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This paper engages with Morsy, Gulson and Clarke's response to the recent special issue ofDiscourse(Vol. 34, No. 2) that examined evolutions of markets and equity in education. We welcome Morsy, Gulson and Clarke's supplementation of the special issue with the genealogical analysis they provide of private school funding in Australia and the attention they draw to elisions of race, ethnicity, Indigeneity and whiteness in contemporary framings of equity in policy and research. We also clarify and expand on some of the aims and arguments that framed the special issue. However, we feel that any response adequate to the ‘event’ that Morsy, Gulson and Clarke hope to stage – that is, a ‘debate redux’ and politics of dissensus in education as an antidote to depoliticisation – must extend beyond the rehearsal of pre-existing positions; it cannot stop at endorsing or critiquing the points raised in their paper, or reiterating the rationales and arguments of the special issue. We therefore respond by gesturing towards possibilities for ‘disagreement’, in the sense that Jacques Ranciere gives this term, about the political vocation of critical policy sociologists, and the modes of doing and being that can be seen as ‘critical’ and ‘political’ in academic education research. We do not disagree with Morsy, Gulson and Clarke in the usual sense; for that reason, we engage seriously with their call for a politics of dissensus in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Recent sociological studies reveal that in some respects religion in Australia is similar to that in many other Western societies, while in other respects it is significantly different. In this paper, these similarities and differences are explored, particular attention being paid to correlates of religiosity, religious institutions in their social context, and civil religion. Overall, religion in Australia tends to occupy a position intermediate to that which it occupies in Britain, on the one hand, and the United States of America, on the other. Various ironies or paradoxes that sociologists have discerned in religious institutions in Australia have parallels elsewhere. Australian civil religion, as expressed in events associated with Anzac Day, cannot be properly understood apart from the ideological structure of Western Judeo-Christian civilization, even though some of the Anzac symbolism derives primarily from pagan sources in classical Greece. Posited explanations for, and effects of, the profile of religion in Australia are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates about the state of Australian sociology have raged for as long as sociology has existed in Australia. Concerns about the discipline's future may be inevitable for a critical, reflexive discipline, but to those entering the discipline, it is neither instructive nor productive to be subjected to lingering disciplinary anxieties. After more than fifty years, it is time to take stock of the differing visions of sociology, and examine the arguments about the health, or otherwise, of Australian sociology. To advance this debate, we consider the signs and benchmarks of a 'successful' sociology as expressed in The Australian Sociological Association magazine, NEXUS, and key writings from Australian sociologists. We suggest that much of the disagreement over the status of sociology derives from the way 'disciplines' and 'success' are defined. Regarding sociology to be an heterogeneous, multi-modal, social institution and practice, we propose a way forward in our efforts to represent ourselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a brief overview of Stephen Crook's scholarly and professional work as a prelude to the articles by Malcolm Waters and Jan Pakulski. His scholarly work particularly focused on the theorization of social differentiation and social order in studies of everyday life. The TASA 2003 Presidential Address is dedicated to the life-work of Stephen Crook. Steve was a prominent figure in Australian sociology and made a significant contribution to the profession over many years. In order to gain a fuller appreciation of Steve's scholarly work, there are no two people better placed to comment than his close friends and colleagues Malcolm Waters and Jan Pakulski. At one stage, all three were in the Department of Sociology at the University of Tasmania, where they co-edited TASA's "Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology" and co-authored the internationally acclaimed book "Postmodernization." Another paper, by Waters, traces the pathway of Steve's intellectual development through three life phases, from Steve's early days in York, to Hobart and then finally to Townsville, explaining the development of his post-foundational approach and highlighting the great promise of Steve's later work on social differentiation and "orderings."

Sociologists have observed that young people increasingly draw on global as well as local images in their constructions of individual selfhood. This article provides a narrative analysis of stories of inhalant use-induced hallucination, drawn from interviews conducted with young people in Melbourne, Australia. Young people's stories of the hallucinations they experience while using inhalants frequently reference the narratives, images and ontological preoccupations of contemporary popular culture; in particular, interactive electronic games. I argue that drug use provides a means by which some marginalised young people are able to integrate their constructions of selfhood within wider networks of power expressed through global popular culture, through mobilising what Scott Lash has referred to as an 'aesthetic' form of reflexivity. This occurs when they construct and narrate their hallucinations through four practices identified as central skills for engaging with contemporary texts: immersion, viewing the world as a hybrid technological self, re-imagining place and play on the borders of story worlds. The research highlights the need to develop drug-treatment interventions that will enable marginalised young people to fulfil - in less harmful ways - the imperative to be part of the globalising world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solving the problem of the adverse impact of human numbers on the natural environment is a collective action problem and, if we are to understand it fully, we need good interdisciplinary research which includes work by demographers and sociologists. A number of factors inhibit this work in Australia: narrow disciplinary training; the scarcity of extrinsic rewards; and, as population growth has come to depend on immigration, the risk of peer disapproval. There is also little encouragement for such research from political leaders or the public. Indeed survey data show that the more Australians worry about the state of the environment the more likely they are to want a higher migrant intake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]