This chapter is published as part of the book, Overlapping Inequalities in the Welfare State. It’s edited by Dr Başak Akkan, Dr Julia Hahmann, Dr Christine Hunner-Kreisel, and Dr Melanie Kuhn, and published by Springer. Read the abstract and introduction sections below.
Abstract
Race is a pervasive system that categorises and stratifies people in ways that maintain institutional and systemic inequality. Race has impacted the evolving management of public health responses to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic around the world. In Australia, state governments imposed harsh policing of migrant and refugee working class people that were not applied to white middle class people. The Government failed to meaningfully engage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in early public health planning, leaving communities who were at high risk from the virus to autonomously coordinate action without substantial state support. This chapter presents a case study of the webseries, Race in Society. The series featured Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars and practitioners, and other people of colour researchers from Australia who examined public discourses of race and the pandemic. The chapter uses the concept of intersectionality to illustrate how the welfare state exercises multiple domains of power to maintain racial inequality, even during the public health crisis of COVID-19. This chapter provides guidance for educators and researchers on how to apply critical race perspectives into their own scholarship, teaching, and activism.
Happy new year! Since my last update, work became frenetic, as my projects moved rapidly. I lost myself in the land of fieldwork and endless reporting of results. Continue reading Lost in the Field
I was invited to the Workshop for Computational Behavioural Science, at the University of Melbourne. It was a very interesting day, with presentations on behavioural science from academics and discussion on how a proposed new centre of excellence could address pressing social policy problems.
A new sociological study finds that students who study online perceive that they have learned less in comparison to students who attend face-to-face lectures. The researchers, Kelly Bergstrand and Scott Savage, find that online students also feel they have been treated with less respect by their lecturers and they generally rate their courses more negatively. Is there an issue with the way sociology is taught specifically that does not translate well to an online environment, or is there something broader at play? Today’s post examines the skills and resources that sociology demands of students, and questions whether the training and delivery of these skills are being adequately supported by the higher education system. I also discuss the influence of larger online courses that are offered “free” to the public and how this relates to funding cuts and a push for online learning in the tertiary sector.
There has been an increase in consumers’ reliance on credit and rising consumer debt. The increase is especially problematic for those least able to afford debt of any kind – welfare recipients. This qualitative study reports on 120 Australian welfare recipients’ attitudes towards debt, their understanding about what constitutes acceptable debt and the debt-management strategies they adopt. The results of this research show that welfare recipients see debt as a way of life and as a means of survival in a society where a core value appears (to them) to be the acquisition of material wealth. Their status as income earners and therefore their capacity to service debt is less than others. Consequently, we could expect that their debt levels would be proportionally less; however, many participants in this research did not appear to understand the long term consequences of their level of debt. The paper concludes with a discussion as to how social marketing can be applied to potentially assist this vulnerable consumer group and the wider community.
Keywords: Vulnerable consumers; Consumer credit; Debt management; Social marketing
Co-authored by Lauren Tolsma and Zuleyka Zevallos This report was first published in 2009 by the Swinburne Institute for Social Research. I republish the summary and one of the findings chapter. The study can be read free and in its entirety via the link below.
Summary
This report provides a sociological analysis of the settlement and support services available to Muslim migrants living in the suburbs of Greater Adelaide, in the state of South Australia. In particular, we seek to learn how existing Muslim organisations address the collective needs of Muslim migrants in Adelaide. We present a critical analysis of the literature on community development with specific focus on the provision of services that aid economic development.
Broadly, we use the term ‘community development’ to refer to the process of organising, educating and encouraging the participation and collaboration of local residents and stakeholders in order to improve their collective outcomes and objectives. Stakeholders might include practitioners who work in the social welfare sector, community leaders, businesses and government agencies who work with Muslim communities. These stakeholders are able to provide funds, or exchange their skills, services, prestige or other forms of support in order to achieve social change. As a pilot case study of community development, we incorporate previously unpublished data on South Australian Muslim community organisations. This includes interviews with service providers, representatives and religious leaders, as well as field notes during visits to organisations and the public events that these groups hosted around Adelaide in 2008.
Our report considers different forms of social capital in relation to Muslim community development and service provision. Social capital refers to the norms, knowledge and status enacted by social actors through their participation in social networks in order to become more socially mobile, particularly by tapping into the resources and capacities of other groups who are better off. This concept is used to examine the power dynamics in negotiations of social and economic exchange among different Muslim organisations and other groups, including mainstream service providers and government officials.
Our study finds that many newly arrived Muslim migrants do not understand the breadth of government-sponsored services available to them, and so they largely rely on a couple of the smaller and widely trusted Muslim community organisations for all of their needs, rather than approaching mainstream organisations for specialised services. In this connection, because some Muslim organisations have stronger visibility among new arrivals, some groups are struggling to manage their members’ requirements, especially given their limited resources. Consequently, a small number of over-worked volunteers deliver targeted assistance for which they have no formal training or qualifications. This includes crisis counselling, occupational assistance and educational advice.
We suggest that an asset-based community development (ABCD) approach would strengthen the social network ties and resources both within and external to the Muslim organisations studied. The ABCD framework is an evaluation methodology which first identifies the social and material capacities that presently exist within particular organisations. This information is used to establish practical ways in which those resources might be used to enhance their service delivery. In order to mobilise the existing assets of Muslim organisations around South Australia, the report proposes the establishment of a South Australian Muslim Community Corporation (SAMCC) which would consist of Muslim community service providers, volunteers and their Muslim clients from around South Australia. We propose a number of recommendations regarding the SAMCC including:
Assisting equitable decision making among Muslim organisations via the SAMCC.
Rather than solely privileging religious leaders, the SAMCC is set up to encourage the inclusion of a broader range of Muslim ‘voices’ that would contribute to community development activities;
Recruiting a SAMCC media liaison to help disseminate important information via a multi-lingual, regularly updated Muslim community newsletter and website. This includes promoting non-Muslim participation in community events, focusing on secular activities, and making available a list of culturally sensitive, mainstream service providers to Muslim community groups;
Restructuring the existing grants scheme of community funding. This is with a view to supporting the long-term self-sustainability of a wider range of ‘grassroots’ Muslim community organisations;
Funding training and hiring professional staff. This would ease the burden of Muslim organisations that are widely used and trusted but currently overextended, while still allowing them to continue providing specialised services for Muslim migrants.
The idea of the SAMCC is to provide sustainability for the Muslim community groups currently in operation, by pooling together and taking better advantage of their existing resources. In this way, it complements the asset-based approach to community development, by mobilising existing social networks and the value that those networks have for ordinary Muslims living in South Australia.
The next section presents our findings from Chapter 5 of our report.
Co-authored: Z. Zevallos and N. Kontoleon This article was first published in 2008 as part of the refereed proceedings of The Australian Sociological Association Conference.
Abstract
This paper explores the process of how sociological knowledge can be usefully applied in the development of a mathematical model of social phenomena. Specifically, it explores issues of translating sociological theory for the purposes of modelling and establishing the conceptual links necessary to achieve interdisciplinary understanding of political violence. The paper begins by describing the literature on violence in the Southern Philippines, focusing on Eric Gutierrez’s (2000) typology of violence. Second, it discusses social modelling as an interdisciplinary practice, including our reinterpretation of Gutierrez’ work into a conceptual scheme and how sociological theory might contribute to the development of a mathematical model based on this scheme. The paper concludes by discussing sociology’s contribution to interdisciplinary social modelling.
The discussion of interdisciplinary collaboration exemplifies how applied sociological knowledge can be appropriated for different audiences and in a variety of working contexts. This paper argues that social models which integrate sociological theories and concepts present an opportunity for people who are not social scientists to better understand the structural processes that might influence political violence.
Keywords: sociology as a discipline, crime and governance, economic, science and technology, power and inequality.
First published in the 2008 Special Edition of Nexus, the newsletter for The Australian Sociological Association. This paper makes reference to a previous job to which I am no longer affiliated.[1]
First published in the 2008 Special Edition of Nexus, the newsletter for The Australian Sociological Association. This paper makes reference to a previous job to which I am no longer affiliated.[1]
Dr Zuleyka Zevallos - Sociology Prose 