"22nd November, 2006". / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media & Philosophy, Dept. of Anthropology, 2007. / Bibliography: leaves 301-330. / Introduction -- Between ourselves -- Two (or three) for the price of one -- Community -- Bits and pieces -- Space painting or painting space -- Talkin' the talk. Bunda bunya miumba (Thundering kangaroos): dancing up a storm -- Welcome to Country: talkin' the talk -- Messing with ceremony -- 'Ethnogenesis' and the emergence of 'darug custodians' -- Conclusion. / The thesis concerns an Aboriginal community, members of which inhabit the western suburbs of Sydney at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This particular group of people has emerged as a cultural group over the last twenty-five years. In other words, the community did not exist before the advent of Aboriginal land rights in Australia. It might be right to suggest that without land rights, native title and state celebrations and inclusions of Aboriginal peoples as multicufturalism, this particular urban community would not and could not exist at all. That, however, would be a simplistic analysis of a complex phenomenon. Land rights and native title provide the beginning of this story. It becomes much more interesting when the people concerned take it up themselves. -- The main foci in the thesis are the cultural forms that this particular community overtly and intentionally produce as articulations of their identity, namely public speaking, dancing, painting and ceremony. I argue that it is only through these yery deliberate collective practices of identity-making that community identity can be produced. This is because the place that the group claims as its own - Sydney - is always already inhabited by 'us' (the dominant society). Analysis of these cultural forms reveals that even if the existence of the group depends on land rights and, attempts to attract the ultimate 'authenticity' bestowed by native title, members of this group are not conforming to native title rules pertinent to what constitutes 'genuine' 'Aboriginality' for the purposes of winning land claims. Their revived traditions are pot what the state prescribes as representative of 'authentic' urban Aboriginal culture. -- The thesis analyses the ways in which urban Aboriginal peoples are makipg themselves in the era and context of native title. It considers the consequences of being themselves. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xii, 330, [8] leaves ill., maps

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Humanities, Department of Contemporary Music Studies, 2007. / Bibliography: p. 291-313. / Introduction -- "Back to this subculture thing": literature review and methodology -- "The crowd went berserk": dance music and club culture in Sydney and Australia -- "Once you find a groove you've got to keep it locked": the role and significance of the DJ -- "There's a great myth about that": DJ culture in Sydney -- "You're not a real DJ unless you play vinyl": technology and formats: the progression of dance music and DJ culture -- "What is underground really?": defining the structure, significance and meaning of dance culture -- "Where are they going to go next?": shifting the focus of dance music studies. / The development of contemporary, post-disco dance music and its associated culture, as representative of a (supposedly) underground, radical subculture, has been given extensive consideration within popular music studies. Significantly less attention has been given to the commercial, mainstream manifestations of this music. Furthermore, demonstrating the influence of subculture theory, existing studies of dance culture focus largely on youth-based audience participation, and as such, those who engage with dance music on a professional level have been somewhat overlooked. In an attempt to rectify these imbalances, this study examines the contemporary commercial dance music scene in Sydney, Australia, incorporating an analytical framework that revolves mainly around the work of DJs and the commercial scene they operate within.--An ethnographic methodological approach underpins the majority of this thesis, with interviews forming the main source of research material. Beginning with a discussion of the existing academic literature on dance culture and dance scenes, an historical context is subsequently established through a section that traces the development of dance culture from an underground phenomenon to a mainstream leisure activity, both within and outside Australia.--The ideas, opinions and interpretations of a selection of local DJs and other music industry practitioners who work in Sydney are central to the analysis of DJ culture herein. Issues discussed include the interaction and relationship between the DJ and their crowd, the technology and formats employed by DJs, and the DJ's multiple roles as entertainer, consumer and educator. The final part of the study gives consideration to the structure of the Sydney dance scene, in regard to the frequently used, but rarely critically analysed, terms 'underground' and 'mainstream'. The thesis concludes with a discussion that challenges the structural rigidity imposed by subcultural theory and scene-based analysis, arguing instead for a greater degree of fluidity in the theoretical approaches taken towards the study of contemporary dance music scenes. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / vi, 334 p

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis is concerned with an examination and re-assessment of the establishment, operation and management of the Female and Male Orphan Schools, in the first half of the nineteenth century in New South Wales. The chaplains and governors in the early penal settlement were faced with a dilemma, as they beheld the number of children who were ‘orphaned’, neglected, abandoned and destitute. In order to understand the reasons why these children were in necessitous circumstances, the thesis seeks to examine the situations of the convict women, who were the mothers of these children. Governors Philip Gidley King and Lachlan Macquarie respectively in 1801 and 1819 established the Schools, which provided elementary education, training and residential care within a religious setting. Researching the motives underlying the actions of these men has been an important part of the thesis. An examination of the social backgrounds of some of the children admitted to these Schools has been undertaken, in order to provide a greater understanding of the conditions under which the children were living prior to their admissions. Information about family situations, and the social problems encountered by parents that led them to place their children in the Schools, have been explored. The avenues open to the girls and boys when they left the Schools, has formed part of the study. Some children were able to be reunited with family members, but the majority of them were apprenticed. A study of the nature of these apprenticeships, has led to a greater understanding of employment opportunities for girls and boys at that time. In 1850 the Schools were amalgamated into the Protestant Orphan School at Parramatta. By examining the governance and operation of the Schools during their last two decades as separate entities, we have more knowledge about and understanding of these two colonial institutions. It is the conclusion of this thesis that some of the harsher judgements of revisionist social historians need to be modified. It was the perception that more social disorder would occur if action was not taken to ‘rescue’ the ‘orphaned’ children, usually of convict parentage. However genuine charity, philanthropy and concern was displayed for the children in grave physical and moral danger. The goals of the founders were not always reached in the Orphan Schools, nevertheless they performed an invaluable service in the lives of many children.

The use of community consultation to address socio-environmental degradation is entwined with contested democratic principles polarising views of its role. I frame this problem by examining three democratic paradigms faced with two contemporary problems. The deliberative argument that preferences require enrichment with debate mediates between the liberal-aggregative view that preferences are individual, private and amenable to aggregation and the view that participation in public life is foundational. Viewing consultation as deliberative reconciles the liberal-aggregative view of consultation as the illegitimate elevation of unrepresentative minority groups with the participationist view that consultation constitutes a step towards participatory democracy. Theorists of social reflexivity, however, point to an elided politics of knowledge challenging technoscience's exemption from politically garnered consent. Also neglected by much democratic theory is how functional differentiation renders self-referential legal, political, technoscientific and administrative domains increasingly unaccountable. I employ Habermas' procedural theory that public spheres allow social irritations into the political domain where they can be encoded into laws capable of systemic interjection in response, along with a dialogic extension accommodating the politics of knowledge. I then use this procedural-dialogic deliberative understanding of democracy to elucidate the context and outcomes of the NSW State's consultative strategy. The NSW state, institutionally compelled to underwrite economic growth, implicating itself in that growth's socio-environmental side effects provoking widespread contestation. The resulting Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (1979) and its adjunctive consultative provisions helped highlight the socio-environmental degradation of the Hawkesbury Nepean River Catchment via Western Sydney's urban sprawl, politicising the region. The convenement of a consultative forum to oversee a contaminated site audit within the region facilitated incisive lay critique of the technoscientific underpinnings of administrative underwriting of socio-environmental degradation. The discomforted NSW State tightened environmental policy, gutted the EP&A Act's consultative provisions and removed regional dialogic forums and institutions. I conclude that the socio-economic accord equating economic growth with social progress is both entrenched and besieged, destabilising the political/administrative/technoscientific regime built upon it. This withdrawal of avenues for critique risks deeper estrangement between reflexive society and the NSW State generative of electoral volatility.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis is concerned with an examination and re-assessment of the establishment, operation and management of the Female and Male Orphan Schools, in the first half of the nineteenth century in New South Wales. The chaplains and governors in the early penal settlement were faced with a dilemma, as they beheld the number of children who were ‘orphaned’, neglected, abandoned and destitute. In order to understand the reasons why these children were in necessitous circumstances, the thesis seeks to examine the situations of the convict women, who were the mothers of these children. Governors Philip Gidley King and Lachlan Macquarie respectively in 1801 and 1819 established the Schools, which provided elementary education, training and residential care within a religious setting. Researching the motives underlying the actions of these men has been an important part of the thesis. An examination of the social backgrounds of some of the children admitted to these Schools has been undertaken, in order to provide a greater understanding of the conditions under which the children were living prior to their admissions. Information about family situations, and the social problems encountered by parents that led them to place their children in the Schools, have been explored. The avenues open to the girls and boys when they left the Schools, has formed part of the study. Some children were able to be reunited with family members, but the majority of them were apprenticed. A study of the nature of these apprenticeships, has led to a greater understanding of employment opportunities for girls and boys at that time. In 1850 the Schools were amalgamated into the Protestant Orphan School at Parramatta. By examining the governance and operation of the Schools during their last two decades as separate entities, we have more knowledge about and understanding of these two colonial institutions. It is the conclusion of this thesis that some of the harsher judgements of revisionist social historians need to be modified. It was the perception that more social disorder would occur if action was not taken to ‘rescue’ the ‘orphaned’ children, usually of convict parentage. However genuine charity, philanthropy and concern was displayed for the children in grave physical and moral danger. The goals of the founders were not always reached in the Orphan Schools, nevertheless they performed an invaluable service in the lives of many children.

There is a need for research to understand change processes and knowledge management in health service organisations, and indeed public sector organisations in general. This research seeks to explain how knowledge becomes formulated and thereby mobile, and also how practice has come to be established, visibilised and thereby sustained in a specific context. Exploring practice within a health service organisation, and in particular a public health service organisation, is a particular feature of this research. The research demonstrates how collaboration becomes necessitated under pressure of enacting increasingly complex work activities, an outcome being changing practices and extended accountability relationships which enacts discipline while realising expertise. Using an ethnographic approach, the research explores how the practice of early childhood nursing in the South Western Sydney Area Health Service became a specialised expert undertaking. The research examines how change has occurred, whereby early childhood nursing was refined from being one part of the generalist community nursing practice to being a specialised practice through the increasing technologisation of practice. The technologisation of practice refers to the artefacts, conduct and the processes through which the conceptualisation and enactment of early childhood nursing has become increasingly standardised. Through the technologisation of practice explicit knowledge becomes distributed within the artefacts for practice and tacit knowing becomes distributed across, and is continually enacted by, the collaboration of the practice community. There are four interrelated aspects to the technologisation of practice. Firstly, the technologisation of practice involves standardising the conceptualisation and enactment of practice through constructing a multi-dimensional practice resource within a community of practice. Secondly, the technologisation of practice involves the mobilisation and refinement of the multi-dimensional practice resource to realise a practice network involving extended relationships of accountability. These relationships of accountability are within a profession and also with other professionals. Thirdly, the technologisation of practice involves the ongoing enactment of accountability in a collaborative community of practice. The research shows that a team can become a collaborative community by constructing an accountability context, reorganising and facilitating the team, and then amalgamating the organising and service delivery activities through integrating formal meetings and informal interactions. Fourthly, the technologisation of practice involves the collaborative community assemblage and/or appropriation of further technologies into practice thereby strengthening the local and extended relationships of accountability and expanding the boundaries of practice. The research describes how the technologisation of practice is the enactment of a number of mutually enabling practice dualities, which together simultaneously discipline and realise expertise. The interrelated practice dualities are individual-community, subjective-objective, local-global, formal-informal and governmentality-communal self-governance. The situatedness of practice is shown to necessitate a subjectivity-objectivity duality, whereby individual and communal experience is drawn upon to see through the otherwise opaque nature of statistics and information. The alignment of practice with the broader organisation and professional colleagues realises a local-global duality, whereby the community's local understandings are informed and shaped by distant issues. The formal-informal duality is a mechanism by which practice is increasingly collaboratively conceptualised and enacted, and thereby standardised. Individual and communal 'expertise' becomes realised through the assemblage and appropriation of organising and transforming tools and artefacts, or alternatively technologies. At the same time, the community in defining the use of such technologies as competent practice is disciplining their own conduct. Through this action a governmentality-communal self-governance duality is realised as the nursing community pursues expertise while disciplining themselves; by engaging in collaborative interactions and using standardised technologies the community constructs and makes visible their knowing, practice and expertise.

This thesis discusses the impact of the counterculture on Australian cinema in the late 20thcentury through the work of the Sydney Underground Film group, Ubu. This group, active between 1965 -1970, was a significant part of an underground counter culture, to which many young Australians subscribed. As a group, Ubu was more than a rat bag assemblage of University students. It was an antipodean aspect of an ongoing artistic and political movement that began with the European avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century and that radically transformed artistic conventions in theatre, painting, literature, photography and film. Three purposes underpin this thesis: firstly to track the art historical links between a European avant-garde heritage and Ubu. Experimental film is a genre that is informed by cross art form interrelations between theatre, painting, literature, photography and film and the major modernist aesthetic philosophies of the last century. Ubu's revolutionary aesthetic approaches included political resistance and the involvement of audiences in the production of art. Their creative wellspring drew from: Alfred Jarry, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Fluxus, Conceptual and Pop art. This cross fertilization between the arts is critical to understanding not only the Australian experimental movement but the history of contemporary image making. The second purpose is to fill a current void of research about early Australian Experimental film. This is a significant gap given it was a national movement with many international connections. The counterculture movement also contains many major figures in Australian art history. These individuals played their parts in the Sydney Push, Oz magazine and the activities of the Yellow House and have since become important multi arts practitioners and commentators. Thirdly, the thesis attempts to evaluate Ubu's political and social agenda for the democratization of film appreciation through their objectives of: production, exhibition, distribution and debate of experimental film both nationally and internationally. Ultimately the group would succeed in these objectives and in winning the war on repressive censorship laws. Their influence has informed the practice of many of Australia's current film heavy weights. Two key films have been selected for analysis, It Droppeth as the Gentle Rain (1963) and Newsfront (1978). The first looks forward to Ubu's contemporary practices and political agenda while the second demonstrates their longer term influences on mainstream cinema.

Hyde Park Asylum for Infirm and Destitute Women, Sydney was the New South Wales government’s first direct initiative in social welfare for the aged with the provision of residential care for women. It was the genesis of a system of destitute asylums (later state hospitals) that lasted for more than a century. For its duration (1862-1886), Hyde Park Asylum was the only one of its type in the colony. This empirical study looks at the day-to-day lives of its inmates at Hyde Park Asylum and follows them to their new home at Newington Asylum on the Parramatta River in 1886. The external and internal administration of the asylum under the Government Asylum’s Boards and later as a sub-department of the Colonial Secretary ‘s office is examined, including the roles of the manager and the matron. / Master of Arts (Hons)

No description available.

This thesis is broadly concerned with how an ethnic group defines itself through the medium of the press. It contends that newspapers do more than simply 'reflect' the experience of ethnic groups, they in fact help to 'construct' ethnic identity. / The specific focus of this study is the Italian language press and its attempts to shape the ideals of italianita of Italian migrants in Canada and Australia in the immediate post-war period. This work is based on two newspapers, Montreal's Il Cittadino Canadese and La Fiamma published in Sydney, New South Wales. All available editions from the decade 1947 to 1957 are examined in order to determine which symbols and causes were used to promote Italian ethnic cohesiveness. / In the course of this thesis, it is argued that La Fiamma used religion as the basis of its ideal of italianita, while the Italo-Canadian paper Il Cittadino Canadese made the issue of Italian political representation in Canadian government structures the basis of its quest to unite Italian migrants into an ethnic 'community'. Some possible reasons for the difference in focus between the two newspapers are presented in the conclusion. Also, suggestions are made for future comparative research between Italian ethnic communities in Canada and Australia which may help to better explain the differences laid bare in this paper.