4 – 10 September 2023

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Governance Challenges and the Challenges of Governance

Virtual , Australia

University of Sydney

What are the inhibitors to effective governance? How – and why – do some of society’s most intractable problems resist or evade governance solutions? In this panel discussion, University of Sydney experts on climate governance, Indigenous governance, financial governance, and internet governance explore the thorny question of governance challenges and challenges posed to governance systems by complex social problems. We also examine the limitations of contemporary governance thinking, and explore the possibility of alternative ways of engaging with governance systems and processes to increase social and political wellbeing. Presenters: Laura J. Shepherd (chair), Professor of International Relations, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Katie Moore, Wiradyuri woman, Project Manager, Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney Susan Park, Professor of Global Governance, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney John Mikler, Associate Professor of International Relations, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Ainsley Elbra, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Sarah Liberty, PhD student, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Join us online via Zoom. Zoom webinar details will be provided to registrants via email.

Free

The History of the Market: Opportunity or Imperative?

University of Sydney

What has the ‘market’ in capitalist society ever done for us? Is the ‘market’ an enabling force in our everyday lives, that unleashes prosperity, entrepreneurialism, unlimited economic growth, and asset inflation by way of offering choice and opportunity? Or, is there a concealed role to the ‘market’ that is more constraining in the way that it circumscribes our actions, limits and structures both individual and collective agency and ultimately ensures specific imperatives of competition, profit maximisation, and compulsion at the cost of socio-environmental degradation? This Roundtable brings together leading political economists to examine critically the past and present history of the market. It does so by covering broad topics related to the organisation of financial markets (Claire Parfitt); the role of institutions such as the World Bank in facilitating private sector finance, rather than public funding (Susan Park); the presence of giant corporations in concentrating power and eschewing accountability (John Mikler); and how market society itself first came into being through acts of enclosure and its associated ideology of improvement. Featured speakers: Dr Claire Parfitt, Discipline of Political Economy, University of Sydney Professor Susan Park, Discipline of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney Associate Professor John Mikler, Discipline of […]

Free

Vulnerable Bodies and the Un/Making of Wellbeing

Virtual , Australia

University of Sydney

Vulnerability is typically imagined as a property of individuals, groups or locales. But vulnerability is not something that is inherent to bodies – physical, social or geographic. Rather, it is produced through a wide variety of social processes that make some bodies more or less vulnerable than others. Vulnerability is patterned in ways that are historically and socially specific, produced at the nexus of markets, economics, politics and cultures, and constantly (re-)made through decisions, discourses and daily practices. Viewed in this way, vulnerability might be individually embodied, but it is also deeply relational and unavoidably socially-structured. This panel will bring together leading social scientists working across a wide range of empirical contexts to discuss how vulnerability is produced in ways that compromise the wellbeing of some over others and further entrench forms of suffering and injustice. Tracing vulnerability as it is produced at the fault-lines of contemporary policy, economic organisation, and governance across scales from the microscopic to the planetary, it will explore how vulnerable bodies are made, and might be unmade, in service of healthier and fairer societies now and into the future. Dr Katherine Kenny, Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, The University of Sydney Prof Alex Broom – […]

Free

Environmental Disaster and Disruption

Virtual , Australia

University of Sydney

Australia and the wider Asia Pacific regions have seen the proliferation of natural disasters in recent years. Social scientists have pointed out that the natural disasters and impacts they have on people and the ecosystems are situated within the larger postcolonial and political-economic systems. Understanding how our social practices at different layers of engagement fuels disasters and shapes responses and recovery is necessary to demand greater action for change. This panel brings together leading and emerging social scientists at the University of Sydney to share current research on environmental disasters, their management, adaption, response and recovery. It does so by unpacking the multifaceted roles of different actors and social practices, from turbulence in global environmental politics (David Schlosberg), to the role of the state in facilitating environmental disasters (Susan Park), to situated knowledge and community self-organisation in disaster response and recovery (Scott Webster), to the household gender dynamics that shape the nature of disasters and responses to them (Shiori Shakuto). Each presentation will be followed by a brief pitch on what change is necessary, and how we can be part of that change. Chair: Professor Dannielle Celermajer, Discipline of Sociology and Criminology Professor David Schlosberg, Discipline of Government and International Relations, University of […]

Free

Discourse in governance: issues of climate, conflict, racism and misogyny

Virtual , Australia

University of Sydney

We access the world through storytelling. The most complex social and political challenges of the contemporary era are mediated for consumption through media, discourse, and narrative. In this panel discussion, University of Sydney experts on media and political discourse analysis engage questions of climate crisis, racism in mainstream politics in Australia, misogyny and the “incel” movement, and international conflict, connecting the representation of these pressing social and political problems with governance efforts to reduce or minimise their impact. Media, discourse, and narrative approaches to governance focus on how social and political realities become known – and how these realities can therefore be acted upon and perhaps even changed. Panelists: Chair: Professor Laura Shepherd Heela Popal is a final year PhD candidate at the department of Government and International Relations (GIR) researching racism in Australian political discourse. Julia Jacobson is an honours student in the department of Government and International Relations researching Australian media and political discourse on incels (an online misogynistic hate group). Sian Lucy Perry is a PhD Student in the Gov and IR department. For her thesis research, she is conducting a narrative study of U.S presidential climate change discourse. Jake Lynch is Associate Professor of Peace and […]

Free

The First 100 Days: Politics, Policy and Reform Under the Albanese Government

Virtual , Australia

University of Sydney

It is with a warm welcome that we invite you to this online forum with Q&A: Paul Keating famously proclaimed that ‘When you change the government, you change the country’. What do the first 100 days of the Albanese Government tell us about the change it wants and how it will try to achieve that change? What are the barriers to the changes that it clearly wants, such as constitutional reform to introduce a Voice to Parliament? What do the experiences of past federal Labor governments tell us about likely successes and failures of the Albanese Government? Professor Rodney Smith chairs a panel discussion by experts from the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney, who will discuss what the first 100 days of the Albanese Government tell us about its ambitions and the key actors, institutions and forces that will help and hinder it achieving them. Presenters (all from the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney): Professor Rodney Smith (Moderator) Professor Anika Gauja (Labor and the Greens: The Party Dynamics of Reform) Associate Professor Elizabeth Hill (Women, Income and Work) Associate Professor Lynne Chester (Energy and Environmental Policies) Associate Professor Anna Boucher […]

Free