List of Titles

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Discursive Australia : Refugees, Australianness, and the Australian public sphere

- Mummery, Jane, Rodan, Debbie

Authors: Mummery, Jane , Rodan, Debbie
Date: 2007
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies Vol. 21, no. 3 (2007), p. 347-360
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Description: The discussion within Australia of events of the last five years, such as 9/11, the Bali Bombing, the Tampa and the Children Overboard affair, Cronulla Riots, as well as the numbers of refugees approaching Australian shores, has typically fallen into a binarized form with public discourses coalescing around calls for either 'protectivism' or 'humanitarianism' (Mummary & Road, 2003). This discursive framework has in turn instantiated an ongoing debate concerning the issue of what it means to be Australian, and who is or should be included or excluded from this national identity, questions which have been particularly contentious in recent years. This project, however, aims to unpack and analyse just one manifestatation of this debate, that carried out in letters to the editor published between 22 January and 28 February 2002 in both The Australian (Australia's national daily broadsheet) and The West Australian (Western Australia's daily broadsheet). The period chosen for this analysis is important for several reasons.
Description: C1
Description: 2003005400

Rorty, Derrida, and the role of faith in democracy to come

- Mummery, Jane

Authors: Mummery, Jane
Date: 2007
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Symposium Vol. 11, no. 1 (2007), p. 33-51
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Description: Democracy may indeed be an imperfect form of government, but all the others are far worse and this, surely, is a moment for recognizing the benefits which democracy brings, not a moment for drawing attention to its shortcomings. It is a moment for confirming our faith, not a moment for doubting it.” Published over ten years ago, Susan Mendus’ statement could stand as a mantra for our times with democracy diagnosed as being at risk almost as a matter of course in our public domains over the last years. That is, despite its much touted benefits, the assumptions, concepts, and practices of democracy are currently depicted as being under threat from an array of terrorists, dictators, fundamentalists of various stripes, and even from the West’s own instituted reactions to the events of the past few years. On this basis at least it would seem that democracy has not lived up to its promise of being the “solution that other people will necessarily adopt when they cease to be ‘irrational.’” Given these points, perhaps it is advisable to follow Mendus’ advice and stop any examination of democracy that would further expose its frailties and shortcomings and simply affirm our faith in it. Of course, this is not what Mendus herself does. The above words are, after all, to be found at the beginning of an essay that goes on to consider yet another critique of democracy, that comprising the feminist challenge to the historical exclusion of women from democracy.
Description: C1
Description: 2003005408

Re-reading interpretation : The way forward for an ethico-political engagement

- Mummery, Jane

Authors: Mummery, Jane
Date: 2002
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Philosophy Today Vol. 46, no. 3 (2002), p. 313-322
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Description: Now if we might be inclined to endorse Heidegger's deconstruction of politics [and ethics] in modernity as being complicitous with a certain metaphysics of the will, a metaphysics which is ultimately hegemonic and destructive, we might also be willing to wonder whether the task of thinking that emerges from this diagnosis is not ultimately heading toward a philosophical dead end, one which, to be more specific, seems to rule out the very possibility of praxis.
Description: 2003004481

Being Australian and the problem of detainees : Petro Georgiou and inclusivity

- Rodan, Debbie, Mummery, Jane

Authors: Rodan, Debbie , Mummery, Jane
Date: 2006
Type: Text , Conference proceedings
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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.
Description: 2003004499

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Discursive Australia : Public discussion of refugees in the early twenty-first century

- Rodan, Debbie, Mummery, Jane

Authors: Rodan, Debbie , Mummery, Jane
Date: 2005
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: Paper presented at the 2nd Annual Conference of the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Sydney : 27th - 28th September, 2004
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Description: This paper interrogates recurring discourses in Australia’s public domain with regards to the issue of refugees and Australianness, and how they have been used to ratify notions of inclusion and exclusion with regards to what being Australian - or indeed being un-Australian - does and should mean. The unpacking of these primary discursive positions will be based on an analysis of the letters to the editor published in both The Australian (Australia’s national newspaper) and The West Australian, covering one key period from 22 January to 28 February 2002 (a period encompassing the Woomera hunger strike).
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Description: 2003001231

Chewing the communal cud: Community deliberation in broadsheet letters and political blogs

- Mummery, Jane, Rodan, Debbie

Authors: Mummery, Jane , Rodan, Debbie
Date: 2011
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Technologies for supporting reasoning communities and collaborative decision-making: p. 296-318
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Description: Contending that media users are more than consumers and that the mass media are able to achieve more in the public sphere than simply meet market demand, Mummery and Rodan argue in this chapter that some types of mass media may in fact fulfil public sphere responsibilities.
Description: 2003008594

The role of blogging in public deliberation and democracy

- Mummery, Jane, Rodan, Debbie

Authors: Mummery, Jane , Rodan, Debbie
Date: 2013
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Discourse, Context and Media Vol. 2, no. 1 (2013), p. 22-39
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Description: Contending that media users are more than self-interested consumers and that the public sphere media can achieve more in the public sphere than simply meet market demand, our mission in this paper is to show how some public sphere media-specifically such fora as weblogs or blogs-may in fact be able to fulfil democratic public sphere responsibilities of enabling deliberative exchange. More specifically, through a consideration of three Australian politically-focused blogs-Larvatus Prodeo (group-authored blog), Andrew Bolt (sole-authored blog by a conservative commentator), and Andrew Bartlett (sole-authored blog by a former Australian Democrats Senator)-we argue that such fora can indeed inform and enable the public sphere deliberation important for democracy. We found that although blog participants might not evidently come to rational and consensual agreements, they are debating issues of public concern, and can take part in exchanges that facilitate deliberation. In our conception, deliberation is not necessarily invalidated by either the lack of any tangible outcome, or the fact that any outcomes reached are only partial and contingent, open to revision. What is rather important is the practice and procedure of deliberation performed without stringent regulation by pre-set endpoints other than that of deliberation itself. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.
Description: 2003010824

Problematising autonomy and advocacy in nursing

- Cole, Clare, Wellard, Sally, Mummery, Jane

Authors: Cole, Clare , Wellard, Sally , Mummery, Jane
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Nursing Ethics Vol. 21, no. 5 (2014), p. 576-582
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Description: Customarily patient advocacy is argued to be an essential part of nursing, and this is reinforced in contemporary nursing codes of conduct, as well as codes of ethics and competency standards governing practice. However, the role of the nurse as an advocate is not clearly understood. Autonomy is a key concept in understanding advocacy, but traditional views of individual autonomy can be argued as being outdated and misguided in nursing. Instead, the feminist perspective of relational autonomy is arguably more relevant within the context of advocacy and nurses' work in clinical healthcare settings. This article serves to highlight and problematise some of the assumptions and influences around the perceived role of the nurse as an advocate for patients in contemporary Western healthcare systems by focusing on key assumptions concerning autonomy inherent in the role of the advocate. © The Author(s) 2014.

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Discourses of democracy in the aftermath of 9/11 and other events : Protectivism versus humanitarianism

- Mummery, Jane, Rodan, Debbie

Authors: Mummery, Jane , Rodan, Debbie
Date: 2003
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies Vol. 17, no. 4 (2003), p. 433-442
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Description: In responding to the events of 11 September 2001—the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington—George W. Bush announced to the world that democracy itself was under attack, and that such an attack1 represented a threat to democracy. Such an interpretation of these events, along with portraying Western democracy as a victim in need of protection and as ‘good’—and establishing thereby the moral high ground—also represented one of the main discourses in which the Tampa refugees were discussed in Australia, and has continued to be a prominent discourse in public discussion within Australia about the War on Terror, the Bali Bombings and both refugees and detention centres. Drawing on a detailed analysis of letters to the editor published in The Australian in the aftermath of 9/11, this paper seeks to show not only that discussion of the events of 2001 and 2002 has tended to coalesce around two apparently irreconcilable discourses2—that of the aforementioned desire to protect democracy or ‘our way of life’ versus that expressive of a kind of ‘globalized humanitarianism’—but that these discourses are indeed not so much irreconcilable but share a common ground along with common stakes and ends.
Description: C1
Description: 2003002849

The interpretation of Da-sein as a transformative, poetic and ethical being

- Mummery, Jane

Authors: Mummery, Jane
Date: 2008
Type: Text , Book chapter
Relation: Heidegger and the aesthetics of living p. 95-111
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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.

Protecting the Global Commons: Comparing Three Ethico-Political Foundations for Response to Climate Change

- Mummery, Jane

Authors: Mummery, Jane
Date: 2013
Type: Text , Journal article
Relation: Borderlands Vol. 11, no. 3 (2013), p.
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Description: The ecological underpinnings of our world are at risk. Despite efforts by governments and the international community to set in place some protection for the global environment, industrialisation, economic development, and modern corporate-driven consumerist lifestyles are all contributing to the pollution that is driving climate change. According to the 2007 Assessment Report carried out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), since the start of industrialisation in the eighteenth century, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane) have markedly increased, primarily as a result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in agriculture and other land-uses. Closer to home, human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have increased globally by 70 percent between 1970 and 2004, with carbon dioxide levels increasing by 80 percent within this same period (IPCC 2007). The panel's report further details that 'atmospheric concentrations of C[O.sub.2] [carbon dioxide] and C[H.sub.4] [methane] in 2005 exceed by far the natural range of the last 650,000 years' (IPCC 2007, p. 37; cf. Global Carbon Project 2010). Indeed, while the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere prior to the industrial revolution was 280 parts per million (ppm), in 2008 it measured 385 ppm, with an annual increase of nearly 2 ppm; furthermore, since the year 2000 carbon dioxide emissions have been growing at four times the pace of the rate of the 1990s (Global Carbon Project 2010).

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