Displaying results 1321 to 1330 of 2610.

Solomon Islands string figures: from field collections made by Sir Raymond Firth in 1928-1929 and Christa de Coppet in 1963-1965 »

Publication date: 1978

Published Press Archives http://press.anu.edu.au/node/3091 1885_114960.jpg ANU Press Solomon Islands string figures: from field collections made by Sir Raymond Firth in 1928-1929 and Christa de Coppet in 1963-1965 Friday, 18 August, 1978 Not available Archive Scholarly Information Services Maude, H

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Episodes of old Canberra »

Publication date: 1978

The history of Canberra goes back long before today{u2019}s Y-shaped city of sprawling brick veneer suburbs began to take shape. Episodes of Old Canberra traces links with Nelson{u2019}s victory at Trafalgar, the Napoleonic wars and the England ofGeorgian times. It tells how pioneers explored the area and their contacts with the Aborigines, how squatters came and the convicts stole to live. This lively text is enhanced by many illustrations linking present day Canberra with the past.

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Crisis of command: Australian generalship and the Japanese threat, 1941-1943 »

Publication date: 1978

How good or bod was the performance of Australian military commanders in World War II? Controversy over this has continued ever since the end of the war. Australia entered the war with seriously deficient defence planning. The armed services were inadequately trained and had little equipment. Australia's strategic assessments were deficient or inaccurate. It is against this background that the achievements and failures of the commanders are assessed in the Papua New Guinea campaigns - bloody battles fought against a determined enemy in a savagely difficult terrain. Great as these difficulties were that commanders in Papua New Guinea faced worse ones from Australia: General MacArthur, the supreme commander, ignorant of the conditions under which the troops were fighting, continually interfered with the command of General Blarney, the Australian Commander-in-Chief. He played a significant role in relieving Generals Powell and Allen of their commands. His actions were supported by the Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin, who was equally ignorant of the conditions under which the battles were being fought and who was convinced that MacArthur was always right. This book draws on material never before available, including diaries and correspondence of both civilian and military participants, to present a challenging interpretation of Australian military history that is outstandingly significant.

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The pack of Autolycus »

Publication date: 1978

The tantalising title of this book derives from Shakespeare{u2019}s Autolycus, that engaging scoundrel who snapped up any 'unconsidered trifles'. A.D. Hope describes his traffic, like that of Autolycus, as being 'in sheets', and the sheets as being the results of his curiosity and speculation over many years of exploring the corners and byways of literary history. The books that aroused Hope{u2019}s curiosity range wide and far over time, from Beowulf to Kangaroo. He is, for example, intrigued by variations on the theme of Venus and Adonis as presented by Ovid, Titian and Shakespeare; he responds to the spell of Wuthering Heights and Emily Bronte and to the challenge of Tennyson{u2019}s attitude to women in The Princess; he brings a poet{u2019}s sensitivity to understanding the apocalypse of Christopher Smart. Readers who appreciate wit, intelligence, knowledge and understanding will value these essays.

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"This sin and scandal": Australia's population debate, 1891-1911 »

Publication date: 1978

'This Sin and Scandal' is a study of the agitated response of some sections of the public to the sharp fall in the birth rate around 1900. Women began to take an initiative in contraception and the size of families decreased dramatically from seven children or more in 1891 to an average of four for women who began childbearing in 1911. After 1890 the birth rate fell by 50 per cent and never recovered and net immigration dried to a trickle. This fall in population growth and the economic depression alarmed some of the established interests in Australia, not only because it affected economic prospects but also because it threatened their moral certainties. Leaders of industry and commerce, doctors and clergy, reacted as if vice were rampant and contraception was ruining the moral fibre of the nation. This book analyses opinions about the peopling of Australia between 1890 and 1911 and assesses the so-called 'evidence' that was available, showing the small relation opinion bore to the evidence. It discusses the 1903 New South Wales Royal Commission on the Decline of the Birth Rate which it shows to have been far more an ideological exercise than a rational inquiry. 'This Sin and Scandal', though an important source of new insight for students of Australian political, social and economic history, will appeal also to the lay reader. It is wittily written with a dry humour and recalls vividly the 'populate or perish' scares of the past - and, to judge from recent political utterances, perhaps of the near future.

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Pacific Islanders under German rule: a study in the meaning of colonial resistance »

Publication date: 1978

This is an important book. It captures under one cover the German approach to her Pacific colonies and the Islanders' responses to the Germans. It is the first detailed study of Samoans, Ponapeans and New Guineans under German rule. It is thoroughly researched, well documented, and written in a readable, yet thoroughly scholarly style. It draws on techniques of anthropology and ethno-history, in addition to formal historiographical analysis, to reveal new insights into the nature of Islander resistance to and protest against German imperial rule. It casts aside the old assumptions that colonised peoples always resisted - to the death, if necessary - the coming of white colonisers, and instead argues, convincingly, that the Islanders' responses to the Germans were more subtle, more profound and more dependent upon traditional social structures and leadership than hitherto has been acknowledged. It does not shy away from major blunders by the German colonial administration in the Pacific, yet, at the same time, it acknowledges the remarkable vision and insight into Island cultures shown by some German administrators.

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Regional planning in New South Wales and Victoria since 1944 with special reference to the Albury-Wodonga growth centre »

Publication date: 1978

The first part of the book reviews the development of regional planning authorities and policies in New South Wales and Victoria since 1944, with respect to the regional components of statutory planning and policies concerned with decentralisation, regional growth centres, system cities and satellite towns. The involvement of the Commonwealth Government in the field of regional planning is also examined. The second part of the book discusses the Albury- Wodonga growth centre, which was instituted as a joint Commonwealth-State project in 1973. The development of the growth centre is analysed to the end of 1977 and problems facing its future expansion are also discussed.

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The economic constitution of federal states »

Publication date: 1978

This book provides a new way of looking at the old problem of the assignment of powers in federal structures. A federal state is, by definition, one in which there exists two or more jurisdictional levels between which authority over domains of public policies has to be assigned. In Canada, for example, the provinces have been given exclusive jurisdiction over education; currency and international trade are assigned to the federal government; and both levels have concurrent authority in agriculture. Furthermore, in Canada, as in all federal states, the assignment of powers changes over time in an almost continuous way. The theory developed in this book suggests that the total amount of resources - defined in the broadest possible way - used up in running the public sector varies with the way powers are assigned to different jurisdictional levels; or, to put it differently, varies with the degree of centralization in the public sector. The absorption of resources for the purpose of running the public sector - to be distinguished from resources absorbed in the supply of the public policies themselves - takes four forms; resources used up by citizens to signal their preferences to governments, or to move from one jurisdiction to another; and those used up by governments to administer themselves, and to co-ordinate their activities. Two basic models are examined. In one, the assignment of powers which uses up the smallest amount of resources is analysed. In the other the assignment which is produced by politicians and bureaucrats operating within the framework of representative governments is studied. The two models are applied to the particular problems posed by redistribution and stabilization powers. A new approach to inter-jurisdictional grants derived from the basic theory is also suggested.

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Political participation: a discussion of political rationality »

Publication date: 1978

Published Press Archives http://press.anu.edu.au/node/2807 1885_115142.jpg ANU Press Political participation: a discussion of political rationality Friday, 18 August, 1978 Not available Archive Scholarly Information Services Benn, Stanley

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On economic man: an essay on the elements of economic theory »

Publication date: 1978

On Economic Man is a speculative essay upon the adequacy of the traditional assumptions about economic behaviour that underlie the bulk of economic theory and much of the thinking of economists about basic policy issues: the assumptions that men are self-regarding, rational, and well-informed. The author recognises that both in theory and in practice economists require a simplified 'model' of economic psychology, and that this cannot be realistic. But after suggesting, in Part I, the remarkable strength of this account in its deductive uses, he concludes, after surveying its psychological assumptions in detail in Part II, that it is a misleading myth - above all in respect of the accurate information and calculation assumed. Part III tentatively examines what might happen to the subject if better models were constructed after systematic empirical studies. This stimulating and controversial book should be read by every economist. It will arouse both fury and applause.

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