School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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    Working wood: the state, wood science and industry: Australia, 1918–1949
    Dadswell, Gordon Alexander ( 2021)
    This study identified the role of three national forest products laboratories and their relationship with other government agencies and specifically, to the Australian timber industry. The laboratories were established with several objectives, including to reduce the importation of timber, develop industry strategies for the use of Australian timbers, identify the properties of Australian woods and minimise problems for the timber industry. A further aim was to implement ‘national efficiency’ (discussed below). The work of the laboratories was based on a common theme: to encourage industries to understand that by using Australian timber, they would help both the nation and their businesses. A major objective of this thesis is to address the ‘doing’ of science in laboratories in conjunction with industry and government Archives from Australia and the United Kingdom were used. Not all of the archives had been opened which suggested that the thesis filled a gap in the history of the Australian wood science. Libraries were also used in Australia and the United Kingdom. A further methodology identified a ‘Triple helix’ between research, industry and government, which focused on collaboration between three organisations whose goals were to conduct research, to develop research outcomes and increase National efficiency. Archival material exposed the frequency of communications between the laboratories and the secondary timber industry. Six stories provided a broad perspective of the research conducted by the laboratories. Time frames of each chapters partially overlapped. The subjects connected across time, and provided depth to the thesis. Using the helix as the framework, the relationship between the laboratories, industry and the national science organisations was identified as collaboration, conflict, innovation, knowledge transfer and networking.
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    Tracing non-biomedical therapeutic knowledge: social-network lives in action
    Nguyen, Dang Hong Hai ( 2021)
    This thesis investigates the performance of non-biomedical therapeutic knowledge as situated knowledge on the internet. Non-biomedical therapeutic knowledge is defined as medical knowledge that exists in separation, but not isolation from, scientific biomedical knowledge. By tracing the social-network lives of non-biomedical therapeutic knowledge, the thesis examines the influences of digital technologies on the propagation of knowledge that exists in the margin of scientific knowledge, as well as the implications of this digitally-enabled propagation on non-biomedical cultural formations as living practices. Assemblages of mediated knowledge emerge as a result of encounters between digital technologies, non-biomedical knowledge, and the people who practice and receive non- biomedical therapies. From static texts to live-streaming videos, social-network enactments replicate existing social dynamics in the propagation of marginalised knowledges, provide channels for social support through casual and ephemeral interactions, transform human experiences with downtime in tending to the sick body, and, through facilitating in vivo conceptions of space, enable the persistence of these marginalised medical practices. In studying the resultant melange of digital artefacts left behind by their actors and the emergent social-network properties arising from their relations, this thesis uses a mix of quantitative computational and qualitative digital methods. Although each digital expression lends itself to particular analytical and methodological approaches, whose engagements produce conclusions of different epistemological standpoints, these conclusions nevertheless complement each other in the overall inquiry of assembling the social-network lives of non-biomedical knowledge. In choosing Vietnam as the local case, I offer a thorough examination of non- biomedical knowledge on the internet in context as a point of contrast, reference, or comparison for other sites and situations. Binding the empirical findings presented in this thesis together are themes of social-network accomplishments as contingency, the politics of in/visibility in social-network labour as patchwork, and the social-network emergence of multiple space-time.
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    Barbarian Civility British Expatriates and the Transformation of the Maghreb in English Thought, 1660-1714
    Cutter, Nathaniel Michael Trevor ( 2021)
    This thesis explores the role of British expatriates living in Ottoman Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripolitania, in a transformation of British-Maghrebi diplomatic, economic, and cultural relations in the later Stuart era. This period, 1660-1714, represented a distinct transitional period in which pragmatic cooperation, detailed knowledge, and material exchanges decreased the envy, enmity and ignorance of earlier periods of conflict, without resulting in the controlling Orientalist domination that characterised later periods. Drawing primarily on a large, little-studied collection of correspondence collected at the British consulate in Tunis, as well as English periodical news, State Papers Foreign, and numerous other government and official records, I highlight how expatriates acted as mediators in trade, diplomacy, and material culture, formed networks of influence and information, and transmitted their pragmatic, nuanced, well-informed views of the Maghreb to British audiences. My introduction presents a survey of relevant literature, sources, and historical context, followed by an outline of key theoretical interventions: the contested term ‘expatriate’ in historiographies of British-Maghrebi relations, the biblical-theological lens of ‘exile’ through which many expatriates viewed their more difficult or isolating experiences, and the concept of ‘equivalence’ in which expatriates and their correspondents viewed Maghrebi institutions, individuals and cultures as essentially equal in legitimacy, and sometimes superior in value, to European equivalents. In Part 1, by exploring the origins, expectations, and interpersonal relationships of British expatriates in the Maghreb, I argue that expatriates were governed fundamentally by self-interest, viewing the Maghreb as a site suitable for personal and professional advancement – not just for wealthy men, but for apprentices, women, and children as well. In Part 2, by examining expatriate material cultures and religious interactions, I show how they ably, often enthusiastically, embraced British, European and Maghrebi traditions without abandoning their essential loyalties to Britain, such that they could act as trusted mediators in negotiation, exchange, and information. In Part 3, I explore expatriates’ professional activities relating to networking, commercial diplomacy, and the Mediterranean corsairing economy, showing how they built robust and varied connections of trust such that they could exploit opportunities to enrich themselves and overcome opposition, in the process deliberately promoting peace and trade between Britain and the Maghreb. In Part 4, I show how expatriate views of the Maghreb and its people reached wider audiences in Britain, by two routes: first, the networks of information that brought expatriate testimony on Maghrebi news to British newspapers, and second, the creation, publication, and influence of The Present State of Algiers, a little-studied but significant longform text produced by a British consul. As a whole, my thesis highlights the significant influence of the actions and networks of British expatriates living in the Maghreb on improving British-Maghrebi relations and increasing public understanding of the Maghreb in British society.
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    Tiered contact zones: a new engagement model for cultural materials conservation
    Lewincamp, Sophie Clare ( 2021)
    Over recent decades, there has been increasing recognition of the need for conservators to engage and collaborate with the communities associated with the origin, ownership, and use of cultural objects. Such collaboration has developed more detailed knowledge and understanding than is possible through object investigation, research, and examination of constituent materials and manufacturing techniques. Two challenges arise, however: ensuring the engagement with community stakeholders is respectful and ethical, and planning and conducting stakeholder engagement in a way that is sensitive to issues of inclusion, authority, and power. Therefore, a key question in cultural material conservation is how those participating in conservation programs who have a common interest in conservation outcomes but come from vastly different backgrounds can best collaborate, share, and construct knowledge. This thesis explores the application of contact zone theory and, addressing the identified shortcomings of that theory, proposes a tiered contact zone model as a more practical means to engage with communities. The model is based on principles of respect, ethical behaviour, and collaborative decision-making and the practices of object-based investigations, object biographies, and actor network and communicative action theories. The thesis investigates how shared spaces for dialogue and exchange are created and analyses the opportunities and challenges that arise from structured contact. The proposed tiered contact zone model, developed from practice-led research, involves four stages of collaboration; firstly, an initial landing zone in which relationships are initiated and common goals identified; secondly, an early exploration zone that consists of the planning and articulation of roles and responsibilities, activities, and intended outcomes; thirdly, a collaboration zone in which confidence, trust, and partnerships are built; and, finally, a knowledge transfer zone in which mature collaboration and enhancement of knowledge are achieved. The tiered contact zone model is applied to two case study collections: the Middle Eastern Manuscript (MEM) Collection at the University of Melbourne, and the Returned and Services League (RSL) LifeCare War Museum in Narrabeen, New South Wales. This thesis identifies the similarities and differences between the application of the model utilising a multiple method qualitative approach of questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups. Feedback recorded participants' sense of belonging and achievement when their knowledge contributed to the shared goals. When concerns of unequal collaboration or lack of engagement were identified, participants drew upon the tiered structure with its development of shared roles and goals to instigate conversations to address their issues. The case studies demonstrate that the tiered contact zone model is a powerful tool that can deliver significant mutual benefits to the conservator and cultural communities, enhance collection knowledge, and inform collaboration processes. The model is flexible and adaptable, allowing for progression and regression through the zones, changing participants, various levels of participation, and ongoing review of objectives and desired outcomes and processes, methodologies, and activities. The model has the potential to be applied to a wide variety of circumstances beyond the conservation of cultural material collections.
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    Revisiting Anzac in the Wake of World War Two: Memory and Identity in the Post-War Period, 1945-1960
    Donohoe-Marques, Anton Tarrant ( 2021)
    This thesis explores how war remembrance—in the form of commemorative observance and the building of memorials—developed in Australia in the period that followed World War Two, from 1945 to 1960. It investigates three key questions. First, what was the nature of the interplay between post-World War Two memorialisation and commemoration and the remembrance traditions that had been established during World War One and the interwar period? Second, how was Australia’s post-World War Two remembrance shaped by the particular social, political, and economic circumstances of the period? And finally, what influence did the process and practice of post-World War Two remembrance have on changing conceptions of the Anzac legend and Australian national identity? In addressing these questions, this study contains five distinct case studies, each of which explores a different aspect of war remembrance between 1945 and 1960. These case studies examine the building of memorials, the efforts of veterans to enact remembrance projects, the observance of Anzac Day, the construction of cemeteries overseas, and interactions between Australian war remembrance and foreign diplomacy. In large part these case studies investigate the Australian state’s efforts to enact control over memorialisation and commemoration. However, the thesis also explores various responses to these projects, analysing how resistance from people outside of government, particularly from veterans of both world wars, was an integral part of how war remembrance in the period took shape. Between 1945 and 1960 there was significant change in the ways that Australians remembered war. During World War One and the interwar period, Australians commemorated the war by building around 1,500 memorials, erected in towns and cities across the country. It was also during World War One that Australians began to observe Anzac Day each year on 25 April. But with the advent of a second global conflict, a new range of perspectives, experiences, and memories were incorporated into this pre-existing culture of war remembrance. Forms of commemoration also reflected the shifting circumstances of Australian society. In the post-World War Two period, communities grew rapidly through migration, industrialisation, and economic expansion. It was also a time in which a new generation of veterans returned and reintegrated into society. Finally, Australia was forging a series of new international partnerships during this period. These social, political and economic changes influenced the way that Australians imagined themselves, their place in the world, and the meaning of the Anzac legend. Post-World War Two remembrance was therefore distinguished by an enthusiasm for utilitarian memorials, by the inclusion of new veterans into the fold of war remembrance, and diplomatically, by the representation of new international relationships with the United States and other Pacific nations through commemoration and memorialisation.
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    In search of just, humanised work: Overcoming workplace oppression and rethinking leadership to create the conditions for human flourishing at work
    Liknaitzky, David Hylton ( 2021)
    Organisations have evolved historically such that, in some instances, it has become the norm to treat employees in ways that would otherwise not be tolerated (or, at least, far less tolerated) in the broader society. Indeed, oppressive relationships of domination and subordination, and arbitrary subjection of employees to restraint of freedom, coercion, victimisation, humiliation, exploitation and manipulation, while not universally the norm, are nonetheless widespread across many organisations, often with employees subject to such treatment having little recourse to redress. I will analyse the ways in which such practices are wrongful and, for the most part, harmful, and will make the case that organisations, as intentionally created moral agents, are culpable and accountable for such practices. I argue against the concept of work as disutility or a ‘necessary evil’ that people should endure as an instrumental means of securing a living. I also argue against the ‘workplace exceptionalism’ that seeks to justify oppressive conditions and practices at work and that places human flourishing outside of the work domain. Rather, I make the claims that work is a primary good for those who undertake it and that organisations are obligated to actively counter harmful conditions and practices in the workplace. More controversially, I argue that organisations should provide (wherever possible, and far more than is currently the norm) for the goods of individual autonomy and human flourishing at work. If work is a domain in which people dedicate a major portion of their time, energy and commitment, there is every reason to expect that this domain should provide the conditions, possibilities and opportunities for them to conduct their work in ways that will enable them to satisfy the needs and access the goods that are meaningful to them. Living a full human life should apply in the work domain as much as in other domains of life. Thus, there is a need to rethink the nature of organisations and leadership, such that what it is to be essentially human is valued and protected in the workplace.
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    Contentious Routes: Ireland Questions, Radical Political Articulations and Settler Ambivalence in (White) Australia, c. 1909 - 1923
    Yan, Jimmy H. ( 2021)
    This thesis is a transnational history of the ‘Ireland Question' in the imperial and ethico-political imaginary of radical and labour movements in (‘White’) Australia during the ‘Irish revolutionary period’, broadly conceived. It traces the contestation of 'Ireland' as a political signifier, with attention to its constitutive differences, transnational circuitries, utopian investments, relations of recognition and desire, and articulatory practices. Where previous studies of Irish nationalisms in Australia have deployed 'the nation' as a consensualist category of analysis, this study reinterprets the ‘Ireland Question’ in postnational terms as contentious and within routes. Combining attention to settler-colonial difference with the discursive articulation of political forms, it situates the 'Ireland Question' firstly in relation to the political as a signifier of settler ambivalence, and secondly to politics as a social movement. Drawing on archival research in Australia, Ireland and Britain, it analyses personal papers, letters, political periodicals, state surveillance records, political ephemera and pamphlets. Beyond the 'Ireland Question' in the imperial labour movement, this study affords serious attention to historical dimensions at the hybrid boundaries of ‘long-distance nationalism’ including political travel performances in Ireland, non-nationalist transnational political networks ranging from feminist to socialist connections, and non-Irish political identification with 'Ireland.' It proposes that this unstable play of meanings comprised a heterogeneity of political positions and networks whose convergence during the conjuncture of 1916-1921 was both contingent and politically contested: one that signified in excess of either Australian nationalist historical teleologies or a coherent 'transnational Irish revolution.'
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    The Elizabethan Succession Question and Competing Understandings of Monarchy, 1558-1603
    Tunstall, Elizabeth Anne ( 2021)
    Queen Elizabeth I ruled England for almost forty-five years (1558-1603) and throughout her reign the succession was a prominent source of debate and anxiety. This thesis surveys the Elizabethan succession question for the entirety of her reign instead of dividing the topic into early or late periods as is typical. An examination of the debate as it appeared in the succession tracts, the writings of Elizabeth, and the numerous manoeuvres of the Privy Council and Parliament, has enabled this thesis to explore the effect of the succession debate upon English considerations of government and royal prerogative during the late sixteenth-century.
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    The Hotel Kurrajong and the public/domestic dichotomy: Women, Work, & Canberra 1926-66
    Thomas, Claire ( 2021)
    To discover the world of Canberra’s hotels, of which the Hotel Kurrajong is a descendent, is to find a Canberra of women. Women as wives and mothers but also doctors, omnibus entrepreneurs, and bookshop owners. Apart from the Hotel Kurrajong’s managers, Isabelle (Belle) Southwell and Gladys Coles, there were women within and without the hotel who contributed to the making of Canberra. These managers, secretaries, activists, and politicians represent a fraction of the women who lived and worked in Canberra between 1926-66. While the working women of Canberra were more likely to be waitresses than palaeontologists, women were more of a presence in the city in its formative years than is commonly acknowledged. Population records show their percentage of the total population has never been less than thirty-nine per cent. If we accept women were a substantial proportion of the Canberra population from its 1911 inception, we must also accept they were contributing to the city’s culture and workforce. To have a more nuanced understanding of our federal capital’s history, we need to re-examine women’s contribution to the formation and development of that society through a re-evaluation of their paid work.
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    On the relationship between the infinite and finite, and between adequate and inadequate knowledge in Spinoza's philosophy
    Mickova, Josipa ( 2021)
    The relationship between substance and modes is an enduring problem in Spinoza studies. How this relationship is understood is consequential on all aspects of Spinoza’s tightly–knit philosophical system. This thesis focuses on two problems downstream from this core issue, namely the relationship between the infinite and finite, and that between adequate and inadequate knowledge, both of which are also matters of ongoing debate. I propose new solutions to these problems that avoid the consequences of fatalism and escapism that, I suggest, are endemic in dominant solutions to these problems in the contemporary Anglo–American literature. The latter are characteristic of naturalising renderings of Spinoza’s system that, I suggest, level the ontological ground between substance and modes, thereby construing substance as a top–down force that determines modes. By contrast, I maintain an ontological distinction through a bottom–up model, on which substance becomes the determining ground that determines modes insofar as it enables them to be modes. My solution explains the relationship between substance and modes through Spinoza’s causal apparatus, which allows for these downstream problems to be reframed and thereby dissolved.