Centre for Global Research

Over the last 14 years Timor-Leste has fashioned a system of government that is rare in this part of the world, often referred to as ‘Semi-Presidentialism’. This system sees a directly elected president governing alongside a prime minister who owes their own legitimacy to the support of an independently elected parliament. Based on the existence of a diarchy of powers, this system is seen by many critics as being broadly susceptible to periods of political imbalance and dysfunction, be it in the form of ‘superpresidentialism’— when presidential and parliamentary majorities coincide—or through the institutionalisation of conflict as political leaders influence the government’s agenda by securing support across various portfolios. To date, Timor-Leste appears to have circumvented many of the problems associated with this system by electing ‘independent’ presidents. However, how realistic is it to assume that such an equilibrium can be maintained into the future? In 2009, Xanana Gusmao, Jose Ramos-Horta and Mari Alkatiri each stressed that any assessment of the system’s virtues should only be undertaken towards the end of the third electoral cycle. This is due to occur in 2017. In this seminar Rui Graça Feijó will offer his thoughts on current trajectories and future possibilities for the future of state politics in Timor-Leste. Rui Graça Feijó is an assistant researcher with the Centro de Estudos Sociais in Coimbra and has been involved with researching and supporting political life in Timor-Leste since the restoration of independence in 2002. In 2005 he was appointed as a UN Advisor to the Office of the President. In 2006 he published 'Tropical Landscape with People Inside' followed by an edited collection in 2014 entitled 'The Timorese Semi-Presidentialism'. This year he released a new monograph 'Dynamics of Democracy in Timor-Leste: The Birth of Democratic Nation, 1999-2012' (Amsterdam University Press).

This high level panel will discuss the practical dimensions of memorialisation and reconciliation. We are living at a time when being a civilian during conflict is less safe than a soldier – with civilian deaths climbing from 5 per cent at the turn of the 20th century to more than 90 per cent in the wars of the 1990s and those currently fought. This has resulted in both the tremendous dislocation experienced by more people than at any time since WWII – with over 60 million refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people worldwide (UNHCR, 2016) – and a relentless number of disappearances of civilians in conflict-affected regions. In line with Robert Hertz's idea that death is a process rather than a moment, and that a person needs to die socially, the panellists will discuss socio-cultural, political, legal and psychological effect and affects of the missing or unidentified dead bodies on the relatives and communities in post-conflict societies, as well as how they extend outwards to diaspora communities. By looking into these issues and how they have been approached in different post-conflict countries and echoed in their respective diasporas, the seminar aims to contribute to the scholarly debate on the missing, as well as to discuss practical dimensions of peace-building, healing and reconciliation essential for these communities and societies to move forward, as well as the political and social effects of not doing so. Panellists include: - Ms Nicole Batch (National Program Coordinator, International Tracing Service at Australian Red Cross) - Dr Damian Grenfell (Director, Centre for Global Research, RMIT University) - His Excellency Mr Bakir Sadovic (Ambassador of Bosnia-Herzegovina to Australia) - Associate Professor Hariz Halilovich (Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Global Research, RMIT University) (Convener)

The nominees are confirmed but what do we really know about Donald John Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton? Republican Donald John Trump and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton are in a virtual dead heat in the race to win the American presidency on November 8. In this edition of Global Frictions, the speakers will discuss the how the billionaire businessman, reality TV host, Donald Drumpf, and President Barack Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, arrived at this point, what they stand for, and what it means for the world. The Key speakers for the event are Professor Joseph M. Siracusa (RMIT University), and Professor Ian Bickerton (University of New South Wales). Both have been scholars and observers of American politics for many years. Global Frictions: A Seminar Series hosted by the Centre for Global Research

The effort to ‘build’ or ‘rebuild’ state functions after long periods of violent conflict has been central to international responses to war and conflict over the past two decades. Rebuilding the state has been widely seen as foundational to the emergence of long-lasting peace after war, while strengthening state institutions has been a major focus of international development efforts. Statebuilding, however, is an extraordinarily ambitious intervention, which carries inherent ethical, political and practical dilemmas. Professor John Connell (Faculty of Science, University of Sydney) Associate Professor Meg Keen (Senior Policy Fellow, State, Society and Governance in Melanesia program, ANU) Associate Professor David Mitchell (School of Science, RMIT) Ms Michelle Rooney (Research Fellow, Development Policy Centre, ANU) Mr David Sweeting (Save the Children) Dr Ceridwen Spark (Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, Centre for Global Research, RMIT)

For a long time, anthropologists working in the Pacific have tended to leave towns and cities and head to the rural and remote places perceived as the authentic ‘heartlands’ of these locations. However, the rate and pace of urbanisation in the region is presenting new challenges and opportunities both for the Pacific peoples who dwell in these places and for those who come to learn about them. This panel discussion brings together academics and development workers to examine the ways in which rural and urban spaces are being remade as a result of emergent social and economic structures as well as climate change. What are the positives and negatives of urbanisation in the Pacific? And how can academics and policy makers think through these transformations in ways that take into account the impacts of ethnicity, gender and class on rights and belonging? Drawing on expertise in Melanesia in particular, this panel will explore these questions to contribute to important – even urgent – debate on the changing places of the Pacific.

In February 2016, the Victorian Government met with representatives of all Victorian Aboriginal tribes. This was the first such meeting in 20 years, and it was called to discuss the recognition of Aboriginal people in the Australian Constitution. At the end of the meeting, however, it was made clear by the Aboriginal people participating that what they wanted to pursue was a Treaty. A follow-up meeting was arranged in May 2016 and once again there was widespread support among Aboriginal people for a Treaty between themselves and the Victorian Government. Australia is the only country in the Commonwealth that does not have a Treaty with its Indigenous People. This forum brings together Aboriginal elders, Treaty campaigners and community organisers to discuss what a Treaty might look like, what it might include, and most significantly of all, what it would mean for Australia's first peoples. Key Speakers: Uncle Larry Walsh and Robbie Thorpe

Culture is increasingly recognised as the fourth pillar of sustainable development in the ‘developed world’, with international peak bodies such as United Cities and Local Government (UCLG) identifying culture as a policy domain that governments should consider and support. A Committee for Culture was recently established by UCLG in the Asia-Pacific region, indicating a likely relevance to Asian and Pacific nations including many considered as ‘developing’. However, this impetus is not universal, with neither the Millennium Development Goals nor the recent Sustainable Development Goals, identifying culture as a focus for policy and activity. This disparity might be appropriate given the different development trajectories of rich countries and the developing world, or these international progress initiatives might be missing a vital link. The seminar addresses this topical issue, bringing together scholars and practitioners with expertise on culture and development from Australia, Europe and Asia. Issues to be examined include: what role should or could culture play in desired futures for the developed and developing world? Can cultures be developed and if so, how? How can those changes be understood and assessed?

For decades the emigration of highly skilled residents has been a cause of concern for many governments. Initially this was cast as a ‘brain drain’, but after several countries experienced significant return migration flows, the notion of ‘brain circulation’ took hold. More recently governments, corporations and various types of institutions have come to understand highly skilled expatriates as constituting diasporic communities, and have sought to engage strategically with them to achieve a range of political and economic objectives. In this seminar, the panel consider the ways in which governments and education providers are endeavouring to engage with and harness diasporic networks to shape the flows of students, graduates and scholars across borders. They also focus on the increasingly prominent role of diaspora populations in shaping Australia’s political and economic relationships with India, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Hosted by the Centre for Global Research, and in collaboration with the Australian Bosnian Academic Forum, this public seminar discusses the political, social, cultural and legal consequences of genocide, mass atrocities and crimes against humanity—the grave crimes that have continued to be committed long after the historical ‘Never again!’ was proclaimed in the aftermath of the Holocaust. In light of the recent judgments by the Hague Tribunal (ICTY) that saw Radovan Karadzic, the Serb war-time leader, sentenced to 40 years for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995; and Vojislav Seseli, the Serb ultranationalist, acquitted of all responsibility for the crimes his militias committed in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo during the 1990s, the panelists will reflect on the history of genocide as a modern, state-sponsored crime and its long term implications. Broadly defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”, genocide had been an instrument of “purifying” territories by eliminating the unwanted groups for much of the 20th and continues to be used in the 21st century. Among other themes and issues, speakers discuss to what degree justice is possible to be reached after genocide, and if legal justice can act as a deterrent for preventing future genocides from happening.

This Global Frictions panel discussion grapples with vexed issues at the intersection of language and tradition when dealing with family violence in linguistically diverse communities. The panel discussion features Dr Eliseu Mabasso (University Eduardo Mondlane, Mozambique) and Dr Adele Murdolo (Executive Director, Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health). The discussion is moderated by Dr Georgina Heydon (RMIT).

A panel of RMIT’s Sustainability and Urban Planning experts discuss responses to climate change and the greening of Melbourne. Speakers draw upon case studies from across the globe where people are preparing their environment to better withstand the inevitable impacts of climate change.

The seminar will critically examine how the trafficking victim has been constructed, highlight key assumptions in the discourse of trafficking and outline the surrounding philosophical and definitional problems. Based on analysis of trafficking narratives published in NGO research, media reports and popular books, Dr Sandy’s in-depth research observes the trafficking story as it is told in and about Cambodia and the ‘myth’ that lies at the core. By closely examining the role of trafficking narratives in determining interventions and shaping understandings, this seminar goes beyond the myth to examine how and why the story is created and crafted in anti-trafficking campaigns and for what purposes.

A Seminar Series hosted by the Centre for Global Research presents ‘Culture and Human Rights: Contest, Consonance and Accommodation’, a panel discussion featuring: Dr Maree Pardy (University of Melbourne), Sonia Randhawa (Centre for Independent Journalism, Malaysia, and University of Melbourne).

Global Frictions: A Seminar Series hosted by the Centre for Global Research Presents Rethinking Resilience: Policy and Practice in the Context of Global Development Featuring: • Associate Professor Robbie Guevara, RMIT University • Dr Anne Brown, University of Queensland • Annette Salkeld, Oxfam Australia • Dr Damian Grenfell, RMIT University (Convener of Discussion) Abstract: Over the last decade the concept of ‘resilience’ has gained much traction in social policy, debates and practice, including in the domains of development as well as conflict, security and peace studies. In these contexts, ‘resilience’ raises issues for research and practice that attend s to what may be classified as ‘fragile’ communities, with risks being constituted at either the micro or macro level, depending on the scenario at hand. In the face of human and natural disasters, resilience then has been promoted as a way to not only buttress against the worst effects of crises, but also to evaluate the extent to which communities can re-gather themselves in the aftermath of a destructive event. To a significant extent the traction that resilience now has can be attributed to the pervasive sense that risks are both multiplying and deepening—perhaps most clearly manifest with regards to climate change and epidemics—and with an added complexity which sees development, security, humanitarian and environmental organisations being continually brought into closer co-operation with one another. The panel will explore differing political contexts in which resilience is operationalised, asking how, for instance, it can be deployed usefully in development practice. In particular, the panel will investigate whether different approaches to resilience contain both a normative and operational capacity to not only protect different communities from immediate crises and disaster, but also the potential to positively reconfigure relations over the longer-term between communities and broader global connections.

Featuring Prof. Manfred B. Steger, A/Prof. Chris Hudson, A/Prof James Goodman and Prof. Supriya Singh. The world is fast approaching a critical point of disjuncture in relations between the major powers, not least between the US, Russia and China, driven by the power rivalries of the ‘old order’ of nation-states. At the same time, across the globe vastly different movements organise via alternative dynamics that affect the lives of civilians as surveillance and securitising agendas recalibrate both compliance and contestation. Accompanying these developments is the increasing globalisation of culture. Ulrich Beck has argued that there is ‘a new kind of capitalism, a new kind of economy, a new kind of global order, a new kind of personal life coming into being, all of which differ from earlier phases of social development’. With these issues in mind we consider the following questions: Are we on the verge of global rupture triggered by the power shifts across and between states and movements? Is the increased coerciveness of the state, and attempts to control the ‘margins’, an inevitable outcome of this period of intensifying globalisation? How is the understanding of new cultural connections and the imagination of life with a global span made possible at the level of everyday social practices?

Global Frictions: A Seminar Series hosted by the Centre for Global Research, presents, 'Resistance is Useless? The Globalisation of State Crime and the Denial of History'. A panel discussion featuring Paul Battersby, Jude McCulloch, Louise Boon-Kuo and Georgina Heydon. Are we witnessing a narrowing and a hardening of the arteries of political liberty globally? Within states wrestling with the challenges of terrorism and transnational crime, new forensic techniques of surveillance and prediction threaten the individual liberties upon which democratic societies at least are founded. The words we write (or speak), the websites we visit, the friends we make, the causes we support, and the things we buy, create digital footprints in the global data-sphere that allegedly betray idiosyncrasies that can be used to predict our future achievements and intent. This panel examines how the lines between who is a domestic criminal and an international threat are becoming blurred as states try to adapt to a changing security environment. In the criminal justice sphere, as the focus for this discussion, this logic presents as “pre-crime”, the notion that criminal tendencies can be identified from behavioural or even genetic traits, and criminals apprehended before a crime is committed. In the global security sphere, strategic responses to terrorism fall victim to an intellectual sclerosis that categorises all forms of armed struggle by non-state armed actors as terror threats, save where these “criminals” serve the interests of a powerful state benefactor. This hardening of the global mind negates creative avenues for dialogue, negotiation and for the resolution of conflict, at home and abroad. Yet it is states that possess the clearest motives and the most extensive organisational resources with which to test the limits of law, transgress international norms, and bend law to suit their purposes. This panel presentation broadens the scope of global unlawfulness to accommodate the actions, and failings, of states and their agents and asks, to what end does all this lead us?

Considering the relationship between domestic imprisonment and offshore detention with a global perspective will be the key concern for this seminar. While the two practices have much in common, and at times these respective regimes even overlap, they are not the same. Each speaks to the respective modalities of regulating behaviour that challenges the norms of domestic and international politics. In his 1993 book Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, R. B. J. Walker critiqued the theoretical juxtaposition of domestic and international political spheres, suggesting it provides as legal and moral foundations to enable and legitimise how societies are governed and violence is projected. While globalisation in its many forms has since blurred the lines between domestic and international that were the object of his critique, the distinctive assumptions of these respective categories continue to underlie global patterns of carcerality. With this in mind, the presentation will draw attention to the ‘inside inside’ – those in prisons – and the ‘outside outside’ – those detained and stateless – drawing focus to the manner of their exclusion from domestic and international politics. Understanding the similarities and differences between these two broad categories of incarcerated people allows us to place them in a global context and think about the systemic effects of their inability to participate and be effectively recognised in political processes. Dr Robin Cameron is a Lecturer in Justice and Legal Studies with the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University.

The recent killings in Paris, and now Copenhagen, have brought to the fore key questions regarding the parameters of freedom of speech in today’s globalised societies. At the core of the discussion is a concern for how we negotiate acute difference across diverse beliefs. This panel will examine the basic values underpinning the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, values which the international media could not always make sense of. As noted by Salomone (2015), “in the days following the attacks, the English language media struggled to explain the apparent cultural divide on religion and free speech that sets France apart from other liberal democracies”. What is the role of a globalised media in narrowing or expanding understanding? How do we reconcile cultural specificity with freedom of speech, and more broadly, how can language and culture interact to create alternative possibilities? The discussion will consider the crucial role of multilinguality and inter-cultural awareness, both considered ways to mitigate against such forms of conflict and violence across societies.

Held annually, the Tom Nairn Lecture brings together pre-eminent thinkers on global issues from around the world to share their knowledge and propose big ideas and challenges for the future. In this lecture, Former French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin showed how the sudden rise of Napoléon Bonaparte – with his establishment of Caesarism (charismatic autocracy) in France and its subsequent imposition on the continent – prevented the modernisation of Europe with drastic consequences for the future. The Tom Nairn Lecture 2014 was introduced by the Former Prime Minister of Australia, The Honourable Paul Keating. About Lionel Jospin A progressive social thinker and advocate, Lionel Jospin is one of the most respected figures in French and European political life. Among his 21 years in politics, his five years as Prime Minister (1997-2002) are widely viewed as a decisive period for economic growth and social peace. Perhaps best known for implementing the 35-hour working week in France, the Jospin government also paved the way for the French adoption of the euro, provided universal health insurance for those on the lowest incomes, promoted the representation of women in politics, expanded the social security system, and introduced civil partnerships between two people, including same-sex couples. Other progressive reforms included improvements to social benefits, increases in the minimum wage and expansions to healthcare and education. Upon losing the first round of presidential elections in 2002, Jospin retired from active politics. But not from public life: since his retirement he has authored a number of books and publications. In his Tom Nairn Lecture, Jospin will draw on themes presented in his latest book Le Mal napoléonien (Editions du Seuil, 2014). Tom Nairn Lecture 2014 was presented by the Globalism Research Centre and the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, in association with the Embassy of France in Australia

As we approach the end of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) there are two identifiable kinds of ‘silences’ that are cause for alarm. The first ‘silence’ was noticeable in two key 2013 documents produced by the High-Level Panel of the UN Secretary General which proposed a new set of post-2015 development goals. Neither report mentions ESD, despite the fact that the new development goals are meant to be called Sustainable Development Goals and that the lead agency for the Decade was itself a UN agency. Since May 2014, ESD has been included as a target in the Muscat Agreement adopted at the 2014 Global Education For All Meeting and in the proposal for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the Open Working Group of the UN General Assembly on SDGs. While this paper considers the reasons for this first ‘silence’, and the successful advocacy to address this ‘silence’, the second ‘silence’ is in many respects the more threatening. It is about how education itself can continue to ‘silence’. To argue this, the growing emphasis on ESD that is focused on ‘Educating for Resilience’ will be discussed. I have argued that resilience itself is a valuable concept and essential in helping populations prepare and cope with increased frequency of natural disasters. However, unless this type of education addresses the fundamental link between vulnerability and power, is this kind of education merely assisting vulnerable communities to prepare and cope for the next disaster? Are we therefore educating for re-silence rather than resilience?