Jenny Cameron

Demystifying Academic Writing: Reflections on Emotions, Know-How and Academic Identity.

Writing is the foundation of academic practice, yet academic writing is seldom explicitly taught. As a result many beginning (and experienced) academics struggle with writing and the difficult emotions, particularly the self-doubt, that writing stirs up. Yet it need not be like this. In this paper, strategies are discussed for attending to the emotions of writing, and developing writing know-how and a stronger sense of identity as a writer. It is argued that addressing all three aspects of writing—emotions, know-how and identity—helps demystify the academic writing process and helps novices on their journey to becoming academic writers.

Transforming communities: Towards a research agenda

Abstract The term ‘community’ has re‐entered policy debates in recent times in connection with new views on economic management and increasing concern about spatial disparities in Australian society. In this paper we review current research on communities and policy interventions into community transformation as a way of outlining a possible research agenda.

Bodily learning for a (climate) changing world: registering differences through performative and collective research

There is widespread agreement that current climate change scenarios mean we have to change how we live on this planet. Yet our current understandings of social and behavioural change seem insufficient for the task at hand. In this paper we explore Bruno Latours notion of “learning to be affected”, and we argue that this idea of bodily learning seems well-suited to thinking about how people can be moved to act in response to the human and nonhuman world that is all around us. We also argue that research can prompt and sharpen this form of embodied learning when it is conducted in a performative and collective mode that is geared towards crafting rather than capturing realities. We demonstrate how this might occur through the example of a community garden research project based on a collective bus trip-workshop method.

Building Citizens: Participatory Planning Practice and a Transformative Politics of Difference

Decision makers frequently use separate participatory activities to involve marginalised groups. This approach can generate valuable insights, but it has limitations. We discuss the benefits and limits through two examples involving young people, and outline how the approach can be modified, thereby building citizens who are responsive to other perspectives.

Researching diverse food initiatives: from backyard and community gardens to international markets

Given the current environmental crisis and prevalence of social justice concerns, there is no doubt that we need a different approach to how food is produced, consumed and distributed. While both academic and popular accounts of the food system often focus on the violences and exclusions created by export-oriented, high-input, industrial agriculture, the focus of many communities, practitioners and academics is on what can and has been done to create and support alternative food initiatives. Food sovereignty movements in the Majority and Minority worlds, community gardens, community supported agriculture and people-led approaches to sustainable agriculture have all made important contributions to how food is produced, distributed and consumed in the 21st century. For those involved in these movements, and for those who work with them, there is a need for detailed discussion of the specific practices associated with alternative food initiatives, and for considered, yet generative, explorations of the strengths, limitations and conundrums of different approaches. For academics working closely with alternative food movements, there is also the question of how best to contribute to the movements, and how to understand the role of the researcher in researching and actively supporting movements in varied ways.

Cultivating hybrid collectives: research methods for enacting community food economies in Australia and the Philippines

Across the globe, groups are experimenting with initiatives to create alternatives to the dominant food system. What role might research play in helping to strengthen and multiply these initiatives? In this paper we discuss two research projects in Australia and the Philippines in which we have cultivated hybrid collectives of academic researchers, lay researchers and various non-human others with the intention of enacting community food economies. We feature three critical interactions in the “hybrid collective research method”: gathering, which brings together those who share concerns about community food economies; reassembling, in which material gathered is deliberatively rebundled to amplify particular insights; and translating, by which reassembled ideas are taken up by other collectives so they may continue to “do work”. We argue that in a climate-changing world, the hybrid collective research method fosters opportunities for a range of human and non-human participants to act in concert to build community food economies.

The practice of politics: transforming subjectivities in the domestic domain and the public sphere

Abstract Contemporary politics seems to be characterised by the competing claims of identity groups, and, with opposing groups drawing upon the rhetoric of truth and justice, it has become increasingly more difficult to adjudicate these claims. Recognising the limits of a politics based on established identities, Michel Foucault articulated a political project that sought to develop new forms of experience and subjectivity. In an age when men have been popularly described as coming from Mars and women from Venus, it seems unlikely that gender identities in the private sphere might offer an example for politics in the public sphere. Despite the view that women and men comprise opposing and conflicting identity groups, I propose that gendered domestic practices and subjectivities can be seen as being constantly negotiated and transformed. Using examples from several households, I argue that supposedly fixed and exclusive feminine and masculine subject positions can be made to seem precarious and tenuous, su...

Negotiating the challenge of collaborative writing: learning from one writing group's mutiny

With continuing pressure to publish or perish, interventions such as writing groups are increasingly part of the academic landscape. In this paper, we discuss our writing groups experiment with collaborative writing, which came unstuck as simmering concerns led to a mutiny within the group. The mutiny provided insights into tensions that are inevitably present in writing groups and collaborative writing exercises but are seldom written about. We explore these tensions via a collaborative autoethnography, drawing on published literature on writing groups and collaborative writing. The mutiny revealed three key dynamics. Experienced voices can have an important role to play but these voices need to be moderated so that other voices might be recognised and valued. Pleasure and productivity are two necessary components for sustaining writing groups and writing collaborations. Finally, hierarchies in the academic context are inescapable but they can be renegotiated so that more enabling power relations can be generated.

Asset-based and citizen-led development: Using a diffracted power lens to analyze the possibilities and challenges:

Asset-based community development or Asset-based and citizen-led development (ABCD) is being used in a range of development contexts. Some researchers have been quick to dismiss ABCD as part of the neoliberal project and an approach that perpetuates unequal power relations. This article uses a diffracted power analysis to explore the possibilities associated with ABCD as well as the challenges. It focuses on the application of ABCD in the Philippines, Ethiopia and South Africa, and finds that ABCD can reverse internalized powerlessness, strengthen opportunities for collective endeavours and help to build local capacity for action.

Evaluation for development: Planning for public involvement in SEQ 2021

Shis paper reports on the first stage evaluation of the public H involvement component of SEQ 2021 a regional planning program in South East Queensland. The evaluation is being conducted using an action research approach so that results can be used to improve subsequent public involvement activities of SEQ 2021. The first stage of the evaluation focused on the process of planning for public involvement. Two findings were that there was a lack of a clear and shared understanding of the aims and objectives of the public involvement component of SEQ 2021, and that there was a disconnect between the stages in the decision making process and the public involvement activities. The authors therefore conducted a community engagement planning workshop to assist SEQ 2021 refine their community engagement plan.