{"title":"Building SMARTER Communities of Resistance and Solidarity","authors":"Andre Oboler, Karen Connelly","doi":"10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6035","url":null,"abstract":"The Cyber-Racism and Community Resilience (CRaCR) project included an examination into features of online communities of resistance and solidarity. This work formed a key part of the project’s focus on resilience and produced a deeper understanding of a range of types of actors working in this space and how they might individually contribute effectively to creating resilience. The need for new synergies between different types of stakeholders and approaches was highlighted as an area of future work. This paper explores a design for that future work that builds and supports online communities of resistance and solidarity by drawing on the lessons from the earlier research and extending them. \u0000 \u0000This new work both presents a model for cooperation and explains how different stakeholders can positively engage under the model in a smarter way. That is, through a system which facilitates Solidarity in Moving Against Racism Together while Enabling Resilience. This new approach draws on the strengths of individuals actors, but also seeks to turn points of weakness for one actor into opportunities for cooperation that strengthen the system as a whole.","PeriodicalId":43957,"journal":{"name":"Cosmopolitan Civil Societies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6035","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45415143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Navigating “Mixedness”: The Information Behaviours and Experiences of Biracial Youth in Australia","authors":"Indra Mckie","doi":"10.5130/CCS.V10I2.5941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.5941","url":null,"abstract":"It is generally understood that, ‘for those deemed white, the idea of race serves as a vast source of unearned privilege within all facets of life; for those deemed coloured, it means susceptibility to countless forms of prejudice and racism’ (Nuttgens 2010, p. 255). But what does this mean for a person with indistinguishable physical features, who is questioned daily, “where are you from?” or, even more dehumanisingly – “what are you? In the current racial climate of Australia, biracial second-generation Australians are left to choose between two or more identities on how to behave in attempts to fit binary racial groups and expectations (Shih & Sanchez 2009). \u0000This paper presents the data from six in-depth interviews with Asian biracial youth from across Sydney. The interviews explore how this group has confronted race while developing their own identities during adolescence, as well as how their understanding of being “mixed” has developed over time. In exploring this collective racial identity, I draw from my own racialised experiences to address emergent themes from my findings. \u0000Numerous displays of information behaviours emerged from the participant’s stories of isolation, belonging and resentment towards their racial mixedness. Information avoidance, browsing, seeking and satisficing were observed within their daily experiences of school, family and social life. Such practices informed how these individuals internalised their inherited intersection of racial persecution and privilege. Critical engagement with information behaviours theories justifies the modern notions of identity as a continuous state of reconstruction (Hall 1996) as the biracial participants of this study struggle to find balance with the external validation of others and their driving agency to be themselves.","PeriodicalId":43957,"journal":{"name":"Cosmopolitan Civil Societies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.5941","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43014813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Whither Standpoint Theory In A Post-Truth World?","authors":"Y. Paradies","doi":"10.5130/CCS.V10I2.5980","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.5980","url":null,"abstract":"This paper begins with a brief overview of the origins and continued use of standpoint theory in the social sciences. It highlights both historical and contemporary challenges to the utility of standpoint theory as a critical scholarly tool, including developments such as intersectionality and transgenderism / transracialism. Specifically, the implications of a post-truth era for standpoint theory are considered alongside the affective turn, purity politics and the critique of critique. Given the slow, but steady, erosion of the ivory tower in which academics enjoyed privileged access to ‘truth’, this paper concludes with the need to foster scholar activism via new forms of knowledge politics that move beyond existing approaches to standpoint theory.","PeriodicalId":43957,"journal":{"name":"Cosmopolitan Civil Societies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.5980","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48933719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Journalism during South Africa's apartheid regime","authors":"V. Alhadeff","doi":"10.5130/ccs.v10i2.5924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/ccs.v10i2.5924","url":null,"abstract":"Vic Alhadeff was chief sub-editor of The Cape Times, Cape Town’s daily newspaper, during the apartheid era. It was a staunchly anti-apartheid newspaper, and the government had enacted a draconian system of laws to govern and restrict what media could say. The effect was that anti-apartheid activists such as Mandela were not 'merely’ imprisoned, they were also banned, as was the African National Congress. Under the law, it was illegal to quote a banned person or organisation. This meant if there was to be an anti-apartheid rally in the city – and we reported it – it could be construed as promoting the aims of a banned organisation. As chief sub-editor, I had to navigate this minefield. In addition, most English-language newspapers were anti-apartheid and had a resident police spy on staff (one of our senior journalists); on a number of occasions I would receive a call from the Magistrate’s Office after the newspaper had gone to print at midnight, putting an injunction on a story. We would have to call back the trucks and dump the 100,000 copies of the newspaper and reprint. The challenge was to inform readers as what was happening and to speak out against apartheid – without breaking the law. \u0000South Africa had its own Watergate equivalent. The apartheid government understood that English speakers generally were anti-apartheid, so it siphoned 64 million rands from the Defence budget and set up the Information Department. The aim was to purchase media outlets overseas which would be pro-apartheid, and it set up an English-language newspaper in South Africa, to be pro-apartheid. It was called The Citizen – and I was offered a job as deputy editor at double my salary, plus an Audi. (I declined the offer, for the record). Two journalists uncovered the scandal, and brought down the Prime Minister.","PeriodicalId":43957,"journal":{"name":"Cosmopolitan Civil Societies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/ccs.v10i2.5924","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43335815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Polish Migrants and Organizations in Australia","authors":"Z. Kinowska, J. Pakulski","doi":"10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6002","url":null,"abstract":"The social profile and the organizational landscape of Polish diaspora, known as ‘Polonia’, in Australia has been undergoing a significant change: sociodemographic (ageing), sociocultural (diversification) and sociopolitical (integration and assimilation). The ‘wave-type’ immigration (1947-56 and 1980-89), combined with the sudden decline in immigration after Poland’s independence (1989) and accession to the EU (2004), resulted in the rapid shrinking, ageing and internal differentiation of the Polish community. The pre-1989 ‘ethno-representative’ and ex-servicemen organisations have been withering away. The ‘culture preserving’ ethnic organizations, as well as religious/church groups also weaken, due to their shrinking demographic base. The Australian ‘Polonia’ is diversifying, as well as internally dividing, the latter process accelerated by widening political-ideological divisions in Poland. Under the impact of social diversification and globalization, and in the context of evolving multicultural policies in Australia, new forms of organization and social activism emerge. Interethnic, integrative and ‘bridging’ organizations and initiatives, anchored mainly in metropolitan social circles of Melbourne and Sydney, attract the most educated immigrants and their offspring and break the mould of ethnic exclusivity. Next to traditional Polish Associations, multiplying Senior Clubs and still numerous Polish schools there also appear some nationalistic groups, active mainly in social media. These general trends: numerical decline, ageing and diversification (combined with political divisions) reflect the changing conditions in the Australian and Polish societies, as well as the processes of migrant adaptation and integration.","PeriodicalId":43957,"journal":{"name":"Cosmopolitan Civil Societies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44315944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"At Cross roads: White Social Work in Australia and the discourse on Australian multiculturalism","authors":"Devaki Monani","doi":"10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6077","url":null,"abstract":"The profession of social work intervenes in the lives of the vulnerable and marginalised. In the majority, social work policy and practice in Australia has been founded on a western practice paradigm. Recent and rapid developments in the migratory trends of migrants and refugees places additional demands on social workers to practice with and for diverse communities. This article argues that the profession of social work is reluctant to embrace the multicultural face of Australia and lacks the intellectual apparatus to respond to diversity. The article underpins Professor Andrew Jakubowicz's analysis to multiculturalism as a powerful platform for social work academics and students to critically engage with by challenge existing racism and discriminatory trends towards multicultural communities that may possibly arise in social work practice.","PeriodicalId":43957,"journal":{"name":"Cosmopolitan Civil Societies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6077","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47719237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Institutionalisation of the Public Intellectual","authors":"H. Yerbury, N. Burridge","doi":"10.5130/CCS.V10I2.5954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.5954","url":null,"abstract":"As the way academics work becomes increasingly specified and regulated, the role of the public intellectual, as championed by Burawoy and exemplified by Jakubowicz, is changing. Engagement with the professions and industry is being proposed as a requirement for a research-active academic. Prescriptions for the way this might happen have the potential to remove the sense of responsibility inherent in Burawoy’s notion of the public intellectual and the suggested use of social media to promote new knowledge potentially dilutes the notion of ‘publics’ which is fundamental to the notion of the public intellectual, substituting the individual for the collective. This in turn has an impact on the kind of informed debate that can influence policy development. This paper explores the narratives of new academics as they seek to answer the questions Giddens asserted were fundamental to the creation of identity in late modernity – What to do? How to act? Who to be? It positions these narratives of identify in a broader discourse of the role of the academic in the creation of new knowledge, perceptions of the role of the university in contemporary Australian culture and the constraints of work planning and performance management.","PeriodicalId":43957,"journal":{"name":"Cosmopolitan Civil Societies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.5954","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47269658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stranger in a Strange Land: reflections on my first fifty years in academia","authors":"A. Jakubowicz","doi":"10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6165","url":null,"abstract":"The author reflects on engaged sociology over the past half-century, exploring the political contradictions, and social and political change. The essay expresses thoughts on his retirement, and the importance of collaboration.","PeriodicalId":43957,"journal":{"name":"Cosmopolitan Civil Societies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CCS.V10I2.6165","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47322658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Poor understanding? Challenges to Global Development Education","authors":"J. Buchanan, M. Varadharajan","doi":"10.5130/CCS.V10I1.5756","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CCS.V10I1.5756","url":null,"abstract":"As members of a global community, we cohabit a metaphorically shrinking physical environment, and are increasingly connected one to another, and to the world, by ties of culture, economics, politics, communication and the like. Education is an essential component in addressing inequalities and injustices concerning global rights and responsibilities. The increasing multicultural nature of societies locally, enhanced access to distal information, and the work of charitable organisations worldwide are some of the factors that have contributed to the interest in, and need for, understanding global development education. The project on which this paper reports sought answers to the question: to what extent and in what ways can a semester-long subject enhance and extend teacher education students’ understandings of and responses to global inequalities and global development aid? In the course of the project, a continuum model emerged, as follows: Indifference or ignorance ➝ pity and charity ➝ partnership and development among equals. In particular, this paper reports on some of the challenges and obstacles that need to be addressed in order to enhance pre-service teachers’ understandings of global development education. The study, conducted in Australia, has implications for global development education in other developed nations.","PeriodicalId":43957,"journal":{"name":"Cosmopolitan Civil Societies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"10 1","pages":"1-26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CCS.V10I1.5756","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47019767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sparking a debate on coal: Case study on the Indian Government’s crackdown on Greenpeace","authors":"Ruchira Talukdar","doi":"10.5130/CCS.V10I1.5602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/CCS.V10I1.5602","url":null,"abstract":"Non-governmental organisations working on rights based issues in India have recently been in the firing line of the government. The controversial Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), originally instituted during national emergency in 1976, has been further amended in recent times to arbitrarily restrict groups speaking out against human rights abuses and environmental problems in a rapidly industrialising economy. Yet again raising the spectre of the ‘foreign hand’, governments have proceeded to cancel the licences and freeze the foreign funds of NGOs. Using the case study of the crackdown on Greenpeace on account of its advocacy against coal development, this paper discusses the main instruments, tactics and arguments engaged in stifling the capability of NGOs to protest rights violations across the landscape. It analyses Greenpeace’s fight-back and the broader civil society response to the government’s crackdown on dissent. In labelling civil society groups as anti-national in an era of neoliberal economic growth, the government’s corporate bias stands fully exposed. In standing thus exposed through its crackdown on dissent, the government’s crackdown contributed to the sparking of two much needed debates in Indian society: about who benefits and who misses out from India’s economic growth, and about the social and environmental costs of coal.","PeriodicalId":43957,"journal":{"name":"Cosmopolitan Civil Societies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"10 1","pages":"45-62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5130/CCS.V10I1.5602","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45073275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}