Being a ‘wog’ in Melbourne – young people's self-fashioning through discourses of racism

The Greek community in Melbourne, Australia, is large and has a long history in the city. It is diverse and associated with a range of cultural, social and political structures. It has strong transnational links and in many ways exemplifies ‘diasporic’ in contradistinction to ‘migrant’. This paper focuses on young people from this community, particularly those who attend schools established to promote Greek language and cultural maintenance. In this paper, we examine such students’ explorations of their cultural identifications, most specifically how they adopt the term ‘wog’. This term is complex and its place in Australian discourse has shifted over time. Tracking these shifts and considering them as a context for these young people's use of the term allows us to consider the processes involved in their self-fashioning. We argue that their uptake of ‘wog’ involves the deployment of irony, given their awareness of its strong association with racism. We are also interested in the potential for women's experience to be silenced through the common association between ‘wog’ and protest masculinities. We argue that these students’ use of the term illustrates self-fashioning that provides insights into the complexities that surround cultural identification at the micro level, including schooling, but also in the broader context of globalisation.     

Researching school choice in regional Australia: what can this tell us about the ethnographic imaginary?

This is an exploration of methodological debates related to ethnographic research. Reflection on conducting research on school choice in an Australian regional centre is the beginning point for a discussion of what Appadurai describes as a dialectical relationship between the neighbourhood and its capacity to exist and reshape itself in relation to outside forces. The place of the researcher is considered in relation to a regional context and the possibility that within such a context, the urban researcher could be a ‘stranger’. The notion of the ‘strange’ researcher is used to explore belonging and through it, geographic imaginaries of regionality. The case is made that the production of locality in this region contributed to a researcher ‘lock out’ because local knowledge about school choice was being unsettled. The paper takes up the question of how research in a region can contribute to understandings of ethnographic research as unbounded.     

Single‐sex schooling: is it simply a ‘class act’?

The current debate about boys education risks taking us back decades in terms of understanding the significance of gender in relation to education. Of particular concern here is the tendency within such debates to rely on dichotomous understandings of gender which reinscribe essentialist understandings of both ‘girls’ and ‘boys’. In this way, the so‐called gender wars construct a climate whereby difference between the categories obfuscates difference within each. Here this issue is explored most specifically in relation to access to higher education and the possible impact of single‐sex schooling. Current debates surrounding boys' experience of schooling have refreshed interest in the possible benefits of single‐sex education, particularly for boys. Schools are establishing single‐sex classes for boys and in some cases parallel education (the provision of single‐sex facilities for girls and boys at the same campus) is being promoted as a way forward. In this paper we examine data from Australia's largest and most diverse university in order to explore the relationship between single‐sex schooling and access to higher education in ways which account for difference based primarily on school sector and socio‐economic status. In these terms, if single‐sex schooling is beneficial for boys we need to consider which boys are benefiting and at whose expense.     

Feminist Theorisations of Identity and Difference‐‐a case‐study related to gender education policy

The intention in this paper is to explore notions of identity and difference in relation to gender and ethnic minority status within the context of Australian schooling. This is discussed through an examination of education policies related to gender. It is argued that over a 20‐year period, these policies have reflected shifts in feminist understandings of processes of identification. Initially, such policies were founded on an understanding of gender which was essentialised and in doing so consolidated discourses that denied the subjectivity of ethnic minority women and girls and reinforced dichotomies related to minority and majority ethnic status. Subsequent policies, while adopting a more deconstructive view of femininity and masculinity and indicating the possibility of biculturalism, none the less failed to address the ways in which gender and cultural identifications articulate. The paper explores the need for gender education policies to incorporate feminist theorisations of identity as unessentialised and shifting in response to contextual factors, one of which is schooling.     

Strategic encounters: choosing school subcultures that facilitate imagined futures

In the Australian state of Victoria, students from elite independent and Catholic schools dominate entry into elite universities. Nonetheless, there are a small number of schools within the government sector whose students succeed in these terms. Such schools are considered highly academic and entry is very difficult. This paper is based on initial findings from an ethnographic study of one such school. Interview material is used to explore how students understand their school culture, their place within it and its role in facilitating their aspirations. Various student subcultures are introduced, to shed light on how these may facilitate success. It is argued that successful students understand but remain sceptical about the uncomplicated definitions of success and the narrowing forms of schooling that both create and respond to such definitions. Within the context of marketisation, a Government school that creates an academic niche for itself, has little flexibility and, because of this, students learn valuable lessons about strategic choices, including those related to which subcultures facilitate or hinder their aspirations.