Scholars have become increasingly interested in the political work of Internet memes. While this ... more Scholars have become increasingly interested in the political work of Internet memes. While this research has delivered critical insights into how memes are implicated in both progressive and reactionary politics, there endures a lack of critical work on the ways in which Indigenous people engage with memes to deconstruct colonial power relations and produce alternative political arrangements. This article offers a reading of a set of memes produced and published by Australian Aboriginal activist Facebook page Blackfulla Revolution. We consider the ways in which memes are entangled in the achievement of an anti-colonial politics. More specifically, drawing Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblage, this article offers two levels of analysis. The first analysis focuses on the memes as a text that works to challenge the founding national myth of “peaceful” British settlement. Through the careful narrative of the memes, we see how the colonial assemblage works through “making missing” Indigenous people. And while the material practices and expressive justifications of Australian colonialism might have varied over time, the assemblage has ultimately not changed in nature. For the second analysis, we read the subsequent user engagement with the memes. The sequence of memes, from this second view, contributes “to the invention of a people,” as Deleuze has said. Those excluded from the colonial assemblage and those who recognize it as violence are called forth to engage in movement against it.
This paper investigates the ways in which Indigenous Australians respond individually, and collec... more This paper investigates the ways in which Indigenous Australians respond individually, and collectively, to racial vilification by means of social media sites. Introducing the concept of " shared recognition " this paper describes the collective sense of anger and frustration experienced by Indigenous people when traumatic events in the public domain act as reminders of ongoing colonialism. Three examples are explored to demonstrate collective trauma as a result of racist and discriminatory acts that are made public, and the ways in which social media is utilised by Indigenous Australians to make sense of and cope with trauma. Firstly, the Four Corners program on ABC television entitled 'Australia's Shame'. Secondly, a cartoon produced by the editorial cartoonist for The Australian newspaper, Bill Leak depicting Indigenous fathers as neglectful. Finally, the social media movement, #IndigenousDads, that emerged in response to these events and demonstrates ongoing resistance to colonial narratives. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's (2004) notion of " affective economies " this paper unpacks the politics of pain, shame and pride in the aftermath of both the Four Corners program and the Bill Leak cartoon.
This paper is an ethnography of how six Australian volunteers experience a house-build project in... more This paper is an ethnography of how six Australian volunteers experience a house-build project in the Philippines. Contingencies of empathic pain arising from the living conditions of those they aimed to help were felt through their bodies. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s ideas on pain enabled us to explore the politics of volunteer tourism. We suggest the intensification of volunteers’ empathic pain constitute ambivalent spaces. In some volunteering contingencies, pain led to a blurring of conventional boundaries of ’them’ and ’us’, giving priority to difference over dominance. In others, volunteers reproduced dominant understandings of volunteering that mobilised neoliberal and colonial discourses. We conclude by encouraging other tourism scholars to think politically about pain.
Some Australian Aboriginal communities experience suicide rates that are among the highest in the... more Some Australian Aboriginal communities experience suicide rates that are among the highest in the world. They are also, however, avid social media users—approximately 20% higher than the national average. This article presents some preliminary findings from a current national study, funded by the Australian Research Council, titled Aboriginal identity and community online: a sociological exploration of Aboriginal peoples’ use of online social media. The purpose of the study is to gain insights into how Aboriginal peoples utilise and interact on social media, and how these technologies can assist with suicide prevention strategies. It found that Aboriginal people are engaging with Facebook to both seek and offer help for issues relating to suicide and self-harm. An existing continuum of suicide prevention strategies was evident—from light emotional support to direct suicide intervention involving health services. These strategies can be leveraged to implement effective and appropriate suicide prevention programs.
This thesis explores voluntourism by following a group of older (aged 60 years and over) Illawarr... more This thesis explores voluntourism by following a group of older (aged 60 years and over) Illawarra Rotarians who travel to the socio-economically disadvantaged village of Nayonbago, Philippines, to build a house. Drawing on post-structuralist feminist epistemology—which emphasises the sensuous and performative aspects of the voluntourist encounter—the thesis aims to better understand older people’s participation in voluntourism. Guiding questions are: How do older voluntourists navigate the ethical dilemmas of voluntourism? And what are the implications of their spontaneous encounters with socio-economic disadvantage? Employing a non-prescriptive methodology, the thesis draws on the analytic tools of narrative ethnography. The results presented across three chapters offer new insights into the embodied geographical knowledges of older voluntourists’ experiences. The results chapters chart how participants both reproduce and rupture normative sets of voluntourism ideas and identities. The materialities of aged bodies became an interesting entry point into the lived, sensuous experiences of older volunteers – an avenue not previously explored in voluntourism literature. The aged bodies of participants encouraged reflexivity of their ambiguous positioning between being both ‘helpers’ and ‘needy’ in Nayonbago. Similarly, participants’ sensuous encounters with the affective qualities of water through ‘play’ fostered mutual feelings of joy between bodies, creating affective bridges across social difference. The aged bodies of participants also helped reconcile the felt differences between outside and inside of their hotel as ‘Western’ and comfortable. Through encounters with hotel air, water, food, and upholstery, participants were not only able to feel the material threshold of the hotel but also resolve the ethical dilemma of the monetary cost of staying there through understanding it as constituting a ‘restorative’ space. The thesis closes by emphasising the importance of future research on older voluntourists in the context of an ageing Australia.
AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 2015
Death and funeral practices are a constant presence in many Aboriginal Australians’ lives—researc... more Death and funeral practices are a constant presence in many Aboriginal Australians’ lives—research in some communities found they are eight times more likely to have attended a funeral in the previous 2 years than non- Aboriginal people. This can be explained by two major factors: inordinately high rates of Aboriginal mortality and cultural practices around death (broadly referred to as Sorry Business). Research in other contexts has found traditions once reserved solely for face- to- face interactions are now also taking place online on social media. This paper draws from interviews conducted with Aboriginal social media users from New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia to explore new cultural expressions of Sorry Business. Drawing from Indigenous standpoint theory as both an entry point for inquiry and a tool for analysis, this paper demonstrates that Aboriginal people participate in a diverse range of online practices related to Sorry Business, including notifications of deaths and funerals, offering condolences and extending support, and grieving and healing.
This article reads transcripts of interviews conducted with longboarders to advance a fresh under... more This article reads transcripts of interviews conducted with longboarders to advance a fresh understanding of localism. Conventionally, historians and sociologists have framed localism around the practices, motives and experiences of surfers who ride shortboards. This approach tends to silence the voice of other groups of surfers, including longboarders. Drawing on ideas from cultural geography, this article explores the motivations and experiences of longboarders who are largely marginalised within shortboard surfing culture. In this study we are interested in the bodily affects of longboarding, which gives meaning to individual lived experiences of riding waves. Bodily affects are understood as performative emotions that enable people to know and shape relationships with other human body-selves, as well as non-human entities. Bodily affects are expressed through narratives of ''the vibe'' and ''the glide'', and the emotions include shame, fear and joy. While some longboarders confirmed the exclusionary and often violent behaviours associated with localism, there were also participants advocating for a more sociable approach to riding waves.
Social media sites are increasingly used by Indigenous people to connect, interact socially, and ... more Social media sites are increasingly used by Indigenous people to connect, interact socially, and to politically agitate for social justice. Many Indigenous social and political movements depend on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as a means of effecting swift and efficient communication between and among Indigenous people. In Australia, Indigenous people are extremely adept and conversant with the use of social media in both urban and remote areas. The social media campaign #SOSBLAKAUSTRALIA represents the response of women from the Kimberley region of Western Australia to the government’s plans to cut essential services funding for up to 150 remote Indigenous communities. This chapter uses this case study to examine the way social media platforms are connecting groups and movements across local, regional, national and global spaces, increasing social connectivity, and amplifying attention for social and political causes. Challenging the stereotypical notion that Indigenous people do not engage with modern technology, the chapter explores how platforms such as Facebook and Twitter present a ‘new frontier’ for Indigenous activists. As a tool for political action, social media sites provide a forum within and across territorial borders where Indigenous people can agitate, demand political recognition for Indigenous causes, and proffer contesting and challenging views that dismantle colonial preoccupations with Indigenous political unity.
Scholars have become increasingly interested in the political work of Internet memes. While this ... more Scholars have become increasingly interested in the political work of Internet memes. While this research has delivered critical insights into how memes are implicated in both progressive and reactionary politics, there endures a lack of critical work on the ways in which Indigenous people engage with memes to deconstruct colonial power relations and produce alternative political arrangements. This article offers a reading of a set of memes produced and published by Australian Aboriginal activist Facebook page Blackfulla Revolution. We consider the ways in which memes are entangled in the achievement of an anti-colonial politics. More specifically, drawing Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblage, this article offers two levels of analysis. The first analysis focuses on the memes as a text that works to challenge the founding national myth of “peaceful” British settlement. Through the careful narrative of the memes, we see how the colonial assemblage works through “making missing” Indigenous people. And while the material practices and expressive justifications of Australian colonialism might have varied over time, the assemblage has ultimately not changed in nature. For the second analysis, we read the subsequent user engagement with the memes. The sequence of memes, from this second view, contributes “to the invention of a people,” as Deleuze has said. Those excluded from the colonial assemblage and those who recognize it as violence are called forth to engage in movement against it.
This paper investigates the ways in which Indigenous Australians respond individually, and collec... more This paper investigates the ways in which Indigenous Australians respond individually, and collectively, to racial vilification by means of social media sites. Introducing the concept of " shared recognition " this paper describes the collective sense of anger and frustration experienced by Indigenous people when traumatic events in the public domain act as reminders of ongoing colonialism. Three examples are explored to demonstrate collective trauma as a result of racist and discriminatory acts that are made public, and the ways in which social media is utilised by Indigenous Australians to make sense of and cope with trauma. Firstly, the Four Corners program on ABC television entitled 'Australia's Shame'. Secondly, a cartoon produced by the editorial cartoonist for The Australian newspaper, Bill Leak depicting Indigenous fathers as neglectful. Finally, the social media movement, #IndigenousDads, that emerged in response to these events and demonstrates ongoing resistance to colonial narratives. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's (2004) notion of " affective economies " this paper unpacks the politics of pain, shame and pride in the aftermath of both the Four Corners program and the Bill Leak cartoon.
This paper is an ethnography of how six Australian volunteers experience a house-build project in... more This paper is an ethnography of how six Australian volunteers experience a house-build project in the Philippines. Contingencies of empathic pain arising from the living conditions of those they aimed to help were felt through their bodies. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s ideas on pain enabled us to explore the politics of volunteer tourism. We suggest the intensification of volunteers’ empathic pain constitute ambivalent spaces. In some volunteering contingencies, pain led to a blurring of conventional boundaries of ’them’ and ’us’, giving priority to difference over dominance. In others, volunteers reproduced dominant understandings of volunteering that mobilised neoliberal and colonial discourses. We conclude by encouraging other tourism scholars to think politically about pain.
Some Australian Aboriginal communities experience suicide rates that are among the highest in the... more Some Australian Aboriginal communities experience suicide rates that are among the highest in the world. They are also, however, avid social media users—approximately 20% higher than the national average. This article presents some preliminary findings from a current national study, funded by the Australian Research Council, titled Aboriginal identity and community online: a sociological exploration of Aboriginal peoples’ use of online social media. The purpose of the study is to gain insights into how Aboriginal peoples utilise and interact on social media, and how these technologies can assist with suicide prevention strategies. It found that Aboriginal people are engaging with Facebook to both seek and offer help for issues relating to suicide and self-harm. An existing continuum of suicide prevention strategies was evident—from light emotional support to direct suicide intervention involving health services. These strategies can be leveraged to implement effective and appropriate suicide prevention programs.
This thesis explores voluntourism by following a group of older (aged 60 years and over) Illawarr... more This thesis explores voluntourism by following a group of older (aged 60 years and over) Illawarra Rotarians who travel to the socio-economically disadvantaged village of Nayonbago, Philippines, to build a house. Drawing on post-structuralist feminist epistemology—which emphasises the sensuous and performative aspects of the voluntourist encounter—the thesis aims to better understand older people’s participation in voluntourism. Guiding questions are: How do older voluntourists navigate the ethical dilemmas of voluntourism? And what are the implications of their spontaneous encounters with socio-economic disadvantage? Employing a non-prescriptive methodology, the thesis draws on the analytic tools of narrative ethnography. The results presented across three chapters offer new insights into the embodied geographical knowledges of older voluntourists’ experiences. The results chapters chart how participants both reproduce and rupture normative sets of voluntourism ideas and identities. The materialities of aged bodies became an interesting entry point into the lived, sensuous experiences of older volunteers – an avenue not previously explored in voluntourism literature. The aged bodies of participants encouraged reflexivity of their ambiguous positioning between being both ‘helpers’ and ‘needy’ in Nayonbago. Similarly, participants’ sensuous encounters with the affective qualities of water through ‘play’ fostered mutual feelings of joy between bodies, creating affective bridges across social difference. The aged bodies of participants also helped reconcile the felt differences between outside and inside of their hotel as ‘Western’ and comfortable. Through encounters with hotel air, water, food, and upholstery, participants were not only able to feel the material threshold of the hotel but also resolve the ethical dilemma of the monetary cost of staying there through understanding it as constituting a ‘restorative’ space. The thesis closes by emphasising the importance of future research on older voluntourists in the context of an ageing Australia.
AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 2015
Death and funeral practices are a constant presence in many Aboriginal Australians’ lives—researc... more Death and funeral practices are a constant presence in many Aboriginal Australians’ lives—research in some communities found they are eight times more likely to have attended a funeral in the previous 2 years than non- Aboriginal people. This can be explained by two major factors: inordinately high rates of Aboriginal mortality and cultural practices around death (broadly referred to as Sorry Business). Research in other contexts has found traditions once reserved solely for face- to- face interactions are now also taking place online on social media. This paper draws from interviews conducted with Aboriginal social media users from New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia to explore new cultural expressions of Sorry Business. Drawing from Indigenous standpoint theory as both an entry point for inquiry and a tool for analysis, this paper demonstrates that Aboriginal people participate in a diverse range of online practices related to Sorry Business, including notifications of deaths and funerals, offering condolences and extending support, and grieving and healing.
This article reads transcripts of interviews conducted with longboarders to advance a fresh under... more This article reads transcripts of interviews conducted with longboarders to advance a fresh understanding of localism. Conventionally, historians and sociologists have framed localism around the practices, motives and experiences of surfers who ride shortboards. This approach tends to silence the voice of other groups of surfers, including longboarders. Drawing on ideas from cultural geography, this article explores the motivations and experiences of longboarders who are largely marginalised within shortboard surfing culture. In this study we are interested in the bodily affects of longboarding, which gives meaning to individual lived experiences of riding waves. Bodily affects are understood as performative emotions that enable people to know and shape relationships with other human body-selves, as well as non-human entities. Bodily affects are expressed through narratives of ''the vibe'' and ''the glide'', and the emotions include shame, fear and joy. While some longboarders confirmed the exclusionary and often violent behaviours associated with localism, there were also participants advocating for a more sociable approach to riding waves.
Social media sites are increasingly used by Indigenous people to connect, interact socially, and ... more Social media sites are increasingly used by Indigenous people to connect, interact socially, and to politically agitate for social justice. Many Indigenous social and political movements depend on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter as a means of effecting swift and efficient communication between and among Indigenous people. In Australia, Indigenous people are extremely adept and conversant with the use of social media in both urban and remote areas. The social media campaign #SOSBLAKAUSTRALIA represents the response of women from the Kimberley region of Western Australia to the government’s plans to cut essential services funding for up to 150 remote Indigenous communities. This chapter uses this case study to examine the way social media platforms are connecting groups and movements across local, regional, national and global spaces, increasing social connectivity, and amplifying attention for social and political causes. Challenging the stereotypical notion that Indigenous people do not engage with modern technology, the chapter explores how platforms such as Facebook and Twitter present a ‘new frontier’ for Indigenous activists. As a tool for political action, social media sites provide a forum within and across territorial borders where Indigenous people can agitate, demand political recognition for Indigenous causes, and proffer contesting and challenging views that dismantle colonial preoccupations with Indigenous political unity.
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