The human factor in project management
In: Best practices and advances in program management series
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In: Best practices and advances in program management series
A critical analysis of feminist writings on sexuality from a radical feminist and lesbian feminist standpoint. Critical of libertarianism, Denise Thompson provides a detailed analysis of the mechanisms of domination and the ways in which feminist theory is marginalised. A must-read for any serious feminist thinker
Shorter versions of this paper were presented at the Australian Social Policy Conference, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 11 July, 2007; and at a staff seminar, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 17 July, 2007 ; The concept of 'social capital' has met with huge success among governmental agencies, including governments at all levels and transnational entities such as the World Bank. And yet the concept has been subjected to a devastating critique. This paper investigates a number of reasons given in the literature for its popularity. It starts with a brief overview of the social policy context in Australia, where the social capital framework has been influential. It goes on to discuss some of the reasons for the framework's popularity, both admiring, e.g. it broadens our understanding of community well-being beyond the economic, and critical, e.g. it ignores the power of (real) capital. The paper concludes by suggesting that 'social capital' continues to prevail, despite its dubious epistemological status, because it serves a useful ideological function for (real) capital.
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In: Australian journal of social issues: AJSI, Band 44, Heft 2, S. 145-161
ISSN: 1839-4655
The paper begins with an investigation of two metaphors central to the 'social capital' framework – 'glue' and 'capital'. Both are found to be inappropriate descriptions of the kinds of human relationships supposedly being alluded to by the term 'social capital'. While the inappropriateness of the term 'glue' is not a major threat to the discourse, the case of 'capital' is more serious. The rest of the paper is devoted to unravelling the connotations of 'capital' and the implications of applying it to relationships where the kinds of calculations necessary for sound economic performance have no place. The competitiveness inherent in the functioning of capital belies the cooperation assumed to exist in 'social capital', while the requirement for 'productiveness' has disquieting implications for those who, for whatever reason, cannot be productive in the economic sense. The final section of the paper argues that those who are supposedly the main, if not the only, beneficiaries of 'social capital' – the 'disadvantaged' or the 'socially excluded' – do not in fact benefit from whatever is being alluded to by the term 'social capital'. The paper concludes by asking, but not answering, the question: Why, if 'social capital' cannot diminish poverty, is it being posited as a substitute for the welfare state, the only institution that does address poverty (if minimally)?
In: Australian journal of social issues: AJSI, Band 42, Heft 3, S. 351-367
ISSN: 1839-4655
This paper is in two parts. An introductory section discusses the housing market in Australia in order to emphasise the fact that homelessness is not simply an individual experience. It is also a structural phenomenon driven by economic imperatives beyond the control of those most affected. The bulk of the paper is devoted to a discussion of the published figures on the level of homelessness in Australia, gathered by the national Census and by the data collection agency for the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP), the nation's main program for combating homelessness. Some problems with those figures as they are reported by the SAAP data collection agency are discussed, in particular, the under‐estimation of the level of unmet demand for accommodation. The paper concludes with a comparison between the Census and the SAAP figures, which indicates that policies for alleviating homelessness are far from achieving their aims.
This is a 1000-word encyclopedia entry arguing that lesbian politics in Australia had two strands, one that might be called 'liberal pluralist', and the other lesbian feminist (although both were argued within feminism). The first asked for mainstream recognition and acceptance of lesbianism as a valid alternative lifestyle, the second claimed to pose a challenge and a threat to that mainstream, particularly to the norm of heterosexuality for women.
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An expanded version of the entry for the Oxford Companion to Australian Politics (2007). It argues that there used to be two strands to lesbian politics during the early 1970s—'liberal pluralist' and lesbian feminist—the first asking for mainstream recognition, the second claiming to pose a challenge to that mainstream. The clearest statements of lesbian feminism came from the US, the Australian accounts largely being critical. The paper discusses these accounts, as well as some of the issues that were preoccupying lesbian feminists at the time, such as relationships and the treatment of lesbian mothers' custody cases by the Family Court.
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This is an introduction to a series of writings about lesbian feminism included on UNSWorks. It also briefly discusses my own experiences of and theorising about lesbian feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. The papers are: • Homosexuality: the invisible alternative (1978); • Lesbianism as political practice (1980); • The third Women and Labour conference (1982); • Anti-intellectualism at the lesbian conference (1989); • Theory and its difficulties (1990); • Impressions of the lesbian conference (1991); • Rules, Principles, Policies, Standards and Guidelines: Do We Need Them? (1991); • A Discussion of the problem of horizontal hostility (1993); • Lesbian feminist politics in Sydney: fighting over meaning (1993); • On pornography (1997); and • Lesbian politics (2004—written after the first version of this Introduction).
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In: Feminist theory: an international interdisciplinary journal, Band 1, Heft 3, S. 371-374
ISSN: 1741-2773
This paper argues for a particular meaning of feminism, in terms of a political struggle against the social relations of male supremacy and for a human status for women outside male control. It starts by acknowledging there are conflicts over the meaning of feminism, but points out that these are not resolved by references to 'feminisms' in the plural. Neither, it goes on to argue, is feminism an 'identity politics'. Although feminism is centrally concerned with women, that concern is necessary because of the existence of social relations based on the principle that only men count as 'human'. In that sense, feminism is both social theory and critical theory. It is also radical feminism, and the paper mounts a defence of radical feminism against charges that it is 'essentialist', 'white and middle-class' and 'right-wing', while at the same time criticising the typology which defines radical feminism as simply one 'feminism' among many.
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In: Feminism & psychology: an international journal, Band 8, Heft 3, S. 371-374
ISSN: 1461-7161
The paper starts with a number of propositions outlining what feminism means for the purposes of my argument, and goes on to give a brief account of what I mean by the ideology of individualism. The body of the paper is devoted to a detailed discussion of one text, Judith Grant's Fundamental Feminism, as an exemplary instance of a widespread problem within academic feminism—the deletion of the problematic of male domination. Grant identifies 'Woman', 'experience' and 'personal politics' as the 'core concepts' of feminism, and suggests 'gender' as the solution to the problems entailed by those concepts. I argue that, while these concepts undoubtedly appear throughout feminist writings, any inadequacies in the ways they have been used can be rectified by situating them within the context of the social relations of male supremacy. I also argue that 'gender' is worse than useless for feminist purposes because it is incoherent and because it obliterates the social problem of male domination.
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This paper is part of a larger project concerned with individualism as an ideology central to the social relations of male domination. In this paper I look at some of the Australian government's policy changes relating to unemployment benefit since the late 1980s. I argue that these changes ignore what is actually going on in the capitalist global economy, and instead, target 'the unemployed' as though they were personally responsible for rising levels of unemployment. I also argue that these changes demonstrate a callous indifference to people's needs, in favour of harassing, coercing and penalising capitalism's chief victims. I conclude by pointing out the links between the inhumane treatment of the unemployed and the inhumanity at the heart of male supemacist relations of ruling.
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