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Intellectual History Commons

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Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Intellectual History

New Light On 'How Labour Governs': Rediscovered Political Writings By Vere Gordon Childe, Terry Irving Jan 2014

New Light On 'How Labour Governs': Rediscovered Political Writings By Vere Gordon Childe, Terry Irving

Terence H Irving, Dr (Terry)

This article uses four rediscovered political essays by Gordon Childe to revise certain accounts of his political thought in the period when he was writing 'How Labour Governs' (1923). It shows that he was not a syndicalist; that he would not be hostile 'to a real Labor government'; that he had not renounced working-class politics; but that he was concerned about the negative effects of Labor's obsession with capturing the state on working class solidarity.


Esmonde Higgins - Politics As Intellectual Practice, Terry Irving Jan 2014

Esmonde Higgins - Politics As Intellectual Practice, Terry Irving

Terence H Irving, Dr (Terry)

This chapter traces Esmonde Higgins' struggle to define his intellectual practice from 1919 to 1954, using his private correspondence and his published writings. It divides his reflections into three parts: alienation, practice, and contradictory aspects of practice.It describes his route from Communist bureaucratic practice to having conversations 'about human interests' with workers as equals in adult education classes and informal domestic gatherings.


Class Structure In Australian History - Poverty And Progress, Terry Irving, Raewyn Connell Jan 2014

Class Structure In Australian History - Poverty And Progress, Terry Irving, Raewyn Connell

Terence H Irving, Dr (Terry)

First published in 1980, this book is an updated and reorganized account of the history of the class structure in Australia. A new chapter discusses the period 1975-1991, and there is a new theoretical chapter introducing the reader to modern debates about class. Separate sections for documents and photographs support the narrative. Extensive notes provide a guide to research literature.


Labour Intellectuals In Australia: Modes, Traditions, Generations, Transformations, Terry Irving, Sean Scalmer Jan 2014

Labour Intellectuals In Australia: Modes, Traditions, Generations, Transformations, Terry Irving, Sean Scalmer

Terence H Irving, Dr (Terry)

The article begins with a discussion of labour intellectuals as knowledge producers in labour institutions, and of the labour public in which this distinctive kind of intellectual emerges. Next we construct a typology of the three modes of labour intellectual that were proclaimed and remade from the 1890s (the 'movement', the 'representational', and the 'revolutionary'), and identify the broad historical processes (certification, polarization, and contraction) of the labour public.


The Southern Tree Of Liberty - The Democratic Movement In New South Wales Before 1856, Terry Irving Jan 2014

The Southern Tree Of Liberty - The Democratic Movement In New South Wales Before 1856, Terry Irving

Terence H Irving, Dr (Terry)

Responsible government began in New South Wales after two decades of radical democratic agitation. Radical intellectuals from England, Ireland, Scotland and Europe mobilized the working men and women of the colony to resist the aristocratic form of government proposed by pastoralists and city capitalists. There was violence on the streets and goldfields, and some notable electoral victories. As 'a great fear' gripped the local elites the British government forced them to accept a more liberal form of representative government in the belief that this would placate the democrats and keep the colony safe for British imperial needs.


Challenges To Labour History, Terry Irving Jan 2014

Challenges To Labour History, Terry Irving

Terence H Irving, Dr (Terry)

The decline of the labour movement in the 1980s and 1990s robbed labour history of its elan as 'history with a social purpose', and the rise of postmodernism devalued the attempt by labour historians to grasp social reality as a whole. Today there is a commonly expressed feeling that labour history is experiencing a crisis. The first three essays in this volume are historiographical; then four essays engage with the challenges posed by post-modernism and cultural theory; and finally four essays present examples of the ways in which theoretical reappraisals can shape the writing of labour history.


Rediscovering Radical History, Terry Irving Jan 2014

Rediscovering Radical History, Terry Irving

Terence H Irving, Dr (Terry)

This article examines aspects of the connection between radical history and labour history in Australia. It begins by resurrecting the forgotten history work by intellectuals in the labour movement from the 1880s to the 1950s, and the conservative attacks on radical history in the 50s and 60s. It continues by highlighting the early attempts to keep this radical tradition alive among labour historians, and concludes by criticising Robin Gollan's failure to distinguish popular democracy from the democratic possibilities of representative government.