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Role of the workplace in Bangladesh-born migrants' participation in Australian society
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 58-62.Introduction -- Chapter 1. Growth of the Bangladesh‐born migrant community in Australia -- Student visas: a popular migration pathway for Bangladeshi migrants -- Reasons for migration -- Obstacles encountered upon arrival in Australia -- Chapter 2. Hierarchy and levels of steepness: The kitchen as a work space -- The kitchen as space: exploring its functionality from the inside -- Hierarchy and levels of steepness in the restaurant kitchen -- Role of the kitchen workplace in overcoming post- arrival obstacles -- The ways in which the kitchen workplace ease the migrants’ settlement process -- Chapter 3. Participation in Australian society -- Participation in Australian society -- Migrants’ stories -- Conclusion -- Bibliography.This thesis aims to show how the kitchen workplace functions as a critical stepping stone or learning space that helps migrants (in this case Bangladesh‐born migrants) to participate in the socio‐cultural and economic milieu that distinguishes their new homeland of Australia. I have drawn upon Bangladeshi migrants’ narratives to detail the accounts of those who have experienced and are currently experiencing this often obstacle prone trajectory. The participants in this study entered Australia on student visas that allow them to stay in Australia temporarily during their period of study. Those holding student visas, unlike other visa holders, cannot access many of the social benefits and services the government extends to Australian citizens and permanent residents. Thus, in the process of maintaining their visa conditions, student visa holders are solely responsible for their tuition fees, living costs and other expenses during their period of study in Australia. The participants in this study, in their attempts to contend with what seems an endless number of obstacles that confront them upon arrival in their new homeland, endeavour to earn sufficient money to support their daily requirements and study expenses. Often by accessing friendship networks, some take part-time paid work in restaurant kitchens. For many, the camaraderie they share in the kitchen workplace plays a major role in their participation process. This thesis, as well as detailing the participants’ premigration expectations and aspirations, focuses on their settlement experiences. The participants’ narratives challenge some of the extant assumptions held and espoused by migration studies and popular opinion.1 online resource (62 pages
The relationship between historical research and future thinking
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 91-96.This thesis explores the relationship between historical thinking and thinking about the future. We argue that despite methodological differences between History and Futures Studies, there is great potential for collaboration. The thesis begins by proposing the ‘History-Futures Framework’, which is a schematic that connects the two disciplines. This schematic reveals that there are three main ways scholars think about the future: by responding to concerns about the future, by envisaging the future, and by attempting to influence the future. We then examine historical thinkers who have either opposed or endorsed thinking about the future. Our findings suggest that despite a dominant attitude within History that historians should not engage in future-thought, some significant historical thinkers have held the opposite attitude. Finally, we use three World Environmental History books as case studies of a historical genre, which we argue is particularly well suited to future-thought. We conclude that by enlarging the spatial, temporal, and disciplinary scopes of historical thinking, historians are better positioned to respond to, envisage, and influence the future.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (96 pages
Emotion and gesture effects on narrative comprehension: do gestures moderate emotion enhanced memory?
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 61-69.Introduction -- Experiment 1 -- Experiment 2 -- General discussion -- References -- Appendix.Research in the field of emotion suggests that emotionally negative stories are more memorable than positive or neutral stories (e.g., Van Bergen, Wall, & Salmon, 2015). Similarly, research has found that people remember stories more effectively when the narrator provides relevant hand gestures to accompany story content (Hostetter, 2011). Given the relative difficulty associated with remembering positive or neutral stories, this study explores whether gestures can be used to compensate for this recall deficit, by testing gesture effects for negative, neutral,and positive stories. In Experiment 1, fifty children aged 4-6 years viewed a video containing two negative, two positive, and two neutral stories. Gesture condition was manipulated between groups, such that participants watched a video in which the narrator provided: (i) gestures reflecting the main emotion of each story; (ii) gestures reflecting the main event of each story; or (iii) no gestures. Children recalled negative emotions more effectively than positive or neutral emotions. Compared to children who viewed no gestures, children who viewed emotion gestures or event gestures recalled more narrative content. Crucially, the memorial benefits of gesture remained consistent across emotional valence conditions. To examine the developmental aspects of these phenomena, seventy-four adults were tested in Experiment 2, using the same stimuli as Experiment 1. Adults recalled events more effectively from negative stories rather than positive or neutral stories. Compared to adults who viewed no gestures, those who viewed emotion gestures did not recall more narrative content, while those who viewed event gestures recalled significantly less narrative content. Again, these findings were consistent across emotional valence conditions. Overall, the results of this study suggest that the extent to which viewing relevant gestures can facilitate narrative comprehension depends less on the emotional valence of the narratives, and more on the difficulty of the task, and the age and cognitive ability of viewers. This research has important implications when deciding how and when to use gestures to best facilitate listeners’ narrative comprehension.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (viii, 72, 3 pages) colour illustration
Disentangling the influence of attention in the auditory efferent system during speech processing
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 111-130.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. General methods -- Chapter 3. Results -- Chapter 4. General discussion -- Chapter 5. Implications for future studies and conclusions -- References -- Appendix.The physiological mechanisms allowing humans to selectively attend to a single conversation in acoustically adverse situations, such as overlapping conversations or background noise, are poorly understood. In particular, the extent to which goal-directed, top-down processes of auditory attention can modulate the inner ear activity via the auditory efferent system remains unclear. This thesis investigates the relationship between degraded speech and the auditory efferent control of the cochlea. Young, normal-hearing, participants were assessed in a series of three experiments where speech intelligibility was manipulated during Active and Passive listening to: 1) noise vocoded speech; 2) speech in babble noise and 3) speech in speech-shaped noise. A lexical decision task was used in the “Active” listening condition where subjects were instructed to press a button each time they heard a non-word. In the “Passive” listening condition they were instructed to ignore all auditory stimuli and watch a movie. Click-evoked OAEs (CEOAEs) were obtained from the ear contralateral to the speech stimuli, allowing the measurement of cochlear-gain changes. A 64-channel EEG was synchronized with the CEOAE recording system, enabling the simultaneous measurement of cortical speech-onset event-related potentials (ERPs), click-evoked auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) and behavioural responses. Behavioural results showed that accuracy declined as the speech signals were degraded, while ERPs components were enhanced during the Active condition compared to the Passive condition. A decrease in cochlear gain (reduction in CEOAE amplitudes) with increasing task difficulty was observed for noise vocoded speech, but not for speech in babble or speech-shaped noise. Brainstem components showed decreased activity linked to CEOAE suppression. These findings contribute to an integrative view of auditory attention as an adaptive mechanism that recruits cochlear gain control via the auditory efferent system in a manner dependent upon the auditory scene encountered.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (140 pages) diagrams, graphs, table
Moral diversity on the straight path: perspectives on sex education, sexuality and romance among unmarried Muslims in Singapore and Australia
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 253-289.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Keeping sins sensible: sex education in Singapore -- Chapter 3. Teaching and learning halal sex: sex education in Sydney -- Chapter 4. Prayers at Pink Dot: queer Muslim experiences in Singapore -- Chapter 5. The complexities of visibility: queer Muslim experiences in Sydney -- Chapter 6. Tactical intimacies: romance and dating in Singapore -- Chapter 7. Mixed messages: romance and dating in Sydney -- Chapter 8. Conclusion: the silent farts of everyday resistance anddiversity in everyday Islam -- Bibliography -- Appendices.This ethnographic study explores attitudes towards sexuality, dating and reproductive health among Muslim young people aged between 18 and 30 in the small city-state of Singapore and the Sydney metropolitan area of New South Wales, Australia. The intention of this research is to document how some unmarried Muslims of various ethnicities, gender identities and sexual orientations position themselves within local Muslim community discourses of piety, shame and reputation while simultaneously negotiating their position within the multicultural societies in which they live. The contrasting Asian and Anglo-dominated Pacific field sites chosen for this research illustrate a rich diversity of everyday Islamic practice. The purpose of examining this diversity is to highlight how some young Muslims go about individualising their faith and personal sense of morality in ways that reflect the wider social and political climate of their environments and challenge discourses that portray Muslims as being inherently more pious than other religious groups. Beyond exploring Muslim piety and religious ethics, which have already been discussed at length by anthropologists, this study instead explores the ways in which young Muslims engage with discourses of what sexual choices are open to a ‘good Muslim’ and argues that they accept, negotiate or resist those choices on a situational basis that is influenced by a range of factors such as experiences of discrimination and disadvantage. Using data obtained from participant-observation, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, this thesis seeks to meaningfully add to the emerging body of literature on everyday Islam with a unique comparative contribution to understanding the moral diversity that exists both within and between Muslim communities in Sydney and Singapore.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (291 pages) colour illustration
A Persian love story in English: challenges and strategies in writing a cross-cultural Iranian novel in the romance genre for a global audience
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 195-232.Exegesis -- Part I. A Persian love story in English : theoretical component. Chapter 1. The impact of cultural differences – the culture shock ; Chapter 2. The impact of linguistic features of the Persian language on writing dialogue – the translation trauma -- Part II. A persian love story in English : creative writing component. Yousef's Sooreh.This dissertation, comprising a creative writing research component and an accompanying novel titled Yousef’s Sooreh, aims to discover the challenges in writing cross-cultural romance fiction in English situated in Islamic contexts, such as in contemporary Iran. In its theoretical component – through the prism of postcolonial literature, diaspora/migrant literature, contemporary women’s/feminist literature, translation/linguistic studies, and popular-fiction/literary romance genre – it utilises hermeneutics and content/textual analysis of such texts as post-revolutionary Iranian migrant novels (both diasporic fiction and non-fiction), as well as a number of non-Iranian cross-cultural romances or love stories, in regard to writing styles, language, figurative approaches, imagery, and so on. Concurrently and parallel to the research, the creative writing component – a fictional romance novel set in contemporary Iran with all Iranian characters – serves as a practical guide that shows the way while shedding light on these challenges, particularly when dealing with passionate love among devout minority of Iranian Muslims, a realm in which no prior study has been carried out. This novel depicts problematic areas of representation, through a cultural and religious perspective – where collectivism, patriarchy, elders’ authority, rules of conduct between unrelated members of the opposite sex, and other cultural interactions and behaviours come into play, and can hinder the writing process in English – as well as taking a linguistic disciplinary approach where issues such as cultural translation from Persian, figures of speech, emotive variables, nonverbal language, untranslatable terms, glossing, annotation, and other linguistic issues become inevitable. It also explores the techniques and aesthetic possibilities of writing a cross-cultural romance that represents aspects of Iranian culture, life, and language for the global English-speaking readership, while focusing on Iranian minority of righteous Muslims.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (x, 232, 289 pages
How does integration of sensory-substitution-devices (SSDs) into the body-schema provide information to generate a theory of the mechanics of the ‘self’ and its role in consciousness?
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 62-68.Introduction -- Chapter 1. The concepts of consciopusness and the 'self' -- Chapter 2. Sensory-substitution-devices and the observed-self -- Chapter 3. The mechanics of SSD integration into the observed-self -- Chapter 4. Theoretical foundations for a theory of consciousness and the observed-self based on SSD research -- Glossary -- References.The main purpose of this thesis is to offer grounds for a possible theory of the self and consciousness based on research on sensory-substitution-devices (SSDs) – devices that convert signals from one bodily sense, vision for example, into signals that can be read in a different modality, such as tactile vibrations. A main problem of traditional views of the self has been conflating the experiencer with the experienced and I propose, as a possible solution, the existence of two selves, an observer-self that emerges from the synergetic sum total of brain/body functioning, and an observed-self, the unconscious house of our perceptions, personal identity and history. I suggest that this is possible because the selves can be thought of as essentially processing-sensors with the former being the ontological first-person ‘I’, converting biological information into phenomenology, and the latter converting sensorial inputs into biological information.The research method I adopted is philosophical. It comprises literature review to critically deduce how incorporation of SSDs into the body-schema transforms the observed-self of the user. The process involves four main factors, which when viewed together indicate that SSDs generate a novel sense. I differentiate the body-schema and the body-model and I identify four stages of SSDs integration, which changes the feeling of body ownership. Integration creates the separateness of ‘attributions to oneself’, that is, our observed-self, from ‘distal attributions’, which we perceive as non-self.I then propose a schematic representation of consciousness that shows consciousness as a full-spectrum (including unconsciousness) and how brain activity generates our field-of-conscious-awareness, with effectors marking the boundaries of the observed-self. The schema depicts information as travelling unidirectionally; afferent downward signals from the environment (global-to-local), and efferent local-to-global upward output generated by our thoughts and intentions. SSDs modify the observed-self because they act as sensoria inputs as part of the downward process.I close the thesis by suggesting that further research should explore how theories such as autopoiesis and emergentism can assist in explaining and completing the model of consciousness outlined here.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (68 pages
Local polynomial M-estimation in random design regression with dependent errors
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 51-53.1. Introduction -- 2. Notations and assumptions -- 3. Results -- 4. Conclusion -- 5. Proofs.The random design nonparametric regression model with short-range dependent and long-range dependent errors is investigated. The asymptotic behaviour of the robust local polynomial M-estimator is investigated under two conditions. Asymptotic results are established by decomposing the local polynomial estimator into two terms: a martingale term and a conditional expectation term. It is found that the local polynomial M-estimator is asymptotically normal when errors are short-range dependent. When the errors are long-range dependent, a more complex behaviour is observed that depends on the size of the bandwidth. If the bandwidth is small enough, the long-range dependent scenario is similar to the the short-range dependent case. If the bandwidth is relatively large the asymptotic result is more intricate and the long-range dependent variables dominate. Moreover, the optimal bandwidth in the case of short-range dependence is determined.1 online resource (53 pages
Harold Stewart’s By the old walls of Kyoto as a foundational Australian transnational poem
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 57-63.Introduction -- Chapter 1. From tourist to transnational poet -- Chapter 2. An unprecedented, localised masterwork -- Chapter 3. A foundational author of the Australian transnational canon -- Conclusion -- Bibliography.The transnational turn in 21st century Australian literary scholarship continues to emphasise and foreground the importance of Australian writers who have lived for extended periods in foreign countries, thereby gaining deeper cultural connections and historical insights through their dual or multinational status. While there are many 21st century authors who fit the transnational model, the relative lack of 20th century authors who may be considered a transnational author has led to the neglect of some early exemplars of Australian transnational writing.Harold Stewart (1916 - 1995) is one such exemplar for his transnational epic poem By the Old Walls of Kyoto (1981), which resulted from his permanent move to Kyoto in 1966. This thesis argues that Stewart’s personal and local interactions with the old city of Kyoto as it faced the pressures of post-war industrialisation directly facilitated an unprecedented major work of Australian-Japanese transnational poetry which is crucial to understanding the cross-cultural history of Australian literature.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (63 pages
In the shadow of the palms: plant-human relations among Marind-Anim, West Papua
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 307-349.Introduction -- Chapter 1. Pressure points -- Chapter 2. Maps that won't sit still -- Chapter 3. Skin, wetness and making Anim -- Chapter 4. The plastic cassowary -- Chapter 5. Sago encounters -- Chapter 6. Sawit counterpoints -- Chapter 7. Time has come to a stop -- Chapter 8. Eaten by Sawit -- Conclusions -- References -- Appendix.This thesis explores how indigenous Marind-Anim in Merauke District (West Papua) conceptualize and engage with the socio-environmental impacts of oil palm expansion. Drawing from post-humanist theories, I analyze how oil palm reconfigures the lifeworld of Marind through its effects on the landscape, on time, on Marinds' relations to plants and animals, and on Marinds' dreams. I demonstrate that widespread speculation among my interlocutors over the attributes and effects of oil palm stems from the fact that the plant itself is seen (and feared) as a willful and destructive actant. Yet many Marind also pity oil palm for its subjection to human exploitation, and express great curiosity about the origins, needs, and dispositions of this introduced plant-being. Giving center stage to plants as 'lethal capital' and their ambivalent relations to humans thus challenges us to rethink capitalism and violence beyond the human. It also highlights the need to attend to 'post-humanism' as a plural rather than singular category of being - one that is alternately embraced and eschewed by communities themselves treated as sub-human and killable within entrenched and emergent colonial, capitalist, and techno-scientific assemblages. Chapters 1 and 2 explore the effects of monocrop plantations and other state and corporate nodes of control on the landscape and its cartographic representation. Chapters 3 and 4 investigate how Marind become anim (human) through their bodily relations to other organisms, and how oil palm violates inter-species dynamics by transforming wild and native lifeforms into domesticated and alien beings. Chapters 5 and 6 examine the Marind practice of 'going to know' sago and its stories, and the contrasts Marind identify between sago and oil palm within an affectively and politically charged moral-vegetal spectrum. Chapter 7 explores the temporal rupture wrought by oil palm in light of Marind concepts of mythical and historical time. Finally, Chapter 8 attends to dysphoric dreams of oil palm possession through which Marind reflect imaginatively and collectively on their changing worlds and ways of being.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (351 pages) colour illustration