The Charles Darwin University (CDU) Public Lecture Series for October begins with Dr Gary Robinson’s lecture The Manufacture of Crisis: Aboriginal Societies, Social Policy and Social Change.
The manufacture of crisis in Aboriginal societies is both product and instrument of policy, according to Dr Robinson, Co-Director of the School for Social Policy and Research, who will discuss the topic on 3 October.
“Policy in Aboriginal affairs has yielded to a pragmatic orientation to social outcomes, driven by the engines of the ‘new welfare’ including service-led community development, ‘reciprocal obligation’ and a growing list of national benchmarks,” says Dr Robinson.
“In this world, Aboriginal societies are communities, but societies no longer: they are residual societies increasingly defined, not by distinctive cultures and social processes, but by their need for partnership with government to deal with symptoms of dysfunction and social failure,” he explains.
Dr Robinson believes that organisational development based on advocacy of outcomes is poorly grounded in understanding of the complexity of the conditions in which Indigenous peoples live and the social transitions occurring within their societies.
The inadequacy of current policy and the determinants of key social outcomes are some of the issues Dr Robinson will cover during the lecture on October 3.
The free public lecture starts at 6pm, with light refreshments afterwards.
The CDU Public Lecture Series aims to provide a platform for the University’s leading academics to discuss today’s critical issues.
Find out more about upcoming CDU Public Lecture Series.