Had the opportunity today to go for a Phd candidate's pre-fieldwork seminar - he's in our department. From my mates tell me here, the first year is normally spent on preliminary research and your proposal, then you will present a pre-fieldwork seminar where everyone who is working on your broad area (in this case, Indonesia) will be invited to critique and comment on your methodology etc. Then you go out to do your fieldwork for slightly more than a year, and then another year+ or so writing your thesis. If you don't have the relevant language (i.e. in this case, Bahasa Indo) you spend another year or so doing intensive language courses in ANU and also in Indonesia before everything begins.
So Velix Wanggai's thesis is on Indonesian decentralisation: Ideas, Power and Policy-Making from 1998 to 2006. During the Soeharto era, power was concentrated mainly in Jakarta but since his resignation, there has been a great impetus to hand over power (e.g. over resources) back to local governments. Some say this has promoted democratisation, but others contend that these new arrangements have been hijacked by the "old" elites for essentially the same purposes as before, e.g. rent-seeking would be major one. But I do agree with Velix that most studies on decentralisation so far has been focused on implemenation - i.e. the focus becomes on political parties. So far, there has not been much on the role of ideas, the role academics, bureaucrats, think-tanks etc play. People were then commenting on whether is it plausible to draw such a tight dichotomy between ideas / knowledge and interest, or if they are really two mutually reinforcing things. Hmm anyway, was a good eye-opener.
On another note, I had quite a big shock when I found out that I was invoiced nearly $2000 higher than what I'd have expected to pay this semester. Some of my friends had no increase, one of them had an increase. I've never known that the school fees would increase because the policy has been that you pay the same school fees annually as the year that you first entered, i.e. for me 2004. I suspect the system stuffed-up our records, as most people didn't have an increase. But it's pretty distressing and I haven't heard from the International Centre yet.
3 days before i leave Canberra, 4 days to Singapore!