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 211 to 220 of 775.
The Court as Archive »
Publication date: February 2019
Until the late 20th century, ‘an archive’ generally meant a repository for documents, as well as the generic name for the wide range of documents the repository might hold. An archive could be visited, and then also searched, to discover past actions or lives that had meaning for the present. While historians and historiographers have long understood the contests that archives contain and represent, the very idea of ‘the archive’ has, over the last 40 years, become the subject and object of widening and intensified consideration. This consideration has been intellectual (from scholars in a wide range of disciplines) and public (from communities and individuals whose stories are held captive, or sometimes hidden or excluded from official archives), as well as institutional. It has involved scrutiny and critique of official archives’ limitations and practices, as well as symbolic, affective and theoretical expansion and heightened expectation of what ‘the archive’ is or should be. The very language of ‘the archive’ now carries freight as administrative practice, normative value, metaphor, description and aspiration in different ways than it did in the 20th century.
This collection offers a unique contribution to these reinvigorated and sometimes new conversations about what an archive might be, what it can do as a consequence, and to whom it bears custodial responsibilities. In particular, this collection addresses what it means for contemporary Australian superior courts of record to not only have constitutional and procedural duties to documents as a matter of law, but also to acknowledge obligations to care for those materials in a way that understands their public meaning and public value for the Australian people, in the past, in the present and for the future.
Drawing in the Land »
Rock Art in the Upper Nepean, Sydney Basin, New South Wales
Authored by: Julie Dibden
Publication date: February 2019
Drawing in the Land offers an important contribution to the field of rock art research and Australian archaeology. It provides a detailed study of the previously under-examined rock art of the Hawkesbury/Nepean area of New South Wales. The study presents a detailed historiography of Australian rock art research and, through the lens of landscape archaeology, offers an innovative contribution to rock art studies in the wider Sydney Basin.
The volume’s theoretical focus on materiality, embodied practice and performance allows for the charting of ideational change and provides a unique contribution to the late Holocene archaeology of NSW and contact archaeology within Australia more broadly.
Pacific Exposures »
Photography and the Australia–Japan Relationship
Authored by: Melissa Miles, Robin Gerster
Publication date: December 2018
Photography has been a key means by which Australians have sought to define their relationships with Japan. From the fascination with all things Japanese in the late nineteenth century, through the era of ‘White Australia’, the bitter enmity of the Pacific War, the path to reconciliation in the post-war period and the culturally complicated bilateralism of today, Australians have used their cameras to express a divided sense of conflict and kinship with a country that has by turns fascinated and infuriated. The remarkable photographs collected and discussed here for the first time shed new light on the history of Australia’s engagement with its most important regional partner. Pacific Exposures argues that photographs tell an important story of cultural production, response and reaction—not only about how Australians have pictured Japan over the decades, but how they see their own place in the Asia-Pacific.
‘Pacific Exposures presents the first study of the photographic exchanges between Australia and Japan—its photographers, personalities, motivations, anxieties and tensions—based on a diverse range of archival materials, interviews, and well-chosen photographs.’
— Dr Luke Gartlan, University of St Andrews
‘[Pacific Exposures] will become a key text on Australia’s interactions with Japan, and the way that photographs can inform cross-cultural relations through their production, consumption and circulation.’
— Prof. Kate Darian-Smith, University of Tasmania
In the media
Listen to the ABC Radio interview: Japan in Focus (from 13:06).
Global Debates, Local Dilemmas »
Sex-selective Abortion in Contemporary Viet Nam
Authored by: Tran Minh Hang
Publication date: December 2018
The practice of sex-selective abortion is on the rise globally, stirring debates about gender inequality, medical ethics and reproductive autonomy. This book is the first ethnography to document practices of sex selection in Viet Nam. It shows how and why abortions are used to select the sex of children and how Vietnamese individuals and health professionals are implicated in this illicit and controversial practice. Telling the stories of women who have undergone sex-selective abortions, it traces their passage through sex determination and abortion decision-making phases, and investigates their experiences during and after their sex-selective abortions. It describes the turmoil experienced by individuals who undergo such abortions and explores their interactions with the spectrum of social actors and health institutions that facilitate practices of sex selection.
As the first ethnographic study on sex-selective abortions in Viet Nam, this book delves into socially sensitive terrain and sheds light on personally fraught individual experiences of reproductive agency. It documents societal responses to sex-selective abortions in Viet Nam and identifies gaps in the state’s capacity to regulate reproductive desire in a marketised economy. A resource for researchers, it contributes to ongoing debates on sex selection and provides a framework for developing relevant social policies, interventions and support services.
‘This pioneering study offers a nuanced and sensitive account of sex-selective abortion as human experience. Through thought provoking case studies, the book provides rare ethnographic documentation of the complex quandaries that arise as selective reproductive technologies are routinised across the globe.’
— Tine M. Gammeltoft, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
The Promise of Prosperity »
Visions of the Future in Timor-Leste
Edited by: Judith Bovensiepen
Publication date: December 2018
For the people of Timor-Leste, independence promised a fundamental transformation from foreign occupation to self-rule, from brutality to respect for basic rights, and from poverty to prosperity. In the eyes of the country’s political leaders, revenue from the country’s oil and gas reserves is the means by which that transformation could be effected. Over the past decade, they have formulated ambitious plans for state-led development projects and rapid economic growth. Paradoxically, these modernist visions are simultaneously informed by and contradict ideas stemming from custom, religion, accountability and responsibility to future generations. This book explores how the promise of prosperity informs policy and how policy debates shape expectations about the future in one of the world’s newest and poorest nation-states.
Indigenous Efflorescence »
Beyond Revitalisation in Sapmi and Ainu Mosir
Publication date: December 2018
Indigenous efflorescence refers to the surprising economic prosperity, demographic increase and cultural renaissance currently found amongst many Indigenous communities around the world. This book moves beyond a more familiar focus on ‘revitalisation’ to situate these developments within their broader political and economic contexts. The materials in this volume also examine the everyday practices and subjectivities of Indigenous efflorescence and how these exist in tension with ongoing colonisation of Indigenous lands, and the destabilising impacts of global neoliberal capitalism. Contributions to this volume include both research articles and shorter case studies, and are drawn from amongst the Ainu and Sami (Saami/Sámi) peoples (in Ainu Mosir in northern Japan, and Sapmi in northern Europe, respectively). This volume will be of use to scholars working on contemporary Indigenous issues, as well as to Indigenous peoples engaged in linguistic and cultural revitalisation, and other aspects of Indigenous efflorescence.
Introduction to the Tibetan Language »
An eTextbook for spoken and literary Tibetan
Publication date: December 2018
This textbook includes twelve multi-media introductory lessons for Tibetan learners. There are sections that explain how to write and read the Tibetan alphabet, how to write and read Tibetan words, and easy colloquial and literary sentences. Each section includes a dialogue that is performed in videos and written down, written explanations of different aspects of the language, videos that demonstrate how to write, read and pronounce Tibetan, and exercises that will help solidify what you have learned. The book also includes links to online sources, including flashcards to aid vocabulary building.
Part 1 is an introduction to reading and writing Tibetan.
Part 2 builds on these skills and helps Tibetan learners develop conversational skills.
Part 3 introduces literary Tibetan by building on the commonalities between it and conversational Tibetan.
Here is everything you need to learn the world's highest language.
This textbook is used as course material in:
Tibetan 1 TIBN1002
Tibetan 2 TIBN1003
For more information about studying a language at the ANU, please visit the College of Asia and the Pacific Languages website and take a look at the School of Culture, History and Language’s Language Guide (PDF, 2.2 MB).
Download for free
Not available for purchase
Atlas of Butterflies and Diurnal Moths in the Monsoon Tropics of Northern Australia »
Authored by: M.F. Braby, D.C. Franklin, D.E. Bisa, M.R. Williams, A.A.E. Williams, C.L. Bishop, R.A.M. Coppen
Publication date: December 2018
Northern Australia is one of few tropical places left on Earth in which biodiversity—and the ecological processes underpinning that biodiversity—is still relatively intact. However, scientific knowledge of that biodiversity is still in its infancy and the region remains a frontier for biological discovery. The butterfly and diurnal moth assemblages of the area, and their intimate associations with vascular plants (and sometimes ants), exemplify these points.
However, the opportunity to fill knowledge gaps is quickly closing: proposals for substantial development and exploitation of Australia’s north will inevitably repeat the ecological devastation that has occurred in temperate southern Australia—loss of species, loss of ecological communities, fragmentation of populations, disruption of healthy ecosystem function and so on—all of which will diminish the value of the natural heritage of the region before it is fully understood and appreciated. Written by several experts in the field, the main purpose of this atlas is to compile a comprehensive inventory of the butterflies and diurnal moths of northern Australia to form the scientific baseline against which the extent and direction of change can be assessed in the future. Such information will also assist in identifying the region’s biological assets, to inform policy and management agencies and to set priorities for biodiversity conservation.
In the media
Read the IFL Science article: Incredible Butterfly And Moth Diversity Hotspot Discovered In Northern Australia.
Read the Fairfax article: Butterfly 'detective' solves 120-year-old north Australian mystery.
The Lives of Stories »
Three Aboriginal-Settler Friendships
Authored by: Emma Dortins
Publication date: December 2018
The Lives of Stories traces three stories of Aboriginal–settler friendships that intersect with the ways in which Australians remember founding national stories, build narratives for cultural revival, and work on reconciliation and self-determination. These three stories, which are still being told with creativity and commitment by storytellers today, are the story of James Morrill’s adoption by Birri-Gubba people and re-adoption 17 years later into the new colony of Queensland, the story of Bennelong and his relationship with Governor Phillip and the Sydney colonists, and the story of friendship between Wiradjuri leader Windradyne and the Suttor family. Each is an intimate story about people involved in relationships of goodwill, care, adoptive kinship and mutual learning across cultures, and the strains of maintaining or relinquishing these bonds as they took part in the larger events that signified the colonisation of Aboriginal lands by the British. Each is a story in which cross-cultural understanding and misunderstanding are deeply embedded, and in which the act of storytelling itself has always been an engagement in cross-cultural relations. The Lives of Stories reflects on the nature of story as part of our cultural inheritance, and seeks to engage the reader in becoming more conscious of our own effect as history-makers as we retell old stories with new meanings in the present, and pass them on to new generations.
The Archaeology of Sulawesi »
Current Research on the Pleistocene to the Historic Period
Publication date: November 2018
The central Indonesian island of Sulawesi has recently been hitting headlines with respect to its archaeology. It contains some of the oldest directly dated rock art in the world, and some of the oldest evidence for a hominin presence beyond the southeastern limits of the Ice Age Asian continent. In this volume, scholars from Indonesia and Australia come together to present their research findings and views on a broad range of topics. From early periods, these include observations on Ice Age climate, life in caves and open sites, rock art, and the animals that humans exploited and lived alongside. The archaeology presented from later periods covers the rise of the Bugis kingdom, Chinese trade ceramics, and a range of site-based and regional topics from the Neolithic through to the arrival of Islam. This carefully edited volume is the first to be devoted entirely to the archaeology of the island of Sulawesi, and it lays down a baseline for significant future research.
Peter Bellwood
Emeritus Professor
The Australian National University