Muslims in Western Australia: parenting and family life
Wednesday 29 February 2012
A seminar presented by Eduardo J Farate, PhD student in the Centre for Muslim States and Societies, University of Western Australia
29 February 2012, 11.15–12.15 am
International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim
Understanding
Room Y3-33 (level 3), Yungondi Building, City West
Campus
This paper presents the preliminary findings of a research project into the experiences of a cohort of Muslim families that have settled in Western Australia, in particular how settlement affected family dynamics and parenting. Participants interviewed for this research originated from Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia and Australia. The interviews involved a total of 32 adults, which included six couples. Ten of the participants arrived as refugees within the last five years.
The findings of this research are grouped under the key themes of children’s education and socialisation, family relationships, parenting, community relationships, religious practice and access to social/settlement services. Linking these themes is information that shows how Muslim parents handle the challenges of parenting and family relationships in a western society. Initial findings suggest that their ability to handle these challenges and negotiate the new social reality is influenced by such things as their journey into Australia and their experience in their country of origin. Parents who originated from more ‘westernised’ societies, such as South Africa, or were born or raised in Australia, appeared to have a more relaxed parenting approach, but still in-keeping with Muslim values and norms.
Participants were also asked to provide their views on the best way to assist fellow Muslims to adjust to the reality of life in their new country. This generated some simple, but practical suggestions, on how families settling in a new country, Muslim and non-Muslim, could be assisted to adjust to the new social reality. Some of the participants felt that, whilst social or settlement services were important, migrant families from ethnic minority groups would thrive in a welcoming community environment and with adequate access to education and employment opportunities.
Cultural eOrientations and Comparative Colonialities
22–24 November 2011, City West Campus, UniSA, Adelaide
The MnM Centre was proud to host the CSAA Annual Conference. We invited scholars to re-orient cultural studies beyond the confines of the US and Western Europe, and to see what other theoretical inspirations and political alliances are open to us.
ReOrienting the World: Decolonial Horizons
22–23 March 2011
The International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding (MnM) at the University of South Australia hosted an international symposium on 22–23 March as part of its commitment to improving understanding between Muslim and non-Muslim communities and the elaboration of critical Muslim studies and launching a major research program – ReOrienting the World – which will animate the various research activities of the centre.
Key to this program is the development of a symposium series dedicated to addressing the specific questions arising from the ways in which the world that we live in continues to be haunted by the histories, economies and cultures inaugurated by Europe’s framing of the globe. For almost half a millennium the non-West was impossible to name except as a lack. It was a residual category, reflecting its subaltern position in the world order. Giving the non-West a name opens up a decolonising horizon and is a way of re-orienting the world. This re-orientation is a way of framing the erosion of western hegemony. It points to the possibility of imagining a different configuration of the planet. Decolonial horizons was the first symposium in the series and primarily focused on the epistemological and methodological implications of the de-centring of the West.
Rethinking the Postcolonial in the Age of the War on Terror Symposium
16–17 September 2010
The MnM Centre, in conjunction with the UNESCO Chair in Transnational Diasporas and Reconciliation Studies, held a joint symposium titled: Re-Thinking the Postcolonial in the Age of the War on Terror, at the University of South Australia, on 16 and 17 September 2010. The aim of the symposium was to explore the postcolonial condition in the era of the 'war on terror' and to rethink postcolonialism in order to reformulate or reinforce its critical insights. This symposium will be the first in a series directed to re-thinking the postcolonial.
Postcolonial thought was for the most part consolidated during the era of the Cold War and as such its critiques and interventions were implicated in the narrative and institutions of that global conflict. The stealthy emergence of a new grammar of international politics centred around the logic of the 'war on terror' demands a reconsideration of some central themes associated with postcolonial thinking. The violent hierarchy between the West and the Rest which characterised much of postcolonial interventions and critiques seems at once inadequate to the contemporary complexities of modernities, societies and cultures, yet at the same time necessary as campaigns of pacification, racisms and exploitations point to the continuities of coloniality.
Speakers included Prof Pal Ahluwalia, Dr Ashis Nandy, Assoc Prof Philip Darby, Dr Eyal Weizman, Prof Barry Hindess, Assoc Prof John Philips and Prof S Sayyid. Topics ranged from colonial terror, British colonial warfare, the use of architecture in forensic investigation, everyday cultures of security, the condition of Indigenous Australia, cosmopolitanism, contemporary terrorism and 'the Muslim question'.
Julia Gillard launches MnM Centre in Delhi
2 September 2010
In New Delhi Julia Gillard, then Australia's Deputy Prime Minister, launched the South Australian-based International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding, with the aim of broadening the scope of the new research centre and attracting research engagement from India and the Asian region. A video was uploaded on YouTube here. See also the write-up on the Australian High Commission website here
