Indigo Willing

Review of sociological literature on intercountry adoption

This review surveys sociological literature on intercountry adoption from 1997 to 2010. The analysis finds a preponderance of literature from the United States, reflecting its place as a major receiving country, and a focus on adoption experience organised by reference to the adoption triad: adoptive parents, adoptees, birth families. Reflecting the power imbalances in intercountry adoption, the voices and views of adoptive parents dominate the literature. There is an emerging literature generated by researchers who are intercountry adoptees, while birth families remain almost invisible in this literature. A further gap identified by this review is work which examines intercountry adoption as a global social practice and work which critically examines policy.

Cosmopolitan encounters: reflexive engagements and the ethics of sharing

ABSTRACT This study contributes to the growing research on everyday cosmopolitanism in diverse societies. We employ a cosmopolitan encounters framework to explore the reflexive openness people perform and the ethical reasoning they draw on to get along with each other. In particular, we look beyond pleasurable cosmopolitan pursuits to consider encounters that cause frictions or require notable efforts to bridge differences as an occasion for cosmopolitan conviviality. Based on qualitative interviews conducted in Australia, we aim to sharpen the demarcation between cosmopolitan encounters and those in which diversity is strategically negotiated by enacting practices of civility. We argue that cosmopolitanism emerges from interactions in encounters between individuals when they reflect on their positionality within unequal power relationships and their actions are guided by a cosmopolitan ethics. The ethical framework we propose is grounded in reflexive acts of sharing going beyond notions of giving and performing hospitality within a host/guest dyad.

“They're all just little bits, aren't they”: South Australian lesbian mothers' experiences of marginalisation in primary schools

Abstract Multiple formations of family have always been a part of Australias social and historical landscape, yet social norms typically function to marginalise some family forms while according others a privileged status. Marginalisation on the basis of sexuality, for example, whilst arguably somewhat less prevalent than in previous decades, nonetheless continues for those families positioned outside the heteronorm. Institutions such as schools can play an important role in transforming marginalising practices, yet research such as that presented in this article suggests that schools often also perpetuate marginalisation, even if unintentionally. Drawing on interviews conducted with twenty-three lesbian mothers, this article highlights the often subtle ways in which such mothers with children in South Australian primary schools experience marginalisation by educators. Specifically, we argue that marginalisation occurs in the form of injunctions made upon lesbian mothers to inform educators about their families (and to do so in often highly normative ways), to accept that it is their role to manage discrimination, and to treat as routine the marginalisation of their families. Such findings indicate that changes still remain necessary within Australian educational practices in order to ensure the full inclusion of lesbian mother families on terms of their own making.

Unrecognised Cosmopolitans: Mobility and Openness Among Globally Engaged Family Farmers

Abstract In contemporary cosmopolitanism research, cities are iconic places where cosmopolitan exchanges and actors find their ‘natural’ milieu. Farmers not only are remarkably absent from this literature but have been depicted as operating with a highly localist and agrarian world view and being strongly connected to the land and the farm through history, biography and family tradition. In this paper, we present findings from a three-year study of entrepreneurial family farmers who are globally engaged and undertake extensive mobility as part of their farm business practices. The paper shows how they readily display some of the key hallmarks of contemporary cosmopolitanism: they are highly mobile and frequently engage in the routineness of international travel; they understand the strategic significance of cultural sensitivities and competencies; and they gain pleasure from engaging with difference. Yet, we suggest that these expressions of cosmopolitanism are also contradictory and, at times, may be understood as either ‘instrumental’, ‘banal’ or ‘engaged’. The paper illustrates how ordinary and everyday cosmopolitan repertoires and sentiments can arise outside the usual settings and among actors not readily acknowledged in the cosmopolitanism literature.

Skateboarding and the ‘Tired Generation’: Ageing in Youth Cultures and Lifestyle Sports:

This article extends current discussions of ageing through a study of the continuing involvement in skateboarding of individuals who are no longer young adults. We qualitatively examine The Tired Video which features older and mostly middle-aged male skaters as our case study. This is done in light of discourses of ageing and a lack of studies examining how older participants remain involved in lifestyle sports typically associated with youth and risk. Our findings reveal four main processes, which we argue assist older skaters to establish an ongoing sense of inclusion in skateboarding. These are modification, dedication, humour and homage. Our study can also contribute insights to other scenes that have reached a ‘coming of age’ where they no longer accurately fit the description of being a youth culture alone, and the need to redirect thinking about ageing away from notions of imminent departure and deficit over to positive adaptations.

Australianness as fairness: implications for cosmopolitan encounters

This article provides an account of interwoven and often competing repertoires of cosmopolitanism and nationalism on which Australians draw when encountering diversity. Using interview and focus group data the article first explores how the notion of Australianness grounded in civic virtues such as fairness, openness and egalitarianism effectively enhances cosmopolitan outlooks. It identifies the mechanisms through which these same virtues are mobilized to rationalize the failure to actualize cosmopolitanism in everyday practice. We argue that Australianness understood as the popular ‘fair-go’ principle at times conceptually overlaps with cosmopolitan ethics. However, it also bears the potential to hinder cosmopolitan practices. Ultimately national and cosmopolitan ethical frameworks have to be interrogated simultaneously when applied to micro-level interactions.