Australian Journal of Social Issues最新文献

{"title":"The Insistence of Blackness and the Persistence of Antiblackness in Ireland","authors":"Philomena Mullen","doi":"10.1002/ajs4.70022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70022","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper positions Ireland as a critical site for examining the insistence of blackness and an antiblackness created and sustained through Irish ethnonationalist imaginaries and exclusionary processes. Drawing on connected sociologies and Irish Black Studies, this enquiry argues that antiblackness in Ireland operates as a generational force, shaping racial boundaries of belonging for those racialised as Black. Blackness is problematised as both a product of imposed racial frameworks and a generative category, one that resists the confines of traditional diasporic trajectories. This paper advances a rhizomatic understanding of blackness and being Black in the Irish context—as both product and poiêsis—as a form of diasporic linkage. The emergence of Irish Black Studies at Trinity College Dublin offers a critical corrective to dominant frameworks within Irish historiography and sociology, frameworks that erase the epistemic and material presence of blackness in Ireland. By engaging blackness not as a static identity but as a site of rupture and resistance, Irish Black Studies cultivates a disruptive force that redefines the potential for transnational solidarities and epistemic reclamation within and beyond the Irish context.</p>","PeriodicalId":46787,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Social Issues","volume":"61 3","pages":"481-489"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajs4.70022","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149011627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Turkeys Cannot Vote for Christmas’: Why Epistemic Disobedience in an Anti-Black World Matters","authors":"Morgan Ndlovu","doi":"10.1002/ajs4.70047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70047","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Never in the history of global coloniality has the idea of epistemic disobedience been as important as in the 21st century. This is not only because the struggle for decolonisation has shifted from physical confrontation between the coloniser and the colonised into a battle of ideas but also because the former has deployed the idea of knowledge to co-opt the latter into sustaining the very power structure in which he/she is oppressed. While the idea of epistemic disobedience has become irresistible to many decolonial scholars, policy makers and activists, its meaning (s) and implications in practice are yet to be elucidated. In this article, I seek not only to explicate the necessity of epistemic disobedience for black liberation within an anti-black world, but also to unpack its practical implications when deployed as a strategy for progressive decolonisation. Thus, I deploy the ideas of diachronic and synchronic agency to emphasise the significance of right positioning in the practice of epistemic disobedience within the power structure of global ‘modernity/coloniality’. (The term ‘modernity/coloniality’ is meant to emphasise that Western modernity is always constitutive of coloniality as its darker side).</p>","PeriodicalId":46787,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Social Issues","volume":"61 3","pages":"490-498"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajs4.70047","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149011626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Racial Misrecognition and Micro-Practices That Undermine Dignity: Insights From [Black] Africans in Australia","authors":"Kathomi Gatwiri,&nbsp;Samara Kim","doi":"10.1002/ajs4.70080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70080","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This article theorises experiences of racial indignity among [Black] Africans in Australia by examining how racial misrecognition (disrespect, dismissal, inferiorisation, silencing and erasure) systematically undermines, erodes and compromises their dignity and personhood. Using a dignity-informed theoretical framework, the study explores how dignity is racialised, constructed, denied and contested within the Australian socio-political context. It critiques the dominance of ‘race neutral’ and ‘colourblind’ discourses that obscure the routine operations of racism, particularly anti-Black racism, and their role in positioning Black Africans within marginal and liminal social spaces. The article argues that Australian political and social institutions have yet to meaningfully confront their embedded histories of anti-Blackness, and proposes 'dignity' as an essential consideration of 'doing' antiracism practice. By centring Afrocentric theoretical and experiential perspectives, the study offers a conceptual vocabulary for articulating the cumulative emotional, psychological and psychic impacts of racial misrecognition, and highlights how racialisation and anti-Black racism shape everyday experiences of in/dignity.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":46787,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Social Issues","volume":"61 3","pages":"499-509"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149011560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Seeking Epistemic Justice: Experiences of Agency, Power and Epistemic Disobedience Among Black African International Doctoral Students","authors":"Amina Adan,&nbsp;Roselyn Masamha,&nbsp;Patience Hart,&nbsp;Ndiweteko Jennifer Nghishitende","doi":"10.1002/ajs4.70010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70010","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This qualitative study examines the experiences of Black African international doctoral candidates in the United Kingdom, particularly focusing on cross-race supervisory dynamics. The research employs in-depth narrative interviews and reflexive thematic analysis to explore the nuances of agency and power as experienced by these candidates. Central to our explorations are the manifestations of epistemic violence and injustice they encounter, as well as the strategies they employ for epistemic disobedience. Despite ongoing decolonial rhetoric and the increased recruitment of PhD candidates from African countries within UK universities, the participants report that the expectation to conform to Western epistemological frameworks remains a dominant aspect of their academic lives. This research critically examines how the participants psychosocially reflect upon and navigate their positions within the hegemonic academic structures that often view them as outsiders. The findings highlight the complex interplay of resistance and conformity within these supervisory relationships, revealing both the constraints imposed by, and the potential for agency within the white supremacist matrices of power in educational spaces. By centring the lived experiences articulated in the voice of our participants, this study makes a significant contribution to decolonial scholarship.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":46787,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Social Issues","volume":"61 3","pages":"470-480"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149011562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Epistemic Disobedience: Theorising Anti-Blackness, an Editorial Overview","authors":"Finex Ndhlovu,&nbsp;Kathomi Gatwiri","doi":"10.1002/ajs4.70133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70133","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;For most Afro-Black scholars, writing honestly, critically and authentically about Black and African experiences is a political act. Their resistance and what Tuck and Yang (&lt;span&gt;2014&lt;/span&gt;) call a ‘refusal’ to be written &lt;i&gt;for&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;about&lt;/i&gt; is an exercise in ‘epistemic disobedience’ (Mignolo &lt;span&gt;2009&lt;/span&gt;) or the expression of epistemic dignity. This disobedience is a form of reclaiming dignity that helps us to chart alternative paths that are de-linked from the colonial and white supremacist matrices of power that currently dominate Black anti-racism discussions and analyses. In this way, Afro-Black or Black-centred scholars are faced with the task of pushing the boundaries of knowledge in a direction that seeks to ‘re-position those who have been objects of research into questioners, critics, theorists, knowers, and communicators’ (S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni &lt;span&gt;2017&lt;/span&gt;, 4).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decolonial, Indigenous and Southern scholars have long critiqued the hegemonic habits and practices that organise Western-centric knowledge systems (Chilisa &lt;span&gt;2011&lt;/span&gt;; Mignolo &lt;span&gt;2011&lt;/span&gt;; Mignolo and Walsh &lt;span&gt;2018&lt;/span&gt;; Ndhlovu &lt;span&gt;2022&lt;/span&gt;; Ndhlovu and Ndlovu-Gatsheni &lt;span&gt;2024&lt;/span&gt;; S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni &lt;span&gt;2015&lt;/span&gt;). Central to these critiques is the insistence that knowledge production must move beyond the narrow epistemic boundaries established by colonial modernity, and instead ‘look at different beings who are capable of being knowledge producers’ (Makoni et al. &lt;span&gt;2024&lt;/span&gt;, 8). This requires a commitment to an ecology of knowledges and interknowledges, through which the work of re-membering, re-claiming and recovering the collective memory of formerly colonised peoples can be undertaken. Such work, as Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (&lt;span&gt;2009&lt;/span&gt;) reminds us, cannot be carried out through the images, metaphors, symbols, languages, grammars, vocabularies and epistemic approaches of the coloniser.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Undisciplined scholarship calls us to disobey: to refuse, resist and invert the normative ‘common-sense’ assumptions that shape understandings of the role of academics in society. It invites academics, researchers and other knowledge producers to position themselves as ‘students of society’. The ‘students of society’ perspective requires researchers to learn in partnership with ‘others’ in the pursuit of solutions to complex societal challenges (Ndhlovu &lt;span&gt;2022&lt;/span&gt;). This orientation recognises that, while researchers hold considerable influence and privilege by virtue of their expertise and disciplinary affiliations, the knowledge they possess is not the ultimate panacea for the myriad problems confronting humanity across cultures, geographies and epistemic traditions. A ‘students of society’ approach understands solutions as emerging from within diverse social communities of practice, with academic expertise constituting only one part of a much larger ecology of knowledge. In practical terms, this approach","PeriodicalId":46787,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Social Issues","volume":"61 3","pages":"432-435"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajs4.70133","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149011571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Navigating Whiteness in Australia's Anti-Racism Movement: A Duoethnographic Inquiry by Women of Colour Scholars","authors":"Franka Vaughan,&nbsp;Aish Ravi","doi":"10.1002/ajs4.70056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70056","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper applies Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore how whiteness operates within Australia's anti-racism movement as a structuring force that shapes discourse, practice and policy. Despite the anti-racism movement offering crucial spaces for resistance and reform, it remains entangled in Australia's settler-colonial present and systemic racism that disproportionately affect Indigenous peoples and other Culturally and Racially Minoritised (CARM) communities. Structural forces, including the dominance of white institutional actors and the persistence of ‘white saviourism’ continue to set the terms of engagement, often constraining the transformative potential of anti-racism efforts. Drawing on duoethnography, this paper is grounded in a series of reflective conversations between two colleagues, both women of colour, working within anti-racism research and activism. Through these dialogues, we examine the tensions, exclusions and opportunities that arise within these spaces where whiteness continues to dominate. We challenge the marginalisation of CARM researchers, who are often treated as subjects rather than active participants in shaping research and policy. Our analysis highlights the need to centre racialised voices and promote community-led collaboration. Through this reflection, we seek to deepen understanding of how whiteness functions as a system of power within anti-racism and advocate for more equitable, inclusive approaches to racial justice in the Australian context.</p>","PeriodicalId":46787,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Social Issues","volume":"61 3","pages":"446-458"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajs4.70056","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149011545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On the Prospects for African Philosophy in Australia","authors":"Bryan Mukandi","doi":"10.1002/ajs4.70055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70055","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper grapples with the situation of people of African descent in Australia by working through the constitution of the body of academic philosophy in the country. It contends with the parochialism of the Australian philosophical community and the prospects for the cultivation of greater pluralism. Taking African philosophy as one possible future constituent of Australian philosophy, the article explores three sets of reasons that are typically given for the marginalisation of Africana contributions to date: Black disinterest; nature; and philosophy itself. The insights gleaned from that investigation lead to a refusal of the status quo and a sketch of an alternative orientation towards philosophy, as well as Australian sociality more broadly.</p>","PeriodicalId":46787,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Social Issues","volume":"61 3","pages":"436-445"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajs4.70055","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149011620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Building Community Amidst the Institutional Whiteness of Graduate Study: Black Joy and Maroon Moves in an Academic Marronage","authors":"Hellen Magoi,&nbsp;Casianus Gemoh,&nbsp;Denise Chapman,&nbsp;Edmund Hypolite,&nbsp;Simon Angok,&nbsp;Melanie Baak,&nbsp;Joel Windle","doi":"10.1002/ajs4.70054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70054","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article reflects on the construction of a supportive community of Black Afro-diasporic graduate students and their supervisors researching issues relating to race in the field of education in Australia. It draws on the concept of marronage—a term rooted in the fugitive act of becoming a maroon, where enslaved people enacted an escape in search of refuge and autonomy within or beyond the structures of slavery. Within this framework, the student-supervisor relationship is reimagined as a relational practice that embodies collectivity and care. We conceptualise the relationality within the group as a form of Marronage, shedding light on how WhatsApp group interactions and reflections from fortnightly virtual meetings offer sustenance, joy and resistance to the institutional anti-Blackness of the academy and wider society. The agency exercised by this community is theorised in terms of maroon moves, in which Black sociability and joy intersect with and interrupt the institutional logics of and hierarchies governing higher education. In the contexts of alienation and atomisation in student experience, our contribution offers new perspectives on how graduate study can be conceptualised and organised to challenge the coloniality of higher education and nourish Black students on their journey through it.</p>","PeriodicalId":46787,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Social Issues","volume":"61 3","pages":"459-469"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajs4.70054","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149011546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Realising Aboriginal Community Controlled Approaches to Child Reunification","authors":"B. J. Newton,&nbsp;Paul Gray,&nbsp;Kathleen Falster,&nbsp;Ilan Katz,&nbsp;Kyllie Cripps","doi":"10.1002/ajs4.70065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70065","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Reunification rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care (OOHC) in Australia are critically low, even though reunification is the preferred permanency outcome for children following removal, and despite a range of mechanisms and strategies ostensibly to support effective reunification. To better understand the barriers to reunification of Aboriginal children, from the perspective of practitioners, nine practitioner forums were conducted online with 84 participants (46 who identified as Aboriginal) working in OOHC and reunification from across NSW between February and June 2023. Participants represented government, non-government, and Aboriginal organisations delivering reunification programmes to Aboriginal families through the NSW Permanency Support Programme. The study found that distinct service responses are required for Aboriginal children on different statutory orders, and that perceiving reunification from Aboriginal community approaches that focus on ongoing family and cultural connections and holistic family support is critical for successful and sustainable reunification. The paper suggested implications from the research, including a conceptual reimagining of permanency and reunification for Aboriginal children and families.</p>","PeriodicalId":46787,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Social Issues","volume":"61 2","pages":"262-273"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajs4.70065","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148269039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Implementing an Indigenous Research Methodology to Develop a Culturally Appropriate Survey and Yarning Protocol: Challenges With Retention of the Aboriginal Health, Ageing and Disability Workforce","authors":"F. Talbot,&nbsp;J. Gilroy,&nbsp;J. Gwynn,&nbsp;K. Bulkeley,&nbsp;C. Alcorso,&nbsp;K. Gwynne,&nbsp;Rob Heard,&nbsp;Sarah Peter,&nbsp;A. Haines,&nbsp;M. Lincoln,&nbsp;B. Rambaldini","doi":"10.1002/ajs4.70071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.70071","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Aboriginal staff play a vital part in improving culturally safe and effective services and supports for Aboriginal people. Research on the Aboriginal workforce helps advance a culturally safe environment for workers and Aboriginal people accessing health and community services. This study aims to identify the barriers and enablers to workforce retention of Aboriginal people who do not have university qualifications and who work in the health, disability and aged care sectors in NSW, Australia. Using an Indigenous research model, this mixed-method study aimed to recruit 150 front-line workers and 50 organisational leaders. Data collection consisted of online surveys that collected quantitative and qualitative data, followed by in-depth interviews and yarn ups with a subset of 20 frontline workers and 20 organisational leaders who had completed the survey. Participants were recruited through snowballing techniques, such as utilising networks and relationships in the communities. The online surveys were completed by participants via an emailed link and phone completion. Indigenous Research Methodologies were comprehensively applied throughout the study and included the development of a strong Indigenous governance structure. These methods are internationally recognised approaches to achieving high participation rates in Indigenous-specific research and to ensuring that all phases of research, including design and the interpretation of results, are driven and managed from an Indigenous standpoint.</p>","PeriodicalId":46787,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Social Issues","volume":"61 2","pages":"384-394"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajs4.70071","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148269151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}