Monday, 11 May 2009

We’re nearly at the end of our first semester seminar series and again have been treated to fascinating insights and ideas from a range of speakers. The last seminar on humans and animals on May 20 promises to be equally interesting. Our next newsletter will have details of the series that begins on July 29 so you’ll be able to mark your diaries early. Steve Johnson and I will also be presenting details of the Centre’s Education for World Futures initiative on May 26 at 1 pm. We’ll send more details closer to the time. We’re pleased to draw your attention to a lecture series on Global Health beginning on Monday July 27. It’s primarily aimed at medical students but interested members of the public are also encouraged to attend. Details are below.

Professor Neville Bruce
Director, Centre for Integrated Human Studies

NEXT SEMINAR: SLAVES OR EQUALS? HUMANS AND ANIMALS May 20

“Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equals.” Charles Darwin

Humans are social animals not only amongst other humans – we also associate with other animals in various ways. Since ancient times we have domesticated pets and used animals for food and work, and it is possible now to use animal organs in human transplants. How far can we take this use – or is it abuse? Extinctions of native animals are not uncommon; have we spoiled our planet to the extent that we may see extinctions of working animals? How has our relationship with animals been portrayed in the arts?

Chair: Prof Dennis Haskell Presenters: Dr Dominique Blache, and beekeeper Peter Detchon. All are welcome and there is no charge to attend. The seminar is at 5.30 pm in Seminar Room 1.81 on the first floor of the School of Anatomy and Human Biology.

NOTES FROM THE LAST SEMINAR, WORK
Chair Professor Colin Macleod , in his introduction, said that attitudes to work differ, even in one person. At different times, work might inspire and satisfy us, or frustrate and annoy us. It could be similar to our relationship with our spouse, but while we could get support to work on our spousal relationship, we often struggle on our own to determine our relationship with our working life.

Professor Rob Lambert of the Business School described his five years of research in three production sites in Korea, Orange, NSW, and South Africa, where the aim was to find out the impact of global restructuring on the experience of work, on the individual, on the families of workers, and in the broader society (published in Grounding Globalization: Labour in the Age of Insecurity , Edward Webster, Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout, Blackwell Publishing, 2008) .
Rob and his colleagues Edward Webster and Andries Bezuidenhout used methodologies of sociology – observation, interviews conducted at three monthly intervals over time, and survey data – and drew on the theory of Karl Polanyi. He explained that we are bound by the discourse of the free market, with its premise of international competitiveness and flexibility, and its commodification of humans. This created a world of profound insecurity for employees.
Rob described the site in Orange that started in WWII as a munitions factory and was restructured after as a refrigerator plant run by an Australian company, Email. After a long stable period, the factory was purchased in 2001 by Electrolux and over the next two years the workforce was reduced from 1800 people to 450. Rob found that individuals, families and the community were all damaged by this experience. A key aspect of people’s work was the search for meaning and identity, and insecurity drains the work experience of meaning. Solidarity and social connectedness are required to ameliorate the dystopian fragmentation of community that occurs in a self-regulated market. Solidarity can be achieved through social movements that may arise in response to particular moments in history; and counter movements could occur through people putting pressure on political parties to regulate the market.

Dr Elliot Wood , a psychologist specialising in organisational psychology, said that the number of hours we work has a negative correlation with psychological and physical wellbeing: that is, the more hours we work, the less well we are. He referred to the Philip Larkin poem “Toads” which asks “Why should I let the toad work / Squat on my life?” and used the tools of his discipline to examine the notion that work interferes with life. One of the conflicts is to do with time. Time spent at work necessarily is not time spent with family. But this works both ways, and time spent with family can interfere with work, and limit career progress. There is also a stress conflict: work stress may make us unable to enjoy family life, and a stressful home life can also interfere with our ability to function well at work. There can also be behavioural conflict: effective behaviours at work may be counterproductive in family dealings, and vice versa.
Chronic work stress can lead to burnout, which is characterised by cynicism, inefficacy and emotional exhaustion. There are many ways to deal with burnout, some better than others, but it is important first to understand it, recognise it and react to it. Finally, the best thing was to prevent it with workplace management strategies.

Anne Gisborne had her first experience of unionism as a member of the students union at UWA in the 1970s. Her current position as the president of the State School Teachers Union of Western Australia had its own built-in insecurity as she faced elections periodically, and she found that union officials lost their own work–life balance in trying to achieve it for their members.
The 21st century had particular challenges for unions as membership was declining; WA has one of the lowest densities of union membership in Australia. The union movement must work to establish its relevance in society, not least because benefits secured for members have flow-ons to entire groups. For example, smaller class sizes would not only improve teachers’ working conditions, but would also deliver better educational experiences and outcomes for students. Unions have roles and functions beyond serving their members; an important role is social justice advocacy. Unions increasingly apply business principles to self management and strive to maximise efficiency. Communications with members takes advantage of modern technologies. The SSTUWA forms alliances with community groups such as WACSSO, and continues to provide services to members such as access to health societies, training of union officials, individual member advocacy and professional development both through agreements and as a provider. Although there is no stated political alignment, the union does in fact have to deal with political parties through targeted and timed lobbying. Anne remains committed to the ideal of the union as a fundamental construct in society providing the more successful instrument of collective bargaining.

Questions and comments included :

  • Two things appeared to be motivating change in work practice and ideology: triple bottom line accounting and global movements like GetUp.
  • Since the global financial crisis, has anything really changed or is it business as usual?
  • Is it fair that the rights won by unions become available to non-union members?
  • Is there an ideal number of hours of work to do? (Not exactly, but qualitative research suggests that negative effects may occur after 48 hours).
  • There was an assumption in the talks that work was paid work. This was not the case always for women. In fact for many women paid work was an escape from family commitments!

GLOBAL HEALTH

The Global Health Short Course is an exciting new initiative designed to provide the West Australian public with an avenue to learn and engage in issues of international health. It is an opportunity to broaden your consciousness and explore the many facets of global health, near and far from home. The topics are:

  • July 27: The way things are (statistics and global health)
  • August 3: Making poverty history (the causes and cures of global inequality)
  • August 10: Getting shot is bad for your health + No place to call home (Conflict and health + The health of displaced persons)
  • August 17: Access to essential medicines (Patent law and how this affects patients)
  • August 24: It’s getting hot in here + When disaster strikes (Climate change and health + Emergency humanitarian relief)
  • August 31: Closing the gap (Aboriginal health)
  • September 7: Mums and Bubs (Women’s and children’s health)
  • September 14: AIDS (The AIDS epidemic)

The course runs every Monday at 5:30pm for eight weeks at Tattersall Lecture Theatre , UWA.  Register your interest online at www.interhealth.org.au , see what it's all about, and GET TO KNOW YOUR WORLD.

HAVE YOU JUST JOINED OUR MAIL LIST?

If you have missed previous newsletters containing summaries of the seminar presentations, you can see them on the UWA News page https://www.news.uwa.edu.au/category/business-unit/integrated-human-studies

ABOUT THE CENTRE FOR INTEGRATED HUMAN STUDIES

You can find out more about the Centre and about IHS at our web site www.ihs.uwa.edu.au . If you are interested in enrolling in postgraduate courses in IHS, please contact the Director, Prof Neville Bruce on 6488 3292 or email [email protected] .

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

Please feel free to give us your comments, thoughts or suggestions for future seminar topics by emailing Karen on [email protected] .

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