Limits reaffirmed: new wheat frontiers in Australia, 1916–1939

At the opening of the twentieth century, it was apparent that good agricultural land was getting scarce even in the New World. There was still a strong political need, especially in countries that owed their existence to an agricultural frontier, to open new land and increase farming population. During the 1920s, Isaiah Bowman in the United States devised what he called “scientific settlement”, a form of social planning. In the countries that had already embarked on extending their farm land, their initiative was something less than scientific settlement. As an illustration, South Australia and New South Wales legislated the resumption of certain pastoral areas for re-allocation as primarily wheat-based farmlands that would provide the heavier rural population sought by politicians. The need to reward soldiers for service in the First World War became a major stimulus to expansion. Whereas there was ample evidence of the unreliability of conditions in most of the areas chosen, the authorities dispatched settlers to relatively small properties and provided only disjointed and tardy support. When the new wheat frontier proved to be expensive and rife with failures, the authorities blamed the settlers. In the circumstances, however, the performance of the settlers was more praiseworthy than the weight of historical opinion has suggested. Even the soldier settlers, who were put at a disadvantage by the high cost of their land and interest, ultimately achieved a success rate comparable to that of civilian ‘closer’ settlers who generally had better land and easier terms of purchase.     

Logging,Women and Submarines: Some Changes in Kamula Men's Access to Transformative Power

In this paper I describe how, for the Kamula, the productive elicitation of both familiar and modern things often requires access to the transformative capacities of ‘bush spirits’. The Kamula narratives I deal with outline how elements of modernity (such as money, logging, guns) are relocated into the domain of these spirits. By the mediation of these spirits, sometimes disturbing, even dangerous, aspects of modernity are transformed and then productively transferred to Kamula men such that they can apparently more effectively negotiate the new forces that now structure their lives. Through these narrative and magical definitions of agency, Kamula men become complicit in a modernity that is increasingly both the source and negation of their power.     

Modern ideology and the creation of ancient town planning

This paper examines the historiography of ancient town planning and the Roman city, with particular attention to its origin in the town planning debate of the early twentieth century. It questions the existing dichotomies, ‘civilised'/'uncivilised’, ‘classical'/'barbarian’, ‘urban'/'proto‐urban’, that have characterised this history. Finally, the paper examines the effect of the separation of the academic disciplines of classics and archaeology in Britain upon the history of ancient urbanism.     

Excluded citizens? Participatory research with young people from a ‘failing’ school community

This paper examines a participatory community research project with young people from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ in a provincial New Zealand town. This school-based project aimed to celebrate the expertise and insights of these young citizens by profiling their digital stories to their community. However, the failure to achieve this goal compelled the researcher to confront the ‘presentist’ assumptions underpinning this project. A re-analysis of the lingering impact of historic processes and practices of exclusion in this divided town drew attention to the temporal, spatial and relational nature of citizenship. The paper proposes that deeper recognition be given to the ‘webs of social relations’ (Arendt, Hannah. 1968. Between Past and Future: Eight Excercises in Political Thought. New York: Viking Press) that citizenship acts are constituted within, alongside the lingering impact of historical legacies of socio-spatial exclusion. Recognising these aspects will enrich our understandings of citizenship as well as enhance the transformative potential of participatory community research.