School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemColonising Yolngu defence : Arnhem Land in the Second World War and transnational uses of indigenous people in the Second World War(University of Melbourne, 2008)The thesis examines the involvement in World War II of the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land, in the context of colonialism in the Northern Territory, and with comparative attention to the war experiences of the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea. and the Native American Navajo. Yolngu participated in the war through various avenues, including the provision of labour for white Australian war initiatives. Most notably Yolngu served as auxiliaries to non-indigenous military units such as the North Australia Observer Unit, and they also participated in the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit, which was exclusively Aboriginal apart from its leadership. Rather than representing widespread white Australian appreciation of Yolngu skills or recognition of Yolngu equality, the military employment of Yolngu continued structures of ideas and practices inherent in settler colonialism in the north. The military authorities, with government endorsement, organised Yolngu to utilise their skills in defence of the colonial project that was of itself simultaneously robbing Yolngu of their land and rights. Yolngu had their own motivations to work alongside white military, and for the most part participated willingly. Analysis of oral testimony points to their courageous efforts and, unlike the non-indigenous documents, positions Yolngu as central actors in Arnhem Land during the war. Comparative analysis of other colonised indigenous peoples' involvement in World War ll�Pacific Islanders in similar units in Papua and New Guinea, and Navajo Codetalkers in the United States�highlights the existence of common colonial practices that existed transnationally, alongside indigenous peoples' own sense of agency. This study re-centres indigenous people in war narratives while demonstrating at the same time how governments' reliance on indigenous skills and labour in times of crisis did not represent a fundamental change in relations, although for white authorities there were, eventually, unanticipated outcomes from the war for indigenous peoples.
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ItemMediating risks : investigating the emergence of court ADR through the risk society paradigm( 2007)In the US, England and Australia alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has been increasingly employed as integral component in the handling and disposal of garden-variety civil cases. This thesis examines the quality and character of changes brought about through the uptake and continued use of ADR in the courts, a configuration that I refer to as Court ADR, in non-family law cases. Ulrich Beck's risk society paradigm provides the theoretical lens through which those changes in the courts are to be understood. In short, Beck claims that institutions and individuals' relationships to those institutions are transforming in contemporary societies, a transformation that is organised by and around risk. According to Beck, these transformations, while partial and incomplete, describe how the fundamental structures that generate and maintain society redound and confront their very foundations, a process that Beck refers to as reflexive modernisation. Moreover, individuals' relationships with institutions are caught up with such transformations. Beck describes this through his concepts of individualisation, whereby individuals are increasingly invited to make decisions regarding particular risks, which are simultaneously enabled and constrained by expert systems. I argue that these two central risk society conceptualisations - reflexive modernisation and individualisation - provide an informed theoretical framework for understanding those transformations in certain US, English and Australian courts as they relate to Court ADR. With the institutional emergence of Court ADR, and the growth of court-sponsored mediation in particular, the rationale underlying its development and continued use can be understood through the risk society paradigm. In terms of reflexive modernisation, the process of producing legal goods as they take shape in a judgement has and continues to produce negative side-effects, including expense, delay, undue complexity and limited accessibility to the courts themselves. One result is the emergence of Court ADR, which provides new procedures to structurally address many of those negative side-effects generated when legal goods are produced through processed that are oriented around adversarial adjudication. The emergence of Court ADR evidences the qualities and characteristics of individualisation insofar as litigants are invited into new decision-making spaces, inclusive of court-sponsored choices over whether arbitration or mediation might be more appropriate to handle and dispose of the case, as well as the attendant decisions once mediation, arbitration or other alternative processes are selected. Moreover, while litigants' entry into these spaces is enabled by legal actors and systems, they are simultaneously constrained. In short, Beck's risk society paradigm provides clarity with respect to how those alternative practices themselves have been legalised when used to handle and dispose of garden variety civil cases in the US, English and Australian courts.
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ItemTerra nullius : Lacanian ethics and Australian fictions of origin( 2005)The fiction of terra nullius, that Australia was 'no-one's land' at the time of British colonisation, was confirmed in law in 1971. At precisely this moment it had begun to fail as the ballast of white Australian identity and the fulcrum of race relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Where white Australia had historically produced a gap, an empty centre from which the white Australian subject could emerge, fully formed, there was now a presence. The emergence of the Aboriginal subject into this empty space inaugurated the anxiety of white Australia that has characterised the period from the 1970s to the present. During these decades of anxiety, the story of this nation's origin-the story of 'settlement'-has retained its pivotal part in the inscription and reinscription of national meanings. Each of the three novels analysed in the thesis is a fictional account of the story of 'settlement published during the closing decades of the twentieth century. Of all the contemporary Australian fiction written about 'settlement' and the race relations conducted in its midst, these texts have been chosen because each is emblematic of a particular national fantasy, and, as is argued in this thesis, a particular orientation, to the tale it tells. The structure of each fantasy-of the frontier, of captivity, of the explorer and of the Great Australian Emptiness- offers particular opportunities for the refantasisation of that national story. The thesis asks how each novel is oriented towards the national aim of not failing to reproduce a satisfactory repetition of the story of national origin and the inevitable failure of that project. All of these questions are framed by an overarching one: what is an ethics of interpretation? The thesis offers a Lacanian response. Interpretation, for Lacan, is apophantic; it points to something, or lets it be seen. It points beyond meaning to structure; it alms to show an orientation not to a 'topic' but to a place. Lacanian psychoanalytic theory offers an ethics of interpretation that includes and accounts for that which exceeds or escapes meaning, and it does this without rendering that excess irrelevant. That something remains constitutive yet enigmatic, making interpretation, in turn, not merely the recovery and rendering of meaning but also a process which seeks to understand the function of this enigmatic structural term. Through its theory of repetition and the pleasures that repetition holds, Lacanian theory offers an approach to analysing the pleasures for the non-Indigenous Australian reader in hearing again the fictions of the nation's founding. It now seems possible for a white Australian encountering any such retelling to ask how our pleasure is taken, and to see the intransigence of our national story, its incapacity to respond to its many challengers, as a particular mode of enjoyment that is too pleasurable to renounce. A Lacanian ethics of interpretation opens up the question: what are the possibilities of re-orientating ourselves in our relation to our founding story such that we did not simply repeat what gives us pleasure?
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ItemScience by correspondence : Ferdinand Mueller and botany in nineteenth century Australia( 2005)Ferdinand Mueller first used correspondence to undertake projects in botany while working as an apprentice pharmacist in Schleswig-Holstein in the 1840s. In so doing he had before him the examples of illustrious scientific travellers like Darwin and Humboldt who collected data on their own and with help of others on a grand scale. Mueller made his own journey of exploration to Australia in 1847, but after being appointed first Government Botanist in the colony of Victoria in 1853, and first Director of the Melbourne Botanic Garden in 1857, he did not return to Europe. This meant that he was somewhat less reliant than Darwin or Humboldt on correspondence to build up a network of collectors, most of whom were based in Australia, but much more reliant on correspondence to communicate with colleagues, most of whom were based in Europe. One of Mueller's first large data-collecting projects in Australia was a flora, based in phytography, and a second was the introduction of alien plants, based mainly in economic botany, but also concerning phytogeography and acclimatisation. A decade after his arrival in Australia, Mueller was still less well-equipped to write a flora than his most obvious colleagues at the Kew Botanic Garden in England, but he did not have far to catch up. He also managed to build up a network of contacts who sent him alien plants on a large scale, especially compared to another Australian botanic garden director, Richard Schornburgk. Nevertheless, disagreements between these colleagues, especially about identifying and delimiting species, marred the progress of their co-operation. The Kew botanists ended up asking one of their own group, George Bentham, to write the flora of Australia. In addition, Mueller and Schomburgk were both unsuccessful in diversifying the plants grown in local agricultural and horticultural industries. Despite these disappointments, in phytography Mueller went on to publish descriptions of thousands of new Australian species, and to promulgate his own version of the natural system of classification in a series of censuses and iconographs. He also issued a much reprinted volume on economic botany called Select extratropical plants, and developed insights about the relationship between culture and nature that can be regarded as among the first contributions to environmental science. For these and other achievements he was regarded as one of Australia's foremost scientists in the nineteenth century, but he felt that his reliance on correspondence contributed to his work being less well-appreciated overseas. He was able to gain international notice and honours for his achievements but he felt that to do so he was obliged to push his work more insistently than colleagues who could meet each other in person.
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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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