Book orders for Christmas – Orders placed after Friday 10 December are unlikely to be delivered before Christmas
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Browse the range of exciting titles ANU Press is currently working on. If you wish to receive an alert when a new title is published, click the ‘Notify me’ button next to the relevant title and register your details.
Living Art »
Indonesian Artists Engage Politics, Society and History
Living Art: Indonesian Artists Engage Politics, Society and History is inspired by the conviction of so many of Indonesia’s Independence-era artists that there is continuing interaction between art and everyday life. In the 1970s, Sanento Yuliman, Indonesia’s foremost art historian of the late twentieth century, further developed that concept stating: ‘New Indonesian Art cannot wholly be understood without locating it in the context of the larger framework of Indonesian society and culture’ and the ‘whole force of history’. The essays in this book accept Yuliman’s challenge to analyse the intellectual, socio-political and historical landscape that Indonesia’s artists inhabited from the 1930s into the first decades of the new millennium, including their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The inclusion of one of Yuliman’s most influential essays, translated into English for the first time, offers those outside Indonesia an insight into a formative period in the generation of new art knowledge in Indonesia. The volume also features essays by T.K. Sabapathy, Jim Supangkat, Alia Swastika, Wulan Dirgantoro and F.X. Harsono, as well as the three editors Elly Kent, Virginia Hooker and Caroline Turner. The book’s contributors present recent research on issues rarely addressed in English-language texts on Indonesian art, including the inspirations and achievements of women artists despite social and political barriers, Islam- inspired art, artistic ideologies, the intergenerational effect of trauma, and the impact of geopolitical change and global art worlds that emerged in the 1990s. The Epilogue introduces speculations from contemporary practitioners on what the future might hold for artists in Indonesia.
Extensively illustrated, Living Art contributes to the acknowledgement and analysis of the diversity of Indonesia’s contemporary art and offers new insights into Indonesian art history, as well as the contemporary art histories of Southeast Asia and Asia more generally.
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Honouring a Nation »
A History of Australia's Honours System
Authored by: Karen Fox
The first detailed history of imperial and national honours in Australia, Honouring a Nation tells the story of the honours system’s transformation from instrument of imperial unity to national institution.
From the extension of British honours to colonial Australasia in the nineteenth century, through to Tony Abbott’s revival of knighthoods in the twenty-first, this book explains how the system has worked, traces the arguments of its supporters and critics, and looks both at those who received awards and those who declined them. Honouring a Nation brings to life a long history of debate over honours, including wrangles over State rights, gender imbalances in honours lists, and the emergence and hardening of the Labor/Liberal divide over British awards, illuminating issues that are still part of Australian life—and of the honours system—today. The history of the honours system is equally the history of the nation, revealing who Australians were, what they have become, what they value, and the things that have unified and divided them.
‘National honours are a fraught recognition of merit. They beg many questions: who decides, why some people are recognised, and others ignored. Honours provide a window to the soul of the nation and invite us to consider who we really are and what we value. These are big issues to ponder. Karen Fox provides many of the answers in this timely, lively and important book.’
— Julianne Schultz AM FAHA, Emeritus Professor Media and Culture, Griffith University
‘Give Karen Fox a gong: for distinguished service to Australian culture in recognition of her authoritative yet entertaining account of how a supposedly egalitarian country embraced knighthoods, OAs and other baubles.’
— Richard White, Associate Professor at the University of Sydney and author of Inventing Australia
‘Karen Fox has written an intelligent, incisive and intriguing account of how Australians have acknowledged and elevated their fellow citizens, from the founding of the first colony to the present day … a work packed with insights about the ever-shifting determinants of social hierarchy, individual merit and public esteem … a thoroughly stimulating read.’
— Stuart Ward, Head of the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen
‘At last, a definitive account of the Australian honours system, from the First Fleet to 2021. Honours serve as a prism through which to view imperial strategies, federal rivalries and partisan, class-based and gender politics, with many scandals and controversies along the way. Karen Fox has given us a book that is both topical and compelling on evolving national identity and honours as a symbol of exclusion or inclusion.’
— Marian Sawer AO, Emeritus Professor, The Australian National University
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Human Ecology Review: Volume 27, Number 1 »
This volume of Human Ecology Review represents an internationally diverse range of human ecology research and practice. Diansyah, Abas, and Sakawi present a review of community forest management in Southeast Asia and its impacts on biodiversity conservation community livelihoods. Flagg and Rudel survey national differences in proposed greenhouse gas emission reductions and relative levels of fossil fuel dependencies. On a similar topic, Hargrove, Sommer, and Shandra link national levels of CO2 emissions to levels of executive and public sector corruption, with consequences for transitioning to renewable energy economies. Hooykaas provides a Canadian place-based case study of the role of public gardens in developing a sense of being ‘at home’. Irshad, Hussain, and Malik analyse the ecological intensity of different levels of well-being across a number of developing countries. From Sweden, Löwgren explores a range of factors that encourage or reduce community acceptance of hydroelectric power generation. Nwoma and Eni provide a fascinating discussion on the interconnectedness between literature and Zimbabwe’s environmental crisis. Finally, Sari and Rahaman give us a study of the community impact of road development in Papua, Indonesia.
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Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform: Volume 28, Number 1, 2021 »
Edited by: William Coleman
Agenda is a refereed, ECONLIT-indexed and RePEc-listed journal of the College of Business and Economics, The Australian National University. Launched in 1994, Agenda provides a forum for debate on public policy, mainly (but not exclusively) in Australia and New Zealand. It deals largely with economic issues but gives space to social and legal policy and also to the moral and philosophical foundations and implications of policy.
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A Genealogy of Bamboo Diplomacy »
The Politics of Thai Détente with Russia and China
Authored by: Jittipat Poonkham
In 1975, M.R. Kurkrit Pramoj met Mao Zedong, marking the eventual establishment of diplomatic relations and a discursive rupture with the previous narrative of Communist powers as an existential threat. This book critically interrogates the birth of bamboo (bending with the wind) diplomacy and the politics of Thai détente with Russia and China in the long 1970s (1968–80).
By 1968, Thailand was encountering discursive anxiety amid the prospect of American retrenchment from the Indo-Pacific region. As such, Thailand developed a new discourse of détente to make sense of the rapidly changing world politics and replace the hegemonic discourse of anticommunism. By doing so, it created a political struggle between the old and new discourses.
Jittipat Poonkham also argues that bamboo diplomacy – previously seen as a classic and continual ‘tradition’ of Thai-style diplomacy – had its origins in Thai détente and became the metanarrative of Thai diplomacy since then. Based on a genealogical approach and multi‑archival research, this book examines three key episodes of Thai détente: Thanat Khoman (1968–71), M.R. Kukrit Pramoj (1975–76), and General Kriangsak Chomanan (1977–80). This transformation was represented in numerous diplomatic/discursive practices, such as ping‑pong diplomacy, petro‑diplomacy, trade and cultural diplomacy, and normal visits.
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Xinjiang Year Zero »
Edited by: Darren Byler, Ivan Franceschini, Nicholas Loubere
Since 2017, the Chinese authorities have detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in ‘reeducation camps’ in China’s northwestern Xinjiang autonomous region. While the official reason for this mass detention was to prevent terrorism, the campaign has since become a wholesale attempt to remould the ways of life of these peoples—an experiment in social engineering aimed at erasing their cultures and traditions in order to transform them into ‘civilised’ citizens as construed by the Chinese state. Through a collection of essays penned by scholars who have conducted extensive research in the region, this volume sets itself three goals: first, to document the reality of the emerging surveillance state and coercive assimilation unfolding in Xinjiang in recent years and continuing today; second, to describe the workings and analyse the causes of these policies, highlighting how these developments insert themselves not only in domestic Chinese trends, but also in broader global dynamics; and, third, to propose action, to heed the progressive Left's call since Marx to change the world and not just analyse it.
‘Xinjiang Year Zero provides a highly readable and utterly necessary account of what is happening in Xinjiang and why. By showing how the mass detentions of Uyghurs and other Xinjiang Muslims are linked to both global capitalism and histories of settler colonialism, the edited book offers new ways of understanding the situation and thus working toward change. A must read not only for those interested in contemporary China, but also for anyone who cares about digital surveillance and dispossession around the globe.’
— Emily T. Yeh, University of Colorado Boulder, author of Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development
‘The crisis in Xinjiang has engendered its own crisis of interpretation and action at a time of growing geopolitical rivalry: how to condemn the atrocities without supporting hawkish voices, particularly among US politicians, who seek to Cold War-ise the US relationship with 'Communist China'? How to critique China for colonialism, racism, assimilationism, extra-legal internment, and coerced labour when many Western nations are built on a history of those same things? Xinjiang Year Zero not only provides non-specialists a thorough, readable, up-to-date account of events in Xinjiang. This much-needed book also offers a broader framing of the crisis, drawing comparisons to settler colonialism elsewhere and revealing direct connections to global capitalism and to the rise of technological surveillance everywhere.’
— James A. Millward, Georgetown University, author of Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang
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Uncovering Pacific Pasts »
Histories of Archaeology in Oceania
Edited by: Hilary Howes, Tristen Jones, Matthew Spriggs
Objects have many stories to tell. The stories of their makers and their uses. Stories of exchange, acquisition, display and interpretation. This book is a collection of essays highlighting some of the collections, and their object biographies, that were displayed in the Uncovering Pacific Pasts: Histories of Archaeology in Oceania (UPP) exhibition. The exhibition, which opened on 1 March 2020, sought to bring together both notable and relatively unknown Pacific material culture and archival collections from around the globe, displaying them simultaneously in their home institutions and linked online at www.uncoveringpacificpasts.org. Thirty‑eight collecting institutions participated in UPP, including major collecting institutions in the United Kingdom, continental Europe and the Americas, as well as collecting institutions from across the Pacific.
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Lilith: A Feminist History Journal: Number 27 »
This year’s issue covers a rich variety of topics in feminist history, including: the role of place and space in feminist and lesbian identity-making in 1970s’ Melbourne; a decolonising approach to writing the history of women and children in Alice Springs; the importance of recipe exchange in kinship networks in seventeenth-century Ireland; an examination of the life of twentieth-century poet’s muse Katie Anna Lush; the political theatre employed by the Australian Women’s Movement Against Socialism in the 1940s; the targeting of wine advertisements at Australian women in the 1950s and 1960s; and an exploration of the processes of power within natural history societies in nineteenth-century South Australia. There are also two articles that form a special section on the topic of the female frame, one on the role of uniforms for women workers in the transport industry, and the other comparing archetypes of the infanticidal mother in fin-de-siècle Australian and France.
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Alliances, Nuclear Weapons and Escalation »
Managing Deterrence in the 21st Century
Edited by: Stephan Frühling, Andrew O’Neil
In an era of great power competition, the role of alliances in managing escalation of conflict has acquired renewed importance. Nuclear weapons remain the ultimate means for deterrence and controlling escalation, and are central to US alliances in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. However, allies themselves need to better prepare for managing escalation in an increasingly challenging geostrategic and technological environment for the US and its allies. While the challenge of great power competition is acute at both ends of Eurasia, adversary threats, geography and the institutional context of US alliances differ. This book brings together leading experts from Europe, Northeast Asia, the United States and Australia to focus on these challenges, identify commonalities and differences across regions, and pinpoint ways to collectively manage nuclear deterrence and potential escalation pathways in America’s 21st century alliances.
‘Nuclear weapons play an important role in deterrence and preventing military conflict between great powers, while also posing an existential threat to humanity. It is vital that we have a nuanced understanding of this important challenge, so that such weapons are never used. This book offers many important perspectives and makes a significant contribution to the overall debate about these powerful weapons.’
— The Hon Julie Bishop, Chancellor, The Australian National University, Former Foreign Minister of Australia
‘This timely book identifies a wide range of challenges US alliances both in the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic face as they seek to ensure the value of US extended deterrence, particular the US nuclear umbrella, against China and Russia. This unique collection of chapters written by experts in US allies in both regions presents widely varying security perceptions and priorities. To understand such differences is the key to globally strengthen the US alliance systems, which are a significant advantage Washington enjoys over the two competitors.’
— Yukio Satoh, former President of The Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA)
‘This is a timely and thoughtful collection of essays that should serve to jumpstart public discussion and debate—the absence of which is widely noted and much bemoaned. Each contributor examines an aspect of the complicated, multifaceted nuclear debate by discussing the range of dilemmas from deterrence to disarmament. The various views set out here are more relevant than ever as Russia, China and the United States flex their nuclear muscles in new and sometimes dangerous ways. This book should be read by anyone interested in the preventing the use of nuclear weapons and understanding complexities of alliances in an increasingly dangerous world.’
— Madelyn Creedon, former Principal Deputy Administrator of the US National Nuclear Security Administration and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs
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Archaeological Perspectives on Conflict and Warfare in Australia and the Pacific »
Edited by: Geoffrey Clark, Mirani Litster
When James Boswell famously lamented the irrationality of war in 1777, he noted the universality of conflict across history and across space – even reaching what he described as the gentle and benign southern ocean nations. This volume discusses archaeological evidence of conflict from those southern oceans, from Palau and Guam, to Australia, Vanuatu and Tonga, the Marquesas, Easter Island and New Zealand. The evidence for conflict and warfare encompasses defensive earthworks on Palau, fortifications on Tonga, and intricate pa sites in New Zealand. It reports evidence of reciprocal sacrifice to appease deities in several island nations, and skirmishes and smaller scale conflicts, including in Easter Island. This volume traces aspects of colonial-era conflict in Australia and frontier battles in Vanuatu, and discusses depictions of World War II materiel in the rock art of Arnhem Land. Among the causes and motives discussed in these papers are pressure on resources, the ebb and flow of significant climate events, and the significant association of conflict with culture contact. The volume, necessarily selective, eclectic and wide-ranging, includes an incisive introduction that situates the evidence persuasively in the broader scholarship addressing the history of human warfare.
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Macrocriminology and Freedom »
Authored by: John Braithwaite
How can power over others be transformed to ‘power with’?
It is possible to transform many institutions to build societies with less predation and more freedom. These stretch from families and institutions of gender to the United Nations. Some societies, times and places have crime rates a hundred times higher than others. Some police forces kill at a hundred times the rate of others. Some criminal corporations kill thousands more than others. Micro variables fail to explain these patterns. Prevention principles for that challenge are macrocriminological.
Freedom is conceived in a republican way as non-domination. Tempering domination prevents crime; crime prevention reduces domination. Many believe a high crime rate is a price of freedom. Not Braithwaite. His principles of crime control are to build freedom, temper power, lift people from poverty and reduce all forms of domination. Freedom requires a more just normative order. It requires cascading of peace by social movements for non-violence and non-domination. Periods of war, domination and anomie cascade with long lags to elevated crime, violence, inter-generational self-violence and ecocide. Cybercrime today poses risks of anomic nuclear wars.
Braithwaite’s proposals refine some of criminology’s central theories and sharpen their relevance to all varieties of freedom, including freedom from crime.
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Wampar–English Dictionary »
With an English–Wampar finder list
Authored by: Hans Fischer, Bettina Beer
This ethnographic dictionary is the result of Hans Fischer’s long-term fieldwork among the Wampar, who occupy the middle Markham Valley in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Their language, Dzob Wampar, belongs to the Markham family of the Austronesian languages. Today most Wampar speak not only Wampar but also PNG’s lingua franca, Tok Pisin. Six decades of Wampar research has documented the extent and speed of change in the region. Today, mining, migration and the commodification of land are accelerating the pace of change in Wampar communities, resulting in great individual differences in knowledge of the vernacular. This dictionary covers largely forgotten Wampar expressions as well as loanwords from German and Jabêm that have become part of everyday language. Most entries contain example sentences from original Wampar texts. The dictionary is complemented by an overview of ethnographic research among Wampar, a sketch of Wampar grammar, a bibliography and an English-to-Wampar finder list.
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Georges River Blues »
Swamps, Mangroves and Resident Action, 1945–1980
Authored by: Heather Goodall
The lower Georges River, on Dharawal and Dharug lands, was a place of fishing grounds, swimming holes and picnics in the early twentieth century. But this all changed after World War II, when rapidly expanding industry and increasing population fell heaviest on this river, polluting its waters and destroying its bush.
Local people campaigned to defend their river. They battled municipal councils, who were themselves struggling against an explosion of garbage as population and economy changed. In these blues (an Australian term for conflict), it was mangroves and swamps that became the focus of the fight. Mangroves were expanding because of increasing pollution and early climate change. Councils wanted to solve their garbage problems by bulldozing mangroves and bushland, dumping garbage and, eventually, building playing fields. So they attacked mangroves as useless swamps that harboured disease. Residents defended mangroves by mobilising ecological science to show that these plants nurtured immature fish and protected the river’s health.
These suburban resident action campaigns have been ignored by histories of the Australian environmental movement, which have instead focused on campaigns to save distant ‘wilderness’ or inner-city built environments. The Georges River environmental conflicts may have been less theatrical, but they were fought out just as bitterly. And local Georges River campaigners – men, women and often children – were just as tenacious. They struggled to ‘keep bushland in our suburbs’, laying the foundation for today’s widespread urban environmental consciousness.
Cover: Ruth Staples was a courageous Georges River campaigner who lived all her life around Lime Kiln Bay at Oatley West. She kept on fighting to regenerate the river until her death, aged 90, in 2020.
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