Rethinking the Narrative of Mars Colonisation

Posted on Thursday, 26 March, 2015Tuesday, 23 April, 2019 by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

Biologist Dr D. N. Lee has been doing an amazing job educating on how enthusiastic narratives of “colonising” Mars are problematic. On her Twitter, Lee notes that the dominant ways of talking about colonisation add to the marginalisation of under-represented minorities in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). If we want to make science more inclusive, we need to better understand how the stories we tell about STEM may exclude and damage under-represented groups we are trying to support.

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Migrants in Australia

Posted on Wednesday, 18 February, 2015Tuesday, 23 April, 2019 by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

Australia is home to the oldest continuous culture in the world, that of Indigenous Australians, and our society also houses one of the highest migrant populations in the world. Australia encompasses over 300 migrant ancestries, with migrants and their children making up half of our population. I’ve just launched a new video series called Vibrant Lives, which explores some of these diverse cultures and the various meanings of multiculturalism in Australia. I’ll focus on different minority groups, as well as covering community events, religious festivals, art exhibitions and community organisations around Melbourne. This post provides some sociological context for my first video on migrant-Australians.

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Share the Spirit: Survival Day 2015

Posted on Monday, 26 January, 2015Friday, 6 September, 2024 by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

The 26th of January is Australia Day and a national holiday. Various events happen all over Melbourne, but some of these recognise that this day raises important issues about Indigenous culture in Australia. Protests over colonialism have been ongoing since Europeans settled in Australia in 1788. On the 26th of January 1938, 150 years after the decimation of Indigenous people began, William Cooper (leader with the Australian Aboriginal League) together with Jack Patten and William Ferguson (the Aboriginal Progressive Association) declared the first “Day of Mourning,” a day recognising the history of colonial violence and dispossession. Survival Day events represent the resilience and contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who collectively make up the world’s oldest, continuous culture.

I attended the Share the Spirit festival, hosted by Songlines Music. This event has been running at the Treasury Garden since 2002. Together with similar events in Sydney, Perth, Adelaide and elsewhere, they are amongst the biggest Indigenous cultural events in Australia. Continue reading Share the Spirit: Survival Day 2015

Repealing Racial Protections

Posted on Tuesday, 13 May, 2014Tuesday, 26 May, 2026 by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

Two hands hold up a sign that says: STOP RACISM

The Australian Government is proposing to remove legal protections against racial abuse. This will make it easier for overt racial discrimination to flourish.

‘White Supremacy Is Not An Attitude… It’s a Question of Power’

Posted on Friday, 4 April, 2014Monday, 25 May, 2026 by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

Kwame Ture (AKA Stokely Carmichael) is a young Black man speaking at a podium with many microphones. He has a short Afro and wears a trenchcoat. He has his fist in the air in the Black power sign

“Some groups in this country, talking all sorts of nonsense, will make you think that white supremacy is a sickness, is a ‘this,’ is a ‘that.’ White supremacy, as far as we’re concerned, just means we’re powerless. That’s all. White supremacy is not an attitude, it’s not a sickness, it’s a question of power. If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he has the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. But as long as I have the power to stop the white man from lynching me, him wanting to lynch me is his problem, and it can remain his problem forever. So the only reason the white man can lynch me is because I am powerless.”
Kwame Ture (previously known as Stokely Carmichael)

Two Out of Five Migrants Experience Racism

Posted on Monday, 31 March, 2014Thursday, 21 May, 2026 by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

A massive crowd of walking people dressed in coats and scarves

An Australian study by philosophy Professor Andrew Markus finds that 40% of migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds have been subject to racism. This is an increase of 19% from six years a go. The groups who reported highest level of abuse include: people from Malaysia (45%), India and Sri Lanka (42%), Singapore (41%), Indonesia (39%), and China and Hong Kong (39%). The national average for experiences of racism was 12%.

Visual Science: Maps and Other Representations of Culture and History

Posted on Thursday, 20 February, 2014Friday, 6 September, 2024 by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

Visuals can shape world views – but not always for the better. Portuguese anthropologist João Figueiredo shared an example how an entrepreneur announced at a conference that Portugal is the centre of the Earth because of his country’s position on a map he presented. This idea is, of course, scientifically incorrect. Unfortunately, this did not stop this notion from being integrated into a Portuguese Government marketing campaign. Maps are factual, so they can’t be political, right? Not so. Maps are created by people and they carry the history of cultures and political ideologies. In this post, we’ll look at the culturally loaded notions of North and South on visual maps, and other representations of science in evolution and science presentations, that have strong cultural authority, even though they are incorrect.

Day of Mourning

Posted on Friday, 31 January, 2014Tuesday, 23 April, 2019 by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

Day of Mourning – Australia Hall, Sydney, 1938. Protest of 150 years of colonialism.

On 26 January [1938], as Australia celebrates the 150th anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove, Indigenous Australians attend a Day of Mourning and Protest in Sydney. The mourners wait for the sesquicentenary procession to pass, then march in silent protest from the Sydney Town Hall to an Australian Aborigines Conference at the Australian Hall. The Australian Aborigines’ League and Aborigines Progressive Association of New South Wales use the meeting to speak out about the denial of civil rights for Indigenous Australians. The protest is the culmination of years of campaigning by Aboriginal leaders including William Ferguson, William Cooper and John Patten. Patten and Ferguson circulate a pamphlet, Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights.

Top photo via Indigenous Rights. Document and quote via Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House.

The Surprising Cultural History of New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on Thursday, 2 January, 2014Tuesday, 23 April, 2019 by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

By Zuleyka Zevallos, PhD

In a fun rummage through vintage sociology, I found an interesting study by Isidor Thorner. Writing in 1951, he used a survey of Americans from various backgrounds to determine the relationship between New Year’s Resolutions (NYR) and Protestant values. Below I take a look at the major findings of Thorner’s study, exploring the historical and cultural variations of resolutions.

Protestant culture highly valued the idea of being in full control of one’s emotions. This meant being organised and denying oneself frivolous pursuits so as to be free to fulfil religious duty. Not adhering to these strict values brought about great personal shame.

Thorner argues that the New Year’s resolutions helped Protestants to manage their emotional baggage, and that over time, this practice lost its religious connotation and spread more widely.

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Reverse Racism is Not Real

Posted on Tuesday, 3 December, 2013Monday, 25 May, 2026 by Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

A white hand holds a "reverse Uno" card, which shows two arrows pointing in opposite ends

Bangladeshi Australian comic Aamer Rahman humorously shows the problem with the idea of “reverse racism.” Sociological research bysociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and colleagues backs up the idea behind his comedy, by showing the paradoxical beliefs held by white people who think they have been the victims of reverse racism: first, that racism is no longer a problem; second, that minorities get special privileges that are unfair, and which disadvantage white people.