‘Working out’ for two: performances of ‘fitness’ and femininity in Australian prenatal aerobics classes

In this article, I consider the distinctly classed places/spaces in which affluent Australian pregnant women physically maintain their bodies through aerobics. The case study described is drawn from data obtained between 2006 and 2008 in a longitudinal study examining feelings about body image and ‘fatness’ in a sample of pregnant women in Melbourne, Australia. The ways in which pregnant bodies are disciplined within gym spaces are discussed through a case study of a prenatal fitness centre, FitForTwo, and drawing on narrative data of pregnant informants. FitForTwo is described as a primary site for the performance of ‘fit’ pregnancy and underscored by bodies that can be shaped, trained, moulded and modified. This case study is analysed against a backdrop of a growing Australian moral panics about ‘fighting’ maternal obesity. It adds to a body of feminist geographical and qualitative studies of pregnancy, bringing both a more sustained, longitudinal analysis than previously offered, and an Australian context that offers rich comparative material.     

The Archaeology of Poverty and Human Dignity: Charity and the Work Ethic in a 1930s Depression Era Itinerant’s Camp on the Toowoomba Range Escarpment, Queensland

This paper outlines the ethnohistory and archaeology of a Great Depression camp for unemployed men, established at Toowoomba, Queensland, in 1932. The camp was self sufficient and highly ordered. We interpret the material signature of the camp as a symbol of main-stream middle-class Australian values. Thus the camp is also a material symbol of the work ethic central at this time to notions of human dignity, respect and the moral development of individuals. We conclude that the archaeology of the camp demonstrates a strong work ethic among the ‘inmates’ and a degree of visible charity enabled by the historical concept of the ‘deserving poor’.     

Placemaking Through Protest: An Archaeology of the Lees Cross and Endcliffe Protest Camp, Derbyshire, England

The article describes the preliminary results of an archaeological survey of a protest camp occupied since 1999 in Derbyshire, England, and reflects briefly on the role of archaeology in researching contemporary activism and protests. The camp is structured by the everyday activities involved in living in the landscape, by the ‘manufactured vulnerability’ created using characteristics of the environment to contest an attempted eviction, and the public statements of protest that symbolise the campaign to the wider world. Through its longevity and the high profile of the wider anti-quarry campaign the camp is now a key element in the history of its landscape, and it is on these terms that it became the subject of archaeological research.     

Pre-deployment ‘gender’ training and the lack thereof for Australian peacekeepers

In the area of peacekeeping training, Australia has a reputation of promoting ‘best practice’ internationally. Training for Australian police peacekeepers has been described by the United Nations as ‘one-of-a-kind’ and ‘a world-class model of best practice’. This article provides a case study of how gender training is conducted, and how ‘gender’ is understood from a critical feminist perspective. This article focuses only on the pre-deployment training stage and is informed by confidential interviews with staff from the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Defence Force, as well as observing training in 2013–14. The findings suggest that the training is inadequate because it is not carried out for all peacekeeping personnel, despite international and national requirements to do so. In addition, the findings suggest that ‘gender’ is understood in a very limited way that does not problematise power relations between the sexes and is only covered as a way of understanding the peacekeeping context, and not in relation to the attitudes and behaviours of peacekeepers themselves. This raises the question of whether and how other troop-contributing countries conduct the training and to what standard, given the documented problems of Australia's supposedly ‘best-practice’ training.     

Australian Federalism and Domestic Violence Policy-Making

The influence of state architecture on gender policy and politics is an emergent strand of feminist research. This paper contributes to this research by undertaking a detailed case study of one specific gender policy area – domestic violence policy – in old federation Australia. Drawing on the experiences of the past decade, it confirms earlier research findings that demonstrate that under certain conditions, federal structures can influence the development of gender policy in positive ways, such as providing opportunities for ‘venue shopping’ and policy innovation. The paper engages, too, with recent research on Australian federalism and challenges the consensus about the centralised nature of the Australian federal system by demonstrating that in the area of gender policy, states and territories are more than just the implementation arms of the Commonwealth government. Sub-national governments continue to play an important and autonomous role in policy relating to women and therefore remain central sites for advancing gender equality.     

The Australian ballot: Not the secret ballot

Australian historical and political science academic accounts of the ‘secret ballot’ often describe it as being designed in Australia and first applied in Victoria in 1856. Narratives often focus on Chartists and radicals finding fertile ground in the New World for ideas that had met insurmountable resistance in the Mother Country. But this concentration on the ‘British story’ has led to a misconception in this country: that the secret ballot was first tried in Australia. This comes from conflating the ‘Australian ballot’ with the ‘secret ballot’. Voting by ballot, in ‘secret’—that is, not by a show of hands, on the voices or signed voting paper—was in use in America and Europe well before being implemented in Australia. This was the secret ballot many demanded for Australia, but they got something else: the Australian ballot, wholly original, with identifying features—such as the government printed ballot paper—previously unimagined. The Australian ballot was not the world's first secret ballot; it was much more important than that.     

Heritage Beyond Borders: Australian Approaches to Extra-National Built Heritage

The rights of the state to protect heritage within its borders, to ratify international conventions and to cooperate in bilateral engagements have been foundational concepts of heritage governance. Extreme circumstances may result in an intervention by non-state parties, but in times of peace it is typically the state that prevails. Drawing from recent efforts (2000s) of the Australian Federal Government to create a ‘List of Overseas Places of Historic Significance to Australia’, this paper explores the complications that can arise from the privileging of state authority in current approaches to heritage. This serves as a point of departure for considering the more widely applicable contradictions, limitations and loopholes of a global approach that favours the ‘state’ and the ramifications this might have for heritage diplomacy.     

Masculine hegemony,the state and the incorporation of gender equity discourse: The case of Australian sport

Although the impact of affirmative action, equal opportunity and gender equity programs on the lives of Australian women have been explored in a number of areas, state interventions related to sport have received scant attention from public policy analysts. This paper examines how the Australian Sports Commission has framed its gender equity policy in the mutually reinforcing hegemonic discourses of masculinity and corporate managerialism. It is argued that the Commission's articulation of gender equity policy in terms of ‘market‐oriented individualism’ is both constituted by, and constitutive of, the shift from a ‘patriarchal‐welfare state’ to a ‘patriarchal‐managerial state’ in Australia. The paper also provides an example of the tensions between bureaucratic and feminist discourses in the state sphere.     

Theatre sports in the Southern Ocean: engagement options for Australia in whale research protest action

In the great whaling debate, fuelled twice yearly by the annual International Whaling Commission meeting and the departure of the Japanese research fleet for the Southern Ocean, silliness knows no bounds. 2008 was no exception, as the Southern Ocean again became the location of protest action (sometimes provocative and potentially life-threatening) against Japanese scientific research vessels. The Japanese are accused of ‘whaling’ in a whale sanctuary off the Australian Antarctic Territory, yet this claim to sovereignty is not legally proven and therefore not universally accepted. The Rudd Labor Government bowed to significant pressure and sent its Customs vessel, the Oceanic Viking, to spy on the Japanese fleet and gather evidence for a possible ‘world court’ action. This paper examines what options were available to Australia to intervene in the protest action, to monitor the Japanese research and to take legal action in an international forum within the constraints of internationally defined diplomatic and legal boundaries. It concludes that the risk of attracting the wrath of the Japanese government and other Antarctic Treaty countries is great indeed and the Australian government must be careful not to step too far outside these boundaries.     

Criminalising commercial surrogacy in Canada and Australia: the political construction of ‘national consensus’

This article examines the language used to justify a criminal prohibition on commercial surrogacy in Canada and Australia. I demonstrate that legislators in each country framed commercial surrogacy as an area over which there was national ‘consensus’ because of uniquely Canadian and Australian values. This was an effective political strategy, but for different reasons in each country: in Canada, because it fit with frames surrounding healthcare and anti-commercialisation, and in Australia, because the distinction between ‘altruistic’ and ‘commercial’ surrogacy mapped onto broader themes of altruism in Australian society. This suggests that the political use of national frames is especially successful when it taps into pre-existing narratives of what constitutes unacceptable behaviour in a given polity, and when it is attached to criminal prohibitions.     

On the difficulties of speaking out against security

Abstract: This article outlines an approach to security that explains its phenomenal growth by examining a peculiarity of its semantic field. In contrast to notions like ‘war’ and ‘violence’, whose antonyms, ‘peace’ and ‘non‐violence’, have positive connotations and are therefore well suited to discursively opposing ‘war’ and ‘violence’, the antonym of ‘security’ ‘ namely ‘insecurity’ ‘ does not achieve the same effect. I suggest that this peculiarity leads to situations in which those in the political field who oppose ‘security’ find themselves in the predicament of having to come up with alternative antonymic constructions such as ‘security vs freedom’ or ‘security vs human rights’ to argue their case. Yet, this produces an asymmetric constellation: while ‘security’ tends to be presented as a self‐evident category, most of its opposites require more explication and substantiation when they are used to denaturalize security. Thus, my argument is that it is difficult to speak out against security without becoming enmeshed in complex questions of what a desirable social life should look like.     

‘The Sun Always Shines in Perth’: a Post‐Colonial Geography of Identity,Memory and Place

In this paper I explore some of the textual possibilities of post‐colonial geography. Using the conceptual tool of place as a palimpsest, I trace some geographies of memory across selected colonial and post‐colonial texts. By focusing on the relationship between representations of ‘sunny Perth’ and ‘Nyungah Perth’, I tease out some of the more general theoretical issues which pertain to a politics of place and space within this (post)colonial Australian context. The nexus of memory, place and cultural identity is central to my analysis. I give particular attention to the ways in which cultural memories are inscribed in some very specific and very ordinary places, and how these places become site‐markers of the remembering process and of identity itself.     

Australian foreign policy and news media: national identity and the sale of uranium to India and China

This article explores the utility of a constructivist-media communications approach to understanding the production of national identity in Australia through a case study of the Australian Labor Party's 2011 decision to allow uranium sales to India. The decision came at a time when Australian foreign policy, political debate and news media discourse were increasingly concerned with India and China, as ‘rising’ superpowers whose prominence offered opportunities for economic prosperity even as it undermined settled regional power balances. This article finds that, rather than a matter of rational strategy, the decision was made in a context of considerable anxiety about the ‘Asian century’ as the Australian public, politicians and policymakers struggled to comprehend geopolitical change. It further argues that the constructivist project in international relations can benefit from engaging with insights from media and communications methodologies and by taking a less hierarchical approach to ‘elite’ and ‘non-elite’ discursive agency.     

Feminist geography,the ‘everyday’, and local–global relations: hidden spaces of place‐making*

An interest in the taken‐for‐granted, mundane routine activities of women's lives has long been central to the production of knowledge in feminist geography. Here, I revisit the ‘everyday’ in relation to changing lines of inquiry as geographers work to capture the complexity of local–global relations in conceptualising an accelerated pace of the stretching of social relations over space. Through a primary focus on feminist work on care in the home, I explore the various ways in which the meanings and organisation of caregiving activity are intricately connected with the intertwining of globalisation, neoliberalism, social conservatism and a ‘greying’ population in the West. Foregrounding gender in my discussion, I review literature and draw on research examples to illustrate ways in which various types of ‘hidden’ caregiving contribute to contemporary place‐making, and open up our understanding of the ‘local’.     

Going to war democratically: lessons for Australia from Canada and the UK

This article addresses the role of democracy in Australia’s foreign policy formation. It argues that public debate and deliberation on foreign policy is a normative good. When there is a lack of debate on a government decision, a democratic deficit occurs. Such a deficit is evident in the way Australia goes to war; however, the examples of Canada and the UK show that reforming parliamentary practice is possible. In the context of the ‘war on terror’, this article compares Australia, Canada, and the UK from 2001 to 2015 with regards to ‘war powers’. Drawing from debates recorded in Hansard, it finds that while Canada and the UK took steps to ‘parliamentarise’ their foreign policy formation, the war-powers prerogative of the Australian government remained absolute. It concludes that increasing the role of parliament may go a long way towards democratising the decision of when Australia goes to war. This has practical as well as normative benefits, since it may prevent governments from entering wars that are unsupported by the public. At minimum, it will compel governments to engage more thoroughly in public debate about their proposed policies, and justify their decisions to the nation.     

From Coombs to Crean: popular music and cultural policy in Australia

The many bodies administering Australian arts activity were incorporated within the Australia Council, established in 1973 by the Whitlam Labor Government to oversee Commonwealth arts policy under the direction of H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs. This article takes the establishment of the Australia Council as a starting point in tracing changing attitudes towards the practices and funding of popular music in Australia and accompanying policy discourses. This includes consideration of how funding models reinforce understandings of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms, the ‘cultural’/‘creative’ industries debates, and their effects upon local popular music policy. This article discusses the history of local music content debates as a central instrument of popular music policy and examines the implications for cultural nationalism in light of a recent series of media and cultural reports into industries and funding bodies. In documenting a broad shift from cultural to industrial policy narratives, the article examines a central question: What does the ‘national’ now mean in contemporary music and the rapid evolution of digital media technologies?     

Gender and the Australian Parliament: Putting the Political Scientist into the Picture

This paper draws on a study of gender and politics in the Australian parliament in order to make a contribution to methodological debates in feminist political science. The paper begins by outlining the different dimensions of feminist political science methodology that have been identified in the literature. According to this literature five key principles can be seen to constitute feminist approaches to political science. These are: a focus on gender, a deconstruction of the public/private divide, giving voice to women, using research as a basis for transformation, and using reflexivity to critique researcher positionality. The next part of the paper focuses more specifically on reflexivity tracing arguments about its definition, usefulness and the criticisms it has attracted from researchers. Following this, I explore how my background as a member of the Australian House of Representatives from 1987 to 1996 provided an important academic resource in my doctoral study of gender and politics in the national parliament. Through this process I highlight the value of a reflexive approach to research.     

Permeability and Protest in Lane 49: Entangling Materialities of Place with Housing Activism in Shanghai

Since China’s implementation of a neo‐liberal housing regime, housing activism has boomed. Whilst activism is ultimately in place, as increasingly recognised within protest work, there is limited reflection upon how permeable material histories are entangled with the throwntogetherness of place as a site for protest. Employing ethnography over three months, this article follows the emergence, organisation and implementation of housing activism in Lane 49, a public housing community in downtown Shanghai. Utilising feminist geography and feminist political theorisations of material permeability this article contributes to Chinese geographies of protest, providing a local epistemology of housing activism which demonstrates the importance of drawing materiality into understandings of activist tactics. The article also contributes to radical geographies of protest by deconstructing the idea of public protest in a public place and thus offering opportunities to demonstrate how, through blurring public‐private binaries, protest can emerge and survive in authoritative governance regimes.     

Trade agreements and the myth of policy constraint in Australia

In this paper, I challenge the conventional view that trade agreements act as a major constraint on Australia’s industry policy options. Through a comparison with South Korea – a country with similar trade obligations to Australia – I find that the Australian government retains significant room to move in the industry policy sphere. However, Australian policy-makers appear far less willing than their foreign counterparts to use that space. To explain Australia’s comparative industry policy in-activism, I move beyond broad-brush explanations centred on ‘liberal ideology’ to explore the ideational, institutional and structural obstacles to the pursuit of a more proactive industry policy approach on the part of Australian policy-makers.     

Feminist research in online spaces

The Internet is growing in popularity as a research site and is often framed as the next frontier in human subjects research. The opportunities the Internet provides for political organizing, making personal experiences more public, and creating spaces for a variety of voices makes it particularly relevant to feminist geographers and researchers such as ourselves. However, many qualitative researchers approach online research as though the Internet simply archives an abundance of data that is ‘there for the taking.’ Being trained in feminist research methods, we took issue with this approach, yet also encountered challenges when trying to apply feminist practices and ethical perspectives to online research environments. We explore these challenges through a collaborative reflection on our own independent online research experiences. Three themes emerge: (1) interpreting politics and visibility in online spaces, (2) researcher positionality across virtual and material study sites, and (3) subjectivity and power in online research ethics. Reflecting on these themes, we argue that the insights of feminist ethics and a feminist geographical lens are crucial for bringing much-needed reflexivity and reciprocity into online research. Simultaneously, online research opens up exciting new ways of conceptualizing central ideas within feminist research ethics, including politicization, positionality, and power.