This book re-evaluates New Left and Marxist texts from the 1980s, in order to explore problems facing the study of ‘class’ which have emerged within Australian and international theories. The author contrasts the popular ideas of Connell, Bourdieu and the ‘Death of Class’ thesis, with those of lesser known texts, concluding that no single definition can account for the various historical meanings of class. Instead, loosely following Castoriadis, the concept of class can best be understood as creatively imagined and institutionalised. Paternoster proposes that class is best studied through historical phenomenology, which can be used to link political economy, cultural sociology and anthropological ethnographies. This approach allows the contributions of Marxist and New Left authors to be reintegrated with contemporary theories. Doing so highlights the significance of labour populism, while cautioning against the ahistorical applications of texts such as Bourdieu’s Distinction. Reimagining Class in Australia will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including sociology, history, political economy and anthropology.

'When it comes to our future, misplaced optimism is as dangerous as blind faith. What is needed is the courage to face the way things are, and the wisdom and imagination to work out how to make things better.' Australia's unprecedented run of economic growth has failed to deliver a more stable or harmonious society. Individualism is rampant. Income inequality is growing. Public education is under-resourced. The gender revolution is stalling. We no longer trust our major institutions or our political leaders. We are more socially fragmented, more anxious, more depressed, more overweight, more medicated, deeper in debt and increasingly addicted - whether to our digital devices, drugs, pornography or 'stuff'. Yet esteemed social researcher Hugh Mackay remains optimistic. Twenty-five years ago, he revolutionised Australian social analysis with the publication of Reinventing Australia. Now he takes another unflinching look at us and offers some compelling proposals for a more compassionate and socially cohesive Australia. You might not agree with everything he suggests, but you'll find it hard to get some of his ideas out of your head. Argued with intelligence and passion, this book is essential reading for everyone who loves Australia enough to want to make it a better place for us all.

Australian English is perhaps best known for its colourful slang, but the variety is much richer than slang alone. This collection provides a detailed account of Australian English by bringing together leading scholars of this English variety. These scholars provide a comprehensive overview of Australian English’s distinctive features and outline cutting-edge research into the variation and change of English in Australia. Organised thematically, this volume explores the ways in which Australian English differs from other varieties of English, as well as examining regional, social and stylistic variation within the variety. The volume first explores particular structural features where Australian English differentiates itself from other English varieties. There are chapters on phonetics and phonology, socio-phonetics, lexicon and discourse-pragmatics as these elements are core to understanding any variety of English, especially within the World Englishes paradigm. It then considers what are arguably the most salient aspects of variation within Australian English and finally focuses on historical, attitudinal and planning aspects of Australian English. This volume provides a thorough account of Australian English and its users as complex, diverse and worthy of study. Perhaps more importantly, this volume’s scholars provide a reimagining of Australian English and the paradigm through which future scholars may proceed.

Providing ways of reimagining home, this book demonstrates that thinking differently about home advances our understanding of processes of belonging. Authors in this collection explore home in relation to the figure of the stranger and public space, as well as with a focus on practices of dwelling and materialities. Through these frameworks, the collection as whole suggests that our home does not ‘belong’ to us, rather we ‘belong’ to home.

This book exposes how inequalities based on class and social background arise from employment practices in the digital age. It considers instances where social media is used in recruitment to infiltrate private lives and hide job advertisements based on locality; where algorithms assess socio-economic data to filter candidates; where human interviewers are replaced by artificial intelligence with design that disadvantages users of classed language; and where already vulnerable groups become victims of digitalisation and remote work. The author examines whether these practices create risks of discrimination based on certain protected attributes, including ‘social origin’ in international labour law and laws in Australia and South Africa, ‘social condition’ and ‘family status’ in laws within Canada, and others. The book proposes essential law reform and improvements to workplace policy.

Reimagining Chinese Diasporas in a Transnational World examines the changing nature of the Chinese diasporas in a transnational world and its concomitant implications for Chinese diaspora studies internationally. With a shifting paradigm of transnationalism and transnational migration, new patterns of Chinese mobilities have emerged that can be characterised as multiple and circular rather than unidirectional or final. This book illustrates how the analytical constructs of hypermobility, hyperdiversity and hyperconnectivity aid in the understanding of contemporary Chinese transnational diasporas. The book offers new research findings and theorisation and contributes to the existing Chinese diasporas literature and the interdisciplinary fields of ethnic, migration and mobility studies. It stimulates further research and scholarly work on the Chinese diasporas in the age of transnational migration. This book will be a great resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of sociology, ethnic studies, international politics, and migration studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

This book takes a fresh look at 'professional experience' in initial teacher education in Australia. Using collaborative narrative methodologies, the authors critically explore the ways in which one faculty of education engages with schools, industry, the teaching profession and government policy to deliver an innovative professional experience program. It includes chapters offering new perspectives on more traditional practicums in schools, as well as those reporting on exciting partnership initiatives where pre-service teachers, teacher educators and practitioners work together to teach and learn in new and mutually beneficial ways. There is a particular focus on the professional learning of all stakeholders from across the professional experience program. The book allows readers to gain a new understanding of the experiences and learning opportunities available to all stakeholders when a professional experience program makes a priority of boundary work, relational work and identity work. With the critical and creative power of narrative to convey what other research methodologies cannot, it shows how one institution has developed a variety of innovative approaches and structures in response to on-going debates on quality in teacher education, the role of educational partnerships in teacher preparation and the personal and professional insights gained from such opportunities.

Disengagement of youth from schooling is an issue of significant national and international concern, and is a key driver of educational policy and reform that look to maximise school retention for the benefit of both students and the wider community. In Australia, Flexible Learning Options (FLOs) have arisen as a response to the premature disengagement from schooling of a sizeable number of Australian youth. FLOs attend to the educational, social and well-being needs of young people experiencing complex life circumstances, yet empirical evidence of their value to date has been largely anecdotal. The significance of this book lies in its innovative approach to gauging the value of FLOs—to young people themselves, as well as the wider Australian community. Drawing on past research and new findings from a national investigation, the authors provide novel insight into the pressures pushing young people out of schools and the mechanisms at work in FLOs to re-engage them in education. The varied contributions of this book elucidate many of the measurable impacts of FLOs on the life trajectories of disenfranchised youth, including improved economic integration, mental and emotional wellbeing, and myriad other outcomes. The significance of this project lies in its exploration of how young people and staff understand the transformative nature of the FLO experience, with an analysis that brings to light the wider value of this type of educational intervention in terms of long term community benefit.

Informed by original ground-breaking research, this book “shifts the lens” of study, identifying how Indigenous Australian values and principles have influenced and contributed to an evolving non-Indigenous mainstream Australian culture. Based on the Indigenous principle of respect, Muller presents a solid research framework to break down the barriers of social differences in a culturally safe space. The text offers an insight into the cultural aspects of modern Australian society that contributed to its globally acclaimed handling of the current coronavirus pandemic. During the preparation for dealing with the pandemic, Muller’s research was validated as the world witnessed the Australian culture undergoing major change, shifting away from the original colonialist culture based on individuality and social stratification, to a community collective-based culture. It will be a valuable read for scholars in the area of community and allied health, humanities, social policy, social sciences and political studies. People seeking alternative lifestyles, a decolonised future and social change will also find this book useful. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Contemporary societies are marked by deep inequalities grounded in collective failures to recognize the histories, needs, and experiences of marginalized social groups. What are the strategies that can help individuals become more responsive to social realities and perspectives that differ significantly from their own? In Reimagining Sympathy,Recognizing Difference: Insights from Adam Smith, Millicent Churcherattends to recent debates over the imagination as a resource for social and political reform, and highlights the central relevance of Adam Smith’s voice to these debates. Smith, best known for his work on economics, may seem an unlikely figure to draw upon in this context. However, his nuanced account of ‘sympathy’—conceived as an imaginative and reflective capacity that develops within and through social experience—greatly enriches the role of imagination in fostering mutual understanding and solidarity among a diverse citizenry. Churcher critically explores and extends Smith’s view that if sympathy is to bind people together across their differences rather than divide them, it requires work at the level of individual practice, as well as the support of wider social structures. By drawing Smith into conversation with contemporary debates in social and political theory, this monograph addresses the pressing question of what is required from individuals and institutionsto remedy abject failures to recognize and respond ethically to difference.