Books
Browse or search ANU Press' range of books or find out more about the publications' authors and co-publishers. Download the book for free or buy a print-on-demand copy.
Displaying results 81 to 90 of 233.
The Representation of Science and Scientists on Postage Stamps »
A science communication study
Authored by: Christopher B. Yardley
Publication date: February 2015
The Representation of Science and Scientists on Postage Stamps examines how the postal authorities of the world have developed unique techniques to portray science and scientists in order to convey a message behind the stamp issue. It is a multi-disciplinary examination that investigates visual representation, semiotics, science, science history and politics, amongst other issues.
The author introduces and describes a technique for looking at how and why images may have been chosen. Is the image a mirror reflecting a known reality or is it a lens to challenge, to prompt further thought or action? He also hypothesises that the Internet created a real change to science communication, influencing the way images of science were used. The stamp message changed from that of pursuing a public understanding approach to an awareness of science with its increasing contextual content.
Ma`afu, prince of Tonga, chief of Fiji »
The life and times of Fiji’s first Tui Lau
Authored by: John Spurway
Publication date: February 2015
Enele Ma`afu, son of Aleamotu`a, Tu`i Kanokupolu, grew up during a time of unprecedented social and political change in Tonga following the advent of Christianity. Moving to Lau, Fiji, in 1847 when he was about 21, he skilfully exploited kinship links to establish a power base there and in eastern Cakaudrove. His achievements were recognised in 1853 when his cousin King Tupou I appointed Ma`afu as Governor of the Tongans in Fiji.
Acting as a putative champion of the lotu, Ma`afu undertook successful military campaigns elsewhere in Fiji and, after adding the Yasayasa Moala and the Exploring Isles to the nascent Lauan state, he was able to establish the Tovata ko Lau, a union of Lau, Cakaudrove and Bua, with himself as head. His power was formally recognised in 1869 when the Lauan chiefs appointed him as Tui Lau, a new title in the polity of Fiji. Ma`afu was now able to challenge Cakobau for the mastery of Fiji.
After serving as Viceroy during the farcical planter oligarchy known as the Kingdom of Fiji, Ma`afu underwent a severe humiliation when, in order to maintain his power in Lau, he was forced to accede to the wishes of Fiji’s other great chiefs in offering their islands to Great Britain. He would end his days as Roko Tui Lau, a ‘subordinate administrator’ in the Crown Colony of Fiji, presiding over a province characterised by corruption and maladministration but where the legacy of his earlier innovative land reforms has endured.
Law and Democracy »
Contemporary Questions
Edited by: Glenn Patmore, Kim Rubenstein
Publication date: December 2014
Law and Democracy: Contemporary Questions provides a fresh understanding of law’s regulation of Australian democracy. The book enriches public law scholarship, deepening and challenging the current conceptions of law’s regulation of popular participation and legal representation. The book raises and addresses a number of contemporary questions about legal institutions, principles and practices:
How should the meaning of ‘the people’ in the Australian Constitution be defined by the High Court of Australia?
How do developing judicial conceptions of democracy define citizenship?
What is the legal right to participate in the political community?
Should political advisors to Ministers be subject to legal accountability mechanisms?
What challenges do applied law schemes pose to notions of responsible government and how can they be best addressed?
How can the study of the ritual of electoral politics in Australia and other common law countries supplement the standard account of democracy?
How might the ritual of the pledge of Australian citizenship limit or enhance democratic participation?
What is the conflict between legal restrictions of freedom of expression and democracy, and the role of social media?
Examining the regulation of democracy, this book scrutinises the assumptions and scope of constitutional democracy and enhances our understanding of the frontiers of accountability and responsible government. In addition, key issues of law, culture and democracy are revealed in their socio-legal context.
The book brings together emerging and established scholars and practitioners with expertise in public law. It will be of interest to those studying law, politics, cultural studies and contemporary history.
Name, Shame and Blame »
Criminalising Consensual Sex in Papua New Guinea
Authored by: Christine Stewart
Publication date: December 2014
Papua New Guinea is one of the many former British Commonwealth colonies which maintain the criminalisation of the sexual activities of two groups, despite the fact that the sex takes place between consenting adults in private: sellers of sex and males who have sex with males. The English common law system was imposed on the colonies with little regard for the social regulation and belief systems of the colonised, and in most instances, was retained and developed post-Independence, regardless of the infringements of human rights involved.
Now the HIV pandemic has thrown a spotlight, not altogether welcome, on the sexual activities of these two groups. In Papua New Guinea, a growing body of behavioural research has focused on such matters as individual sexual partnering, condom use and awareness of HIV. My work, however, has a different purpose. I chose the terms in the title to highlight a nexus which I believe exists between the criminal law and negative attitudes of society. At an international level, the argument has been put that decriminalising sex work and sodomy will facilitate HIV epidemic management, reducing the stigma and discrimination these groups encounter and making them easier to reach. I undertook my research therefore with the aim of gaining deeper understanding of the effects the current situation of criminalisation might have on the social lives of these criminalised people today, in the country generally and in Port Moresby the capital in particular, and whether these effects might provide evidence to support the argument for law reform.
This is a rich and well-researched study of the legal, social and moral issues surrounding the criminalisation of two forms of consensual sex…. A very impressive piece of work, it is extensively documented, relies on a wide range of material and makes a clear and coherent argument about the place of law in producing identities and exclusions…. The attention to change over time and the complexity of the ways in which sexual behaviour is enacted and punished is a particular strength of the book.
—Professor Sally Engle Merry, Anthropology, Law and Society, New York University
This book is an exceptional contribution to our knowledge of the nexus between the criminal law and negative attitudes of society, and what effects criminalization has on the social lives of prostitutes and males who have sex with males, and whether these effects might provide evidence to support the argument for law reform…. The author’s experience of Papua New Guinea allows her to comment in depth on such matters as the United Nations’ human rights approach to the HIV epidemic and their call to decriminalize all sexual acts between consenting adults…. She shows that criminal laws—with the help of the normative discourse of religion and media—underpin and legitimize high levels of stigma, discrimination and abuse of prostitutes and males who have sex with males…. The quality of the writing and general presentation are exceptional.
—Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi, Truman State University (retired)
Diversity in Leadership »
Australian women, past and present
Edited by: Joy Damousi, Kim Rubenstein, Mary Tomsic
Publication date: November 2014
While leadership is an over-used term today, how it is defined for women and the contexts in which it emerges remains elusive. Moreover, women are exhorted to exercise leadership, but occupying leadership positions has its challenges. Issues of access, acceptable behaviour and the development of skills to be successful leaders are just some of them.
Diversity in Leadership: Australian women, past and present provides a new understanding of the historical and contemporary aspects of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women’s leadership in a range of local, national and international contexts. It brings interdisciplinary expertise to the topic from leading scholars in a range of fields and diverse backgrounds. The aims of the essays in the collection document the extent and diverse nature of women’s social and political leadership across various pursuits and endeavours within democratic political structures.
In the Eye of the Beholder »
What Six Nineteenth-century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity
Authored by: Barbara Dawson
Publication date: November 2014
This book offers a fresh perspective in the debate on settler perceptions of Indigenous Australians. It draws together a suite of little known colonial women (apart from Eliza Fraser) and investigates their writings for what they reveal about their attitudes to, views on and beliefs about Aboriginal people, as presented in their published works. The way that reader expectations and publishers’ requirements slanted their representations forms part of this analysis.
All six women write of their first-hand experiences on Australian frontiers of settlement. The division into ‘adventurers’ (Eliza Fraser, Eliza Davies and Emily Cowl) and longer-term ‘settlers’ (Katherine Kirkland, Mary McConnel and Rose Scott Cowen) allows interrogation into the differing representations between those with a transitory knowledge of Indigenous people and those who had a close and more permanent relationship with Indigenous women, even encompassing individual friendship. More pertinently, the book strives to reveal the aspects, largely overlooked in colonial narratives, of Indigenous agency, authority and individuality.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
Power and International Relations »
Essays in Honour of Coral Bell
Edited by: Desmond Ball, Sheryn Lee
Publication date: November 2014
Coral Mary Bell AO, who died in 2012, was one of the world’s foremost academic experts on international relations, crisis management and alliance diplomacy. This collection of essays by more than a dozen of her friends and colleagues is intended to honour her life and examine her ideas and, through them, her legacy.
Part 1 describes her growing up during the Great Depression and the Second World War, her short-lived sojourn in the Department of External Affairs in Canberra, where she was friends with some of the spies who worked for Moscow, and her academic career over the subsequent six decades, the last three of which were at The Australian National University.
Most of Coral’s academic career was spent in Departments of International Relations. She was disdainful of academic theory, but as discussed in Part 2, she had a very sophisticated understanding of the subject. She was in many ways a Realist, but one for whom agency, in terms of ideas (the beliefs and perceptions of policy-makers) and institutions (including conventions and norms of behaviour), essentially determined events.
Part 3 is concerned with power politics, including such matters as Cold War competitions, crisis management, alliance diplomacy, and US and Australian foreign policies. She recognised that power politics left untrammelled was inevitably catastrophic, and was increasingly attracted to notions of Concerts of Power.
‘Coral would be touched by this collection of essays about her professional and personal life. The contributors offer honest, professional and insightful reviews of her many academic achievements and especially her ideas, many of them the forerunners of others’ work, that makes her one of the very best international relations and strategic thinkers.’
— Dr. Pauline Kerr, Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, The Australian National University
‘It’s a rare thing in an international relations expert to possess a balance of theory and experience, history and imagination, realism and hope. Coral had this, and she had a 19th-century prose style to match it. Through her writing she explained the chaos of international events and human affairs in simple and clear language to her baffled compatriots. For the rest of the world, she brought an antipodean temperament and perspective to the great questions of our time; she was our George Kennan in thick glasses, blue floral dress, white sneakers and a string of pearls.’
— Minh Bui Jones, The Lowy Interpreter, 5 October 2012
Contextualising the Neolithic Occupation of Southern Vietnam »
The Role of Ceramics and Potters at An Son
Authored by: Carmen Sarjeant
Publication date: November 2014
Excavated in 2009, An Son, Long An Province, southern Vietnam has been dated to the second millennium BC, with evidence for neolithic occupation and burials. Very little is known about the neolithic period in southern Vietnam, and the routes and chronology for the appearance of cultivation, domestic animals, and ceramic and lithic technologies associated with sedentary settlements in mainland Southeast Asia are still debated. The ways in which the ceramic material culture at An Son conforms to the wider neolithic expression observed in Southeast Asia is investigated, and local and regional innovations are identified. The An Son ceramic assemblage is discussed in great detail to characterise the neolithic occupation, while considering the nature of craft production, manufacturing methods and the transference of traditions.
Contextualising the neolithic in southern Vietnam is conducted through a comparative study of material culture between An Son and the sites of Bến Ðò, Bình Đa, Cù Lao Rùa, Cái Vạn, Cầu Sắt, Đa Kai, Đình Ông, Lộc Giang, Rạch Lá, Rạch Núi and Suối Linh, all in southern Vietnam. Another analysis is presented to contextualise An Son in the wider neolithic landscape of mainland Southeast Asia, between An Son and Ban Non Wat, early Ban Lum Khao, early Ban Chiang, early Non Nok Tha, Khok Charoen, Tha Kae, Khok Phanom Di, Nong Nor (phase 1), Samrong Sen, Laang Spean, Krek, Bàu Tró, Mán Bạc and Xóm Rền. The aspects of material culture at An Son that appear to have ancestral links are considered in this research as well as local interaction spheres.
Ngapartji Ngapartji »
In turn, in turn: Ego-histoire, Europe and Indigenous Australia
Publication date: November 2014
In this innovative collection, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars from Australia and Europe reflect on how their life histories have impacted on their research in Indigenous Australian Studies. Drawing on Pierre Nora’s concept of ego-histoire as an analytical tool to ask historians to apply their methods to themselves, contributors lay open their paths, personal commitments and passion involved in their research. Why are we researching in Indigenous Studies, what has driven our motivations? How have our biographical experiences influenced our research? And how has our research influenced us in our political and individual understanding as scholars and human beings? This collection tries to answer many of these complex questions, seeing them not as merely personal issues but highly relevant to the practice of Indigenous Studies.
I think this rich collection will become a landmark text and a favourite within Australian scholarship. I am keen to see it published so that I can recommend it to others
— Professor Emerita Margaret Allen, Gender Studies and Social Analysis, University of Adelaide
The idea was to explain the link between the history you have made and the history that has made you
— Pierre Nora
The Naturalist and his 'Beautiful Islands' »
Charles Morris Woodford in the Western Pacific
Authored by: David Russell Lawrence
Publication date: October 2014
‘I know no place where firm and paternal government would sooner produce beneficial results then in the Solomons … Here is an object worthy indeed the devotion of one’s life’.
Charles Morris Woodford devoted his working life to pursuing this dream, becoming the first British Resident Commissioner in 1897 and remaining in office until 1915, establishing the colonial state almost singlehandedly. His career in the Pacific extended beyond the Solomon Islands. He worked briefly for the Western Pacific High Commission in Fiji, was a temporary consul in Samoa, and travelled as a Government Agent on a small labour vessel returning indentured workers to the Gilbert Islands.
As an independent naturalist he made three successful expeditions to the islands, and even climbed Mt Popomanaseu, the highest mountain in Guadalcanal. However, his natural history collection of over 20,000 specimens, held by the British Museum of Natural History, has not been comprehensively examined. The British Solomon Islands Protectorate was established in order to control the Pacific Labour Trade and to counter possible expansion by French and German colonialists. It remaining an impoverished, largely neglected protectorate in the Western Pacific whose economic importance was large-scale copra production, with its copra considered the second-worst in the world.
This book is a study of Woodford, the man, and what drove his desire to establish a colonial protectorate in the Solomon Islands. In doing so, it also addresses ongoing issues: not so much why the independent state broke down, but how imperfectly it was put together in the first place.
David Russell Lawrence is an anthropologist who has managed environmental programs in Melanesia and Southeast Asia for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. His most recent book was a re-examination of the place in Melanesian anthropology of the Finnish sociologist Gunnar Landtman who spent two years working with the Kiwai people of the lower Fly estuary. He recently managed a large-scale survey of 300 communities in the Solomon Islands for the Community Sector Program and has assisted with a number of the annual RAMSI People’s Surveys in the islands. This work has given him insight into the colonial heritage of the Solomon Islands and a desire to tell the story of the establishment of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate through the eyes of the first Resident Commissioner, Charles Morris Woodford.