School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemProtest and patient care: Employing theories of organising and mobilisation to explain the growth of the Victorian Nurses' Union( 2015)After striking for the first time in its history in 1985, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (Victorian Branch) (ANMF) has experienced consistent and continuous growth in union membership since 1990, a period in which most unions have suffered a decline in membership. Drawing on an analysis of the trade union ‘organising’ model and social movement theories of organisation, mobilisation, leadership and the framing of grievances, this thesis will chart the history of the Branch over this period. It will address three questions. First, how was the union able to grow and flourish in a period characterised by union membership decline? Second, what strategies did the leaders of the Branch employ to ensure this growth and success? Third, how were these strategies developed and how were they applied in industrial campaigns?
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ItemWith my needle: embroidery samplers in colonial Australia( 2008)This thesis examines a group of more than one hundred needlework samplers stitched in the Australian colonies during the nineteenth century. It uses them as documents of social history to examine the lives of individual girls and women during that time, and to trace changing expectations of girls, especially in the later decades of the century. Although there are many individual stories that can illuminate certain aspects of Australian history such as migration, settlement, and death and mourning, these samplers are most useful as documents in the examination of girls' education and the social expectations transmitted through the education system. It addresses the contradiction between the sampler's continuing presence in girls' schooling and the increasing irrelevance of the skills embodied in it. The thesis argues that needlework samplers retained their place in girls' education well into the twentieth century because of their significance as symbols of feminine accomplishment. They were physical expressions of a definition of respectability that was based on the `feminine ideal' of the nineteenth century and allayed anxiety about girls' involvement in formal schooling.
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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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ItemBeyond the book: reshaping Australian public history in the Web 2.0 environment( 2008)With digital media and the web becoming increasingly pervasive in our everyday lives, few historians have considered in depth the impact that this is having on the ways that history is represented and communicated in the public sphere. This thesis is an examination of how the practice of public history in Australia is being reshaped in the Web 2.0 environment. In the context of new media theory, public history practice is considered in relation to identifiable changes in the ways the web is used and understood. The public historian’s concern with interpreting the past to a public audience means that changing social practices and information patterns are pertinent to their work. This thesis highlights the ways in which different forms of history are being produced, distributed and consumed on the web. It focuses on the potential role of the web user as an active producer of personal and creative interpretations of the past and on how experimental public history practices in the Web 2.0 environment have emerged in response to changing audiences. This study argues that the rise of Web 2.0 is reflected by personalised, ubiquitous, democratic and innovative public history practices on the web. Through an in depth analysis of The Powerhouse Museum collection search and YouTube as case studies, this thesis shows how increased participation, the proliferation of user-generated content, social networking and existing practices by users in the Web 2.0 environment reshapes public history. This thesis goes beyond conceiving of the web as a site of historical source material, both digitised and born-digital, to an understanding of the value of participatory media and informal communication in enabling the sharing of historical knowledge and materials between and among networks of people on the web.
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ItemFrom idol to artform: missionaries and material culture in the Pacific( 2012)In Hawai’i the introduction of woven cloth and sewing circles led to the development of a distinctive form of quilting. In Arnhem Land in Australia the transition to a market economy through the promotion of local art and craft production led to the material transformation of bark painting from objects of temporary use to artefacts of permanent significance. In both of these cases missionaries played a key, though often unintentional, role in the development of these artforms. This thesis is an exploration of Indigenous creativity and purpose combining with missionary influence on Pacific material culture. Particular focus is made of the development of quilting in Hawai’i in the nineteenth-century and bark painting at Yirrkala in the twentieth-century, culminating in Lili’uokalani’s 1895 ‘Queen’s Quilt’ and the 1963 Painted Bark Petition. During periods of social change, transformations occur in material culture produced by a society. Exploring the relationships between missionaries and Indigenous peoples through artistic expressions of the time illuminates many aspects of these relationships otherwise restricted to European-dominated accounts. Material culture is used as an historical source material to explore cultural changes and corresponding notions of authenticity, as expressed through missionary and museum collections. This thesis is concerned with the two-way nature of cultural exchanges, with particular reference to the art produced through these relationships, art that is both aesthetically beautiful and socially powerful. Queen Lili’uokalani’s Crazy Quilt and the Yirkaala bark petitions both appropriated aspects of European culture in order to create new objects of significant cultural, political, and social importance, and were generated out of missionary-Indigenous relationships.
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ItemThe AIDEX '91 protest: a case study of obstructive direct action( 2011)In November 1991 the biennial Australian International Defence Exhibition (AIDEX ‘91) was held in Canberra at the National Exhibition Centre (NATEX). Organised in the context of the drive by the Australian Labor Party to double domestic military exports between 1987 and 1992, the event attracted overseas and domestic arms manufacturers and buyers, as well as up to 2000 protesters from across Australia. There had been a similar demonstration at the previous AIDEX exhibition, held in 1989, and this one occurred in the wake of recent disruptive protest activity around issues such as rainforest imports and old-growth logging as well as events such as the first Gulf War. During the eleven-day protest a number of events occurred across Canberra including religious ceremonies, concerts and a series of rallies at Parliament House and in the city centre. The majority of protesters camped across the road from NATEX and picketed its main gates. Tactics as varied as lying passively on the road and setting barricades on fire were employed, causing much debate during and after the event. Media coverage was widespread and often sensational, leading many protesters to complain of misrepresentation. The protest was also marked by allegations of extensive police violence and over 200 arrests were made. In the months leading up to AIDEX ‘91 the government of the Australian Capital Territory had announced that it would not allow another arms fair to be held in the region. The poor publicity generated in the build-up to the 1991 event also saw the number of exhibitors fall from 234 to 138. During the protest, displays, military vehicles and other items were either delayed or prevented from entering the site. Afterwards, attempts by the event organiser, Desiko Pty Ltd, to organise similar events on federally owned property in the ACT and in the adjoining town of Queanbeyan, New South Wales were blocked by local and state authorities wary of the disruption caused during AIDEX ‘91. Although air shows and smaller events have continued to be held in Australia, there has not been an arms exhibition on the scale of AIDEX since 1991. This thesis will provide a history of the AIDEX ‘91 protest. In doing so it will seek to understand why the issue of arms fairs arose at this time as well as how and why a particular repertoire of contention, which I have labelled ‘Obstructive Direct Action’, was employed by activists as part of a strategy of ‘coercion’. The organisation, promotion and unfolding of the protest will be examined and evaluated along with the outcomes it produced. The ways in which protests such as these reflect the tactical, organisational and strategic choices that activists make, consciously or otherwise, will also be considered along with how such choices are shaped by the context in which they occur.
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ItemSydney Dance Company: a study of a connecting thread with the Ballets Russes( 2009)This thesis addresses unexplored territory within a relatively new body of scholarship concerning the history of the Ballets Russes in Australia. Specifically, it explores the connection between the original Diaghilev Ballets Russes (1909- 1929) and the trajectories of influence of Russian ballets that visited Australia. This thesis addresses unexplored territory within a relatively new body of scholarship concerning the history of the Ballets Russes in Australia. Specifically, it explores the connection between the original Diaghilev Ballets Russes (1909- 1929) and the trajectories of influence of Russian ballets that visited Australia. This study sketches the origins of the Ballets Russes, the impact its launch made on dance in the West, and how it progressed through three distinguishable phases of influence. It summarises the important features of the visits to Australia of Russian ballet companies from Adeline Genee in 1913 to the culturally altering impact of the revived Ballets Russes companies over three extended tours between 1936 and 1940. It charts the formation of viable ballet companies in Australia, commencing with Kirsova in 1939 and Borovansky in 1940, to the Australian Ballet in 1962 and the Sydney Dance Company led by Murphy between 1976 and 2008. Drawing on distinctions between classical and contemporary dance, it attempts to demonstrate the groundwork of example established by the Russian ballet, and, particularly, the revived Ballets Russes visits up to 1940. Data for this thesis was drawn from a personal interview with Graeme Murphy, original documentary research in public collections in Australia, government and Sydney Dance Company archives, newspapers and secondary literature.
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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.
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ItemThe domestic peril: the radical alien and the rise of corporate Americanism, 1912-1919( 2010)In the years preceding the First World War, corporate propaganda in the United States weighed in against the menace of the ‘radical alien,’ said to be a clear and present threat to American freedoms. This propaganda blamed strikes and other manifestations of class antagonism on unassimilated immigrants, who it claimed were, at best, vulnerable to peddlers of ‘un-American’ unionism, and, at worst, importers of the ‘alien’ ideologies upon which organised labour was said to be founded. This thesis argues that this propaganda was part of a conscious campaign of class warfare conducted by the National Association of Manufacturers and other representatives of Corporate America, who formed the vanguard of Corporate Americanism. Corporate Americanism, an ideology equating the self-interest of Corporate America with the interest of all, proclaimed as its operating principle that ‘those who are not for America are against it.’ In reaction to the Lawrence Strike of 1912, composed mostly of foreign-born workers and led by the hated Industrial Workers of the World, big business manipulated half-truths through propaganda to develop the mythology of the ‘radical alien,’ responding to the perceived peril with the movement to ‘Americanise’ the immigrant. Under the guise of providing lessons in English and Civics, this movement functioned to neutralise the threat of union militancy on the part of foreign-born workers by indoctrinating them in Corporate Americanist civic orthodoxies. The movement to Americanise the immigrant led to an experiment in Industrial Americanisation in Detroit in 1915, an experiment that sought to combine the indoctrination process of Americanisation with the benevolent paternalism of industrialists such as Henry Ford to provide a means of incorporating foreign-born workers into an industrial order in which they would be submissive pawns. With the onset of war the mythology of the ‘radical alien’ menace combined with war-fever to produce conditions in which the Americanisation movement would be accepted as state policy and the core principles of Corporate Americanism would come to be seen not as the self-interested ideology of a powerful lobby group, but rather as the desirable traits of citizens. Representing a significant shift towards corporate oligarchy, this thesis argues that these changes laid the foundations for the Red Scare of 1919-1920 as well as providing continued political cover for Corporate America’s campaign of class war.