Publication:
Disarming dissent: The institutional politics of sexual violence in the neoliberal university

dc.contributor.advisor Durbach, Andrea
dc.contributor.advisor Chappell, Louise
dc.contributor.advisor Apoifis, Nicholas
dc.contributor.author Hush, Anna
dc.date.accessioned 2022-10-07T01:21:02Z
dc.date.available 2022-10-07T01:21:02Z
dc.date.issued 2022
dc.date.submitted 2022-10-04T22:14:04Z
dc.description.abstract For decades, feminists at Australian universities have fought to publicise and politicise the issue of campus sexual violence. These efforts have recently come to fruition, with universities publicly acknowledging the problem and undertaking various institutional reforms. However, there has been little scholarly attention paid to political struggles over sexual violence within universities. This thesis critically examines the politics of feminist activism against sexual violence at Australian university campuses. It situates this activism against the backdrop of the neoliberalisation of Australian universities, to reveal how feminists have challenged – and at times, acted in complicity with – these transformations in the landscape of Australian higher education. This analysis is both historical, drawing on archival material relating to the history of campus feminist politics, and contemporary, using data from interviews with students currently engaged in organising against sexual violence. It explores the strategies and tactics adopted by feminist collectives, the constraints on feminist mobilisation in the neoliberal university, and the shortcomings of these movements. This thesis makes two original contributions to knowledge. Firstly, it extends existing analyses of university sexual violence and contributes to the growing body of scholarship on this topic. Research on campus sexual violence in Australia has so far focused on policy analysis and prevalence data. While this provides an important basis for evaluating the scope of the problem and potential remedies, it is largely disconnected from political struggles over institutional responses to sexual violence, a gap this thesis seeks to fill. I offer an analysis of the historical and contemporary struggles that have created the conditions for institutional change, as well as the complex ways in which the neoliberal university undermines and constrains oppositional movements. Secondly, this thesis makes a theoretical contribution to the field of New and Feminist Institutionalism. It critically intervenes in the institutionalist field, drawing greater attention to the roles of macro-social contexts and actors in the form of social movements in processes of institutional change and proposing a framework that foregrounds these aspects of institutional politics. The findings of this research reveal significant limitations in Australian universities’ responses to sexual violence, with their actions falling short of both student demands and expert recommendations. I argue that these actions have largely functioned to consolidate managerial power and mitigate reputational risk, in doing so narrowing the space of political contestation. My analysis further illuminates the specific institutional constraints that bear upon student feminist organisers within the neoliberal university. This analysis offers strategic insights into feminist engagement with institutions, suggesting that student movements must develop the capacity to disrupt processes of institutional reproduction and challenge the reformist approach adopted by universities. A transformative response to campus sexual violence, I argue, will require broader and better-organised coalitions of staff and students in order to collectively challenge and overcome these constraints.
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/100679
dc.language English
dc.language.iso en
dc.publisher UNSW, Sydney
dc.rights CC BY 4.0
dc.rights.uri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.title Disarming dissent: The institutional politics of sexual violence in the neoliberal university
dc.type Thesis
dcterms.accessRights open access
dcterms.rightsHolder Hush, Anna
dspace.entity.type Publication
unsw.accessRights.uri https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
unsw.date.workflow 2022-10-06
unsw.identifier.doi https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/24386
unsw.relation.faculty Law & Justice
unsw.relation.faculty Other UNSW
unsw.relation.faculty Arts Design & Architecture
unsw.relation.school School of Global and Public Law
unsw.relation.school School of Global and Public Law
unsw.thesis.degreetype PhD Doctorate
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