What are the issues of safety and social inclusion experienced by migrants? This lecture discusses how migrants access housing, work and study, and how they use public urban spaces, locating these everyday practices within the context of local planning and social policy. Featuring Dr Julie Rudner (Planning, La Trobe University) and Noemi Cummings (Executive Officer, Loddon Campaspe Multicultural Services) Copyright 2014 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Sociology

Migrants' Sense of Safety in Bendigo

Professor Peter Murphy (School of Creative Arts, James Cook University) argues that technology and medicine produce research that makes exciting promises but delivers fewer real results. This lecture will discuss the cultural and social forces driving this desertification of the imagination. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

The Collapse of Creativity

Dr Ian Coller (European History, La Trobe University) talks about the 'disease of the soul' and how different researchers - historians, social scientists, anthropologists, neurologists, and scientists of different backgrounds might be able to come together to start to bring insights into this question that we've never had before. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Why do we Hate?

Bernie Geary OAM (Principal Commissioner for the Commission for Children and Young People) on how young people make a life after school and their need to make meaningful connections in their community. The 2013 Kerferd Oration, delivered on 28th July in Beechworth. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Engaging Youth in the Community

Dr Kiran Bedi was India's first and highest ranking woman officer in the Indian Police Service. She has worked with the UN and has represented India in international forums on crime prevention, drug abuse, police and prison reforms and women's issues. Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

In Conversation with Kiran Bedi

Professor Simon Tormey (School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney) returns to a prominent theme of Agnes Heller's political thought: the relationship between modernity and democracy. Heller's work displays a notable ambivalence not about democracy, but about what form democracy should take. Introduced by Professor Peter Beilharz. Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Agnes Heller and the Future of Democracy

Dr Kiran Bedi was India's first and highest ranking woman officer in the Indian Police Service. She has worked with the UN and has represented India in international forums on crime prevention, drug abuse, police and prison reforms and women's issues. Introduced by Professor Tim Murray. Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Leadership in the Making

Anthropogenic climate change has been described as the biggest crisis of the 21st century, with the next decade the last window to keep the heat within a less damaging range. What sort of a crisis is climate change from the standpoint of anthropology, as humans transform the geophysical processes of the planet? The 2012 Joel Kahn Anthropology lecture, delivered by Professor Linda Connor (University of Sydney). Introduced by Helen Lee. Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

The Anthropology of Climate Change

Lenore Skenazy (New York columnist, author, 'America's Worst Mum') on the pressure to create a perfect parent, and perfect kid, in our child-obsessed culture. How safe are our children? Can we let them roam around the streets unsupervised as many of us did when we were young? Or is today’s world too dangerous a place? Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Pressure to Raise the 'Perfect Child'

Dr Ramón Spaaij (Senior Research Fellow, School of Social Sciences) discusses the gendered nature of professional sport. He focuses on his extensive research into soccer hooliganism in Europe and links this form of fan violence to broader issues of masculinity in sport and society. Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Masculinities and Hooliganism in Sport

Dr Ramón Spaaij (Deputy Director, La Trobe Refugee Research Centre) discusses the process and effects of doing fieldwork by drawing on a three-year ethnographic research project recently carried out with members of Melbourne's Somali community. He also discusses the research methods and key findings, and links these to core issues in anthropology as well as to dominant policy discourses and understandings of sport participation and social integration among resettled refugees in Australia. Copyright 2011 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Sport and Social Integration Amongst Refugees in Australia

China Observations and Reflections

How do we best make sense of contemporary Japanese society, a non-Western, highly technological, post-modern democracy, recently dubbed "Cool Japan"? Japan simultaneously exports to the world hi-tech hardware (e.g., cars, computers, Nintendo DS and Wii) and soft popular culture (e.g., games, anime, manga, fashion, and J-pop). Yoshio Sugimoto is La Trobe's Emeritus Professor of Sociology, globally regarded as one of the most prominent sociologists of contemporary Japanese society, with a long list of publications. Drawing on his most recent edited volume, The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2009), and in reference to La Trobe undergraduates' reviews of this book, he will talk on how the world can better understand contemporary Japan. Copyright 2009 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Pursuing Invisible Japan

Are Australians racist? Who are we to speak? Who can call themselves real Australians? Professor Sandy Gifford, Director of La Trobe University's Refugee Health Research Centre, believes this is the case. You can read a transcript for this podcast at http://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2009/podcasts/australian-racism-with-sandy-gifford/transcript Copyright 2009 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Is Australia a Racist Country?

Professor John Carroll discusses the desire for the soul to crave meaning. A transcript of this podcast is also available at http://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2008/podcasts/ego-and-soul-with-john-carroll/transcript Copyright 2009 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Ego and Soul

Podcasts concerned with the study of social life and human behaviour - the structural arrangements and cultural patterns which shape behaviour at every level of social action, whether personal, local, national or global. It examines how we are shaped by the world around us but also how we also shape and construct the social and cultural world within which we live.

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Sociology

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