http://hdl.handle.net/2100/20 UTS theses submitted as part of the Australasian Digital Theses Program (ADT) http://utsescholarship.lib.uts.edu.au:80/scholarly-works/retrieve/28 http://hdl.handle.net/2100/20 http://hdl.handle.net/2100/1289 Refashioning the romantics : contemporary Japanese culture- aspects of dress Monden, Masafumi Clothing is often perceived as a device to create, define and demarcate the gender binary. Accordingly, there are sets of preconceptions regarding ways in which men and women are assumed to engage with fashion. The research presented here reviews three of these ideas, some of which have been challenged by scholars but which are, still persistently, present in popular culture. Such preconceptions assume that men prioritize functionality over aesthetics and are the bearers, not the objects of the gaze, while women’s fashion is represented through multiple binaries of sexualisation and restriction, and female sartorial ornamentation is seen as symbolic of subservience. I investigate these presumptions via three contemporary Japanese cultural texts –(a) Japanese young men’s fashion magazines, (b) Japanese female performers’ appropriations of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” in their music videos, and (c) Lolita fashion and Tetsuya Nakashima’s film Kamikaze Girls (2004), respectively. My study of these three selected texts explores the following possibilities that: (a) through negotiating the male reader’s desire to attract admirers and narcissistic impulse, young men’s fashion magazines endorse an idea that “crafting” the pleasant “look” is a part of quintessence of self-assurance and the idea of a good, successful life; that (b) kinds of Japanese cute (kawaii) and girlish aesthetics demonstrated by the Japanese singers allow them to accentuate their “cute” femininity without a hint of sexualisation, and; that (c) one of the heroines in Kamikaze Girls engages in both conventionally “masculine” and “feminine” activities while almost always dressed in the highly elaborate, girlish Lolita fashion. My examinations of these texts arguably renders the cultural and socialpsychological conceptions of “gender performativity” and “androgyny” effective and credible. The Japanese context is appropriate for this aim because this is where, particularly since 1868, European sartorial styles have been actively promoted, both politically and aesthetically. Consequently, Japan has become an ethnographically unique space where the subtle marriage of European dress style and Japanese aesthetics has taken place. Along with the theme of fashion and gender, this research attempts to unearth the meanings behind processes of Japanese adaptation, appropriation and restylisation of European sartorial and aesthetic concepts. Japanese appropriation and refashioning of European sartorial concepts, this research argues, offers a unique interpretive illustration of the aesthetics of fashion and transnationality. Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:21:11 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2100/1287 The diffusion of sustainable practices within the Australian housing industry : implications for future change management Reardon, Christopher Charles A substantial barrier to sustainable change arises from reliance on positivist, disciplinary science and neo-classical economic theory to create the new knowledge that underpins policies intended to deliver such change. This barrier is particularly evident within the core focus of this research, change strategies to reduce or eliminate adverse net lifecycle environmental emissions and depletions by the cost sensitive, risk averse built environment sector. While recognising the role and importance of traditional disciplinary knowledge in this field, this thesis suggests that such knowledge creation processes are self-defeating in terms of creating sustainable futures because the only truly positivist proof of a threat to sustainable futures is the irreversible failure of biospheric life support systems. Accordingly, an alternative, transdisciplinary (TD) approach to knowledge creation is adopted. An Action Research (AR) methodology applied within a social constructivist epistemological stance is used to generate ‘temporary knowledge’ to inform the change agendas of AR partners in their attempts to apply the ‘precautionary principle’. This temporary knowledge is created through AR monitoring and explanation of sustainable change strategies being implemented in the Australian Housing Industry (AHI) and is framed within Diffusion of Innovations theory (DoI). The knowledge is temporary in that it provides useful insights and understandings that are valid or relevant at specific stages of an evolving change process. In successive cycles of AR and reflective practice, multiple case studies and examples drawn from a variety of change agendas are used to test and refine hypotheses and develop arguments that explain successes and failures. AR observations and temporary knowledge are ‘retrospectively’ analysed through an innovative combination of DoI and Actor Network Theory (ANT) to develop deeper or more ‘permanent’ understandings of effective processes of sustainable change in the AHI. These explanations are presented as a series of generalisations to inform the subsequent ‘prospective’ analysis that underpins concluding recommendations for future management of sustainable change within the AHI. The generalisations also form the basis of theoretical contributions with potential for adaptive application in other sustainable change agendas. This thesis makes contributions to knowledge at several levels. Key industry recommendations address the need for: fresh approaches to regulation, skill and information provision drawn from DoI and ANT; a shift in focus from new to existing housing stock; strategies to engage the finance and marketing sectors; greater emphasis on the role of networks in change planning and management and a shift in regulatory focus to encourage innovation and technology transfer between the custom and volume housing sectors. Additionally, the research contributed to the significant, practical, sustainable change outcomes that occurred during its currency. Finally, theoretical contributions are embodied in the evolution of ANT and DoI through their application as complementary analytical frameworks. Tue, 03 Jan 2012 03:42:31 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2100/1284 A history of the early development of the nurse practitioner role in New South Wales, Australia Foster, Jann Patricia Changes in the health care environment have required concomitant changes in approaches to health care, and the roles and functions of health care professionals worldwide. The nurse practitioner (NP) role was first introduced in the United States of America (US) in the 1960s to help address critical health care needs that were designed to improve access to health services. The NP role has continued to evolve in the US and other countries including Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) across a range of health care settings. In Australia, New South Wales (NSW) was the first state to consider the potential for the NP role in 1990 (NSW Department of Health, 1992). The purpose of this research was to trace and document the early development and implementation of the NP role in NSW. This study adds to the nursing literature by documenting historical events in the inception of the NP role, particularly factors that affected the development and its implementation of the NP role in the NSW health care system. In addition the study preserves the oral histories of figures who were instrumental in the introduction of this new clinical career pathway for nurses, and a new model of care into the Australian health care system. This thesis constitutes original historical research into the development of the NP role in NSW. An historical, descriptive design was used that included recorded interviews with 10 pioneer nurse practitioners and 17 key stakeholders involved in the development of the NP role. Documents were collected that were central to the key historical events, and these documentary accounts were compared and contrasted with the information provided through the interviews. The data was analysed using qualitative thematic analysis. The development of the NP role began at a nursing conference in 1990 because a nurse asked the NSW Health Minister whether he supported the NP role. This one question triggered a cascade of events. Between 1990 and 1998 the NP role was legislated and the title of the NP protected through the Nurses Amendment (Nurse Practitioners) Act 1998 (NSW). During this time four committees were formed, four reports had been generated and 10 pilot projects undertaken. In 1997, the NSW Minister for Health established an implementation process for NP authorisation, education and regulation. On May 11, 2001 the NSW Minister for Health announced the first NP to be appointed into a position in remote NSW and in September 2002, NPs were introduced into metropolitan areas of NSW. Disparate visions and vested interests in relation to the NP role inevitably affected the development of the role and the way it was enacted. Stakeholders who had a ‘sense of gain’ and supported the NP role saw its benefits for the health care system, and for nursing. Those who fought to maintain the status quo were ultimately driven by a sense of ‘loss and fear.’ There was considerable fear about the effect of the NP role on the roles of other health care professionals. There was much interplay between those trying to maintain the status quo and those who were trying to counterbalance the sense of loss and fear. The development and implementation of the NP role became an arduous process of negotiation and compromise. Further complexities arose in understanding tradition’s historical legacy on the NP role. The findings illuminated that some doctors were not only resistant to the NP role but had not adapted to the professional status of nursing. Similarly, the findings indicate that there are still many nurses who have not adapted to the advancement of nursing. As a consequence, they also hanker for the supposedly good old days, and strongly opposed new developments such as the introduction of NPs. The findings attest to significant disruption to professional-working relationships with some health care professionals torn between their personal, professional and organisational commitments. Long-term professional relationships between the NPs, nurses, doctors and managers were challenged. The study’s findings demonstrate the need to assess an organisation’s readiness when introducing a new nursing role and an assessment of the environmental conditions to support role implementation. The findings also revealed the importance and influence of language in introducing a new nursing role such as that of the NP. There was confusion surrounding the use of certain terms (e.g., advanced practice) within and beyond nursing. The NPs found the authorisation process particularly challenging. The findings show that, with any newly introduced process, there needs to be detailed guidance and an assessment that candidates are able to meet the requirements set by the regulatory body. Only because of the resilience and perseverance of the nurse leaders, the NPs and others who supported the role, has the NP movement been able to gain momentum. One of the principal findings of this study has been the political maturation of the nurse leaders during the development of the NP role that, in turn, has benefited nursing. There was considerable resistance to the NP role by some powerful medical organisations and the findings show that it is important to engage the media and educate the public about the NP role and its value, to help garner support early on in the development of the role. In addition, because of the political nature of the role, NPs require education in using and managing the media and also education about managing themselves in the politics of health care. All of these findings are discussed in detail in this thesis. Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:55:54 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2100/1283 Encounters with the Clandestino/a and the nomad in Milan : Securitisation, irregularisation and the illegitimate outsider through the Italian 'security package' Hepworth, Katherine On the 21st May 2008, Berlusconi’s newly elected coalition il Popolo della Libertà announced its Security Package: a bundle of temporary and permanent legislative measures that identified a continuum of insecurities which included organized crime, urban degradation, illicit drug use, and ‘illegal’ or ‘clandestine’ migration. At the same time, it also announced a second set of laws, commonly referred to as the ‘Nomad Emergency Decree’, which declared a ‘State of Emergency with regards to the Settlement of Nomad Communities in the regions of Lazio, Campania and Lombardy’. Two figures were continually invoked throughout the debates and the progressive enactment of the legislations: the ‘clandestino/a’ (clandestine immigrant) and the ‘nomad’. This research took these two figures as its starting point. It considered how they came to be imagined as ‘illegitimate outsiders’ in the nation, and subsequently constituted as ‘objects of security’ through ongoing processes of securitisation and irregularisation. This research draws on a range of literature that understands citizenship to be mutually constituted with its (legitimate and illegitimate) outsiders. Following this, I argue that the processes which differentiate between citizens and non-citizens act to produce a complex topology of (whole and partial) insiders and outsiders. In this context, securitisation and irregularisation are considered as complementary strategies of citizenship, which operate together (and with other strategies) to continually reconstitute the boundaries of the political community. In this research, I consider securitisation and irregularisation as operating through official and popular discourses, legislation, as well as through the everyday practices of security professionals, including the police, military, and bureaucrats. Furthermore, I understand these processes – and the figures they produce – to be encountered, negotiated and reworked in the everyday by those individuals and groups who are cast as ‘objects of security’. This analysis acknowledges that these processes of securitisation and irregularisation did not originate in the Security Package but were refracted through it. This research focused on three groups that are, to some extent, identified through the figure of the ‘clandestino/a’ or the ‘nomad’: Romanian Roma living in unauthorized encampments, Latin-American domestic workers who live and work in Italian homes, and irregular Senegalese traders selling counterfeit bags from the city’s streets. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation in three sites in Milan, the research considered how the figures of the clandestino/a and the nomad came to be variously emplaced and embodied, thereby producing multiple counterpoints to citizenship. These counterpoints suggest that the boundaries of citizenship are neither fixed nor complete. There is a complex topology at the edges of citizenship in which one can, for example, be an irregular and illegitimate outsider, regular but still considered illegitimate, or irregular but identified as a legitimate outsider in the nation. Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:26:21 GMT