Same but Different: Muslims and Foreigners in Public Media Discourse

This contribution analyzes the public discourse on foreigners and Muslims in Switzerland between 2000 and 2009. In Switzerland, as elsewhere in Europe, the Muslim minority has emerged as the main concern for integration in public discourse. What makes Muslims special in the debate on immigration and integration? How does the public discourse on Muslims differ from the portrayal of foreigners in general? A quantitative content analysis of four Swiss newspapers was conducted covering three direct democratic campaigns. While the demographic composition of the Muslim minority has not changed substantially, the way Muslims are perceived in public discourse did. Certain ethnic groups, which are still categorized as foreigners in 2000, are mainly assigned to the Muslim minority in 2009. The latter is seen as a relatively homogeneous group raising other issues than foreigners. These results should lead to question the current academic and political debate on integration in Switzerland.     

议程与框架:西方舆论中的我国外交话语

本文以我国外交部新闻发言人的话语为切入点,探索了当代中国外交话语在西方舆论中的角色问题。通过对2004-2008年间LexisNexis数据库②中新闻文本的定量分析和定性解读,笔者发现,我国的外交话语目前仍无法为西方舆论设置议程,西方舆论反过来对我国的外交议程还采取了一种反向设置;同时,西方舆论对中国的外交话语主要采取负面、对抗的立场解读,东方主义框架和负责任大国框架交叉使用,进而通过议程的反设置和框架的选择生产出符合西方利益的新的话语意义。要实现中国外交话语在当前舆论环境中的突围,需要从改变西方公众对中国的态度着眼,这既要求中国外交话语自身的调整,又呼唤构建有利于中国外交话语的全方位传播网络。     

Challenging Institutional Denial: Psychological Discourse,Therapeutic Culture and Public Inquiries

ABSTRACT

The damaging effects of abuse in childhood were repeatedly emphasised in public hearings and in media coverage of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Testimony from earlier Australian inquiries, which documented widespread experiences of child maltreatment, particularly in institutions, also underscored the ongoing and often intergenerational impact of abuse. Taking institutional child abuse inquiries as a case study, this article examines how psychological and therapeutic concepts have been mobilised politically. It argues that therapeutically oriented and psychologically informed cultural narratives of childhood trauma and its ongoing effects have provided a framework for making sense of long-term experiences of adversity and suffering and have enriched attention to “the question of justice” for survivors of historical institutional child abuse.     

The “Middle Power” Concept in Australian Foreign Policy

During the early 1990s, the Hawke and Keating Labor governments promoted Australia's diplomatic credentials as an activist and independent middle power. Labor claimed that by acting as a middle power Australia was constructing a novel diplomatic response to the challenges of the post-Cold War world. But a closer reading of the official foreign policy record since 1945 reveals that previous conservative governments have also taken a similar view of Australia's place and position on the international stage. This essay traces the historical evolution of the middle power concept in Australian foreign policy and concludes with an assessment of the Howard government's more recent reluctance to use this label and its implications for Australia's future middle power credentials. Although its use has waxed and waned in official policy discourse and it is more commonly associated with Labor governments, the middle power concept itself and the general diplomatic style it conveys have been one of the most durable and consistent elements of Australia's diplomatic practice.     

Khatami's Islamist-Iranian Discourse of National Identity: A Discourse of Resistance

Using a discourse approach, the article demonstrates that Khatami's construction of Iranian national identity is a discourse of resistance on the international and regional levels. This resistance is evident in the meanings attached to three sets of values: Iranian-Islamic culture, ‘dialogue among civilisations’ and Islamic mardumsālārī, which are referred to as the three pillars of the Islamist-Iranian discourse of national identity. In terms of Iranian-Islamic culture, it is evident that Islam is Iranianised and furthermore the framework for the political apparatus is not simply politicised Islam, but rather Iranian political Islam. In terms of ‘dialogue among civilisations’, the resistance is not only to perceived Western hegemony in the international system, but also resistance to the dominance of the West and Western perspectives in the discipline of International Relations. Finally, Khatami establishes Islamic mardumsālārī as the most appropriate and authentic means of maintaining Iran as an independent nation.     

Before the Surgeon-General's Report: Public Discourse in Australia Over Tobacco Addiction to 1964

Long before the contemporary debate over nicotine addiction, doctors, alternative health professionals, journalists and moral reformers in Australia discussed this issue in the media. It was assumed that tobacco was a powerful drug, and difficult to give up. Growing acknowledgment of addiction to tobacco was linked to 1) the rise of the cigarette, instead of pipe smoking; 2) the rise of use of other drugs in the aftermath of World War I; 3) the impact of the temperance movement and other moral reformers. The use of the term "addict" increased over time. The 1964 U.S. Surgeon-General's Report claim that tobacco smoking was merely a "habit" temporarily inhibited public discussion of addiction. Scientific research and political will over the addiction issue lagged behind commonsense observations of the effects of smoking.     

Public Discourse of (De)legitimation: The Case of South Estonian Language

This paper focuses on two different argumentative strategies for dealing with a regional variety of Estonian, one of which may discourage the use of South Estonian in favor of Estonian, while another legitimates the lesser-used regional variety. These argumentative strategies are studied by critical discourse analysis (CDA) of six articles in Estonian language newspapers and magazines published in 2004–2005. The use of South Estonian is discouraged by presenting real or imagined threats that it will undermine Estonian. This discourse also parallels the Estonian-Russian majority-minority discourse of recent years by employing zero-sum arguments of the Estonian language losing to Russian as a consequence of the recognition of South Estonian. Language ideologies, which also construct some varieties worthier than others, re-enforce an essentialist representation of separate languages. This representation will work toward suppressing linguistic variation.     

Australian Internment Life Stories: Recapturing Salvatore Ragonesi between the Public Record and Family Memories

Since the Archives Act of 1983 Australia's Second World War internees have had access to their wartime files, yet little attention has focused on whether they and their families have consulted these records, or on their responses to them. From the early 2000s historians and archivists began discussing the need for combining private oral testimony with official records as part of a wider discourse on the importance of life stories for deepening knowledge about the past. This article explores the impact of a father's official internment records on his son, through the son's sharing of memories, lived experience and his reactions to official documents, in order to provide a more complete story of his father's internment and life than either the public record or the oral testimony alone can produce. We argue that Sam Ragonesi's oral testimony, especially concerning his encounter with Salvatore Ragonesi's official records, contributes to a greater shared understanding of experiences of war on the home front by integrating social, cultural and family dimensions hidden from Salvatore's public history. In this way intergenerational experiences help both to contest the collective image of internment and create a more complex picture of the War.     

“Secure in our Identity”: Regional Threat and Opportunity in Australian Election Discourse, 1993 and 1996

Anxiety about the Asia‐Pacific region has held an evocative place in the Australian imagination, and has featured in federal elections since Federation. This article explores discussions of regional opportunity and threat in the spoken campaign language of Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating, and his Liberal opponents, in the 1993 and 1996 elections. This language forms part of an ongoing project by Australian political leaders to provide voters with a secure identity by managing regional threat: from extending “civilisation” in the first half of the twentieth century; to the image of Australia as a benevolent stabilising force in an unstable region following the Second World War; and the contested frameworks of engagement and opportunity from the 1980s onwards. While specific constructions of regional threat have changed since federation, leaders' discursive reassurances have remained remarkably consistent over 110 years.     

Policing protest in the Australian Capital Territory: the introduction and use of the Public Order Act 1971

This article examines the reaction by the Australian Federal Government to the protest movements of the 1960s–1970s and their attempts to use public order legislation to thwart radical discontent in Australia. It argues that the Public Order (Protection of Persons and Property) Act 1971 was aimed at the threat of “violent” protests, particularly the tactic of the “sit-in”, and that to this end, the legislation was an overreaction to the actual threat posed by the protest movements at the time. It also shows that after a long gestation period, the Act was ill-equipped to deal with the changing nature of demonstrations in the 1970s, such as the problems caused by the erection of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Thus, after an initial flurry of use in mid-1971, the law has been seldom used since.     

State Socialism in Australian Political Thought: A Reconsideration

In understanding the origins of conventional tenets in political thought, we should attend to cross‐spectrum analysis of usage. Taking state socialism as an instance, this paper argues that the practice of treating it historically either as an element within a radical tradition (by Labour historians) or as a discredited part of a socialist agenda (by liberals) ignores the ways in which it was it was deployed across the political spectrum. Outsiders (such as the Webbs and Métin) skewed the record, describing the pragmatic accommodations they saw as “socialism without doctrines”, unconscious of the debates amongst Australian political elites. We need to explore anew where ideas came from, how they were taken up and adapted in the Australian context (by all sides) and the circumstances that determined their duration within everyday discourse.     

Indictments, Myths, and Citizen Mobilization in Argentina: A Discourse Analysis

Most accounts of the turmoil that shook Argentina in 2001–2 focused on the harmful impact of the financial environment, imprudent policymaking, and institutional weaknesses. These explanations paid little attention to the cultural frames and cognitive patterns that underlie the connection between civil society and political society. Based on a discourse analysis of Internet forums and presidential speeches, this article argues that the Argentine crisis cannot be fully grasped without considering the link between collective behavior and ingrained conceptions of national identity. The analysis finds that national myths and definitional questions of national purpose are key factors in the way citizens behave in the context of an economic and political crisis.     

Australian National Anthologies: A Study of Poems and Poets

This article analyses the contents of fifteen Australian “national” poetry anthologies published between 1946 and 2011. The study has three basic aims: to identify the most anthologised poems (as determined by the greatest number of inclusions in all anthologies), to identify poets with the most poems anthologised, and to identify the poets most consistently represented during this period. Based on quantitative data derived from each anthology’s table of contents, this article provides an empirical and analytical account of Australian national poetry anthologies over a six-decade period. The results reveal a core group of consistently anthologised poems and poets. While each anthology is different, there is a degree of consensus among national anthologists regarding the inclusion of “standard anthology pieces”. This article also considers the role of national anthologies in supporting a hierarchy of established literary reputations and perpetuating a poetic tradition in Australian literature.     

Australian Cinema Studies: How the Subject Is Taught in Australian Universities

Since the mid-1970s, the subject Australian Cinema, and its various synonyms and neologisms, has been studied in humanities, social sciences and the arts in Australian higher education, and research in the field has played an important role in informing the critical approaches underpinning curriculum. Yet to date there is limited insight into the types of subjects offered, approaches to curriculum and syllabus, and their alignment with research. This article maps Australian cinema studies in higher education at an undergraduate level, and provides insight into common curriculum and syllabus models. Findings are drawn from an online survey of university course handbooks, content and thematic analysis of study guides and weekly syllabus, and correspondence with coordinators. Twenty-seven universities offered subjects with a dominant Australian cinema focus. Australian cinema studies is firmly embedded in national cinema curriculum, and three common curriculum models include the following: (1) a historical chronology of Australian cinema, (2) a text-dominant approach organised around the weekly study of a key film and (3) an approach predominately structured around Australian cinema discourses and critical theory. Despite the increasing importance of transnational approaches to Australian screen in research, transnationalism rarely functions as a dominant organising logic for curriculum in its own right.