School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemA culture of speed: the dilemma of being modern in 1930s Australia( 2003)This thesis explores the reaction of Australians living in Melbourne in the 1930s, to changes in technology, social organisation, and personal attitudes that together constituted what they saw as innovations in modern life. Taking the Victorian Centenary of 1934 as a starting point, it analyses the anxieties and excitements of a society selfconsciously defining itself as part of a progressive potion of the western world. They reflected on the place of the city as locus of modernity; they analysed what appeared to be the quickening pace of human communications. They knew increasing leisure but deprecated the concomitant condition of boredom. They were concerned whether modernity was disease. They faced the ambiguities of the racial exclusivity of Australian modernity, centred in part on their ambivalence about Aborigines as Australians, but also incorporating long-held fears of populous Asian neighbours. They were not Britons, but their concerns for “men, money and markets”—and defence—kept the British connection uppermost. They participated in competing visions of the meanings of the past, and the directions of the future. Modern life, it seemed, was accused of overturning fundamental, and natural, race and gender norms, sapping the vital force of white Australia. Spurred by the increasing likelihood of a major conflict at the decade’s end, and drawing on much older and deepseated anxieties in Australia’s past, pessimists predicted a future where the technologies of modernity would make Australia vulnerable to attack. Australians in Melbourne, however, were excited about modernity and not just anxious. People were prepared to take risks, to seek novel experiences, and the reasons for this probably stemmed from the same causes that made other people turn away from the new to find comfort in the familiar. Modernity, in terms of changing mental processes as much as in its technological dimension, offered the chance for Melburnians to escape the often grim realities of life in the 1930s. Despite clearly expressed uncertainties, interwar Australians had committed themselves to a project of modernity.
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ItemDeparting from their sphere: Australian women and science, 1880-1960( 2003)This thesis charts, predominantly elite, white women's engagement with science in Australia over a relatively long period, in a way which has been attempted for few other countries. Noting women's relatively strong visibility in many scientific arenas prior to the 1940s, it argues that, despite the widespread coding of science as masculine, their experiences cannot be explained through simple exclusionary models or notions of hegemonic gender discourses and spheres. Beginning in the nineteenth century, elite women showed a surprising, strong, enthusiasm for scientific education and employment. By the early twentieth century, women comprised a significant proportion of the local scientific community and made substantial contributions in this critical phrase of the development of the field in Australia. In the broader cultural arena, such women were prominent promoters of the scientific cause within social reform movements. It is suggested that a specific set of circumstances was required for the masculine image of science to be fully reflected in the gendered structure and composition of the Australian scientific community. It was only in the years after World War II, as scientific education and employment expanded enormously, that men were attracted to the field in large numbers and women's participation decreased. It was only then that the masculine image of science came to be more completely reflected in gender composition of the scientific community. Patterns set in place in period were enduring and many are still evident today. Apart from simply documenting uncharted territory, it also seeks to suggest new approaches which might be fruitful. It offers a new interpretation of elite women's engagement in 'traditionally' masculine spheres, in Australia and other western countries, by focusing on the relative privileges they enjoyed. Indeed, it will be suggested that studies of 'women in science' reveal as much about the, sometimes significant, disruptions to the discursive construction of science as masculine as they do about any disjunction between the feminine and the scientific. The experiences of Australian women in science reveal that positive subcultures supportive of women's scientific engagements could coexist quite easily with discourses positing a close alignment between science and masculinity. The ideological construction of science as a masculine domain did not necessarily represent or create the experiences of all women in all times and places.
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ItemMagic and science: aspects of Australian business management, advertising and retailing, 1918-40( 1989)This thesis is concerned with four dominant themes: - the rise of a new managerial formation and associated ideology during the inter-war period, which provided an important base for the spread of managerial skill and power in later decades. - the reconstruction by managers of workers as consumers during the inter-war period. Structural and ideological changes in industrial managements, especially in the fields of advertising, media and retailing were important in promoting a particular ethic of consumption. - the role of empirical social sciences, especially economics and legitimating managerial psychology, aspirations in and technology and in fuelling the reconstruction of social and cultural life. - the influence of ideas and developed in America on businessmen, their practice thoughts. values first Australian and their thoughts.
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ItemDarwinism and Australia, 1836-1914( 1992)This thesis is an examination of certain themes and ideas surrounding the development of Darwinism as an intellectual concept in Australian culture. Beginning with a discussion of the manner in which Australian resources played a role in the formulation and growth of Darwin's ideas, it then moves to an analysis of a number of public controversies and debates around aspects of Darwinism which are seen by current Darwinian scholars as being of central importance. The work of a number of Australian scholars is explored to illustrate the way in which evolutionary theory found its way into the academic and public culture of Australia. Finally, discussion is given over to the way in which evolutionary theory became diffused through all areas of intellectual life. Among the chief claims made here are firstly, that, Darwinism played a significant role in the intellectual life of Australia in the last part of the nineteenth-century and that Australians made significant contributions to the development of evolutionary theory. Secondly, it is claimed that for the history of Australian science to have any real meaning it must be understood in its own terms, here on the periphery, and not as an adjunct to events and happenings at the centre. Finally, it is urged here that Australian science and its growth is not bound to a pre-determined and periodised historical development, but that insofar as it is tied to the history of Australia generally, it exhibits the stresses and tensions of the social context in which it exists. At all times this thesis should be seen as an attempt at intellectual history, but one seeking to embed that history within a specific social context.
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ItemThe emergence and character of women's magazines in Australia 1880-1914( 1975)Four major points relating to the emergence and character of women's magazines in Australia are explored in this thesis:- when they began, why they began when they did in the 19th century, what form they took when published and the views they expounded about the status and life of women in Australia between the years l880-19l4. Thirty-five women's magazines were consulted, but only one or two representative examples of each type are discussed in any detail. The magazines themselves fall into two distinct categories during this period - the general or service magazine containing fiction, fashion and homemaking features; and the suffrage or political magazine dealing with the implications of votes for women. The thesis is divided into three sections and follows a basically chronological pattern. The first section of four chapters deals with the English background of women's and family magazines to 1850; the popularity of these publications in the Australian colonies throughout the 19th century; the level of education and literacy among women in Australia during this period; and the early attempts to found women's magazines in Melbourne and Sydney in the 1880's. Section two discusses the suffrage and political magazines published for women in Sydney and Melbourne between the years 1889-1914. The first of these two chapters is devoted to a detailed examination of Australia's first successful feminist magazine, Louisa Lawson's Dawn (1888-1905); while the second discusses the suffrage and political magazines for women in New South Wales and Victoria, and compares their failure to the success of Mrs. Lawson's publication. The third and final section examines the emergence of the modern American-influenced magazines in Australia from 1894 to 1914, a whole chapter being devoted to the New Idea (1902-14) as the archetypal example of this trend.
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ItemA history of the Australian meat export trade, 1865-1939( 1967)This thesis is about the production, treatment and export of meat from Australia between the 1860s, when the trade began, and the Second World War. Primarily it is a study of those involved directly in the trade in Australia - graziers and farmers, meatworks operators and exporters - and of their actions and attitudes. To some extent, however, it has also been necessary to examine the trade in the broader context of Australian rural production as a whole, of domestic demands for meat and stock, and of the leading overseas markets and competitors with Australia in those markets.
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ItemFraming Fitzroy: contesting and (de)constructing place and identity in a Melbourne suburb( 2002)This thesis examines the ways in which Melbourne's 'worst suburb', Fitzroy, was constructed, both physically and culturally, from the Great Depression of the 1930s until the gentrification of the suburb in the early 1970s. The thesis argues that an array of institutions, extending from social welfare and slum reform groups to the media and a variety of policing agencies, relentlessly constructed Fitzroy as the site of social evil in Melbourne. It examines the variety of texts, both written and visual, that were utilised to construct a singular and negative representation of Fitzroy that legitimated particular forms of intervention. The thesis critiques and contests this representation through an analysis of the lives of those who lived in Fitzroy in the period covered by this thesis and by using a variety of original sources, including the testimonies of those who lived and worked in Fitzroy. It is a central argument of this thesis that Fitzroy was a place of complexity, vitality and cultural value for those who lived there.
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ItemThe role of Australia's cultural council 1945-1995( 2000)This thesis examines the concept of a cultural council as it was expressed in Australian public debate over the fifty years between 1945 and 1995. It aims to draw out the discrepancy between the concept of such a council- its potential contribution and relation to Australian political, social and cultural development - and the form in which the council has been institutionalised as the Australia Council. The thesis was written in a context of increasing government interest in cultural policy, and increasingly pro-active policies. This resulted in a recognised need for more research into the relationship between cultural activities and public policy, which has become an issue of interest within the disciplines of cultural studies, economics, history and political science. The Australia Council has been one focus of such interest. Research has concentrated on its administration, its funding priorities and, more recently, the extent to which it has reflected government cultural policy objectives. Yet such research has tended to neglect the extent to which the function of the Council has reflected and interpreted broader social and political concerns. Throughout the period examined in this thesis, understandings of a cultural council's appropriate responsibilities have included a wide range of social, cultural and political concerns experienced as a consequence of post-war development. The council has provided an important, but often overlooked, axis around which public recognition of and debate about such concerns has occurred. Its function has thus been 'cultural' not just in the sense of providing funds for artists and arts organisations, but in providing a focus for public debate. There are two key implications of these findings. Firstly, behind the institution of the Australia Council lies a more complex history than previous policy studies might suggest, a history that reveals a unique aspect of common social concerns and ideals over the post-war period and that might make a significant contribution to broader studies of Australian history. Secondly, the contribution of the council to public debate - rather than to cultural development in the more narrow sense of arts development - might usefully be considered in future political or administrative assessments of the cultural council's worth.
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ItemPrivate and public regulation of the general insurance industry in Australia 1897 to 1992( 1993)Only one third of the number of Australian insurance companies that were trading in 1890 survived the financial crisis of the decade that followed. In the wake of these collapses, a group of the major British companies operating in Australia set up a cartel-like organisation in 1897 which set rates and policy terms for the whole country. Through an agency network it controlled distribution, and its inter-company trading rules concerning reinsurance and risk sharing effectively excluded any new opposition. Despite a Federal Royal Commission appointed in 1908 to inquire into the insurance industry, which recommended Commonwealth regulation in 1910, governments did not proceed with legislation. With the pressures of World War I the matter was passed over. This private regulation, known as the 'Tariff', went largely unchallenged until 1974. The Tariff co-existed with State regulation introduced in Queensland in 1916, resisted competition from Lloyd's and other free-riders between the Wars, and adapted to deposit only requirements for insurance companies introduced by the Commonwealth in 1932. It also co-existed with a number of state government insurance companies, the first of which was established in Victoria in 1915. The Tariff distribution system, and the political pressure it applied to keep state offices out of the direct competition they were designed to create, prevented the state offices from making any significant impact on the market. Competitive pressures exerted by overseas brokers, and by new insurers entering the expanding motor vehicle insurance market, eroded Tariff dominance to some extent after World War II, but private regulation was abandoned only after the introduction of the Trade Practices Act 1974. In 1973 the Commonwealth introduced solvency regulation for all general insurance companies. This regulation is still in place. This history offers a rare, perhaps unique, opportunity to compare the behaviour of two markets in the same country, one under private and the other under public regulation. For a period of more than forty years the outcomes of public regulation of the industry in Queensland can be compared with outcomes of private regulation in the rest of the country. It is also possible to measure changes in the market under private regulation arising from some competition after the Second World War, and the further changes which occurred when private regulation was abandoned in the face of the Trade Practices Act 1974. The evidence produces the conclusions that private regulation kept profits and distribution costs at a level that allowed the least efficient companies to remain in the market, and created super-normal profits for the most efficient. State government insurance offices are shown to have been failures as mechanisms for government to regulate markets. Although the present market is shown to be much more efficient, a critique of existing Federal regulation is offered. This increasingly expensive operation has failed to achieve the purpose for which it was established. The failure rate of insurance companies is higher under public regulation that it was before the legislation was introduced, the public are not able to obtain full information of the financial status of insurance companies from the Insurance and Superannuation Commission, and policyholders are not protected by a guarantee fund from company failure. Finally, classic regulatory theory is tested against each of these forms of regulation and their outcomes. The conclusions reached are that these theories could not have predicted either the forms of regulation adopted, or the outcomes of the movements.