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Books > History > Australasian & Pacific history > General
Children in the Marshall Islands do many things that adults do not.
They walk around half naked. They carry and eat food in public
without offering it to others. They talk about things they see
rather than hiding uncomfortable truths. They explicitly refuse to
give. Why do they do these things? Many think these behaviors are a
natural result of children's innate immaturity. But Elise Berman
argues that children are actually taught to do things that adults
avoid: to be rude, inappropriate, and immature. Before children
learn to be adults, they learn to be different from them. Berman's
main theoretical claim therefore is also a novel one: age emerges
through interaction and is a social production. In Talking Like
Children, Berman analyzes a variety of interactions in the Marshall
Islands, all broadly based around exchange: adoption negotiations,
efforts to ask for or avoid giving away food, contentious debates
about supposed child abuse. In these dramas both large and small,
age differences emerge through the decisions people make, the
emotions they feel, and the power they gain. Berman's research
includes a range of methods - participant observation, video and
audio recordings, interviews, children's drawings - that yield a
significant corpus of data including over 80 hours of recorded
naturalistic social interaction. Presented as a series of
captivating stories, Talking Like Children is an intimate analysis
of speech and interaction that shows what age means. Like gender
and race, age differences are both culturally produced and socially
important. The differences between Marshallese children and adults
give both groups the ability to manipulate social life in distinct
but often complementary ways. These differences produce culture
itself. Talking Like Children establishes age as a foundational
social variable and a central concern of anthropological and
linguistic research.
First Published in 1973. Forming part of a collection on general
African studies, this text presents records of the Gold Coast
Settlements from 1750 to 1874, by the Colonial Secretary of Sierra
Leone, Major Crooks. It covers the period from the formation of the
last African Company of Merchants in 1750 until the conclusion of
the third Ashantee War in 1874.
Christmas Island is a small territory of Australia located in the
Indian Ocean. It is home to three main ethnic groups, the smallest
of which are European Australians. Christmas Island is also where
those who arrive "illegally" to seek asylum in Australia are
accommodated. Christmas Island has played a key role in Australian
security, located as it is at the northern extremity of Australian
territory; much closer to Indonesia than to the nation to which it
belongs, and from whose territory it has recently been excised for
migration purposes. As a migration exclusion zone, Christmas is
both within and without of the nation, and has gone from a place
known among nature lovers for its unique red crabs and bird life to
the highly politicised subject of national concern and heated
debate. But what is it like to be at home on Christmas Island? How
do locals make and come to be at home in a place both within and
without of the nation? This anthropological exploration--the very
first one ever undertaken of this strategically important
island--focuses closely on the sensual engagements people have with
place, shows how Christmas Islanders make recourse to the animals,
birds and topographic features of the island to create uniquely
islandic ways of being at home--and ways of creating "others" who
will never belong--under volatile political circumstances. This
original ethnography reveals a complex island society, whose
presence at the very edge of the nation reveals important
information about a place and a group of people new to ethnographic
study. In and through these people and their relationships with
their unique island place, this ethnographic exploration reveals a
nation caught in the grip of intensive national angst about its
borders, its sense of safety, its struggles with multiculturalism,
and its identity in a world of unprecedented migratory movement. As
the first book in the discipline of anthropology to study Christmas
Island in ethnographic terms, Christmas Island is a critical work
for all collections in anthropology and Australian Studies.
"Christmas Island is described by Simone Dennis as 'the last
outpost of the nation', that is, a multicultural microcosm of
contemporary Australia, worried by a search for a national identity
in touch with the past but not limited by it...In Simone Dennis,
Christmas Island has its consummate ethnographer and analyst." -
Professor Nigel Rapport, University of St. Andrews
This book considers the law, policy and procedure for child
witnesses in Australian criminal courts across the twentieth
century. It uses the stories and experiences of over 200 children,
in many cases using their own words from press reports, to
highlight how the relevant law was - or was not - applied
throughout this period. The law was sympathetic to the plight of
child witnesses and exhibited a significant degree of pragmatism to
receive the evidence of children but was equally fearful of
innocent men being wrongly convicted. The book highlights the
impact 'safeguards' like corroboration and closed court rules had
on the outcome of many cases and the extent to which fear - of
children, of lies (or the truth) and of reform - influenced the
criminal justice process. Over a century of children giving
evidence in court it is `clear that the more things changed, the
more they stayed the same'.
This book offers the first in-depth enquiry into the origins of 135
Indigenous Australian objects acquired by the Royal Navy between
1795 and 1855 and held now by the British Museum. In response to
increasing calls for the 'decolonisation' of museums and the
restitution of ethnographic collections, the book seeks to return
knowledge of the moments, methods, and motivations whereby
Indigenous Australian objects were first collected and sent to
Britain. By structuring its discussion in terms of three key
'stages' of a typical naval voyage to Australia-departure from
British shores, arrival on the continent's coasts, and eventual
return to port-the book offers a nuanced and multifaceted
understanding of the pathways followed by these 135 objects into
the British Museum. The book offers important new understandings of
Indigenous Australian peoples' reactions to naval visitors, and
contains a wealth of original research on the provenance and
meaning of some of the world's oldest extant Indigenous Australian
object collections.
The Foundation of Australia's Capital Cities is the story of how
the places chosen for Australia's seven colonial capitals came to
shape their unique urban character and built environments. Tony
Webster traces the effects of each city's geologically diverse
coastal or riverine landform and the local natural materials that
were available for construction, highlighting how the geology and
original landforms resulted in development patterns that have
persisted today.
First published in 1969. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
Despite the Australian Constitution having been one of the most
stable since its commencement in 1901, it is becoming fatally
flawed. The Naked Australian Constitution examines these flaws and
the lack of public appreciation of those defects. This is due to
several serious errors, including the racial basis of its origin,
and the misleading nature of its text-with the High Court having
interpreted it in a remarkably subjective manner, undermining the
few express requirements and freedoms in the Constitution while
also applying concepts that are not required by the constitutional
text. As a result, the Constitution is now what the High Court says
it is, instead of what it was expected to be by its drafters. Most
Australians have no knowledge of the Constitution or its operation,
but with the growing subjective application of the Constitution,
this constitutional digression requires remedy by a Constitutional
review. Ian Killey argues that without review, the Australian
people will eventually see the Australian Constitution for what it
is rapidly becoming-an Emperor with no clothes.
Spanning four centuries and vast space, this book combines the
global history of ideas with particular histories of encounters
between European voyagers and Indigenous people in Oceania (Island
Southeast Asia, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific
Islands). Douglas shows how prevailing concepts of human
difference, or race, influenced travellers' approaches to
encounters. Yet their presuppositions were often challenged or
transformed by the appearance, conduct, and lifestyle of local
inhabitants. The book's original theory and method reveal traces of
Indigenous agency in voyagers' representations which in turn
provided key evidence for the natural history of man and the
science of race. In keeping with recent trends in colonial
historiography, Douglas diverts historical attention from imperial
centres to so-called peripheries, discredits the outmoded
stereotype that Europeans necessarily dominated non-Europeans, and
takes local agency seriously.
This book is the first history of commercial television in regional
Australia, where diverse communities are spread across vast
distances and multiple time zones. The first station, GLV Latrobe
Valley, began broadcasting in December 1961. By the late 1970s,
there were 35 independent commercial stations throughout regional
Australia, from Cairns in the far north-east to Bunbury in the far
south-west. Based on fine-grained archival research and extensive
interviews, the book examines the key political, regulatory,
economic, technological, industrial, and social developments which
have shaped the industry over the past 60 years. Regional
television is often dismissed as a mere extension of - or footnote
to - the development of Australia's three metropolitan commercial
television networks. Michael Thurlow's study reveals an industry
which, at its peak, was at the economic and social heart of
regional communities, employing thousands of people and providing
vital programming for viewers in provincial cities and small towns
across Australia.
The New Port Moresby: Gender, Space, and Belonging in Urban Papua
New Guinea explores the ways in which educated, professional women
experience living in Port Moresby, the burgeoning capital of Papua
New Guinea. Drawing on postcolonial and feminist scholarship, the
book adds to an emerging literature on cities in the "Global South"
as sites of oppression, but also resistance, aspiration, and
activism. Taking an intersectional feminist approach, the book
draws on a decade of research conducted among the educated
professional women of Port Moresby, offering unique insight into
class transitions and the perspectives of this small but
significant cohort. The New Port Moresby expands the scope of
research and writing about gendered experiences in Port Moresby,
moving beyond the idea that the city is an exclusively hostile
place for women. Without discounting the problems of uneven
development, the author argues that the city's new places offer
women a degree of freedom and autonomy in a city predominantly
characterized by fear and restriction. In doing so, it offers an
ethnographically rich perspective on the interaction between the
"global" and the "local" and what this might mean for feminism and
the advancement of equity in the Pacific and beyond. The New Port
Moresby will find an audience among anthropologists, particularly
those interested in the urban Pacific, feminist geographers
committed to expanding research to include cities in the Global
South and development theorists interested in understanding the
roles played by educated elites in less economically developed
contexts. There have been few ethnographic monographs about Port
Moresby and those that do exist have tended to marginalize or
ignore gender. Yet as feminist geographers make clear, women and
men are positioned differently in the world and their relationship
to the places in which they live is also different. The book has no
predecessors and stands alone in the Pacific as an account of this
kind. As such, The New Port Moresby should be read by scholars and
students of diverse disciplines interested in urbanization, gender,
and the Pacific.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2014
WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE 2015 One morning in 1805, off a remote
island in the South Pacific, seal hunter and abolitionist Captain
Amasa Delano climbed aboard the Tryal, a distressed Spanish slaver.
He spent all day on the ship, sharing food and water, yet failed to
see that the slaves, having slaughtered most of the crew, were now
their own masters. Later, when Delano realized the deception, he
chased the ship down, responding with barbaric violence. Greg
Grandin follows this group of courageous slaves and their
persecutor from the horrors of the Middle Passage to their
explosive confrontation. A page-turning and profoundly moving
account of obsessive mania, imperial exploitation, and lost ideals,
The Empire of Necessity captures the epic clash of peoples,
economies, and faiths that was shaping the so-called New World and
the Age of Revolution.
This book examines how convicts played a key role in the
development of capitalism in Australia and how their active
resistance shaped both workplace relations and institutions. It
highlights the contribution of convicts to worker mobilization and
political descent, forcing a rethink of Australia's foundational
story. It is a book that will appeal to an international audience,
as well as the many hundreds of thousands of Australians who can
trace descent from convicts. It will enable the latter to make
sense of the experience of their ancestors, equipping them with the
necessary tools to understand convict and court records. It will
also provide a valuable undergraduate and postgraduate teaching
tool and reference for those studying unfree labour and worker
history, social history, colonization and global migration in a
digital age.
The story of an essential Australian Army Corps
As all students of the First World War know, Britain expected,
called for and received the support of fighting men from her
colonies during the conflict. Imperial forces saw action against
Germany and notably against Germany's Turkish ally. Anzac troops,
travelling from the southern hemisphere, were consolidated in Egypt
for service in the abortive Gallipoli offensive in the Dardanelles
and also for the defence of the Suez Canal. As the Palestine
campaign progressed, colonial troops, particularly those who by
virtue of their training as mounted infantry were ideally suited
for the task, advanced north through the Sinai desert, into
Palestine itself and then on to Syria. Allied forces were based in
Egypt for sound strategic and logistical reasons, which meant that
much of the regional infrastructure of command and administration
was centralised there for the duration of the war. Essential among
these services was the Australian Army Medical Corps. The duties of
the corps included the care of wounded in the field, the
establishment of hospitals, the treatment of disease, convalescent
units and evacuations. The work of the outstanding doctors and
nurses of the Australian Army Medical Corps as it operated in the
middle east through the campaign is thoroughly described in this
book, which is recommended to anyone interested in obtaining a more
complete view of the role of the Australian Army during the Great
War.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each
title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our
hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their
spines and fabric head and tail bands.
The international bestselling author returns with an exploration of one
of the grandest obsessions of the twentieth century
'The Bomber Mafia is a case study in how dreams go awry. When some
shiny new idea drops from the heavens, it does not land softly in our
laps. It lands hard, on the ground, and shatters.'
In the years before the Second World War, in a sleepy air force base in
central Alabama, a small group of renegade pilots put forth a radical
idea. What if we made bombing so accurate that wars could be fought
entirely from the air? What if we could make the brutal clashes between
armies on the ground a thing of the past?
This book tells the story of what happened when that dream was put to
the test. The Bomber Mafia follows the stories of a reclusive Dutch
genius and his homemade computer, Winston Churchill's forbidding best
friend, a team of pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard, a brilliant pilot
who sang vaudeville tunes to his crew, and the bomber commander, Curtis
Emerson LeMay, who would order the bloodiest attack of the Second World
War.
In this tale of innovation and obsession, Gladwell asks: what happens
when technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war? And
what is the price of progress?
This book draws on archival, oral history and public policy sources
to tell a history of foster care in Australia from the nineteenth
century to the present day. It is, primarily, a social history
which places the voices of people directly touched by foster care
at the centre of the story, but also within the wider social and
political debates which have shaped foster care across more than a
century. The book confronts foster care's difficult past-death and
abuse of foster children, family separation, and a general public
apathy towards these issues-but it also acknowledges the resilience
of people who have survived a childhood in foster care, and the
challenges faced by those who have worked hard to provide good
foster homes and to make child welfare systems better. These are
themes which the book examines from an Australian perspective, but
which often resonate with foster care globally.
Madness in the Family explores how colonial families coped with
insanity through a trans-colonial study of the relationships
between families and public colonial hospitals for the insane in
New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and New Zealand between 1860
and 1914.
Contemporary female novelists tend to portray the relationship between women and the state as profoundly negative, in contrast to various constructions in current feminist theory. Martine Watson Brownley analyzes novels by Margaret Atwood, Paule Marshall, Nadine Gordimer, and Margaret Drabble to explore the significance of this disparity. The book uses literary analysis to highlight elements of state power that many feminist theorists currently occlude, ranging from women’s still minimal access to state politics to the terrifying violence exercised by modern states. At the same time, however, feminist theory clarifies major elements in many contemporary women’s lives about which the novels are ambivalent or misleading, such as romantic love and the role of sexuality in state politics. Deferrals of Domain fills a double gap, both authorial and topical, in current critical treatments of women writers and will be of interest to both literary and women’s studies scholars.
Originally published in 1928, this book is a comprehensive study of
the Maori people - their inner lives, customs and beliefs - by one
who lived amongst them during a time before modern western
civilisation had much altered their existence. Many of the earliest
books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are
now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press
are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality,
modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents
Include: The Maori and his Surroundings - His Foods - Meat Foods -
His Language - Some Maori Customs, Muru - More Maori Customs, Tangi
- Maori Superstitions - The Maori and His Superstitions - More
Maori Superstitions, Makutu - The Maori as a Warrior - The Coming
of the White Man - The New Era - The New Era that Failed - Another
Era that Failed - The Maori Woman - The Haangi (Native Oven) - A
Few Closing Words - The Treaty of Waitangi - The Waitara Blunder -
Some Reasons for the Decline of the Maori - Where the White Man
Treads? - A Quaint Friendship - The Maori as a Storyteller - A Bit
of Diplomacy - Taranaki (Mount Egmont) - Where the White Man
Treads, and a Story - A Trait and an Incident - As He Saw it - A
Promise Redeemed - A Traveller's Musings - Some Native Traits - A
Maori Philosopher - A Twentieth Century Tohunga - The Pathos of it
All - His Simple Faith - Our First Steamboat - The Maori and Our
Duty - Mistaken Endeavour - The Old, Old Plea - The White Man's
Brain - Concerning Stone Axes - An Appeal - His First Romance - In
Various Moods - A New Year's Experience - A Final Word on
Tohungaism - The Maori as a Tradesman - A Native Plea - The Maori
Girls' School atTurakina - An Important Correction - Our
Half-Castle Population - Cornwall Park and It's Donor - Some
Outback Impressions - A Home in the Wilderness - A Plea for the
Pioneer - A Last Word
This book provides a comprehensive overview of capital punishment
in the Australian colonies for the very first time. The author
illuminates all aspects of the penalty, from shortcomings in
execution technique, to the behaviour of the dying criminal, and
the antics of the scaffold crowd. Mercy rates, execution numbers,
and capital crimes are explored alongside the transition from
public to private executions and the push to abolish the death
penalty completely. Notions of culture and communication freely
pollinate within a conceptual framework of penal change that
explains the many transformations the death penalty underwent. A
vast array of sources are assembled into one compelling argument
that shows how the 'lesson' of the gallows was to be safeguarded,
refined, and improved at all costs. This concise and engaging work
will be a lasting resource for students, scholars, and general
readers who want an in-depth understanding of a long feared
punishment. Dr. Steven Anderson is a Visiting Research Fellow in
the History Department at The University of Adelaide, Australia.
His academic research explores the role of capital punishment in
the Australian colonies by situating developments in these
jurisdictions within global contexts and conceptual debates.
This book tells the story of local-level controls on liquor
licensing ('local option') that emerged during the anti-alcohol
temperance movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It
offers a new perspective on these often-overlooked smaller
prohibitions, arguing local option not only reshaped the hotel
industry but has legacies for, and parallels with, questions facing
cities and planners today. These range from idiosyncratic dry
areas; to intrinsic ideas of residential amenity and neighbourhood,
zoning separation, and objection rights. The book is based on a
case study of temperance-era liquor licensing changes in Victoria,
their convergence with early planning, and their continuities.
Examples are given of contemporary Australian planning debates with
historical roots in the temperance era - live music venues, bottle
shops, gaming machines, fast food restaurants. Dry Zones uses new
archival research and maps; and includes examples from family
histories in Harcourt and Barkers Creek, a district with a
temperance reputation and which closed all its hotels during the
temperance era. Suggesting 'wowsers' are not so easily relegated to
history books, Taylor reflects on tensions around individual and
local rights, localism and centralism, direct democracy, and
domestic violence, that continue to be re-enacted. Dry Zones visits
a forgotten by-way of licensing history, showing the early 21st
century is a useful time to reflect on this history as while some
temperance-era controls are being scaled back, similar controls are
being put forward for much the same reasons.
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