Global Thinkers Series
The Global Thinkers Series is an initiative of the Public Policy Editorial Board at the ANU Press. The series was launched in 2020 to highlight the writings of internationally acclaimed Australia-linked scholars, particularly those working in policy-relevant fields. Each volume is a capstone book, collecting the essential writings of one scholar, showcasing how their ideas developed over time, and putting each contribution in perspective. The series also offers each scholar an opportunity to reflect on their own intellectual evolution and to consider how their ideas help to illuminate contemporary questions. It is our hope that each collection will testify to the durability and relevance of academic scholarship in today’s world.
Please note: The following list of titles is sorted by publication date, with the most recent first.
Displaying results 1 to 3 of 3.
After Neoliberalism »
Authored by: John Quiggin
Publication date: July 2024
Since the early 1980s, Australian economic policy has been dominated by the ideology of neoliberalism (also known as ‘economic rationalism’), including policies of privatisation, financial deregulation and micro-economic reform. Throughout this period, John Quiggin has presented critical assessments of neoliberal policies and the claims about productivity growth made in support of those policies.
The credibility of neoliberalism was fatally wounded by the Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath. Nevertheless, market ideology has lumbered on in zombie form, for want of a clear alternative. It is only recently that we have begun to reverse the failed policies of privatisation and deregulation and to consider radical alternatives such as a shift to a four-day week.
This book provides a historical perspective in the form of a series of articles written from the mid-1980s to the present day. It concludes with some suggestions for the way forward, after neoliberalism.
‘John Quiggin is the intellectual equivalent of a dazzling fireworks display. I walk away from every encounter with a bright new insight, and this book is no exception. Agree or disagree, Professor Quiggin is a veritable trove of fresh insights. Spanning nearly four decades, this volume brings together some of Professor Quiggin’s most provocative contributions, driven by a deep commitment to equity. It will pique your curiosity and encourage you to work towards a better world.’
—Andrew Leigh, Parliamentarian and author of The Shortest History of Economics
Law and the Quest for Gender Equality »
Authored by: Margaret Thornton
Publication date: April 2023
For centuries, law was used to subordinate women and exclude them from the public sphere, so it cannot be expected to become a source of equality instantaneously or without resistance from benchmark men—that is, those who are white, heterosexual, able-bodied and middle class. Equality, furthermore, was attainable only in the public sphere, whereas the private sphere was marked as a site of inequality; a wife, children and servants could never be the equals of the master. Despite their ambivalence about the role of law and its contradictions, women and Others felt that they had no alternative but to look to it as a means of liberation.
This skewed patriarchal heritage, the subtext of this collection of essays, has continued to impede the quest for equality by women and Others. It informs not only gender relations in the private sphere, as illustrated by domestic violence and sexual assault, but also the status of women in the public sphere. Despite the fact that women have entered the paid workforce—including the professions—in large numbers, they are still expected to assume responsibility for the preponderance of society’s caring. The essays show how maternal and caring roles, which are still largely viewed as belonging to an unregulated private sphere, continue to be invoked to detract from the authority of the feminine in the public sphere. The promise of antidiscrimination legislation in overcoming the heritage of the past is also shown to be somewhat hollow.
On the Frontiers of History »
Rethinking East Asian Borders
Authored by: Tessa Morris-Suzuki
Publication date: August 2020
Why is it that we so readily accept the boundary lines drawn around nations or around regions like ‘Asia’ as though they were natural and self-evident, when in fact they are so mutable and often so very arbitrary? What happens to people not only when the borders they seek to cross become heavily guarded, but also when new borders are drawn straight through the middle of their lives? The essays in this book address these questions by starting from small places on the borderlands of East Asia and looking outwards from the small towards the large, asking what these ‘minor pasts’ tell us about the grand narratives of history. In the process, it takes the reader on a journey from Renaissance European visions of ‘Tartary’, through nineteenth-century racial theorising, imperial cartography and indigenous experiences of modernity, to contemporary debates about Big History in an age of environmental crisis.