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NGOs and Political Change »
A History of the Australian Council for International Development
Authored by: Patrick Kilby
Publication date: August 2015
The Australian Council for International Development is the peak body of Australian international development NGOs. This book explores ACFID’s history since its founding in 1965, drawing on current and contemporary literature as well as extensive archival material. The trends and challenges in international development are seen through the lens of an NGO peak body: from the heady optimism of the first Development Decade of the 1960s, through the growth in government support of NGOs in the 1980s, to the challenges of the 2010s. The major themes of ACFID are presented: human rights; gender justice; humanitarianism; NGO codes of conduct; and influencing government policy both broadly and as it relates to NGOs. Each of these themes is placed in a global context and in relation to what other NGO networks are doing internationally.
International Review of Environmental History: Volume 1, 2015 »
Edited by: James Beattie
Publication date: August 2015
International Review of Environmental History takes an interdisciplinary and global approach to environmental history. It encourages scholars to think big and to tackle the challenges of writing environmental histories across different methodologies, nations, and time-scales. The journal embraces interdisciplinary, comparative and transnational methods, while still recognising the importance of locality in understanding these global processes.
The journal’s goal is to be read across disciplines, not just within history. It publishes on all thematic and geographic topics of environmental history, but especially encourage articles with perspectives focused on or developed from the southern hemisphere and the ‘global south’.
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Long History, Deep Time »
Deepening Histories of Place
Edited by: Ann McGrath, Mary Anne Jebb
Publication date: August 2015
The vast shape-shifting continent of Australia enables us to take a long view of history. We consider ways to cross the great divide between the deep past and the present. Australia’s human past is not a short past, so we need to enlarge the scale and scope of history beyond 1788. In ways not so distant, these deeper times happened in the same places where we walk today. Yet, they were not the same places, having different surfaces, ecologies and peoples. Contributors to this volume show how the earth and its past peoples can wake us up to a sense of place as history – as a site of both change and continuity.
This book ignites the possibilities of what the spaces and expanses of history might be. Its authors reflect upon the need for appropriate, feasible timescales for history, pointing out some of the obstacles encountered in earlier efforts to slice human time into thematic categories. Time and history are considered from the perspective of physics, archaeology, literature, western and Indigenous philosophy. Ultimately, this collection argues for imaginative new approaches to collaborative histories of deep time that are better suited to the challenges of the Anthropocene. Contributors to this volume, including many leading figures in their respective disciplines, consider history’s temporality, and ask how history might expand to accommodate a chronology of deep time. Long histories that incorporate humanities, science and Indigenous knowledge may produce deeper meanings of the worlds in which we live.
Bougainville before the conflict »
Edited by: Anthony J Regan, Helga M Griffin
Publication date: August 2015
One of the most beautiful island groups of the Pacific, Bougainville has a remarkable history. Tragically, it is as the site of devastating civil conflict that Bougainville is perhaps best known.
In exploring the rich environmental, cultural and social heritage of Bougainville before the conflict, this collection provides an insight into the long-term causes of the crisis. In doing so, it surveys such topics as Bougainville’s prehistory and traditional cultures, the impact of German and Australian colonialism, the attempts by disparate local cultures to find a common identity, the assertion of political autonomy in the face of coercion to integrate with Papua New Guinea, and contemporary efforts to resolve conflict and plan a viable future.
A landmark collaboration between expert commentators on Bougainville and Bougainvilleans themselves, this volume provides a comprehensive picture for those seeking to understand Bougainville’s history and future directions.
Bougainville before the conflict was published in association with the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project, which is supported by The Australian National University and the Commonwealth of Australia.
Ten Journeys to Cameron's Farm »
An Australian Tragedy
Authored by: Cameron Hazlehurst
Publication date: August 2015
‘In the whole history of government in Australia, this was the most devastating tragedy.’
Three decades after what he called ‘a dreadful air crash, almost within sight of my windows’ Robert Menzies wrote ‘I shall never forget that terrible hour; I felt that for me the end of the world had come…’
Ten Journeys to Cameron’s Farm tells the lives of the ten men who perished in Duncan Cameron’s Canberra property on 13 August 1940: three Cabinet ministers, the Chief of the General Staff, two senior staff members, and the RAAF crew of four. The inquiries into the accident, and the aftermath for the Air Force, government, and bereaved families are examined. Controversial allegations are probed: did the pilot F/Lt Bob Hitchcock cause the crash or was the Minister for Air Jim Fairbairn at the controls?
‘Cameron Hazlehurst is a story-teller, one of the all-too rare breed who can write scholarly works which speak to a wider audience. In the most substantial, original, and authoritative account of the Canberra aircraft accident of August 1940 he provides unique insights into a critical, poignant moment in Australian history. Hazlehurst’s account is touched with irony and quirks, set within a framework of political, social, and military history, distinctions of class, education, and rank, and the machinations of parliamentary and service politics and of the ‘official mind’. The research is meticulous and wide-ranging, the analysis is always balanced, and the writing at once skilful and compelling. This is a work of an exceptional historian.’
— Ian Hancock (author of Nick Greiner: A Political Biography, John Gorton: He Did It His Way, and National and Permanent? The Federal Organisation of the Liberal Party of Australia)
‘Ten Journeys to Cameron’s Farm is a monumental work of historical research pegged on a single, lethal moment at the apex of government at an extraordinarily sensitive time in Australia’s history. The book embodies top drawer scholarship, deep sensitivity to antipodean class structures and sensibilities, and a nuanced understanding of both democratic and bureaucratic politics.’
— Christine Wallace (author of Germaine Greer Untamed Shrew and The Private Don: the man behind the legend of Don Bradman)
Vietnam as if… »
Tales of youth, love and destiny
Authored by: Kim Huynh
Publication date: August 2015
Vietnam as if… follows five young people who have moved from the countryside to the city. Their dramatic everyday lives illuminate some of the most pressing issues in Vietnam today: ‘The Sticky Rice Seller’ explores gender roles; ‘The Ball Boy’ is all about the struggles of sexual and ethnic minorities; ‘The Professional’ examines relations between rich and poor; ‘The Goalkeeper’ delves into politics and ideology; and ‘The Student’ reflects upon family and faith. The stories also reboot several classics of Vietnamese literature for the twenty-first century, including ‘Floating Dumplings’ by feminist poet Ho Xuan Huong, Vu Trong Phung’s satire of French colonialism Dumb Luck, Nguyen Du’s epic account of fate and sacrifice ‘The Tale of Kieu’, and the proclamations of Ho Chi Minh. These novellas reveal the deepest sentiments of Vietnamese youth as they – like youth everywhere – come of age, fall in love and contest their destiny.
In 2011 Kim Huynh returned to Vietnam, having left more than three decades earlier. He had few plans other than to experience as much of his birthplace as possible. That year he came into contact with a wide range of people and took on many trades. Kim drank and dined with government officials, went on pilgrimages with corporate tycoons and marched in the streets against foreign aggression. He sold sticky rice, was a tennis player and also a ball boy, attended all manner of rituals and celebrations, eavesdropped on people in cafés and restaurants, and went back to the classroom as both a student and a teacher. Rich in detail and broad in scope, these tales capture Kim’s experiences and imaginings of Vietnam as if….
Songs of the Empty Place »
The Memorial Poetry of the Foi of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea
Authored by: James Weiner, Don Niles
Publication date: July 2015
For 31 months between 1979 and 1995, James F. Weiner conducted anthropological research amongst the Foi people in Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. This book contains the transcriptions, translations, and descriptions of the songs he recorded.
The texts of women’s sago songs (obedobora), men’s ceremonial songs (sorohabora), and women’s sorohabora are included. Men turn the prosaic content of womenís sago songs into their own sorohabora songs, which are performed the night following large-scale inter-community pig kills, called dawa. While women sing sago songs by themselves, men sing their ceremonial songs in groups of paired men. Women also have their own ceremonial versions of such songs.
The songs are memorial in intent; they are designed to commemorate the lives of men who are no longer living. Most commonly they do so by naming the places the deceased inhabited during his lifetime.
These song texts and translations are introduced by Weiner. Ethnomusicologist Don Niles then brings together information about each type of song and considers these Foi genres in relation to those of neighbouring groups, highlighting aspects of regional performance styles. Consideration is also given to the poetic devices used in Papua New Guinea songs.
Eighteen recordings illustrating the Foi genres discussed in this book are available for download.
It remains uncertain how such songs may be affected by the major oil extraction project that has been undertaken in the region for more than two decades.
This book will interest students of anthropology, ethnomusicology, linguistics, verbal art, aesthetics, and cultural heritage.
Political Life Writing in the Pacific »
Reflections on Practice
Edited by: Jack Corbett, Brij V. Lal
Publication date: July 2015
This book aims to reflect on the experiential side of writing political lives in the Pacific region. The collection touches on aspects of the life writing art that are particularly pertinent to political figures: public perception and ideology; identifying important political successes and policy initiatives; grappling with issues like corruption and age-old political science questions about leadership and ‘dirty hands’. These are general themes but they take on a particular significance in the Pacific context and so the contributions explore these themes in relation to patterns of colonisation and the memory of independence; issues elliptically captured by terms like ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’; the nature of ‘self’ presented in Pacific life writing; and the tendency for many of these texts to be written by ‘outsiders’, or at least the increasingly contested nature of what that term means.
The Seven Dwarfs and the Age of the Mandarins »
Australian Government Administration in the Post-War Reconstruction Era
Edited by: Samuel Furphy
Publication date: July 2015
In the history and folklore of Australia’s Commonwealth Public Service, the idea of the ‘Seven Dwarfs’ has been remarkably persistent. Originally a witty epithet applied to a powerful group of senior public servants, the term has come to represent the professionalisation of Australian government administration during the Second World War and post-war reconstruction era, and into the following two decades of expansion. This was a period when, for the first time, talented university graduates entered the public service, rose to senior levels, and exerted great influence over the affairs of the Commonwealth. With the secure tenure of being permanent heads of departments, they defined the age of the public service mandarin.
This book explores the lives and influence of the Seven Dwarfs and their colleagues, bringing together the leading researchers on post-war Australian administration. Featuring four thematic chapters and ten biographical portraits, it offers a fascinating insight into the workings of the Commonwealth Public Service during a critical period in its history.
Talking it Through »
Responses to Sorcery and Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia
Edited by: Miranda Forsyth, Richard Eves
Publication date: May 2015
Sorcery and witchcraft practices and beliefs are pervasive across Melanesia. They are in part created by, and give rise to, a wide variety of poor social and developmental outcomes. These include uneven economic development, low public health, lack of social cohesion, crime, fear and insecurity. A further very visible problem is the attacks on men and women who are accused of being practitioners of witchcraft or sorcery, which can lead to serious bodily harm, banishment and sometimes death. Today, many communities, individuals, church organisations and policymakers in Melanesia and internationally are exploring ways to overcome the negative social outcomes associated with witchcraft and sorcery practices and beliefs. This book brings together a collection of chapters written by a diverse range of authors, both Melanesian and non-Melanesian, providing crucial insights both into how these practices and beliefs are playing out in contemporary Melanesia, and also the types of interventions that are being trialled or debated to address the problems associated with them.