Theme: Millennial Reflections
When: Wednesday 6 to Friday 8 September 2000.
Where: Nowik Auditorium, Albury-Wodonga Campus, Charles Sturt University.
Hosts: CSU School of Community Health and the Journal of Occupational Science.
[ conference program ] [ notes on speakers ]
Aims of the Symposium
- To provide a forum for scholarly reflection on, and discussion of, occupational science themes and topics;
- To explore research directions and policy/intervention strategies related to the occupational science; and
- To promote interdisciplinary input to the growing occupational science knowledge base.
(Occupation is used according to its historical definition - not just work, but all human endeavour over time.)
About the Symposium
This is the third Australasian Occupational Science Symposium; the inaugural symposium was held at the University of South Australia, Adelaide in 1996 and the second was held in Perth in 1998.
Who is the Symposium aimed at?
Because occupational scientists can closely influence daily practice, people from many backgrounds could be interested in the themes of occupational science. Those involved in previous symposia have included social scientists, economists, politicians, indigenous educators and environmental scientists, as well as occupational therapists researching in occupational science.
Media note:
- Interviews on the Conference are available from Associate Professor Gail Whiteford on (02) 6051 6736 or email gwhiteford@csu.edu.au
[ back to top ]
2.00pm Opening
2.30pm Professor Charles Christiansen, University of Texas, USA.
"Doing and being: Daily occupations as identity builders"
In this presentation, Professor Christiansen will describe a view of daily occupations that emphasises the importance of such chosen occupations in establishing an individual's social and personal identity. The importance of identity to life satisfaction and overall well being will be described. It will then be asserted that when people have the opportunity to engage in occupations that are more likely to gain a sense of meaning and purpose in life.
3.20pm Afternoon tea
3.45pm Dr Michael Bittman, Social Policy Research Centre, Sydney
"Now it's 2000: Trends in doing and being in the new millennium"
Since the middle of the twentieth century any reference to the year 2000 has been used as another way of talking about the future. Three decades ago forecasters made concrete prediction about working life, leisure and family life in the year 2000. An obvious, almost irresistible question that arises is how accurately have these forecasts predicted what actually happens today. This paper draws on my analysis of trends in Australian time use to examine the nature of working life, family life and leisure now that 2000 has finally arrived.
5.15pm Exhibition opening with Charles Sturt University wine and cheese:
CSU student photo-essays "Images of Occupation" Wilson St. Gallery
9.15am Dr Loree Primeau, University of Texas
"Work within families: When gender ideologies and gender practices interact"
Today, two-parent families are faced with the dilemma of how to accomplish the work required to meet their family's need for both economic support and nuturing their children physically and psychologically. Drawing from literature in gender studies on unpaid work and data from a qualitative research study, this paper examines how families divide the work required to sustain themselves and demonstrates how the parents' gender ideologies interacted to create specific gender practices.
Morning tea
10.30am Irene Willis, Flinders University, Adelaide
"Deadlines and the purgatorial complex"
In this paper it is argued that successful 'meeting deadline' behaviour is form of sadomasochism and evidence of a 'purgatorial complex'. Attempting to meet a deadline causes 'time induced anxiety'. Meeting the deadline reduces anxiety, but only for a time, for in the modern workplace deadlines follow the duration of hell; that is, they are endless and eternal. The origin of this sadomasochism however, is not in hell, but can be found in the medieval invention of purgatory.
11.15am Yal-mambirra, Murray Education Unit, Charles Sturt University
"Black time, white time: Your time, my time"
Indigenous time began with the era of creation. White time started with the invention of the calendar, sundial and clock. Your time was, and still is, influenced by the clock or watch. Time to get up, time to get up, go to work…go home, time for dinner, watching footy or cricket and time for bed. Even time "put aside" for sex! Traditional time was set, not by the calendar or the sun dial or clock, but by the seasons, by the use of resources and ourselves. Your time has resulted in the decline of resources, family instability, the deterioration of the very air we breathe. Whose time is better … your time or my time?
Lunch
1.00pm Dr Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase, Charles Sturt University
"Globalisation and its discontents: An Indian response"
Based on recent ethnographic research among salaried workers and their families in West Bengal, India, this paper examines the lived experiences of people in lower-middle class households under a globalising Indian economy. The major finding from this study reveals that there is a stark contradiction between the rhetoric and reality of globalisation for the lower middle classes. This paper focuses on their ambivalence towards globalisation, and analyses their criticisms and their simultaneous and paradoxical espousal of the government rhetoric of work place restructuring and global competitiveness.
1.50pm Clare Hocking, Auckland University of Technology
"Having and using objects in the western world"
People in the Western world hold complex, and at times contradictory, ideas about objects. These ideas include whether cultural values and aesthetic sensibilities are best represented by great works of art or by objects from popular culture. Whether technology will enable us to triumph over adversity or lead to the destruction of the planet. Whether clothing reflects people's character or their manipulation by a consumer society. And whether conspicuous consumption is a vice or keeps the economy buoyant. This presentation explores how these ideas shape the meaning and subjective experience of having and using objects, with particular reference to using objects to create and sustain an identity, to mediate relationships, as tools or occupational opportunity, and to provide a context for occupation.
Afternoon tea
3.10pm Associate Professor Ann Wilcock, University of South Australia
"Occupational utopias: Back to the future"
This presentation will reflect on the historically recurring theme of Utopian dreams, doing so from the perspective of the occupational nature of the types of communities envisaged by people such as Thomas More, Robert Owen and Octavia Hill. Three types of Utopian communities will be compared with reference to the central idea that without consideration of peoples' occupational natures, no Utopia or community of the future will be totally successful in that it would fail to meet a basic human need.
9-9.30am International developments in occupational science
- "Creation of an International Society" - Alison Wicks, Covenor ISOS
- "New developments in the Journal of Occupational Science" - Clare Hocking, Editor
9.30-9.50am Associate Professor Gail Whiteford, Symposium Convenor
"The occupational agenda of the future: Issues, challenges and opportunities"
This session ends with a recapitulation of, and reflection on, symposium themes as well as an exploration of possible future directions.
Morning tea
10.15-11.45am Panel "Hypothetical"
This lively, interactive session will be conducted as a "hypothetical" in which a provocative scenario is given to the panel who have to "think on their feet" and improvise as the scenario unfolds! Watch for the mystery guest facilitator.
Closure
[ back to top ]
Professor Charles Christiansen
Charles Christiansen is Dean and George T. Bryan Distinguished Professor in the School of Allied Health Sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Dr. Christiansen is the Founding Editor of the Occupational Therapy Journal of Research, a leading research publication in occupational therapy. He is also senior editor and contributor to three major textbooks in the field: Occupational Therapy: Overcoming Human Performance Deficits, Ways of Living: Self Care Strategies for Special Needs, (now in its second edition) and most recently Occupational Therapy: Enabling Function and Well being. He has been a consulting editor for the past four editions of Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, has published numerous articles, abstracts and chapters in scholarly books and journals and has served as a guest editor for special series and editions of The American Journal of Occupational Therapy. Most recently, he has received the Meritorious Achievement Award by the American Occupational Therapy Foundation and the Nicholas and Katherine Leone Award for Administrative Excellence from the University of Texas Medical Branch. In 1998, he was given occupational therapy's highest academic honour, The Eleanor Clarke Slagle Lectureship, which was presented in Indianapolis in March 1999.
Associate Professor Ann Wilcock, Australia
Dr Wilcock is currently one of the most well known international speakers on occupational science. Ann's contribution to the field has been over a long period of time, and she has had an outstanding influence on occupational therapists, postgraduate students and researchers in both Australia and the United Kingdom. Ann's book An Occupational perspective of Health has won international acclaim as a landmark text informing a whole generation of not only occupational therapists and other professionals working in health promotion. Amongst her many achievements and honours are her establishment of the Journal of Occupational Science, her presentation of the Wilma West Lecture at the University of Southern California in 1995, and her keynote presentation at the World Federation of Occupational Therapists Congress in Montreal in 1998. In 2000 she will undertake speaking engagements in Canada, the UK and Japan. Ann lives in the tranquil coastal setting of Normanville, South Australia where she looks after a host of well loved animals.
Dr Loree Primeau, USA
Loree A. Primeau, PhD, OTR, OT(C) is Assistant Professor and Chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, USA. Prior to this appointment, she was Assistant Professor in the School of Occupational Therapy at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada. She earned her PhD in Occupational Science and a Graduate Certificate in Gender Studies from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA. Her paper is based on her dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment for a PhD degree. She was recognised for this work with the Elizabeth June Yerxa Award for Academic Excellence and Outstanding Scholarly Research, presented by the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Southern California.
Dr Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase, Australia/India
Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase teaches anthropology and sociology at Charles Sturt University. She is the author of Global Issues /Local Contexts: The Rabi Das of West Bengal, a study of leather workers in India. She is a key researcher with the Centre for Rural Social Research, where she is researching the experiences of childhood and work in rural and regional Australia. Dr Ganguly-Scrase obtained her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Melbourne. She has published a number of articles on the local impact of globalisation, ethnographic method, women's work and minority women. She has worked as a consultant on gender equity projects with the Tasmanian Education Consortium and Asia Education Foundation. Her most recent collaborative research on globalisation, economic liberalisation and the trajectory of modernity in India is to be published shortly. Her earlier research on the settlement experience of Indian immigrants in Australia was jointly published by the Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission and Deakin University Press.
Eileen Willis, Australia
Eileen is senior lecturer in the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Science, Flinders University where she has taught sociology for the last 15years. Her most recent research interest is in the sociology of work time, specifically the impact of micro-economic reform on the culture of work in the health industry. She is currently doing her PhD in this area within the Department of Social Inquiry, Labour Studies at Adelaide University.
Clare Hocking, New Zealand
Clare is principal lecturer, School of Occupational Therapy at the Auckland University of Technology. She is currently undertaking research into the relationship between the objects people surround themselves with and their identity, as part of her PhD through the University of South Australia. She has been involved with the Journal of Occupational Science since its early days and took up the position of editor in 1996.
Yal-mambirra, Wiradjuri Country, NSW Australia
Yal is a Wiradjuri man and his name comes from the Wiradjuri meaning "to cause one to speak", "to teach". Yal is a well respected and highly valued member of the Albury/Wodonga campus. He fulfils a number of roles including being a lecturer in Indigenous Australian Studies for the School of Education and as facilitator/lecturer in a range of other courses from Occupational Therapy to Parks, Recreation and Heritage. Yal is a committee of the annual Ngan-Girra festival and works tirelessly to attract funding and resourcing for ongoing re-vegetation and rehabilitation of an area of east Albury known s Mungabareena reserve for the benefit of the entire Albury/Wodonga community.
Dr. Michael Bittman, Sydney, Australia
Over the past decade Michael Bittman has developed an international reputation as one of the foremost analysts of time use information. His analysis of the 1987 Time Use Survey - Juggling Time - remains the most cited work in its field. He has employed time use statistics to studying changes in the characters of the working life, the shifting boundary between market and family, the quality of leisure, and sexual division of labour. Recent publications include The Double Life of the Family (Allen & Unwin, 1997) and articles published in international and national journals of across the fields sociology, economics, industrial relations and leisure studies. Michael Bittman is regularly consulted by government agencies around the world for his advice on the issues in the measurement and analysis of time use. He has held Research Fellowships at Australian Bureau of Statistics, University of Essex, University of Melbourne, and the Australian National University.
Associate Professor Gail Whiteford
Gail is currently Head of Occupational Therapy at Charles Sturt University, Albury. Having studied occupational science with Ann Wilcock, Gail went on to complete a PhD which focussed, in part, on the relative values associated with occupation cross culturally. She has published articles on a range of topics including occupational deprivation, occupational narratives, and occupation within occupational therapy curricula. She completed a book chapter on time use and has another chapter on barriers to occupation due for publication in 2001. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Occupational Science and presented at the inaugural Occupational Science Symposium in Adelaide in 1997 and, more recently, at the inaugural United Kingdom Occupational Science Symposium.
Social
Explore the world of social