Political Islam and the future of Australian multiculturalism

How can complex and diverse societies ensure the survival of core democratic values and the allegiance of all citizens, while respecting cultural difference? In the Australian context, these issues have been foregrounded by the presence of Muslim communities. This article argues that the discourses about Muslims and discourses by Muslims can work to reveal the dynamics for negotiating social cohesion. The political projects of mainstream Muslim communities can play a critical role in knitting together fragmented elements, and offering broader fronts through which a more integrated multicultural society can evolve. However, the potential for integration can be undermined in two ways: by political decisions in the dominant society that reject such projects, rather than engaging with them in creative and constructive directions; and by marginal groups within Muslim communities gaining greater leverage over younger people in a period of heightened apprehension occasioned by world events and Australian government reactions

Chinese Walls: Australian Multiculturalism and the Necessity for Human Rights

Australian multiculturalism is undergoing major challenges and reformulations. In part, this is due to the rapidly increasing presence of Chinese communities. In the past, 'The Chinese' were both a major trigger for the creation of and later protagonists for the abolition of White Australia. The complex and multiple layers of engagement of the Chinese in the Australian political system range from inter-governmental relations, through national political and policy issues, to local politics. Their involvement in a wide range of political parties and the interweaving of international and national politics, and economic and policy decisions, indicates political changes that may transcend the problematic of a multiculturalism constituted before the terror attacks of 2001 and before the rise of China as an international economic and political force in the wake of the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis. Moreover, the effective integration of the Chinese into Australian society may depend on how well the human rights dimension of multicultural policy is applied and conveyed to and through the Chinese population. © 2011 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Theory of Electron Beam Induced Current and Cathodoluminescence Contrasts from Structural Defects of Semiconductor Crystals; Steady-State and Time-Resolved Problems

Electron-beam-induced current and cathodoluminescence are powerful tools for revealing and characterizing point-like defects, dislocations, and grain boundaries in semiconductor crystals. This paper reviews the theoretical studies of electron-beam-induced current and cathodoluminescence contrasts from local structure defects of semiconductor crystals (the geometrical aspects of both contrasts, the assessment of the defect properties from the contrast, the evaluation of bulk parameters in the presence of defects, and time-resolved characterization of defects), including recent developments in this area

Algorithms of hate: How the Internet facilitates the spread of racism and how public policy might help stem the impact

© The Royal Society of NSW. Complex multicultural societies hold together through effective and interactive communication, which reinforces civility, enhances information sharing, and facilitates the expression of interests while permitting both diversity and commonality. While trust is an important cement in the building of social cohesion, multicultural societies face continuing challenges as their ever-extending populations test the trust necessary to constitute supportive, bridging social capital. The Internet, which has become a crucial component of the communication systems in modern societies, offers both opportunities and challenges, especially in the generation and circulation of race hate speech which attacks social cohesion and aims to impose singular and exclusive racial, ethnic or religious social norms. The Internet in Australia remains problematic for four key reasons. The underlying algorithms that produce social media and underpin the profitability of the huge domains of Facebook and Alphabet also facilitate the spread of hate speech online. With very limited constraints on hate speech, the Australian Internet makes it easy to be racist. Human/computer interactions allow for far greater user disinhibition, which suits the proclivities of those more manipulative and sadistic users of the Internet. All of this is occurring in a post-truth world where racially, religiously and nationalistically inflected ideologies spread fairly much unchecked, and discourses of violence become everywhere more apparent. Australia has opportunities to do something about this situation in this country, yet we see around us a lethargy and acceptance of technological determinism. The paper assesses these claims and proposes some ways forward that are evidence-based, and collaborative, scholarly and social

The inherent subjectivity of the apparently objective in research on ethnicity and class

Policy making in the area of immigration and ethnic affairs relies increasingly on the findings of social science research. A new conventional wisdom is emerging in sociological and economic studies. Its claim to objectivity is based on the use of a methodology which emphasises the use of sophisticated statistical methods, especially multiple regression models. The present paper suggests that this apparently objective approach is actually based on a set of of subjectivist and voluntaristic assumptions on: the nature of society, the character of the groups being examined, and on the practice and logic of scientific research. This type of analysis leads to the reconstitution of the ethnic group through the use of dummy variables, which mask many of the specific structural features of labour migrants. Moreover, the emphasis on multiple regression models makes it necessary to quantitify the variables to be examined. This involves a subjective decision by the researcher: either to give a numerical value to something for which there is no single correct form of quantification, or to exclude it altogether from the analysis. The approach is based on a human capital model, in which migrants are seen only as economic subjects in a rational market system. This blocks historical understanding of the way labour relations function in capitalist societies, in particular of the significance of labour migration, and of the role of segmentation of the labour market according to ethnciity and gender in class relations

The goldberg variations I: Assessing the academic quality of multidimensional linear texts and their re-emergence in multimedia publications

After an introduction on the recent history of academic publishing in non-linear media, the article compares two versions of an academic publication by the American sociologist David Theo Goldberg. The two versions deal with the same subject matter, but one is a traditional scholarly article, the other published in an online journal in a non-linear format. While the academic article constructs a tight, linear argument, subordinating a range of themes to a single key theme, the non-linear text gives all themes equal weight, accommodates a greater amount of evidence and documentation, and has more scope for multimodality. © The Author(s) 2010

Minority youth and social transformation in Australia: Identities, belonging and cultural capital

© 2014 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). Increasingly minority youth, especially from Muslim backgrounds, have been seen in Australian public policy and the media as potentially disruptive and transgressive. In some European societies similar young people have been portrayed as living in parallel and disconnected social spaces, self-segregated from interaction with the wider community. Yet Australian ethnic minority youth do not fulfil either of these stereotypes. Rather, despite their often regular experiences of racism or discrimination, they continue to assert a strong identification with and belonging to Australian society, albeit the society that marginalizes and denigrates their cultural capital. In particular it is the neighbourhood and the locality that provides the bridge between their home cultures and the broader world, contributing to a range of positive aspirations and fluid identities