Authors & editors
ANU Press has collaborated with a diverse range of authors and editors across a wide variety of academic disciplines. Browse the ANU Press collection by author or editor.
Chains »
Edited by: Linda Jaivin, Esther Sunkyung Klein, Annie Luman Ren
Publication date: July 2023
Speaking to the Twentieth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, in October 2022, President Xi Jinping reiterated his commitment to the ‘opening up’ policy of his predecessors — a policy that has burnished the party’s political legitimacy among its citizens by enabling four decades of economic development. Yet, for all the talk of openness, 2022 was a year of both literal and symbolic locks and chains — including, of course, the long, coercive, and often brutally enforced lockdowns of neighbourhoods and cities across China, most prominently Shanghai. Then there was a vlogger’s accidental discovery of the ‘woman in chains’, sparking an anguished, nationwide conversation about human trafficking. That was part of a broader (if frequently censored) conversation about gendered violence and women’s rights, in a year when women’s representation at the highest levels of power, which was already minimal, decreased even further. There was trouble with supply chains and, with the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis, in August, island chains as well. Despite the tensions in the Asia-Pacific, the People’s Republic of China expanded its diplomatic initiatives among Pacific island nations and celebrated fifty years of diplomatic links with both Japan and Australia. As the year drew to a close, a tragic fire in a locked-down apartment building in Ürümqi triggered a series of popular protests that brought an end to three years of ‘zero COVID’. The China Story Yearbook: Chains provides informed perspectives on these and other important stories from 2022.
Ebenezer Mission Station, 1863–1873 »
The Diary of Missionaries Adolf and Polly Hartmann
Edited by: Felicity Jensz
Publication date: July 2023
This book contains the annotated diary of Adolf and Mary (Polly) Hartmann, missionaries of the Moravian Church who worked at the Ebenezer mission station on Wotjobaluk country, in the north-west of the Colony of Victoria, Australia. The diary begins in 1863, as the Hartmanns are preparing to travel from Europe to take up their post, and ends in 1873, by which time they are working in Canada as missionaries to the Lenni Lenape people.
Recording the Hartmann’s eight years at the Ebenezer mission, the diary presents richly detailed insights into the daily interactions between Aboriginal people and their colonisers. The inhabitants of the mission are overwhelmingly described in the diary as agents in their lives, moving in and out of the missionaries’ sphere of influence, yet restricted at times by the boundaries of the mission. The diary reveals moments of laughter, shared grief, community, advocacy and reciprocal learning, alongside the mundane everyday chores of mission life.
Through the personal writings of a missionary couple, this diary brings to light the regular, routine and extraordinary events on a mission station in Australia in the third quarter of the nineteenth century—a period just prior to British high imperialism, and a period before increasingly restrictive legislation was enforced on Indigenous people in the Colony of Victoria.
Aboriginal History Journal: Volume 46 »
Edited by: Crystal McKinnon, Ben Silverstein
Publication date: July 2023
The articles in Volume 46 each take provocative and generative approaches to the challenge of historical truth-telling. Examining the public memory of massacres in Gippsland, Victoria, Aunty Doris Paton, Beth Marsden and Jessica Horton trace a history of contestation between, on the one hand, forms of frontier memorialisation articulated to secure colonial possession and, on the other, the sovereign counter-narratives of Gunai Kurnai communities. Heidi Norman and Anne Maree Payne describe Aboriginal campaigns to repatriate Ancestors’ stolen remains over the past fifty years, showing how these campaigns have proceeded along with and as part of nation-building movements towards land rights and self-determination. Their call for Aboriginal relationships with Ancestors to be represented in a National Resting Place aligns their research with these movements. We return to Gunai Kurnai Country in a piece authored by Rob Hudson and Shannon Woodcock, who show how the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place has formed an important site and tool of community work towards cultural resurgence; the article itself demonstrates the value and importance of collaborative and co-designed research methods. The volume then includes a conversation between Laura McBride and Mariko Smith about their curation of the Australian Museum’s Unsettled exhibition, through which they responded to the 250th anniversary of Cook’s Endeavour voyage along Australia’s east coast by telling true stories that put Cook in his place.
Australian Journal of Biography and History: No. 7, 2023 »
Special Issue: Convict Lives
Publication date: June 2023
This special issue of the Australian Journal of Biography and History explores the lives of convicts transported to Australia and asks how they can be investigated through various forms of biography. Given the ever-increasing range of methodologies for researching convict lives, this issue offers a timely reflection on their varying strengths, limitations and functions as well as on the future of convict history research. Nine refereed articles and two research notes provide new insights into various aspects of convict lives and experiences, combined with broad discussions on methodology.
In their introductory article, Matthew Cunneen and Malcolm Allbrook delve into the history of convict biography and the ways previous historians have attempted to explore and understand such lives. To overcome the gaps and silences in the archives, they argue, historians of convict Australia should employ a range of methodologies that each have their own particular domains of enquiry. In her research note, Janet McCalman reflects on the historiographical discoveries that have been made possible by the digitising, indexing and linking of convict records. She calls for future researchers to continue the work behind large datasets so that one day a fully comprehensive database of convicts can be created. Adopting a more fine-grained approach, Jennifer Bird reconstructs in detail from the archives the penal life of the convict Robert Edward Knox. Her analysis of Knox demonstrates an alternative to big-data approaches for understanding convict agency.
With a similarly refined scope—though one that looks at the convict system from the outside in—Jennifer Brookes examines the struggles of Lydia Anne to join her transported husband, Laurence Hynes Halloran, in Australia. Brookes’s article suggests that historians might consider how contemporary understandings of convicts can be enhanced by studying the lives of non-convicts associated with transportation. Matthew Cunneen reconstructs the lives of three convicts to further inform the experiences of people of colour under transportation. He argues for collective biography as a way of bridging the methodological shortcomings of purely biographical and prosopographical approaches. In the first large-scale study of the subject, Patricia Downes examines the social and legal conditions that saw freely arrived British soldiers sentenced to transportation within the Australian colonies. Complicating old narratives of the soldiers as contaminated by the convicts around them, she explores how military crimes resulting in transportation were sometimes driven by desires for freedom from military life and to protest service conditions.
Christine Fernon reports in her research note on the progress made in the National Centre of Biography’s First Three Fleets and Their Families project, an ambitious intergenerational study of Australia’s early colonial history. The preliminary findings give a sense of the insights that the project will provide into how convict lives formed the fabric of Australian colonial history. Kristyn Harman and Anthony Ray explore the intergenerational effects of the convict system through the experiences of three convicts of colour. In analysing these lives, they contribute to our understanding of interracial marriage, family formation and recidivism in Van Diemen’s Land. Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, David Andrew Roberts and Mark McLean draw on a wealth of convict records to show the potential of using big data to analyse thousands of convict lives in parallel. Doing so would allow the individual to be contextualised within the greater population and would present opportunities for temporal and spatial analysis, thereby deepening understandings of British criminal management.
Visually illustrating the potential of big data in studies of convict protest and collective biography, Monika Schwarz examines collective resistance networks in female factories in Van Diemen’s Land. She draws together the stories of previously unconnected women and uncovers episodes of resistance. Returning convict history to its material origins, Richard Tuffin, Martin Gibbs, David Roe and Sylvana Szydzik draw on archaeological methods of digital technology to recontextualise convict lives. By mapping sites of convict labour and quantifying the outputs from them, the authors collectively argue that adopting multi-scalar and multidisciplinary approaches to studying convict environments can deeply enhance the histories of those who were involved with them. This issue deepens understandings of Australia’s convicts, the lives they led and the ways historians can best study them.
East Asia Forum Quarterly: Volume 15, Number 2, 2023 »
Publication date: June 2023
Global trade stands at a crucial crossroads. The multilateral trading system that underpinned globalisation for three-quarters of a century is being pulled apart by big power politics and the way forward is fogged in mistrust. Global growth is projected to decline this year and remain anaemic. Inflation, the rising rivalry between the world’s two largest economies, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine weigh heavily on the global outlook. The European war underscores how quickly the trading ties between nations might be undone and weaponised. This issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly examines the impact of trade sanctions as they rip into the trading system well beyond the battlefield. It interrogates how far sanctions have succeeded in hobbling Russia’s war machine and questions their deterrent value outside of conflict or their universal application, explores how supply chains have reshuffled around the reach of regulators, and asks how nations are probing opportunities created by the conflict.
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‘Order, Order!’ »
A Biographical Dictionary of Speakers, Deputy Speakers and Clerks of the Australian House of Representatives
Edited by: Stephen Wilks
Publication date: May 2023
‘Order, Order!’: A Biographical Dictionary of Speakers, Deputy Speakers and Clerks of the Australian House of Representatives shines a first-ever historical light on the remarkable men and women who have served in these national offices since Federation.
The Speakers include Frederick Holder, whose campaign to embed a Westminster-style Speakership died with him when he collapsed dramatically in the parliament; the much-loved Joan Child, Australia’s first female Speaker, whose struggles as a widow with five children fostered her commitment to social justice and made her, in the words of another Speaker, Anna Burke, ‘pretty fierce’; and Ian Sinclair, a warhorse of a parliamentarian who seemed to prove the poacher-turned-gamekeeper principle. The Deputy Speakers, a particularly eclectic assortment, include the strange and bleakly serious James Fowler, who once hopefully mailed a film synopsis to the American director Cecil B. DeMille and who ended his days warning of the perils of democracy. Amongst the Clerks are Frank Green, who, at the height of the Cold War, indiscreetly befriended members of the Communist Party, and the popular Jack Pettifer—a true child of parliament—who grew up in an apartment in the building.
This book includes analysis of what sorts of individuals typically filled these vital parliamentary positions, and the appearance of an Australian model of the Speakership based on pragmatic compromise. All three offices are typically more than just creatures of political parties—something that Australians should be prepared to defend against the remorseless encroachment of political partisanship.
Islands of Hope »
Indigenous Resource Management in a Changing Pacific
Edited by: Paul D’Arcy, Daya Dakasi Da-Wei Kuan
Publication date: May 2023
In the Pacific, as elsewhere, indigenous communities live with the consequences of environmental mismanagement and over-exploitation but rarely benefit from the short-term economic profits such actions may generate within the global system.
National and international policy frameworks ultimately rely on local community assent. Without effective local participation and partnership, these extremely imposed frameworks miss out on millennia of local observation and understanding and seldom deliver viable and sustained environmental, cultural and economic benefits at the local level.
This collection argues that environmental sustainability, indigenous political empowerment and economic viability will succeed only by taking account of distinct local contexts and cultures. In this regard, these Pacific indigenous case studies offer ‘islands of hope’ for all communities marginalised by increasingly intrusive—and increasingly rapid—technological changes and by global dietary, economic, political and military forces with whom they have no direct contact or influence.
Navigating Prosperity and Security in East Asia »
Publication date: May 2023
The world’s two largest economies, the United States and China, are locked in a trade war, complicating policy choices internationally. These choices are sharper for the countries of East and Southeast Asia than they are elsewhere, because the multilateral rules-based economic order on which East Asian economic integration and cooperation is built is under threat.
Economic policy has never been separate from security considerations. For decades, the national security risks inherent in economic exchange have been mitigated under a US-led system that allowed the strengthening of economic ties, including between China and the rest of the world. But economics and security are increasingly entangled in a way that is damaging to both, creating a dangerous trade-off. Now, as global uncertainties grow, the risks of international exchange—rather than its benefits—are beginning to dominate the calculus for some policymakers.
Against this backdrop, how can Southeast Asian countries and US allies in Asia balance their security interests and their economic interests? And how can these countries, individually and collectively, broaden their policy options and deepen economic integration? This volume investigates the domestic and international dimensions of these questions.
The Australian Constitution and National Identity »
Edited by: Anna Olijnyk, Alexander Reilly
Publication date: May 2023
What does Australia’s Constitution say about national identity? A conventional answer might be ‘not much’. Yet recent constitutional controversies raise issues about the recognition of First Peoples, the place of migrants and dual citizens, the right to free speech, the nature of our democracy, and our continuing connection to the British monarchy. These are constitutional questions, but they are also questions about who we are as a nation.
This edited collection brings together legal, historical, and political science scholarship. These diverse perspectives reveal a wealth of connections between the Australian Constitution and Australia’s national identity.
More Than Fiscal »
The Intergenerational Report, Sustainability and Public Policy in Australia
Publication date: May 2023
Every five years, the Australian treasurer is required to publish an intergenerational report (IGR), which examines the long-term sustainability of current government policies and seeks to determine how demographic, technological and other structural trends might affect the economy and the budget in coming decades. Despite these lofty objectives, the five IGRs produced from 2002 have received only muted applause. Critics say that they are too mechanical, too narrow and too subject to the views of the government of the day and that they don’t provide the intended wake-up call for public understanding of looming economic, social and environmental issues.
This analysis of the most recent IGR (2021) is based on a workshop hosted by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. While finding that the 2021 IGR is an improvement on the previous report (2015), the authors identify several fiscal and broader policy issues that deserve greater attention, including Australia’s structural deficit, rising inequality and the impacts of climate change. They argue that the report fails to discuss the policies required to support greater resilience against future shocks, including the case for earlier budget repair. They propose that future IGRs be prepared with greater independence, cover all levels of government, have more transparent analysis and draw upon a wider ‘wellbeing’ approach to long-term sustainability.
This book aims to attract close attention from public officials and politicians and generate constructive debate in the community.
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.
Fijians in Transnational Pentecostal Networks »
Authored by: Karen J. Brison
Publication date: April 2023
In Fijians in Transnational Pentecostal Networks, Karen J. Brison examines the Harvest Ministry, an independent Fijian Pentecostal church that sends Fijian and Papua New Guinean missionaries to East Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe and elsewhere. After studying the ministry’s main church in Suva for several years, Brison visited its missionaries and their local partners in East Africa and Papua New Guinea. The result of those visits, this book provides an unusual insight into Pentecostal churches in the global south, arguing that they seldom produce novel visions of Christianity and world inequality. It also offers new perspectives, by situating Pacific island churches within a global community and by examining social class formation, which is increasingly important in the Pacific.
Pentecostalism has a consistent culture all over the world, but shared themes take on different meanings in the face of local concerns. In Fiji, Pentecostal churches are part of middle-class projects constructing leadership roles and highlighting transnational ties for a growing group of indigenous urban professionals. In Papua New Guinea, church leaders promote the idea that youths with blocked aspirations are tough and humble and therefore make invaluable missionaries. In East Africa, Pentecostal churches are part of a networking strategy that entrepreneurial individuals see as essential to survival. As these local groups each use Pentecostalism to advance their own agenda, they endorse Euro-American racial stereotypes and ideologies about social evolution and progress.
Wehali: The Female Land »
Traditions of a Timorese Ritual Centre
Authored by: Tom Therik
Publication date: March 2023
Wehali defines itself as the ritual centre of the island of Timor. As a ritual centre, Wehali continues to be the residence of a figure of traditional authority on whom, in the 18th century, the Dutch conferred the title of Kaiser (Keizer) and to whom the Portuguese gave the title of Emperor (Imperador). At one time, Wehali was the centre of a network of tributary states, which both the Dutch and Portuguese regarded as paramount to the political organisation of the island. This book is a study of Wehali in its contemporary setting as it continues to maintain its rituals and traditions.
Significantly, Wehali is a ‘Female’ centre and its ‘Great Lord’ is considered to be a ‘Female’ lord. Whereas other Timorese societies are organised along male lines, in Wehali, all land, all property, all houses belong to women. Men are exchanged as husbands in marriage. Wehali is thus considered to be the ‘husband-giver’ to the surrounding realms on the island that look to its inner power as their source of life.
Something's Gotta Change »
Redefining Collaborative Linguistic Research
Authored by: Lesley Woods
Publication date: March 2023
Indigenous people are pushing back against more than 200 years of colonisation and rejecting being seen by the academy as ‘subjects’ of research.
A quiet revolution is taking place among many Indigenous communities across Australia, a revolution insisting that we have control over our languages and our cultural knowledge – for our languages to be a part of our future, not our past. We are reclaiming our right to determine how linguistic research takes place in our communities and how we want to engage with the academy in the future.
This book is an essential guide for non-Indigenous linguists wanting to engage more deeply with Indigenous communities and form genuinely collaborative research partnerships. It fleshes out and redefines ethical linguistic research and work with Indigenous people and communities, with application beyond linguistics.
By reassessing, from an Indigenous point of view, what it means to ‘save’ an endangered language, Something’s Gotta Change shows how linguistic research can play a positive role in keeping (maintaining) or putting (reclaiming) endangered languages on our tongues.
East Asia Forum Quarterly: Volume 15, Number 1, 2023 »
Publication date: March 2023
While many rejoice in something like ‘normality’ after the years of disruption caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the world will not resume its former shape. Nowhere is this more evident than in China. After the disastrous economic performance of 2022, a recalibration of China’s policies was essential—including by retreating from zero-COVID and, under the banner of ‘Chinese-style modernisation’, relaxing restrictions on the free market. China’s greatest post-pandemic challenge, however, will be the terms of its engagement with the outside world. Its claims to both developing-nation status and global leadership define China, some say, as an ‘anxious adolescent superpower’. This issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly canvasses a range of shifts in Chinese society and daily life as well as policy direction: describing women’s leading role in the calls for social change, explaining how China’s demographic crunch is unlikely to affect its economic modernisation over the coming two decades, examining the difficulties faced by rural migrants and in investing in the education of the rural young, and detailing the public response to the poorly understood social credit system.
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The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations »
Edited by: Kate Darian-Smith, David Lowe
Publication date: March 2023
Relations between Australia and Japan have undergone both testing and celebrated times since 1952, when Australia’s ambassadorial representation in Tokyo commenced. Over the years, interactions have deepened beyond mutual trade objectives to encompass economic, defence and strategic interests within the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. This ‘special relationship’ has been characterised by the high volume of people moving between Australia and Japan for education, tourism, business, science and research. Cultural ties, from artists-in-residence to sister-city agreements, have flourished. Australia has supported Japan in times of need, including the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.
This book shows how the Australian embassy in Tokyo, through its programs and people, has been central to these developments. The embassy’s buildings, its gardens and grounds, and, above all, its occupants—from senior Australian diplomats to locally engaged staff—are the focus of this multidimensional study by former diplomats and expert observers of Australia’s engagement with Japan. Drawing on oral histories, memoirs, and archives, this volume sheds new light on the complexity of Australia’s diplomatic work in Japan, and the role of the embassy in driving high-level negotiations as well as fostering soft‑power influences.
‘With a similar vision for the Indo-Pacific region and a like-minded approach to the challenges facing us, Australia and Japan have become more intimate and more strategic as partners. I am very pleased to see this slice of Australian diplomatic history so well accounted for in this book.’
— Jan Adams AO PSM, Secretary, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Australia’s Ambassador to Japan, November 2020–June 2022
Come Hell or High Fever »
Readying the World's Megacities for Disaster
Authored by: Russell W. Glenn
Publication date: January 2023
‘Nations appear and fall, but cities endure and rediscover how to succeed. In this meticulously defined and researched book, Glenn presents ideas for minimising suffering during urban catastrophes. His urgency identifies risks held in urban areas by 3.5 billion people. These people are many of us: as urban populations occupying 3 per cent of our planet’s land area, drawing water from 41 per cent of the world’s ground surface, consuming 60 to 80 per cent of global energy and achieving 80 per cent of the world’s economic productivity. For Glenn, our resilience—through diversity in preparation, survival and recovery—includes comprehensive approaches that are sustained in duration, orchestrated in bringing all necessary capabilities to bear, layered in approach and early in application.’
—Major General Chris Field, Australian Army
‘The time to prepare for the inevitable is now. Dr Glenn has written a book that should be read by all leaders, planners and responders who may be called upon in an urban disaster, whether natural or man-made. Military leaders should give it particular attention, as the human race is increasingly concentrated in its cities. Understanding how to wage war in dense urban terrain is essential, especially if a nation also seeks to hold the moral high ground. The fruits of any victory won among people that fails to consider the lessons in Come Hell or High Fever are likely to be very bitter.’
—Lieutenant General Sean MacFarland, United States Army (retired)
Marhaba! An Introduction to Modern Standard Arabic »
Publication date: January 2023
Marhaba! An Introduction to Modern Standard Arabic is a unique student handbook specifically written and designed for flexible learning. It consists of 23 lessons that include a variety of online interactive tasks supported by a range of audio resources. Online learners develop reading, listening, speaking and writing skills at the introductory level of Modern Standard Arabic while getting an insight into the culture of the Arab world. This publication addresses the needs of a mobile and diverse cohort of Australian and international students who seek to acquire a basic knowledge of the grammar and syntax of Modern Standard Arabic, a form of the language common to all peoples of the Arab-speaking world, from North Africa to the Middle East and Asia.
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Made in China Journal: Volume 7, Issue 2, 2022 »
Publication date: December 2022
In 2020, Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping pledged to ‘transition to a green and low-carbon mode of development’, as well as to ‘peak the country’s CO2 emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060’. Xi’s pledge offered a tangible example of what has come to be known as the ecological civilisation (生态文明)—the idea of engineered harmony between humans and nature that was recently incorporated into the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. But what kind of engineering is required for sustainable transitions at this scale and pace? Through which political concepts and technical practices could such a harmonious rebalancing of China’s resource-devouring development be envisioned and achieved?
This issue of the Made in China Journal addresses these questions by borrowing political theorist John Dryzek’s rereading of the Greek myth of Prometheus. Inspired by the story of a demigod who stole the technology of fire for the sole purpose of human advancement, Prometheanism describes an eco-modernist orientation that perceives the Earth as a resource whose utility is determined primarily by human needs and interests and whose environmental problems are overcome through continuous political and technological innovation. In contrast with other environmental perspectives, Prometheanism prioritises human interests and needs over those of ecosystems or the individual needs of other lifeforms. Through this framework, we asked our contributors to offer their takes on the following questions: To what extent can Xi’s dream of an ecological civilisation be understood in terms of techno-optimism and the anthropocentrism that characterise Prometheanism? What price is China paying in its effort to transition towards a heavily engineered ‘sustainable’ market utopia?
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Lilith: A Feminist History Journal: Number 28 »
Publication date: December 2022
New research in this issue of Lilith includes studies of feminist vegetarian activism in Victorian England; the lives of Japanese businesswomen in North Queensland before 1941; negotiations of gender amongst women combatants in Tigray, Ethiopia; and the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on women. Each of the four research articles draws upon new sources and interpretations that shed light on the varied experiences of women within and beyond Australia, often challenging established norms or assumptions about progress.
In ‘Vegetarians, Vivisection and Violationism’, Ruby Ekkel explores the centrality of vegetarianism to the activities and lived experience of noted Victorian activist Anna Kingsford. Tianna Killoran’s article ‘Sex, soap and silk’ draws on newly accessible sources in moving beyond traditional narratives that characterise Japanese women in interwar North Queensland as impoverished sex workers. In ‘A Soldier and a Woman’, Francesca Baldwin examines how women combatants in Tigray, Ethiopia, negotiated the connections and collisions between soldiering and womanhood during and after the 1974–91 civil war. Petra Brown and Tamara Kayali Browne’s article ‘Relational Autonomy: Addressing the Vulnerabilities of Women in a Global Pandemic’ explores how the individualistic/atomistic model of autonomy in responses to Covid-19 has disproportionately disadvantaged women.
This issue also contains nine short essay responses from experienced gender scholars—including Ann Curthoys, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, Catherine Kevin, Ann McGrath, Janet Ramsey, Yves Rees, Madeleine C. Seys, Jordana Silverstein, and Zora Simic—to the question ‘What does it mean to do feminism in 2022?’ These essays reveal the political power of feminist history-making, since, as Ann Curthoys argues in her essay, feminist history is itself a form of activism.
Taken together, these research articles and essays, along with the editorial, demonstrate the fallibility of the notion of history being a narrative of linear progress without relevance to our current reality. They urge against political complacency about the Covid-19 pandemic, colonialism or women's oppression as existing only in the past.
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International Review of Environmental History: Volume 8, Issue 2, 2022 »
Edited by: James Beattie, Brett Bennett
Publication date: December 2022
The latest issue of the International Review of Environmental History ranges widely and deeply across several topics, periods and continents. The first part contains six articles, on environmental history teaching; ancient populations and plague; European geographical knowledge of India; environment, architecture and design; introduced ship-borne rats and mice; and environmental change on sub-Antarctic islands.
The second part is a special-issue section, edited by Shoko Mizuno (Komazawa University, Tokyo), on the hybridity of colonial and postcolonial forestry in environmental history. Its articles investigate the production and circulation of knowledge in colonial British, postcolonial and international forestry networks, including during the development of the East Pegu Yoma forestry project in Burma (Myanmar) and the spread of invasive lantana in India.
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Unsung Land, Aspiring Nation »
Journeys in Bougainville
Authored by: Gordon Peake
Publication date: December 2022
In 2016, Gordon Peake answers a job advertisement for a role with the government of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, a collection of islands on the eastern fringe of Papua New Guinea looking to strike out as a country of its own.
In his day job he sees at first hand the challenges of trying to stand up new government systems. Away from the office he travels with former rebels, follows an anthropologist’s ghost and visits landmarks from the region’s conflict. In 2019, he witnesses joy and euphoria as the people of Bougainville vote in a referendum on their future.
Out of these encounters emerges an unforgettable portrait of this potential nation-in-waiting.
Blending narrative history, travelogue and personal reminiscences, Unsung Land, Aspiring Nation is an engaging memoir as well as an insightful meditation on the realities of nation-making and international development.
‘Heartfelt and honest. This book is an insightful read and a valuable addition to scholarship on Bougainville’s journey to peace.’
— Joseph Nobetau, former Chief Secretary to the Autonomous Bougainville Government
‘An excellent piece of engaged travel writing. With first-hand observation and curiosity, Gordon has produced a deeply informed, compelling and evocative account of war, survival and nation-building in what may become the world’s newest country.’
— Tom Bamforth, author of The Rising Tide: Among the Islands and Atolls of the Pacific Ocean
Unsung Land, Aspiring Nation is also available as an audiobook.
How Government Experts Self-Sabotage »
The Language of the Rebuffed
Authored by: Christiane Gerblinger
Publication date: December 2022
After official policy advice to governments is publicly released, governments are often accused of ignoring or rejecting their experts. Commonly represented as politicisation, this depiction is superficial. Digging deeper, is there something about the official advice itself that makes it easy to ignore?
Instead of lamenting a demise of expertise, Christiane Gerblinger asks: does the expert advice of policy officials feature characteristics that invite its government audience to overlook or misread it? To answer this question, Gerblinger critically examines official policy advice and finds the language of the rebuffed: government experts reluctant to disclose what they know so as to accommodate political circumstances. She argues that this language evades stable meaning and diminishes the democratic right of citizens to scrutinise the work of government.
Human Ecology Review: Volume 27, Number 2 »
Publication date: December 2022
Human Ecology Review 27(2) features contributions from researchers from around the world, including Brazil, the United States, Mexico, Chile, Australia, Uruguay, Spain, and Nigeria. Studies presented include the indigenous Truká people’s knowledge of medicinal plants in Pernambuco, Brazil (Alves et al.); perceptions of Lyme disease risk in New Hampshire, USA (Bolin); social and physical aspects of adolescent sport development (Concha-Viera and Datta Banik); the role of ecopolitics and ecopoetics in promoting environmental concerns about and resistance to oil exploration in Africa (Nwosu); traditional water harvesting and conservation in arid regions of the Canary Islands (Santamarta et al.); feedback-guided analysis of ecotourism and poaching in the Dominican Republic (Taveras Dalmau and Coghlan); motivations for participation in off-grid ecovillages, featuring a case study from Uruguay (Colby and Whitley); and biodiversity protection in Santiago, Chile (Cox and Asún).
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East Asia Forum Quarterly: Volume 14, Number 4, 2022 »
Publication date: December 2022
Southeast Asian nations have long understood that effective national security goes well beyond military preparedness, encompassing a variety of ‘non-traditional’ security issues. This idea is at the heart of political cooperation within ASEAN and competes with traditional notions of regional security in East Asia. But the vocabulary that has developed in the face of growing geopolitical tensions—decoupling, dual circulation, friendshoring, ‘strategic’ supply chains, securitisation—suggests that the big powers are working towards their own notion of comprehensive security.
Contributors to this issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly recognise that comprehensive regional security—an approach that embraces economic, environmental and energy security as well as military interests and considers how they are secured within today’s economically interdependent and politically cooperative regional system—can only be secured collectively: one country’s resilience to climate change, or its access to free and well-served markets for energy and food, cannot come at the expense of others.
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