Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Family South Australia'

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2005.
Title from title screen (viewed 21 May 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Discipline of Government and International Relations, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2005; thesis submitted 2004. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

This thesis examines the political representation of Australian farmers. The NFF family of interest groups is charged with the political representation of farmers in Australia.Given that their state affiliates are the only organisations that farmers can directly join, this study takes the case of the New South Wales Farmers' Association (NSWFA) as its major reference point. A paradox is immediately confronted. On one hand, both the state and commentators refer to the NFF family as an exemplar of a successful modern interest group. However, on the other, the NFF family is being confronted with escalating levels of disillusionment and criticism from its own constituency.Two points of interest are highlighted. Firstly, it is suggested that theoretical frameworks, which assist commentators and researchers to come to the conclusion that the NFF family is 'successful', are not constructed in such a fashion as to throw sufficient light on the paradoxical nature of an existing situation. Secondly, this paradox suggests that the NFF itself must be able to disassociate the contingent relationship between its internal levels of support and external levels of access and influence. These two focal points are explored in this thesis, and the framework used by researchers to understand the actions of Australian farm interest groups are scrutinised. Discussing 'authentic' political representation assists considering the major theme of the 'representative paradox'. It is argued that this paradox is best understood by locating it within a search by farmers for authentic political representation - both through the NFF family and apart from it.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

"June 2002"
Bibliography: p. 347-360.
xiii, 360, [200] p. : ill. ; 30 cm.
Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.
Thesis (M.Med.Sc.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Public Health, 2002

The centrepoint of this thesis is an action research project, the Maternal Alienation Project (MAP), implemented during 2002 and 2003 in Adelaide, South Australia. Resourced by two government-funded community health services, it was established to improve organisations’ (health, welfare and legal) and systems’ responses to the newly termed ‘maternal alienation’. MAP was situated within a tradition of feminist participatory and action research. It was designed to work on three levels: practice, systems and policy-making, and research. The outcomes, processes and events of MAP at the different levels of its operation are examined in the thesis through the employment of a gendered analysis drawn mainly from materialist feminism and standpoint theories. Post-project interviews and focus groups provided further data to the fieldnotes written throughout MAP, and the project’s formal and informal documents. A recent example of a contested gendered concept, “maternal alienation” was first identified and named in 1999 as a component of gender violence (Morris 1999). It forms part of a spectrum of violence perpetrated in households, and had been identified within domestic violence and child sexual abuse. It is a term for the range of tactics used by mainly male perpetrators, predominantly the mothers’ intimate partners and the children’s fathers or step-fathers, to deliberately undermine the relationship between mothers and their children. The mother-blaming discourses and degrading constructions of mothers conveyed to children and those in the family’s orbit are strongly related to wider socio-cultural constructions of women and mothers. The thesis examines theories of gender, gendered organisations and gender violence. It develops the concept of an abusive household gender regime, characterised by perpetrators’ imposition of a coercive and abusive regime on household members, and particular patternings of gendered relations. Comparisons are made between household and organisational gender regimes, which are also viewed in relation to the local gender order at the time of MAP. It was found that services that lack an analysis of gender are likely to re-inscribe the dynamics of maternal alienation in their responses to families. Language was found to play a significant part in addressing maternal alienation, particularly in developing congruence between language and women’s and children’s “lived” experiences. The principles that were developed were founded on supporting mothers and rebuilding their relationships with children, and making visible the tactics employed by perpetrators, thereby reducing their power to coerce and increasing their accountability. The concept of maternal alienation and MAP itself were attacked by a coalition of men’s rights and Christian Right lobbyists. This compromised the operations of MAP, and of its key supporters, managers of feminist and gender-aware organisations. In many ways these attacks, played out at a macro level, reflected the techniques and dynamics of maternal alienation at a micro level. This thesis raises questions about the strategies that feminist organisations need to develop to more effectively pursue feminist agendas, and to re-invigorate a women’s movement.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 2008