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The ability to recognise and understand your own cultural context is a prerequisite to understanding and interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds. An intercultural learning approach encourages us to develop an understanding of culture and cultural difference, through reflecting on our own context and experience.
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The issue of Indigenous identity has gained more attention in recent years from social science scholars, yet much of the discussions still centre on the politics of belonging or not belonging. While these recent discussions in part speak to the complicated and contested nature of Indigeneity, both those who claim Indigenous identity and those who write about it seem to fall into a paradox of acknowledging its complexity on the one hand, while on the other hand reifying notions of ‘tradition’ and ‘authentic cultural expression’ as core features of an Indigenous identity. Since identity theorists generally agree that who we understand ourselves to be is as much a function of the time and place in which we live as it is about who we and others say we are, this scholarship does not progress our knowledge on the contemporary characteristics of Indigenous identity formations.
The range of international scholars in this volume have begun an approach to the contemporary identity issues from very different perspectives, although collectively they all push the boundaries of the scholarship that relate to identities of Indigenous people in various contexts from around the world. Their essays provide at times provocative insights as the authors write about their own experiences and as they seek to answer the hard questions: Are emergent identities newly constructed identities that emerge as a function of historical moments, places, and social forces? If so, what is it that helps to forge these identities and what helps them to retain markers of Indigeneity? And what are some of the challenges (both from outside and within groups) that Indigenous individuals face as they negotiate the line between ‘authentic’ cultural expression and emergent identities? Is there anything to be learned from the ways in which these identities are performed throughout the world among Indigenous groups? Indeed why do we assume claims to multiple racial or ethnic identities limits one’s Indigenous identity? The question at the heart of our enquiry about the emerging Indigenous identities is when is it the right time to say me, us, we… them?
Book DetailsThis book provides an overview of the innovative social inclusion initiatives known as human or living libraries. It is the first comprehensive and independent analysis of Human Libraries in Australia. The book provides an overview of Human Library practices and identifies key challenges for policymakers and practitioners while contributing to scholarly debates on anti-racism work and on the benefits and limits of cross-cultural contact or dialogue within that work.
Book DetailsWaterborne: Vietnamese Australians and Sydney's Georges River parks and green spaces, has been created by talking with the Vietnamese Australians who live around the Georges River and who often visit its parklands. Here they explain their memories of their early homelands, which are given context with information about the histories of rivers and parks in Vietnam. The Vietnamese Australians highlighted talk about their hopes for parks in Australia and their actual experiences in the parks and rivers around their new homes near the Georges River.
Book DetailsRough Living: Surviving Violence and Homelessness reveals the ways in which intense chains of disadvantage, incorporating homelessness, are triggered by very early experiences of violence. Drawing on biographic interviews with six men and six women, the book bears witness not only to horrendous repeated experiences of physical and sexual violence, but discusses what may be understood as related multi-dimensional vulnerability in areas such as physical and mental health, education, employment and social connectedness. A picture of the long-term cycles of violent victimisation and homelessness, and their compounding traumatising effects, are made clear and the importance of trauma-informed service delivery is outlined as a key way forward.
Book DetailsThis research monograph examines the lack of crisis accommodation services for single homeless women in Sydney, with particular focus on Western Sydney. The book concludes that while single homeless women remain 'invisible' as a target group in need of accommodation assistance, they will continue to be displaced from their home suburbs and forced to solve their own homelessness through problematic practices such as 'couch surfing' and swapping sex for shelter.
Book DetailsThis research monograph documents and analyses the many ways in which communities experiencing racism after September 11, 2001 have responded to increased prejudice, harassment and discrimination. While much research analyses the 'problem' of racism, this book highlights the responses developed by targeted communities, including strategies of Interfaith, cross-cultural education, media responses and community cultural development work. A follow-up to the 2006 work Targeted, the research underlying this book is based on extensive community consultations and interviews with Arab, Muslim and Sikh communities in Sydney. It maps the field and identifies common challenges with the aim of contributing to wider processes of innovation in community anti-racism work.
Book DetailsTargeted researches experiences of racism in New South Wales after September 11, 2001. The monograph analyses data collected by the anti-racism hotline established by the Community Relations Commission For a Multicultural NSW (CRC). It details a significant increase in racially motivated violence and verbal abuse in NSW in the months following the US 2001 September 11 attacks and finds these incidents produced a climate of fear and insecurity, which continues to impact these communities, and denies them the chance to enjoy a true sense of Australian citizenship.
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During the 12 years of the Nazi regime, a secret program of ‘euthanasia’ was employed against the sick and disabled. More than 300,000 Europeans with disabilities were covertly murdered and their families issued with falsified death certificates. A further 400,000 were deemed by special courts to have ‘hereditary diseases’ and were sterilised against their will.
This aggregate of crimes, now known as Krankenmorde (the murder of the sick), was organised and performed by doctors, nurses, bureaucrats and designated military groups. Many would go on to commit larger scale crimes against humanity in the Holocaust.
From the extraordinary eyewitness account of eight-year-old Elvira Hempel, The First into the Dark reveals a history of the victims, witnesses, opponents to and perpetrators of the Krankenmorde. It presents an accessible analysis of that era within the rise of ‘scientific’ eugenic discourse and traces the implications for contemporary society—moral values and ethical challenges in end of life decisions, reproduction and contemporary genetics, disability and human rights, and in remembrance of and atonement for the past.
Dr Michael Robertson is a consultant psychiatrist, Clinical Associate Professor of Mental Health Ethics at the Sydney Health Ethics centre at the University of Sydney, and a visiting professorial fellow at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
Dr Astrid Ley is a historian and historian of medicine. She is deputy director at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial near Berlin.
Dr Edwina Light is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Sydney Health Ethics centre at the University of Sydney, and a visiting fellow at the Sydney Jewish Museum
