body of research on whiteness, and Mixedness, there is very little qualitative research on attitudes toward mixing among the different groups in Australia. Therefore, in this article, I document attitudes towards ‘mixed’ marriage through focus group interviews in communities across Australia to explore what boundaries, if any, exist and the attitudes of different groups toward intermarriage and ‘mixed’ families in Australia. Drawing from these 69 focus groups conducted across seven cities and the surrounding area of the six states of Australia: Darwin, Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, and Melbourne with homogenous groups based on the ways Australians self-identify – indigenous (Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander), white (differentiating if applicable between those who identify as Australian as opposed to European or South African), African Australian, and other groups at various community locations, I argue that national discourses of multiculturalism and imaginings of who and what constitutes being Australian heavily influence attitudes toward mixing. Furthermore, there is a clear hierarchy of desirability in terms of who is considered marriable, with pattern in the narratives and counter-narratives offered by different groups. These findings are presented within a larger discussion of how the contemporary situation in Australia compares to the institutional, individual, and ideological practices that discourage mixing globally.     

Neoliberalism,Individualisation and Community: Regional Restructuring in Australia

Since the early 1980s, Australian governments have embraced neoliberal policies as a means of improving the nation's global economic competitiveness. The impacts of such policies in regional areas have been quite profound, leading to socio-economic polarisation, population loss, and the growth of anti-globalisation sentiments. In this paper, we examine the process of regional restructuring that arises from this trajectory in Australia, and examine current policy responses to change under the neoliberal regime. We argue that while many such responses are individualistic, and based upon policies of personal responsibility, self-advancement and entrepreneurship, others are imbued with the language of community, social capital and collective action. The existence of individualism and community within the same policy agenda may appear contradictory, yet it is suggested that neoliberalism brings together these two opposing discourses through a process of what Nikolas Rose calls ‘governing through community’. We explore how neoliberalism underpins community approaches to regional development in Australia, arguing that such strategies do little to counter the negative forces of globalisation in non-metropolitan parts of the country.     

邻里社区如何促进族际融合——国际经验及其启示

邻里社区是国家治理中的最小单元,但其内涵丰富,功能多样,特别是在促进社会融合方面发挥着重要作用。在很多国家,邻里社区都是促进城市族际融合的重要平台。20世纪中叶以来,由于城市族群隔离和冲突问题日益严峻,国外理论界提出通过邻里社区规划建设促进邻里互动和族际融合的相关观点。从实践中看,国外以邻里社区为载体促进城市族际融合的策略包括:加强社区住宅设计和价格的多样性、打造族群混居格局;重视社区交往性空间规划、加强族群间的社会互动和文化表达;组织丰富的社区公共活动、增进跨文化群体间的情感交流;构建共同语言基础、鼓励社区内的文化融合;培育社区志愿组织、增强社区社会支持力度;扶持边缘社区发展、遏制族群分层等。国外城市社区建设的经验表明,无论国家的制度安排和政策设计如何精细和完善,均需要充分重视和发挥社区在促进族际融合方面的独特优势。     

Two Rescues,One History: Everyday Racism in Australia

On the same day, at different ends of Australia, two extraordinary rescues of men from extreme hardship took place. The two miners, both white and of Anglo-Celtic origin, were fêted, appeared on television chat shows and became celebrities so sought after that they had to employ an agent. The three Torres Strait Islanders, members of a grouping identified as ‘indigenous’ in the Australian social order, who had survived 22 days at sea in an open dinghy, were, to all intents and purposes, ignored by the mainstream Australian media. They would appear to have simply gone back to their families and got on with their lives. This article tracks the discursive histories in which each event was embedded to examine how this distinction could happen and how it could be so naturalised that hardly anybody commented on the disparity of treatment. It is this taken-for-granted disparity that I am describing here as everyday racism.     

Do Muslims See Australia as Their Homeland? The Notion of watan al-asli and watan al-sukna in Islam

Abstract

The concept of “country” or homeland in Islam was defined by Muslim jurists in the eighth century in the light of the sacred text. They set three categories: watan al-asli, the country of birth, the country of one's spouse or the place of permanent residence; watan al-sukna, the country of temporary residence and employment; and watan al-safari, the country that is traveled to. Accordingly, for Muslims immigrating to Australia, their new country falls into one of these categories. Muslim contact with Australia stretches back centuries. However, although early Muslims arrived on Australian shores before Europeans, they did not settle. It was not until the late 1960s, when Muslims came in mass immigration, that permanent communities were established. Since then, particularly over the last two decades, Muslims have become gradually more visible. This increase in prominence has raised anxiety from some segments of the Australian community. There are groups who view Islam as an obstacle for integration. The loyalty of Muslims to Australia is being debated, discussed and questioned by some intellectuals, politicians, media and other Australians with little or no knowledge of the Islamic theological perspective of the “notion of country”. In this article, I will argue that the “notion of country”, a concept of which even the majority of Muslims are not aware, supports integration. This article will also explore the concept of “homeland” in Islamic theology and jurisprudence and discuss the findings of a survey on Muslims’ views about Australia as home.     

Islam,Moderation, Radicalism,and Justly Balanced Communities

If media outlets and political rhetoric are to be believed, then the way to counter “radical” Islam is through “moderate” Islam. Seemingly, “moderate” Islam is that which “radical” Islam is not. In appointing “moderate” Islam as an antidote to “radical” Islam, the implication is that, conceptually at least, the two terms are contradistinctive. Yet, while much is, perceivably, known about “radical” Islam, with its associated ills of an unequivocal Islamic worldview, very little attention has been afforded to this signifier, “moderate”. Inasmuch as this term is bandied around, even scholars of Islam will acknowledge that, within Islamic education, understandings of and debates on conceptions of moderation, and moderate Muslim communities, have been somewhat overlooked. What, therefore, is a “moderate” Islam? What is a “moderate” Muslim community and how would it act? What are the implications for a “moderate” community in relation to pluralist societies? And, can such a “moderate” community offer a practical response not only to “radical” Islam, but, perhaps, more importantly, to increasingly antagonistic, liberal contexts?     

The roles of social housing providers in creating ‘integrated’ communities

ABSTRACT

Cohesion and integration agendas in Britain can be characterised by localisation of ‘race relations’ responsibilities and the importance of local institutions in shaping neighbourhoods has been acknowledged. However, little is understood about the roles of housing providers in integration initiatives. Indeed, research on housing and race has experienced a lull in the 2000s. Thus, this paper aims to examine how social housing providers negotiate their positions and are complicit in constructing a certain vision of community. It draws on interviews from the ESRC Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE)’s work in the ethnically diverse neighbourhoods of Cheetham Hill (Manchester), Newham (London), Butetown (Cardiff) and Pollokshields and Govanhill (Glasgow). The paper makes three arguments: first, that race and ethnicity as facets of ‘integration’ have been subsumed into broader agendas, yet remain implicit in community building; second, that housing organisation practices are often detached from local meanings of community and prioritise exclusionary activities focusing on behaviour change and, third, that the roles of housing organisations in constructing ‘integrated’ communities are highly variable and localised, influenced by the history and contemporary dynamics of place.     

Narratives of national belonging: the domestic,the wild,and the mutant in Australian film

This article explores understandings of postcolonial national belonging through an analysis of cinematic representations of humans, animals and the environment. It does so by analyzing a series of Australian films about plants, animals or people who are out of place or out of control. The article registers some of the changing representations of Australian flora, fauna and, by association people, as native, domesticated, simpatico, feral and wild; interpreting these shifts as recalibrations of a moral hierarchy of cultural belonging. Films including Lantana (2001) Dir. Ray Lawrence; Razorback (1984) Dir. Russell Mulchay; Rogue (2007) Dir. Greg Mclean; and Black Water (2007) Dirs. David Nerlich and Andrew Traucki are read in terms of political anxieties. Drawing on work ‘that insists humans and animals are currently bound in a complex network of relationships’, I use these films to explore issues of the nation, place, belonging in relation to aliens and natives. Given that in the past 20 years there has been increasing recognition of the history of colonialism and its effects on Indigenous peoples but also a different but related blossoming of environmental nationalism, the key question that animates this research is how these understandings are represented in film and what work animals and plants might have played in filmic cultural representations of national belonging.     

Slavery,black peasants and post‐emancipation society in Brazil (nineteenth century Rio De Janeiro)

From the analysis of archival material about small farming communities, in the northern region of the State of Rio de Janeiro, during slavery and in the period immediately post‐emancipation, this article revisits the intersection of race and class by showing how slaves, indigeneous peoples, and freed men and women have been an integral part of the constitution of this country's rural classes. By identifying a variety of socio‐economic and cultural ties between communities of runaway slaves, quilombos (maroon settlements), slave and freed peasants and slaves' autonomous economic activities in the plantation, this article departs from tradition historiography of Brazilian peasantry and shows how its history cannot be separated from of the history of the black Brazilian peasantry. More importantly, it describes how black historical experiences in Brazil has been constitutive of a complex peasant economic sector.     

Snapshots from sari trails: cyborgs old and new

In this paper, the author draws upon an examination of two apparently opposed cyborg locations and technologies to show how, in specific instances, globalization, technology, economics, culture and diasporas intersect. Such intersections produce very specific, situated contexts for productive labor forces to emerge at the interface of technologies ‘old’ and ‘new’. These situated contexts place the individual in relation to market forces and community production logics through which labor and affect are placed in hierarchies of digital globalization. The author does this by looking at how the ‘sari’ is produced, marketed and worn in two ‘cyborg’ contexts. One of the cyborg locations this article explores is online, the other is offline. By juxtaposing these ‘old’ and ‘new’ contexts of production and marketing a sari the author hopes to allow for issues to be raised that otherwise would be invisible.     

Forging a Brazilian Islam: Muslim Converts Negotiating Identity in São Paulo

Converts form a growing portion of the Muslim community in São Paulo, Brazil. Often introduced to Islam through media representations, they turn to religion for a variety of reasons, including the desire to search for spiritual truth. This article will examine questions of identity that arise during the process of religious conversion, using data gathered from extensive fieldwork. Specifically, it will analyze how male converts view the place of Islam within the context of Brazilian society and how they reimagine concepts of personal identity through religious conversion. The study suggests that converts hold diverse points of view regarding the development of their spiritual identity, emphasizing both the challenges and benefits of being Muslim and practicing Islam in Brazil.     

Rethinking the nation: Apology,treaty and reconciliation in Australia

In February 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to Indigenous Australians for past injustices. The apology was presented as a turning point in the history of the nation. According to Rudd, ‘there comes a time in the history of a nation when peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future’. The apology marked a new step in the reconciliation process in Australia, but as this article argues, the treaty issue – another controversial aspect of reconciliation – remains a major challenge to the Australian nation.     

Lost Agency for Change: The Diasporic Identity in Yizhou's Shui Community

This paper discusses how an incorporated ethnic community has gradually lost its agency for change or subjectivity to face the state. Contrary to what a postcolonial writer wants to see, in the diasporic Shui community of Yizhou (a city in China's Guangxi Autonomous District) there is a lack of agency for change or self-empowerment. The paper reports how the Shui identity is reduced to a by-product of ancestor worship within each family. The loss of agency for change and willing acculturation do not necessarily confirm the state-promoted modernization theory's linear historiography. What the Shui example proves is that the agency for change cannot be taken for granted. Although the hybrid component in the Shui ethnicity is not felt today, the chances that some revived ethnic consciousness can reinvent cultural customs should not be ruled out, as long as the Shui communities continue to carry the name of Shui. The invention of ‘The Shui people grabbing the flower lamp’, and the interpretation of keeping old trunks in the ancestors’ place are two such possible starting points. However, hybridity of this sort is reinvented from, and not embedded in, their identity. Nevertheless, the quest for being different from the larger community is both a matter of internal need and an external construction. This is why the simple name of Shui cannot guarantee itself as a basis for revival.     

Beyond insiders and outsiders: welfare and immigration reforms in 1960s US

Despite the civil rights dialogue used by the gay community, many ‘gay’ organizations and members of the ‘gay’ community continue to exclude men of color from leadership positions and ‘gay’ establishments, thus continuing to add to the notion that ‘gay’ equals ‘white’. Likewise, gay men of color experience homophobia within their racial and ethnic communities. In this paper, I discuss both the subtle and the blatant forms of racial exclusion practised in the ‘gay’ community as well as the homophobia found in racial and ethnic communities to examine how such practices affect gay men of color, particularly their self-esteem and their emotional well-being.     

Islamic Religious Organizations Across Borders: The Case of the Pakistani Migrant Muslim Community in Korea (South)

With the formation of small migrant communities in foreign lands, some religious organizations migrate along with the migrants and play a part in shaping and reshaping the socio-religious experiences of respective migrants. This paper looks into how Islamic religious organizations have been established in South Korea; how the socio-religious experience of the Pakistani Muslim minority community in Korea is mediated by these organizations; and what is the impact of this mediation on the daily socio-religious lives of the migrants. Two Islamic religious organizations—Dawat-e-Islami and Minhaj-ul-Quran—have been discussed here which originated in Pakistan and have been working around the world including Korea. Using the conceptual framework of social capital, we elaborate on three stages for establishment and working of these religious institutions: deployment of social capital for initiation; reinforcement of social capital for establishment; and sustenance with social capital over a course of time. This paper proposes that these religious organizations are established by the migrant community because of the social capital created within, as opposed to any master plan from the respective parent organizations in the country of origin. Further, these organizations become connected to mainstream organizations as a result of community efforts.     

‘I feel myself to be a world citizen’: negotiating Turkish and Alevi identity in Melbourne

The complexity and heterogeneity of modern multicultural societies can both highlight and obscure the diversity which exists within identity groups. Whilst the majority of the Turkish community in Melbourne are Sunni Muslim, significant groups of ethnically, religiously and linguistically different communities also exist. Recent research with women who participate in activities at the Alevi community centre in Melbourne has brought to light many of the issues which are faced by individuals who are doubly excluded from the mainstream of Australian life and culture as migrants and from the mainstream of Turkish diasporic life through a non-Sunni Islamic religious orientation. For some, but not all of these women there is also an added dimension of difference through embracing their Kurdish ethnicity and linguistic background. Both first and second generation Alevi women use a range of strategies to locate themselves within what one respondent called the ‘rose garden’ of Australia since the advent of immigrant diversity.     

Homicide and ‘Englishness’: Criminal Justice and National Identity in Victorian England

One venue for the formation of national identity that has received comparatively little attention in recent years, is that of the courtroom. In particular, the treatment of serious crimes in Victorian England involved a good deal of reference to notions of Englishness. In the course of their routine work, Victorian criminal courts promulgated particular and generally coherent views as to how ‘an Englishman’, as opposed to a foreigner, was expected to behave. This article examines how the judicial treatment of three types of nineteenth‐century violence – the duel, knife‐fighting and the killing of an adulterous spouse or his or her lover – contributed to reshaping the contours of male English national identity.     

Remembering Forbidden Memories: Community Theatre and the Politics of Memory

This article demonstrates how community theatre enables marginalized groups to re-member their forbidden memories and thus re-form their blocked cultural histories. I focus here on the Mizrahi group (Jews originating from Arab countries) in Israel and the way it appropriates community theatre as a tactic to articulate its own memories and history. In order to introduce community theatre as a particular alternative mnemonic practice within marginalized communities I present here together three alternative remembering systems: countermemory, community of memory, and performing history and show their connection to community theatre. I then analyse three community theatre productions which present community theatre as a popular form of performing history through which the Mizrahi actors produced a countermemory that contributed to the consolidation of their community into a community of memory.     

The Muslim Question in Australia: Islamophobia and Muslim Alienation

Islamophobia has become a significant problem across the Western world. Australia is no exception. The emergence of far right groups and a political environment that allows anti-Islamic discourse has created an increasingly unwelcome environment for Muslims, even though multiculturalism has long been a fundamental marker of Australian daily life. The rise of Islamophobia has been damaging to Australia. This paper explores the rise of anti-Islamic sentiments in Australia and the increasing marginalization of Muslim youth, showing that Islamophobia not only breaks the bond between Muslim youth and Australian society, it also polarizes relations within Australian Muslim communities.