School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemProstitution and the state in Victoria, 1890-1914( 1986)The later decades of the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth centuries were marked by considerable change in Victorian society. Rapid urban expansion and industrialization were among the most profound of these developments. They resulted in increasing problems of urban over-crowding, poverty, sanitation and, despite the youth of the cities, decay. Those in power began to see these urban problems as being partly related to the nature of working-class life, so sought to control aspects of working-class culture to an unprecedented degree. During this period, legislation relating to liquor, tobacco, drugs, and gambling, for example, were brought into effect for the first time or became more intrusive. Street life was becoming increasingly regulated. In 1891, for example, amendments to the Victorian Police Offences Act made important changes to the social construction of anti-social behaviour and placed increased power in the hands of the police and legal institutions to control the behaviour of individuals in public places. As part of this development, soliciting prostitution was made an offence for the first time. Women, too, had become subversive. Feminists demanded the vote, increased educational opportunities and threatened the established power differential between the sexes. At the same time, legislation was being passed and medical practices were emerging which increasingly impinged upon women's bodies and upon the areas of women's traditional power - life itself and child life. Kerreen Reiger has traced the increasing attempts to professionalize and rationalize family life, resulting in greater intrusion into the lives of women in relation to childbirth and motherhood.' Increasing attempts to control prostitution in Australia date from this same period, and can be seen as part of these processes. It was from the 1860s that an edifice of laws was constructed. Firstly, legislators were concerned with how women were forced into prostitution (procuring), the relationships between women working in prostitution and their children, and the spread of venereal disease. Later, from the 1890s, there was a new spate of legislation related to soliciting, the ownership and management of brothels, procuring, and living on the earnings of prostitution. During the same period a centralized, bureaucratized police force, which was crucially involved in the increasing control of prostitution, was established in Victoria. The prison system, too, became more organized and intrusive. By the later part of this period the move toward greater state intrusion into the area of prostitution was clear; the years 1890 to 1914 have been chosen for detailed study. This period was marked at the beginning by important new amendments to the Police Offences and Crimes Acts in 1891 and at the end by the advent of the First World War, which created new contexts and problems. (From Introduction)
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ItemThe Australian Railways Union: railway management and railway work in Victoria 1920-1939( 1989)This thesis takes the Australian Railways Union as a focus for an examination of the Victorian Railways between the two World Wars. The development of the union is traced through the optimistic expectations of the early 1920s, the disillusionment which followed the union’s affiliation with the ALP and registration under the Commonwealth Arbitration Court, to the increasing polarisation of the union on political lines as the 1930s progressed. At the same time the union’s relations with, railway management are explored. The innovative management style of Harold Winthrop Clapp, whose term as Chief Railways Commissioner covered the two decades under discussion in this thesis, is examined and set in the context of developments elsewhere in Australia and overseas. The repercussions of Clapp’s administrative and technological changes in railway work are discussed throughout the thesis, and particular attention is paid to the relationship between such changes and job loss. The problems arising from lack of clarity over control of the Railways Department, which are also examined in a separate chapter, were common to other statutory authorities as well. The financial situation of the railways is discussed in relation to that of other Australian railways. The problem of transport regulation to prevent uneconomic competition between motor transport and railways, which received growing recognition during the period of this thesis, also receives special attention. During the Great Depression, the Victorian Railways Department and the ARU played a central role in the national arena. The railway basic wage case of 1930, which resulted in a ten per cent cut in wages, set a precedent for all major industries. The analysis of transcripts of this lengthy case has produced much which is of general significance for economic and labour history. In the final chapters of the thesis, the ARU is shown approaching the radicalism of the 1940s, when large scale industrial action was carried out under Communist leadership. The union in 1939, following two decades of activity as part of a federal railways union, and experience of arbitration and affiliation to the ALP, was very different from the union which had existed up until 1920 in Victoria, with its narrow sphere of activity bounded by ‘the railway fence’, and this thesis explores that transition.
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ItemVagrancy and the Victorians: the social construction of the vagrant in Melbourne, 1880-1907( 1990)In Melbourne between 1880 and 1907, the construction and propagation of a vagrant stereotype and its manifestation in law, constituted an important means of controlling the behaviour of individuals and groups who were perceived to be socially undesirable or economically burdensome.
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ItemLabour pains: working-class women in employment, unions, and the Labor Party in Victoria, 1888-1914( 1987-05)This study focuses on the experiences of working-class women spanning the years from 1888 to 1914 - a period of significant economic growth and socio-political change in Victoria. The drift of population into the urban centres after the goldrush marked the beginning of a rapid and continual urban expansion in Melbourne as the city’s industrial and commercial sectors grew and diversified. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, the increasing population provided a larger workforce which also represented a growing consumer market. The rise of the Victorian manufacturing industries in this period also saw the introduction of the modern factory system. With the increasing demand for unskilled labour in factories, it was not only men who entered this new factory workforce. Young women and older children were, for the first time, drawn in appreciable numbers into the industrial workforce as employers keenly sought their services as unskilled and cheap workers. Women were concentrated in specific areas of the labour market, such as the clothing, boot, food and drink industries, which became strictly areas of “women’s work”. In the early twentieth century, the rigid sexual demarcation of work was represented by gender-differentiated wages and employment provisions within industrial awards.
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Item"Most humble homes": slum landlords, tenants, and the Melbourne City Council's health administration, 1888-1918( 1987-07)The thesis examines the relationship between public health and questions of housing and poverty, in Melbourne, 1888- 1918. It is concerned with the way that with certain groups of people - local council workers, tenants of houses referred to as ‘slums’, and the owners of those houses - represented their experiences. And it seeks to place those representations in the context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century concern about the ‘housing problems’. It compares the public rhetoric of the housing reformers and politicians with letters written to the Melbourne City Council by landlords and tenants, and in doing so seeks to show that there were a whole range of housing ‘problems’ not addressed by the public discourse. The first half of the work seeks to place the housing issue into a late nineteenth-century context, and concentrates on public and official discourse. First it considers the City itself, and examines dominant myths about wealth and poverty in 'boom' Melbourne. It argues that these myths shaped contemporary discussion of and responses to housing questions. It then suggests that housing was to a great extent a public health issue for contemporaries, and therefore proceeds to examine the nature of public health administration in the city, both at a central and at a local level. The emergence of housing as a discrete issue in public health discourse is also considered. The thesis then seeks briefly to examine the concept of the 'slum' and to relate it to Melbourne's inner city rental housing market. It then considers in more detail two inner city wards renown for their 'slum' housing. Finally it considers the housing debates which gathered momentum in Melbourne between 1910-1913 and which culminated in the appointment of a Royal Commission to enquire into the housing of the people of the metropolis. It also considers the results of that inquiry. The second half of the work, using an ethnographic and cultural approach looks at slum tenants, landlords and council-workers in an attempt to explore how they perceived their worlds. The correspondence files of the Melbourne City Council are extensively used to consider how these people represented housing issues. Tenants' descriptions of their houses, their concepts of health and disease, their relationships with their landlords and the Council workers, their descriptions of the housing market, and their sense of community and neighbourhood networks are all considered. In turn the thesis considers landlords' representations of their financial positions, and their relationships with Council officials and tenants. Finally, the daily work of the Melbourne City Council's health workers is re-examined in the context of the evidence given before the Royal Housing Commission by the Chairman of the Council's Health Committee, Alderman William Burton.
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ItemShadows on the landscape: memorial aspects of the Great Ocean Road( 1999)Victoria's commemorative landscape is made up of a series of natural and constructed features comprising roads, bridges, memorial sculptures, avenues of honour, coastal fortifications and military memorabilia, yet their memorializing function is largely unrecognized by the general population. Some of these memorials have been linked with the scenic landscape and have become privileged as tourist sites. Their original meanings, however, have been blurred by twentieth century progress. This thesis examines one component of Australia's memorial landscape, the Great Ocean Road in South West Victoria, and questions whether there is a parallel between the Western concept of a memorial landscape and the notions of spirituality in the land which are a primary component of the belief structure of indigenous peoples. This leads to an examination of the local geographical landscape in relation to Aboriginal massacre sites, and a questioning of the congruence between such sites and the now memorialized battlefields of World War 1. Chapter One deals with the history of the Great Ocean Road and traces its development and construction from 1916 to 1932. Chapter Two examines the place of the Great Ocean Road in the overall scheme of post World War 1 memorialization, and questions why its original function has been so little recognized by the community. Chapter Three looks at the complex relationships between the physical and spiritual elements of the land as perceived by Aboriginal culture, investigates the Aboriginal massacre sites within close proximity to the Great Ocean Road, and questions why no memorials have been raised to Aborigines who died defending their land. The theoretical base of the thesis is supported by the notion that landscape is socially and culturally determined, and that place can be invested with spiritual potency. Finally, it is argued that for a place to retain its spiritual strength, regardless of the culture, the spiritual content must be recognized, ritualized and constantly refreshed within the culture.
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ItemThe Chinese in Australia 1930-45: beyond a history of racism( 1995)The present thesis is a contribution to the history of the Chinese in Australia. In it, I have endeavoured to look at the relations between European and Chinese settlers in Australia from a perspective other than that of racism. Discrimination against the Chinese was common in all settler societies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the basis of archival documentation and in conjunction with contemporary sources, I would suggest that a different history can be told in regard to Australian Chinese. To look at the history of the Chinese in Australia in light of the immigration policy alone ignores other aspects of Australian-Chinese history, aspects which concern the daily lives of those Chinese who lived and worked in Australia as Australian citizens. With due regard to Federal political policies implicated at a bureaucratic level, the actual experiences and achievements of Australian Chinese still indicate that they fared better than most authors on the subject would have us believe. ..... In presenting the results of my research, I do not mean to belittle the experience of racism suffered by people of Chinese ancestry in Australia. This experience has been well documented and is, moreover, still being endured. My point is merely that racism was not the sum total of the Chinese experiences of Australian society. As a recent collection of essays shows, the time has come to write about other aspects of Australia's Chinese history. In this thesis I have documented the attitudes and efforts of the Chinese Nationals and Australian Chinese in Australia during the war years. Their efforts, combined with the Australian Chinese communities' supportive role and the increased wartime interactions with other Australians contributed during this period to establishing a greater understanding between the different communities in Australian society. (From introduction)
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ItemMaking the deserts bloom: attitudes towards water and nature in the Victorian irrigation debate, 1880-1890( 1994)In 1836 Major Thomas Mitchell and his gaggle of supply carts, Europeans and Aboriginal interpreters camped on a river and named it Moonlight Creek. Those who followed after Mitchell called the town that grew up near Moonlight Creek “Kerang”, which was supposedly the local Koori word for moonlight. Locals now tell visitors Kerang means “moon over water.” Kerang lies north of Bendigo and south east of Swan Hill. It is part of the area known as northern Victoria. In the past it has been called the northern plains or regarded as part of Australia Felix. The major characteristic of this area is its dependence on water. Water was a major preoccupation of Major Mitchell, as it has been for all those who followed him. Water had both symbolic and practical applications. It has been used as a symbol which unified the experience of European settlers with those who followed them. In part this association can be explained by the ancient European image of the river as a symbol of endurance and of “changeless change”. A river seems to be continually changing between historical, linear time and future cyclical time, between a definite spatial context, and one which is continuous. At Swan Hill, residents have built a monument to their pioneers surrounded by a pool of water. The monument offers clues to the complex relationship between water and society, and attempts to impose a dominant meaning on this relationship. The monument stands at the entrance of Swan Hill’s major tourist attraction, the Pioneer Settlement, a recreation of a nineteenth century pioneer town where local residents in period costume sell boiled lollies and horse rides to tourists. (From Introduction)
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ItemStudies in the relations between Indian and Australian colonies in the nineteenth century( 1987?)Geoffrey Blainey's reference to India in The Tyranny of Distance initiated my interest in researching the relationship between India and Australia in the nineteenth century. While Blainey made several references to India in the early development of colonial Australia, other historians have not developed that issue. I started my research with Blainey’s lead that there were some years in the nineteenth century when Australia seemed to be a satellite of India as well as a colony of England and that cargoes from Bengal fed and equipped the colony and also gave it a hangover. It seemed so obvious that the two 'neighbouring' British colonies have contact with each other and as Blainey pointed out, Australia was so far from England, and communication between the two was so irregular, that Sydney slowly drifted into Asia's net of commerce. (From introduction)
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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.