Scott Sharpe | UNSW - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Scott Sharpe

Australia is one of the world’s most urbanised countries, with 90% of its population residing in ... more Australia is one of the world’s most urbanised countries, with 90% of its population residing in cities and towns. Sydney and Melbourne alone have populations with over 4 million; and by 2030 this figure is expected to reach 6 million. Australia is vulnerable to food supply shortages and inequalities, especially in cities. Its ability to feed itself, alongside its share of the global population, is already challenged, and this is expected to become even more so given population growth trends. A 2010 Senate inquiry into food security and the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC) have both drawn attention to these issues. These reports identified that Australia already imports much of its food supply, and a “just in time” supply chain from global producers to local supermarkets is vulnerable to global shocks in production and distribution. The combined impacts of global warming, soil erosion, desertification, drought and population increase are also sig...

This paper outlines the development of a Work Integrated Learning (WIL) program for introduction ... more This paper outlines the development of a Work Integrated Learning (WIL) program for introduction into courses run by the Division of Environmental and Life Sciences (ELS) at Macquarie University. It explores the conceptual learning framework that underpins the approach, and supports such a learning environment. It reviews best practise models from across the world to initiate the development of a program with real stakeholder ownership and a structured curriculum framework that defines the expected learning outcomes for all students. The elements common to successful WIL programs are noted. Potential strategies addressing learning and managerial issues associated with WIL placements detail the way forward for the Division of ELS and possibly the wider university

cultural geographies, 2019

From a commonsense perspective, an outburst of laughter appears to demonstrate little more than a... more From a commonsense perspective, an outburst of laughter appears to demonstrate little more than a lack of subjective will; it certainly does not register as having political significance. Yet, this is also to render the political in commonsense terms. As the emerging body of literature on the question of the micropolitical suggests, there is, beneath the essentially representational sphere of macropolitics, a micropolitics of affective force. In exploring the political potential of eruptions of laughter, I argue that grasping the novelty of the micropolitical requires that we shift debate away from the scalar questions of large and small, towards the distinction between the ordinary and the singular. Untoward laughter, by protracting the process through which affective force crosses a threshold of perception and becomes remarkable, draws attention to the micropolitics of everyday life. In pursuing this argument, first, I draw on the work of Helmuth Plessner to make a case for the fu...

Dialogues in Human Geography, 2018

tasa.org.au

In early 2009 Quadrant's Keith Windschuttle was caught out having accepted for publication a... more In early 2009 Quadrant's Keith Windschuttle was caught out having accepted for publication a fraudulent piece of academic research, a hoax which aimed to reveal the hypocrisy of Windschuttle's lofty rejections of 'ideological'history as fraudulent scholarship. ...

Borderlands, 2009

ABSTRACT With almost a decade having passed since the spectacular protests of Seattle, it seems t... more ABSTRACT With almost a decade having passed since the spectacular protests of Seattle, it seems timely to evaluate the meaning and significance of the mass actions that have come to be associated with the &#39;anti-globalisation movement.&#39; According to some critics, the movement must urgently re-evaluate its aims, its past successes and chances of making a difference to the future. But judgments of the movement have predictably operated at the level of ideals and ideology, according to the moral determination whereby bodies are at the behest of consciousness. The paper offers a less moralistic reading of the mass actions, arguing that they can be more fruitfully evaluated with an eye to the openness of bodily encounters. In doing so, we revisit Spinoza&#39;s ethical determination of the relationship between bodies and ideas, which goes beyond the illusions of consciousness in order to open up new powers for the body and thought. An ethical evaluation of the mass actions explores their potential to express joy, but also cautions against the forms of sadness to which our habits of thinking may lead. In a book that remains something of a staple for anti-globalisation activists, Paul Kingsnorth (2003) enjoins the movement and the public at large to be bold in their imaginings of an alternate future and dogged in their attempts to realise it. What is needed, Kingsnorth (2003: 331) insists, &#39;is vision, bravery, political will, a willingness to confront those who benefit from injustice.&#39; In this paradigmatic formulation of the task of political action it is consciousness and will that are placed at the fore. The problem (injustice) calls for a consciousness of what is and a plucky imagining of what could be, combined with a collective discipline of the will. Such idealism is also a moralism, as a sense of what ought to be the case determines how

cultural geographies, 2014

ABSTRACT Contributing to cultural geography&#39;s emerging interest in the work of Felix ... more ABSTRACT Contributing to cultural geography&#39;s emerging interest in the work of Felix Ravaisson, this article explores the relationship between the impersonal force of habit and the personalised production of subjectivity. More precisely, our concern is with the relationship between habit and the stylisation of self that can be witnessed in the production of the intellectual subject. Paying particular attention to the relationship he traces between habit, consciousness and the effort that defines subjectivity, we explore the implications of Ravaisson&#39;s understanding of habit for the work of style, understood as an integration of habits and dispositions into a manner of being. By exploring the question of intellectual style in the work of Alain Badiou, Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche, we consider what the implications might be of performing that task of integration lightly, without the lofty weightiness that often attends intellectual life.

Geographies of Global Issues: Change and Threat, 2015

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2015

Continuum J Media Cult Stud, 2007

Contributing to cultural geography's emerging interest in the work of Felix Ravaisson, this artic... more Contributing to cultural geography's emerging interest in the work of Felix Ravaisson, this article explores the relationship between the impersonal force of habit and the personalised production of subjectivity. More precisely, our concern is with the relationship between habit and the stylisation of self that can be witnessed in the production of the intellectual subject. Paying particular attention to the relationship he traces between habit, consciousness and the effort that defines subjectivity, we explore the implications of Ravaisson's understanding of habit for the work of style, understood as an integration of habits and dispositions into a manner of being. By exploring the question of intellectual style in the work of Alain Badiou, Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche, we consider what the implications might be of performing that task of integration lightly, without the lofty weightiness that often attends intellectual life.

Performance Research, 2014

The International Journal of Children's Rights, 2007

Rethinking Marxism, 2014

ABSTRACT Throughout their research, and most explicitly with their work on the concept of affect,... more ABSTRACT Throughout their research, and most explicitly with their work on the concept of affect, J. K. Gibson-Graham think about our capacities and potentialities—the “visceral intensities” that accompany politics—without falling into a moralistic or purist critique of limiting powers. They refuse to dismiss as trivial or marginal those everyday economic ventures that cannot be measured against the yardstick of capitalism but that nonetheless extend capacities in unpredictable ways. Through interviews conducted with both Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham, this paper examines the immanence of potentiality in Gibson-Graham's theoretical arguments and research practices. It also examines a less recognized, though crucial, dimension of their work: the place of impotentiality in thinking and practice. Impotentiality is poorly understood as a merely negative incapacity. An analysis of both thinkers' reflections on their own research practices demonstrates that our impotentiality enables us to live and think in ways that are more than reactive.