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(2012)ThesisBetween 1937 and 1986, Australian Indigenous people diagnosed with Hansen's disease (leprosy) were compulsorily isolated under the care of Catholic religious nursing Sisters in remote leprosaria across the north of the continent. This thesis explores the forces that gave rise to and maintained this policy; the underlying ideals and anxieties; and the ways the policy was executed across the four institutions that form the focus of the study: Derby (WA), Fantome Island (QLD), and Channel Island and East Arm (both NT). Missionary archival documents, oral histories and publications are used to examine the lives, work and traditions of the Sisters and other influential Catholic missionaries. Government records also reveal medical and social objectives implicit in the founding, staffing and ongoing operations of the institutions. Comparisons are made with management strategies for white Hansen's disease patients in Australia to unravel prevailing conceptions about the separate categories of race and disease. The Indigenous leprosaria derived from the Commonwealth government's interwar vision of a healthy White Australia, and the supervision and treatment of the inmates was considered a necessary corollary to this initiative. Catholic women religious were uniquely positioned for this role, being prepared for the incumbent risks, and having the requisite nursing and midwifery qualifications, resulting from a current upsurge in Catholic missionary activity in northern Australia. The Sisters expanded their nursing duties to encompass the holistic care of their patients and to educate them in Western skills, culture and morality. They ushered in the more intensive participation of Catholic Brothers and priests in evangelising the patients. In many ways the Catholic project aligned with government objectives for the social assimilation of the Indigenous population, but in the leprosarium, the object of such efforts was that ‘civilised’ and ‘Christianised’ residents would comply stoically with their enforced detention. Prescribed activities, whether hard work or leisure, were to keep patients occupied, diffusing their yearnings for home, and offering a gentler alternative to more punitive controlling measures. In later years, the Sisters became modern therapists, and agitators for better conditions and less stringent discharge criteria, thus more effectively helping patients regain their health and independence.
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(2021)ThesisThis study addresses modern and contemporary food art practices that incorporate edible materials into art. Such art emerged in the early 20th century when artists began using edible materials in work designed to be touched, tasted, or smelled by audiences. By constructing these experiential encounters, food art activates bodily responses of a perceiving subject. My project proposes a theoretical framework called the 'gastronomic body' to address and analyse the subjective, bodily involvement of food art audiences where their bodies become perceptual sites for interpretation and introspection. I argue that social and cultural environments inform and direct audience perceptions of gustatory art. In this thesis, I build on existing food art literature by investigating how bodily memory links to culturally formed habits, dining rituals, and customs activated by food art. The experience of eating food, and by extension food art, is multidimensional: past experience can influence or shape a subject's perception. Referencing key examples of food art, I trace a lineage of art that employs edible materials from the Futurist banquets of the early 20th century to neo-avant-garde practices of the 1960s and 70s. Artists including Alison Knowles, Allan Kaprow, Dieter Roth, Edward Ruscha, and Daniel Spoerri used foodstuffs in various applications from object-based work to participatory, performance, and installation art. I also examine food-based artwork from the 1990s by Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Janine Antoni and more recent examples, including 21st-century edible installations by Elizabeth Willing and Sonja Alhauser. This examination of food art shows how the imagined dimensions of sensory experience in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological theory of the 'virtual body' link sensory perception and encultured experience. I uncover how sociocultural customs and norms shape bodily responses and sensory feelings from pleasure to displeasure through the lens of Silvan S. Tomkins's psychological approach to affect theory. The gastronomic body bridges the sensory with the sociocultural to map the spectrum of sensations, memories, and gestures activated through the embodied experience of food art, connecting past and present, body and mind, self and others.
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(2021)ThesisAs increasing numbers of apartments are developed domestically and internationally, longstanding concerns about their livability for families with children become more pressing. This research explores how the quality and choice of apartment designs might be improved to better meet the needs of families with children. It focuses on unit layouts in Sydney, the city, which has the highest number of new apartment developments in Australia and a growing number and proportion of families with children. Unit layout is an important factor that influences residents’ desires and residential satisfaction, but there are few studies available on unit layout and residential desires. Firstly, the research investigated the units being developed in three areas (City of Sydney, City of Parramatta, and Liverpool City) through an analysis of sale information (unit plan, size, and price) before exploring the drivers behind current unit layouts through interviews with architects and developers. Secondly, the desires of families with children regarding unit layout were explored through interviews with parents living in apartments. The desires of parents were categorized as universal, consistent (according to children’s age), and diverse (according to personal tastes and cultural backgrounds). Thirdly, parents’ desires were compared with the unit layouts being delivered to identify synergies and mismatches and determine the aspects that need to be kept or need to be improved. Lastly, the implications of the research findings for designing and delivering units that better meet the desires of families with children are discussed. The research provides knowledge on the characteristics of delivered and desired unit layouts for families with children and contributes to academic research on the potential role the spatial layout of units has for improving residential satisfaction. The findings can assist governments in regulating apartment design and enable professionals in the building industry to better meet the desires of families with children. It also offers methodological innovation by combining different methods to measure spatial layout and compare this with abstract ideas about the desires of residents. While this thesis focused on the Sydney context and families with children, it provides insights into the impact and implications of apartment design for residents more broadly.
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(2021)ThesisThe 1968 Democratic National Convention has long been remembered for the televised images of police clashing with protesters in downtown Chicago while delegates nominated their candidate for the presidential election. Among those gathered in the city were a number of literary and countercultural figures who acted through and against dominant forms of media, cultural, and political power. Playback ’68: Countercultural Media Activism at the 1968 Democratic National Convention focuses on such activities using the case studies of William S. Burroughs’ incendiary “invisible” tape recorder playback, Allen Ginsberg’s chant of Aum, and Abbie Hoffman’s performative approach to “media-freaking.” Employing original research in television, literary, and personal archives, the thesis provides an historical analysis of these seemingly marginal cases as they are manifested on personal, local, and national scales. They are situated within the context of arts and literature, institutional and grassroots forms of media, police and surveillance tactics, union and party politics, and broader activist aspirations leading up to and including the Convention. Playback ’68 specifically investigates how media technologies, techniques, and outlets were repurposed and navigated in this shifting and complex media, cultural and political environment. In doing so, it provides an understanding of a rich historical moment that sits of the cusp of the proliferation and broad possibility of activist media forms that we continue to see today.
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(2021)ThesisHow can we address the fragmentation of inter-and intra-species relationships and the conceptual and material dislocations of humanity from its natural environments, in environmental thinking and practices? In answering this question, this dissertation offers an ubuntu-inspired solution. Ubuntu views humanity as inseparably connected with other beings and located in the environment. I propose that, in rejecting (human and nonhuman) capacities-based approaches to what counts morally, ubuntu provides an alternative vision, one that decolonises ideas and practices that suppress or deny the flourishing of individuals or groups. This dissertation proposes an original, ubuntu-inspired framework, an 'ethico-ecological community', with two integrated themes, relationality and locatedness. Ubuntu provides the primary conceptual insight within which these dual themes are nested. ‘Relationality’ draws our attention to networks of inter-and intra-species interactions involving humans and nonhumans, while ‘locatedness’ prompts us to consider the embeddedness of beings and entities in built and natural environments (cities, forests, rivers, soils, or in some combination: location). Together, the themes animate the dissertation’s arguments that: (a) the environment is not merely a site within which humans live, but is constitutive of human and nonhuman identities and flourishing, and (b) the relationships therein must also be incorporated in an account of human and nonhuman wellbeing. My argument demonstrates that ubuntu helps to redirect our moral gaze beyond more simplistic and insular conceptions of environmental ethics that only address human wellbeing. While ubuntu will be helpful in repositioning the way we think about environmental ethics, I suggest that ubuntu does not offer a one-size-fits-all solution for all the environmental ills we face. Rather, more realistically and cautiously, this dissertation will contribute to scholarship by (1) grounding an argument for environmental ethics in human and nonhuman wellbeing, (2) adapting the idea of sharing central to ubuntu, to highlight the importance of locality—locatedness in the earth environment—in human and nonhuman life, and (3) offering unique themes from ubuntu that diversify our conceptions of environmental wellbeing. This could help expand our moral vocabulary and vision to provide a less fragmentary approach to environmental problems.
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(2021)ThesisThis thesis is an anthropological study of kinship among residents in Reykjavík, Iceland, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Through ethnographic research with families and citizens’ collectives, kinship is explored as the cultures of relatedness developed in response to an economic crisis that turned into a political one. I argue that kin bonds provide affective support to recast the moral landscape after the economic collapse and revelations of corruption among politicians. The backdrop to this thesis is the effect of the crisis on culturally sanctioned ideas about accepted behaviours for the benefit of present and future kin. This is traced through debates over legislating a new constitution drafted after the crisis. While a distinction is often made between the domains of politics and kinship, this thesis engages recent anthropological literature on collective action and protest against the nation-state to illustrate the political utility of affective support and social intimacy among kin networks for rebuilding Iceland’s moral landscape. Kinship is shown to provide the conditions necessary to build this landscape and mount democratic reform. Kinship and politics blend in this context, thereby leading to the development of new shared values, ethics and attitudes for reinstating social equality, which are then channelled into politics through sustained efforts in the public sphere to build recovery and enact lasting reform. Noting Iceland’s peripheral location from the metropolitan centres of Europe and my cultural and geographic position as an Australian anthropologist, this research asks what can be known about crisis and recovery when we look to the margins. With reference to Raewyn Connell’s Southern theory (2007), I join Icelandic scholars in questioning what accounts of the crisis–aftermath nexus outside the global centres of capitalism tells us about the crisis phenomenon. In this context, citizens’ collectives comprising kin networks are shown to be revitalising national politics, demonstrating kinship’s enduring appeal for social organisation and belonging when leaders are seen to fail in their elected responsibilities.
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(2021)ThesisThis study has been undertaken to gain a new understanding of the relationship between housing density and liveability. Through a critical examination of various concepts of density, a holistic theoretical framework of density has been proposed and tested via a case study, that is, the housing history of Shanghai between 1843 and 1949 is analysed and interpreted from a density perspective. There are numerous misconceptions about density as revealed in the surveyed literature of architecture and urban planning. High density, as a method of measuring efficiency and the sustainability of urban environment, has become the dominant goal in urban development according to the modern mindset. Such a mindset has led to misconceptions about density, such as understanding it in a singular, quantitative and linear way. Perceptions that human beings have in relation to density are ignored, making density difficult to use as an effective reference to guide the shaping of liveable urban environments. It is therefore necessary to propose a holistic theoretical framework of density that integrates physical density and perceived density. From the perspective of density, Shanghai's urban housing history is a story of western urban planning and architectural concepts that have been grafted and adapted and then finally developed into a unique urban environment. Shanghai's distinctive topographic and socio-cultural context is an important background behind the development of a diverse and integrated living environment. This study explores ways of shaping urban fabric and housing through re-enacting the living environment of Shanghai from 1843 to 1949. The study includes two steps. Firstly, the concepts of physical density and perceived density are respectively correlated to parti and poché used in the École des Beaux-Arts’ architectural education to propose a new theoretical framework of density. Secondly, physical and social conditions of the living environment in Shanghai between 1843 and 1949 are re-enacted from the macro to the micro scale following the structure of the street-system, street-blocks and block-plans. Corresponding to these three levels, the findings from the case studies consist of three parts. First, the street system, inherited from the spatial morphology of the agricultural era, formed appropriately sized blocks that balanced the vitality of the streets and the stability within the blocks. Second, the remarkable diversity of urban plots converted from pre-divided agricultural land, facilitated the appearance of mixed uses and varied building forms within a single block to meet the needs of different groups of residents. Finally, different forms of boundaries were used as effective architectural strategies to purposefully manipulate perceived density and thus improved the liveability of urban environments. These findings describe the fitting relationship between living environment and ways of living so that the influence of density on liveability is elucidated. The findings of this study reveal that the density of a liveable environment is not an absolute value. Liveability is closely related to both physical density and how it is perceived. The housing history of Shanghai from 1843 to1949 shows that residents of certain quarters of Shanghai during that period developed a fitting relationship between their ways of living and the living environment within a specific socio-cultural context. This relationship and its vernacular and agricultural roots are an important reference for the purposeful shaping of perceived density and consequently the creation of a liveable environment. This thesis makes contributions to both theoretical and practical properties of density. The theoretical framework integrating physical and perceived density provides a new perspective for urban housing history studies and can be used as an effective reference for achieving a balance between economic efficiency and liveability in contemporary urban design and administration.
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(2021)ThesisAs the final phase of the translation process, revision has traditionally been a relatively neglected component despite it being critical to achieving high-quality translation. The significant role played by revision was recognized relatively late in the development of Translation Studies. However, revision is arguably very relevant to translator tra ining. Recent advances in research technologies and methods (e.g. screen recording and eye tracking) can now be harnessed to investigate the process of translation, in cluding the quantity, quality and nature of revision. Indeed, translators’ own reflections and self- and meta-awareness of the translation process and the quality of the pro ducts which they produce may also be explored, and even enhanced, in this manner. In order to address lacunae in the literature, this project situates itself in process-ori ented translation research and aims to provide original, empirical work that is likely to have implications for models of the revision component of the translation process, translator training, and professional practice. The research attempts to explore the development of translation students’ self-reflection on their own translation processes by using translation process protocols of eye tracking and screen recording.
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(2022)ThesisThis study was conducted to increase our understanding of residents’ place attachment within residential outdoor environments in urban China. There were three aims for this study: to investigate how residents develop place attachment within residential outdoor environments through their experiences of these settings; to examine the role of the physical environment in residents’ place attachment within residential outdoor environments; and to identify the relationship between the Chinese socio-cultural context and place attachment, adding the evidence in the Chinese context to the existing literature on place attachment that mainly focuses on the Western context. Place attachment as an affective bond between people and place has a positive impact on people’s health and well-being. Residential areas are important places in people’s everyday life and there is a large body of research on residential attachment. Residential outdoor environments have been proven to play a role in residential place attachment, but the mechanics of place attachment within residential outdoor environments are not known. This study investigates residents’ experience of the outdoor environments to which they are attached to identify the significant physical characteristics and social dimensions that may contribute to place attachment. Residential neighbourhoods in urban China have witnessed great change over the last forty years due to rapid urbanisation and currently there are two typical residential models in urban China: one, mid-rise apartment blocks with unrestricted street patterns built before 2000; the other, high-rise towers in gated communities built in the past 20 years. Residential outdoor environments are traditionally designed to provide opportunities for physical activities and social interaction, but aestheticization of outdoor environments has become a major selling point and an important indicator for evaluating the quality of newly built settlements in China. This dilemma has put great pressure on landscape urban design to provide quality residential outdoor environments. This study used a comparative case study of the two residential models in Qingdao, China, and three methods were used: semi-structured interviews with 20 adult residents for each case, 40 in total; a questionnaire with the participants involved in the interviews; and participant observation of outdoor environments. Theories of place attachment, social ecological perspective, and urban open space studies provide the conceptual framework for this study. The findings reveal that place attachment within residential outdoor environments can be rooted in social ties and can also stem from the physical attributes of the environment. For the former, residents can ascribe attachment to the place through lengthy person-environment interaction or because of environmental beauty and distinctiveness. For the latter, residents can be attached to the place that symbolises their social group or where they have important personal memories. The findings also identify the key attributes of the physical environment that contribute to place attachment. The relationship between the Chinese socio-cultural context and place attachment is also identified in terms of the physical characteristics as well as social dimensions. This study makes theoretical contributions to place attachment theory. It throws light on the understanding of the role and functions of the physical environment in place attachment and increases our understanding of how place attachment manifests in the Chinese context. It also provides design recommendations for landscape architects and planners to create and construct supportive residential outdoor environments in urban China, which has practical implications.
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(2022)ThesisThis thesis addresses language maintenance and shift (LMS) in the Blang community in China. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories including the sociology of language, the social psychology of language and linguistic anthropology, this research examined Blang people’s language practices, their attitudes towards the complex ecology of Blang, Putonghua, the Yunnan dialect, and English. These attitudes inform the research about their perceptions of Blang vitality and their motivations for maintaining Blang for future generations. The study used a qualitative approach and conducted semi-structured interviews with 61 participants representing three generations. The study was also informed by ethnographic observations during fieldwork in the Township of Blang Mountain, Southwest China. The numerical data on language practices was analysed using descriptive statistics, and the discursive data on language perceptions was analysed through thematic analysis. The data analysis identified that the Blang language has been undergoing language shift. This shift was found to have been mediated by social structures that provide limited affordance for the use of Blang in public domains. Blang people’s ideological beliefs about the reduced utility of Blang have further marginalised the language. However, the findings also revealed that language shift did not occur in a uniform pattern in the community, and it was contingent on individual agency. Blang people deployed their agency to either adapt to or resist structural constraints through different linguistic practices, which resulted in varying degrees of LMS. In addition to the interplay between structure and agency, there were contests between parental and child agency. Blang youth responded to the parental agency in varied ways through negotiating their family language policy and their own language preferences. The findings support theories of LMS which recognise that language shift has variation within speech communities. This study provides empirical evidence for the benefit of using qualitative approaches to the study of LMS to have a deeper understanding of structure and agency at play. This study also draws attention to the unequal power relations between languages and calls for language policies which support minority groups to maintain their language.