One Party,Two Traditions: Radicalism and Pragmatism in the Australian Greens

The 2004 Australian federal election established the Australian Greens (Greens) as the third largest political force in the country behind the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal Party in electoral terms. Despite the Greens’ electoral achievements, the party has been largely dismissed as a radical single-issue political party. This paper will argue that while radicalism is an institutionally entrenched feature of the Greens in both organisational and programmatic terms, there are also strongly pragmatic aspects to the party's modus operandi. It suggests that the Greens are astute political operators who use radicalism in a highly pragmatic way to achieve their political objectives.     

在一个国家和多元文化主义的激荡中成长--从公民社会模式看澳大利亚华人的参政空间

九十年代后期澳大利亚华人参政形式发生了结构性转变,由原来的相对散漫而少有华人参政,转变成为华人主动集会结社投身政治.本文认为,这种转变是在特定的历史时空,由华人社群与澳洲主流社会的变化互相激荡而产生的.本文利用公民社会理论来建构一个看待移民社会政治参与的参考架构,用海外华人的视角来审视澳洲华人发展史,讨论九十年代后期澳洲极端派反移民势力的兴起,以及对华人社会的影响.笔者认为,澳洲华人社会这个转变提供了一个华人参政的良好典范,即以少数族裔身份在公民社会中参与政治活动,从而改变主流社会的思维.     

Explaining the growth of government expenditure: Australian government department appropriations since world war two

Political economists have concentrated on explaining the growth of total government expenditure rather than individual governmental institutions. This paper applies four models of governmental behaviour from the public administration and public choice areas to the growth of the major Australian government departments in the period 1947–1979, and provides forecasts of expenditure for the years 1980–1982. The three models are: budgetary incrementalism, based on the auto‐correlation of departmental appropriations; the degree of bureaucratic monopoly power vis‐a‐vis its financial sponsor; a macro model incorporating social, political and economic incentives for governmental expenditure (e.g. unemployment); and a model based on measurements of the demand of the median voter for government services. The results suggest that a simple budgetary incrementalism model, using a first order autoregression provides the best explanation for institutional growth over the past thirty years and the best forecasts.     

Spatial Autocorrelation and the Classic Maya Collapse: One Technique, One Conclusion

A pair of articles appearing recently in this journal (Whitley & Clark, Journal of Archaeological Science12, 377-395, 1985; Kvamme, Journal of Archaeological Science17, 197-207, 1990) apply spatial autocorrelation analysis to the distribution of terminal long-count dates from southern Lowland Classic Maya monuments. The authors employ similar techniques yet arrive at contradictory conclusions regarding the presence of geographical patterning in the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization in this region. Kvamme's contention, however, that Whitley & Clark conducted an inappropriate analysis and arrived at an erroneous conclusion is unsubstantiated. Both articles present appropriate analyses and report results which support the presence of spatial patterning in the Lowland Maya dates.     

The Italian Left in search of ideas: the rediscovery of the political ideas of the Action Party

In the wake of the collapse of 'really-existing' socialism and against a background of the growing influence of neo-liberal political thought, European socialist parties - and especially the former communist parties - have found it crucially important to reassert their liberal credentials. This explains the interest displayed by the Italian Left in liberal socialism, Dahrendorf 's New Liberalism and American liberalism, and especially in what is now called the 'Third Way'. In Italy, these developments have resulted in a genuine example of 'history's revenge'. The political ideas associated with the Action Party (PdA), which long played a Cinderella role in Italian politics and culture, have moved back to centre stage. This article examines how Italian leftist parties like the Democrats of the Left (DS) have been realigned to take into account the ideas of liberal socialism proposed by thinkers like Carlo Rosselli. It also explores how,since 1989, parties of the Italian Left have tried to appropriate the Actionist past and its mission, and why,after a long period of deliberate neglect, the Actionist agenda has again become the subject of lively debate.     

Provincialising God: Anglicanism,Place, and the Colonisation of Australian Land

This article investigates the importance of Anglican religion and the physical structures of faith to how some believers understood their surrounds in a British settler colony. Its central figure, William Grant Broughton, was head of the Church of England in Australia during the 1830s and 1840s. At the time when the position of the Church was changing both at home and abroad, it was his responsibility to establish the physical and spiritual presence of Anglicanism throughout the colony. He faced the particular challenges of negotiating the Church's formal relationship to the land and Anglicanism's cultural contribution to settler notions of local place and community. In meeting these challenges, Broughton “provincialised God” by articulating the Anglican faith with consequences specific to his Australian context and particularly to the British colonisation of Aboriginal territory.     

The dual endorsement in the federal electorate of Riverina, 1966

The dual endorsement in Riverina was the result of several circumstances: the Labor Party was unlikely to win the seat; Newman, though he agreed to contest the election, had no strong parliamentary ambition and no antipathy to a second candidate; the electorate was large enough to justify dividing the effort and expense of the campaign. In the face of these circumstances the State Executive, when pressed by the Electorate Council and the endorsed candidate, agreed to Solly's endorsement. However, political conditions proved to be unfavourable to Labor in the elections and the experiment of endorsing two candidates failed, or rather, was not properly put to the test, since it was not necessary to distribute preferences. Underlying this failure is the absence of any evidence to support the belief that the presence of two candidates will increase a party's vote. Since 1949, Labor's real problem in Riverina has been a lack of enough Labor voters—dual endorsement or not. It is probably unlikely that the A.L.P. will repeat the experiment of endorsing two candidates in the near future; perhaps even less likely that the curious circumstances in Riverina will occur in other electorates.     

Sir Otto Niemeyer,the bankrupt state and the federal system

One of the main myths about Australian political and economic history relates to the intervention in economic policy making in the 1930s by the Bank of England through the mission of Sir Otto Niemeyer. This article argues that Niemeyer's advice was not heeded. Rather, parallels between what he demanded and the Premiers’ Plan were largely confined to the level of rhetoric as part of a strategy to regain access to the London capital market. State expenditures were reduced gradually according to local political calculations and fiscal priorities, and not in step with the timetable set by the Bank of England. Far from weakening and dividing the Australian state, the federal separation of powers led to the gradual introduction of fiscal austerity, as state governments had little option but to maintain their role in complementing capital accumulation and facilitating social legitimation.     

对“音近义通”说的反思——近年来汉语词源学研究趋势管窥

明清以来,“音近义通”说畅行,开创了汉语词源研究的新局面。然而,由于“音近义通”说之“音近”概念模糊,且在实践中往往忽视了“义通”的因素,因此影响了汉语词源研究的进展。近年来,学们开始对“音近义通”说进行反思,指出音义二不可偏废,应互相制约,两维交叉：有的学还认为,音义二关系应以义为纲,以音为纬．而在意义的研究上,则开始从发生学及认知语盲学角度探索同源词语源义即“义类”的生成及其作用。     

To Garden,to Market: Gendered meanings of work on an African urban periphery

This article traces the historical origins of a localized gender division of labor found in two villages on the edge of the city of Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Through social-historical analysis, this article demonstrates that gender divisions of labor are not simply constructed in particular places; they are constructs located near or far from other places, and thus influenced by multidimensional interactions between those places. Specifically, this article shows how the villages' location on the periphery of an important regional city has shaped their experience of European colonialism, religious change and market expansion in ways that have given particular meanings to certain kinds of work in commercial gardening. More generally, this article shows how a focus on the historical meanings of work can provide insights into local variations in gender divisions of labor.     

Australian politics in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

This article examines how contributors to the Australian Journal of Political Science (AJPS) have conceptualised Australian politics over 50 years. It undertakes this task by examining key events in Australian politics that prompted vigorous debate. These include the election of the Whitlam government in 1972, its dismissal in 1975, and how this in turn generated discussion about the nature of responsible government in Australia. The republican debate of the 1990s shifted the focus. Since 2000, however, a few contributors to the journal have attempted to find a central focus for Australian politics in the controversy over the idea of the Australian settlement. Much recent discussion about Australian politics has been influenced by the ‘cultural turn’, and become particularistic. It is argued that despite their diversity, articles in the AJPS generally do not usually contribute to a narrative that sheds light on the larger, longstanding, structural issues of Australian politics.     

Cancer, quackery and the vernacular meanings of hope in 1950s America

Hope was central to cancer control in twentieth-century America. Physicians placed great store in its power to persuade people to seek medical help as early as possible in the development of the disease, when it was most amenable to treatment; to maintain patients' loyalty through what could be a long, painful and uncertain course of therapy; and to encourage doubts about alternative healers. Some also argued that hope could have beneficial therapeutic and psychological effects for patients. However, we know very little about its meanings for the public. Focusing on a large collection of letters written to the Food and Drug Administration in the 1950s concerning an anti-quackery campaign, this article explores how men and women responded to the competing messages of hope promoted by orthodox cancer organizations and by alternative healers. It asks: What did hope mean to such men and women? How did they construct this meaning? How did they decide which treatments were hopeful and which were not? And, how did they use hope to imagine the social world of cancer? In short, this article explores the vernacular meanings, epistemologies, and imaginative uses of hope among Americans in the mid-twentieth century.     

Housing the workforce in 19th-century east Lancashire: past processes,enduring perceptions and contemporary meanings

Abstract

The Lancashire Historic Town Survey, undertaken by Lancashire County Council between 2001 and 2006, examined the complex and varied history of 'working-class' housing in the east Lancashire textile towns. Often seen by the media and politicians as uniform and of low quality, and frequently condemned as slum dwellings, the surviving stock of such buildings results from past responses, both to housing requirements and to 'working-class' communities. It is argued that east Lancashire's housing has been a victim of inaccurate perceptions, both past and present, and of political bias and myth-making.     

A world apart: geography, Australian quarantine, and the mother country

In many respects the Australian colonies were what one person called "the proud offspring of a grand old mother." Yet when it came to the prevention of imported infectious disease, Britain's Australian colonies were not a chip off the old block. British opposition to the lengthy and costly imposition of quarantine had intensified throughout the nineteenth century, eventuating in the abolition of human quarantine in 1896. The Australian colonies, on the other hand, which had based their first quarantine regulations on British law and remained constantly aware of changing medical trends in the mother country, gradually expanded the breadth and capabilities of their maritime quarantine as the century progressed. Although other European powers and British colonies progressively adopted systems of medical inspection more in line with British port prophylaxis and away from quarantine, the Australian colonies invested increasing amounts of time and money into more elaborate quarantine stations and regulations. In this article I examine some of the basic features of coastal disease prevention in the Australian colonies and how they differed from British controls. Australia's distance from Britain was emphasized in the quarantine debates geographically as well as in policy. I argue that the often controversial differences in quarantine policy were for the most part a product of Australia's geographical location. The natural prophylactic of Australia's remoteness was not a reason to minimize quarantine in the colonies but rather served to increase it; whereas, it was argued that "the geographical position of England deprived it of the advantages...derived from a comprehensive quarantine system." I discuss this seeming anomaly in light of other arguments that have claimed that the close proximity of a state to the acknowledged origin of a disease was likely to increase its eagerness to quarantine.