ICS Seminar Series - James Arvanitakis, Ingrid Matthews and Bob Hodge
Date: Thursday 8 October 2015
Time: 11.30am - 1pm
Venue: EE.G.02, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus
Ingrid Matthews and Bob Hodge
After Engagement and Beyond Empowerment
Abstract
The ARC Discovery project Promoting Young People's Citizenship in a Complex World built on a typology of engagement and empowerment, democratic deficit, and active citizenship, with a particular focus on young people. This paper reports on the experience at one of our research sites, Glebe Youth Service, as it resisted a neoliberal agenda which initially saw the service locked out of its premises.
The community rallied around the 'Save Glebe Youth Service' campaign, refusing to accept the reasons given for its eviction and settling for nothing less than 'Back in the Building', which was achieved after the relatively short period of two months. As the research team were unable to work with young people when their centre had been locked by the government, we switched focus to documenting the successful campaign, according to principles of co-development and surplus model research design (Arvanitakis and Matthews 2014). Ingrid Matthews interviewed staff and management committee members and attended After Dark, the local Friday night program, to get a sense from community of the place of Glebe Youth Service in Glebe.
The final report drew on these interviews as well as the history of the Glebe Estate, campaign materials, media coverage, the role of social media (which was, perhaps surprisingly, small) and the broader political landscape. Two key findings around active citizenship emerged from this recording and analysing of a successful community action. The first is that the scaffolding was already in place: the Glebe community is highly organised, with multiple and diverse organisations and groups. The campaign was populated by many activist veterans dating back to the Vietnam peace movements. The second finding is that the participation of the local Aboriginal community, residents of the Glebe Estate, was pivotal in several ways, most prominently in focussing the mind of key political players.
Biographies of Researchers
Ingrid Matthews is a session lecturer at the School of Law and research officer on the ARC project Promoting Young People's Citizenship in a Complex World at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University.
Professor Bob Hodge is a researcher at the Institute for Culture and Society. His research interests include analytic and conceptual toolkits for social and cultural research; major theoretical traditions in humanities and social sciences; radical transdisciplinarity and engaged research; and specific areas of study (globalisation, cyberculture, Australian Studies, Indigenous Studies, Mexico and Latin America, Chinese language and culture, education, popular culture, literature).
Professor James Arvanitakis is the (Interim) Dean of the Graduate Research School and the Head of The Academy at the Western Sydney University where he is also a lecturer in the Humanities and a member of the University's Institute for Cultural and Society.
