Books
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Displaying results 221 to 230 of 775.
The Bounty from the Beach »
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Essays
Edited by: Sylvie Largeaud-Ortega
Publication date: October 2018
The Bounty from the Beach is a collection of cross-disciplinary essays, capitalising on a widely shared fascination for the Bounty story in order to draw scholarly attention to Oceania. It aims to reorient the Bounty focus away from the West, where most Bounty narratives and studies have emerged, to the Pacific, where most of the original events unfolded. It investigates the Bounty heritage from the standpoint of the beach, Greg Dening’s metaphor for culture contact and conflict in the Pacific Islands: this liminal place that transforms Islanders and voyagers, islands and ships, each time it is crossed. It analyses the way newcomers create new islands, and how these changes may occasionally impact the world. This volume examines the ‘little people’, to use another of Dening’s expressions, who stand ‘on both sides of the beach’: they are Polynesian or European or, as beaches are crossed and remade, no longer one without the other, but bound together in processes of change. Among these people are Bounty sailors, beachcombers, Pitcairners and indigenous Pacific Islanders of the past and the present.
This collection also explores the works of some renowned Western writers and actors who, turning mutineers after their own fashion and in their own times, themselves crossed the beach and attempted to illuminate the ‘little people’ involved in the Bounty narratives. These prominent writers and actors put the spotlight on characters who were silenced on account of race, class or geographical distance from the dominant centres of power. Inspired by Dening’s empowering voice, our purpose is to fill that silence.
Just as it criss-crosses the ocean, progressing with the ship through time and space, The Bounty from the Beach ranges far and wide across disciplines, methodologies and scholarly styles. Its multidisciplinary course contributes to illuminate the multiple ways in which the Bounty heritage embraces diverse horizons. It throws light on the colonial discourse that undertook to stifle Pacific Islander agency, and the neocolonial policies that have been applied to Oceania, and still are: hegemonic moves that have led to global environmental, nuclear and ecological hazards. As a whole, the collection contends that what unfolds in this vast ocean matters: the stakes are high for the whole human community.
Making Copyright Work for the Asian Pacific »
Juxtaposing Harmonisation with Flexibility
Edited by: Susan Corbett, Jessica Lai
Publication date: October 2018
This book provides a contemporary overview of developing areas of copyright law in the Asian Pacific region. While noting the tendency towards harmonisation through free trade agreements, the book takes the perspective that there is a significant amount of potential for the nations of the Asian Pacific region to work together, find common ground and shift international bargaining power. Moreover, in so doing, the region can tailor any regional agreements to suit local needs. The book addresses the development of norms in the region and the ways in which this can occur in light of the specific nature of the creator–owner–user paradigm in the region and the common interests of Indigenous peoples.
A New Rival State? »
Australia in Tsarist Diplomatic Communications
Publication date: October 2018
A New Rival State? is a unique collection of dispatches written in 1857–1917 by the Russian consuls in Melbourne to the Imperial Russian Embassy in London and the Russian Foreign Ministry in St Petersburg. Written by eight consuls, they offer a Russian view of the development of the settler colonies in the late nineteenth century and the first years of the federated Commonwealth of Australia. They cover the federalist movement, the changing domestic political situation, labour politics, the treatment of the Indigenous population, the ‘White Australia’ policy, Australia’s defensive capacity and foreign policy as part of the British Empire.
The bulk of the material is drawn from the Russian-language collection The Russian Consular Service in Australia 1857–1917, edited by Alexander Massov and Marina Pollard (2014), using documents from the archive of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Landlock »
Paralysing Dispute over Minerals on Adivasi Land in India
Authored by: Patrik Oskarsson
Publication date: September 2018
Landlock: Paralysing Dispute over Minerals on Adivasi Land in India explores the ways in which political controversy over a bauxite mining and refining project on constitutionally protected tribal lands in Andhra Pradesh descended into a state of paralysis where no productive outcome was possible. Long-running support for Adivasi (or tribal) land rights motivated a wide range of actors to block the project’s implementation by recourse to India’s dispersed institutional landscape, while project proponents proved adept in proposing workarounds to prevent its outright cancellation. In the ensuing deadlock, the project was unable to move towards completion, while marginalised Adivasi groups were equally unable to repossess their land. Such a ‘landlock’ is argued to be characteristic of India’s wider inability to deal with conflicts over land matters, despite the crucial importance of land for smallholder livelihoods and various economic processes in an intensely growth-focused country. The result has been frequent yet grindingly slow processes of contestation in which powerful business and state interests are, at times, halted in their tracks, but mostly seem able to slowly exhaust local resistance in their pursuit of large-scale projects that produce no benefits for the rural poor.
Divided Loyalties »
Displacement, belonging and citizenship among East Timorese in West Timor
Authored by: Andrey Damaledo
Publication date: September 2018
Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this study explores the ideas of belonging and citizenship among former pro-autonomy East Timorese who have elected to settle indefinitely in West Timor. The study follows different East Timorese groups and examines various ways they construct and negotiate their socio-political identities following the violent and destructive separation from their homeland. The East Timorese might have had Indonesia as their destination when they left the eastern half of the island in the aftermath of the referendum, but they have not relinquished their cultural identities as East Timorese. The study highlights the significance of the notions of origin, ancestry and alliance in our understanding of East Timorese place-making and belonging to a particular locality. Another feature of belonging that informs East Timorese identity is their narrative of sacrifice to maintain connections with their homeland and move on with their lives in Indonesia. These sacrificial narratives elaborate an East Timorese spirit of struggle and resilience, a feature further exemplified in the transformation of their political activities within the Indonesian political system.
The Australian Continent »
A Geophysical Synthesis
Publication date: August 2018
The Australian Continent: A Geophysical Synthesis is designed to provide a summary of the character of the Australian continent through the extensive information available at the continental scale, as a contribution to the understanding of Australia's lithospheric architecture and its evolution.
The results build on the extensive databases assembled at Geoscience Australia, particularly for potential fields, supplemented by the full range of seismological information, mostly from The Australian National University. To aid in cross comparison of results from different disciplines, information is presented with a common projection and scales.
Read till it shatters »
Nationalism and identity in modern Thai literature
Authored by: Thak Chaloemtiarana
Publication date: August 2018
This book introduces readers to modern Thai literature through the themes of modernity, nationalism, identity and gender. In the cultural, political and social transformations that occurred in Thailand during the first half of the twentieth century, Thai literature was one of the vehicles that moved the changes. Taking seriously ‘read till it shatters’, a Thai phrase that instructs readers to take apart the text, to break it down, to deconstruct it, Thak Chaloemtiarana challenges the Thai literary canon from the margins and suggests ways of expanding and enriching it.
Thai literature is scarce in translation and requires the skills of a scholar fluent in Thai to comprehend it. Thak is a political scientist turned literary scholar who is bilingual in Thai and English and an avid reader of Thai fiction by authors up and down the social scale. Here he offers lively insights into his favourite literary genres with fresh readings of early Thai novels, Sino-Thai biographies and memoirs of the rich and famous.
‘Thak Chaloemtiarana is an inquisitive man. Late in his career he switched from politics to literature. In these chapters, he draws on a lifetime of reading about writers and writing in Thailand over the past century. He nods towards the usual big names—King Vajiravudh, Luang Wichit, Kulap Saipradit, Kukrit Pramoj—but spends more time on those found in the lesser visited stacks of the libraries, the secondhand bookstalls, and the shelf by the supermarket checkout. His themes are familiar—Thailand and the West, Thai nationalism, the Thai-Chinese, and women under patriarchy—but the angles of vision are original. With a cast ranging from motor-racing princes through sexy Egyptian mummies and a feminist serial murderer to starlets touting breast-enhancement techniques, this book educates, enlightens, and entertains.’
— Dr Chris Baker, Bangkok-based author with Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Ayutthaya (Cambridge 2017)
Carl Strehlow’s 1909 Comparative Heritage Dictionary »
An Aranda, German, Loritja and Dieri to English Dictionary with Introductory Essays
Edited by: Anna Kenny
Publication date: August 2018
Carl Strehlow’s comparative dictionary manuscript is a unique item of Australian cultural heritage; it is a large collection of circa 7,600 Aranda, 6,800 Loritja (Luritja) and 1,200 Dieri to German entries compiled at the beginning of the twentieth century at the Hermannsburg Mission in central Australia. It is an integral part of Strehlow’s ethnographic work on Aboriginal cultures that his German editor Baron Moritz von Leonhardi published as Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien (Strehlow 1907–1920) in Frankfurt. Strehlow and his editor had planned to publish a language study that included this comparative dictionary, but it remained unpublished until now due to a number of complicated historical and personal circumstances of the main characters involved with the dictionary.
Strehlow’s linguistic work is historically and anthropologically significant because it probably represents the largest and most comprehensive wordlist of Indigenous languages compiled in Australia during the early stages of contact. It is an important primary source for Luritja and Aranda speakers. Both languages are spoken in homes and taught in schools in central Australia.
The reasons for presenting this work as a heritage dictionary—that is, as an exact transcription of the original form of the handwritten manuscript—are to follow the Western Aranda people’s wishes and to maintain its historical authenticity, which will prove to be of great use to both Indigenous people and scholars interested in language.
Road Pricing and Provision »
Changed Traffic Conditions Ahead
Edited by: Michael de Percy, John Wanna
Publication date: July 2018
Road pricing is not a new concept—toll roads have existed in Australia since Governor Macquarie established one from Sydney to Parramatta in 1811—and distance-based charging schemes have been trialled and implemented with varying success overseas.
But how would full market reform of roads look in a federation like Australia? In its responses to the 2016 Australian Infrastructure Plan and the 2015 Competition Policy Review, the Australian Government explicitly supported investigating cost-reflective road pricing as a long-term reform option, and has committed to establishing a study chaired by an eminent Australian to look into the potential impacts of road pricing reform on road users. The challenges we face in this space are manifold and complex, and we still have a long road ahead of us. However, with advocacy for reform coming from interest groups as diverse as governments, private transport companies, peak industry bodies, policy think tanks and state motoring clubs, there is now more support than ever before for changing the way we provide for and fund our roads.
This book seeks to advance the road reform agenda by presenting some of the latest thinking on road pricing and provision from a variety of disciplinary approaches—researchers, economists and public sector leaders. It stresses the need for reform to ensure Australians can enjoy the benefits of efficient and sustainable transport infrastructure as our population and major metropolitan cities continue to grow. Traffic congestion is avoidable, but we must act soon. The works presented here all point to the need for change—the expertise and the technology are available, and the various reform options have been mapped out in some detail. It is time for the policy debate to shift to how, rather than if, road reform should progress.
The Neoliberal State, Recognition and Indigenous Rights »
New paternalism to new imaginings
Edited by: Deirdre Howard-Wagner, Maria Bargh, Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez
Publication date: July 2018
The impact of neoliberal governance on indigenous peoples in liberal settler states may be both enabling and constraining. This book is distinctive in drawing comparisons between three such states—Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In a series of empirically grounded, interpretive micro-studies, it draws out a shared policy coherence, but also exposes idiosyncrasies in the operational dynamics of neoliberal governance both within each state and between them. Read together as a collection, these studies broaden the debate about and the analysis of contemporary government policy.
The individual studies reveal the forms of actually existing neoliberalism that are variegated by historical, geographical and legal contexts and complex state arrangements. At the same time, they present examples of a more nuanced agential, bottom-up indigenous governmentality. Focusing on intense and complex matters of social policy rather than on resource development and land rights, they demonstrate how indigenous actors engage in trying to govern various fields of activity by acting on the conduct and contexts of everyday neoliberal life, and also on the conduct of state and corporate actors.