Repopulating the Industrial Landscape: Giving Former Employees a Voice in History

This paper examines the concept of putting history “under the power of the public”. It discusses the role played by former employees in researching and publishing the histories of two former large industrial history/heritage sites in Perth, Western Australia. The projects originated not in academia but from past employees who sought the help of labour historians to record the histories. Former employees provided much of the research material and assisted as sources of information, interviewers and interviewees, site guides and critics of work put forward for publication. While academic authors were responsible for interpreting their own research, past employees had a voice in the ways in which the sites’ stories were presented to the public, and the veracity of that information. The article explores the subversive potential of subaltern histories such as these, as well as some principles for putting history under the power of the public. It concludes by examining the strengths and weaknesses of this method, including the extent to which the pressures of academia discourage historians from engaging with “popular” projects requiring “a different voice”.     

The Unruly Past: History and Historiography of the 1932 Thai Revolution

ABSTRACT

The monarchy and the country’s military dominate discussions of Thai political history. The country’s democratic history meanwhile is much less well known. To many people, historiography – the history of the writing of history – is a dull affair that only concerns academics. But the changing representations of the origins of democracy in the 1932 revolution that ended the absolute monarchy show the politics of history as a continuous problem that still shapes Thai society. The interpretations have been bound to the bitter partisanship that has accompanied a history of political instability. This article examines the changing interpretations of 1932 in their historical contexts and demonstrates the central antagonism towards the ideal of popular sovereignty, despite its long history in the country, that is still held by the military and monarchic elite.     

A Survey of Military,Educational and Community Expectations of the Cadet Movement in Australia, 1866‐2006

The national military cadet movement in Australia marked its centenary in 2006. In total, however, taking into account their colonial forebears, cadets have existed in this country for more than 140 years. The scale of the organisation over time, in the context of a relatively small regular army and situated (for the most part) within secondary schools, serves to emphasise its importance as a nexus of military, educational and social history. Throughout time the movement has been characterised by two key features. The first is that all cadet schemes, from 1866, have operated on the basis of consistent military, educational and social support. The second is a conspicuous lack of published material concerning the history of the movement. The purpose of this article is therefore twofold. It aims to explain the longevity of this three‐sided commitment; why the army, state schooling systems, and the community at large have underwritten the movement for so long. What did they expect in return? In doing so the article traces a cyclic balance between the expectations of these three groups — to this end it is a survey of changing aspirations. As a secondary objective, it hopes to help fill the near historiographical vacuum surrounding the movement.     

Branding Dissent: Nitirat,Thailand’s Enlightened Jurists

Abstract

This article examines the political role of a group of academic lawyers based at Thammasat University who have been seeking to reform various aspects of the Thai legal and judicial system. The seven-member group started out by criticising the illegality of the 2006 coup. After the 2010 crackdown against redshirt protestors, the group named itself Nitirat and started to hold seminars, draft legal proposals, and campaign to amend various laws. Nitirat has repeatedly challenged the legal and constitutional underpinnings of three key elements of the Thai state: the judiciary, the military, and the monarchy. In doing so, the group has gained a mass following, drawn mainly from those sympathetic to the “redshirt” movement which broadly supports former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Informally led by scholar Worajet Pakeerat, Nitirat has created a popular branding which is reflected in huge audiences for public events, and the sales of souvenirs. The article aims to answer the following questions: How does Nitirat combine the roles of legal academic and political activist? How does it differ from the traditional mode of Thai public intellectuals? How significant is the Nitirat phenomenon?     

Australia's Response to the Indochina Crisis of 1954 amidst the Anglo‐American Confrontation

Meeting in Berlin in February 1954, the Great Powers decided to convene an international conference in Geneva in April to discuss the restoration of peace in Indochina and thereby opened the door to a crisis. Their decision triggered a Vietnamese communist offensive against the French union forces at Dien Bien Phu, and a subsequent US proposal for multilateral military intervention which put great strain upon Anglo‐American relations. This article examines Australia's response to the Indochina crisis of 1954 amidst the Anglo‐American confrontation, focusing on the disagreement between the UK and USA with its origins in their different assessments of the will of the French and Vietnamese to continue fighting; on the impetus that events such as the Berlin conference gave to Australia to redefine its own position on Indochina; and on the (relatively minor) role which Australia, as the military situation in Indochina worsened, played in assisting the US to alter its proposal for allied military intervention.     

Peacekeeping from Oceania: Perspectives from Australia,New Zealand and Fiji

Abstract

This article gives an overview of the involvement of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji in peacekeeping operations with attention to motives, experience and ‘lessons learnt’. Australia and New Zealand have been strongly influenced by regional considerations and an understanding of good international citizenship. Fiji’s contribution has been determined less by regional considerations and more by its position as a small developing country whose peacekeeping activities bring economic benefits, although it could be argued that by providing a basis for extending military forces they have contributed indirectly to political instability. Police contributions have been increasingly important to Australia and New Zealand and they have advocated a stronger role for police in other situations around the world.     

Neoliberalism and Academia in Morocco

This article analyses the impact of international aid flows and the process of global market integration in Morocco on the role of academia—meaning research, teaching and intellectual debate conducted largely, but not solely, through publications and conferences—in social and political change. Drawing upon interviews and analysis of secondary sources, the article suggests that international development agencies working in Morocco and national policy strategies to further globalisation have had consequences for academic research and outputs as well as on intellectual debate in general. The first effect is to support the cultivation of an academic elite in the social sciences and humanities whose research agenda is often connected to national and international policy agendas and, likewise, to limit the evolution of a broader-based national or regional academic debate based on independent research. The second is to raise the importance of private higher education, which is focused for the most part on teaching and not on independent research. The impact of both has been to undermine the status of the academic profession and the role of higher education in pushing forward public debate on critical issues beyond programmatic concerns, for instance illiteracy or migration; and to address more fundamental questions, such as adherence to neoliberal policies or the pervasiveness of political and social alienation in Morocco. More importantly, the decline of public higher education has symbolic significance in that it reflects disassociation of the state from supporting a connection between craft, identity and citizenship. Taking into account the consequences of the impoverishment of higher education for training, research and critical analysis, the article ends by calling on aid agencies to regard academic research and public universities as means to reinvigorate public debate and new thinking around national and local development issues.     

Moving the Genocide Debate Beyond the History Wars*

The “History Wars” have paralysed the scholarly discussion on genocide in Australian history, because genocide is regarded as a politicized concept that distorts historical understanding. Both the public sphere and much historiography continue to regard genocide as a synonym for the Holocaust, framing public discussion of genocide in Australia as well as discouraging historians from engaging with the international comparative literature on colonial genocides. This article aims to stimulate reflection on these issues by explaining the origin and meaning of the term in intellectual and legal history. It suggests that thinking of genocide as a form of extreme counter‐insurgency helps us comprehend how colonial violence unfolds. Finally, it highlights some potential limitations of the concept in understanding the Indigenous experience of colonial genocide, before suggesting how historians can deploy it in the service of scholarship rather than “History Wars”.     

Public health in Burma: Anatomy of a crisis

Burma has been ruled by a military government since 1962. A steady deterioration in public health standards has accompanied such rule, with a particularly marked decline following the crushing of the pro-democracy movement in that country in 1988. This article draws attention to a number of aspects of this decline and the growing precariousness of the overall public health system. As it will be suggested, primary responsibility for this state of decay should be borne by the military regime. Through several policies and practices, the military has severely compromised the functioning of the public health system and perverted it in ways that fulfill its narrow political interests, rather than those of the nation as a whole. The article concludes by emphasizing the urgent need for a reinstatement of democratic norms and institutions in Burma, so that the nation's public health needs may be meaningfully addressed and a looming humanitarian disaster averted.     

“Sun Arise”: The Appropriation of Australia’s First Peoples’ Music, 1956–1974

While the music of Australia’s First Peoples contributes to a growing list of academic books and articles, the appropriation of that music by non-Indigenous pop musicians has received little academic attention. During the 1950s and 1960s, Australian audiences dismissed early attempts at fusing pop with Indigenous instrumentation as embarrassingly kitsch; at the same time, many Australian historians and archaeologists viewed Aboriginality as something primitive, a relic of the “stone-age”. Consequently, there was very little commentary on the cross-pollination between pop and Indigenous music. This article examines this phenomenon. Drawing on contemporary newspaper articles and vinyl record releases, this article argues that pop music appropriated Australia’s Indigenous music soon after art developing its fusions with Indigenous culture. Older popular musicians were more prepared to experiment than young pop performers. The reluctance of young pop musicians to experiment with Indigenous music was primarily an economic decision—American rock’n’rollers had captured the local teenage market. After more recordings of Aboriginal music became commercially available, interest in Indigenous music accelerated, and younger non-Indigenous musicians saw opportunities to incorporate Indigenous themes and instrumentation into their own material.     

Settler Colonial Strategic Culture: Australia,AUKUS, and the Anglosphere

Australia's history as a settler colony within the British Empire fundamentally shapes its sense of security within the Indo-Pacific region. Australia has consistently looked outside of its region for security and sought partners on the explicit basis of political, cultural, and ethnic similarity. What role does Australia's history play in shaping its foreign policy? We argue that these choices in foreign policy are inextricable from Australia's history as a settler colony on the farthest reaches of the British Empire. The AUKUS Agreement (AUKUS) is an example of how Australia operates to preserve racial hegemony in the face of non-white threat — real or perceived. This research utilises critical discourse analysis to interrogate elite-level discourse around AUKUS to ascertain the dominant narratives that inform its creation, the issues it seeks to address in Australian security policy, how it is structured by historical narratives of security, and how it functions to structure those narratives going forward. This article seeks to participate in the growing push to decolonise International Relations by illuminating the way Australia is ontologically and epistemologically invested in the preservation of racial hegemony.     

Undemocratic Democracy: Venezuela and the Distorting of History

President Hugo Chávez has been the subject of much frenzied comment, as much at academic conferences as in the press. Criticism has been to a great degree personalised against his very visible public profile. The crisis of democracy in Venezuela has been widely ascribed to faults committed by the traditional parties since the early 1980s and reflected in the coterminous rise in crime and violence. Support for Chávez, or even objective comment, has been at a premium. This article looks at the crisis of democracy across a wider timescale and sees the ‘most stable democracy in Latin America’ to have been deeply flawed from the outset. It reflects an earlier propaganda campaign, similarly short on meaningful analysis, aimed at undermining the popularity of a previous unconventional leader of Venezuela, Marcos Pérez Jiménez. It is claimed that Venezuelans want to preserve democracy but are also ready to support military coups to oust corrupt or inefficient politicians. Is Chávez merely representative of transient anti‐party feeling or could the history of Venezuelan democracy have caused a more fundamental change in relationships between the mass of the people and their leader?     

“Bordering on Treason”? Sir Raphael Cilento and Pre‐Second World War Fascism in Australia

Sir Raphael Cilento died on 16 April 1985 at the age of ninety‐two. The notice in the Canberra Times spoke of Cilento's “worldwide” reputation in tropical medicine, his contribution to the public health service in Queensland, and his role with the United Nations in the immediate post‐war years. In short, he was an “eminent son of Australia”. But Sir Raphael Cilento's halo has been tarnished by his persistent eugenicist beliefs and his later association with the anti‐Semitic League of Rights. There were also lingering allegations and rumours about his apparent pre‐war association with Fascism. Without the evidentiary “smoking gun”, this association has occasionally been alluded to by scholars but never fully examined. Drawing on an unreleased, previously classified security file, this article addresses this question in Cilento's life. Through an examination of what the security service and military intelligence knew of Cilento's activities, the article argues that Cilento was at best an active fellow traveller and at worst a card‐carrying Fascist who narrowly escaped internment.     

The National Wages Council of Singapore: Issues for consideration

There are important regional dimensions to Australia's globalisation. This article focuses on Australia's developing relations with Southeast Asia and argues that the increasing interdependence between the two regions is weakening Australia's liberal democracy while at the same time highlighting the fundamental differences in legitimacy that exist between Australia and its Southeast Asian neighbours. In this context, this article considers important aspects of Australia's military and foreign relations with the region, the state's role in weakening civil society, and the emerging pattern of conflict with Southeast Asia.     

The Bangladesh party-state: a diachronic comparative analysis of party-political regimes

Since independence in 1971, both civilian and military regimes have ruled Bangladesh. As many other military regimes did, the latter civilianised their rule through the formation of political parties and participation in general elections. When diachronically analysing political formations in Bangladesh, it is appealing to make a clear-cut distinction between autocratic and democratic regimes. However, this article argues that throughout its post-independence history, the dominant form of rule has been the party-state. Revisiting the work of Aristide Zolberg, this article develops a typology of party-states, away from its initial focus on single-party regimes. It argues that party-state formation can also be witnessed in competitive electoral settings.     

“Team Australia”: Cartoonists Challenging Exclusionary Nationalist Discourse

In the context of the “war on terror”, Australian leaders announced that an increased threat of terrorist activity existed within Australia in 2014, which was generated by young people travelling to engage in military activity in the Middle East and returning “radicalised”. The prime minister at the time, Tony Abbott, called on Australians to rally together, in the face of such a threat, as “Team Australia”. This article analyses the responses by cartoonists to this call, focusing on the way the notion of Team Australia is portrayed as a challenge to core aspects of Australianness, such as mateship, multiculturalism and the “fair-go”. Frame analysis is used to explore how the cartoons connect with the broader populace and represent, challenge, reconstruct and rely on implicit and explicit understandings of Australianness. The cartoons frame Abbott’s Team Australia as exclusionary, unfair, politically elitist, anti-multicultural and “un-Australian”, even while pursuing a nationalist project.     

三十年来日本满铁研究现状述评

满铁是近代日本设于中国东北最大的殖民统治机构。日本通过满铁攫取中国的政治、经济、社会和文化等情报,控制中国交通,掠夺资源,以此达到对华殖民统治目的。日本战败后,满铁大部分文献资料留存于中国,分散于国内数十家图书馆。这批规模巨大、卷帙浩繁的满铁文献资料,是研究中国东北地方史、近现代中日关系史和东北亚国际关系史极为珍贵的第一手资料。近30年来日本学界对满铁资料及满铁史的研究取得了令人瞩目的成果,但也存在一些问题需要引起我们的重视。     

The National Service Scheme: Citizenship and the Tradition of Compulsory Military Service in 1960s Australia

Between 1964 and 1972, the National Service Act 1964 required Australian men turning twenty years old to register for national service. Unlike most scholarship on the national service scheme, which focuses on opposition to the scheme and its unpopularity, this article examines the reasons why most Australians supported the reintroduction of national service and why so many young men complied with its provisions. It argues that compulsory military service was seen as essential in the context of the Cold War, and as a way of ensuring that young men now coming of age were inducted into models of masculinity, citizenship and duty considered essential for a cohesive society. It was the scheme's break with accepted traditions of compulsory military service in Australia that is an overlooked, and important, element of the criticism it generated. In that sense, it was the legacy of earlier wars that fed into the contemporary response to national service.     

Neutralising Punitive Asylum Seeker Policies: An Analysis of Australian News Media During the 2013 Federal Election Campaign

ABSTRACT

For almost two decades, negative portrayals of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat have been dominant within political and media discourses. In particular, asylum seekers have been portrayed as a “dangerous other”—as an illegal group that the public ought to fear and from which they require protection—rather than as a vulnerable group who require protection themselves. This article examines some of the ways in which these discourses make possible public support for punitive policies relating to the treatment of asylum seekers (particularly boat arrivals)—policies that violate many of the human rights instruments to which Australia is a signatory. Specifically, this paper uses Sykes and Matza’s (1957) work on “Techniques of Neutralisation”, which considers the way in which those who knowingly commit illegal, immoral, or harmful acts neutralise their behaviour and disavow its harmful effects, to analyse these dynamics. In particular, it focuses on the political and media discourses regarding asylum seeking produced during the 2013 Australian federal election campaign. The paper argues that these theoretical tools can be effectively applied to this case study and provide some insight into the ongoing punitive treatment of asylum seekers in Australia.     

Representing China in the South Pacific

Chinese diplomacy, aid, economic interactions and manifestations of soft power have increased the country??s influence in the South Pacific region. By some accounts, China??s influence is already approaching that of traditional stakeholders Australia and New Zealand. In Africa and other regions state-led and private activities in established powers?? perceived spheres of influence has caused concern and inspired particular narratives about China??s motivations. In this article we examine how media discourses in Australia and New Zealand have represented China??s role in the South Pacific. We find that China??s role has been constructed using multiple negative frames, which seek to establish China as unequivocally ??different??. More than being unencumbered by the constraints of public opinion and a free press, China is portrayed as operating in a different moral universe, in which the cold hearted exploitation of vulnerable island nations (often in cahoots with venal island elites) is entirely normal. The article shows how such constructions reveal some of the complex issues involved in Australia and New Zealand??s relationships both with China and other South Pacific nations.