Challenging the Criteria of Significance: Lessons from Contemporary Indonesian Labour History

Non-governmental organisations' (NGOs) dominance of the Indonesian labour movement has been undermined by changes in the regulation of labour since the fall of Suharto. This article examines the effects of these changes on the form and discourse of labour representation in contemporary Indonesia. It is argued that while NGOs' renewed acceptance of unionism as the primary form of labour organisation demonstrates the strength of the 'trade union' as a criterion of significance, their (partial) execution of 'trade union functions' during the late New Order period demands that we re-examine the ways in which we perceive and measure organised labour activism.     

Extracts from an Arabic History of Sokoto

This article is made up of extracts from a new translation ofthe Arabic history of Sokoto by Hajji Sa‘id, which wasprinted as an addendum to Tadhkiratu ’Inisian, Publishedin 1899 by Houdas and Benoist, and covers the period of threesultans, Muhammad Bello, Atiqu and Aliyu.¹ It presents a graphicaccount of life in those days of sporadic revolt on the partof the old Hausa states against the new Fulani power. The translatorworks in the School for Arabic Studies in Kano.     

Exemption: A Gendered History

Diverse questions might be contemplated once we consider the gender implications and impacts of Aboriginal exemption policies. The article traces such questions in relation to a series of distinct episodes in the history of exemption. The first of these focuses on postwar New South Wales, where marital status was core to the application process from the point of its introduction, and the system built upon older policies of ‘training’ Aboriginal girls as servants. The second moment, moving back in time, discusses a petition for collective exemption for a group of women domestic workers in Broome, Western Australia, that was presented to a government enquiry in 1934. The third concerns the quest for release from government controls by several domestic workers brought to Adelaide in South Australia, from the Northern Territory, in the late 1920s. Finally, the article reflects upon the efforts of young women placed in service in early-twentieth-century Brisbane, Queensland, to secure exemptions, and the responses of the authorities. While exemption policies may have been designed to impose Anglo-Australian gender norms of female dependence, Aboriginal women who worked in service consistently subverted these aims, by using the discourses of domesticity to challenge and resist the authorities' power.     

Exemptions from Compulsory Income Management: A Short “History of the Present”

The historical study of exemptions has focused on escape from protectionist policies designed to control and monitor Aboriginal people in Australia — restricting their freedom of movement, intruding into their family life, and reducing their ability to participate on equal terms in the labour force. In this paper, we consider a contemporary policy — income management — which primarily restricts the freedom to dispose of personal income and has targeted Aboriginal people and communities, both directly and indirectly. Provisions for individual exemptions have been incorporated inconsistently within the many iterations of income management, and Aboriginal people are significantly less likely than others to be granted an exit from this form of financial control. The study reported here is an example of mixed-methods social research, rather than an historiography. We use techniques of historical comparison to illuminate contemporary practices and identify the ongoing influence of settler-colonial governance in the lives of Aboriginal people.     

Palestinian Oral History as a Source for Understanding the Past: Insights and Lessons from an Oral History Project among Palestinians in Israel

The purpose of this article is to further explore the potential for Palestinian oral history to be used as a source for understanding the past. It examines existing directions in this field and highlights new approaches based on a discussion of an oral history project conducted by the author of this paper - a Jewish Israeli - in the Upper Galilee between the years 2006 and 2011. The article sharply illustrates the necessity and the urgency of recording Palestinian oral history with regard to the period that preceded the 1948 war, especially where written sources are lacking. It demonstrates the richness of oral history among Palestinians in Israel and exemplifies its ability to capture a vivid picture of a segment of Palestinian rural life before the Nakba. Methodologically, the article emphasizes the significance of cross-checking non-dependent oral sources as well as cross-checking oral sources against written testimonies as a means of striving for the truth and as a useful way of examining the reliability of oral sources.     

"Real Solemn History" and its Discontents: Australian Political History and the Challenge of Social History

The relationship between Australian political and social history has received little historiographical attention. Political history has been lauded or, more often, dismissed as traditional historical practice, while from the 1960s social history took its place as a catch-all phrase for various "new" histories concerned with everyday life. This article examines the place of political and social history in the nascent Australian academic historical profession of the 1950s to the early 1970s, and then explores the impact of the new social history on academic political history. It will suggest that while there was only limited exchange before the late 1980s, in the last twenty years social history has contributed modestly to a reconstituted understanding of political history as part of lived experience.
"[…] I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?"
"Yes, I am fond of history."
"I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention […]". ¹     

Institutional Abuse: A Long History

ABSTRACT

This article explores the long history of institutions for children in Australia and of the existence of abuse within them. By examining the function that such institutions were designed to perform, and the forms and structures that were devised to best achieve such purposes, the article argues that abuse was all too often not simply inherent in, but essential to, institutional operation. It pays particular attention to the classification of children deemed to be in need of institutional “care” and shows how, through a process of “othering”, their institutionalisation too often rendered them vulnerable to abuse.     

Brazilian History as Global History

The article discusses the relationship between global history and Brazilian history and suggests an agenda for future research. It argues that global history scholars could profit from Brazil's great scholarly tradition, which conceptualises key topics of global history such as global encounters and cultural identities, power asymmetries and spatial orders. Scholars interested in Brazilian history, on the other hand, will find a set of approaches and questions from a global history perspective helpful for research on central fields of Brazil historiography such as the coffee economy, scientific racism, the Cold War and the Amazon.