RUCTA Research Themes
- Urbanisation in Asia
- Environment, resource management and the migration of labour in Asia
- Work, consumerism, leisure, tourism: impact of technological change
- Asian corporate governance
- Development and technology in the abolition of poverty
- The internet in Asia: revitalisation or death of cultural variety?
- Human rights in Asia
(The leader of each research team is displayed in bold)
Urbanisation in Asia
( Prof. Zenon J Pudlowski, Director, UNESCO International Centre for Engineering Education, Faculty of Engineering ; Dr Andrew Olszewski, Program Director, UNESCO International Centre Engineering Education, Faculty of Engineering; Professor Marika Vicziany, Director, Monash Asia Institute)
India and China, and other Asian countries, are experiencing rapid urbanisation which is putting pressure on how existing cities can be made more liveable. There is also pressure on engineers, economists and other professionals to educate themselves about the needs of the new cities that are growing up and whether an appropriate pattern of urbanisation might not be developed in a manner less antagonistic to rural lives and realities than in the past. Engineering, social, environmental and economic solutions are needed to deal with the massive demand for urban opportunities. This research team will investigate a series of experiments with reconciling these problems and ask whether there are lessons to be learnt from these. The focus will be on particular cities in Asia e.g. Mumbai, Singapore, Shanghai and Chengdu.
Environment, resource management and the circulation of labour in Asia
( Dr Penny Graham, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts ; Professor Nigel Tapper, Head, School of Geography, Faculty of Arts, Deputy Director Monash Environment Institute, Joint Coordinator Monash Atmospheric Science Program; Mr James Garza, PhD student, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts; Dr Bruce Missingham, Rural and Regional Australia Project, Faculty of Arts and Research Associate of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Monash Asia Institute; Dr David Mitchell, Research Associate Faculty of Medicine and Research Associate of Anthropology, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts).
In the late 1990s, cultures and technologies came together in attempts to monitor and mitigate life-threatening environmental events such as El Nino drought, fire and haze across much of Southeast Asia. Modes of natural resource extraction through mining, forestry and plantation industries are implicated in these and other major environmental threats and challenges. So too are the movements of people that these events and industries instigate and the consequent new socio-cultural formations that are emerging in migration streams and the human settlements they generate. In addition there is growing realisation that traditional knowledge of the environment and environmental variability can provide new scientific understandings and that sensitive recognition of this traditional knowledge can assist the adoption of appropriate technologies (eg drought forecasting, appropriate use of fire in the environment). This research group will develop further understanding of traditional knowledge systems amongst Indonesian farming communities and explore ways to harness this through the adoption of appropriate modern technologies. It will also seek to explore how tensions emerge when local knowledge and experience do not mesh with the claims of corporate capitalism and local/national governments to manage resource extraction projects for the greater good.
Work, consumerism, leisure and tourism: the impact of technological change in Australia, Malaysia and Singapore
(Dr Wendy Smith, Department of Management, Faculty of BusEco; Dr Helen Johnson, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts; Dr Christopher Baker, National Centre for Australian Studies).
Technological change in the workplace impacts on the way work is organised, the intensity of the work experience and career outcomes for employees. The workload severity, career stability and incomes generated by the technology variable in the modern workplace impact on consumer behaviour (including tourism), leisure activities and levels of fun in daily life. These are significant problems in all developed industrial societies, but Asia provides a novel focus for examining these issues, as many employees are engaging in industrial wage labour, or professional managerial roles as the first generation members of their families to do so. Moreover, in many Asian societies, issues of daily cultural practice, especially religious observances and gender differences, have a greater impact on regimes of work and leisure. This research team will focus on three societies of the Asia/Pacific region which share the common feature of multi-ethnicity and the penetration of high levels of technological change in their systems of production and consumption, yet which represent different areas of the continuum in terms of the maturity of experience of modern organizational employment by members of their labour markets.
Asian corporate governance
(Professor On Kit Tam, Department of Management, Faculty of BusEco; Dr Russell Smyth, Department of Economics, Faculty of BusEco)
Corporate governance performance is a critical factor to the continuing success of the modern firms competing in the globalised market economies. The Asian economic crisis has exposed some serious corporate governance problems among countries in this region. Reform of corporate governance arrangements and practices is seen as a key to achieving sustainable growth. This research team will investigate the extent and effects of establishing effective corporate governance standards and practices in selected Asian economies from the business, economics, and legal, perspectives.
Development and technology in the abolition of poverty
(Professor Mark Wahlqvist, Asia Pacific Health and Nutrition Centre, Monash Asia Institute; Professor Marika Vicziany, Director, Monash Asia Institute; Associate Professor Robin Pollard, Faculty of Information Technology; Dr. Pushkar Maitra, Department of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics)
The Asian region continues to be defined as an area of mass poverty: India has an estimated 400 million people living below the poverty line and China about 100 million. Significant poverty exists also in other countries, including amongst indigenous Australians. Poverty is created or exacerbated by ill health, malnutrition, lack of information, and systems of hierarchy, which make it difficult to escape from cultures of poverty. Information Technology has the capacity to break some of these boundaries by providing the poorest of the poor with essential information about proper diets, better job opportunities and how to create self-employment. This team will focus on a range of projects in the Asia-Pacific region that seek to address these problems, including projects in Arnhemland and Alice Springs.
The internet in Asia: revitalisation or death for cultural variety?
( Associate Professor Alison Tokita, Faculty of Arts ; Associate Professor Jim Breen, Faculty of IT ; Dr Lijian Hong, Asian Studies and Languages, Faculty of Arts)
There is extensive debate in Asia about the role of the internet, who should and can control it, and its cultural, political and economic impact. In the PRC government seeks to control the internet and related e-mail services to prevent public access to sensitive cultural and political information in order to prevent civil society from developing challenges to the one party state. Despite this, internet cafes are booming - even in relatively remote parts such as southern Yunnan. In Japan, a much more politically open society, the Internet caf' seems to have acquired a life of its own. It is a cyber version of the conventional caf', providing a site where (especially) young people can experience not so much social interaction, as private time away from family and work. In India, the internet cafes are fast replacing the convention of discussing politics and reading aloud from newspapers in urban and rural coffee shops. The political context of the internet differs throughout the Asia-Pacific region, but certain concerns are common to all the cultures in the region. Will the internet create a social space which threatens the traditional family? Will it create political cultures that undermine conventional politics? Will the internet be the cultural equivalent of Macdonalds and become the purveyor of American values? Or will the internet in Asia create local cultural content, strengthen regional diversity and enhance political maturity?
Human rights in Asia
(Professor David Kinley, Faculty of Law and members of the Castan Centre for Human Rights )
The purported universality of human rights is one of the most important, if often overlooked, features of globalization. In Asia, more than any other place, the foundations of such universality are open to question. It is indeed the only region without a regional human rights instrument of any kind. Further, many of the principal controversies within human rights discourse are conspicuously played out in the region, catalysed, in no small measure, by the extraordinarily diverse economic, social, cultural, religious and legal traditions of the states and peoples in the region. In the context of Asian circumstances, this module will focus on the interplay between development and human rights; the cultural relativity/universality of human rights debate; the human rights responsibilities of corporations, and nation-state sovereignty and international humanitarian intervention and human rights, refugees and displaced persons. By focusing on these issues, the intention will be to identify both the dynamics demark the current human rights debate in Asia and how human rights protection and promotion will develop in the region in future.