The human, human rights and the image. Today, human rights come a poor second to the security of society, with the human now largely defined in terms of its purely biological existence. Through case studies and theoretical innovation, this project seeks to counter this by showing that the human always has a transcendent quality, one highlighted by humanity's relation to the image.
Reading the Social Future of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service. This project investigates how and if the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) is building social capital. It does this by interrogating existing practices and operations at the ARCBS and by surveying donors and non-donors. This project aims to develop a Deleuzian critique of the notion of social capital.
Living With Uncertainty: Creating the Postmodern Self in Contemporary Australia. Life in postmodernity is marked by rapid change and uncertainty. Increasingly, as tradition is worn away, individuals must create new scripts to give life meaning and structure. Through a case study of gays and lesbians, this project will investigate how a group of Australians are creating postmodern selves. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it traces the relationship between discursive and psychological accounts of t ....Living With Uncertainty: Creating the Postmodern Self in Contemporary Australia. Life in postmodernity is marked by rapid change and uncertainty. Increasingly, as tradition is worn away, individuals must create new scripts to give life meaning and structure. Through a case study of gays and lesbians, this project will investigate how a group of Australians are creating postmodern selves. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it traces the relationship between discursive and psychological accounts of the postmodern self and their political effects. With a particular interest in emotional life, this study will provide critical information on how individuals and communities can manage creatively the uncertain conditions of postmodernity.Read moreRead less
Locating science fiction. The project will devise and develop a new 'cultural materialist' paradigm for science fiction studies and apply it to a case study of science fictional representations of catastrophe, especially nuclear war, plague and extreme climate change.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE130100325
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$371,931.00
Summary
Revisiting the foundations of mainstream economics: a cooperative account of wellbeing and moral improvement. This study presents a major theoretical challenge to the individualistic definition of wellbeing that defines mainstream economics. It does so by advancing an alternative paradigm for understanding individual wellbeing as co-dependent on the wellbeing of others, exploring intersubjective attitudes that facilitate cooperative economic behaviour.
Speed, Time and the Political Process in Australia. The project represents the first empirically-based study to research the traditional processes of political decision-making from the perspective of time and speed in the context of economic globalisation and the networked society. A clearer understanding of how political processes function in a globally-networked setting will provide valuable insight into how well the fundamental, politically grounded, aspects of Australian life and culture are ....Speed, Time and the Political Process in Australia. The project represents the first empirically-based study to research the traditional processes of political decision-making from the perspective of time and speed in the context of economic globalisation and the networked society. A clearer understanding of how political processes function in a globally-networked setting will provide valuable insight into how well the fundamental, politically grounded, aspects of Australian life and culture are functioning. This unique perspective will form the basis of an incisive method of applying 'time-awareness' not only to the political process, but to the many national/community sectors across Australian society that depend upon responsible and effective decision-making practices.Read moreRead less
New social foundations of money. In global finance, what is used as 'money' is changing. The capacity for close state control is diminishing and with it the state's capacity to guarantee the value of money. This project looks at the evolving money system identifying new material foundations in the household sector and how households are coming under the rubric of global finance.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120100626
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
Othering in penal policy and practice: a cross-national study of imprisonment in Australia and Sweden. This is a comparative project between Australia and Scandinavia, focusing on prisons and practices of punishment. Based on innovative normative theory, it will propose a model of practice than can reduce violence and disorder in prisons, lead to a safer work environment for staff, and more humane treatment of prisoners.
Democratic Resilience: The Public Sphere and Extremist Attacks. The project aims to explain responses to extremist attacks intended to sow division, and why some democracies prove fragile, succumbing to polarisation or exclusion of key groups, while others prove resilient by sustaining integrative, tolerant discourse. The project develops new knowledge through an innovative synthesis of cultural sociology and deliberative democracy to analyse nine cases of responses in the public realm to attack ....Democratic Resilience: The Public Sphere and Extremist Attacks. The project aims to explain responses to extremist attacks intended to sow division, and why some democracies prove fragile, succumbing to polarisation or exclusion of key groups, while others prove resilient by sustaining integrative, tolerant discourse. The project develops new knowledge through an innovative synthesis of cultural sociology and deliberative democracy to analyse nine cases of responses in the public realm to attacks. Expected outcomes include a new account of the democratic public sphere, and identification of how meaningful, civil communication whose health is vital to democracy, especially in a multicultural society, can be maintained. Benefits include identification of measures to counter extremist political disruption.Read moreRead less
Agency and Change in Institutionalised Organisations: The role of volunteers as institutional agents in the non-profit sector. This project intends to test recent developments in neoinstitutional organisational theory. The theoretical model developed is designed to address two questions bedvilling the genre: the role of human agency in institutional processes, and understanding institutional change. These questions are addressed in two ways: first, it takes voluntarism as an example of agency ....Agency and Change in Institutionalised Organisations: The role of volunteers as institutional agents in the non-profit sector. This project intends to test recent developments in neoinstitutional organisational theory. The theoretical model developed is designed to address two questions bedvilling the genre: the role of human agency in institutional processes, and understanding institutional change. These questions are addressed in two ways: first, it takes voluntarism as an example of agency in action; and second, it is located in the non-profit sector, an organisational field undergoing significant change. The project employs a micro-sociological methodological orientation rarely used in neoinstitutional research; that of non-participant observation and conversation analysis.Read moreRead less