All posts by ckutay

Working on country

Employment in Engineering

Working on country: a case study of unusual environmental program success

Kathleen Mackie and David Meacheam School of Business, University of NSW, Canberra, Australia

ABSTRACT

Many programs have failed in attempting to tackle Indigenous disadvantage, through remote-area employment and environment activities. In the 1990s and 2000s, the federal environment department’s Contract Employment Program for Aboriginals in Natural and Cultural Resource Management and Indigenous Protected Areas program made small but valuable advances. In the post-2005 Indigenous reform agenda, the environment department took the opportunity to go the next step, proposing in 2007 a program paying award wages for Indigenous rangers caring for country. The result, Working on Country, is acknowledged as an environmental, employment, and social success. By September 2013, nearly 700 rangers in 90 projects cared for 1.5 million square kilometres of country. Theoretical understanding of ‘policy success’ is recognised as an embryonic field within public policy theory. Working on Country provides a fertile case to investigate ‘policy success’. Interviews with federal environment departmental officials show that, in the particular case of Working on Country, keys to policy success were the lengthy evolution and ‘road testing’ of the program concept, authentic stakeholder engagement, and subsuming the environment objectives. We enunciate the unusual factors that were brought to bear in that success, and inquire if they are replicable.

Photostory used in water management research

Water

Using PhotoStory to capture irrigators’ emotions about water policy and sustainable development objectives: A case study in rural Australia Ganesh B Keremane, Jennifer McKay

Abstract

Participatory research approaches have gained popularity within the natural resource management domain, particularly irrigation management since 1980s. Some of these methods allow the examination of values and emotions with regard to the management of natural resources and hence can supplement other ways of eliciting community responses to policy change. This article discusses the methodology and findings of an image-based participatory research project called PhotoStory. The project was conducted with members of stressed and conflicted irrigation communities in rural Australia. Participants were provided with cameras to record their views about different issues related to sustainable water management and conflicts and were also able to record their emotions and values on these topics. Findings of this project – PhotoStory – give a two-dimensional narration (visual and written) about complex issues related to water policy such as the creation of regional water allocation plans. This method answers how plans and a widespread drought have been experienced and interpreted by people living in two communities. The article concludes with some pros and cons of using this technique with an irrigation community and reflects on the use made of the work by the community and policy-makers.

Corresponding author: Ganesh B Keremane, Centre for ComparativeWater Policies and Laws and National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training, School of Commerce, University of South Australia, City West Campus, GPO Box 2471, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia Email: ganesh.keremane@unisa.edu.au

Photostory methodology

Process

Photo Elicitation Methods in Engineering Research

Jessica Kaminsky, University of Washington, USA

ABSTRACT

Construction research often uses case study methods to investigate the large and singular projects that are a hallmark of the profession. These studies increasingly use informant interviews as a strategy to develop detailed case based knowledge. In contrast, photo elicitation uses photographs or other images in interviews to elicit informant knowledge, and is particularly well suited for understanding knowledge and perspectives other than the researchers’. As such photo elicitation has particular potential for researchers interested in sustainability, human factors in design, and other transdisciplinary topics. This method has a rich history in many academic disciplines; however, to date it has not been applied in construction research. This paper presents the method and suggestions for its application in construction research, drawing from insights gained in other disciplines to develop recommendations that can be used to achieve high quality research results. It also presents important limitations, benefits, and ethical considerations of the method important for a researcher to consider when applying it to construction and engineering research.

Acoustics

Acoustics

Vocal tract resonances and the sound of the Australian didjeridu (yidaki) I. Experiment available https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16521780

Alex Z. Tarnopolsky Neville H. Fletcher Lloyd C. L. Hollenberg Benjamin D. Lange, John Smith, and Joe Wolfeb

The didjeridu, or yidaki, is a simple tube about 1.5 m long, played with the lips, as in a tuba, but mostly producing just a tonal, rhythmic drone sound. The acoustic impedance spectra of performers’ vocal tracts were measured while they played and compared with the radiated sound spectra. When the tongue is close to the hard palate, the vocal tract impedance has several maxima in the range 1–3 kHz. These maxima, if sufficiently large, produce minima in the spectral envelope of the sound because the corresponding frequency components of acoustic current in the flow entering the instrument are small. In the ranges between the impedance maxima, the lower impedance of the tract allows relatively large acoustic current components that correspond to strong formants in the radiated sound. Broad, weak formants can also be observed when groups of even or odd harmonics coincide with bore resonances. Schlieren photographs of the jet entering the instrument and high speed video images of the player’s lips show that the lips are closed for about half of each cycle, thus generating high levels of upper harmonics of the lip frequency. Examples of the spectra of “circular breathing” and combined playing and vocalization are shown. © 2006 Acoustical Society of America. DOI: 10.1121/1.2146089

For more on Acoustics word UNSW by Benjamin Lange

http://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/didjeridu.html

Spirituality

Spirituality

Extracts from a longer paper entitled

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF ABORIGINAL WORLDVIEWS

Graham, M 1999, ‘Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal Worldviews’, World views Environment, Culture, Religion 3:

Western: What’s the meaning of life?

Aboriginal: What is it that wants to know?

“The white man’s law is always changing, but Aboriginal Law never changes, and is valid for all people”

Mr. Bill Neidjie, “Kakadu Man”

BASIC PRECEPTS OF THE ABORIGINAL SPIRITUALITY

* The Land is the Law

*Your are not alone in the world

Aboriginal people’s culture is ancient, and certain observations have been made over many millennia about the nature of nature, spirit and being human. The most basic questions for any human group, despite advances in technology, have not changed much over time; they include:

*How do we live together (area/nation/globally), without killing each other off?

*How do we live without substantially damaging the environment?

*Why do we live? The need to find the answer to this question in a way that does not make people feel alienated, lonely or murderous.

Code Talk by Higgins

Collaborative work

‘Code talk’ in soft work

■ Allen Higgins

University College Dublin, Ireland

A B S T R A C T ■ The performance of writing software is an under-studied phenomenon in Information Systems (IS) studies. Key aspects of the process of software development – the practice of writing code, coding texts collectively, maintaining and extending source code – are too often glossed or treated unproblematically as technical ‘givens’ rather than social accomplishments. Although ethnographic methods are now considered a valid mode of study in the software industry, there is a relative scarcity of ethnographic studies of the performance of programming itself. Utilizing data drawn from an ethnographic study of an Irish software development company, this article presents an intensive study of what I term ‘code talk’, the verbal interactions which attend the performance of programming software. ‘Code talk’ is then situated as a crucial element of a broader social understanding of collaborative knowledge work.

Community Knowledge

Community Knowledge

In the process of sharing Indigenous engineering knowledge, it is important we link to the community groups and individuals who will provide the stories to support this knowledge sharing.

It would be good to keep record here of who we have talked to under different engineering topics, as well as articles and published works that are authored by Aboriginal people, or quote Aboriginal authorities.

As this grows it can be accessed by an app to provide this resources under categories such as location or engineering topic.

Please add posts under “Community knowledge” category to be add here