News Archive

NEWS FROM THE DIRECTOR

The big news from UWA is the completion and release of its Review of Course Structures Report: “Education for Tomorrow’s World: Courses of Action” https://www.coursestructuresreview.uwa.edu.au/?a=84109 . It includes a powerful set of recommendations that could position UWA as an educational leader and have an important impact on future growth and development of the CIHS. The UWA report calls for a greater broadening of undergraduate learning and proposes that all students include four units outside of their degree-specific major. We have been developing two first year units that closely fit with the thrust of the UWA report. We plan to have these IHS units ready for online delivery to remote and regional, mature age and international students by the latter half of 2009. This would give us the experience and time to adapt the units to “blended” learning (a mix of online and face to face learning) to be well positioned to make a major contribution to the proposed new UWA curricula. Soon, we will have the prototypes of these units ready for discussion and comment on our website. We will then welcome your input to help make these units outstanding!

Associate Professor Neville Bruce
Director, Centre for Integrated Human Studies

NOTES FROM THE LAST SEMINAR, WAR AND CONFLICT
Dr Carmen Lawrence , speaking about the preconditions for war and conflict, declared that her expertise was not in the history of war and indeed her personal experience was of campaigning against Australia’s involvement in various wars. The focus of her talk was how people got involved in war and civil conflict. She quoted Elie Wiesel as saying that the 20th century was “a violent century” with its world and civil wars, the Holocaust, assassinations, bloodbaths, the Gulag, and atomic warfare, and suggested the 21st century was shaping up to be similar or worse. In the last 15 years there have been more than 100 armed conflicts, most within nations, and 100 million deaths. Modern warfare had removed the distinction between civilians and combatants, and many of the casualties were women and children. However, she believed humans were not doomed to repeat this pattern endlessly: there was nothing inherent in human nature that meant we had to settle conflict in bloody battle; nor was the problem one of knowledge: we understand the causes of conflict, the problem is in how we respond. We urgently needed to prevent wars, through education, example and good governance. A simple definition of war was “the use of violent means to achieve political ends”, and war occurred often (and increasingly) within states. War was largely carried out with relatively cheap, conventional and small arms weapons, supplied from countries in the developed world, including Australia. The causes of interstate war were many and varied, and included resource ownership; disputed boundaries, often the legacy of colonialism; and religious, cultural and ethnic grievances. Many of these factors support or exacerbate each other. Poverty and illiteracy make populations susceptible to propaganda. And yet we are all capable of inhuman behaviour. Slavery, the treatment of Indigenous people in Australia and elsewhere, the Holocaust, and events such as the bloodbath in Rwanda suggest that individual psychopathology is not the explanation for such behaviour. The depiction of some groups as “other” enables the perpetration of violence against them. Our identity as individuals and as part of a group is central to our relationship with other people and whether we see them as like
ourselves or as different to the point of not being human. People who feel themselves under threat may be less tolerant of difference, more likely to embrace stereotypes and more likely to show animosity to outsiders. Recognition of these risk factors can help us prevent war and conflict. In the first instance, we should reject suggestions that this is impossible.

Robyn Carroll declared her commitment to mediation and education and suggested that since many lawyers become politicians or advise politicians, training lawyers in mediation and other non-adversarial processes may have a far-reaching effect on the practice of politics in our society. She gave the background to mediation by examining the nature of conflict and the various approaches to conflict resolution. Our legal system is adversarial, which means that the onus of defining the issues in a dispute lies with the parties involved rather than with the judge. There has been a shift in recent years towards a more consultative, collaborative approach that recognises the interests and needs of the people in conflict and may work on building relationships to achieve settlement.

Mediation is a structured problem solving process of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Mediation is often beneficial to people in dispute as it gives them an “excuse” to settle without being seen to have backed down. Broadly within society there has been a move towards ADR in schools and universities; business; courts; and even in government.

Professor Dennis Haskell was defeated by technology in his talk so instead of playing some music he showed us some CD covers! He prefaced his presentation with a generalisation that the arts represent our finest natures and aspirations but also show our baser instincts. Dennis referred to a variety of works including paintings, posters, plays, poetry and music. Works of art, literature and popular culture could both express the ethos of a time in history and seek to influence it, and of course any intended message was also supplemented by unintended revelations of meaning. “Something to do with war” was at the heart of Australian culture in our reverence for the Anzac spirit and the Gallipoli story. Images of war in painting often served as
propaganda about nationalism and heroism; similarly poetry extolled the virtues of gallantry in war (e.g. Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” – even though the event referred to in that poem was a military catastrophe). But in modern times, especially during World War I, photography and poetry began to represent war in a different way. Wilfred Owen’s poetry, for example, presented different images of war and rejected “the old lie” (“Dulce et decorum est”). Dennis read Kenneth Slessor’s sadly lyrical “Beach Burial”, describing it as one of the finest poems of World War II. In the post-war period, there had been a perception of the sheer absurdity of war in such works as Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, and the film M.A.S.H. Popular culture and television journalism now have a huge influence on our attitudes.

Questions and comments included:
· Harking back to discussions about wisdom, it is clear that war is madness. It is time we stopped talking about rights and started talking about obligations.
· We need to educate for peace. Australia spends billions every year on defence – money should be spent on education for peace.
· More educated communities are more likely to be harmonious – education is the key.
· We could learn from states that are peaceful – how do they do it? There is more crime in communities where there is greater disparity of wealth. Scandinavia has moved to less disparity and achieved lower crime rates.
· Are there situations where mediation or appeasement of an aggressor is inappropriate? Can it be “just” to go to war?
· Are we really living in violent times – isn’t any historic period you cared to choose
similarly violent?
· Religions, which should be exemplars of tolerance, are not.

NEXT SEMINAR

Our fifth seminar in the Human Wellbeing series looks at poverty and affluence, material and spiritual. It’s at 5.30 pm in Seminar room 1.81 in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia (two buildings south of Shenton House on the Matilda Bay side of the campus).

Seminar 5, 1 October 08 : Poverty and affluence, material and spiritual

While the affluent in the first world grow fat, millions are starving in other countries, and in our own, the working poor proliferate. What are the causes of poverty? What are the consequences of poverty both for those who suffer from it, and for the affluent in the first world? Can both poverty and affluence have material, mental and spiritual dimensions?
Chair: Prof Graeme Martin
Presenters: Dr Steve Schilizzi; Ms Inga Kristoffersen; Rev Dr Ian Robinson

Our seminars are free and for those who need a little something to keep them going until dinner time, there are some light refreshments available, also free.

HAVE YOU JUST JOINED OUR MAIL LIST?
If you have missed previous newsletters containing summaries of the seminar presentations, you can see them on our web site on the News and Events page .
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ABOUT THE CENTRE FOR INTEGRATED HUMAN STUDIES
You can find out more about the Centre and about IHS at our web site . If you are interested in enrolling in postgraduate courses in IHS, please contact the Director, A/Prof Neville Bruce on +61 08 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] .

Media references

Karen Connolly
Integrated Human Studies
School of Anatomy and Human Biology
The University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway Crawley WA 6009
+61 08 6488 3647 email: [email protected]
In the office on Mondays and Thursdays - for urgent enquiries please phone Neville Bruce on +61 08 6488 3292