A ‘Governance Lunches’ Learning Communities Journal issue:

Dear Governance Lunchers and Writers

1.  We have talked to a number of publishers about a book on Governance research issues in Northern Australia – the topic of our lunch time discussions
2. We have decided that the best place to start would be a special edition of the Learning Communities Journal, which tells the story of our discussions, and provides the opportunities for people to publish articles which put a particular governance angle on our individual research projects.
3. We hope that articles and excerpts from the special edition may find their way into a book which will be framed up in collaboration with an interested publisher.
4. At this stage we expect that the title of the special edition would be something like: ‘Governance in Northern Australian Communities: Learning from Sharing Experience as Researchers’.
5. The LCJ edition will be introduced with an editorial, talking about how the group came to be, and how it unfolded, including the writing of our ‘one-pagers’, the blog, the discussions and transcriptions.
6. If you would like to part of this writing exercise here are your instructions:

o   Revisit your one pager.

o   You might be interested to read the attached short article ‘Understanding Localism’ (see below). You might want to think if and how your work fits into the frame for analysing policy which this paper sets up.

o   Helen will pull together a final paper thinking about governance and localism.

o   Your task would be to write about 2-3000 words expanding upon the original paper in which tell the story of how your understanding of your work has changed over the past year, how changing forms and understandings of governance (for example the announcement of the IAS and its application process) have changed your and your work.

o   Look at the transcriptions of what you and others have said, and think about how our ideas have come together and separated

o   If you have a draft ready by the end of February, Helen will be available in Darwin for two weeks to work with you personally on developing your draft in terms of the overall themes emergent in the volume

o   If you don’t have a one-pager, now is the time to start.

o   Helen will be available to help you structure your writing in a way which might appeal to the reviewers.

7. We would like to continue the lunchtime discussions into the future, but from now on without the recording and transcriptions.  Michaela will be diverting her attention to her post doc, so we are hoping someone from one of the other groups within the NI will be happy to take over the coordination, maybe with a new focus.

‘Understanding Localism’

Evans, Marsh, Stoker (2013) Understanding Localism

In this paper, Evans Stoker and Marsh outline three different types of localism – managerial, representative and community. As we revisit our 1-pagers, we may like to consider our work in relation to these categories.

Here are some comments that Helen Verran sent through following the discussion of our last meeting (6th November, 2014).

I’ve really enjoyed listening to the accounts that have been given to today’s meeting and it reminds me that in varying ways many of us work across the ‘imagined’ boundary between services delivery and research.  What we’ve heard today reminds us of how artificial that boundary is because irrespective of being ‘researchers’ or ‘services delivery personnel,’ in being involved with the social-political-cultural endeavour of governance in Northern Australia in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, we are participants in a national scale experiment in governance as the IAS administrative framework is gradually extended from the top down, being tinkered with here and there, in the process.  This is rather similar (but on a larger and grander scale) to the experiment in environmental policy that started up in the mid to late 1990s in Victoria and spread unevenly (in both time and space).

So I wonder do we have a sort of ‘found comparison’ here in juxtaposing the recent past of the shifts in governance in Australian environmental policy as the arena shifted to environmental services as the core object of governance, with emergent Indigenous Australia policy?  For example I am reminded of the recent paper that Allan’s group circulated tracking the flows and ebbs of changes in environmental policy frameworks that emerged from the Australian centres of government…

I am beginning to think that following this experience with the IAS collectively in our meetings for at least the next few months—which are recorded and transcribed we remind you. Will this become an important topic in publications that emerge from our discussions?

There’s particular questions there for me… One is this: do you all as university based practitioners  of governance, think and or talk about the common institutional distinction between research and services delivery? The distinction is important to the University, and distinguishes a university as an institution working in the social-political-cultural arena of governance in Northern Australia from other national level institutions.

This question is one which we may begin with next meeting… please feel free to post any thoughts here, and to be thinking about your response  as the basis for our next lunchtime discussion (Thurs 11th Dec).

If you would like to write a post for the blog, just click on the link below and follow the prompts.

WRITE A POST

Posts may be to do with questions which have arisen in group discussion, challenges arising in your work, changes in policy, upcoming events, provocations to the group etc, etc, etc.

Please include a title; and if you hit the ‘add media’ button on the following page you’ll be able to upload images or documents from your computer and add them to you post.