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Indigenous Biography and Autobiography »
Publication date: December 2008
In this absorbing collection of papers Aboriginal, Maori, Dalit and western scholars discuss and analyse the difficulties they have faced in writing Indigenous biographies and autobiographies. The issues range from balancing the demands of western and non-western scholarship, through writing about a family that refuses to acknowledge its identity, to considering a community demand not to write anything at all.
The collection also presents some state-of-the-art issues in teaching Indigenous Studies based on auto/biography in Austria, Spain and Italy.
For more information on Aboriginal History Inc. please visit aboriginalhistory.org.au.
The Centrelink Experiment »
Innovation in Service Delivery
Authored by: John Halligan, Jules Wills
Publication date: December 2008
Centrelink was established in 1997 as part of the Howard government’s bold experiment in re-framing social policy and re-shaping service delivery. Centrelink was the embodiment of a key tenet of the Howard vision for public service: a specialised service delivery ‘provider’ agency separated from the policy functions of the ‘purchaser’. Carved out of a monolithic Department of Social Security, Centrelink was established along ‘business lines’ operating 320 service centres and delivering payments to 10 million Australians. Although enjoying ‘monopoly provider’ status, the organisation was required to deliver services to many different clients on behalf of its ‘purchasing departments’ (up to 25 in total) under the terms of quasi-contractual service agreements. It was meant to demonstrate a greater level of both transparency and accountability for the administration of payments amounting to over $60 billion of Commonwealth expenditure. For many years there was a real ‘buzz’ around the Centrelink experiment and staff and clients were generally enthusiastic about the transformation. However, after around eight years, the experiment was reined in and Centrelink was placed under closer ministerial direction and under a new managing department. The experiment continues, but its trajectory reflects the different pressures impacting on such dedicated ‘services delivery agencies’.
John Halligan, Professor of Government at the University of Canberra, is a foremost Australian expert on public sector governance and has published extensively on the evolution, form and behaviour of the public sectors in Australia and overseas. This volume is the culmination of an exhaustive empirical study of the origins and experience of ‘the Centrelink Experiment’. I commend this book to researchers, policy practitioners and students with an interest in policy innovation, change management and the realpolitik of public sector reform.
John Wanna, Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration, The Australian National University
The Changing South Pacific »
Identities and Transformations
Edited by: Serge Tcherkézoff, Françoise Douaire-Marsaudon
Publication date: December 2008
The texts collected in this volume take an anthropological approach to the variety of contemporary societal problems which confront the peoples of the contemporary South Pacific: religious revival, the sociology of relations between local groups, regions and nation-States, the problem of culture areas, the place of democracy in the transition of States founded on sacred chiefdoms, the role of ceremonial exchanges in a market economy, and so forth.
Each chapter presents a society seen from a specific point of view, but always with reference to the issue of collective identity and its confrontation with history and change. The collection thus invites the reader to understand how the inhabitants of these societies seek to affirm both an individual identity and a sense of belonging to the contemporary world. In doing so, it informs the reader about the contemporary realities experienced by the inhabitants of the South Pacific, with a view to contributing to an intercultural dialogue between the reader and these inhabitants.
Australian Humanities Review: Issue 45, 2008 »
Edited by: Monique Rooney, Russell Smith
Publication date: November 2008
Australian Humanities Review is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal featuring articles, essays and reviews focusing on a wide array of topics related to literature, culture, history and politics.
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Islamising Indonesia »
The Rise of Jemaah Tarbiyah and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS)
Authored by: Yon Machmudi
Publication date: November 2008
The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) is the most interesting phenomenon in contemporary Indonesian politics. Not only is it growing rapidly in membership and electoral support, it is also bringing a new and markedly different approach to Islamic politics, one which has no precedent in Indonesian history.
Understanding PKS and analysing its political behaviour presents challenges to scholars and observers. This is partly due to the fact that the party represents a new trend within Indonesian Islam which has few parallels with preceding movements.
Yon Machmudi has rendered us a valuable service. In this book, he provides a thoughtful and authoritative context for viewing PKS. He critiques the existing categorisations for Indonesian Islam and points to their inadequacy when describing the PKS and the campus-based Tarbiyah movement from which it sprang. He reworks the santri typology, dividing it into convergent, radical and global substreams. This offers new possibilities for explaining the PKS phenomenon and assists in differentiating between various types of Islamic revivalism in contemporary Indonesia. It also allows a more understanding of the accommodatory stance which PKS has towards the state and other political forces.
Yon’s text provides a good overview of the development of PKS from its Tarbiyah movement origins to its impressive success at the 2004 general elections. It considers the party’s attitude towards the issues of sharia implementation and community welfare and closes by examining the future challenges facing PKS.
It is a well written and authoritative account from a scholar who has done wideranging research on the party.
Public Leadership »
Perspectives and practices
Edited by: Paul `t Hart, John Uhr
Publication date: November 2008
‘Leadership’ is routinely admired, vilified, ridiculed, invoked, trivialised, explained and speculated about in the media and in everyday conversation. Despite all this talk, there is surprisingly little consensus about how to answer basic questions about the nature, place, role and impact of leadership in contemporary society. This book brings together academics from a broad array of social science disciplines who are interested in contemporary understandings of leadership in the public domain. Their work on political, administrative and civil society leadership represents a stock-take of what we need to know and offers original examples of what we do know about public leadership. Although this volume connects scholars living in, and mostly working on, public leadership in Australia and New Zealand, their contributions have a much broader scope and relevance.
Remaining Karen »
A Study of Cultural Reproduction and the Maintenance of Identity
Authored by: Ananda Rajah
Publication date: November 2008
This publication of Remaining Karen is intended as a tribute to Ananda Rajah and his consummate skills as an ethnographer. It is also a tribute to his long-term engagement in the study of the Karen. Remaining Karen was Ananda Rajah’s first focused study of the Sgaw Karen of Palokhi in northern Thailand, which he submitted in 1986 for this PhD in the Department of Anthropology in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University. It is a work of superlative ethnography set in an historical and regional context and as such retains its value to the present.
Foreign Bodies »
Oceania and the Science of Race 1750–1940
Edited by: Bronwen Douglas, Chris Ballard
Publication date: October 2008
From the 18th century, Oceania became the principal laboratory of raciology for scholars, voyagers, and colonisers alike. By juxtaposing encounters and theory, this magisterial book explores the semantics of human difference in all its emotional, intellectual, religious, and practical dimensions. The argument developed is subtle, engrossing, and gives the paradigm of ‘race’ its full use value. Foreign Bodies is a model of analysis and erudition from which historians of science and everyone interested in intercultural relations will greatly profit.
— Claude Blanckaert, CNRS (Centre Alexandre Koyré), Paris, and Honorary President, French Society for the History of the Science of Man
Calvin for the Third Millennium »
Authored by: Hans Mol
Publication date: September 2008
This work is a series of sermons produced by Emeritus Professor Hans Mol, and based on Biblical texts, the Commentaries of John Calvin on these texts, and on Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. Mol is Australia’s pre-eminent scholar in the sociology of religion, particularly in Australia. His 1971 volume, Religion in Australia, was the first attempt at statistical analysis of religion in Australia, which was also internationally significant. Parallel to Mol’s interest in the sociology of religion has been his interest in Calvin. Indeed the theological basis of his life has been as a Calvinist. Here in this volume he brings both of these interests together. His sermons, preached over the years in Canberra, seek to apply the teachings of Calvin to a world-view in which the scientific study of religion, and indeed the wider study of sociology, are of central significance. In these sermons, he succeeds considerably in this.
The volume is a substantial contribution to scholarship, in that the combination of these two factors has only rarely been attempted. Thus, the volume has originality and will have enduring value. It is especially appropriate that it should be published at this time, in preparation for the 500th Anniversary of Calvin’s birth (1509–2009).
Whistleblowing in the Australian Public Sector »
Enhancing the theory and practice of internal witness management in public sector organisations
Edited by: A. J. Brown
Publication date: September 2008
Of the many challenges in public sector management, few are as complex as the management of whistleblowing. Because it can lead to the discovery and rectification of wrongdoing, public interest whistleblowing is widely acknowledged as being positive for organisations and for society at large. However, the conflicts and reprisal risks often associated with whistleblowing also support a widespread belief that every whistleblower is destined to suffer, and nothing can be done to protect them from reprisals. Even if they did it once, sensible employees are often seen as unlikely to ever blow the whistle a second time around.
The extensive research in this book reveals a more complex and, fortunately, more positive picture. The product of one of the world’s most comprehensive research projects on whistleblowing, evidence from over 8,000 public servants in over 100 federal, state and local government agencies shows that whistleblowers can and do survive, and that often their role is highly valued. Public sector managers face significant challenges in better managing and protecting whistleblowers. There is great variation between the many public agencies making the effort, and the many agencies where the outcomes — for managers and whistleblowers alike — are still likely to be grim. This book is compulsory reading for all public sector managers who wish to turn this negative trend around, and for anyone interested in public accountability generally.