This book brings together two vitally important strands of 20th-century thinking to establish a set of simple and elegant principles for planning, project design and evaluation. It explains the backgrounds of cultural ecofeminism and critical systems thinking, and what we find when they are systematically compared. Both theories share a range of concepts, have a strong social justice ethic, and challenge the legacy of modernity. The book takes theory into practice. The value of the emergent principles of feminist-systems thinking are described and demonstrated through four chapters of case
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An exciting product of a ten year study, commended for its originality and innovation, is a set of five practical principles, to assist in policy directions for enhanced community development and project management. The principles are derived from an imbrication of contemporary sociological theory and were applied in four discrete community development contexts in Australia to test their relevance and suitability as a framework to plan, guide and evaluate community development interventions. It was found that the principles can make practitioners' work clearer; identify gaps to address the multiplicity of often overlapping social concerns, and flag implications for future research and practice. One of these implications is the generation of 'inhabit-ability', a state of being which allows a particular place to be better inhabited, following an intervention. The concept offers the potential to move beyond a common cynicism evoked by the word 'sustainable' because of a perceived sense of dilution of the concept. The principles are a set of five short statements. Simple and elegant, the principles are: • Adopt a gender sensitive approach. • Value voices from the margins. • Incorporate the environment within research/actions. • Select appropriate method/ologies. • Undertake research/action that promotes plural, desirable and sustainable social changes. The principles are transferrable across a range of contexts, and have particular relevance to policy and planning for people working in the ecological/economic development fields. Project managers, Indigenous Elders, social entrepreneurs, local politicians, public servants, social workers, teachers, doctors, community activists, and other cultural leaders, have engaged with the principles at various levels and stages of their projects. This poster will describe the principles, and give examples of how to use them in the field, as well as invite comment and feedback from EcoSummit participants.
[Extract] Schools are complex places. They are grand social institutions, situated in local places, the site of complex cultural struggles. In the schoolyard and in the classroom, individuals seek to find their identity mediating the images, messages and knowledges about their world. Simultaneously, issues of 'complex connectivity' (Tomlinson, 1999), the rapidly moving networks of 'interdependencies that characterise modern social life' (p. 4), place economic, political and environmental pressures from local, state, national and global realms, on schools. Pressures that are valued are welcomed and desirable, and enter through the front door. Devalued cultural entities, commonly misunderstood and considered devious by teachers and parents, arrive by jumping the fences, hitchhiking in backpacks, or as illegal downloads, and remain marginalised by the dominant authority but are often fiercely guarded within youth cultures being played out in the school yard and classrooms. Other sets of values may be forced upon a school and become included in the school's rhetoric, but excluded in the practice of the social rituals performed by the school community in school culture. Some of the significant choices schools make in their response to globalisation are the issues I examine in this paper. Is it morally correct or educationally valid that some schools fail to mediate complex connectivity? Is trying to insulate their structures, policies, curriculum and students from the impact of globalisation ethically and morally more destructive to local cultural and economic communities left to battle the impacts on their own? Or do schools open their doors, engage in multidimensional flows and attempt to make sense of "fluid, irregular shapes … that characterise international capital as deeply as they do international clothing styles" (Appadurai, 1996, p 7). Process analysis of marginalisation issues that emerge at the interfaces between global forces and local cultures reveals boundary judgements and effected consequences on the community or systems within those boundary perimeters. For the purposes of this paper, I have chosen to analyse two schools currently operating within the New Basics (NB) Queensland Middle School Renewal Trial. NB, I argue, is the embodiment of global, national, state and local connectivities, and therefore, a curriculum model designed for students and teachers to mediate the complexities of globalisation. The implementation of NB in the two schools shows how schools respond to globalization at the level of curriculum and pedagogical reform. One school has embraced the trial, providing leadership, resourcing and ideology to facilitate rapid and massive change, while the other has adopted a minimalist approach to implementation in an attempt to avoid and shelter the school from its full impact. This paper's analysis concludes by considering the consequences of each school's reaction and responses to the NB in the context of uncertain political realities in the future, and makes predictions of the schools' situated preparedness in the event of differing political outcomes.
[Extract] Schools are complex places. They are grand social institutions, situated in local places, the site of complex cultural struggles. In the schoolyard and in the classroom, individuals seek to find their identity mediating the images, messages and knowledges about their world. Simultaneously, issues of 'complex connectivity' (Tomlinson, 1999), the rapidly moving networks of 'interdependencies that characterise modern social life' (p. 4), place economic, political and environmental pressures from local, state, national and global realms, on schools. Pressures that are valued are welcomed and desirable, and enter through the front door. Devalued cultural entities, commonly misunderstood and considered devious by teachers and parents, arrive by jumping the fences, hitchhiking in backpacks, or as illegal downloads, and remain marginalised by the dominant authority but are often fiercely guarded within youth cultures being played out in the school yard and classrooms.
International audience ; In 1930's China, while the country, under the rule of Nationalist, was facing the threat of the economic and military invasion of Western powers, and in particular of Japan, Chinese cinema was perceived by the intelligentsia and the politics as a tool well suited to educate the people of New China. However, neither the ruling Guomindang, nor its enemy, the Communist Party, managed to really control the movie industry, which was in the hand of private companies. This article examines the attempt made by both sides to establish a propaganda cinema and explores the reason why this attempt failed to succeed.
International audience ; In 1930's China, while the country, under the rule of Nationalist, was facing the threat of the economic and military invasion of Western powers, and in particular of Japan, Chinese cinema was perceived by the intelligentsia and the politics as a tool well suited to educate the people of New China. However, neither the ruling Guomindang, nor its enemy, the Communist Party, managed to really control the movie industry, which was in the hand of private companies. This article examines the attempt made by both sides to establish a propaganda cinema and explores the reason why this attempt failed to succeed.
AbstractBetween 1930 and 1937, the Lianhua Film Company was one of the major studios in China, and in many ways was a symbol of modernity. The policy of the Company towards its actors was quite new and contributed to the creation of a new social status for this group, especially for the women. This paper focuses on three female stars (Wang Renmei, Chen Yanyan and Li Lili,) who worked for the Lianhua Film Company. Through a detailed analysis of the photos published in its magazine, Lianhua Huabao, as well as feature films produced by the Company, we will study Lianhua's strategies to transform these women into professional actresses. Their image was created by the entanglement of three spheres: their private lives, their public lives and their fiction lives played on screen. We will consider the sometimes conflicting relationships between these spheres by looking at the visual sources (photos and feature films) in conjunction with the actresses' biographies and movie roles. This will underline the complexity and ambiguity of a process understood by the Lianhua Film Company not only as the making of professional actresses but also as the creation of a new, modern Chinese woman.
The rationales and related programs for delivering vocational education and training to Indigenous Australians have seen significant change over the past 40 years, with several influential reviews marking policy pivot points along the way. Commencing with the 1960s Martin Review, the implementation by governments of selected recommendations have led to structural reforms and the creation of public policy instruments to monitor, regulate and control access to vocational training. These activities have heavily impacted Australian First Nations people for whom certificate level qualifications are disproportionally the highest level of post-school education held. In the 'thin' markets of regional Australia, in particular, the authors of this paper argue that the changing priorities in training policy have systematically perpetuated inequity of access to, and benefit from vocational education and training, contrary to the original conception of a national post-secondary technical and further education system for Australia. Marketisation of the training sector and the transfer of funding responsibility from the public purse to the individual student/worker have produced low rates of employment and high training attrition rates for First Nations people. We argue that this arises from a fundamental shift in the meaning of equity itself. Culminating in today's implementation of training under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy explores how the refusal of self-determination, unscrupulous practices, limited choice and culturally inappropriate training continues to reinforce the nation's persistent failure to close the gap in Indigenous wellbeing.
[Extract] The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) presents an overwhelming opportunity to revolutionise the care and support given to Indigenous people. But the equity of the scheme is already at risk, with treasurer Joe Hockey yesterday warning the scheme will have to be made more efficient. Our research for the NDIS this year revealed that people living in the remote communities face a complex web of system failures spanning health care, disability services, housing and infrastructure. Without political will and bi-partisan commitment from all tiers of government to address the chronic gaps in infrastructure and health-care delivery, the NDIS scheme can't deliver on its promises in very remote Indigenous communities.
[Extract] Northern Australia, the region of Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn, is characterized by profound difference and complexity in cultures, worldviews and ways of being. An array of diverse governance responses to the way this complexity and difference manifests itself has been discussed elsewhere (Stephens, 2014). This chapter reflects in particular on the use of Governance Systems Analysis (GSA) in northern Australia in improving governance outcomes in this complex world. GSA is an analytical tool deployed to support deliberative dialogue among those involved in complex governance systems and contexts in the north. To date, its most common use has been in the mobilization of the dominant norms of governmental practice to resolve complex problems at a landscape scale. In the context of multiplicity and incommensurability of different ways of being, this chapter seeks to enhance GSA's ability to engage explicitly and ethically with genuine cultural difference embedded within northern Australian society. It uses Critical Systems Thinking (CST) to revisit, through systems thinking, GSA's structural-functionalist foundations. The chapter's objective is to enhance an approach to complex problem solving that is already used in Northern Australia to support practical policy engagements.
Evaluation of minority-culture specific treatment centres for substance use and mental health is challenging. The challenge is compounded by a paucity of validated instruments for assessing substance use and mental ill health. In the field of Australian Indigenous alcohol and other drug service provision there are few guidelines to determine which instruments should be targets for validation for use with Indigenous clients. As such, reliable, validated, evaluable data on the client population is limited, posing multifaceted concerns for clinicians and service providers as well as evaluators. The aim of this study was to pilot the use of a participatory expert consensus approach to evaluate, rate and select suitable majority-culture substance use and mental health assessment instruments for use with their clients. Eight practitioners of an Indigenous-specific substance misuse residential treatment centre participated. The findings reinforce the value of consensus approaches for stakeholder engagement and to provide a sense of ownership of the results. In this setting, consensus on the implementation of an agreed set of Indigenous-specific and non-Indigenous specific instruments improved the ownership of the instruments by clinicians allowing for the use of valid and/or reliable instruments that also had good face validity. This makes it more probable that reliable client wellbeing data will be collected. This is crucial to program evaluation at a later point in time. This study was a novel approach to generating evidence to inform practice in the absence of normative practice guidelines.
