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JOURNAL Volume 10, Number 2: March 2012 |
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It’s Just
a Joke: Defining and Defending (Musical) Parody Paul Jewell
and Jennie Louise
Australia has recently amended copyright
laws in order to exempt and protect parodies, so that, as
the Hon. Chris Ellison, the then Minster for Justice told
the Senate, ‘Australia’s fine tradition of poking
fun at itself and others will not be unnecessarily restricted’.
It is predicted that there will be legal debates about the
definition of parody. But if the law, as the Minister contends,
reflects Australian values, then there is a precursor question.
Is there anything wrong with parody, such that it
should be restricted? In our efforts to define parody,
we discover and develop a moral defence of parody. Parody
is the imitation of an artistic work, sometimes for the sake
of ridicule, or perhaps as a vehicle to make a criticism or
comment. It is the appropriation of another’s original
work, and therefore, prima facie, exploits the originator.
Parody is the unauthorised use of intellectual property, with
both similarity to and difference from other misappropriations
such as piracy, plagiarism and forgery. Nevertheless, we argue
that unlike piracy, plagiarism and forgery, which are inherently
immoral, parody is not. On the contrary, parody makes a positive
contribution to culture and even to the original artists whose
work is parodied.
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Empowering Victims
of Family Violence: Could Anti-Discrimination Laws Play a Role?
Tashina Orchiston and Belinda Smith (Mar
2012)
Women who are victims of family violence
have more disrupted work histories, on average have lower personal
incomes, have had to change jobs frequently and are more likely
to be employed in casual and part-time work than women with no experience
of violence. Yet work is a vital structural support for victims,
providing them with financial independence, enhancing self-worth,
and reducing isolation. Do anti-discrimination laws have a role
in helping these women stay in work? Australian law reformers think
they could.
Feminism and Unionism: Local,
National, Global Strategies for Change Jennifer Curtin (Mar
2012)
Women’s rights to work and to economic
security have always been central tenets in the fight for gender
equality. These rights are won through feminist politics that focus
on the individual rights of women as equal with men. But also important
is a more social and collective understanding of rights that challenges
the masculine culture of the trade union movement worldwide.
The Ghosts of Labor’s
Past Rob Manwaring (Feb 2012)
We know Labor is in trouble in Australia—but
they are not alone. Increasing numbers of the public are turning
to the right rather than to the left to govern in Europe as well.
Why? One reason might be, paradoxically, that centre-left parties
are too right wing: governments they lead struggle to find adequate
policy responses, not least since most of them have abandoned state
ownership as a civilising force for capitalism. But not everyone
agrees with this assessment …
Putting Your Hand Up for Public
Deliberation Lyn Carson (Feb 2012)
Citizens may be able to make decisions better
than those of professional politicians, because they are not affected
by political party allegiances, corruption, re-election anxiety,
donor obligations or strategic bargaining. And there are well-tried
methods of engaging citizens in rich forms of democratic participation,
to harness this potential. So what is preventing their acceptance
and widespread use?
What’s New? Democracy,
Politics and the Role of the Media Tim Dwyer (Feb
2012)
Citizens need to be informed to participate
in democracy—and they rely on the media for information. Three
recent books catalogue the problems with the contemporary media,
and show just how much needs to change for the democratic role of
the news to be fulfilled. In Australia, would-be reformers confront
a dangerous level of media ownership concentration, declining investment
in costly citizenship-focused information gathering practices, and
audiences whose tastes have been cultivated in soft entertainment.
‘Don’t retreat,
reload’: The Character and Career of Sarah Palin Dennis
Phillips (Dec 2011)
In September 2008, when Republican presidential
candidate John McCain named Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential
running mate, some Australians likened the self-described ‘maverick’
Palin to Australia’s own political maverick, Pauline Hanson.
Both women are attractive, energetic, conservative, populist, blunt
and—how to put this tactfully—lacking in philosophical
sophistication. But Palin has had much more political impact than
Hanson on her nation’s politics …
On Be(com)ing a Good
Doctor Annette Braunack-Mayer (Dec
2011)
Medical students meet users of health services
in clinical settings—the hospital or surgery—and so
see them through eyes attuned to clinical and individual solutions,
not to the broader social determinants of health, illness and modes
of medical practice. Students are often resistant to thinking in
new and different ways about the problems patients bring to them,
but need to learn how, if medical care is to be genuinely caring.
Post-GFC Fantasies Martijn
Konings (Dec 2011)
A paradoxical logic shapes debate among critics
of capitalism after the GFC: awareness that markets cannot solve
social problems has generated a range of fantasies about markets’
as yet untapped potential. Even financial institutions are routinely
ascribed capacities for egalitarian inclusiveness that the crisis
seems decisively to have demonstrated they lack. Social scientists
need to do better.
The Dark Side of the Internet
Katharine Gelber (Nov 2011)
The Internet—home to ‘cyber mobs’,
liars, aggressive misogynists and purveyors of hate, who distribute
their views with impunity. Meanwhile, their targets suffer the consequences
of this predominantly unregulated arena for speech. The ubiquity
of the Internet, the permanence of posts, and the search engines
that dredge sludge for you, mean that material that makes its way
online affects people’s lives over the long term and in profound
ways. Can this dark side of the Internet be regulated?
Stand Up, and be Counted and
Challenged Charlotte Baines (Nov 2011)
Since World War II, globalisation and mass
migration have exposed Australians, city and country dwellers alike,
to new religions from around the world. Religious people and groups
can respond in different ways to increasing diversity, and a new
book explores the challenges and opportunities they face.
Talking About Genocide
Andrew Markus (Oct 2011)
In Australia, the attempt to apply the concept
of genocide has produced two separate conversations, two divergent
discourses with little indication of mutual engagement. It has not,
as some might have hoped it would, fostered a wide-ranging reappraisal
of Australian history. This problem is not unique to Australia.
Indeed, beyond the addition of a significant chapter to the sociology
of group relations, the genocide concept has failed to generate
understanding at depth.
What is it About Women Doctors
Jo Wainer (Oct 2011)
The changed sex ratio of doctors is a worldwide
phenomenon attracting the interest of policy makers at the highest
level. That we even need to think at a policy level about how women
are included in the practice of medicine is a result of the systematic
exclusion of women from licensed practice as healers when modern
medicine was being established in Europe from the 15th–19th
centuries.
Motherhood in the
21st Century Susan Goodwin and Kate Huppatz (Sep
2011)
Unimaginable a decade or two ago: interracial
surrogacy, raising transgender children, queer parenting, mothers’
chatrooms on the Internet, ‘tradie’ mothers, executive
mothers, yummy mummies, and mothers subjected to mutual obligation.
Yet with all these new ways of being a mother and doing motherhood,
even in the 21st century motherhood continues to be an arena of
conflict for women. How are we to make sense of mothering today?
Theorising China’s International
Relations Mark Chou (Sep 2011)
Since the first Chinese international relations
theory conference was held in Shanghai in 1987, proposals for a
Chinese school of international relations, or at the least a theory
of international relations with Chinese characteristics, have been
continuously mooted. What can philosophers from China’s prehistory
offer this project?
Intimacy, Memory and the
Oral Historian’s Project Jan Gothard (Sep
2011)
All historians have an obligation not to
misuse or falsify their sources and to treat them with respect.
For oral historians the obligation is also a personal and ethical
one, which sometimes predisposes them to infinite introspection
on their role in the co-creation of their interview sources. A new
history of migration to Australia pushes the boundary of how much
introspection is too much …
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