School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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Item'Alien Hordes': A cultural history of non-native birds in Australia( 2024-03)From 1788, settlers introduced a host of organisms to the Australian continent. They did so largely deliberately, with high hopes, and often viewed these species with immense fondness. Yet now many of these species are labelled ‘invasive’ and killed at will. This about-turn requires explanation. This thesis traces settler Australians’ changing attitudes towards nonnative wildlife from the late 1820s to the present. Taking a longitudinal approach and focusing in particular on wild birds, it describes how the language, imagery and sentiments surrounding non-native wildlife changed over this period, as well as accounting for why these changes occurred. I closely read public texts – books, lectures, pamphlets, parliamentary debates and, above all, articles from periodicals – in order to uncover the suppressed colonial and racial anxieties underlying seemingly rational and scientific discussion of avifauna. I use species such as the house sparrow, the red-whiskered bulbul and the common myna as case studies to challenge established narratives about the rise and fall of the acclimatisation movement in Australia and to explain why the settler public’s hostility towards and anxiety about non-native wildlife grew so dramatically over the course of the twentieth century. Much has been written about non-native wildlife in Australia, but little of this is adequately historicised; almost all of it is highly scientistic, taking for granted the current (and much contested) orthodoxy of ‘anekeitaxonomy’, that is, the classification and judgement of species by their geographical origin. Although the great reversal in attitudes may appear to be justified by ‘improving’ ecological knowledge, I argue that it is best understood in the context of settler colonialism as a system that generates ideas about who and what belongs to the land. As settlers’ understanding of their own belonging in the continent has changed, this has influenced their perceptions of and attachments to wild animals, native and non-native alike. Ultimately, this is not a story of empirical fact but one of culture, values and how these have changed over the course of Australia’s colonial history.
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ItemThe Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium by Gaius Julius Solinus: A Roman Geography for a Changing World( 2022)The Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium is a collection of wondrous facts from various areas of natural science presented within the geographical framework of a description of the known world. Little is known of its author Gaius Julius Solinus, possibly a grammaticus who lived between the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century AD. Despite being today largely neglected within the field of Latin literature, the text played a significant role in the transmission of classical geographical and scientific knowledge to Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Since the publication of Theodor Mommsen’s critical edition of the text in the late 19th century, studies on Solinus’ work have largely focused on philological issues concerning the author’s sources and the authenticity of the second redaction of the text. Such approach stemmed from the general view that the text was a mere epitome of its main source, Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, and has not offered a comprehensive assessment as to why and for whom the Collectanea was written. This thesis aims to fill this gap in the research and to answer the question of what the ultimate purpose of this text was. Specifically, the following aspects of the issue are investigated: the cultural, social, and historical reasons that prompted Solinus’ reorganisation of Pliny’s knowledge; the world view that emerges from the prominent space reserved to Rome within the text; and the role of mirabilia, and in particular animal paradoxography, in providing the author with the epistemological support to the world order that his text upholds. The methodology here adopted follows a text-based approach, by analysing those passages of the Collectanea in which Solinus’ tone, choice of words, and deviation from source material can be read as indicative of his authorial autonomy, and thus the reflection of a clear political project. This thesis concludes that a date of composition at the reign of Constantine I (or at least between the end of the third and the first few decades of the fourth century) is consistent with the author’s need to reaffirm the cultural primacy of the city of Rome, at a time in which it was losing its political relevance. It also suggests that the view of Nature that emerges from Solinus’ use of animal paradoxography (and mirabilia in general) is indicative of a ‘deterministic’ Weltanschauung, and is used as the moral justification of a providentially arranged world order with Rome at its centre. This thesis ultimately argues that Solinus’ Collectanea should be read independently from its sources, and that its importance lies in its being one of the most significant reflections of the cultural eclecticism of its time.
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ItemCountryminded Conforming Femininity: A Cultural History of Rural Womanhood in Australia, 1920 – 1997( 2021)This thesis explores the cultural and political history of Australian rural women between 1920 and 1997. Using a diverse range of archival collections this research finds that for rural women cultural constructions of idealised rural womanhood had real impacts on their lived experiences and political fortunes. By tracing shifting constructions of this ideal, this thesis explores a history of Australian rural womanhood, and in turn, centres rural women in Australian political and cultural history. For rural women, an expectation that they should embody the cultural ideals of rural Australia — hardiness, diligence, conservatism and unpretentiousness — was mediated through contemporary ideas of what constituted conforming femininity. This thesis describes this dynamic as countryminded conforming femininity. In this respect, this research is taking a feminist approach to political historian Don Aitkin’s characterisation of the Country Party as driven by an ideology of countrymindedness. This thesis uses countryminded conforming femininity as a lens through which cultural constructions of rural womanhood may be critically interrogated, and changes in these constructions may be traced. This thesis represents the first consideration of Australian rural womanhood as a category across time that is both culturally constructed and central to Australian political and cultural life, drawing together histories of rural women’s experience, representations and activism. It theorises what ideals of Australian rural womanhood have meant across the twentieth century and finds that they have had an under-considered role in Australian political life, and on constructions of Australian national identity.
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ItemThe motivations behind the decision by the Okinawa Teachers' Association to terminate its pro-Japanese national flag during the period of American administration from 1952 to 1972( [2007])This thesis argues that the decision by the Okinawa Teachers' Association (OTA) to terminate its pro-Japanese national flag campaign during the period of American administration from 1952 to 1972 was consistent with an approach to propaganda activity that was driven by opportunism and directed by self-interest. This finding, therefore, rejects the contemporaneous assertions of the OTA that it was nationalism (or, later, its negative mirror image, 'reactionary nationalism') which motivated the OTA to first raise the flag and then, albeit slowly, allow the flag to lower itself. This study argues that the OTA's flag policy behaviour appeared intuitively consistent with 'components of propaganda' such as its changing organisational goals, and adjustments in world and regional politics, the reactions of target audiences and other pragmatic concerns. Between 1952 and 1961 the OTA vigorously promoted the flag to establish sentiment for reunification with Japan among the people of Okinawa. Behind the OTA's interest in reunification was its conviction that Okinawa's legal re-entry into the Japanese polity would obligate the Japanese Government to provide the education sector with much better salaries and working conditions. During this period the flag was an uncontroversial national symbol in Japan which was in favour with both anti-American leftists and traditional rightist individuals and political groups. In 1961, despite almost ten years of fervently promoting the national flag, the OTA realised that this campaign had secured it extensive popularity but few, tangible benefits for its fee-paying membership. To preserve the politically valuable goodwill generated by the flag campaign, the OTA softly withdrew its support. In 1965 the OTA managed to secure from the conservative Japanese Government substantial improvements in salaries for its teacher members. In 1969 the OTA skilfully pressured the same conservative government to begin negotiations with America for Okinawa's return to the national polity. Ironically, with each of these substantive moves closer to Japan the OTA displayed somewhat less interest in Japan's national flag. Mindful of their role as teachers of young children and their long tradition of educators teaching flag worship, the OTA membership resisted openly rejecting the flag. The result was to greatly moderate its pro-flag campaign until 1971 when the OTA did openly reject the flag just as Okinawa's reunification with Japan approached and flag raising at schools became a legal obligation on Okinawa's 'new' Japanese teachers.
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Item'In our lifetime': the gay and lesbian movement and Australian society, 1969-1978( [1998])The social standing of lesbians and gay men has been transformed dramatically in Australia in the past thirty years. From a group which was marginalised to the point of invisibility, vilified, and discriminated against, we have moved towards the social and political mainstream. Or rather, the mainstream has moved towards us. Laws, administrative and bureaucratic practices and professional and public opinion have all been recast. This thesis is concerned to explore the parameters of this transformation and to explain it. To do this, it relies upon recent developments in social movement theory which have focused attention upon the conditions within which social movements arise and the ways in which, having come into existence, they tap into, and transform, generally-available repertoires of action, organisation and thought. The resource-mobilising capacity of social movements where resources are to be understood very broadly - allows them to have a very much greater impact than the actions of individuals alone. The diversity of their activities and ideas allows them to operate very flexibly - to seize opportunities, appeal to a variety of audiences, engage in a very much wider range of actions, than can political parties, lobby groups and other more conventional forms of political activism. The gay and lesbian movement of the 1970s demonstrated all the characteristics of the social movements which have been studied and theorised internationally, though its historic context is, as I demonstrate in Part One, rather unique. The absence of any deeply-rooted or extensive public homophobia in the Australia of the 1950s is important, though it was only with the emergence of a new liberalism in the second half of the 1960s that homosexuality found voice. The rise of the movement in the radical climate of the 1970s gave it access to a variety of ideas, forms of action and means of organising, as well as a number of different audiences liberal and radical and counter-cultural. But it is important to recognise that, in mobilising against 'society', the movement was, in fact, mobilising against attitudes, practices and policies concentrated in a number of different sectors (or realms or arenas). The thesis, in order to capture this, focuses upon both the broad questions of movement-formation and transformation and upon a number of sectors on which it acted. In particular, I examine, as case-studies, the campaigns around the medical profession, the Anglican Church and the Victorian teachers' unions, examining the ways in which, in each of these sectors, specific tactics were deployed, specific goals sought and different outcomes achieved.
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ItemLarrikinism: an interpretation( [1950])This is a study of the social causes of larrikinism. No attempt has been made to provide an eloquent or detailed inventory of larrikin habits and dress for the satisfaction of the antiquary.