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Australian Journal of Biography and History: No. 1, 2018 »
Publication date: December 2018
In this first issue, a diverse range of essays primarily relates to questions of individuals and the contexts in which they functioned, the ‘middle ground’ between a life and the times. Four of them concern Australian women who operated and negotiated various fields of endeavour, only one of which—the role of headmistress of a girls’ school—was unambiguously a woman’s domain. The profile of Miss Annie Hughston (1859–1943) shows how a strong figure could have a disproportionate influence on women entering male bastions. Similarly, Nancy Atkinson, a pioneering bacteriologist at the University of Adelaide, was not only a scientific researcher of note but a teacher of generations of graduate students. Yet when the chair in her field finally became available, she was overlooked in favour of a male English import, despite having acted in the role for many years. She was valued it seems more for her teaching than her research, a classic tendency to ascribe to women in scientific circles a nurturing rather than a knowledge-creating function. Jean Andruana Jimmy (1912–1991), a Yupngayth woman from Mapoon in north Queensland, also became prominent in community leadership and land rights activism, areas that had been assumed to be male spheres. Yet leading her community was by no means as revolutionary as was often assumed by outside European observers, for Andruana saw herself resuming a role that was entirely consistent with women’s responsibilities. Sophie Scott-Brown’s portrait of the playwright and director Eunice Hangar examines the nature of reading as ‘a simultaneously social and individualistic activity’ and its implications for understanding the way Australians have read English writers.
The article on the nineteenth-century journalist and gold commissioner Fredrick Dalton explores the potential of nineteenth-century mobilities in the formation of identity. Karen Fox explores how family history, in this case the Stephen and Street ‘legal dynasty’, can illuminate an understanding of legal and power relations in a geographic setting. The article on André Kostermans, a renowned Dutch Indonesian botanist, is also on one level a story of shifting identity. Born in the Dutch East Indies, and trained in botany in Holland, Kostermans was interned by the Japanese during World War II, and used his skills to supplement the diet of his fellow prisoners of war, and to develop a ‘bush’ procedure for producing surgical-grade alcohol, actions that undoubtedly saved the lives of many. After the war, his career was almost ruined by the Indonesian government’s response to his homosexuality. In the final essay, the University of Xian scholar Tiping Su discusses the problem of the ‘missing’ Chinese in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, explaining the various issues in identifying and historicising the many Chinese who sojourned in Australia, as well as those who stayed.
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Atlas of Butterflies and Diurnal Moths in the Monsoon Tropics of Northern Australia »
Authored by: M.F. Braby, D.C. Franklin, D.E. Bisa, M.R. Williams, A.A.E. Williams, C.L. Bishop, R.A.M. Coppen
Publication date: December 2018
Northern Australia is one of few tropical places left on Earth in which biodiversity—and the ecological processes underpinning that biodiversity—is still relatively intact. However, scientific knowledge of that biodiversity is still in its infancy and the region remains a frontier for biological discovery. The butterfly and diurnal moth assemblages of the area, and their intimate associations with vascular plants (and sometimes ants), exemplify these points.
However, the opportunity to fill knowledge gaps is quickly closing: proposals for substantial development and exploitation of Australia’s north will inevitably repeat the ecological devastation that has occurred in temperate southern Australia—loss of species, loss of ecological communities, fragmentation of populations, disruption of healthy ecosystem function and so on—all of which will diminish the value of the natural heritage of the region before it is fully understood and appreciated. Written by several experts in the field, the main purpose of this atlas is to compile a comprehensive inventory of the butterflies and diurnal moths of northern Australia to form the scientific baseline against which the extent and direction of change can be assessed in the future. Such information will also assist in identifying the region’s biological assets, to inform policy and management agencies and to set priorities for biodiversity conservation.
In the media
Read the IFL Science article: Incredible Butterfly And Moth Diversity Hotspot Discovered In Northern Australia.
Read the Fairfax article: Butterfly 'detective' solves 120-year-old north Australian mystery.
The Lives of Stories »
Three Aboriginal-Settler Friendships
Authored by: Emma Dortins
Publication date: December 2018
The Lives of Stories traces three stories of Aboriginal–settler friendships that intersect with the ways in which Australians remember founding national stories, build narratives for cultural revival, and work on reconciliation and self-determination. These three stories, which are still being told with creativity and commitment by storytellers today, are the story of James Morrill’s adoption by Birri-Gubba people and re-adoption 17 years later into the new colony of Queensland, the story of Bennelong and his relationship with Governor Phillip and the Sydney colonists, and the story of friendship between Wiradjuri leader Windradyne and the Suttor family. Each is an intimate story about people involved in relationships of goodwill, care, adoptive kinship and mutual learning across cultures, and the strains of maintaining or relinquishing these bonds as they took part in the larger events that signified the colonisation of Aboriginal lands by the British. Each is a story in which cross-cultural understanding and misunderstanding are deeply embedded, and in which the act of storytelling itself has always been an engagement in cross-cultural relations. The Lives of Stories reflects on the nature of story as part of our cultural inheritance, and seeks to engage the reader in becoming more conscious of our own effect as history-makers as we retell old stories with new meanings in the present, and pass them on to new generations.
Skin, Kin and Clan »
The dynamics of social categories in Indigenous Australia
Publication date: April 2018
Australia is unique in the world for its diverse and interlocking systems of Indigenous social organisation. On no other continent do we see such an array of complex and contrasting social arrangements, coordinated through a principle of ‘universal kinship’ whereby two strangers meeting for the first time can recognise one another as kin. For some time, Australian kinship studies suffered from poor theorisation and insufficient aggregation of data. The large-scale AustKin project sought to redress these problems through the careful compilation of kinship information. Arising from the project, this book presents recent original research by a range of authors in the field on the kinship and social category systems in Australia. A number of the contributions focus on reconstructing how these systems originated and developed over time. Others are concerned with the relationship between kinship and land, the semantics of kin terms and the dynamics of kin interactions.
Teaching ‘Proper’ Drinking? »
Clubs and pubs in Indigenous Australia
Authored by: Maggie Brady
Publication date: December 2017
In Teaching ‘Proper’ Drinking?, the author brings together three fields of scholarship: socio-historical studies of alcohol, Australian Indigenous policy history and social enterprise studies. The case studies in the book offer the first detailed surveys of efforts to teach responsible drinking practices to Aboriginal people by installing canteens in remote communities, and of the purchase of public hotels by Indigenous groups in attempts both to control sales of alcohol and to create social enterprises by redistributing profits for the community good. Ethnographies of the hotels are examined through the analytical lens of the Swedish ‘Gothenburg’ system of municipal hotel ownership.
The research reveals that the community governance of such social enterprises is not purely a matter of good administration or compliance with the relevant liquor legislation. Their administration is imbued with the additional challenges posed by political contestation, both within and beyond the communities concerned.
‘The idea that community or government ownership and management of a hotel or other drinking place would be a good way to control drinking and limit harm has been commonplace in many Anglophone and Nordic countries, but has been less recognised in Australia. Maggie Brady’s book brings together the hidden history of such ideas and initiatives in Australia … In an original and wide-ranging set of case studies, Brady shows that success in reducing harm has varied between communities, largely depending on whether motivations to raise revenue or to reduce harm are in control.’
— Professor Robin Room, Director, Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University
In the Media
Read the Alice Spring News article: ‘Proper’ drinking: elusive goal but how hard have we tried?
Awards
Shortlisted – 2019 Chief Minister's Northern Territory History Book Award
A Long Way to Go »
Irregular Migration Patterns, Processes, Drivers and Decision-making
Edited by: Marie McAuliffe, Khalid Koser
Publication date: December 2017
A Long Way to Go: Irregular Migration Patterns, Processes, Drivers and Decision-making presents the findings of a unique migration research program harnessing work of some of the leading international and Australian migration researchers on the challenging and complex topic of irregular maritime migration. The book brings together selected findings of the research program, and in doing so it contributes to the ongoing academic and policy discourses by providing findings from rigorous quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research to support a better understanding of the dynamics of irregular migration and their potential policy implications.
Stemming from the 2012 Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers report, the Irregular Migration Research Program commissioned 26 international research projects involving 17 academic principal researchers, along with private sector specialist researchers, international organisations and policy think tanks. The centrepiece of the research program was a multi-year collaborative partnership between the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and The Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy. Under this partnership, empirical research on international irregular migration was commissioned from migration researchers in Australia, Indonesia, Iran, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka and Switzerland.
Crown and Sword »
Executive power and the use of force by the Australian Defence Force
Authored by: Cameron Moore
Publication date: November 2017
The Australian Defence Force, together with military forces from a number of western democracies, have for some years been seeking out and killing Islamic militants in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, detaining asylum seekers for periods at sea or running the judicial systems of failed states. It has also been ready to conduct internal security operations at home. The domestic legal authority cited for this is often the poorly understood concept of executive power, which is power that derives from executive and not parliamentary authority. In an age of legality where parliamentary statutes govern action by public officials in the finest detail, it is striking that these extreme exercises of the use of force often rely upon an elusive legal basis. This book seeks to find the limits to the exercise of this extraordinary power.
Multi-level Governance »
Conceptual challenges and case studies from Australia
Edited by: Katherine A. Daniell, Adrian Kay
Publication date: November 2017
Important policy problems rarely fit neatly within existing territorial boundaries. More difficult still, individual governments or government departments rarely enjoy the power, resources and governance structures required to respond effectively to policy challenges under their responsibility. These dilemmas impose the requirement to work with others from the public, private, non-governmental organisation (NGO) or community spheres, and across a range of administrative levels and sectors. But how? This book investigates the challenges—both conceptual and practical—of multi-level governance processes. It draws on a range of cases from Australian public policy, with comparisons to multi-level governance systems abroad, to understand factors behind the effective coordination and management of multi-level governance processes in different policy areas over the short and longer term. Issues such as accountability, politics and cultures of governance are investigated through policy areas including social, environmental and spatial planning policy.
The authors of the volume are a range of academics and past public servants from different jurisdictions, which allows previously hidden stories and processes of multi-level governance in Australia across different periods of government to be revealed and analysed for the first time.
Researching functional ecology in Kosciuszko National Park »
Edited by: Hannah Zurcher, Ming-Dao Chia, Michael Whitehead, Adrienne Nicotra
Publication date: November 2017
Take 30 undergraduates and 20 experts from the Research School of Biology at The Australian National University, and put them together for 10 days in the high-altitude environment of Kosciuszko National Park in the Australian Alps. Challenge them to first identify research questions of potential importance to the survival of one of Australia’s unique ecosystems under threat from climate change, and then to answer those questions in scientifically rigorous and competent ways.
The successful outcomes of this challenge are evidenced in this volume of selected and fully peer-reviewed papers. They are all written by students who—after intense pre-field preparation—isolated intriguing research questions, postulated hypotheses, collected and analysed data, and interpreted their findings in the context of functional ecology theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence in the scientific literature. The experts acted as guides and supporters rather than lead researchers, so that the students—most of whom were at the end of their first year of studies—were all tasked with fully realising the concept of self-actuated research.
This book has much to offer ecologists, plant and animal scientists, protected area managers and anyone else interested in knowing more about the species of Kosciuszko National Park and how they live, survive, behave and interact. This book is also a showcase of just how much can be accomplished by bright and enthusiastic students who are trusted and guided to use their scientific and ecological knowledge and skills immediately. Much of the knowledge made available in these papers would simply not have seen the light of day except for this innovative intensive approach to research-based education. It is reassuring to know that the future of ecological research is in such capable hearts and minds!
Tax, Social Policy and Gender »
Rethinking equality and efficiency
Edited by: Miranda Stewart
Publication date: November 2017
Gender inequality is profoundly unjust and in clear contradiction to the philosophy of the ‘fair go’. In spite of some action by recent governments, Australia has fallen behind in policy and outcomes, even as the G20 group of nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund are paying renewed attention to gender inequality.
Tax, Social Policy and Gender presents new research on entrenched gender inequality in a comparative framework of human rights and fiscal sustainability. Ground-breaking empirical studies examine unequal returns to education for women and men, decision-making about child care by fathers and mothers, the history and gendered effects of the income tax and family payments, and women in the top 1 per cent. Contributors demonstrate how Australia’s tax, social security, child care, parental leave, education, work and retirement income policies intersect to compound gender inequality.
Tax, Social Policy and Gender calls for a rethinking of equality and efficiency in tax and social policy and provides new policy solutions. It offers a pathway to achieve gender mainstreaming for women’s economic security and the wellbeing of all Australians.