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 291 to 300 of 779.
The Histories of Raphael Samuel »
A portrait of a people's historian
Authored by: Sophie Scott-Brown
Publication date: May 2017
In the first integrated biographical study of his work, this book situates British historian Raphael Samuel (1934–1996) in relation to his distinctive form of activist politics as they developed from youthful Cold War communism to the first British New Left, 1960s radicalism to the 1980s history wars.
As the catalyst behind the History Workshop movement, Samuel championed the democratisation of history-making and practised an eclectic form of people’s history in his own work. His unique approach was controversial, drawing impassioned responses from across the ideological spectrum, the most sustained critique often coming from his left-wing contemporaries. It is argued here that this compelling figure has been unjustly neglected and that he continues to offer important insights into the politics of history-making in a post-Marxist world.
Tides of Innovation in Oceania »
Value, materiality and place
Edited by: Elisabetta Gnecchi-Ruscone, Anna Paini
Publication date: April 2017
Tides of Innovation in Oceania is directly inspired by Epeli Hau‘ofa’s vision of the Pacific as a ‘Sea of Islands’; the image of tides recalls the cyclical movement of waves, with its unpredictable consequences. The authors propose tides of innovation as a fluid concept, unbound and open to many directions. This perspective is explored through ethnographic case studies centred on deeply elaborated analyses of locally inflected agencies involved in different transforming contexts. Three interwoven themes—value, materiality and place—provide a common thread.
Vocational Education and Training »
The Northern Territory’s history of public philanthropy
Authored by: Don Zoellner
Publication date: April 2017
This book represents the first consolidated history of vocational education and training in the Northern Territory. Not only does the story present a chronological account of events, people and institutions, it also offers an explanation of how the system actually works and this has application well beyond the Territory. The mix of historical accounting and operational analysis comes from a unique perspective. It is proposed that the best way to understand the behaviour of the government ministers who have responsibility for vocational training is to compare their decisions and actions with those of wealthy philanthropists.
Dilthey’s Dream »
Essays on human nature and culture
Authored by: Derek Freeman
Publication date: April 2017
With great eloquence, Derek Freeman takes the reader on an intellectual journey through the complexities of philosophical anthropology. Even while the controversial Nature–Nurture debate raged, Freeman contended that the crucial fact that humans had the capacity to make choices was ‘both intrinsic to our biology and basic to the very formation of cultures’. Thus the scene was set for his widely publicised criticism of Margaret Mead’s book Coming of Age in Samoa. Publishing her research in 1926, Mead concluded that all human behaviour was the result of social conditioning. Freeman refuted this assumption in 1983, urging closer interactions between the biological sciences and cultural studies to bridge the ever-widening chasm threatening all studies of humankind.
Dilthey’s Dream is an engagingly powerful set of essays depicting the depth of one man’s thinking on issues, which consumed a lifetime.
Making Mala »
Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s
Authored by: Clive Moore
Publication date: April 2017
Malaita is one of the major islands in the Solomons Archipelago and has the largest population in the Solomon Islands nation. Its people have an undeserved reputation for conservatism and aggression. Making Mala argues that in essence Malaitans are no different from other Solomon Islanders, and that their dominance, both in numbers and their place in the modern nation, can be explained through their recent history.
A grounding theme of the book is its argument that, far than being conservative, Malaitan religions and cultures have always been adaptable and have proved remarkably flexible in accommodating change. This has been the secret of Malaitan success.
Malaitans rocked the foundations of the British protectorate during the protonationalist Maasina Rule movement in the 1940s and the early 1950s, have heavily engaged in internal migration, particularly to urban areas, and were central to the ‘Tension Years’ between 1998 and 2003. Making Mala reassesses Malaita’s history, demolishes undeserved tropes and uses historical and cultural analyses to explain Malaitans’ place in the Solomon Islands nation today.
New Perspectives in Southeast Asian and Pacific Prehistory »
Publication date: March 2017
‘This volume brings together a diversity of international scholars, unified in the theme of expanding scientific knowledge about humanity’s past in the Asia-Pacific region. The contents in total encompass a deep time range, concerning the origins and dispersals of anatomically modern humans, the lifestyles of Pleistocene and early Holocene Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, the emergence of Neolithic farming communities, and the development of Iron Age societies. These core enduring issues continue to be explored throughout the vast region covered here, accordingly with a richness of results as shown by the authors.
Befitting of the grand scope of this volume, the individual contributions articulate perspectives from multiple study areas and lines of evidence. Many of the chapters showcase new primary field data from archaeological sites in Southeast Asia. Equally important, other chapters provide updated regional summaries of research in archaeology, linguistics, and human biology from East Asia through to the Western Pacific.’
Mike T. Carson
Associate Professor of Archaeology
Micronesian Area Research Center
University of Guam
New Worlds from Below »
Informal life politics and grassroots action in twenty-first-century Northeast Asia
Edited by: Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Eun Jeong Soh
Publication date: March 2017
In Asia today, the grand ideologies of the past have lost their power over the popular imagination. Even in many of the region’s democracies, popular engagement in the political process faces profound challenges. Yet amidst this landscape of political disenchantment, groups of ordinary people across Asia are finding new ways to take control of their own lives, respond to threats to their physical and cultural survival, and build better futures. This collection of essays by prominent scholars and activists traces the rise of a quiet politics of survival from the villages of China to Japan’s Minamata and Fukushima, and from the street art of Seoul and Hong Kong to the illegal markets of North Korea. Introducing an innovative conceptual framework, New Worlds from Below shows how informal grassroots politics in Northeast Asia is generating new ideas and practices that have region-wide and global relevance.
Kastom, property and ideology »
Land transformations in Melanesia
Publication date: March 2017
The relationship between customary land tenure and ‘modern’ forms of landed property has been a major political issue in the ‘Spearhead’ states of Melanesia since the late colonial period, and is even more pressing today, as the region is subject to its own version of what is described in the international literature as a new ‘land rush’ or ‘land grab’ in developing countries. This volume aims to test the application of one particular theoretical framework to the Melanesian version of this phenomenon, which is the framework put forward by Derek Hall, Philip Hirsch and Tania Murray Li in their 2011 book, Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia. Since that framework emerged from studies of the agrarian transition in Southeast Asia, the key question addressed in this volume is whether ‘land transformations’ in Melanesia are proceeding in a similar direction, or whether they take a somewhat different form because of the particular nature of Melanesian political economies or social institutions. The contributors to this volume all deal with this question from the point of view of their own direct engagement with different aspects of the land policy process in particular countries. Aside from discussion of the agrarian transition in Melanesia, particular attention is also paid to the growing problem of land access in urban areas and the gendered nature of landed property relations in this region.
China's Domestic Transformation in a Global Context (Chinese version) »
全球背景下的中国经济转型
Edited by: 宋 立刚, Ross Garnaut, 蔡 昉, Lauren Johnston
Publication date: February 2017
中国经济正经历着自改革开放以来最持久深入的增长转型期。本书 主题是“中国经济转型”，主要关注以下问题：一是全球经济增长的背景； 二是中国的货币政策与外汇政策改革及资本项目开放；三是中国的能源 与电力改革与政策调整；四是中国的对外投资以及贸易政策的实施。在“新 常态”的增长速度下，中国的经济发展是否能够如预期为中国走上世界 生产力前沿奠定基础？在结构调整和低速增长并存的情况下，未来经济 发展面临什么新的问题？通过本书的分析阐释，也许能够为读者找到解 答这些问题的线索。
Chinese print version of this book is available from Social Science and Academic Press
Joro's Youth »
The first part of the Mongolian epic of Geser Khan
Authored by: Igor de Rachewiltz, Li Narangoa
Publication date: February 2017
The epic of King Gesar of Ling is the national oral epic of Tibet, sung by itinerant bards in their land for many centuries but not recorded in print until recent times. Spreading widely beyond Tibet, there are extant versions in other languages of Central Asia. The first printed version is from Mongolia, produced on the orders of the Kangxi emperor of the Manchu Qing dynasty in the early 18th century. In the process of transmission, the original saga lost much of its Tibetan flavour, and this Qing edition can be regarded as a genuine Mongolian work. Its hero, Geser Khan in Mongolian, became a folk-hero, later deified both in China and Mongolia. Geser’s mission is to save the world from endemic evil and strife, bringing peace to all. Although he himself is the son of a god, Geser as a human is unpredictable, romantic and funny, and many of his adventures belong to the picaresque. This translation of the first, and one of the longest, chapters of the epic covers his miraculous birth, his turbulent youth, and his marriage to the beautiful Rogmo Goa. It celebrates and commemorates the 300th anniversary of the printing of the epic in Peking in early 1716.