2010 CAPSTRANS Seminar Abstracts

3 March 2010

Peter Sales
"Eleksyon 2010:  Ballots and Bayonets in the Philippines" 
CAPSTRANS Associate, Uow

Abstract:
When Ben Franklin observed that nothing is certain but death and taxes, he clearly overlooked elections, which are occurring all around Asia-Pacific in 2010, Australia included.  Each is distinctive and specific; if studied closely enough, an election sheds light on the nature of a society and/ or state.  Campaigning for the forthcoming contest in the Philippines began unofficially months ago with the death of Saint Cory Aquino, a flood which devastated the national capital, and a ghastly massacre on a lonely jungle hillside in deepest, darkest Mindanao.  

Save for some senate seats, all elective positions from the lowliest barangay captain or mayor to the president and the highest in the land are being fought over, along with the power, influence, and wealth they bring.  The May poll (pun intended for never was there more running around in circles) is fraught with dangers as yet again the troubled archipelago lurches into a process which is at once costly, corrupt, debilitating, and unbelievably violent.  Massive cheating, fraud, and terror tactics are deployed against opposition candidates.  Traditionally the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is blatantly partisan, preventing entire communities sympathetic to progressive groups from voting at all.  Right now, according to experts, the military is especially fractious.  And this time the technological challenge of automated voting threatens more than the normal amount of chaos and confusion.

Bio-data:
Peter Sales is a Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Arts after teaching at University of Wollongong for many years.  He spends a great deal of time (and money) in Mindanao, where he has a home and an adoptive family.  He has published extensively on human rights and counter-insurgency and is currently preparing a major study on the 2010 election in the Philippines.

 19 March 2010

Yasue Arimitsue 
'Transformation of literature in a globalising society' 
Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan

Abstract:
Literature is considered to be synonymous with the ‘imaginative,’ which means ‘literally untrue’ but is also an evaluative term meaning ‘visionary’ or ‘inventive’.  The definition of literature thus emphasizes the supremacy, autonomy and transcendency of “imagination”.  However, from the end of the last century to the 21st century, many critics argued about the future of literature.  Edward Said mentions about the end of “the concept of literature” in Reflections on Exile (2002); Hideo Levy examines “the death of literature” in his book Voices beyond the Border (2007); and a Japanese critic, Kojin Karatani, declares “Japanese modern literature is now dead” in his book An End of Modern Literature (2004).  It seems that these remarks suggest that literature is not a self-evident truth any more.    

In modern times, literature became deeply concerned with the social power rather than religion, and began to play an important role in representing the power of a nation.  In particular English literature established its position as representative of the English empire, along with the English language.  A “nation” was conceived as comprising “one language”, “one ethnicity” and “one culture,” and literary identity is a closely related concept.  In the 21st century, however, globalization in economy, technology, information and humanity is rapidly progressing, and cultural globalization is expanding at high speed.  In this globalizing world, the notion of a nation has been evolving; the nation as “one language”, “one ethnicity” and “one culture” has collapsed, and as a result, the function of literature has also changed drastically.

In this paper, I intend to examine the transformation of literature or literary values focusing on Australian literature.  I chose Australia as a case study because Australia changed its social system from a “White Australia Policy” to a vastly different policy, “Multiculturalism”.  I will focus on how the function of literature has changed in a multicultural society.  I will also focus on the transformation of literature in the globalizing societies in general.  

Bio-data:
Yasue Arimitsu is Professor of English and Australian Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan.  She is the author of Finding a Place: Landscape and the Search for Identity in the Early Novels of Patrick White (1986) and Australian Identity: Struggle and Transformation in Australian Literature (2003).  She co-authored An Introduction to Australian Studies, 2nd Edition (2007).  She has also edited and contributed to translating Diamond Dog: An Anthology of Contemporary Australian Short Stories ― Reflections on Multicultural Society (2008).

 14 April 2010

Adam Lucas 
‘Carbon Captured: Australia's Love Affair with Big Coal’
Science & Technology Studies Program, UOW

Abstract:
Despite the fact that Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter, most Australians are not well informed about the extent of our country’s role in the international coal industry.  Nor are most Australians well informed about the extent to which we remain dependent on coal for the vast majority of our electricity production.  This talk outlines the economics and future prospects of the Australian coal industry and its role in electricity generation both here and overseas.  Australian Labor governments’ rhetoric about addressing climate change does not square with the reality of their ongoing financial and legislative support for the coal industry and coal-fired power generation.

Bio-data:
Adam Lucas is a lecturer in the Science and Technology Studies Program at the University of Wollongong.  Adam has previously taught STS and environmental sociology at UNSW, UTS, and the University of Sydney, and worked in the early 1990s as a freelance science journalist.  Prior to taking up a lectureship in UoW in March 2008, Adam worked as a policy analyst for the NSW Government in a number of departments, including The Cabinet Office under former Premier Bob Carr, and the Departments of Aboriginal Affairs, Housing and State and Regional Development.

 28 April 2010

Mark Rix 
The NSI Act, Information and the Media: Keeping the National Security Agencies and the Political Executive under Scrutiny
Sydney Business School, UOW

Abstract:
This paper investigates Australia’s National Security Information (Criminal and Civil Proceedings) Act 2004 (the NSI Act) focusing on its provisions for protecting national security information. The investigation highlights the broad and encompassing definitions of ‘national security’ and ‘information’ used in the Act and considers the measures it prescribes for the protection of so-called ‘security sensitive’ information’ in Federal civil and criminal proceedings. The paper then examines the implications of the definitions and measures for a suspect’s prospects of receiving a fair trial in terrorism cases. Here, the paper highlights the serious restrictions the Act places on a legally-aided person’s right to engage a legal representative of their own choosing. These restrictions are compared with those obtaining in some comparable jurisdictions. Building on and extending this examination, and using the experience of Mohamed Haneef as a case study, the paper concludes with an investigation of the media’s vital role in facilitating public scrutiny of the conduct of terrorism investigations and trials and in exposing the improper use sometimes made of protected information by the political executive to influence the conduct of these cases.

Bio-data:  
Mark Rix is a Senior Lecturer in the Sydney Business School at the University of Wollongong where teaches subjects in corporate governance and human resource management. His research deals with issues relating to access to justice, human rights and the rule of law, counter-terrorism and liberal democracy.

 12 May 2010

Nicola Marks
'Stem cell research and scientific citizenship in the UK and Australia'
Science & Technology Studies Program, UOW

Abstract:
Drawing on concepts from Development Studies and Science and Technology Studies, this paper examines the ways in which scientists – stem cell researchers here – talk about their work and public engagement, and how this can create and/or limit opportunities for public involvement in decisions about science. It highlights how professionals’ discourses can perform different kinds of ‘scientific citizenship’.

In developed countries such as the UK and Australia, controversial issues including genetically modified crops, human cloning or the excessive exploitation of the environment by modern technologies are seen to have caused an erosion of public trust in science. One response to this has been to promote public engagement in science. However, this should not be seen as a panacea, and studies of participatory development in places such as South East Asia or Africa suggest that science-public interactions are often set up in such a way that participants are only empowered to play particular roles, usually that of an enlightened citizen of late modernity. Therefore, if we are genuinely committed to creating a trusting relationship between science and members of the public and to opening up some areas of science to public scrutiny and negotiation, it is important to pay attention to the ways in which science-public encounters are framed. Scientists play central roles in this framing. By examining stem cell researchers’ public and private discourses, different kinds of citizenship are shown to be promoted above others. Taking a more normative stance, some of these are highlighted as more desirable, and ways of encouraging them are sought.  

Bio-data:
Nicola Marks came to Australia and the University of Wollongong last year after completing a PhD and post-doc at the University of Edinburgh on public participation in stem cell research. She is a lecturer in the Science and Technology Studies Program. Her research interests include public engagement in science, and social and political aspects of science (especially gender and power dimensions of new reproductive technologies).

 2 June 2010

Frances Steel
'Colonial hospitality, transpacific mobility and Suva’s Grand Pacific Hotel, 1900s-1920s'
History & Politics Program, UOW

Abstract:
In recent years, historians interested in the ways colonial relationships of power were fashioned, projected and maintained have expanded the archive to include the built environment. The grand hotel is a particularly interesting site – at once a private and public space, a temporary home for wealthy travellers, a social club for the white colonial elite, a multi-racial workplace. It was a site where a range of contacts, relationships and expectations were negotiated. A culture of grand hotel hospitality originated in America in the mid-nineteenth century, but as it developed in tropical colonies, particular racialised and exoticised definitions of luxury, service and order came to the fore. Suva’s Grand Pacific Hotel serves as a useful case study of an emergent transcolonial culture of hospitality in the Asia-Pacific. Built in 1914 by a NZ steamship company, it ceased operating in 1992, fell into serious disrepair and since the 2006 coup has housed a military garrison. In this seminar I focus on the early years of the hotel’s construction and use to chart some of the challenges involved in accommodating new expectations about leisure and status in a British tropical colony

Bio data:
Frances Steel is a lecturer in Pacific History and Australian Studies in the School of History and Politics. Her research interests lie at the intersection of cultures of maritime transport, mobility and empire in the Pacific basin. She is currently working on a project which explores the colonial origins of leisure travel and cruise ship tourism in the region from the late nineteenth century.

 4 August

Susan Engel
"Play it again, Sam?’ Neoliberal Critiques of Official Development Assistance"

Abstract:
This paper written with Dr Susan Park (University of Sydney) explores whether the debate over the utility of Official Development Assistance (ODA) progressed? Even before states committed to providing 0.7% of their Gross National Income (GNI) as ODA in the 1970s, there has been a persistent dichotomy between opponents and adherents to the provision of multilateral and bilateral development assistance. The anti-aid literature always gains strong academic and media attention, including the latest wave (e.g. Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid, 2009). This paper will examine whether the critiques of ODA over the last two decades have added to our knowledge and understanding of aid effectiveness. Using politico-economic analysis, the paper traces the dominant criticisms of ODA to highlight recurrent themes and repetitive arguments. We posit that dominance of neoliberal arguments have limited the debate on the utility of ODA. Indeed, the paper makes the case for retiring old arguments and basing new ones on sophisticated analysis and more detailed empirical research.