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| Talking about knowledge and education. |
Mathew Toll is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. He completed his BA (hons) in 2012. His current research is in digital sociology and the sociology of knowledge, looking at the deficit model of public understanding of science, political deliberation and knowledge formation online.
Abstract: Sociologists often view the authority of knowledge as a reflection of social power. Educational research mirrors with theories that treat knowledge as primarily “knowledge of the powerful” (Young 2009:13). This study employed conceptual tools from Legitimation Code Theory (Maton 2014) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (Eggins 1994; Martin 1993) to explore university student’s perceptions of knowledge claims and if knowledge is deemed to be shaped both by social relations and epistemic relations. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2012 for an honours research project with participants from four Sydney based Universities. Results indicated that students perceive knowledge to have its own organizing principles, its legitimacy and power not reducible to who have the social power to claim knowledge.
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| Alex 'talking back' to the settler state. |
Alexander Page is a PhD candidate at the University
of Sydney. He completed a BSocSc Hons. (First Class) with a thesis titled
“Indigenous Peoples and the Settler-State in Twenty First Century Australia” in
2012. His research focused on the dynamic between the Australian Settler-State
and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists/advocates in the regional
city of Townsville, North Queensland. His current research embodies urban
Aboriginal approaches to service delivery as resistance and reflexivity to the
structures constructed by Australian governmentality. This project seeks to
understand the role of Indigenous institutions and organisations as mediators;
between state expectation and control on the one hand, and the needs of
community on the other. Understanding such inter-relationships reveals the
dynamics of power existing vertically and horizontally between the state,
community organisations and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
population of Blacktown, Western-Sydney. His blog can be found here.
Abstract:
The positioning of sociology as a critical response to the continued unfolding
of colonisation in Australia could not be more vital. The current climate of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander politics demands that we take on the modern
Settler-State and enduring structures of marginalisation with Indigenous
peoples. This paper seeks to provide the reader with some theoretical
foundations of a sociology for social justice. Using structures of the
Australian Settler-State as the focus of the critique, this paper outlines a
paradigm of a critical Indigenous research methodology to challenge state
practice. It calls for continued assessment within the contemporary political
arena of the Abbott Coalition Government. Such a research paradigm seeks to:
critique structures by talking back to power; foster hope for alternate futures
by highlighting the possibilities for change through community agency; and aims
for research outcomes which provide practical value for Indigenous peoples and
their communities in the self-determination movement. Sociologists have the
unique research tools, the passion for social justice, and the prime position
to speak back to power in a continued effort to change the world for the
better.
Jessica Richards’ research interests broadly focus on
the sociology of sport, with a particular emphasis on sport fandom and spatial
geography. After graduating from the University of Sydney with a B.A (First
Class Hons), she was awarded an Australian Post-Graduate Award to pursue
further study in the field of the sociology of sport. Following work experience
at a research agency, Jessica is now working full-time on her PhD, and is
currently living between England and Australia. In Australia, she tutors in the
Sociology and Social Policy department at the University of Sydney. In England,
Jessica works as an Honorary PhD Student in the Management School at the
University of Liverpool. Twitter: @j_richo1990
Title: ‘Beers, Balls and Banter’: The Maintenance of Gender Boundaries in
Sporting Spaces.
Abstract: This paper argues that sports stadiums
are inherently gendered spaces that celebrate and protect physical and cultural
representations of masculinity. Although sports stadiums are often read as
uncontested or innocent places, this paper considers how they are physically
and socially constructed, rather than a void or empty ‘stage’ on which actors
perform. Drawing on ethnographic data generated from participant observation
and semi-structured interviews collected during observations on Everton
football club during the 2012-2014 seasons of Premier League football, this
paper explores how the physical and social environment influences and
encourages various types of sports fans behaviour within particular locations.
It draws its theoretical support from the work of Cohen and his symbolic
construction of the ‘boundary’, where the powerful symbolism and collective identity
of sport means that it has the potential to reinforce feelings of belonging,
providing a source of stability and community. However, at the same time it is
these symbolic and collective principals that also have the ability to
segregate, exclude, and marginalise. Additionally, the boundaries that surfaced
remained tied to wider issues, including how both sports communities
internalised the debates surrounding authentic and inauthentic ‘types’ of
fandom and sport culture. The importance of physical sporting spaces in
maintaining and legitimising the social, cultural, and masculine histories of
the localised community and sports team it represents are the focus of this
paper. However, whilst sporting spaces reproduce and reinforce normative
gendered discourses, this paper also considers how they can also create space
for counter hegemonic and resistant practices.
Daniel HedlundJorquera is a PhD Candidate from the University of Stockholm who is a
visiting postgraduate researcher at the University of Sydney.
Title: Legislators’ Perceptions about Unaccompanied Minors.
Abstract: This study forms part of a larger PhD thesis project about perceptions about unaccompanied refugee minors in the asylum process in Sweden. The findings of this qualitative interview study is that chronological age becomes a key sign for how legislators understand the life situation, needs and best interests of unaccompanied refugee minors. Age was central for a legitimate asylum claim. Legislators’ strong differentiation between how to understand adolescents contributes to varying accounts interchanging between suspicion and protection. Contrary perceptions about unaccompanied minors depict them as either innocent or potentially threatening. Also, the findings from this study suggests that that the moralizing welfare ideology of the past is still present in political discourse and social planning, construing unaccompanied minors as an ambivalent category between civilization and savagery. The findings from this study indicate that legislators enact reforms of importance for unaccompanied children without considering them as agents of their own future, with their own motives and reasons to seek asylum.Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) was used in order to identify and analyse patterns in the interview data. The theoretical understanding of the identified themes and their meanings was informed by Willig’s (2012) insights on interpretation in qualitative analysis, with regards to how the findings were conceptualized and communicated, in particular interpretative phenomenology.
Natalia Maystorovich Chulio is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. She completed her B Socio-Legal (hons) in 2012 and a BA in 2004. Her research interests include humanitarian and human rights law; transitional justice; the archaeological recovery of mass graves; and the capacity of social movements to elicit social, political and legal change as they seek justice for victims. Her focus is on socio-legal research and qualitative methods in an attempt to merge her political and social interests with a scholarship which may enact social change. Since 2012 she has worked with the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH – Association for the Recovery of Historic Memory) in an attempt to draw attention to the difficulties experienced by victims and their relatives in the recuperation of their missing.
Abstract: The local exhumation movement to recover, identify and rebury victims of the Spanish Civil War and Franco Dictatorship has emerged as a challenge to the prevailing dominant discourses regarding the defeated victims. The bodily recovery of victims and the public testimonies told at the gravesites provide stark imagery while incorporating a historical context of the past, which remains socially; politically; institutionally and legally silenced for almost 80 years. This movement, initially a grass roots operation, commenced in response to the Spanish states failure to provide the necessary institutional and legal support to investigate past political crimes. The social movements have utilised transitional justice discourses and mechanisms to challenge the states choice of impunity to manage the transition to democracy. This has forced symbolic and legal changes, however, the recent global financial crisis coupled with a change in government to Partido Popular has severely hindered the expansion of the movement. Given the contentious and disputed nature of the period, those undertaking the exhumation of mass graves encounter varying responses from support to outright hostility and institutional impediments. This has been the experience of groups such as ‘ARMH, in attempts to recuperate the missing and their personal histories during interactions with the social, political, institutional and legal fields. How successful has ARMH been in challenging the official narrative of the past?
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