Description:
Although livestock welfare issues were once barely visible to mainstream consumers, animal welfare activists now combine traditional public media advocacy with digital media advocacy to spread their campaign message and mobilise consumers. This article examines one attempt to mainstream animal welfare issues: Animals Australia's' 'Make It Possible' multimedia campaign. Specifically, we contend that the campaign puts into circulation an 'affective economy' (Ahmed, 2004a, 2004b) aimed at proposing and entrenching new modes of everyday behaviour. Core affective positions and their circulation in this economy are considered from three interrelated articulations of this campaign: the release of and public response to the YouTube campaign video; Coles' short-lived offering of campaign shopping bags; and public engagement in the 'My Make It Possible Story' website. Analysis also opens up broader questions concerning the relationship between online activism and everyday life, asking how articulations in one domain translate to everyday practices.
Description:
Although livestock welfare issues were once barely visible to mainstream consumers, animal welfare activists now combine traditional public media advocacy with digital media advocacy to spread their campaign message and mobilise consumers. This article examines one attempt to mainstream animal welfare issues: Animals Australia's' 'Make It Possible' multimedia campaign. Specifically, we contend that the campaign puts into circulation an 'affective economy' (Ahmed, 2004a, 2004b) aimed at proposing and entrenching new modes of everyday behaviour. Core affective positions and their circulation in this economy are considered from three interrelated articulations of this campaign: the release of and public response to the YouTube campaign video; Coles' short-lived offering of campaign shopping bags; and public engagement in the 'My Make It Possible Story' website. Analysis also opens up broader questions concerning the relationship between online activism and everyday life, asking how articulations in one domain translate to everyday practices.
Description:
Exploring some of the implications of Heidegger's depction of Da-sein is thus the aim of this paper. To begin with, as I will demonstrate, Da-sein's way of being, in escaping categorization in terms of any particular 'waht', points instead to a 'how' and an open and transformative potentiality, a potentiality that is best exemplified by a certain mode of being-with. This, however, has implications broader than just the transformation of our understanding of Da-sein's way of being-in-the-world. Specifically, I suggest that it is this understanding of Da-sein's potentiality that not only mirrors but underpins and enables Heidegger's later delineations of the ethical and aesthetic potentiality of thinking itself. Like Da-sein, or perhaps due to Da-sein, thinking is depicted as being able to escape its traditional or common forms and constraints. These possibilities, however, raise in their turn a series of important questions with regard to the very possibility of thinking - in particular, questions concerning whether we do in fact need to dwell in order to think. Such questions, as I will show, have some interesting implications with regard to the possibility and efficacy of ethical thinking.
Description:
Introduction and Aims Treatment of opioid dependence through opioid replacement therapy is widely recognised as effective. Nonetheless, while there has been a community-based program in the state of Victoria for over two decades, consumer experiences have received little attention. This study aimed to describe the experiences of opioid replacement therapy consumers living in rural and regional areas of the state. Design and Methods A qualitative design employed an interpretative phenomenological approach. Sixteen consumers were interviewed. Thematic analysis was conducted by the researchers to examine the phenomena of consumers ' experiences and findings were verified by a stakeholder group. Results Findings centred on themes of consumers ' experience of becoming recipients; consumer perceptions of pharmacists and pharmacy settings and psychosocial impacts on consumers. A majority of participants believed opioid replacement therapy brought increased normality to their life, however systemic and psychosocial barriers impacted on well-being. The pharmacy setting itself as a public dosing space commonly provoked feelings of stigma and discrimination among consumers. Other barriers prominently reported were restrictions on number of takeaways, cost of dispensing and lack of access to medical practitioners and allied supports. Discussion and Conclusions There were psychosocial impacts on opioid replacement therapy consumers relating to financial and social burdens, stigma and discrimination. Access to medical care and a choice of pharmacy appeared to be restricted in rural regions. The findings suggest a need to address, in particular, the financial and dispensing point burdens experienced by consumers to facilitate program retention.
Description:
The cornerstone of contemporary nursing practice is the provision of individualised nursing care. Sustaining and nourishing the stream of research frameworks that inform individualised care are the findings from qualitative research. At the centre of much qualitative research practice, however, is an assumption that experiential understanding can be delivered through a thematisation of meaning which, it will be argued, can lead the researcher to make unsustainable assumptions about the relations of language and meaning-making to experience. We will show that an uncritical subscription to such assumptions can undermine the researcher's capacity to represent experience at the high level of abstraction consistent with experience itself and to thus inform genuinely individualised care. Instead, using qualia as a touchstone for the possibilities of understanding and representing experience, we trace the ‘designative’ and ‘expressive’ distinction to language in order to raise critical questions concerning both these assumptions and common practices within qualitative research. Following the ‘expressive’ account of language, we foreground in particular the hermeneutic work of Gadamer through which we explore the possibilities for a qualitative research approach that would better seek the mot juste of individual experience and illuminate qualia in order to better inform genuinely individualised care.
Description:
There is agreement between national governments, employers, and teaching practitioners and researchers that one of the foundational objectives of higher education is to teach not only higher order knowledge but key generic, transferable or employability skills, with such skills seen as essential in allowing graduates to make the transition between the world of learning and the world of work [1]. Typically described with reference to employer concern that graduates be able to practically and effectively apply their knowledge in a competitive social world, and further display flexibility and adaptability in their management of workplace and social change (e.g. [2]; [3]), such skills must be applicable to different cognitive domains or subject areas and/or a variety of social, and in particular employment, situations [4]. There is thus a burgeoning literature concerned with students' development of transferable skills, and which teaching practices may be optimal for developing their abilities (e.g. [5]; [6]; [7]; [8]). These skills have been variously defined, but lists typically include: logical and analytical reasoning, problem-solving, effective communication skills, and teamwork skills, as well as personal attributes such as imagination, ethical practice, integrity and tolerance (e.g. [9]). Within any of the above definitions are notions of personal development for not only professional environments, but also for participation in the community as an engaged citizen. As is stated by Sin and Reid [10], however, and also evident throughout the literature on such skills, a key weakness is the "vagueness in the conception" of these skills. Barrie ([11]; [12]) also reports on a lack of shared understanding of when and how to integrate and develop such skills in the curriculum and classroom. Of these skills, personal attributes prove particularly challenging to teach. This paper describes how transferable skills in ethical decision-making and practice, as well as the attributes of integrity and tolerance, can be taught within the classroom. It is based on the review of three courses, one taught to undergraduate students and the others to graduate students. The undergraduate course is a general applied ethics course that is available to students from across multiple programs. Each of these programs counts successful completion of the course as contributing to student development of ethical attributes and skills. The graduate courses are both framed with regards to professional ethical development requirements, one addressing pre-service teachers and the other graduates in the information technologies sectors. Under examination here are the modes of teaching and presentation of curricula, as well as forms of assessment. In particular our aim is to present another side to the story: student's own beliefs regarding their development as ethical thinkers. Our discussion of student beliefs and their evaluation of our teaching practices will be based upon a variety of self-reporting mechanisms active during course delivery between 2012 and 2015: formal and informal qualitative feedback received from course and teaching evaluations, unsolicited correspondence and feedback received from students, as well as self-reports collected annually.
Description:
Legal protection of animal welfare in Australia is problematic with livestock (defined here as all animals farmed for use and profit, including poultry and aquatic animals) being effectively excluded from the majority of animal protection statutes. Such legal exclusions, joined with the inherent challenges of legal reform in this field – significant issues to do with standing, costs bearing and jurisdiction – have increased the difficulties of successful litigation. Despite explicit recognition of the necessity for reform in Australian animal law – in 2008 the Australian Law Reform Commission journal, Reform, took as its subject the ‘next great social justice movement’ of animal welfare and animal rights – a number of legal strategies for reform have been summed up by the Principal Solicitor for the Pro Bono Animal Law Service (PALS), the national legal referral service for animal law operating between 2009 and 2013, as having been exhausted. Specifically, the challenges of standing and costs bearing have meant that many meritorious animal welfare matters have not been able to be pursued within the legal domain. Alternative strategies for the achievement of legal reform in this field are thus required, and at this point in the history of the Australian animal welfare movement, one significant strategy is arguably emerging: that of strategically using social media to develop public interest in these issues and to focus this interest into effective pressure in the political, social and industry domains. This paper thus carries out an analysis of this development and focusing of pressure by animal welfare organisations through their use of social media, specifically considering a) the social media strategies utilised by such peak animal welfare bodies as Animals Australia and Voiceless, and b) the recently released Animal Effect smartphone app. More generally, this is a paper outlining and analysing the architecture of social media and public pressure being conjoined in the service of the livestock law reform movement. This paper is part of a larger project in which we record and analyse how animal welfare issues are conceived, articulated and argued within the public domain.
Description:
Although livestock welfare issues were once barely visible to mainstream consumers, animal welfare activists now combine traditional public media advocacy with digital media advocacy to spread their campaign message and mobilise consumers. This article examines one attempt to mainstream animal welfare issues: Animals Australia's' 'Make It Possible' multimedia campaign. Specifically, we contend that the campaign puts into circulation an 'affective economy' (Ahmed, 2004a, 2004b) aimed at proposing and entrenching new modes of everyday behaviour. Core affective positions and their circulation in this economy are considered from three interrelated articulations of this campaign: the release of and public response to the YouTube campaign video; Coles' short-lived offering of campaign shopping bags; and public engagement in the 'My Make It Possible Story' website. Analysis also opens up broader questions concerning the relationship between online activism and everyday life, asking how articulations in one domain translate to everyday practices.
Description:
Internationalisation of curriculum (IoC) practices promote students developing knowledge of other cultures, attitudes, values and ethics. This conceptual article argues that embedding critical reflection in the IoC program–through integrating insights from both IoC thinkers and critical reflection literature–may allow educators and students to not only gain understanding and/or competency in other cultures but better address questions of privilege, power and colonisation and thereby interrogate their own normative cultural understandings. Borrowing from debates within IoC pedagogy, as well as from Ahmed’s work on critical reflection, this article also argues that cross/intercultural understanding should be understood (and taught) not as a competency but a disposition towards thinking, analysing and understanding the world which is based on critiquing the ‘self’ and its relationship with the ‘other’.
Description:
This book engages with a pressing question: How does global climate change increase the need for accountable governance? It examines interdisciplinary approaches to consider how accountable climate governance mechanisms can meet the complex challenges of environmental changes impacting natural systems and the global distributions of species, water, arable and habitable land. Integrated approaches that take heed of ecological and biological systems are identified as enabling better understandings of accountable climate governance systems, human and environmental interfaces, political and economic sectoral interplay and scalable solutions. It argues that achieving accountable climate governance mechanisms will enable states to meet the expectations of informed citizens and provide better environmental outcomes.
Description:
The plethora of public and political discourses concerned with refugees/detainees in Australia coalesced in 2005 around the private members bill introduced by Petro Georgiou (Member of Parliament for the House of Representatives affiliated with the Liberal Party of Australia) in May 2005. This bill, aimed at reforming Australia’s immigration detention policy, brought about significant changes at the legislative level (June 2005) with regard to Australia’s practices in the mandatory detention of refugees, especially the detention of children and families. These changes were also both prefaced by and led to a considerable amount of public debate in the Australian media. On this basis, 2005 has been a highly significant period with regard to the public sphere discussion of detainees, mandatory detention, and ensuing issues of national inclusivity, exclusivity, and just what it means – and takes – to be Australian. This paper thus aims to unpack part of this public discussion by analyzing letters to the editor devoted to the above issues and published in Australia’s national broadsheet The Australian between January and July 2005. In addition to outlining the major public discourses in use in these letters, this paper also flags the need for a methodology able to consider not only content but its situatedness in and implications for broader socio-political theory. Given the inextricability of such public discourses from broader social and political theories – those concerned, for instance, with identity, representation, difference, democracy, and governmentality – we use here a cross-disciplinary approach that utilises both media and discourse analysis and contemporary political and cultural theory. Consequently this paper is in two key parts. After identifying and examining the discursive positions prevalent in these letters, we then move to analyse their socio-cultural implications, unpacking just how these discursive positions function within and in terms of broader social and political theories.