Journal articles on the topic 'Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument'

A sample of 199 project management personnel took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode instrument. Results supported the earlier research of Thomas and Kilmann (1975) with two extensions. Extraversion in our sample was not associated with cooperation, and it correlated with both the distributive and integrative dimensions of conflict handling.

Abstract Objective To assess if the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict MODE Instrument predicts residents’ performance. Study Design Nineteen residents were assessed on the Thomas-Kilmann conflict modes of competing, collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding. Residents were classified as contributors (n = 6) if they had administrative duties or as concerning (n = 6) if they were on remediation for academic performance and/or professionalism. Data were compared to faculty evaluations on the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies. P value of < .05 was considered significant. Results Contributors had significantly higher competing scores (58% versus 17%; P = .01), with lower accommodating (50% versus 81%; P 5 .01) and avoiding (32% versus 84%; P = .01) scores; while concerning residents had significantly lower collaborating scores (10% versus 31%; P = .01), with higher avoiding (90% versus 57%; P = .006) and accommodating (86% versus 65%; P = .03) scores. There were significant positive correlations between residents’ collaborating scores with faculty ACGME competency evaluations of medical knowledge, communication skills, problem-based learning, system-based practice, and professionalism. There were also positive significant correlations between compromising scores and faculty evaluations of problem-based learning and professionalism with negative significant correlations between avoiding scores and faculty evaluations of problem-based learning, communication skills and professionalism. Conclusions Residents who successfully execute administrative duties are likely to have a Thomas-Kilmann profile high in collaborating and competing but low in avoiding and accommodating. Residents who have problems adjusting are likely to have the opposite profile. The profile seems to predict faculty evaluation on the ACGME competencies.

El propósito de esta investigación es analizar los diferentes estilos de resolución de conflictos presentes en escolares adolescentes de España y ver si existen diferencias significativas entre varones y mujeres, teniendo en cuenta además el tipo de centro al que asisten (mixto o diferenciado por sexo). Para ello se definió una muestra de 816 alumnos, de 12 escuelas españolas, a la que se aplicó un cuestionario basado en el Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI), adaptado y validado para adolescentes. Los resultados confirman diferencias entre sexos, ya identificadas en otras investigaciones, y para ambos sexos, en la escuela diferenciada aparecen puntajes más altos en el estilo colaborador respecto de los estudiantes varones y mujeres que asisten a una escuela mixta. Para los demás estilos de resolución de conflictos no se encontraron diferencias significativas.

The article presents results of a study on the relationship between the level of formation of psychological boundaries and the development of assertiveness in primary school children. The authors review the main Russian and foreign theoretical concepts of assertive behavior and identify the key aspects of the phenomenon of psychological boundaries in modern psychology. The study involved 165 schoolchildren of 3rd and 4th classes. The following research techniques were applied: N.Brown’s Personal Boundaries technique, V.Sheinov’s Test of Assertiveness, and the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. The study revealed the correlation between psychological boundaries and patterns of behavior in a conflict situation as well as with assertiveness skills in schoolchildren. The results of the study suggest that the development of assertiveness will have a positive impact on the development of autonomy and the formation of healthy psychological boundaries in primary school children, increase their self-confidence and contribute to the development of the ability to cope with difficult life situations, including conflicts.

Background Conflicts in medical settings affect both team function and patient care, yet a standardized curriculum for conflict management in clinical teams does not exist. Objectives To evaluate the effects of an educational intervention for conflict management on knowledge and perceptions and to identify trends in preferred conflict management style among intensive care unit workers. Methods A conflict management education intervention was created for an intensive care team. The intervention was 1 hour long and incorporated the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument as well as conflict management concepts, self-reflection, and active learning through discussion and reviewing clinical cases. Descriptive statistics were prepared on the participants’ preferred conflict management modes. A pretest/posttest was analyzed to evaluate knowledge and perceptions of conflict before and after the intervention, and 3 open-ended questions on the posttest were reviewed for categories. Results Forty-nine intensive care providers participated in the intervention. The largest portion of participants had an avoiding conflict management mode (32%), followed by compromising (30%), accommodating (25%), collaborating (9%), and competing (5%). Pretest/posttest data were collected for 31 participants and showed that knowledge (P < .001) and perception (P = .004) scores increased significantly after the conflict management intervention. Conclusions The conflict management educational intervention improved the participants’ knowledge and affected perceptions. Categorization of open-ended questions suggested that intensive care providers are interested in concrete information that will help with conflict resolution, and some participants understood that mindfulness and awareness would improve professional interactions or reduce conflict.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the conflict resolution styles used by university students in handling conflicts, and to determine the effects (if any) of age, nationality and gender on how students respond to conflicts. Design/methodology/approach – The Thomas-Kilmann conflict mode instrument was adopted to assess the conflict resolution styles (accommodating, avoiding, collaborative, competitive and compromising) of post graduate students in a University in Malaysia. Both ANOVA and t-test analyses were utilized to investigate the relationship between, nationality, gender, age and conflict resolution styles used by students. Findings – Results of this study indicates that female students used competitive style more than male students, while male students are more likely to avoid conflicts. The older students were discovered to use more avoiding, while younger students are more likely to be competitive in nature. The findings did not reveal any significant differences in nationality. Originality/value – This paper expands its focus from gender (which is the most commonly tested category) to other categories such as age and nationality, thereby giving room for these new categories to be tested extensively in future researches. The results reveal that students not only use different conflict resolution styles to address conflicts, but also there exists differences in the styles used by students of different age groups and gender.

Wife who works has more than one role, namely the role of wife for the husband, mother forchildren, as a housekeeper, and as a worker. The many roles and responsibilities make workingwives vulnerable to various kinds of conflicts. If the conflict experienced is not handled properly,it will have the potential to damage the existing relationship. So it becomes important for a workingwife to be able to manage her conflict well. There are five conflict management styles developedby Thomas & Kilmann (2008) based on the dimensions of assertiveness and cooperativeness,namely; Competing, Collaborating, Compromising, Avoiding, and Accomodating. This study useda quantitative method, with 128 participants with the characteristics of a wife, full-time officeworker, age range within 20-40 years old (M= 30.8; SD= 4.88), have children and live in Jakartacity, Bogor city, Depok city, Tangerang city, and Bekasi city (Jabodetabek). Conflict managementstyle is measured using the Thomas-Killman Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) which is adapted inIndonesian. The results showed that the dominant conflict management style used by the workingwive in Jabodetabek is compromising. As well as the conflict management style that theparticipants have in each demographic category, namely participant age, length of marriage,living with nuclear family vs extended family, monthly range of income and length of work, iscompromising style.

The aim of this experimental study was to examine how undergraduate students as participants resolve a conflict in response to authority status manipulation of the opponent person (low: a fellow student; high: a university professor), considering the moderating role of participants’ personality traits. 320 Psychology undergraduate students from Istanbul Bilgi University, aged 19-23 participated in an online survey. The participants first completed the Turkish version of the NEO-FFIand then they completed the modified Turkish version of the Thomas-Kilmann Mode Instrument (TKI). It was hypothesised that highly agreeable participants who were faced with a professor in a conflict would show a accommodating resolution style. Whereas extroverted participants who faced a fellow student inwere predicted to displaycompetitiveness in the conflict. A moderated regression analysis was applied. The results showed the opposite effects, students who were in conflict with the professor were more competitive and students who were in conflict with fellow students showed more accommodation. Limitations and future research possibilities are also discussed.

PurposeThis study aims to provide a more detailed examination of the way conflict styles vary by organization level and gender.Design/methodology/approachThe authors drew a stratified, random sample from a national database on the Thomas‐Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, selecting 200 fully‐employed men and 200 fully‐employed women at each of six organizational levels – from entry‐level positions to top executives. This design allowed them to test for linear and curvilinear relationships between style and organization level, as well as to compare gender differences in styles across organization levels.FindingsResults showed moderate effect sizes for both organization level and gender, with negligible interaction effects. Assertiveness (competing and collaborating) increases monotonically at progressively higher organization levels, while unassertive styles (avoiding and accommodating) decrease. Compromising shows a curvilinear relationship to organization level, decreasing at both the highest and lowest levels. The strongest gender finding was that men score significantly higher on competing at all six organization levels. Thus, there was no evidence that conflict styles of men and women converge at higher organization levels.Originality/valueThe study provides a more detailed picture of conflict style differences by organization level and gender. Among other things, these differences suggest the usefulness of multiple sets of norms for conflict style instruments and the need for conflict training and team building to take into account the typical style patterns at a given organization level.

Abstract Background Residency program directors have increasingly challenging roles, but they may not be receiving adequate leadership development. Objective To assess and facilitate program directors' leadership self-awareness and development at a workshop retreat. Methods At our annual program director retreat, program directors and associate program directors from a variety of specialties completed the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI), which evaluates an individual's behavior in conflict situations, and the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership (HBSL) model, which measures individuals' preferred leadership style in working with followers. Participants received their results during the retreat and discussed their leadership style results in the context of conflict situations experienced in the past. An online survey was distributed 3 weeks after the retreat to assess participant satisfaction and to determine whether participants would make changes to their leadership styles. Results Seventeen program directors attended the retreat and completed the tools. On the TKI, 47% preferred the Compromising mode for handling conflict, while 18% preferred either the Avoiding or Accommodating modes. On the HBSL, 71% of program directors preferred a Coaching leadership style. Ninety-one percent of postretreat-survey respondents found the leadership tools helpful and also thought they had a better awareness of their conflict mode and leadership style preferences. Eighty-two percent committed to a change in their leadership behaviors in the 6 months following the retreat. Conclusions Leadership tools may be beneficial for promoting the professional development of program directors. The TKI and HBSL can be used within a local retreat or workshop as we describe to facilitate positive leadership-behavior changes.

Worldwide, leader is the person in an organization who directs, manages and controls at least one person. The purpose of this study is to internationally examine the relationship between leadership decision-making and resolution of conflict. Author is aiming to provide a comprehensive global literature review of leadership decision-making and conflict management. Alternative dispute resolution methods are to support persons and expressly leaders with several levels of conflict solving. Author interviewed leaders through a questionnaire survey how they decide in case of conflict: do they prefer court procedure or the possibilities of alternative dispute resolution? From 124 answers the paper‘s main finding is that leaders prefer alternative dispute resolution if they can choose. Methodology is different regarding the types of leaders from different dimensions, as transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leader dimensions. This approach treated conflict styles as individual disposition, stable over time and across situations. It is argued and supported by literature that leadership styles or behaviors remain stable over time and are expected to be significantly related to conflict management styles [1]. The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) assesses an individual’s behavior in conflict situations, in which we can describe a person’s behavior along two basic dimensions: (1) assertiveness, the extent to which the individual attempts to satisfy his or her own concerns, and (2) cooperativeness, the extent to which the individual attempts to satisfy the other person’s concerns.

The paper presents and discusses outcomes of the first stage of a research project on the role of social media in the life of modern adolescents that was carried out on basis of the MSUPE Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Modern Childhood in 2015—2018. The issue of adolescents’ self-presentation in social media is one of the key trends in modern research, and in Russian psychological and pedagogical science there is clearly a lack of works on various aspects of adolescent online behaviour and interaction, in particular, in social media websites. The sample of our empirical study consisted of 88 individuals aged 15—18 years, and the following techniques were used: a modified version of A.Ye. Lichko’s character accentuations questionnaire; Stephenson’s Q-Sort technique; the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory; the Tomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument; Eyesenck’s Self-Evaluation of Mental States technique; content analysis of VKontakte webpages. As it was revealed, personality traits of the adolescents were closely interrelated with the structure of their profiles in the VK website. For instance, numerous correlations were found between various parameters of personal webpages and such personality traits as character accentuations, interpersonal conflicts, preferred type of conflict behaviour, as well as with levels of anxiety, rigidity, aggression and frustration.

PurposeAs the workforce becomes increasingly diversified, it becomes increasingly important for managers to understand the conflict resolution attitudes brought to information systems (IS) by both men and women. This research was designed to investigate assumptions that may exist regarding the relationship between gender and conflict resolution. Specifically, the intent of this study was to compare the conflict resolution strategies of males and females majoring in IS in order to determine if gender‐based differences exist.Design/methodology/approachThe Thomas‐Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument was utilized to assess the conflict resolution styles of 163 traditional‐age (18‐22) students enrolled in undergraduate IS courses at a large Midwestern university. Both ANOVA and t‐test analyses were utilized to investigate the relationship between gender and conflict resolution style.FindingsResults of this study indicate that, when compared with their male counterparts, women are more likely to utilize a collaborative conflict resolution style and men are more likely to avoid conflict. As collaboration is generally considered more productive and avoidance more disruptive in the conflict resolution process, the study suggests that women may possess more effective conflict resolution attributes than their male counterparts.Originality/valueThe results of this paper lend support to the theory that an individual's gender may be related to the development of conflict resolution styles. These findings also support the premise that female students in IS are highly adapted with regard to their ability to work collaboratively (and thereby successfully) in situations where conflict is likely to occur.

Abstract Objective To assess conflict styles and construct validity of the Thomas-Kilmann Mode of Conflict Instrument (TKI) among medical education personnel. Methods From 2006 to 2009, 23 board-certified physicians (faculty), 46 residents, and 31 graduate medical education (GME) administrators participated in 3 behavior surveys. We used self-reported data (as completed by participants on the questionnaire). The TKI defines 5 conflict styles: competing, collaborating, compromising, accommodating, and avoiding. The My Best Communication Style Survey assesses 4 styles of communication: bold, expressive, sympathetic, and technical. The Interpersonal Influence Inventory categorizes 4 behavior styles: openly aggressive, assertive, concealed aggressive, and passive behaviors. A P value of < .05 was significant. Results Avoiding was the conflict style most chosen, closely followed by compromising and accommodating, whereas collaborating was the least likely to be selected. Collaborating percentiles were highest in GME administrators and lowest in faculty. Competing percentiles decreased from faculty to GME administrators (r = −0.237, P = .017). Openly aggressive scores were highest in faculty and lowest in GME administrators (P = .028). Technical communication scores were highest in residents and lowest in GME administrators (P = .008). Technical communication scores were highest in African Americans (P = .000). Asian Americans were more likely to be high in accommodating style (P = .019). Midwest respondents selected the collaborating style more than others did (41.3% versus 25%) (P = .009). Competing conflict style correlated positively with openly aggressive behavior and bold communication but negatively with expressive and sympathetic communications. Conclusion There are differences in behavior patterns among faculty, residents, and GME administrators with suggestions of ethnic and geographic influences. Correlation among instruments supported theoretical relationships of construct validity.

Conflicts are an integral part of people’s lives, regardless of their age. This aspect of life evokes many negative connotations. Nevertheless, the advantages of confl icts are now often exposed, providing that they are solved in a constructive way. The adolescent period is a stage of life that undoubtedly favours the frequency and intensity of diffi cult interpersonal situations. Therefore, the researchers decided to analyse which confl ict resolution styles are favoured by youth. The research was conducted in a group of one hundred and twentytwo secondary school students, half of whom were minors. A diagnostic opinion poll was applied. To be precise, it was the Confl ict Mode Instrument of Thomas and Kilmann. From the data obtained it stems that the minors, in comparison to the youth who are not under the supervision of a probation offi cer, are less likely to give up their own needs and interests on behalf of their partner in confl ict. However, equally often, people from the comparison groups solve confl icts by competing, looking for a compromise, using escaping mechanisms as well as cooperating with the confl ict partner. This means that it is worth applying negotiation and mediation as a preventative measure to prevent the escalation of the symptoms of social maladjustment.

There is no established classification scheme for literary characters in narrative theory short of generic categories like protagonist vs. antagonist or round vs. flat. This is so despite the ubiquity of stock characters that recur across media, cultures, and historical time periods. We present here a proposal of a systematic psychological scheme for classifying characters from the literary and dramatic fields based on a modification of the Thomas-Kilmann (TK) Conflict Mode Instrument used in applied studies of personality. The TK scheme classifies personality along the two orthogonal dimensions of assertiveness and cooperativeness. To examine the validity of a modified version of this scheme, we had 142 participants provide personality ratings for 40 characters using two of the Big Five personality traits as well as assertiveness and cooperativeness from the TK scheme. The results showed that assertiveness and cooperativeness were orthogonal dimensions, thereby supporting the validity of using a modified version of TK’s two-dimensional scheme for classifying characters.

Background and Objective. Lithuanian and international public health experts emphasize the importance of leadership in public health. The aim of this study was to explore the self-assessed level of leadership competencies of executives in Lithuanian public health institutions. Material and Methods. Data were collected in a cross-sectional survey of executives of Lithuanian public health institutions in 2010. The total number of returned questionnaires was 55 (response rate, 58.5%). Respondents were asked about their competencies in leadership, teamwork, communication, and conflict management. The evaluation was carried out by analyzing the answers provided in the survey, which used a 5-point rating scale. In addition, the Belbin Team-Role Self-Perception Inventory and the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument were used. Results. The results showed that respondents were reserved or limited in their individual capacities through this evaluation of their leadership competencies. The mean score was 3.47 (SD, 0.71). Skills in competency areas of communication, teamwork, and conflict management were scored higher (3.73 [SD, 0.67], 3.73 [SD, 0.62], and 3.53 [SD, 0.63], respectively). Most of executives preferred to choose action-oriented roles (76.2%). The most common role was “implementer” (69.1%). “Avoiding” (52.7%) was the most common conflict solving strategy. The results showed that 89.1% of executives wanted to improve teamwork; 83.6%, leadership competencies; 81.8%, communication; and 80.0%, conflict management. Conclusions. The study results suggest that the executives of Lithuanian public health institutions evaluate their leadership competencies moderately. These results indicate the value of leadership training for public health executives.

The article reveals military students’ psychological characteristics manifested at overcoming stresses, conflicts, frustrations and crises during vocational training. Young years is the most interesting and difficult period in a person’s life. An individual’s identification in society is formed at this age. An appearing mature personality determines life goals, values, gender orientation. Incomplete identification is characteristic for people with internal conflicts, which worsen interpersonal communications, contribute to frustration, aggravates an experienced crisis and make searches for meanings more intensive. Interconnections between a crisis, a conflict, a meaning and a stress have not yet been investigated in psychology to the full degree. The article studies the qualities that should be developed in youth in order to have high tolerance to stress in overcoming obstacles, crises, stresses and noogenic neuroses (lack of meaning). The article purpose: to study second-year military students’ tolerance to stress when they overcome stresses, frustrations, crises or conflicts. The article objective: to study empirically correlations among young men’ gender identity, their tolerance to stress and the peculiarities of their defence mechanisms, used strategies for conflict overcoming, readiness to overcome frustration and life-meaning crises. The applied methods and techniques: theoretical analysis; systems approach; Psychological Stress Measure (PSM-25) (Lemyre-Tiesser-Fillion); Life Style Index (R. Plutchik, H. Kellerman and H. Conte); L.B.Shneider's method of gender identity studying; K. V. Karpinsky’s questionnaire on life-meaning crises; Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument; Stevan Hobfoll’s questionnaire on coping with stressful situations; Boyko-Vasserman questionnaire on social frustration; correlation analysis. Research results. Military students’ tolerance to stress contributes to their “adaptation” (0.35) to educational and professional conditions. The reasons for “meaningful crisis” (-0.55), “frustration” (-0.5), “conflict avoidance” (-0.37) are unsuccessful strategies used by military students for stress overcoming. “Life-meaning crisis” (0.39) and “frustration” (0.39) encourage military students to “avoid conflicts”, thus “assertiveness” (self-confidence) and (-0.43) “support” (-0 , 29) decrease, students “leave” conflicts (0.60), resort to “manipulations” (0.39). “Rivalry” in a conflict encourages military students to “antisocial actions” (0.34). The “caution” strategy is used by military students who are inclined to “cooperation” (0.33). The “contact” strategy is opposed to the “compromise” strategy (-0.28) in a conflict. Conclusions. The signs of formed identity for military students are self-acceptance, existing life goals, values, and the absence of internal conflicts, and also the developed ability to overcome stresses, conflicts, frustrations, crises. All critical situations are interconnected. A crisis and a frustration are the most similar. To overcome them, military students need to be taught such technique as “support” and to develop “assertiveness” (self-confidence).

Abstract Objective The purpose of this article was to develop and determine the utility of a compliance form in evaluating and teaching the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education competencies of professionalism, practice-based learning and improvement, and systems-based practice. Methods In 2006, we introduced a 17-item compliance form in an obstetrics and gynecology residency program. The form prospectively monitored residents on attendance at required activities (5 items), accountability of required obligations (9 items), and completion of assigned projects (3 items). Scores were compared to faculty evaluations of residents, resident status as a contributor or a concerning resident, and to the residents' conflict styles, using the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict MODE Instrument. Results Our analysis of 18 residents for academic year 2007–2008 showed a mean (standard error of mean) of 577 (65.3) for postgraduate year (PGY)-1, 692 (42.4) for PGY-2, 535 (23.3) for PGY-3, and 651.6 (37.4) for PGY-4. Non-Hispanic white residents had significantly higher scores on compliance, faculty evaluations on interpersonal and communication skills, and competence in systems-based practice. Contributing residents had significantly higher scores on compliance compared with concerning residents. Senior residents had significantly higher accountability scores compared with junior residents, and junior residents had increased project completion scores. Attendance scores increased and accountability scores decreased significantly between the first and second 6 months of the academic year. There were positive correlations between compliance scores with competing and collaborating conflict styles, and significant negative correlations between compliance with avoiding and accommodating conflict styles. Conclusions Maintaining a compliance form allows residents and residency programs to focus on issues that affect performance and facilitate assessment of the ACGME competencies. Postgraduate year, behavior, and conflict styles appear to be associated with compliance. A lack of association with faculty evaluations suggests measurement of different perceptions of residents' behavior.

The article deals with the problem of primary schoolchildren’s conflict behaviour. The necessity of forming constructive strategies of children's behaviour in conflict through the implementation of the developed programme is shown. The results of ascertaining experiment conducted on a sample of 60 fourth-formers using the following diagnostic tools are presented – the method of Kenneth W. Thomas & Ralph H. Kilmann’s Conflict Mode Instrument (in the adaptation of Natal’ya Grishina), expert assessment of the behaviour of schoolchildren in a conflict situation by pedagogues and parents, a questionnaire for teachers ‟Signs of conflict” by Yelena Lyutova & Galina Monina). The analysis of the data showed that the majority of primary schoolchildren choose non-constructive behavioural strategies (adaptation, competition, avoidance), and also have an increased level of conflict, which indicated the feasibility of developing and implementing a programme for the formation of constructive behavioural strategies of pupils. 15 group sessions were conducted in the form of training using role-playing games, psychohymnastic exercises, mini-lectures, discussions, and situation analysis. The control experiment, as well as the use of mathematical statistics methods, showed the effectiveness of the work done – the presence of changes in the strategies of behaviour in conflict, in particular, pupils more often choose constructive strategies (cooperation and compromise) and less often destructive ones (rivalry and withdrawal), there was a decrease in the level of conflict.

The research used the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) (more specifically, TKI-R, the Russian adaptation by N.V. Grishina) psychodiagnostic procedure to assess the behaviour strategy in conflict situations, as well as the Buss-Durkee Inventory to determine the tendency of subjects to various forms of aggressive behaviour. Statistical processing of the findings was done using the Bravais-Pearson correlation coefficient and Pearson’s criterion. Results. At the first stage of the multipurpose experiment 48 student dispatchers were surveyed, at the second stage the total of 603 subjects were surveyed (students of the Saint Petersburg State University of Civil Aviation and the Institute of Philology, Foreign Languages and Media Communications of the Irkutsk State University), i.e. while emphasizing operator professions in order to improve the validity of the experiment the sample was significantly extended to include, among others, students of the humanities. It was found that the results of the Buss-Durkee Inventory have an inverse correlation with the tendency to an adaptation strategy and direct correlation with the tendency to rivalry and collaboration strategies. According to Pearson’s fitting criterion, there are significant differences in the manifestation of such behaviour styles as rivalry and avoidance between pilot and humanities students, while for the samples of males and females the differences are in the manifestation of such behaviour stiles as rivalry, avoidance and compromise. Females are significantly less inclined to rivalry and somewhat more inclined to avoidance and compromise as compared to males. There are also no observable crucial differences between the intercorrelations of the TKI-R results of the first and second stages of the experiment. The authors’ findings were compared with the published results of the survey of the students of the Tuvan State University and Yaroslavl State Medical University, as well as with the results of surveys of athletes and business owners. Conclusions. By generalizing own findings and those set forth in other authors’ publications, we can conclude that uncooperative behaviour of all tested students is dominated by average manifestation of strategies of competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating, which indicates the ability of the subjects of this age for flexible behaviour in conflict situations subject to the specific conditions of interaction. That means that students, unlike the success-seeking business owners, while prioritizing collaboration and compromise in conflict situations, flexibly use other behaviour strategies. This must be taken into consideration when planning measures aimed at improving the reliability of professional psychological selection in commercial aviation. It appears that in view of the above reasons, the application of the TKI-R procedure in the professional psychological selection of aviation specialists is unviable.

The relation between authentic leadership (AL) and conflict management is a topic that has not been extensively researched and merits further empirical examination. In this study, two hypotheses were tested: first, whether AL is positively correlated with active constructive conflict (ACC) behaviors, and second, whether the conflict management styles (CMSs) of the organization moderate the relationship between AL and ACC behaviors. Partial least square structural equation analysis was used to examine the responses of 65 leadership participants in a survey of management styles. The results supported the hypotheses. A statistically significant relationship was found between AL, as measured by the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire, and ACC behaviors, as measured by Thomas–Kilmann Instrument; CMSs, as measured by the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory, moderated this relationship. The implications of these findings are discussed in detail.

AbstractIn policymaking, actors are likely to take the preferences of others into account when strategically positioning themselves. However, there is a lack of research that conceives of policy preferences as an interdependent system. In order to analyse interdependencies, we link actors to their policy preferences in water protection, which results in an actor-instrument network. As actors exhibit multiple preferences, a complex two-mode network between actors and policies emerges. We analyse whether actors exhibit interdependent preference profiles given shared policy objectives or social interactions among them. By fitting an exponential random graph model to the actor-instrument network, we find considerable clustering, meaning that actors tend to exhibit preferences for multiple policy instruments in common. Actors tend to exhibit interdependent policy preferences when they are interconnected, that is, they collaborate with each other. By contrast, actors are less likely to share policy preferences when a conflict line divides them.

The Thomas Killman Conflict Mode Instrument is widely used to assess conflict management styles. The instrument uses two parameters, i.e. assertiveness and cooperation, resulting in five distinct styles: avoiding, competing, collaborating, accommodating and compromising. Twenty five senior- and twenty five junior managers in the banking industry (2 particular companies) completed the questionnaire, answering in the context of their relationships with each other. Results indicate significant differences between the two groups. Senior management prefers the assertive styles (competing and collaborating) with scant attention to cooperation, while middle management primarily uses the avoiding style, which is both uncooperative and unassertive. The implications of these findings are discussed, leading to particular recommendations.

The article uses an empirical approach examining the role of ego-states in the choice of pedagogical professionals 174 students were involved in the study that aims to show the discrepancies of the states of Parent, Child and Adolescence for choice of speciality and future work. The study subjects were provided with a Transactional Analysis Questionnaire (TAQ, 2014) and Thomas – Killman Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI, 1974).

Aim. The purpose of the article is to introduce innovative approaches to training female basketball players for responding and resolving conflict situations, reducing aggressiveness, building effective interpersonal relationships during training to achieve high results. Materials and methods. The study involved two groups of female basketball players. The experimental group (EG) consisted of 32 subjects aged 18–25 years old, members of the women's basketball teams of universities in Chelyabinsk. The control group (CG) consisted of 28 subjects of a similar age, who were part of the amateur university women's basketball teams. The study used the “Aggression Test” by L.G. Pochebut, the K. Thomas Conflict Mode Instrument (adaptation by N.V. Grishina), and the T. Leary Interpersonal Behavior Circle Personal Inventory. Statistical analysis of the results was carried out using the SPSS Statistics 17.0 program. Results. High level of aggressiveness, conflict and inadequacy of interpersonal relations in basketball players was revealed. The author’s innovative modular psychological and pedagogical program for the correction of destructive types of aggression, as well as conflict and ineffective interpersonal relationships was developed and implemented. Monitoring showed a decrease in the level of physical, emotional aggression, self-aggression. The choice of adequate strategies for behavior in the conflict was formed, which indicates the effectiveness of the program when working with athletes of basketball teams during training. Conclusion. An analysis of the data obtained indicates that after the modular psychological and pedagogical program the athletes learned to neutralize conflict and at the same time switch their aggression to neutral objects, express aggression verbally with less emotional coloring, resolve conflict situations and construct harmoniously interpersonal relationships.

Socializing is an interactive communication process that involves both individual development and personal effects, i.e. personal reception and interpretation of all social messages, but also the dynamics and content of social influences. Distance Education is a mode of education in which there is a distance between and. Due to distance, several value conflicts occur in the learners. These value conflicts can be reduced through a Socialization process. The Socialization Process and value conflicts are always side by side. Socialization is the skill of students to recognize with society, connect decisively in a trusting situation, as well as make inter-personal interactions by way of caring for their characters. Conflicts of the character can be condensed through education and it is a social activity. Therefore, the core aim of this investigation was to explore the socialization process and value conflict of distance students at International Islamic University, Islamabad. It was quantitative and survey type investigation. The population of the study was contained of Students B.Ed., M.Ed., and MA Education in semester autumn 2018. So, 190 students were randomly selected. A Questionnaire was used as a research instrument. Data were analyzed through SPSS (Version 20), and data were represented in the form of tables. It was founded that the Socialization process is a key factor of human nature, leads to the Status quo in the community as well as plays a main role in preparing students character. It develops a positive attitude in distance learners, cultural traditions in individuals and produces good individuals for national development. The socialization process establishes proper linkage among the acquisition of knowledge, attitude, values, and behavior. Major recommendations of the study were: conflicts may be minimized by providing more Islamic ethical values in the syllabus/curriculum. And number of study centers may be increased so that learners may get maximum chances of face to face/seminar/workshop.

This article reviews some recent evolutionary psychological theories about the interaction between environmental factors and sexual strategies. Evolutionary psychology explains sexual strategies in terms of innate information-processing mechanisms. The most important theoretical instrument relating to this topic is the theory of sexual selection and parental investment. Because of the unequal parental investment of the sexes, their sexual strategies differ. This is an important source of conflict between the sexes. Humans evolved in a complex social environment. As a consequence, human psychic mechanisms produce a wide variety of sexual strategies. Two dimensions along which human sexual strategies vary are considered here. First, people's mating strategies range from striving for a lifelong pair bond to aiming at a single act of copulation with someone. Second, strategies situated at the long-term end of the continuum can be polygynous, monogamous or polyandrous. The choices made by a concrete individual are influenced by several factors such as the personal life history, the general availability and predictability of resources, the distribution of political and economic power between men and women, the distribution of political and economic power between men themselves, the production mode of a society and finally the content of cultural representations in a society. It is shown that evolutionary psychology can be important for the explanation of contemporary behavioural differences. Some methodological problems of evolutionary psychology are reviewed and an evolutionary psychological perspective on the sex/gender distinction is considered.

Land-use planning (LUP), an instrument of land governance, is often employed to protect land and humans against natural and human-induced hazards, strengthen the resilience of land systems, and secure their sustainability. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) underlines the critical role of appropriate local action to address the global threat of land degradation and desertification (LDD) and calls for the use of local and regional LUP to combat LDD and achieve land degradation neutrality. The paper explores the challenges of putting this call into practice. After presenting desertification and the pertinent institutional context, the paper examines whether and how LDD concerns enter the stages of the LUP process and the issues arising at each stage. LDD problem complexity, the prevailing mode of governance, and the planning style endorsed, combined with LDD awareness, knowledge and perception, value priorities, geographic particularities and historical circumstances, underlie the main challenges confronting LUP; namely, adequate representation of LDD at each stage of LUP, conflict resolution between LDD-related and development goals, need for cooperation, collaboration and coordination of numerous and diverse actors, sectors, institutions and policy domains from multiple spatial/organizational levels and uncertainty regarding present and future environmental and socio-economic change. In order to realize the integrative potential of LUP and foster its effectiveness in combating LDD at the local and regional levels, the provision of an enabling, higher-level institutional environment should be prioritized to support phrοnetic-strategic integrated LUP at lower levels, which future research should explore theoretically, methodologically and empirically.

As we seek to identify new norms to bridge the gaps between extant law and the challenges that new conflict modes pose today, we confront a threshold question as to which methodological ground we should stand upon in doing so. Based on a background assumption of positivism as the source of substantive norms, the issue for some observers comes down to a clash between pragmatism and formalism. To formalism's proponents, the concept of pragmatism—which sees law as a functional instrument to be used in pursuit of pre-envisioned ends—has contributed to a dearth of moral obligation in international humanitarian law discourse. Such a view considers that the emphasis on empiricism found in pragmatism both legitimizes and shrouds the reality of effective power lurking behind the law. The alternative they prefer, championed most articulately by Professor Koskenniemi, is a “culture of formalism” that sees law as an object of universal obligation and as a form of critique that unmasks the pragmatic mode for what it is, namely, a rationalization of might. As this Article suggests, this understanding misapprehends the true nature of pragmatism, which is neither a smokescreen nor an apoloay. Rather, pragmatism's focus on real-world effects and consequences holds far greater promise for advancing the actual humanitarianism of IHL. Formalism, moreover; is subsumed within the constellation of factors that pragmatic analysis demands. These ideas are explored on a theoretical level, and are then illustrated by a look at the Israel separation barrier cases decided by the International Court of Justice and the Israeli High Court of Justice.

The purpose of the article is to study the conceptual-semantic core of the film construct “The Cold Summer of 1953” carried out as part of the author's metadisciplinary methodology – the theory of modeling cognitive-pragmatic programs (CPP). CPP is a supporting system of cognitive-pragmatic sets that can have both a personal and a superpersonal character. The article solves the problems of deciphering the multidimensional impact of the dominant “superpersonal” CPP on the consciousness and behavior of its carriers, since the basic party-ideological CPP is deeply rooted in the minds of both government officials and political prisoners; moreover, the power system also turns the representatives of criminal environment into the carriers of a specific criminal projection of the basic CPP. The main results of the study: film construct unfolds before us a panorama of the mythological recoding of the consciousness of CPP carriers, while the ethical category of duty, which is fundamental for self-identification of a person, suffers the most profound recoding. “The Duty” here is a destructive and manipulative instrument for controlling the CPP over the consciousness of its carriers. Confident that he decides by himself who he is (level of self-identification), what is his goal (level of goal-setting) and what is the path to it (level of modeling of an instrumental-operational strategy), the CPP carrier does not / fully does not recognize the substitution. In fact, the CPP controls it: a) the goal of the program is identified with the goal of the CPP carrier; b) the CPP carrier does not think of itself separately from the program; c) the destructive strategy of the CPP is perceived by the subject as its own. Studying the three basic regimes of the destructive activity of the ideological CPP, we come to the following conclusions: 1) In the “conditional passivity” mode of the CPP, its carrier retains a significant degree of internal freedom, not allowing the program to exercise full control. 2) The “Active-passive” mode of the CPP makes a substitution: the program carrier, being in the full sense of his personal freedom, becomes a “machine of generation” of senseless pseudo-ideologized conflict situations and a “machine of reproduction” of “alien” automated, reflex-impulse reactions. 3) Under the conditions of the “active-destructive” CPP regime, the “pseudodialogue” is no longer entered by “living” people, but by different options (“tools”, “mechanisms”) of the dominant program. That is why the “dialogue” of programs turns into an endless, automated, one-sided, impersonal process of “exchanging” orders.

Contradictions in society, the struggle between social groups and conflicts of public interests increase the importance and relevance of social compromise, capable of ensuring the stability and orderliness of human behavior, the formation of certain levels of organization of society, ensuring the systematic social institutions. Given the significant increase in the importance of the state as a means of ensuring the coherence of social processes and law as a means of reflecting, securing, guaranteeing and restoring public interests, problems of researching legal compromise are actualized. The need for its doctrinal analysis is a legitimate requirement that arises in societies embarking on the path of building a democratic, social, rule of law. Compromise (from the Latin Compromissum) is an agreement reached on the basis of mutual concessions. For the first time, the term "compromise" was introduced into scientific research by A. Comte, who believed that without reaching a compromise in society there was no opportunity for its development, since social relations, both in statics and dynamics, need coherence for their normal implementation. Such coherence, in other words consensus, is based on the principles of interaction of different types and levels, harmony of parts and the whole, and is aimed at securing the interests of participants in public relations. Already in ancient philosophy, a foundation was laid for the study of compromise as one of the basic elements of achieving a public good and building an ideal society. Its representatives, exploring models of the ideal social order, addressed the problems of integration of society, the combination of its various elements, stability and efficiency of the functioning of the state, as well as the means of achieving social compromise. Ancient researchers have proposed a number of ideas that still have value today. It can be argued that ancient philosophers began to study the political structure of the state, its regimes of government and their means of securing public consensus, including the category of "compromise". However, they did not yet specify definitions of compromise, consensus, integration, consent, but only considered them within the general categories of “integrity” and “unity”. Representatives of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance continued to study the compromise as one of the foundations of the functioning of society, enriched the concepts of Plato and Aristotle came up with their original ideas. However, in the spirit of the ideas of ancient philosophers, they viewed compromise not as an independent category, but as an element of a means of forming a state and society - either coercion or violent compromise (N. Machiavelli), or Christian dogmas (F. Aquinas). They failed to address the issue of compromise as one of the defining principles of establishing a democratic regime in society. The ideas of modern-day Enlighteners to designate the category of "compromise" have become the methodological basis for modern-day researchers and present in the study of the problem of public consent. Modern problems of research of the category of "compromise" are based on the continuity of the theories and ideas of precursors-thinkers of different times and peoples, from the time of antiquity to the present. In its turn, the current state of the study of the category of "compromise", including as a basis for the functioning of a democratic rule of law, is characterized by ideas about the adequate definition of this category. The essence of the compromise is formed on the basis of a combination of material (value-orientation and anthropological-communicative sphere of being subjects) and procedural (procedural-mode and regulatory sphere of being subjects) components and consists in reaching public agreement by non-violent methods that reduce or impede one subject to another. Thus, a compromise is an instrument of public consent and a means of final resolution of the conflict, based on mutual concessions, which is of value and orientation and is the basis for the formation of a democratic regime in society. The role of legal compromise in ensuring human rights lies in the possibility of legally securing means that guarantee a certain level of communication in the sphere of opportunities provided by society or the state to a person. Legal compromise is one of the defining principles of the functioning of a democratic regime, the basis of the legitimation of power, which is the subject of the consolidation and guarantee of human rights. It is an effective means of redressing legal conflicts in the field of human rights; legal compromise causes legal consequences for public relations entities, including by applying coercive means to entities that do not perform their duties or violate the rights of other entities. Finally, legal compromise is a prerequisite for any legal relationship in the field of human rights. It is the achievement of a legal compromise in the field of human rights that provides an opportunity to resolve emerging conflicts and determines the level of effectiveness of the state's activities in the specified field. Keywords: law, legal compromise, human rights, society, state.

The development of social competencies is of huge importance for young people of the 21st century. The contemporary, dynamic world requires skills for effective communication and dialogic behavior, quick adaptation, decision – making and high conflict avoidance culture. The object of the research are the possibilities of forming social competencies, in particular, the ability of conflict avoidance in the development of educational technological processes. The goal is to study the parameters of conflict culture in future teachers in technological education. In the context of the current research, the social competence is studied as a means of problem solving, conflict avoidance, empathy display, assertiveness, the willingness of being constructive, and socially responsible dialogic behavior. The results of the implemented empiric study of the social competency “conflict avoidance“ are displayed as well. In the conducted empirical study with pedagogics students, the development dynamics of the social competency “conflict avoidance” is followed, using the TKI: Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. The conclusions made refer to the pedagogical effectiveness of the project based method for the formation of conflict-avoidance culture.

The article presents the results of a socio-psychological study of students’ mindsets about mediated conflict resolution. By such mindsets, we understand a systematic development of personal readiness to conflict situations that involve the idea of a possible conflict resolution method, attitude and evaluation of such methods, as well as the readiness of implementing them in certain conflict situations with the help of different categories of intermediaries (including mediators). Empirical study sample: 159 university students (77 from Dagestan and 82 from the Krasnodar Region). Methods of empirical research: «The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI)» (adaptation by N. V. Grishina); interview; questioning; list of personality traits of a mediator. Statistical methods: descriptive statistics, comparison method (Student’s t-test). The substantive differences in the cognitive, emotional and behavioural components of attitudes towards conflict resolution of the respondents of the compared groups were revealed. The Krasnodar Region students demonstrated the ability of independent conflict resolution, low importance of the social context, lack of understanding of the cultural mediation traditions, and a willingness to turn to professional mediators. Dagestani students are characterized by knowledge of traditional mediation practices and low readiness to turn to professional mediators. The role of the social environment and the social status of a mediator for them is high. The culturally determined preferences of different types of mediators in different conflict situations, the specificity of the students’ expectations of the mediator’s personality, his psychological and professional characteristics were revealed. The achieved results can be used to consider the ethnocultural properties of the conflict parties in the professional activities of mediators, their training and education. The research results can be also used for the organization and operation of mediation and psychological services at universities

This study examined emotional intelligence as an instrument for enhancing the performance of project managers in the construction industry in Ibadan Metropolis. This was a view to determine the effect of the emotional intelligence (EI) of project managers on project management, as well as the relationship between project managers’ emotional intelligence and delivery of projects. The study employed survey research method to collect information from project managers, who are Quantity Surveyor, Civil Engineer, Mechanical Engineer, and Architects. Seventy five project managers were randomly selected from building and construction industry in the study areas. A well-structured questionnaire was administered to the respondents. The data collected were analysed using SPSS Version 16. Descriptive and inferential statistic consisting mean, mode, percentage, frequency, and Chi-Square test were used respectively. The results showed that emotional intelligence is important to the field of project management with an overall mean value of 4.46 on a Likert Scale of 5. Chi-Square test showed a significantly positive relationship between the emotional intelligence level of the project managers and their performance on the job. A positive significance occurs in information handling in all the four domain of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management, unlike other variables such as managing project environment and resources, organising and coordination providing for growth and development and motivation and conflict handling that show both positive and negative significances. The paper concluded that emotional intelligence is a significant phenomenon in the field of project management, because it enhances the performance of project managers.

In July 2005, while European heads of state attended memorials to mark the ten year anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide and court trials continued in The Hague at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Bosnian-American artist Aida Sehovic presented the aftermath of this genocide on a day-to-day level through her art installation in memory of the victims of Srebrenica. Drawing on the Bosnian tradition of coming together for coffee, this installation, ‘Što te Nema?’ (Why are you not here?), comprised a collection of tiny white porcelain cups (‘fildzans’ in Bosnian) arranged in the geographic shape of Srebrenica in the lobby of the United Nations building in New York. It was to represent Europe’s worst mass killing since the Second World War, which took place in July 1995 in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. Up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb troops overran the internationally protected enclave (The Guardian). The cups were gathered from Bosnian families in the United States of America and Bosnia & Herzegovina, and in particular from members of ‘Zene Srebrenice’ (‘the women of Srebrenica’). Each of the 1,705 cups represented one exhumed, identified and re-buried victim of the Srebrenica genocide (1,705 at July 2005). The cups were filled either with coffee or, in the case of victims not yet 18 and therefore not old enough at the time of their death to have participated in the coffee tradition, with sugar cubes. The names and birth dates of the victims were recited on an audio loop. Genocide is the methodical destruction of the existence of a people. It is noted through the ‘UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’ that genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity throughout history (UNHCHR). Tribunals, such as the ICTY, with their focus on justice, are formal and responsibility-based modes of responding to genocide. Society seeks justice, but raising awareness around genocide through the telling and hearing of the individual story is also required. Responding to genocide and communicating its existence through artistic expression has been a valuable way of bearing witness to such a horrendous and immense crime against humanity. Art can address the gaps in healing and understanding that cannot be addressed through tribunals. From Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, to the children’s pictures triggered by the Rwandan genocide, to the ‘War Rugs’ of Afghanistan and to vast installations such as Peter Eisenman’s recently opened Holocaust memorial in Berlin; art has proved a powerful medium for representing such atrocities and attempting to find healing after genocide. Artworks such as Sehovic’s ‘Što te Nema?’ give insight into the personal experience of genocide while challenging indifference and maintaining memory. For the affected communities, this addresses the impact on individuals; the human cost and the loss of everyday experiences. As Srebrenica survivor Emir Suljagic comments, “when you tell someone that 10,000 people died, they cannot understand or imagine that. What I want to say is that these people were peasants, car mechanics or masons. That they had daughters, mothers, that they leave someone behind; that a lot of people are hurt by this person’s death” (qtd. in Vulliamy). ‘Što te Nema?’ transmits this personal dimension of genocide by using an everyday situation of showing hospitality with family and friends, which is familiar and practised in most cultural experiences, juxtaposed with the loss of a family member who is missing as a result of genocide. This transmits the notion of genocide into the sphere of common experience, attachment and emotion. It acts as an invitation to explore the impact of genocide beyond the impersonal statistics and the aloof legalese of the courtroom drama. Beyond providing a representation of the facts or emotions around genocide, art provides a way of responding to a crime, which, by its nature, is generally difficult to comprehend. Art can offer a mode of giving testimony and providing catharsis about events which are not easily approached or discussed. As Sehovic says of ‘Što te Nema?’ (it) is a way of healing for Bosnians, coming to terms with this terrible thing that happened to us … it is building a bridge of understanding where Bosnian people are coming from, because it is very hard to talk about these things (qtd. in Vermont Quarterly Magazine). For its receiver, genocide art, with all its capacity to arouse our emotions and empathy, transmits something that we cannot see or engage with in the factual reporting of genocide or in a political analysis of the topic. Through art, it is possible to encounter genocide at an individual, personal level. As Mödersheim points out, we seem to need symbolic expressions to help us understand, and deal with the complex nature of events so horrific that reason and emotion fail to grasp their magnitude. To the intellect, many aspects of these experiences are unfathomable, and yet to keep our humanity we need to understand them … where words and explanations fail, we look for images (Mödersheim 18). An artist’s responses to genocide can vary from the need of survivors to create actual depictions of the atrocities, to more abstract portrayals of the emotional response to acts of genocide. Art that is created by survivors or witnesses to the genocide demonstrates a documentation and testament to what has occurred – a symbolic act of transmitting the personal experience of genocide. Artistic responses to genocide by those, such as Sehovic, who did not witness the event first hand, express how genocide “remains deeply felt to the point where we could not say it has ended” (Morris 329). Such art represents the continuation and global repercussions of genocide. The question of what ‘genocide art’ means to the neutral or removed viewer or society is also significant. Art is often associated with pleasure. Issues of mass killing and war are often not the types of topics one wishes to view on a trip to an art gallery. However, art has a more crucial function as a social reflector. It is often the reaction of non-acceptance of such artworks which indicates how society wishes to consider questions of genocide or of war in general. For example, Rayner Hoff’s 1932 war memorial ‘The Crucifixion of Civilisation 1914’ was rejected for display because it was considered too confronting and controversial in its depiction of a naked, tortured female victim of war in a Christ-like pose. As Picasso commented, “painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy” (qtd. in Mödersheim 15). In discussing the art that emerged from the Sierra Leone Civil War, Ross notes, “as our stomachs and hearts turn over at such sights, we get a small taste of what the artists felt. Even as we look at the images and experience the horror, disgust and anger that comes with knowing that they really happened, we realise that if these images are to be understood as reports from the field, serving the same function as photojournalism, it means that we have been sheltered from this type of reporting from our own news sources” (Ross 39). Here, art can address the often cursory acknowledgment given to ‘events which happen in faraway places’ and lend an insight into the personal. As Adorno notes, “history in artworks is not something made, and history alone frees the work from being merely something posited or manufactured” (133). Here we see the indivisibility of the genocide (the ‘history’) from the artwork – that what is seen is not mere ‘depiction’ but art’s ability to turn the anonymous statistics or the unknown genocide into the realisation of a brutal annihilation of individual human beings – to bring history to life as it were. What the viewer does after viewing such art is perhaps immaterial; the important thing is that they now know. But why is it important to know and important to remember? It has been argued that genocides which occurred in places like Srebrenica and Rwanda happened because the international community did not know or refused to recognise the events to the point of initially declining to apply the term ‘genocide’ to Srebrenica and settling for the more sanitised term ‘ethnic cleansing’ (Bringa 196). It would be nave and even condescending to argue that ‘Što te Nema?’ or any of the myriad other artistic responses to genocide have the possibility of undoing a genocide such as that which took place in Srebrenica, or even the hope of preventing another genocide. However, it is in transporting genocide into the personal realm that the message is transmitted and ignorance to the event can no longer be claimed. The concept of genocide can be too horrendous and vast to take in; art, whilst making it no less horrific, transmits the message to and confronts the viewer at a more direct and personal level. Such art provokes and provides a starting point for comment and debate. Art also stands as a lasting memorial to those who have lost their lives as a result of genocide and as a reminder to humanity that to ignore, underestimate or forget genocide makes possible its recurrence. References Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory. Trans. by Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Bringa, Tone. “Averted Gaze: Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-1995.” Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide. Ed: Alexander Hinton Laban. London: University of California Press, 2002. 194-225. Kohn, Rachael. “War Memorials, Sublime & Scandalous.” Radio National 14 August 2005. 12 December 2005 http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/ark/stories/s1433477.htm>. Mödersheim, Sabine. “Art and War.” Representations of Violence: Art about the Sierra Leone Civil War. Ed. Chris Corcoran, Abu-Hassan Koroma, P.K. Muana. Chicago, 2004. 15-20. Morris, Daniel. “Jewish Artists in New York: The Holocaust Years.” American Jewish History 90.3 (September 2002): 329-331. Ross, Mariama. “Bearing Witness.” Representations of Violence: Art about the Sierra Leone Civil War. Ed. Chris Corcoran, Abu-Hassan Koroma, P.K. Muana. Chicago, 2004. 37-40. The Guardian. “Massacre at Srebrenica: Interactive Guide.” May 2005. 5 November 2005 http://www.guardian.co.uk/flash/0,5860,474564,00.html>. United Nations. “International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.” 10 January 2006 http://www.un.org/icty/>. UNHCHR. “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” 1951. 3 January 2006 http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm>. Vermont Quarterly Magazine. “Cups of Memory.” Winter 2005. 1 December 2005 http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/vq/vqwinter05/aidasehovic.html>. Vulliamy, Ed. “Srebrenica Ten Years On.” June 2005. 10 February 2006 http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-yugoslavia/srebrenica_2651.jsp>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hawkes, Martine. "Transmitting Genocide: Genocide and Art." M/C Journal 9.1 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/09-hawkes.php>. APA Style Hawkes, M. (Mar. 2006) "Transmitting Genocide: Genocide and Art," M/C Journal, 9(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/09-hawkes.php>.

Despite numerous critics describing him as an auteur (i.e. a film-maker who ‘does’ everything and fulfils every production role [Bordwell and Thompson 37] and/or with a signature “world-view” detectable in his/her work [Caughie 10]), Rolf de Heer appears to have declined primary authorship of Dance Me to My Song (1997), his seventh in an oeuvre of twelve feature films. Indeed, the opening credits do not mention his name at all: it is only with the closing credits that the audience learns de Heer has directed the film. Rather, as the film commences, the viewer is informed by the titles that it is “A film by Heather Rose”, thus suggesting that the work is her singular creation. Direct and uncompromising, with its unflattering shots of the lead actor and writer (Heather Rose Slattery, a young woman born with cerebral palsy), the film may be read as a courageous self-portrait which finds the grace, humanity and humour trapped inside Rose’s twisted body. Alternatively, it may be read as yet another example of de Heer’s signature interest in foregrounding a world view which gives voice to marginalised characters such as the disabled or the disadvantaged. For example, the developmentally retarded eponyme of Bad Boy Bubby (1993) is eventually able to make art as a singer in a band and succeeds in creating a happy family with a wife and two kids. The ‘mute’ girl in The Quiet Room (1996) makes herself heard by her squabbling parents through her persistent activism. In Ten Canoes (2006) the Indigenous Australians cast themselves according to kinship ties, not according to the director’s choosing, and tell their story in their own uncolonised language. A cursory glance at the films of Rolf de Heer suggests he is overtly interested in conveying to the audience the often overlooked agency of his unlikely protagonists. In the ultra-competitive world of professional film-making it is rare to see primary authorship ceded by a director so generously. However, the allocation of authorship to a member of a marginalized population re-invigorates questions prompted by Andy Medhurst regarding a film’s “authorship test” (198) and its relationship to a subaltern community wherein he writes that “a biographical approach has more political justification if the project being undertaken is one concerned with the cultural history of a marginalized group” (202-3). Just as films by gay authors about gay characters may have greater credibility, as Medhurst posits, one might wonder would a film by a person with a disability about a character with the same disability be better received? Enabling authorship by an unknown, crippled woman such as Rose rather than a famous, able-bodied male such as de Heer may be cynically regarded as good (show) business in that it is politically correct. This essay therefore asks if the appellation “A film by Heather Rose” is appropriate for Dance Me to My Song. Whose agency in telling the story (or ‘doing’ the film-making), the able bodied Rolf de Heer or the disabled Heather Rose, is reflected in this cinematic production? In other words, whose voice is enabled when an audience receives this film? In attempting to answer these questions it is inevitable that Paul Darke’s concept of the “normality drama” (181) is referred to and questioned, as I argue that Dance Me to My Song makes groundbreaking departures from the conventions of the typical disability narrative. Heather Rose as Auteur Rose plays the film’s heroine, Julia, who like herself has cerebral palsy, a group of non-progressive, chronic disorders resulting from changes produced in the brain during the prenatal stages of life. Although severely affected physically, Rose suffered no intellectual impairment and had acted in Rolf de Heer’s cult hit Bad Boy Bubby five years before, a confidence-building experience that grew into an ongoing fascination with the filmmaking process. Subsequently, working with co-writer Frederick Stahl, she devised the scenario for this film, writing the lead role for herself and then proactively bringing it to de Heer’s attention. Rose wrote of de Heer’s deliberate lack of involvement in the script-writing process: “Rolf didn’t even want to read what we’d done so far, saying he didn’t want to interfere with our process” (de Heer, “Production Notes”). In 2002, aged 36, Rose died and Stahl reports in her obituary an excerpt from her diary: People see me as a person who has to be controlled. But let me tell you something, people. I am not! And I am going to make something real special of my life! I am going to go out there and grab life with both hands!!! I am going to make the most sexy and honest film about disability that has ever been made!! (Stahl, “Standing Room Only”) This proclamation of her ability and ambition in screen-writing is indicative of Rose’s desire to do. In a guest lecture Rose gave further insights into the active intent in writing Dance Me to My Song: I wanted to create a screenplay, but not just another soppy disability film, I wanted to make a hot sexy film, which showed the real world … The message I wanted to convey to an audience was “As people with disabilities, we have the same feelings and desires as others”. (Rose, “ISAAC 2000 Conference Presentation”) Rose went on to explain her strategy for winning over director de Heer: “Rolf was not sure about committing to the movie; I had to pester him really. I decided to invite him to my birthday party. It took a few drinks, but I got him to agree to be the director” (ibid) and with this revelation of her tactical approach her film-making agency is further evidenced. Rose’s proactive innovation is not just evident in her successfully approaching de Heer. Her screenplay serves as a radical exception to films featuring disabled persons, which, according to Paul Darke in 1998, typically involve the disabled protagonist struggling to triumph over the limitations imposed by their disability in their ‘admirable’ attempts to normalize. Such normality dramas are usually characterized by two generic themes: first, that the state of abnormality is nothing other than tragic because of its medical implications; and, second, that the struggle for normality, or some semblance of it in normalization – as represented in the film by the other characters – is unquestionably right owing to its axiomatic supremacy. (187) Darke argues that the so-called normality drama is “unambiguously a negation of ascribing any real social or individual value to the impaired or abnormal” (196), and that such dramas function to reinforce the able-bodied audience’s self image of normality and the notion of the disabled as the inferior Other. Able-bodied characters are typically portrayed positively in the normality drama: “A normality as represented in the decency and support of those characters who exist around, and for, the impaired central character. Thus many of the disabled characters in such narratives are bitter, frustrated and unfulfilled and either antisocial or asocial” (193). Darke then identifies The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980) and Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone, 1989) as archetypal films of this genre. Even in films in which seemingly positive images of the disabled are featured, the protagonist is still to be regarded as the abnormal Other, because in comparison to the other characters within that narrative the impaired character is still a comparatively second-class citizen in the world of the film. My Left Foot is, as always, a prime example: Christy Brown may well be a writer, relatively wealthy and happy, but he is not seen as sexual in any way (194). However, Dance Me to My Song defies such generic restrictions: Julia’s temperament is upbeat and cheerful and her disability, rather than appearing tragic, is made to look healthy, not “second class”, in comparison with her physically attractive, able-bodied but deeply unhappy carer, Madelaine (Joey Kennedy). Within the first few minutes of the film we see Madelaine dissatisfied as she stands, inspecting her healthy, toned and naked body in the bathroom mirror, contrasted with vision of Julia’s twisted form, prostrate, pale and naked on the bed. Yet, in due course, it is the able-bodied girl who is shown to be insecure and lacking in character. Madelaine steals Julia’s money and calls her “spastic”. Foul-mouthed and short-tempered, Madelaine perversely positions Julia in her wheelchair to force her to watch as she has perfunctory sex with her latest boyfriend. Madelaine even masquerades as Julia, commandeering her voice synthesizer to give a fraudulently positive account of her on-the-job performance to the employment agency she works for. Madelaine’s “axiomatic supremacy” is thoroughly undermined and in the most striking contrast to the typical normality drama, Julia is unashamedly sexual: she is no Christy Brown. The affective juxtaposition of these two different personalities stems from the internal nature of Madelaine’s problems compared to the external nature of Julia’s problems. Madelaine has an emotional disability rather than a physical disability and several scenes in the film show her reduced to helpless tears. Then one day when Madelaine has left her to her own devices, Julia defiantly wheels herself outside and bumps into - almost literally - handsome, able-bodied Eddie (John Brumpton). Cheerfully determined, Julia wins him over and a lasting friendship is formed. Having seen the joy that sex brings to Madelaine, Julia also wants carnal fulfilment so she telephones Eddie and arranges a date. When Eddie arrives, he reads the text on her voice machine’s screen containing the title line to the film ‘Dance me to my song’ and they share a tender moment. Eddie’s gentleness as he dances Julia to her song (“Kizugu” written by Bernard Huber and John Laidler, as performed by Okapi Guitars) is simultaneously contrasted with the near-date-rapes Madelaine endures in her casual relationships. The conflict between Madeline and Julia is such that it prompts Albert Moran and Errol Vieth to categorize the film as “women’s melodrama”: Dance Me to My Song clearly belongs to the genre of the romance. However, it is also important to recognize it under the mantle of the women’s melodrama … because it has to do with a woman’s feelings and suffering, not so much because of the flow of circumstance but rather because of the wickedness and malevolence of another woman who is her enemy and rival. (198-9) Melodrama is a genre that frequently resorts to depicting disability in which a person condemned by society as disabled struggles to succeed in love: some prime examples include An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey, 1957) involving a paraplegic woman, and The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993) in which a strong-spirited but mute woman achieves love. The more conventional Hollywood romances typically involve attractive, able-bodied characters. In Dance Me to My Song the melodramatic conflict between the two remarkably different women at first seems dominated by Madelaine, who states: “I know I’m good looking, good in bed ... better off than you, you poor thing” in a stream-of-consciousness delivery in which Julia is constructed as listener rather than converser. Julia is further reduced to the status of sub-human as Madelaine says: “I wish you could eat like a normal person instead of a bloody animal” and her erstwhile boyfriend Trevor says: “She looks like a fuckin’ insect.” Even the benevolent Eddie says: “I don’t like leaving you alone but I guess you’re used to it.” To this the defiant Julia replies; “Please don’t talk about me in front of me like I’m an animal or not there at all.” Eddie is suitably chastised and when he treats her to an over-priced ice-cream the shop assistant says “Poor little thing … She’ll enjoy this, won’t she?” Julia smiles, types the words “Fuck me!”, and promptly drops the ice-cream on the floor. Eddie laughs supportively. “I’ll just get her another one,” says the flustered shop assistant, “and then get her out of here, please!” With striking eloquence, Julia wheels herself out of the shop, her voice machine announcing “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me”, as she departs exultantly. With this bold statement of independence and defiance in the face of patronising condescension, the audience sees Rose’s burgeoning strength of character and agency reflected in the onscreen character she has created. Dance Me to My Song and the films mentioned above are, however, rare exceptions in the many that dare represent disability on the screen at all, compliant as the majority are with Darke’s expectations of the normality drama. Significantly, the usual medical-model nexus in many normality films is ignored in Rose’s screenplay: no medication, hospitals or white laboratory coats are to be seen in Julia’s world. Finally, as I have described elsewhere, Julia is shown joyfully dancing in her wheelchair with Eddie while Madelaine proves her physical inferiority with a ‘dance’ of frustration around her broken-down car (see Starrs, "Dance"). In Rose’s authorial vision, audience’s expectations of yet another film of the normality drama genre are subverted as the disabled protagonist proves superior to her ‘normal’ adversary in their melodramatic rivalry for the sexual favours of an able-bodied love-interest. Rolf de Heer as Auteur De Heer does not like to dwell on the topic of auteurism: in an interview in 2007 he somewhat impatiently states: I don’t go in much for that sort of analysis that in the end is terminology. … Look, I write the damn things, and direct them, and I don’t completely produce them anymore – there are other people. If that makes me an auteur in other people’s terminologies, then fine. (Starrs, "Sounds" 20) De Heer has been described as a “remarkably non-egotistical filmmaker” (Davis “Working together”) which is possibly why he handed ownership of this film to Rose. Of the writer/actor who plied him with drink so he would agree to back her script, de Heer states: It is impossible to overstate the courage of the performance that you see on the screen. … Heather somehow found the means to respond on cue, to maintain the concentration, to move in the desired direction, all the myriad of acting fundamentals that we take for granted as normal things to do in our normal lives. (“Production NHotes”) De Heer’s willingness to shift authorship from director to writer/actor is representative of this film’s groundbreaking promotion of the potential for agency within disability. Rather than being passive and suffering, Rose is able to ‘do.’ As the lead actor she is central to the narrative. As the principle writer she is central to the film’s production. And she does both. But in conflict with this auteurial intent is the temptation to describe Dance Me to My Song as an autobiographical documentary, since it is Rose herself, with her unique and obvious physical handicap, playing the film’s heroine, Julia. In interview, however, De Heer apparently disagrees with this interpretation: Rolf de Heer is quick to point out, though, that the film is not a biography.“Not at all; only in the sense that writers use material from their own lives.Madelaine is merely the collection of the worst qualities of the worst carers Heather’s ever had.” Dance Me to My Song could be seen as a dramatised documentary, since it is Rose herself playing Julia, and her physical or surface life is so intense and she is so obviously handicapped. While he understands that response, de Heer draws a comparison with the first films that used black actors instead of white actors in blackface. “I don’t know how it felt emotionally to an audience, I wasn’t there, but I think that is the equivalent”. (Urban) An example of an actor wearing “black-face” to portray a cerebral palsy victim might well be Gus Trikonis’s 1980 film Touched By Love. In this, the disabled girl is unconvincingly played by the pretty, able-bodied actress Diane Lane. The true nature of the character’s disability is hidden and cosmeticized to Hollywood expectations. Compared to that inauthentic film, Rose’s screenwriting and performance in Dance Me to My Song is a self-penned fiction couched in unmediated reality and certainly warrants authorial recognition. Despite his unselfish credit-giving, de Heer’s direction of this remarkable film is nevertheless detectable. His auteur signature is especially evident in his technological employment of sound as I have argued elsewhere (see Starrs, "Awoval"). The first distinctly de Heer influence is the use of a binaural recording device - similar to that used in Bad Boy Bubby (1993) - to convey to the audience the laboured nature of Julia’s breathing and to subjectively align the audience with her point of view. This apparatus provides a disturbing sound bed that is part wheezing, part grunting. There is no escaping Julia’s physically unusual life, from her reliance on others for food, toilet and showering, to the half-strangled sounds emanating from her ineffectual larynx. But de Heer insists that Julia does speak, like Stephen Hawkings, via her Epson RealVoice computerized voice synthesizer, and thus Julia manages to retain her dignity. De Heer has her play this machine like a musical instrument, its neatly modulated feminine tones immediately prompting empathy. Rose Capp notes de Heer’s preoccupation with finding a voice for those minority groups within the population who struggle to be heard, stating: de Heer has been equally consistent in exploring the communicative difficulties underpinning troubled relationships. From the mute young protagonist of The Quiet Room to the aphasic heroine of Dance Me to My Song, De Heer’s films are frequently preoccupied with the profound inadequacy or outright failure of language as a means of communication (21). Certainly, the importance to Julia of her only means of communication, her voice synthesizer, is stressed by de Heer throughout the film. Everybody around her has, to varying degrees, problems in hearing correctly or understanding both what and how Julia communicates with her alien mode of conversing, and she is frequently asked to repeat herself. Even the well-meaning Eddie says: “I don’t know what the machine is trying to say”. But it is ultimately via her voice synthesizer that Julia expresses her indomitable character. When first she meets Eddie, she types: “Please put my voice machine on my chair, STUPID.” She proudly declares ownership of a condom found in the bathroom with “It’s mine!” The callous Madelaine soon realizes Julia’s strength is in her voice machine and withholds access to the device as punishment for if she takes it away then Julia is less demanding for the self-centred carer. Indeed, the film which starts off portraying the physical superiority of Madelaine soon shows us that the carer’s life, for all her able-bodied, free-love ways, is far more miserable than Julia’s. As de Heer has done in many of his other films, a voice has been given to those who might otherwise not be heard through significant decision making in direction. In Rose’s case, this is achieved most obviously via her electric voice synthesizer. I have also suggested elsewhere (see Starrs, "Dance") that de Heer has helped find a second voice for Rose via the language of dance, and in doing so has expanded the audience’s understandings of quality of life for the disabled, as per Mike Oliver’s social model of disability, rather than the more usual medical model of disability. Empowered by her act of courage with Eddie, Julia sacks her uncaring ‘carer’ and the film ends optimistically with Julia and her new man dancing on the front porch. By picturing the couple in long shot and from above, Julia’s joyous dance of triumph is depicted as ordinary, normal and not deserving of close examination. This happy ending is intercut with a shot of Madeline and her broken down car, performing her own frustrated dance and this further emphasizes that she was unable to ‘dance’ (i.e. communicate and compete) with Julia. The disabled performer such as Rose, whether deliberately appropriating a role or passively accepting it, usually struggles to placate two contrasting realities: (s)he is at once invisible in the public world of interhuman relations and simultaneously hyper-visible due to physical Otherness and subsequent instantaneous typecasting. But by the end of Dance Me to My Song, Rose and de Heer have subverted this notion of the disabled performer grappling with the dual roles of invisible victim and hyper-visible victim by depicting Julia as socially and physically adept. She ‘wins the guy’ and dances her victory as de Heer’s inspirational camera looks down at her success like an omniscient and pleased god. Film academic Vivian Sobchack writes of the phenomenology of dance choreography for the disabled and her own experience of waltzing with the maker of her prosthetic leg, Steve, with the comment: “for the moment I did displace focus on my bodily immanence to the transcendent ensemble of our movement and I really began to waltz” (65). It is easy to imagine Rose’s own, similar feeling of bodily transcendence in the closing shot of Dance Me to My Song as she shows she can ‘dance’ better than her able-bodied rival, content as she is with her self-identity. Conclusion: Validation of the Auteurial OtherRolf de Heer was a well-known film-maker by the time he directed Dance Me to My Song. His films Bad Boy Bubby (1993) and The Quiet Room (1996) had both screened at the Cannes International Film Festival. He was rapidly developing a reputation for non-mainstream representations of marginalised, subaltern populations, a cinematic trajectory that was to be further consolidated by later films privileging the voice of Indigenous Peoples in The Tracker (2002) and Ten Canoes (2006), the latter winning the Special Jury prize at Cannes. His films often feature unlikely protagonists or as Liz Ferrier writes, are “characterised by vulnerable bodies … feminised … none of whom embody hegemonic masculinity” (65): they are the opposite of Hollywood’s hyper-masculine, hard-bodied, controlling heroes. With a nascent politically correct worldview proving popular, de Heer may have considered the assigning of authorship to Rose a marketable idea, her being representative of a marginalized group, which as Andy Medhurst might argue, may be more politically justifiable, as it apparently is with films of gay authorship. However, it must be emphasized that there is no evidence that de Heer’s reticence about claiming authorship of Dance Me to My Song is motivated by pecuniary interests, nor does he seem to have been trying to distance himself from the project through embarrassment or dissatisfaction with the film or its relatively unknown writer/actor. Rather, he seems to be giving credit for authorship where credit is due, for as a result of Rose’s tenacity and agency this film is, in two ways, her creative success. Firstly, it is a rare exception to the disability film genre defined by Paul Darke as the “normality drama” because in the film’s diegesis, Julia is shown triumphing not simply over the limitations of her disability, but over her able-bodied rival in love as well: she ‘dances’ better than the ‘normal’ Madelaine. Secondly, in her gaining possession of the primary credits, and the mantle of the film’s primary author, Rose is shown triumphing over other aspiring able-bodied film-makers in the notoriously competitive film-making industry. Despite being an unpublished and unknown author, the label “A film by Heather Rose” is, I believe, a deserved coup for the woman who set out to make “the most sexy and honest film about disability ever made”. As with de Heer’s other films in which marginalised peoples are given voice, he demonstrates a desire not to subjugate the Other, but to validate and empower him/her. He both acknowledges their authorial voices and credits them as essential beings, and in enabling such subaltern populations to be heard, willingly cedes his privileged position as a successful, white, male, able-bodied film-maker. In the credits of this film he seems to be saying ‘I may be an auteur, but Heather Rose is a no less able auteur’. References Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction, 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993. Capp, Rose. “Alexandra and the de Heer Project.” RealTime + Onscreen 56 (Aug.-Sep. 2003): 21. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue56/7153›. Caughie, John. “Introduction”. Theories of Authorship. Ed. John Caughie. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 9-16. Darke, Paul. “Cinematic Representations of Disability.” The Disability Reader. Ed. Tom Shakespeare. London and New York: Cassell, 1988. 181-198. Davis, Therese. “Working Together: Two Cultures, One Film, Many Canoes.” Senses of Cinema 2006. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/06/41/ten-canoes.html›. De Heer, Rolf. “Production Notes.” Vertigo Productions. Undated. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.vertigoproductions.com.au/information.php?film_id=10&display=notes›. Ferrier, Liz. “Vulnerable Bodies: Creative Disabilities in Contemporary Australian Film.” Australian Cinema in the 1990s. Ed. Ian Craven. London and Portland: Frank Cass and Co., 2001. 57-78. Medhurst, Andy. “That Special Thrill: Brief Encounter, Homosexuality and Authorship.” Screen 32.2 (1991): 197-208. Moran, Albert, and Errol Veith. Film in Australia: An Introduction. Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 2006. Oliver, Mike. Social Work with Disabled People. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1983. Rose Slattery, Heather. “ISAAC 2000 Conference Presentation.” Words+ n.d. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.words-plus.com/website/stories/isaac2000.htm›. Sobchack, Vivian. “‘Choreography for One, Two, and Three Legs’ (A Phenomenological Meditation in Movements).” Topoi 24.1 (2005): 55-66. Stahl, Frederick. “Standing Room Only for a Thunderbolt in a Wheelchair,” Sydney Morning Herald 31 Oct. 2002. 6 June 2008 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/30/1035683471529.html›. Starrs, D. Bruno. “Sounds of Silence: An Interview with Rolf de Heer.” Metro 152 (2007): 18-21. ———. “An avowal of male lack: Sound in Rolf de Heer’s The Old Man Who Read Love Stories (2003).” Metro 156 (2008): 148-153. ———. “Dance Me to My Song (Rolf de Heer 1997): The Story of a Disabled Dancer.” Proceedings Scopic Bodies Dance Studies Research Seminar Series 2007. Ed. Mark Harvey. University of Auckland, 2008 (in press). Urban, Andrew L. “Dance Me to My Song, Rolf de Heer, Australia.” Film Festivals 1988. 6 June 2008. ‹http://www.filmfestivals.com/cannes98/selofus9.htm›.

This article is about refugees’ and migrants’ dreams of home and family and stems from an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, “A Hand Up: Disrupting the Communication of Intergenerational Welfare Dependency” (LP140100935), with Partner Organisation St Vincent de Paul Society (WA) Inc. (Vinnies). A Vinnies-supported refugee and migrant support centre was chosen as one of the hubs for interviewee recruitment, given that many refugee families experience persistent and chronic economic disadvantage. The de-identified name for the drop-in language-teaching and learning social facility is the Migrant and Refugee Homebase (MARH). At the time of the research, in 2018, refugee and forced migrant families from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan constituted MARH’s primary membership base. MARH provided English language classes alongside other educational and financial support. It could also organise provision of emergency food and was a conduit for furniture donated by Australian families. Crucially, MARH operated as a space in which members could come together to build shared community.As part of her role, the researcher was introduced to Sara (de-identified), a mother-tongue Arabic speaker and the centre’s coordinator. Sara had personal experience of being a refugee, as well as being MARH’s manager, and she became both a point of contact for the researcher team, an interpreter/translator, and an empathetic listener as refugees shared their stories. Dreams of home and family emerged throughout the interviews as a vital part of participants’ everyday lives. These dreams and hopes were developed in the face of what was, for some, a nightmare of adversity. Underpinning participants’ sense of agency, subjectivity and resilience, Badiou argues (93, as noted in Jackson, 241) that hope can appear as a basic form of patience or perseverance rather than a dream for justice. Instead of imagining an improvement in personal circumstances, the dream is one of simply moving forward rather than backward. While dreams of being reunited with family are rooted in the past and project a vision of a family which no longer exists, these dreams help fashion a future which once again contains a range of possibilities.Although Sara volunteered her time on the research project as part of her commitment to Vinnies, she was well-known to interviewees as a MARH staff member and, in many cases, a friend and confidante. While Sara’s manager role implies an imbalance of power, with Sara powerful and participants comparatively less so, the majority of the information explored in the interviews pertained to refugees’ experiences of life outside the sphere in which MARH is engaged, so there was limited risk of the data being sanitised to reflect positively upon MARH. The specialist information and understandings that the interviewees shared positions them as experts, and as co-creators of knowledge.Recruitment and Methodological ApproachThe project researcher (Jaunzems) met potential contributors at MARH when its members gathered for a coffee morning. With Sara’s assistance, the researcher invited MARH members to take part in the research project, giving those present the opportunity to ask and have answered any questions they deemed important. Coffee morning attendees were under no obligation to take part, and about half chose not to do so, while the remainder volunteered to participate. Sara scheduled the interviews at times to suit the families participating. A parent and child from each volunteer family was interviewed, separately. In all cases it was the mother who volunteered to take part, and all interviewees chose to be interviewed in their homes. Each set of interviews was digitally recorded and lasted no longer than 90 minutes. This article includes extracts from interviews with three mothers from refugee families who escaped war-torn homelands for a new life in Australia, sometimes via interim refugee camps.The project researcher conducted the in-depth interviews with Sara’s crucial interpreting/translating assistance. The interviews followed a traditional approach, except that the researcher deferred to Sara as being more important in the interview exchange than she was. This reflects the premise that meaning is socially constructed, and that what people do and say makes visible the meanings that underpin their actions and statements within a wider social context (Burr). Conceptualising knowledge as socially constructed privileges the role of the decoder in receiving, understanding and communicating such knowledge (Crotty). Respecting the role of the interpreter/translator signified to the participants that their views, opinions and their overall cultural context were valued.Once complete, the interviews were sent for translation and transcription by a trusted bi-lingual transcriber, where both the English and Arabic exchanges were transcribed. This was deemed essential by the researchers, to ensure both the authenticity of the data collected and to demonstrate “trust, understanding, respect, and a caring connection” (Valibhoy, Kaplan, and Szwarc, 23) with the participants. Upon completion of the interviews with volunteer members of the MARH community, and at the beginning of the analysis phase, researchers recognised the need for the adoption of an interpretive framework. The interpretive approach seeks to understand an individual’s view of the world through the contexts of time, place and culture. The knowledge produced is contextualised and differs from one person to another as a result of individual subjectivities such as age, race and ethnicity, even within a shared social context (Guba and Lincoln). Accordingly, a mother-tongue Arabic speaker, who identifies as a refugee (Al-Hameed), was added to the project. All authors were involved in writing up the article while authors two, three and four took responsibility for transcript coding and analysis. In the transcripts that follow, words originally spoken in Arabic are in intalics, with non-italcised words originally spoken in English.Discrimination and BelongingAya initially fled from her home in Syria into neighbouring Jordan. She didn’t feel welcomed or supported there.[00:55:06] Aya: …in Jordan, refugees didn’t have rights, and the Jordanian schools refused to teach them [the children…] We were put aside.[00:55:49] Interpreter, Sara (to Researcher): And then she said they push us aside like you’re a zero on the left, yeah this is unfortunately the reality of our countries, I want to cry now.[00:56:10] Aya: You’re not allowed to cry because we’ll all cry.Some refugees and migrant communities suffer discrimination based on their ethnicity and perceived legitimacy as members of the host society. Although Australian refugees may have had searing experiences prior to their acceptance by Australia, migrant community members in Australia can also feel themselves “constructed in the public and political spheres as less legitimately Australian than others” (Green and Aly). Jackson argues that both refugees and migrants experiencethe impossibility of ever bridging the gap between one’s natal ties to the place one left because life was insupportable there, and the demands of the nation to which one has travelled, legally or illegally, in search of a better life. And this tension between belonging and not belonging, between a place where one has rights and a place where one does not, implies an unresolved relationship between one’s natural identity as a human being and one’s social identity as ‘undocumented migrant,’ a ‘resident alien,’ an ‘ethnic minority,’ or ‘the wretched of the earth,’ whose plight remains a stigma of radical alterity even though it inspires our compassion and moves us to political action. (223)The tension Jackson refers to, where the migrant is haunted by belonging and not belonging, is an area of much research focus. Moreover, the label of “asylum seeker” can contribute to systemic “exclusion of a marginalised and abject group of people, precisely by employing a term that emphasises the suspended recognition of a community” (Nyers). Unsurprisingly, many refugees in Australia long for the connectedness of the lives they left behind relocated in the safe spaces where they live now.Eades focuses on an emic approach to understanding refugee/migrant distress, or trauma, which seeks to incorporate the worldview of the people in distress: essentially replicating the interpretive perspective taken in the research. This emic framing is adopted in place of the etic approach that seeks to understand the distress through a Western biomedical lens that is positioned outside the social/cultural system in which the distress is taking place. Eades argues: “developing an emic approach is to engage in intercultural dialogue, raise dilemmas, test assumptions, document hopes and beliefs and explore their implications”. Furthermore, Eades sees the challenge for service providers working with refugee/migrants in distress as being able to move beyond “harm minimisation” models of care “to recognition of a facilitative, productive community of people who are in a transitional phase between homelands”. This opens the door for studies concerning the notions of attachment to place and its links to resilience and a refugee’s ability to “settle in” (for example, Myers’s ground-breaking place-making work in Plymouth).Resilient PrecariousnessChaima: We feel […] good here, we’re safe, but when we sit together, we remember what we went through how my kids screamed when the bombs came, and we went out in the car. My son was 12 and I was pregnant, every time I remember it, I go back.Alongside the dreams that migrants have possible futures are the nightmares that threaten to destabilise their daily lives. As per the work of Xavier and Rosaldo, post-migration social life is recreated in two ways: the first through participation and presence in localised events; the second by developing relationships with absent others (family and friends) across the globe through media. These relationships, both distanced and at a distance, are dispersed through time and space. In light of this, Campays and Said suggest that places of past experiences and rituals for meaning are commonly recreated or reproduced as new places of attachment abroad; similarly, other recollections and experience can trigger a sense of fragility when “we remember what we went through”. Gupta and Ferguson suggest that resilience is defined by the migrant/refugee capacity to “reimagine and re-materialise” their lost heritage in their new home. This involves a sense of connection to the good things in the past, while leaving the bad things behind.Resilience has also been linked to the migrant’s/refugee’s capacity “to manage their responses to adverse circumstances in an interpersonal community through the networks of relationships” (Eades). Resilience in this case is seen through an intersubjective lens. Joseph reminds us that there is danger in romanticising community. Local communities may not only be hostile toward different national and ethnic groups, they may actively display a level of hostility toward them (Boswell). However, Gill maintains that “the reciprocal relations found in communities are crucially important to their [migrant/refugee] well-being”. This is because inclusion in a given community allows migrants/refugees to shrug off the outsider label, and the feeling of being at risk, and provides the opportunity for them to become known as families and friends. One of MAHR’s central aims was to help bridge the cultural divide between MARH users and the broader Australian community.Hope[01:06: 10] Sara (to interviewee, Aya): What’s the key to your success here in Australia?[01:06:12] Aya: The people, and how they treat us.[01:06:15] Sara (to Researcher): People and how they deal with us.[01:06:21] Aya: It’s the best thing when you look around, and see people who don’t understand your language but they help you.[01:06:28] Sara (to Researcher): She said – this is nice. I want to cry also. She said the best thing when I see people, they don’t understand your language, and I don’t understand theirs but they still smile in your face.[01:06:43] Aya: It’s the best.[01:06:45] Sara (to Aya): yes, yes, people here are angels. This is the best thing about Australia.Here, Sara is possibly shown to be taking liberties with the translation offered to the researcher, talking about how Australians “smile in your face”, when (according to the translator) Aya talked about how Australians “help”. Even so, the capacity for social connection and other aspects of sociality have been linked to a person’s ability to turn a negative experience into a positive cultural resource (Wilson). Resilience is understood in these cases as a strength-based practice where families, communities and individuals are viewed in terms of their capabilities and possibilities, instead of their deficiencies or disorders (Graybeal and Saleeby in Eades). According to Fozdar and Torezani, there is an “apparent paradox between high-levels of discrimination experienced by humanitarian migrants to Australia in the labour market and everyday life” (30) on the one hand, and their reporting of positive well-being on the other. That disparity includes accounts such as the one offered by Aya.As Wilson and Arvanitakis suggest,the interaction between negative experiences of discrimination and reports of wellbeing suggested a counter-intuitive propensity among refugees to adapt to and make sense of their migration experiences in unique, resourceful and life-affirming ways. Such response patterns among refugees and trauma survivors indicate a similar resilience-related capacity to positively interpret and derive meaning from negative migration experiences and associated emotions. … However, resilience is not expressed or employed uniformly among individuals or communities. Some respond in a resilient manner, while others collapse. On this point, an argument could be made that collapse and breakdown is a built-in aspect of resilience, and necessary for renewal and ongoing growth.Using this approach, Wilson and Arvanitakis have linked resilience to hope, as a “present- and future-oriented mode of situated defence against adversity”. They argue that the term “hope” is often utilised in a tokenistic way “as a strategic instrument in increasingly empty domestic and international political vocabularies”. Nonetheless, Wilson and Arvanitakis believe hope to be of vital academic interest due to the prevalence of war and suffering throughout the world. In the research reported here, the authors found that participants’ hopes were interwoven with dreams of being reunited with their families in a place of safety. This is a common longing. As Jackson states,so it is that migrants travel abroad in pursuit of utopia, but having found that place, which is also no-place (ou-topos), they are haunted by the thought that utopia actually lies in the past. It is the family they left behind. That is where they properly belong. Though the family broke up long ago and is now scattered to the four winds, they imagine a reunion in which they are together again. (223)There is a sense here that with their hopes and dreams lying in the past, refugees/migrants are living forward while looking backwards (a Kierkegaardian concept). If hope is thought to be key to resilience (Wilson and Arvanitakis), and key to an individual’s ability to live with a sense of well-being, then perhaps a refugee’s past relations (familial) impact both their present relations (social/community), and their ability to transform negative experiences into positive experiences. And yet, there is no readily accessible way in which migrants and refugees can recreate the connections that sustained them in the past. As Jackson suggests,the irreversibility of time is intimately connected with the irreversibility of one’s place of origin, and this entwined movement through time and across space proves perplexing to many migrants, who, in imagining themselves one day returning to the place from where they started out, forget that there is no transport which will convey them back into the past. … Often it is only by going home that is becomes starkly and disconcertingly clear that one’s natal village is no longer the same and that one has also changed. (221)The dream of home and family, therefore and the hope that this might somehow be recreated in the safety of the here and now, becomes a paradoxical loss and longing even as it is a constant companion for many on their refugee journey.Esma’s DreamAccording to author three, personal dreams are not generally discussed in Arab culture, even though dreams themselves may form part of the rich tradition of Arabic folklore and storytelling. Alongside issues of mental wellbeing, dreams are constructed as something private, and it generally breaks social taboos to describe them publicly. However, in personal discussions with other refugee women and men, and echoing Jackson’s finding, a recurring dream is “to meet my family in a safe place and not be worried about my safety or theirs”. As a refugee, the third author shares this dream. This is also the perspective articulated by Esma, who had recently had a fifth child and was very much missing her extended family who had died, been scattered as refugees, or were still living in a conflict zone. The researcher asked Sara to ask Esma about the best aspect of her current life:[01:17:03] Esma: The thing that comforts me here is nature, it’s beautiful.[01:17:15] Sara (to the Researcher): The nature.[01:17:16] Esma: And feeling safe.[01:17:19] Sara (to the Researcher): The safety. ...[01:17:45] Esma: Life’s beautiful here.[01:17:47] Sara (to the Researcher): Life is beautiful here.[01:17:49] Esma: But I want to know people, speak the language, have friends, life is beautiful here even if I don’t have my family here.[01:17:56] Sara (to the Researcher): Life is so pretty you only need to improve the language and have friends, she said I love my life here even though I don’t have any family or community here. (To Esma:) I am your family.[01:18:12] Esma: Bring me my siblings here.[01:18:14] Sara (to Esma): I just want my brothers here and my sisters.[01:18:17] Esma: It’s a dream.[01:18:18] Sara (to Esma): it’s a dream, one day it will become true.Here Esma uses the term dream metaphorically, to describe an imagined utopia: a dream world. In supporting Esma, who is mourning the absence of her family, Sara finds herself reacting and emoting around their shared experience of leaving siblings behind. In doing so, she affirms the younger woman, but also offers a hope for the future. Esma had previously made a suggestion, absorbed into her larger dream, but more achievable in the short term, “to know people, speak the language, have friends”. The implication here is that Esma is keen to find a way to connect with Australians. She sees this as a means of compensating for the loss of family, a realistic hope rather than an impossible dream.ConclusionInterviews with refugee families in a Perth-based migrant support centre reveals both the nightmare pasts and the dreamed-of futures of people whose lives have experienced a radical disruption due to war, conflict and other life-threatening events. Jackson’s work with migrants provides a context for understanding the power of the dream in helping to resolve issues around the irreversibility of time and circumstance, while Wilson and Arvanitakis point to the importance of hope and resilience in supporting the building of a positive future. Within this mix of the longed for and the impossible, both the refugee informants and the academic literature suggest that participation in local events, and authentic engagement with the broader community, help make a difference in supporting a migrant’s transition from dreaming to reality.AcknowledgmentsThis article arises from an ARC Linkage Project, ‘A Hand Up: Disrupting the Communication of Intergenerational Welfare Dependency’ (LP140100935), supported by the Australian Research Council, Partner Organisation St Vincent de Paul Society (WA) Inc., and Edith Cowan University. The authors are grateful to the anonymous staff and member of Vinnies’ Migrant and Refugee Homebase for their trust in and support of this project, and for their contributions to it.ReferencesBadiou, Alan. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Trans. Ray Brassier. 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Aug. 2013 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/700>.Fozdar, Farida, and Silvia Torezani. “Discrimination and Well-Being: Perceptions of Refugees in Western Australia.” The International Migration Review 42.1 (2008): 1–34.Gill, Nicholas. “Longing for Stillness: The Forced Movement of Asylum Seekers.” M/C Journal 12.1 (2009). Mar. 2009 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/123>.Graybeal, Clay. “Strengths-Based Social Work Assessment: Transforming the Dominant Paradigm.” Families in Society 82.3 (2001): 233–42.Green, Lelia, and Anne Aly. “Bastard Immigrants: Asylum Seekers Who Arrive by Boat and the Illegitimate Fear of the Other.” M/C Journal 17.5 (2014). Oct. 2014 <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/896>.Guba, Egon G., and Yvonna S. Lincoln. "Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research." Handbook of Qualitative Research 2 (1994): 163-194.Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. “Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.” Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants. Ed. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 2006. 72-79.Jackson, Michael. The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, Migration, and the Question of Well-Being. California: U of California P, 2013.Joseph, Miranda. Against the Romance of Community. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.Myers, Misha. “Situations for Living: Performing Emplacement." Research in Drama Education 13.2 (2008): 171-180. DOI: 10.1080/13569780802054828.Nyers, Peter. “Abject Cosmopolitanism: The Politics of Protection in the Anti-Deportation Movement.” Third World Quarterly 24.6 (2003): 1069–93.Saleeby, Dennis. “The Strengths Perspective in Social Work Practice: Extensions and Cautions.” Social Work 41.3 (1996): 296–305.Valibhoy, Madeleine C., Ida Kaplan, and Josef Szwarc. “‘It Comes Down to Just How Human Someone Can Be’: A Qualitative Study with Young People from Refugee Backgrounds about Their Experiences of Australian Mental Health Services.” Transcultural Psychiatry 54.1 (2017): 23-45.Wilson, Michael. Accumulating Resilience: An Investigation of the Migration and Resettlement Experiences of Young Sudanese People in the Western Sydney Area. Sydney: University of Western Sydney, 2012.Wilson, Michael John, and James Arvanitakis. “The Resilience Complex.” M/C Journal 16.5 (2013). <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/741>.Xavier, Johnathon, and Renato Rosaldo. “Thinking the Global.” The Anthropology of Globalisation. Eds. Johnathon Xavier and Renato Rosaldo. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2002.

Introduction I am a transmigrant who has moved back and forth between the West and the Rest. I was born and raised in a Muslim family in a predominantly Muslim country, Bangladesh, but I spent several years of my childhood in Pakistan. After my marriage, I lived in the United States for a year and a half, the Middle East for 5 years, Australia for three years, back to the Middle East for another 5 years, then, finally, in Australia for the last 12 years. I speak Bengali (my mother tongue), Urdu (which I learnt in Pakistan), a bit of Arabic (learnt in the Middle East); but English has always been my medium of instruction. So where is home? Is it my place of origin, the Muslim umma, or my land of settlement? Or is it my ‘root’ or my ‘route’ (Blunt and Dowling)? Blunt and Dowling (199) observe that the lives of transmigrants are often interpreted in terms of their ‘roots’ and ‘routes’, which are two frameworks for thinking about home, homeland and diaspora. Whereas ‘roots’ might imply an original homeland from which people have scattered, and to which they might seek to return, ‘routes’ focuses on mobile, multiple and transcultural geographies of home. However, both ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ are attached to emotion and identity, and both invoke a sense of place, belonging or alienation that is intrinsically tied to a sense of self (Blunt and Dowling 196-219). In this paper, I equate home with my root (place of birth) and route (transnational homing) within the context of the ‘diaspora and belonging’. First I define the diaspora and possible criteria of belonging. Next I describe my transnational homing within the framework of diaspora and belonging. Finally, I consider how Australia can be a ‘home’ for me and other Muslim Australians. The Diaspora and Belonging Blunt and Dowling (199) define diaspora as “scattering of people over space and transnational connections between people and the places”. Cohen emphasised the ethno-cultural aspects of the diaspora setting; that is, how migrants identify and position themselves in other nations in terms of their (different) ethnic and cultural orientation. Hall argues that the diasporic subjects form a cultural identity through transformation and difference. Speaking of the Hindu diaspora in the UK and Caribbean, Vertovec (21-23) contends that the migrants’ contact with their original ‘home’ or diaspora depends on four factors: migration processes and factors of settlement, cultural composition, structural and political power, and community development. With regard to the first factor, migration processes and factors of settlement, Vertovec explains that if the migrants are political or economic refugees, or on a temporary visa, they are likely to live in a ‘myth of return’. In the cultural composition context, Vertovec argues that religion, language, region of origin, caste, and degree of cultural homogenisation are factors in which migrants are bound to their homeland. Concerning the social structure and political power issue, Vertovec suggests that the extent and nature of racial and ethnic pluralism or social stigma, class composition, degree of institutionalised racism, involvement in party politics (or active citizenship) determine migrants’ connection to their new or old home. Finally, community development, including membership in organisations (political, union, religious, cultural, leisure), leadership qualities, and ethnic convergence or conflict (trends towards intra-communal or inter-ethnic/inter-religious co-operation) would also affect the migrants’ sense of belonging. Using these scholarly ideas as triggers, I will examine my home and belonging over the last few decades. My Home In an initial stage of my transmigrant history, my home was my root (place of birth, Dhaka, Bangladesh). Subsequently, my routes (settlement in different countries) reshaped my homes. In all respects, the ethno-cultural factors have played a big part in my definition of ‘home’. But on some occasions my ethnic identification has been overridden by my religious identification and vice versa. By ethnic identity, I mean my language (mother tongue) and my connection to my people (Bangladeshi). By my religious identity, I mean my Muslim religion, and my spiritual connection to the umma, a Muslim nation transcending all boundaries. Umma refers to the Muslim identity and unity within a larger Muslim group across national boundaries. The only thing the members of the umma have in common is their Islamic belief (Spencer and Wollman 169-170). In my childhood my father, a banker, was relocated to Karachi, Pakistan (then West Pakistan). Although I lived in Pakistan for much of my childhood, I have never considered it to be my home, even though it is predominantly a Muslim country. In this case, my home was my root (Bangladesh) where my grandparents and extended family lived. Every year I used to visit my grandparents who resided in a small town in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Thus my connection with my home was sustained through my extended family, ethnic traditions, language (Bengali/Bangla), and the occasional visits to the landscape of Bangladesh. Smith (9-11) notes that people build their connection or identity to their homeland through their historic land, common historical memories, myths, symbols and traditions. Though Pakistan and Bangladesh had common histories, their traditions of language, dress and ethnic culture were very different. For example, the celebration of the Bengali New Year (Pohela Baishakh), folk dance, folk music and folk tales, drama, poetry, lyrics of poets Rabindranath Tagore (Rabindra Sangeet) and Nazrul Islam (Nazrul Geeti) are distinct in the cultural heritage of Bangladesh. Special musical instruments such as the banshi (a bamboo flute), dhol (drums), ektara (a single-stringed instrument) and dotara (a four-stringed instrument) are unique to Bangladeshi culture. The Bangladeshi cuisine (rice and freshwater fish) is also different from Pakistan where people mainly eat flat round bread (roti) and meat (gosh). However, my bonding factor to Bangladesh was my relatives, particularly my grandparents as they made me feel one of ‘us’. Their affection for me was irreplaceable. The train journey from Dhaka (capital city) to their town, Noakhali, was captivating. The hustle and bustle at the train station and the lush green paddy fields along the train journey reminded me that this was my ‘home’. Though I spoke the official language (Urdu) in Pakistan and had a few Pakistani friends in Karachi, they could never replace my feelings for my friends, extended relatives and cousins who lived in Bangladesh. I could not relate to the landscape or dry weather of Pakistan. More importantly, some Pakistani women (our neighbours) were critical of my mother’s traditional dress (saree), and described it as revealing because it showed a bit of her back. They took pride in their traditional dress (shalwar, kameez, dopatta), which they considered to be more covered and ‘Islamic’. So, because of our traditional dress (saree) and perhaps other differences, we were regarded as the ‘Other’. In 1970 my father was relocated back to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and I was glad to go home. It should be noted that both Pakistan and Bangladesh were separated from India in 1947 – first as one nation; then, in 1971, Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan. The conflict between Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and Pakistan (then West Pakistan) originated for economic and political reasons. At this time I was a high school student and witnessed acts of genocide committed by the Pakistani regime against the Bangladeshis (March-December 1971). My memories of these acts are vivid and still very painful. After my marriage, I moved from Bangladesh to the United States. In this instance, my new route (Austin, Texas, USA), as it happened, did not become my home. Here the ethno-cultural and Islamic cultural factors took precedence. I spoke the English language, made some American friends, and studied history at the University of Texas. I appreciated the warm friendship extended to me in the US, but experienced a degree of culture shock. I did not appreciate the pub life, alcohol consumption, and what I perceived to be the lack of family bonds (children moving out at the age of 18, families only meeting occasionally on birthdays and Christmas). Furthermore, I could not relate to de facto relationships and acceptance of sex before marriage. However, to me ‘home’ meant a family orientation and living in close contact with family. Besides the cultural divide, my husband and I were living in the US on student visas and, as Vertovec (21-23) noted, temporary visa status can deter people from their sense of belonging to the host country. In retrospect I can see that we lived in the ‘myth of return’. However, our next move for a better life was not to our root (Bangladesh), but another route to the Muslim world of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. My husband moved to Dhahran not because it was a Muslim world but because it gave him better economic opportunities. However, I thought this new destination would become my home – the home that was coined by Anderson as the imagined nation, or my Muslim umma. Anderson argues that the imagined communities are “to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (6; Wood 61). Hall (122) asserts: identity is actually formed through unconscious processes over time, rather than being innate in consciousness at birth. There is always something ‘imaginary’ or fantasized about its unity. It always remains incomplete, is always ‘in process’, always ‘being formed’. As discussed above, when I had returned home to Bangladesh from Pakistan – both Muslim countries – my primary connection to my home country was my ethnic identity, language and traditions. My ethnic identity overshadowed the religious identity. But when I moved to Saudi Arabia, where my ethnic identity differed from that of the mainstream Arabs and Bedouin/nomadic Arabs, my connection to this new land was through my Islamic cultural and religious identity. Admittedly, this connection to the umma was more psychological than physical, but I was now in close proximity to Mecca, and to my home of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Mecca is an important city in Saudi Arabia for Muslims because it is the holy city of Islam, the home to the Ka’aba (the religious centre of Islam), and the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad [Peace Be Upon Him]. It is also the destination of the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islamic faith. Therefore, Mecca is home to significant events in Islamic history, as well as being an important present day centre for the Islamic faith. We lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for 5 years. Though it was a 2.5 hours flight away, I treasured Mecca’s proximity and regarded Dhahran as my second and spiritual home. Saudi Arabia had a restricted lifestyle for women, but I liked it because it was a Muslim country that gave me the opportunity to perform umrah Hajj (pilgrimage). However, Saudi Arabia did not allow citizenship to expatriates. Saudi Arabia’s government was keen to protect the status quo and did not want to compromise its cultural values or standard of living by allowing foreigners to become a permanent part of society. In exceptional circumstances only, the King granted citizenship to a foreigner for outstanding service to the state over a number of years. Children of foreigners born in Saudi Arabia did not have rights of local citizenship; they automatically assumed the nationality of their parents. If it was available, Saudi citizenship would assure expatriates a secure and permanent living in Saudi Arabia; as it was, there was a fear among the non-Saudis that they would have to leave the country once their job contract expired. Under the circumstances, though my spiritual connection to Mecca was strong, my husband was convinced that Saudi Arabia did not provide any job security. So, in 1987 when Australia offered migration to highly skilled people, my husband decided to migrate to Australia for a better and more secure economic life. I agreed to his decision, but quite reluctantly because we were again moving to a non-Muslim part of the world, which would be culturally different and far away from my original homeland (Bangladesh). In Australia, we lived first in Brisbane, then Adelaide, and after three years we took our Australian citizenship. At that stage I loved the Barossa Valley and Victor Harbour in South Australia, and the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but did not feel at home in Australia. We bought a house in Adelaide and I was a full time home-maker but was always apprehensive that my children (two boys) would lose their culture in this non-Muslim world. In 1990 we once again moved back to the Muslim world, this time to Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. My connection to this route was again spiritual. I valued the fact that we would live in a Muslim country and our children would be brought up in a Muslim environment. But my husband’s move was purely financial as he got a lucrative job offer in Muscat. We had another son in Oman. We enjoyed the luxurious lifestyle provided by my husband’s workplace and the service provided by the housemaid. I loved the beaches and freedom to drive my car, and I appreciated the friendly Omani people. I also enjoyed our frequent trips (4 hours flight) to my root, Dhaka, Bangladesh. So our children were raised within our ethnic and Islamic culture, remained close to my root (family in Dhaka), though they attended a British school in Muscat. But by the time I started considering Oman to be my second home, we had to leave once again for a place that could provide us with a more secure future. Oman was like Saudi Arabia; it employed expatriates only on a contract basis, and did not give them citizenship (not even fellow Muslims). So after 5 years it was time to move back to Australia. It was with great reluctance that I moved with my husband to Brisbane in 1995 because once again we were to face a different cultural context. As mentioned earlier, we lived in Brisbane in the late 1980s; I liked the weather, the landscape, but did not consider it home for cultural reasons. Our boys started attending expensive private schools and we bought a house in a prestigious Western suburb in Brisbane. Soon after arriving I started my tertiary education at the University of Queensland, and finished an MA in Historical Studies in Indian History in 1998. Still Australia was not my home. I kept thinking that we would return to my previous routes or the ‘imagined’ homeland somewhere in the Middle East, in close proximity to my root (Bangladesh), where we could remain economically secure in a Muslim country. But gradually I began to feel that Australia was becoming my ‘home’. I had gradually become involved in professional and community activities (with university colleagues, the Bangladeshi community and Muslim women’s organisations), and in retrospect I could see that this was an early stage of my ‘self-actualisation’ (Maslow). Through my involvement with diverse people, I felt emotionally connected with the concerns, hopes and dreams of my Muslim-Australian friends. Subsequently, I also felt connected with my mainstream Australian friends whose emotions and fears (9/11 incident, Bali bombing and 7/7 tragedy) were similar to mine. In late 1998 I started my PhD studies on the immigration history of Australia, with a particular focus on the historical settlement of Muslims in Australia. This entailed retrieving archival files and interviewing people, mostly Muslims and some mainstream Australians, and enquiring into relevant migration issues. I also became more active in community issues, and was not constrained by my circumstances. By circumstances, I mean that even though I belonged to a patriarchally structured Muslim family, where my husband was the main breadwinner, main decision-maker, my independence and research activities (entailing frequent interstate trips for data collection, and public speaking) were not frowned upon or forbidden (Khan 14-15); fortunately, my husband appreciated my passion for research and gave me his trust and support. This, along with the Muslim community’s support (interviews), and the wider community’s recognition (for example, the publication of my letters in Australian newspapers, interviews on radio and television) enabled me to develop my self-esteem and built up my bicultural identity as a Muslim in a predominantly Christian country and as a Bangladeshi-Australian. In 2005, for the sake of a better job opportunity, my husband moved to the UK, but this time I asserted that I would not move again. I felt that here in Australia (now in Perth) I had a job, an identity and a home. This time my husband was able to secure a good job back in Australia and was only away for a year. I no longer dream of finding a home in the Middle East. Through my bicultural identity here in Australia I feel connected to the wider community and to the Muslim umma. However, my attachment to the umma has become ambivalent. I feel proud of my Australian-Muslim identity but I am concerned about the jihadi ideology of militant Muslims. By jihadi ideology, I mean the extremist ideology of the al-Qaeda terrorist group (Farrar 2007). The Muslim umma now incorporates both moderate and radical Muslims. The radical Muslims (though only a tiny minority of 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide) pose a threat to their moderate counterparts as well as to non-Muslims. In the UK, some second- and third-generation Muslims identify themselves with the umma rather than their parents’ homelands or their country of birth (Husain). It should not be a matter of concern if these young Muslims adopt a ‘pure’ Muslim identity, providing at the same time they are loyal to their country of residence. But when they resort to terrorism with their ‘pure’ Muslim identity (e.g., the 7/7 London bombers) they defame my religion Islam, and undermine my spiritual connection to the umma. As a 1st generation immigrant, the defining criteria of my ‘homeliness’ in Australia are my ethno-cultural and religious identity (which includes my family), my active citizenship, and my community development/contribution through my research work – all of which allow me a sense of efficacy in my life. My ethnic and religious identities generally co-exist equally, but when I see some Muslims kill my fellow Australians (such as the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005) my Australian identity takes precedence. I feel for the victims and condemn the perpetrators. On the other hand, when I see politics play a role over the human rights issues (e.g., the Tampa incident), my religious identity begs me to comment on it (see Kabir, Muslims in Australia 295-305). Problematising ‘Home’ for Muslim Australians In the European context, Grillo (863) and Werbner (904), and in the Australian context, Kabir (Muslims in Australia) and Poynting and Mason, have identified the diversity within Islam (national, ethnic, religious etc). Werbner (904) notes that in spite of the “wishful talk of the emergence of a ‘British Islam’, even today there are Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab mosques, as well as Turkish and Shia’a mosques”; thus British Muslims retain their separate identities. Similarly, in Australia, the existence of separate mosques for the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Arab and Shia’a peoples indicates that Australian Muslims have also kept their ethnic identities discrete (Saeed 64-77). However, in times of crisis, such as the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, and the 1990-1991 Gulf crises, both British and Australian Muslims were quick to unite and express their Islamic identity by way of resistance (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 160-162; Poynting and Mason 68-70). In both British and Australian contexts, I argue that a peaceful rally or resistance is indicative of active citizenship of Muslims as it reveals their sense of belonging (also Werbner 905). So when a transmigrant Muslim wants to make a peaceful demonstration, the Western world should be encouraged, not threatened – as long as the transmigrant’s allegiances lie also with the host country. In the European context, Grillo (868) writes: when I asked Mehmet if he was planning to stay in Germany he answered without hesitation: ‘Yes, of course’. And then, after a little break, he added ‘as long as we can live here as Muslims’. In this context, I support Mehmet’s desire to live as a Muslim in a non-Muslim world as long as this is peaceful. Paradoxically, living a Muslim life through ijtihad can be either socially progressive or destructive. The Canadian Muslim feminist Irshad Manji relies on ijtihad, but so does Osama bin Laden! Manji emphasises that ijtihad can be, on the one hand, the adaptation of Islam using independent reasoning, hybridity and the contesting of ‘traditional’ family values (c.f. Doogue and Kirkwood 275-276, 314); and, on the other, ijtihad can take the form of conservative, patriarchal and militant Islamic values. The al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden espouses the jihadi ideology of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian who early in his career might have been described as a Muslim modernist who believed that Islam and Western secular ideals could be reconciled. But he discarded that idea after going to the US in 1948-50; there he was treated as ‘different’ and that treatment turned him against the West. He came back to Egypt and embraced a much more rigid and militaristic form of Islam (Esposito 136). Other scholars, such as Cesari, have identified a third orientation – a ‘secularised Islam’, which stresses general beliefs in the values of Islam and an Islamic identity, without too much concern for practices. Grillo (871) observed Islam in the West emphasised diversity. He stressed that, “some [Muslims were] more quietest, some more secular, some more clamorous, some more negotiatory”, while some were exclusively characterised by Islamic identity, such as wearing the burqa (elaborate veils), hijabs (headscarves), beards by men and total abstinence from drinking alcohol. So Mehmet, cited above, could be living a Muslim life within the spectrum of these possibilities, ranging from an integrating mode to a strict, militant Muslim manner. In the UK context, Zubaida (96) contends that marginalised, culturally-impoverished youth are the people for whom radical, militant Islamism may have an appeal, though it must be noted that the 7/7 bombers belonged to affluent families (O’Sullivan 14; Husain). In Australia, Muslim Australians are facing three challenges. First, the Muslim unemployment rate: it was three times higher than the national total in 1996 and 2001 (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 266-278; Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 63). Second, some spiritual leaders have used extreme rhetoric to appeal to marginalised youth; in January 2007, the Australian-born imam of Lebanese background, Sheikh Feiz Mohammad, was alleged to have employed a DVD format to urge children to kill the enemies of Islam and to have praised martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad (Chulov 2). Third, the proposed citizenship test has the potential to make new migrants’ – particularly Muslims’ – settlement in Australia stressful (Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79); in May 2007, fuelled by perceptions that some migrants – especially Muslims – were not integrating quickly enough, the Howard government introduced a citizenship test bill that proposes to test applicants on their English language skills and knowledge of Australian history and ‘values’. I contend that being able to demonstrate knowledge of history and having English language skills is no guarantee that a migrant will be a good citizen. Through my transmigrant history, I have learnt that developing a bond with a new place takes time, acceptance and a gradual change of identity, which are less likely to happen when facing assimilationist constraints. I spoke English and studied history in the United States, but I did not consider it my home. I did not speak the Arabic language, and did not study Middle Eastern history while I was in the Middle East, but I felt connected to it for cultural and religious reasons. Through my knowledge of history and English language proficiency I did not make Australia my home when I first migrated to Australia. Australia became my home when I started interacting with other Australians, which was made possible by having the time at my disposal and by fortunate circumstances, which included a fairly high level of efficacy and affluence. If I had been rejected because of my lack of knowledge of ‘Australian values’, or had encountered discrimination in the job market, I would have been much less willing to embrace my host country and call it home. I believe a stringent citizenship test is more likely to alienate would-be citizens than to induce their adoption of values and loyalty to their new home. Conclusion Blunt (5) observes that current studies of home often investigate mobile geographies of dwelling and how it shapes one’s identity and belonging. Such geographies of home negotiate from the domestic to the global context, thus mobilising the home beyond a fixed, bounded and confining location. Similarly, in this paper I have discussed how my mobile geography, from the domestic (root) to global (route), has shaped my identity. Though I received a degree of culture shock in the United States, loved the Middle East, and was at first quite resistant to the idea of making Australia my second home, the confidence I acquired in residing in these ‘several homes’ were cumulative and eventually enabled me to regard Australia as my ‘home’. I loved the Middle East, but I did not pursue an active involvement with the Arab community because I was a busy mother. Also I lacked the communication skill (fluency in Arabic) with the local residents who lived outside the expatriates’ campus. I am no longer a cultural freak. I am no longer the same Bangladeshi woman who saw her ethnic and Islamic culture as superior to all other cultures. I have learnt to appreciate Australian values, such as tolerance, ‘a fair go’ and multiculturalism (see Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79). My bicultural identity is my strength. With my ethnic and religious identity, I can relate to the concerns of the Muslim community and other Australian ethnic and religious minorities. And with my Australian identity I have developed ‘a voice’ to pursue active citizenship. Thus my biculturalism has enabled me to retain and merge my former home with my present and permanent home of Australia. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, New York: Verso, 1983. Australian Bureau of Statistics: Census of Housing and Population, 1996 and 2001. Blunt, Alison. Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home. 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Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid. "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>. APA Style Kabir, N. (Aug. 2007) "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>.