Daniel Teghe

Neo‐liberal higher education policy and its effects on the development of online courses

This paper discusses the managerialist approach to developing and implementing systems for flexible delivery of educational systems in the Australian university sector. Rapid advances in communication technologies have enabled the education sector to provide greater flexibility and diversity in the traditional areas of mixed delivery and distance education. Notes that educational policy is being shaped by neo‐liberal ideology, leading to systems of flexible delivery in which a concern with economic worth and efficiency can override the purpose of such systems. Asserts that, in order to develop effective online flexible learning systems, universities need to plan for, and invest heavily in, adequate programs to train academic staff in all aspects of the delivery of courses in the online flexible learning systems and to provide incentives to academics to become e‐moderators and managers of online flexible learning systems.

Using applied phronesis to explore productivism in elderly care policy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of how applied phronesis can be used as a methodological approach in social research. The example consists of an exploration of the discourse of productivism in elderly care policy in Australia.Design/methodology/approach – The research interrogates arrangements of objective facts within recent representations of the aged which render particular policy discourses rational. An analysis of selected secondary data and texts is offered to demonstrate how applied phronesis may be used to discern when objective facts are presented in particular ways to sustain useful discourses, such as productivism.Findings – The paper demonstrates that, rather than being rational discourse, productivism employs suitable arrangements of objective facts leading to particular rationalisations, including that the elderly should be viewed as a separate “category”, that they are a burden on society and that they contribute to increasing health care costs. Alternative inte...

Sociology for Social Workers

research hierarchy of evidence in the dominant research discourse is critiqued and dispelled. Although the book is not overly prescriptive, it does provide some guidance to new researchers particularly in seeking out the research they wish to undertake. Here the authors warn against taking on too much scope and discuss the question of both feasibility and specificity. Going further, there is some examination of the main methods in social research, including the interview, and discussion ensues on what is acceptable while leaving it to the readers to contemplate this within their own contexts. There are questions raised that relate to recruitment of participants and, through the use of the metaphor of fishing, an interesting discussion proceeds on the notion of the term capture/recapture for hard to reach populations, using the example of sex workers. Most social researchers have a change focus underpinning their work and it is certainly something that I strongly advocate in my belief that the primary purpose of research with vulnerable and marginalised populations is to overturn dominant discourses and to influence policy and practice. The comments on this constitute a salutary wake up call to idealists with a plea to manage expectations about the capacity of one’s research to influence change. Realistic reasons are presented as to why a social change focus may be unachievable. Unfortunately there is little guidance on strategies that may be undertaken to persist with a change agent role for the determined, rigorous, activist and ethical social researcher. Each chapter on case studies provides a unique contribution and the reader will no doubt peruse them for the aspects relevant to their own field and which they can incorporate in their own research. The chapter on drug use presents some of the fundamentals about research with this group including touching on ethics and methods. A unique contribution of this chapter however, is delving into the core complex issues of representation, capacity, mutual benefit and definition, matters that are sometimes not fully explored in more conventional research texts. The chapter on research with lesbians raises interesting perspectives. It advocates moving beyond United States perspectives and dominance. Furthermore, the question of power emerges as well as the ‘‘epistemology of insiderness’’. This highlights the question of lesbians conducting research with lesbians because of greater knowledge and sensitivity to the issues than non-lesbians. This of course applies to other ‘‘sensitive’’ areas of practice and research. The research with people with intellectual disabilities chapter points out the previous exclusion of this group when research was conducted. As the authors aptly expound, such research was used to assess, categorise and control lives and behaviour. Now people with intellectual disabilities, like others, claim the right to participate actively in the research. Another example is the well-trodden path of over-researched Indigenous peoples and this chapter contributes to the increasing literature by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers that aims to overturn dubious research practices. An innovative approach is adopted on social research with HIV populations as it is presented through a challenging conversation, with the authors having an exchange of issues from their own practice, research and advocacy experiences. The contributors are all experienced social researchers who have deeply contemplated the issues that they raise and are generous in sharing their knowledge and experience. As a text that explores rigour, ethics and obligation, it complements more standard research tomes and is recommended for both aspiring and experienced social work researchers.

The Central Queensland Sapphire Mining Community: Case of Common Property and Cultural Capital

This paper discusses the case of the sapphire mining community of Central Queensland, Australia, and its changing fortunes as a result of its dependence on publicly-owned and regulated sapphire deposits. These fortunes were subjected recently to the introduction of capital-intensive mining using employed labour, and vertically integrated sapphire marketing. This affected the viability of individual miners who operated small-scale mines, and the overproduction and falling demand for sapphires which followed quickly drove most large miners out of the area as well. In response to these events, local entrepreneurs are turning to tourist enterprises which still have their basis in the sapphire deposits, but now repackage the cultural capital accumulated by the long history of small-scale mining to sell it to tourists as an ‘authentic small-miner experience’: descending a facsimile sapphire mine, washing ostensible sapphire-bearing gravel, finding whatever sapphires have been ‘seeded’ there, and offering them to local gem-cutters who cut the stones in the sight of the tourists and set them to specification. Against this background, we identify and then discuss a paradox: the common property resource of the sapphire deposits were originally privately exploited to create livelihoods for those individuals who lived and worked in this community. However, the capitalist transformation of this petty bourgeois industry has imploded the long-term privatisation of the common resource by over-exploiting the original deposits to the point where now few owner-operators are able still to make any kind of living from the quantity of sapphires they mine. Interestingly, even though the common resource has been substantially exhausted, the community is still building its sustainability on it. This is due to the ties which the locals have with this resource, expressed in the local ‘culture’ – a culture being packaged and sold as tourist products to visitors, thus sustaining a viable economic base for the community. The remaining section of our paper provides an analysis of this process, in which we employ the concept of ‘community cultural capital’ (used in a different sense from Bourdieu (1997)) to encompass the traditions of the small-scale sapphire miners.