Search titles

Displaying results 141 to 150 of 208.

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.

Collaborative Governance »

A new era of public policy in Australia?

Publication date: December 2008
Collaboration has emerged as a central concept in public policy circles in Australia and a panacea to the complex challenges facing Australia. But is this really the cure-all it seems to be? In this edited collection we present scholarly and practitioner perspectives on the drivers, challenges, prospects and promise of collaboration. The papers, first presented at the 2007 ANZSOG Conference, draw on the extensive experience of the contributors in either trying to enact collaboration, or studying the processes of this phenomenon. Together the collection provides important insights into the potential of collaboration, but also the fiercely stubborn barriers to adopting more collaborative approaches to policy and implementation. The collection includes chapter from public servants, third sector managers, and both Australian and international academics which together make it a stimulating read for those working with or within government. It adds considerably to the debate about how to address current challenges of public policy and provides a significant resource for those interested in the realities of collaborative governance.

Public Leadership »

Perspectives and practices

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

Contested Governance »

Culture, power and institutions in Indigenous Australia

Edited by: Janet Hunt, Diane Smith, Stephanie Garling, Will Sanders
Publication date: October 2008
It is gradually being recognised by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians that getting contemporary Indigenous governance right is fundamental to improving Indigenous well-being and generating sustained socioeconomic development. This collection of papers examines the dilemmas and challenges involved in the Indigenous struggle for the development and recognition of systems of governance that they recognise as both legitimate and effective. The authors highlight the nature of the contestation and negotiation between Australian governments, their agents, and Indigenous groups over the appropriateness of different governance processes, values and practices, and over the application of related policy, institutional and funding frameworks within Indigenous affairs. The long-term, comparative study reported in this monograph has been national in coverage, and community and regional in focus. It has pulled together a multidisciplinary team to work with partner communities and organisations to investigate Indigenous governance arrangements–the processes, structures, scales, institutions, leadership, powers, capacities, and cultural foundations–across rural, remote and urban settings. This ethnographic case study research demonstrates that Indigenous and non-Indigenous governance systems are intercultural in respect to issues of power, authority, institutions and relationships. It documents the intended and unintended consequences–beneficial and negative–arising for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians from the realities of contested governance. The findings suggest that the facilitation of effective, legitimate governance should be a policy, funding and institutional imperative for all Australian governments. This research was conducted under an Australian Research Council Linkage Project, with Reconciliation Australia as Industry Partner.

Permissive Residents »

West Papuan refugees living in Papua New Guinea

Authored by: Diana Glazebrook
Publication date: September 2008
This book offers another frame through which to view the event of the outrigger landing of 43 West Papuans in Australia in 2006. West Papuans have crossed boundaries to seek asylum since 1962, usually eastward into Papua New Guinea (PNG), and occasionally southward to Australia. Between 1984–86, around 11,000 people crossed into PNG seeking asylum. After the Government of PNG acceded to the United Nations Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, West Papuans were relocated from informal camps on the international border to a single inland location called East Awin. This volume provides an ethnography of that settlement based on the author’s fieldwork carried out in 1998–99.

Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform: Volume 15, Number 3, 2008 »

Authored by: William Coleman, Alex Robson
Publication date: September 2008
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. Subscribe to the Agenda Alerting service if you wish to be advised on forthcoming or new issues.
Download for free
Not available for purchase

Dreamtime Superhighway »

Sydney Basin Rock Art and Prehistoric Information Exchange

Authored by: Jo McDonald
Publication date: August 2008
Dreamtime Superhighway presents a thorough and original contextualization of the rock art and archaeology of the Sydney Basin. By combining excavation results with rock art analysis it demonstrates that a true archaeology of rock art can provide insights into rock art image-making in people’s social and cultural lives. Based on a PhD dissertation, this monograph is a significantly revised and updated study which draws forcefully on rich and new data from extensive recent research—much of it by McDonald herself. McDonald has developed a model that suggests that visual culture—such as rock artmaking and its images and forms—could be understood as a system of communication, as a way of signaling group identifying behaviour. For the archaeologist of art, the anthropologist of art and those of us who try to think about past worlds… this monograph is a must read. Margaret W. Conkey University of California, Berkeley

Islands of Inquiry »

Colonisation, seafaring and the archaeology of maritime landscapes

Edited by: Geoffrey Clark, Foss Leach, Sue O'Connor
Publication date: June 2008
This collection makes a substantial contribution to several highly topical areas of archaeological inquiry. Many of the papers present new and innovative research into the processes of maritime colonisation, processes that affect archaeological contexts from islands to continents. Others shift focus from process to the archaeology of maritime places from the Bering to the Torres Straits, providing highly detailed discussions of how living by and with the sea is woven into all elements of human life from subsistence to trade and to ritual. Of equal importance are more abstract discussions of islands as natural places refashioned by human occupation, either through the introduction of new organisms or new systems of production and consumption. These transformation stories gain further texture (and variety) through close examinations of some of the more significant consequences of colonisation and migration, particularly the creation of new cultural identities. A final set of papers explores the ways in which the techniques of archaeological science have provided insights into the fauna of islands and the human history of such places. Islands of Inquiry highlights the importance of an archaeologically informed history of landmasses in the oceans and seas of the world.