12 Aug 2023

Bullying Culture: Understanding bullying in schools and workplaces

Professor Valerie Braithwaite is internationally recognised for her work on how people adapt when their institutions fail to address their needs, hopes and fears. Her studies extend across a range of controversial issues, including school and workplace bullying, where laws and regulations have provided only a partial solution to social problems. Her published books include “Defiance in Taxation and Governance” and “Hope, Power and Governance”, and she has co-edited and contributed to many other publications including “Shame Management through Reintegration”, “Trust and Governance”, “Regulating Aged Care” and “Anomie and Violence”. -

While most of us have not directly experienced the pain of serious bullying, we all know of someone who has. As a society we are genuinely horrified by stories of people whose lives have been destroyed by bullying. We have heard enough of them from schools, children’s residential homes, youth detention centres, refugee detention centres and workplaces. Introducing laws against bullying was thought by many to be the answer, to set a standard for behaviour, to hold people accountability and most importantly to stop bullying. But laws need to catch on, and anti-bullying laws have not reached deep enough into the culture to do the job expected of them.

This film complements the many anti-bullying programs for schools and workplaces through explaining the social and psychological dynamics that contribute to a bullying culture and what must happen to break that culture. To stop bullying, change needs to happen at a very fundamental level in how we relate to each other. Stopping bullying becomes everyone’s responsibility.