Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Kim Scott's Benang: Monstrous (Textual) Bodies, Lisa Slater

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

In Kim Scott’s Benang, bodies in excess of, or incompatible with, assimilationist and eugenicist discourse, narrate and make sense of their world. Scott has composed a novel that opens up a space to affirm and re-articulate subjectivities, and hence challenge the fantasy of a uniform civic body. Although he is the body who mediates the plurality of stories, his voice does not synthesise heterogeneous stories into a unified and coherent whole. Instead, Harley’s narrative— like his performance— creates a meeting place where diverse and multifarious stories are articulated. Scot t introduces the reader to Harley as a hybrid, floating being:

The Veneer Is Radical, The Substance Is Not, Evan S. Poata-Smith

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Ranginui Walker's history of the Maori struggles for tino rangatiratanga (self-determination) was first published during New Zealand’s sesquicentennial year. The 150th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi provoked intense public debates around issues of nationhood and the place of the Treaty of in managing contemporary relationships between Maori communities and the Crown.

Regulating The Power Shift: The State, Capital And Electricity Privatisation In Australia, Damien Cahill, Sharon Beder

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

In 1990, British political economist Grahame Thompson observed:

“One of the most remarkable features of the ‘conservative turn’ experienced in the UK since 1980 is the paradoxical emergence of extensive reregulation of economic activity in a period supposedly typified by drastic deregulation” (Thompson, 1990: 135).

Thompson’s comments point to one of the central, but least understood, contradictions of neo-liberalism: that a system which is justified on the premise o f a withdrawal of state intervention in the economy has entailed an active role for the state in its implementation and maintenance. This article examines the realities of neo-liberalism in practice …

Regulating Dogs, Goats, Companions And Their Humans 1898-1998: Modern To Post-Modern Pets?, Fiona Borthwick

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Franklin and White (2001) present the results of a content analysis on animal-related stories in the Tasmanian newspaper, The Mercury, over the period 1949-1998. The research was designed to test the thesis presented in Franklin's (1999) earlier publication. In summary, Franklin (1999) links the characteristics of a post or late-modern society, ontological insecurity, misanthropy and risk-reflexivity with their manifestations in animal-human relations. Based on Franklin's, and others, research pet owners are creating much more specific sentimental connections with their dogs and cats. This contrasts with how dogs and cats are regulated increasingly as a threat in need of control. In …

Europe And Refugees: A Sparrow's Eye View, Alastair Davidson

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This chapter contrasts Australian and European policies and attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers, and suggests that underlying European attitudes there is a stronger sense of social decency, based on a longer and deeper historical perspective. A detailed examination of European treatment of refugees and asylum seekers would be more critical of European treatment, but compared with Australia's, European refugee policy does not appear so bad. While it is easy to point at figures like Le Pen or the late Pym Forteyn as examples of European failure, the difference between Australia and Europe is summed up in the Human Rights …

Indigenous Diaspora And Literature, Kimberley Mcmahon-Coleman

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Alootook Ipellie is an Inuk writer whose work can be read as diasporic, dealing as it does with issues of transculturation. Diaspora is fundamentally concerned with complex notions of home, belonging and exile. Within the Indigenous context, the situation becomes even more complicated, for when Indigenous peoples were forcibly removed from their familial locations, they crossed traditional borders, even whilst remaining within the modern nation-state. As Noelene Brasche argues, the forced displacements of Indigenous peoples "infringed traditional boundaries ... Territorial or national groups who previously had little or nothing in common now shared experiences of dispersal and loss of sovereignty, …

Environmental Decision Making: Emerging Conceptualisations Of Uncertainty And Precaution, Fern Wickson

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

In contrast to traditional 'risk-based' approaches to environmental decision making, this paper identifies the emergence of approaches based around the process of negotiating uncertainties. I begin by presenting different typologies of uncertainty before offering a synthesis conceptualisation of 'incertitude'. I then consider the theoretical literature on how decision making processes can develop to confront the challenges of different forms of incertitude and highlight the distinction between applying a precautionary principle and adopting a precautionary approach. Through doing so, this paper presents some emerging trends in the conceptualisation and stance adopted towards the uncertainties inherent in environmental decision making.

Australia's Environmental Regulation Of Genetically Modified Organisms: Risk And Uncertainty, Science And Precaution, Fern Wickson

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Any organisation or institution charged with the objective of regulating the deliberate environmental release of genetically modified organisms so as to ‘protect the environment’ will face the difficult task of decision making in the face of a debate where the meaning of ‘the environment’ and what it takes to ‘protect it’ are contested. While the tool of risk analysis has traditionally been employed as an aid for environmental decision making in regards to new technologies, through a review of the social science literature on risk and uncertainty in environmental decision making this paper highlights the limitations associated with adopting this …

The Beating Of Rodney King: The Dynamics Of Backfire, Brian Martin

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police provides rich case material in how an attack perceived as unjust can backfire. Drawing on nonviolence theory, an original framework is developed to analyze attacks as potential backfires that are usually, but not always, inhibited. Attackers can use a variety of methods to inhibit backfires, including covering up the attack, devaluing the target, reinterpreting the events, using official channels, and using intimidation and bribery. Writings on the Rodney King beating include evidence on the use of each of these methods. Studying the backfire process offers improved understanding on how to …

The Student And New Left Movements, Anthony Ashbolt

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

For some years now, the 1960s have been contested terrain. Many-commentators have rushed to specious judgements about the radical politics of the era, while others have struggled valiantly to keep memories alive. Much of the politics of the contemporary epoch is being played out through the lens of the sixties. This seems like a grand and perhaps foolish claim but it needs to be understood that the neo-liberal and/or neoconservative agenda (and I will include hawkish foreign policy in this) is substantially directed at burying the sixties, the radical sixties. The gains of the various social movements, in particular the …

Death, Decline Or Atrophy? The Necessity Of Politics, Anthony Ashbolt

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

While thinking about the contemporary state of politics, it is very difficult to shake off a recurring image from the brilliant television series A Very Peculiar Practice. In that show, a wonderful aging character was writing a book about the parlous state of higher education in Great Britain. 'Death of the University' muttered Jock into a portable tape recorder, between swigs of Scotch, as he wandered around campus despairing at the shattered values and distorted priorities of the new university. Jock spoke for all of us who care about education. I hope to be speaking to all of us who …

Review: A Time For Choosing: The Rise Of Modern American Conservatism, Anthony Ashbolt

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The steady rise of the radical Republican right as an electoral force since the mid 1960s is an intriguing, albeit chilling, feature of contemporary politics. What was once considered fringe and unacceptable, to the point where Goldwater was decimated by Johnson in 1964, has now become mainstream. We now have an administration that compels National Parks bookstores to stock a book which argues that the Grand Canyon is only 4500 years old, being the result of the global flood described in Genesis. This reflects both the persistence of fundamentalist beliefs in ordinary Americans and a dramatic transformation in American political …

Alternative Solutions: Multiculturalism And The Struggle For Hegemony In Australian Community Broadcasting, Robert Carr

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

‘Who listens to community radio anyway?’ This has undeniably been the most common response to my investigations of the history of community radio in Australia. However, for those involved in the establishment of 3ZZ Radio in Melbourne, their struggle was about more than broadcasting to their own cultural and linguistic communities. It had a greater social significance, and would change the nature of the Australian broadcasting sector. The history of 3ZZ Radio is an indicator of the social context in which it is set; that is, 1970s Australia. Its rise and plummet out of existence between 1974 and 1977 reflects …

Benjamin Constant: From The Age Of War To The Age Of Commerce, Gregory C. Melleuish

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Benjamin Constant was a distinguished liberal thinker whose continuing fame rests on his differentiation between ancient and modern liberty. In making this distinction Constant was attempting to demonstrate that the values which had actuated the ancient Greeks and Romans, and which many of the most extreme players in the French Revolution had attempted to emulate, were no longer relevant in the modern world. For Constant the Revolution had demonstrated that the values of ancient liberty were positively harmful when applied to modern politics. In this Constant was following Montesquieu and his view that 'sweet commerce', as manifested in the regime …

Kim Scott's Benang: An Ethics Of Uncertainty, Lisa Slater

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The narrator, Harley, of Kim Scott’s novel Benang, suggests that he is writing “the most local of histories” (10). However, he also questions what it is that he is writing—“What was it? A family history? A local history? An experiment? A fantasy?” (33). Furthermore, throughout the novel, Harley worries that his “little history” might be resuscitating racist discourse. The questions that Harley raises regarding what it is he is writing parallel Scott’s concerns with problems of style, genre and frame. The colonial ideology of assimilation was disseminated through writing, which informed non-Indigenous people’s knowledge of and relationships to Indigenous people …

Report On The International Conference: 'Mobile Communications And Health: Medical, Biological And Social Problems', Sept 20-22 2004, Moscow, Russia, Donald Maisch

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This conference report summarizes the research, views, disagreements, recommendations and conclusions of the above conference, with the author's comments on the apparent editing and changing of the final press release compared to what was stated or agreed at the conference.

Introduction - A Turbulent Decade: Social Protest Movement And The Labour Movement, 1965-1975, Rowan Cahill

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The Conference, 'Social Protest Movements and the Labour Movement, 1965-1975', was held in Sydney on September 22-23, 2001. It took place eleven days after Muslim militants crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Centre in New York and into the Pentagon, and nine days after the Australian government, in consultation with the United States government, invoked relevant provisions of the ANZUS treaty equating an attack on the US as an attack on Australia's peace and safety. Australia was heading for military involvement in a war against the hapless, impoverished nation of Mghanistan - a war that US President George W. …

Inverse Invasions: Medievalism And Colonialism In Rolf Boldrewood's 'A Sydney-Side Saxon', Louise D'Arcens

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Rolf Boldrewood’s forgotten 1894 novel, A Sydney-Side Saxon, merits reexamination as a fascinating nineteenth-century medievalist vision of Australian national identity. The novel’s vision of pastoral Australia depends on idiosyncratic notions of Saxon and Norman ethnicity derived from Scott’s Ivanhoe. While Scott’s portrait of post-conquest England dramatizes the ethnic and political conflict between Norman conquerors and subjected Saxons, Boldrewood consistently presents Norman and Saxons as two complementary sides of an English ‘type’ that is perfectly fitted to achieve the colonial settlement of Australia. Boldrewood’s racialized vision of England’s medieval past informs not only his novel’s celebration of colonial meritocracy in Australia, …

Getting Over Post-Election Blues, Brian Martin, Lyn Carson

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

For many, it was a one-two punch: the October 2004 re-election of the Howard government in Australia followed a month later by the re-election of George W. Bush. Many expressed disappointment and demoralisation. US liberal magazine The Nation conveyed this feeling on the cover of its post-election issue with a picture of a cloudy night sky and the words ‘four more years’. Meanwhile, commentators have written endless post-mortems and recommendations for ‘next time’.

Aotearoa - New Zealand, Evan S. Poata-Smith

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

“Race relations” and the place of the Treaty of Waitangi as a blueprint for nation building were very much at the forefront of the national political agenda in 2004. The broad political consensus shared by both National and Labour-led governments in New Zealand over the past decade collapsed in the wake of the soaring political popularity of Don Brash, the new leader of the National Party, the main opposition political party in the New Zealand Parliament.

The legitimacy of policy initiatives and programmes that specifically target Mãori in order to reduce the relative socio-economic disparities that exist between indigenous communities …

Corporate Propaganda And Global Capitalism - Selling Free Enterprise?, Sharon Beder

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This chapter examines the way in which capitalism has been underpinned by a self-conscious propaganda campaign on the part of the world’s major corporate powers. Corporations have used a variety of propaganda techniques not only to dominate markets but also to attempt to monopolise the realm of ideas where dissent and alternate voices might be heard (Beder 2002; Ewen 1996). The rise of corporate propaganda since the 1970s has been particularly aimed at selling the idea of free, unregulated business enterprise and an accompanying policy agenda that facilitates the expansion and spread of global capitalism. Ideas associated with the maintenance …

The End Of Indenture? Asian Workers In The Australian Pearling Industry, 1901–1972, Julia Martinez

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The historical circumstances which led to the end of the indentured labor trade suggest that its abolition was only partially the result of humanitarian concern for the welfare of workers. It was the development of nationalism, both in sending and receiving countries, that prompted a rethinking of the racialized labor organization of indenture. In Australia, the introduction of the White Australia policy in 1901, with its restrictions on non-white immigration and employment, is usually thought to coincide with the abolition of the indentured labor trade. But the Australian pearl-shelling industry continued to employ indentured Asian workers up until the 1970s. …

Italo-Australians During The Second World War: Some Perceptions Of Internment, Gitano Rando

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The entry of Italy into the second world war brought considerable disruption to the over thirty thousand strong Italian Australian community whose presence was seen by the Australian authorities as a serious potential threat to national security. About 4,700 mainly male Italian Australians were incarcerated in internment camps while women and children were left to fend for themselves in a highly hostile environment. Although a significant social-historical phenomenon, very few and at best highly partial studies (such as Bosworth and Ugolini 1992, Cresciani 1993, Martinuzzi O’Brien 1993, 2002, in press) have been produced on the subject. Many Italian Australians, however, …

Tales Of Internment: The Story Of Andrea La Macchia, Gaetano Rando

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Relates the plight of one Italian migrant, Andrea La Macchia, who arrived in Australia in 1940 only to be caught up in the events following Italy's entry into the war by being interned for nearly three years. His story is placed in the general context of the internment experience.

William Forster And The Critique Of Democracy In Colonial New South Wales, Gregory C. Melleuish

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The introduction of what have termed 'democratic' regimes into mid nineteenth century Australia in the form of the granting of responsible government to the Australian colonies has been treated in recent times as an unproblematic process. The quasi-official version of political development in the colonies, as found in the Discovering Democracy civics education programme sponsored by the Commonwealth government and expressed in the textbook written for the programme by Dr John Hirst, is that this was the first stage on the road to 'real' democracy in Australia, the final stage of which will be the establishment of an Australian republic. …

Private Schooling As A Way Of Life, Anthony Ashbolt

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Warning become self-fulfilling prophecies in the hands of a mass media trained in the art of disguising publicity as news. For many years, news about public or private schools or both, has often signalled doom, on the one hand, and infinite variety and riches, on the other. The story is familiar, so familiar as to be tiresome. Lazy journalists, ever at the ready for a slightly new angle, beef up the latest statistics and, quelle surprise, another front page news item emerges. Thus the Sydney Morning Herald educational writers tell us once again of the drift towards private schools.

Latham Had It Right, Anthony Ashbolt

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

While Tony Blair's war on civil liberties has been checked by the British Parliament, Labor in Australia fails to challenge the threat to democracy which the terrorism legislation represents. Instead, Kim Beazley is happy to declare that Labor is with Mr Howard in "the war on terror". That is somewhat remarkable, given that Mr Howard sees the invasion of Iraq as part of "the war on terror".

Antipodean Wanderer In The Mediterranean, Melissa Boyde

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The opening image of the writer as a young girl in Australia putting together jigsaw pieces to form an image of antiquity is a metaphor for what happens in Diana Wood Conroy’s book The Fabric of the Ancient Theatre. Midday. The car drove off and I was left alone at the site of old Paphos. The place seemed oddly familiar – perhaps the light reminded me of the jigsaw puzzle of the Mediterranean coast that I had so obsessively put together as a child, and then scattered to be reassembled again. The book gathers together a range of experience, reading, …

Art And Advocacy: Mary Alice Evatt In The 1930s And '40s, Melissa Boyde

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

On her return to Australia from Europe in 1939, Mary Alice Evatt remarked in an interview for the Australian Women s Weekly that paintings devoted to gum trees, sheep, koalas and misty seascapes were the only Australian works selected to hang in World Fair Art Exhibitions. In addition she derided the decision makers who overlooked Australia's modernist, experimental artists, many of whom were women: 'if only those in authority were to select the paintings of Australian artists who prefer creation to photography, and were less overawed by official selection bodies, Australia might find a worthy place on the art map …

Myths, Traditions And Mothers Of The Nation: Some Thoughts On Efua Sutherland’S Writing, Tony Simoes Da Silva

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Focusing in some detail on three of her plays, this paper addresses the work of Efua Theodora Sutherland, arguably one of Ghana’s foremost literary figures, and one of Africa’s most influential dramatists. Specifically, the paper proposes that in spite of a considerable body of critical work devoted to her writing, she remains surprisingly little known outside the specialist fields of African literature, and indeed even theatre. I will then seek to relate this assertion to her status as a woman writer in Africa, and to the challenges her conflation of traditional African cultural forms and Western dramaturgy create. Sutherland incorporates …