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The Forum > Article Comments > Double standards over diversity > Comments

Double standards over diversity : Comments

By Paul Frijters and Tony Beatton, published 19/2/2007

There is a deplorable tendency among social scientists to blunt their critical rigour.

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Right on mate . We don't value our own past but we value anothers. perhaps its partly about the cringe factor( http://cringenomore.blogspot.com ) . We don't take ownership of what's ours . Maybe you need to factor guilt and projection into the datasets .
Great scoping work, but we've only just started to cut the surface on the sacred and a more truly scientific approach to it. Hope to see you all on blogs
Posted by sirhumpfree, Monday, 19 February 2007 9:36:51 AM
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Very annoying, very lazy article.

On the issue of aboriginal health, the key question is not whether conditions for indigenous Australians have improved, rather whether they have improved as much as for non-indigenous Australians. In 1900, Australian male life expectancy at birth was 55.2 years, whereas today it’s around 78 years. http://www.aihw.gov.au/mortality/data/life_expectancy.cfm

However the life expectancy for indigenous males remains at the non-indigenous population’s 1900 levels. At a human level, it doesn’t matter how you define indigenous for the purpose of these statistics. The fact that we have a group in our society who live shorter, less healthy lives should be ringing alarm bells. Instead we have Frijters and Beatton ignoring the human misery behind these numbers while they quibble about definitions. Good one guys.

On the issue of the benefits of diversity, Leigh’s article doesn’t claim that diversity is universally good for a society. On the contrary, he brings rigorous data to support the view that there are some disadvantages. All F&B seem to be able to take issue with is his anodyne observation that ethnic cuisines enrich our lives. I suspect that a rigorous study on their part might reveal that the causes of obesity are more related to improvements in transport and food processing, which make our favourite food items easily and permanently available.

Linking the rise in obesity to the increased availability of ethnic foods looks to me like one of the classic logical traps – a confusion of coincidence with cause.

Before F&B start lecturing others about intellectual rigour, they need to apply a bit of it to themselves.
Posted by w, Monday, 19 February 2007 10:22:54 AM
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I find it a significant concern when a paper on a topic starts out with an acknowledgement to the currently acceptable views on that topic.

Gone is any sense of serious questioning of those underlying beliefs.
If the paper thens comes out in support of those views then it's all to easy to assume that it is because the authors never seriously questioned those views.

I much prefer the authors who have in their conclusions a statement along the lines of "The first two results run counter to conventional wisdom and to the hypotheses with which we began the paper." http://www.fact.on.ca/Info/dom/heady99.htm

R0bert
Posted by R0bert, Monday, 19 February 2007 10:44:01 AM
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I haven't read the original article, and I agree that precision in the social sciences is always difficult to obtain. But I raised my eyebrows at the present authors' comments about food. Nothing in the culinary literature would support the notion that England knew 100 different ways of cooking parsnips a century ago. Indeed, English writers on food, few as they were, seemed to think that there were only a few ways to do anything, and expressed surprise that the French had so many different recipes for eggs, for example. My first 'ethnic' meal was in 1954, at a Chinese restaurant in a country town, and I discovered real (not canned, ie) pasta in an Italian restuarant in Sydney the next year. But there were very few restaurants then anyway. We ate at home, mostly because few could afford to do anytthing else. The diversity of food available now flows not only from immigration but from higher incomes. Eating out, and eating fatty/sweet takeway food, are no doubt connected to obesity, but I can't see how one would connect it to the diversity of ethnic restaurants.

And I'd be glad to know where 'w' has gained knowledge of Aboriginal death rates a century ago. I'm not aware of any such statistics.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Monday, 19 February 2007 10:47:28 AM
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The trouble is the Australian for at least a decade has become an empty opinion rag which unlike the millions of blogs online kills trees to inform us of nothing.

The article misunderstands the anthropological dimension of Australian society. Away from the jingoism, the skin head chant of 'oi, oi , oi', the need to view ourselves as a cartoon parody manufactured by media the cultural difference between the house holds of siblings is as great as the cultural difference between migrants , the indigenous and 5th generation Australians.

We all possess a commonality in that we come together in mutual understanding to create law, to communicate , to form relationships and to trade. Nothing can take away diversity, even in communist Russia and fascist Europe ethnicity and diversity survived. As long as everybody goes about their buisness as themselves diversity will prevail.

Anglo culture of the 19th century brought with it survival responses from source communities , many things became irrelevant to daily life. Both indigenous and migrant people of the past responded to their environment to survive. Technology and circumstances have changed and survival strategies have also changed. The fact that Indigenous Australians on the whole have been hard done by is a symptom of the failure of our political system to deliver what Australian communities such as the Indigenous community need and want. The way Indigenous Australia has been treated reflects the way the migrant community since 1788 have competed for resources and then shared resource gains.
Posted by West, Monday, 19 February 2007 11:33:21 AM
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We bought a parsnip yesterday. Seems like a pretty commonsense assertion to say you can't get them any more.

My understanding is that less physical activity and more highly processed food combine with the intake of Maccas and KFC to make a big contribution to obesity. Maccas and KFC are foreign imports too.

A couple of hundred years ago when indigenous life expectancy was 30 (according to the article this is a best estimate, which isn't very precise) Aboriginal people were not living in modern society and weren't expected to. What was the average life expectancy of Anglo-Australians at the time? It certainly wasn't 80.

Social science works with real life, which is diverse, messy and imprecise. The alternative is to put us all into pigeon hole categories and move even further away from the truth
Posted by chainsmoker, Monday, 19 February 2007 1:07:02 PM
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Don, I guess my use of the word “remains” implies that I have some knowledge of indigenous mortality rates in 1900, but that implication was unintended.

Rather than re-phrasing what I was trying to say, here’s how it is formulated in the Health and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples 2001 report:

In the period 1997–99, the life expectancy at birth for the Indigenous
population was estimated to be 56 years for males and 63 years for
females. In contrast, the life expectancy at birth for all Australians was
76 years for males and 82 years for females. The 1997–99 Indigenous life
expectancies are similar to life expectancy for the total male population
in 1901–1910, and for the total female population in 1920–22
(ABS 1999b)
http://www.aihw.gov.au/publications/ihw/hwaatsip01/hwaatsip01-c08.pdf

I am not aware of any relevant data for indigenous mortality in 1900, though I agree it would be extremely useful.
Posted by w, Monday, 19 February 2007 4:59:59 PM
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W

I agree with your sentiments and I am not only annoyed at this lazy argument, I am also ashamed of it. We have succeeded to undermine the sense of self worth of our aboriginal communities to the point that they are now dying due to lack of self care. Despite the fact that our white medical technology exists, aborigines die due to illness which would keep most of us in bed for no more than a week. We need to admit that as far as the Tasmanian aborigines are concerned we have in effect committed genocide. As European's we brought a strain of the common cold to Tasmania which swept through their communities in a matter of months, killing every last Tasmanian aborigine. This article only goes further to supporting the type of attitudes which translates into the emotional abuse encountered by aborigines in Australia. I judge people by the way they treat those who they do not have to treat well. I didn't know that people think this way. I am now beginning to see why aboriginal are still dying despite all government efforts.
Posted by vivy, Monday, 19 February 2007 5:06:30 PM
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W

Thank you: this is helpful information and a good source, though it doesn't quite make the point you originally set out. There are too many variables in all of this to enable us to point to single or even two causes of any condition in the population.
Posted by Don Aitkin, Monday, 19 February 2007 6:09:41 PM
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What an hilarious article. The headline should have been "Where have all the parsnips gone?" or "100 intricate ways with parsnips" or, wait, how about "Immigrants made me fat"?

:-D

Obesity has surged since immigration levels surged...what's your point? We've had two world wars and a Great Depression since women got the vote, have Frijters and Beatton got anything to say about that?

I mean, really. I can buy parsnips up the road from my Chinese greengrocer. Is Frijters and Beatton's speculation that there "might well have been 100 intricate ways to cook a parsnip" itself "based on anything more than gut feeling?"

Here's a novel idea to run past you - if you can't buy parsnips locally, maybe it's because there's so little demand for parsnips because, well, parsnips kinda suck, and after I tried the 99th intricate way of cooking them, I got bored. Maybe I should have tried for that elusive 100th intricate way, huh?

Still, that's market forces for you. Why don't you start a parsnip appreciation society and see how many members you get?

I love turning these arguments back on the skinheads...now let's see, what epithets can I hurl over this latest effort? First, this is Australia, mate, and if you don't trust our ethnic diversity, and if you feel closer to your Anglo-Saxon heritage than you do to your Australian hosts, then why don't you go back to Merrie Olde England?

In fact, if you left our diverse community, you'd help to make it less diverse, so by your own arguments you'd be doing us all a favour. We'd be very thankful.

Let's all marry our cousins and then we'll see whether or not there are benefits to diversity.

Just sayin', is all.
Posted by Mercurius, Monday, 19 February 2007 6:39:53 PM
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The points about irrational thinking raised in the article are very apt. They are similar to the inconsistency in the argument that the first european settlers shouldn't have come here, but modern illegal immigrants for some reason are entitled to come.

Much of the criticism of other posters is based on the old marxist maxim that everyone has to have the same outcome, regardless of cicumstances. The fact that aboriginal life expectancy has doubled since settlement is ignored because it is still less than the non-aboriginal figure, even though it could be said that the non-aboriginal figure has similarly doubled since settlement.

Much of the methodology behind this is based on a famous quote from Konrad Henlein in the 1930s:

"We must make demands that cannot be satisfied".

To be satisfied would be to admit that there was no more need for you political activity. Those who prefer the medium to the message can never admit that.
Posted by plerdsus, Monday, 19 February 2007 8:28:10 PM
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The points about irrational thinking raised in the article are very apt. They are similar to the inconsistency in the argument that the first european settlers shouldn't have come here, but modern illegal immigrants for some reason are entitled to come.

Much of the criticism of other posters is based on the old marxist maxim that everyone has to have the same outcome, regardless of cicumstances. The fact that aboriginal life expectancy has doubled since settlement is ignored because it is still less than the non-aboriginal figure, even though it could be said that the non-aboriginal figure has similarly doubled since settlement.

Much of the methodology behind this is based on a famous quote from Konrad Henlein in the 1930s:

"We must make demands that cannot be satisfied".

To be satisfied would be to admit that there was no more need for your political activity (or job). Those who prefer the medium to the message can never admit that.
Posted by plerdsus, Monday, 19 February 2007 8:29:17 PM
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Frijters and Beatton want to know why "we" don't bemoan the "loss of diversity within Anglo-Saxon heritage"...it's because loss of diversity is meat and drink to nationalists. Loss of diversity is what gives nationalist movements strength. English nationalists didn't bemoan the loss of diversity because they deliberately set out to destroy that diversity. Or, across the Channel, as Charles de Gaulle once said, "nobody can simply bring together a country that has 365 kinds of cheese".

Ernst Gellner (no Marxist, he) made a fairly sound case to show that the founding of modern nation-states depends upon the erasure of localised village/provincial differences into an homogenised national identity that spans considerable geographic distance.

This is how the national identities of England, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, US, and all the great nations were formed.

To anybody for whom nation-states represent the sine qua non of human society, the pinnacle of human organisation beyond which we cannot progress, then diversity is to be regarded with suspicion and anxiety, since diversity attempts to reassert the simple humanistic liberal values of individual difference.

But for anybody who thinks that monolithic compulsory identification with a nation-state leads to, as George Orwell put it, a "boot stamping on human face, forever", then diversity, the assertion of individual will and preferences, has its attractions...
Posted by Mercurius, Monday, 19 February 2007 8:56:18 PM
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I think it has become patently obvious that multiculti was a spectacular failure. As for our aborigines, clearly the best thing for them is to be taken away from so-called "aboriginal culture" the moment they are born!
Posted by Neokommie, Tuesday, 20 February 2007 1:51:09 AM
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Neokommie,
If opinions like yours are still held by people in positions of authority, or even by one joe blog on the street, I can see why the aborigines are still dying.
Thank you for airing views that are responsible for genocide. It is good to know the nature of the idiocy aborigines are up against.
Posted by vivy, Tuesday, 20 February 2007 6:04:59 AM
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While there are those who are in despair and it is the end of the world because we have bonded our fortunes to the dinosaur industry of coal extraction. As some see it we are to painfully switch to flourescent lights. Water restrictions visciously punish those poor battlers with swimming pools and hot tubs. The price of the rare turnip rises. The petrol peak means the days of drag racing and burnouts are numbered. Has the Indigenous culture which has survived failed? Is it really multiculturalism that has failed? It appears it is our western culture which has hit the fan.

We will get our diversity back , when a couple of drought forced famines have us inventing a hundred ways of cooking weedy desert turnips. The same recipes that will in a few hundred years fill the plates of decadent restaurants in post pollution Australia.
Posted by West, Tuesday, 20 February 2007 11:35:41 AM
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Ah Mercurius, you're a funny beggar.

We bought our parsnip at the local corner shop where they keep the parsnips right next to the turnips, just where they've always been in the root vegetable category. We were happy to satisfy the kids' curiosity about those white carrots, but drew the line at turnips.

I'd like to see the much maligned brussels sprout resurrected as a decent vegetable. They're only horrible if you boil them to death, an unfortunate habit we learned from our multicultural British ancestors.

Neokommie, if you don't like Australian society you can always leave. Siberia is apparently nice at this time of year and there won't be too many bothersome people around to upset you. How about the moon?
Posted by chainsmoker, Tuesday, 20 February 2007 4:27:57 PM
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Memo to Frijters and Beatton:

Colonisation of this continent without treaty = Apples.
Subsequent immigration by lawful programmes = Oranges.

You can't seem to grasp this elementary point, yet off you go comparing apples and oranges to try and make some point about diversity, and then you see fit to lecture the rest of us about misuse of data.

Missing the point much?

PS - Agree chainsmoker: I like Brussel Sprouts, but I only know 2 intricate ways of cooking them. One involves a wok, which I know is a shocking abrogation of my Anglo-Saxon heritage, but if you don't like my brussel sprouts, you can leave too ;-)
Posted by Mercurius, Tuesday, 20 February 2007 8:46:22 PM
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There's so much abstration and crap in this piece that
I'm not going to even bother.
Published by who else. The Australian.
Posted by Rainier, Tuesday, 20 February 2007 10:01:35 PM
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I whole-heartedly agree with Fritjers (Hi Paul) and Beatton that more rigorous questioning of taken-for-granted views, beliefs, presumptions and their logics would enhance the quality of debate in the social sciences and elsewhere. But I am not so sure whether this questioning would lead to more convergence or divergence.

As the responses show, it can be child’s-play to point out overlooked common-sense presumptions in any text (and it helps keep social scientists in business). Of course, what we choose to question at any one time can only ever be partial and invested in selected problems, so we are always open to accusations of bias. If we’re aiming for impartiality, the best we can do is cover off the obvious ones and hope no-one twigs to (or cares about) the others or, failing that, we don’t engage with people whom we know would object.

The thing is it’s unlikely we’re always going to agree on the 'correct' logic or standards for rigorous questioning. As you know, one person's rigour is often another's travesty – like the hot, tired debates over economic presumptions about human nature or the relative value of 'gold standard' quantitative versus 'rich' qualitative data in the social sciences. And that's not even getting into the philosophical quagmire on questions about 'truth'.

Pointing out logical inconsistencies in our universal assertions, as you do, is one method for scrutinising social or theoretical ‘givens’ but it is not the only one (Foucault or historians provide other examples). And I agree with those who argue that the ways we question are themselves necessarily founded in particular understandings of what ‘impartiality’ and ‘rigour’ can and ought to be. We just can’t get away from taking an a priori stand somewhere. Which is not to say that engagement is unproductive across all these barricades, far from it. It’s just that we might be less confused when we can’t get everyone, finally, to agree with us.
Posted by KFisher, Tuesday, 27 February 2007 2:32:08 PM
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