School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemObject lessons: public history in Melbourne 1887-1935( 2000-05)The thesis studies history-making in Melbourne’s central civic sphere, from its emergence in the 1880s to its decline in the 1930s. It identifies public history’s major themes and forms, and the relationships between them, based on four main cases of history-making: the articulation of the past and history in Melbourne’s 1888 Centennial International Exhibition; the historical backgrounds, development, unveilings and partial after-lives of Sir Redmond Barry’s statue, unveiled in Swanston Street in 1887, and the Eight Hours’ Day monument, unveiled in Carpentaria Place in 1903; and history-making around Victoria’s 1934-1935 Centenary Celebrations, with special emphasis on the Shrine of Remembrance and a detailed study of Cooks’ Cottage.
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ItemChamber music audiences: access, participation and pleasure at Melbourne concerts( 2003)This thesis examines the social role of chamber music. It argues that in contemporary Australian society the chamber music audience is largely unobserved and under-theorised, and redresses this with a study of Melbourne concert audiences. An analysis of the chamber music 'scene(s)' in Melbourne finds that audience-ship is a socially constructed practice accessed through a particular habitus that facilitates participation and pleasure at concerts. In this way access and participation is acquired through social vehicles that exist outside the concert hall. The thesis also finds that chamber music is not simply one unified cultural form, but a diverse set of music genres and cross-fertilised forms with some striking differences in the audiences of ‘new music' concerts compared with other forms of chamber music. Through an analysis of survey data and self-narrated audience biographies the thesis demonstrates that, for those with the necessary habitus, chamber music constitutes an important source of cultural capital: it is a worthwhile object of desire, an indispensable and irreplaceable means of pleasure and happiness and plays a worthwhile role in the public and private lives of individuals. The habitus that facilitates an appreciation for chamber music is not available to everyone and in an era of confused egalitarianism this finding challenges the claim that access to the arts and high culture has been democratised. Particular cultural precursors arc necessary in order to derive access, participation and pleasure in high cultural events such as chamber music concerts. In this way access, participation and pleasure of chamber music remain off limits to most Australians.
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ItemEarly modernist landscape painting in Melbourne( 1995)In the years leading up to Federation at the turn of the century and in the ensuing decades up to about 1940, popular and respected landscape artists in Australia were preoccupied with distinctively 'Australian' images of the countryside. These nationalist landscapes tended to promote a conservative and masculinist imagery. Subsequently historians have constructed a narrative of landscape painting in Australia which follows the work of these popular artists and generally dismisses the early challenges to the art establishment posed by artists who produced modernist landscapes from 1925 to 1939. Historians have constructed a narrative of early modernism in Australia which focuses on Sydney artists and on painting genres and art practices apart from landscape art (design art, flower studies, prints). Furthermore, some historians have dismissed this period as unimportant or as a period producing unsuccessful works because a number of women painters were prominent and influential. Historians have not considered the impact of early modernism on landscape painting. This thesis recovers the work of a number of early Melbourne modernist landscape artists and discusses them in their historical context in order to re-evaluate the success of their modernist experiments and the importance of their challenges to Melbourne's art establishment. The work of early Melbourne modernists in educating a new audience for art, inspiring a new generation of art students, and in challenging the authority of critics and established artists was significant for the development of modernism in Melbourne.
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ItemL. Bernard Hall and the National Gallery of Victoria: conflict and change( 1984)In all, Lindsay Bernard Hall acted as Director of the National Gallery of Victoria and its associated Schools of Art for a period of 42 years. During this period, the Gallery underwent a dramatic change from an unstructured colonial Gallery dependant upon limited Government funding to on able to purchase works on a competitive world market as a result of the Felton Bequest. Because of his position as Director, it could be argued that Hall was instrumental in many of the changes that occurred. However, despite the amount of study undertaken on Australian art and artists of the period, Hall and his work has been virtually ignored. There is no biography of the artist and the limited detail that survives depends upon subjective articles reflecting the contradictory attitudes towards Hall that occurred over time. This thesis is concerned with Hall, his work and his influences.
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ItemThe Moravian-run Ebenezer mission station in north-western Victoria: a German perspective( 1999)This thesis analyses the German perspective of the Ebenezer mission station in north-western Victoria. The German-speaking Moravian missionaries were sent out from Germany in 1859 to civilise and Christianise the Aborigines of this area. Until now the German perspective of the Ebenezer mission station has been neglected, partly because much information is locked up in the German language. Through an analytical descriptive history the missionaries are contextualised in a European and also an Australian setting. This background clearly defines the cultural baggage that the missionaries carried with them to Australia, and how this affected their work at Ebenezer. With this background in mind an analysis of the German language writings in three mediums is conducted, these being: Missionsblatt aus der Brudergemeine (the Moravian mission's global publication), Der australische Christenbote (the journal of the Lutheran Church in Victoria) and also the missionaries diaries and letters that were sent back to Germany. It is shown that the missionaries were aware of the different perceptions that their audiences had and wrote accordingly. Through the missionaries' depiction of other groups an understanding of how the missionaries perceived themselves is formed. Although these depiction of the ‘other’ were different in all three mediums, they always advanced the interests of the missionaries (usually by reinforcing the contemporary cultural hierarchy) and not the ‘other’. The analysis of German language sources leads to a more detailed understanding of the perceptions of the German-speaking missionaries at the Ebenezer mission, and also to the history of the mission itself.
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ItemThe show must go on: organizational responses to traumatic employee fatalities within multiple employer worksites( 1995)This thesis analysed the way organizations working within multiple employer worksites, that is sites characterized by contracting and subcontracting arrangements, respond to the death of a worker. Data on responses was used to explore recent debates in regulatory theory. The introductory chapters traces shifts in the regulatory debate between "deterrence" based punitive methods of securing corporate compliance, towards more recent discussions which look to a regulatory mix of punish and persuade to gain optimal corporate behaviour. Of particular interest is Braithwaite's (1993) conception of regulation as concerned primarily with "nurturing virtue", ie using responsive regulatory techniques to encourage compliance. Braithwaite's concept of organizational virtue was fleshed out using research and theorizing in related areas; namely the work of organizational symbolists to explore corporate virtue as a cultural concept, and social theory, in particular the work of Marx and Weber to understand the relationship between structure, culture and virtuous behaviour, noting in particular the theorized structural relationships between small and large business. The data gathered for this study was used primarily to analyse the prospects for nurturing virtue, taking account of possible structural and cultural imperatives which may lie behind virtuous behaviour. Data was gathered through the records of the Victorian State Coroner on all deaths at work that occurred within multiple employer worksites in 1987. It was considered that multiple employer worksites characterized best the contemporary economic climate which has seen extensive shifts towards greater use of "contracting out" and downsizing in order to make production more cost effective. Responses to the deaths were ascertained by initial exploration of Coroner's records followed by in depth interviewing with each of the organizations involved. Analysis of the responses allowed operationalization of the concept of organizational virtue. Responses by organizations which contributed to the death, fell into two major categories: either "virtuous", where extensive changes were made to prevent repetition of the death; or "blinkered" (ie lacking in virtue) organizations which made minimal changes, or whose changes simply involved reducing legal liability, such as changing company name. Various factors associated with the responses were analysed. These were: Managers' rationalizations about responsibility for the death; organizational culture; the structural environment of the organization, namely its size and position in the contracting hierarchy; the influence of the law on response; and finally the affect of increasing competitiveness and increased regulatory expectations in the area of health and safety. How the organization perceived their responsibility for making safety improvements after the death, and the actual response to the event could be best understood by looking at the size of the organization, and the cultural orientation to success the organization had. This suggests that in order for "nurturing virtue" to be successful, the culture of the organization and the structural environment within which it is situated must first be understood. Further, in terms of the affect of law on virtue, a wide range of laws need to be considered, beyond that specifically concerned with regulations, in this case the Occupational Health and Safety Act 1985 (Vic). Compensation Law, and the common law each have a role to play. Like other influences however, the impact of law on response was mediated by the size and culture of the organization. The thesis expands on the need to take account of structure and culture as central to the purpose of regulation. It does this, drawing on the work of Shearing (1993), Grabosky (1994a and b) and Gunningham (1993) among others, and links these theorists to a comprehensive model of regulation which builds on parameters laid down by both Marx and Weber.
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ItemThe National Gallery School of Victoria, 1870 to 1890( 1975)It would be a temptation to see the development of art education in Melbourne in terms of a logically related progression of events, but this would be a simplification of what was really a much more haphazard process. In fact, I shall argue that the mixed beginnings and ambiguities do not find any comfortable resolution until the reign of George Frederick Folingsby, after 1882.