School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemContaining anxiety : a socio-analytic contribution to the study of organisational stress( 2003)The aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of anxiety as it is experienced in group and organisational settings. A 1997 study commissioned by the ACTU found that workplace stress was becoming increasingly prevalent in Australia, with the three most stressful conditions at work being increased workload, organisational change and job insecurity. According to the literature, stress appears to be a highly complex phenomenon, involving a myriad of psychological and physical symptoms which impact at the individual and social level. The "causes" of stress appear to be similarly complex, with some research suggesting that the occurrence of stress is a function of individual predisposition. Other studies attribute the origin of stress to environmental factors, whilst still other approaches regard stress as he product of interactions between person and environment. Apart from difficulties involved in alleviating the effects of stress given such conflicting accounts of its aetiology, there are also different political implications depending upon which approach is given precedence. For example, employers tend to adopt "person-centred" explanation of job stress, at the expense of accounts which attribute stress to poor working conditions - a move which might be regarded as "blaming the victim". The thesis attempts to resolve the dilemma of whether anxiety/stress is an individual or social phenomenon by investigating the various assumptions about the constitution of the "subject of stress" which are implicit in existing approaches. By drawing on debates in broader social theory, I suggest that stress cannot be adequately theorised, or addressed in practice, without paying attention to the concept of "inter-subjectivity". Psychoanalytically-informed social theory, by virtue of its concept of the "unconscious", I argue, provides a model of the subject in which the rigid distinction between person and environment, made by existing approaches to stress, is problematised. A particular branch of psychoanalytic organisational theory, known as "socioanalysis", emphasises the centrality of anxiety to both the constitution of the subject and the establishment of organisational systems. As such, I contend that this theory provides a useful base from which to construct a model of organisational stress which avoids the person-environment dilemma encountered by existing approaches. I explore the implications of a model of this kind with reference to a case study of the Australian social security organisation Centrelink. The empirical material consists of interviews with Centrelink staff, a content analysis of Centrelink internal policy documents, and observations of a range of Centrelink work practices undertaken during my own tenure as a Centrelink employee. The case material is interpreted using a socio-analytic methodology to investigate the effects of change on the various individuals and groups who interact with Centrelink. By reflecting on the case study, I make predictions about Centrelink and its changing role in Australian society, and also develop suggestions for ways of addressing the negative effects of stress as it is experienced in Centrelink.
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ItemThe quest for certainty in population screening for cervical cancer( 2000)The thesis explores the management of the certainty/uncertainty tension in the context of cervical screening programs (CSPs). In the past, the discursive making of certainty by laboratories, health educators, and promoters, has elicited a broad public perception of a simple screening test provided as a public good in answer to a common need. However, the recent litigation 'watershed' has recast CSP technologies as problematic. The quest for solutions emerging from a desire both to 'get it right', and to avoid litigation, has produced technologies of control which among other things, perform transformed answers to the question 'How should we live?' The turn to litigation is interpreted as a transforming moment in the continually unfolding CSP trajectory. The complex conditions of the Pap test's emergence as simultaneously a problem and a solution, are located and de-composed to reveal a multiplicity of performers, performances, understandings, and interpretations within the CSP arena. Problems experienced with constitutive elements of the CSPs have arisen from a disjunction between practices, representations, expectations, and perceived outcomes of screening. Early and continuing messages about screening have failed in some cases to accord with lived experience. As the workings of the CSPs have been opened to public scrutiny in the courts and the media, old certainties have been displaced by doubt, perceptions of error, and calls for improvement. Moves to manage these revealed uncertainties have issued in newly articulated and defensive strategies for building resilience and securing continuity. Such moves to regain control and restore public confidence are manifested and embodied in the processes of accreditation, regulation, registration, quality management, and automated technologies, all of which contain the promise of better ways of going on. The opening up of the CSPs to critical scrutiny in the courts and media, has meant adapting to a different discursive milieu in which the languages of cost benefit analysis, technological advantage, TQM, and zero-error, are fused with legal constructions of morality, responsibility, and certainty to perform a significant rhetorical shift. In this altered moral milieu, there is a danger that the flexible and reflective attitude which encourages multiple, and different voices to be heard, may be overcome by the rigidities expressed and performed in an overzealous quest for certainty.
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ItemThe myth of "One Nation" in multicultural Australia : an analysis of contemporary discourse and nationalism( 1999)The primary aim of this thesis is to examine discourses of multicultural politics in contemporary Australia and to analyze how these discourses impact upon the definition of national identity. Through an analysis of nations and nationalism, and the ways in which political discourse shapes these concepts, this thesis discusses how `one nation' discourse in Australia attempts to bind the nation together; at the same time the growing call to promote diversity and recognize difference unsettles the notion of being `one nation' and questions traditional, homogenous definitions of national unity. Drawing on the rhetoric of former Prime Minister Paul Keating, current Prime Minister John Howard, and MP Pauline Hanson, various perceptions of what it means for Australia to be 'one nation' are explored in this thesis. While each of these public figures conceive of national identity in different ways, each of them maintains that a shared, collective identity is possible. However, alternative definitions of difference destabilize this possibility, and suggest that the aim of national unity, as it has conventionally been defined, is inappropriate in a world where nations are becoming increasingly multicultural in nature. This thesis does not assert that nationalism as an ideology should be abandoned; indeed, this may not even be possible. However, nationalisms which seek to eradicate difference and sustain a homogenous culture are at odds with developing global trends. The active recognition and promotion of difference should be central to the contemporary nation-state, and political philosophy and rhetoric should reflect this. In furthering such a change, however, it is critical to understand that the recognition of difference furthers the state of permanent tension in which the nation finds itself. The promotion of a 'unity through sameness' framework will ultimately point to the reality of diversity, while a framework of 'unity through diversity' will ultimately recall nostalgic notions of a homogenous, collective community. A polarity of unity and separation emerges, and the two continually unsettle one another. In promoting a discourse of difference within the public sphere, the possibility for a 'detached we identity' emerges to allow a shared national identity that also allows individual and cultural differences to exist uneasily with one another.
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ItemCompensatory justice and land claims by Australian aborigines( 1998)In this thesis, I delineate the general structure of the theory of Compensatory Justice. The various issues addressed in this work are resolved via the reflective equilibrium technique so closely associated with the work of John Rawls, though I do not proceed by way of an original position story. The scope of Compensatory Justice is defined such that compensation is a response only to certain sorts of harms, where harm is defined in terms of setbacks to interests. Compensable harms are distinguished from non-compensable harms; and I establish when a person can rightly be held liable to provide another's compensation, and how proper compensation is be determined in any given instance. In the course of resolving these general issues, a number of further issues are brought to light and settled, e.g. what should be done when there is no-one on whom liability can rightly be imposed for another's compensation. Numerous cases are considered which extend and test the conclusions reached about the precepts of Compensatory Justice. Once the delineation of the general structure is complete, the conclusions reached are applied to the issue of Australian Aborigines' land claims. Since those claims are, in essence, claims about the suffering of harm, they also may be claims about the suffering of compensable harm. Although determinations of compensable harm must be made on a case by case basis, in the expectation that at least some land claims made by Aborigines will involve compensable harms I consider some general issues which will be relevant to the determination of proper compensation for them. The major conclusions reached are: that compensable harm is harm which is not in a person's interest (i.e. which affords them a net loss in well-being); that the person who intentionally or negligently causes a given compensable harm can rightly be held liable for the compensation due to the harmed person, and that a person should not be chosen at random to bear such liability; that proper compensation counterbalances a harm by providing the harmed person with a relevant good equivalent to the extent of the harm they have suffered; that the only relevant compensatory good for Aborigines who have suffered harms in respect of land to which they have ties based on Traditional Law or long association will be the land which was the original object of their set back interest; and that where Aborigines have a prima facie valid entitlement to a given area of land qua compensation and that land is currently the object of another's equally prima facie valid entitlement, neither entitlement should be allowed to predominate if the two can coexist (in the event that the two cannot coexist, I determine ways of resolving the question of which entitlement should prevail).
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ItemIn search of identity : engineering in Australia 1788-1988( 1988)This is the first historical study of the social organisation of engineering in Australia. Engineering education, professional associations, industrial relations, engineering populations and attitudes concerning occupational title, professional recognition and nature of employment are analysed as to their influence upon occupational control and identity. The shared values among engineers concerning occupational identity stem from these factors. The study is not concerned with the technological and resource management functions of engineers. In considering the first of the research questions: 'How has the occupational identity of engineers developed in Australia?', two further questions arise. The second question: 'What have been the influences of the professional associations, engineering education and industrial relations in the development of occupational identity for engineers in Australia?', gives rise to the major historical themes in the study. The analysis goes well beyond the history of engineering education and the engineering associations in addressing the third research question: 'What are the shared values of engineering concerning occupational control and professionalisation, especially in relation to occupational identity?' The study shows that Australian engineers have long been concerned about the identity of their occupation, and that they have developed mechanisms for occupational control that not only depend upon clarity of Identity, but also reinforce it. Early concern about use of 'engineer' by the non-qualified persons caused adoption of the descriptor professional engineer. Concerns about community recognition caused engineers to argue that their education and the importance of their work should attract the prestige accorded to other professions. Believing that they deserve to be ranked high among the professions, engineers sought a commensurate level of income. But engineers predominantly are not independent practitioners, they are employed in teams in organisations, and such concerns existed mainly within the context of employment, requiring the issues of corporate patronage and industrial relations to be addressed. There was little engineering in the Australian colonies until after the gold rushes of the 1850s. The study includes quantitative analyses of the growth of the Australian engineering population from 1850 to gauge of the influence of different modes of formation of engineers in the evolution of shared values. The antecedents of Australian engineering are traced to the beginnings of the occupation in Britain and North America. During the last half-century industrial relations became a major element in the occupational control and identity of Australian engineers, and this factor provides a contrast between the manner in which occupational control, is exercised in Britain and North America. The conclusions are that occupational control in Australia differs from that in Britain and North America, and that, in contrast with those countries, occupational identity has been strongly reinforced in Australia through industrial relations. However, trends indicate possible changes in the future social organisation of Australian engineering, with diminished strength in occupational control mechanisms.
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ItemJohn Ridley's contributions to Australian technology and to the early progress of South Australia( 1979)This study is primarily concerned with the working career of John Ridley (1806-1887), and with his contributions to the flour-milling industry of South Australia, to wheat harvesting technology, and to the progress of the colony generally. Ridley emigrated to South Australia from the north of England in 1840, and remained there until early 1853. Although still a relatively young man, he then returned to England to live in semi-retirement. The following text will show that Ridley contributed substantially to the technical and economic progress of the young- colony in at least two separate ways :- (i) He built the first flour-mill in South Australia in the year 1840, and subsequently operated it as a very successful business until he left the colony in 1853. The mill was steam-driven, of substantial capacity for the time, and of considerable economic significance to the colony. The local flour-milling industry which grew up soon afterwards freed the colony from crippling expenditures for imported flour and other breadstuffs, thus permitting a sound local economy to be developed. During 1842 Ridley leased a second (inoperative) flourmill near Adelaide, completely refitted it, and brought it too into successful operation. As well as helping to alleviate the financial difficulties of the colony at the time, these two mills provided a timely stimulus to local wheat growing. Ridley exerted a considerable influence upon the early development of South Australia's flour-milling industry, by virtue of the high standards for efficiency, operating reliability, and sound profitability he established in his own businesses. The competitors he attracted were forced to achieve similarly high standards in order to survive. His work was thus of importance in helping to secure a sound base for the future growth of the industry. (ii) In late-1843 Ridley invented, constructed, and demonstrated a unique mechanical harvester for gathering grain crops. This machine, later known as the "Ridley Reaper" or the "South Australian Stripper", was subsequently manufactured and used in thousands within the colony. For more than half a century the machine played a major part in stimulating wheat production in the region by providing the simplest and cheapest harvesting method in the world at that time. Ridley's invention embodied a principle of operation which was entirely novel at the time it was introduced. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries this same principle was incorporated into the designs of many other widely used grain harvesters. Ridley's machine therefore occupies an important place in the evolution of modern grain-harvesting machinery. The first two machines (both built by Ridley) were directly responsible for averting a serious harvesting crisis in South Australia at the 1843-44 season. Afterwards, when ever-increasing numbers of the machines went into service, a dramatic expansion of the colony's wheat-growing industry became possible. This in turn led to the development of a large export trade in wheat, and thus to an enviable economic prosperity for the colony. Whilst there is unanimous agreement that Ridley constructed and demonstrated the first successful machine of the "Stripper" type, his claim to have also invented the principle of its operation has been disputed. John Wrathall Full, another. pioneer South Australian settler, insisted that he and not Ridley originated the fundamental principle. In fact, he directly accused Ridley of stealing his idea and putting it into practice. The resulting controversy is examined in detail, and Bull's claim shown to be falsely based. Two further points of historical interest are also made and substantiated. Firstly, the "Stripper" was the first ever harvesting machine to successfully combine the operations of gathering and threshing the grain. And secondly, Ridley's "Stripper" was the first machine in the world to substantially displace hand-methods of cereal harvesting in its region. In the light of all the above considerations, it is suggested that Ridley's machine has not received either fair or sufficient notice in the histories of agricultural technology published to date. John Ridley's importance in the story of the development of mechanical harvesting has thus been unjustly neglected.
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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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ItemThe Australian missionary endeavour in China, 1888-1953( 1978)Late in the nineteenth century, when cultural and commercial contact between China and Australia was minimal and the Australian public felt a deep, ingrained distaste for its own Chinese immigrant population, Australian missionaries began to join the Christian missionary enterprise in China. The initial stimulus for the movement was, however, provided largely by British missions and their deputationists who visited Australia in the 1890s. The first stage of the movement was not, therefore, an expression of the burgeoning Australian nationalism in which distrust and loathing of the Chinese immigrant was an integral element. Furthermore, it continued as it began. Between 1888 and 1953, more than 500 missionaries worked in China, the great majority in British, not exclusively Australian, mission organizations. The endeavour was a predominantly Protestant phenomenon, characterized by a high proportion of evangelists, a small core of post-secondary or tertiary-trained professionals, and a large number of women. Apart from a few outstanding contributions to China's social welfare and Sinology, most missionaries were fully occupied with converting the Chinese to Christianity. Although initially and continually stimulated by influences which were external to the Australian environment, the movement had its own internal logic. It was highly self-propagating, drawing a large proportion of its members from friends and families within the ecclesia, the religious community. It did not, however, constitute a homogeneous community. This was due to the wide differences in the ethos and methods of the mission societies involved. Once in China, the great majority of missionaries obeyed the rules and followed the policies of the British societies to which they belonged. They responded to the Chinese and conditions in China in this capacity and adopted the image of Christian internationalism which those societies increasingly projected to accommodate to the demands of Chinese nationalism. Most missionaries therefore voluntarily suppressed their Australian identity. Australian branches of mission societies, with few exceptions, followed suit. As a consequence of the way the movement began, and this effort to remain supranational, Australian missionary interest in China never harmonized with developing Australian secular interest. The missionary movement peaked in 1923 and again in 1933 in response to favourable conditions for Christianity in China; secular interest developed after 1938 and during World War II in response to China's valuable resistance to the common enemy, Japan. For the above reasons, and because of their own mission-centrism, Australian missionaries were not effective translators of the Chinese culture to Australia; nor did they transmit Australian secular attitudes to China. Those Chinese who, in the last stages of the endeavour, were aware of the identity of the Australian missionary, saw him as the colonial subject of British imperial domination. Finally, the missionary body's effect on China's culture and historical development is best assessed in terms of its role as an intellectual stimulus to the social revolution which fomented throughout the undertaking, climaxed in 1949, and rejected the entire Western missionary enterprise.
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ItemHer self portrayed: Australian women's self-portraits between the wars 1918-1939( 2001-12)The subject of this dissertation is female self-portraiture in Australia of the interwar years, 1918 to 1939. The primary concern of this thesis is to consider self-portraiture as a conceptual process. Self-portrayal is understood as an act of cultural invention rather than an unmediated access to an essential core self. It is this invention and what is entailed in the process of self-imagining, rather than any formal analysis of the style, which is of greatest concern. The thesis examines the challenges faced by Australian interwar women in using an aesthetic convention designed to champion 'the artist' - a masculinist paradigm. The misogynist values encoded in traditional self-portrait iconography mediated the process of self-imagining form women. Thus, in seeking to portray the ‘self’, women were forced to devise strategies to deal with the exclusion integral to self-portrait traditions. It is the argument of this thesis that the exclusions formalised through self-portrait iconography provided a microcosm of the broader historical marginalisation of women in the 1920s and 1930s. Seen this way, Australian interwar female self-portraiture is a register of the wider struggle by women to work for equal pay, to accommodate new forms of femininity and to exercise their rights as citizens. the thesis presents historically based interpretations of works by women artists who worked in high, commercial and modernist art arenas. Such a diverse range allows for an inter-disciplinary approach in which Australian female self-portraiture will be examined from multiple perspectives – historical, philosophical, sociological, psychoanalytical, literary and cultural.