From Siam to New York: Jacques May and the ‘foundation’ of medical geography

The history of medical geography is marked by a search for ancestors. The story usually begins in the writing of Hippocrates before re-emerging in the works of 18th and 19th century practitioners. In recent years, historical geographers have called for the destabilising of such assertions of lineage and descent. This paper offers a reconsideration of the history of medical geography through an exploration of the often hidden connections and intersections that have helped to frame the future trajectory of the sub-discipline. More specifically, we focus on the important contribution made by Dr Jacques Meyer May and offer a complex and multi-layered account that examines the close interweaving of his work as a colonial surgeon and specialist in tropical medicine and his role as a medical geographer in the United States.     

‘WERE YOU EVER SAVAGES?’ ABORIGINAL INSIDERS AND PASTORALISTS' PATRONAGE

This paper is a reading of the life story of Jack Sullivan, an Aboriginal stock worker employed by the Durack family in the east Kimberley. It draws upon ethnographic and other writing to suggest the processes of pastoralist hegemony. Durack rule constituted several male Aboriginal workers as trusted intermediaries with those who were more distant from the colonists. Autonomous and skilful, Jack aligned himself with the ‘inside’ world centred on the homestead, against the danger ‘outside’. The ‘inside’ position seems to have had some roots in waves of Aboriginal cultural renewal (from the south and east). The paper uses ethnographic evidence to interpret the local eminence of one agent of this renewal, Boxer, a Queensland Aborigine who helped raise Sullivan.     

Australian Labor and the Socialist Tradition

Amidst the turmoil of the so‐called ‘death of socialism’, both in Australia and elsewhere, there has been renewed debate about what socialism should be taken to mean. This paper attempts to come to terms with the competing claims about, in particular, socialism within the Australian Labor Party and, in general, how better to understand the meaning of socialism. A comparison and contrast between the first principles of liberalism and socialism helps to illuminate some of the inadequacies of Marxist criticisms of parliamentary Labor. In addition, the argument is made that if we are willing to give greater emphasis to questions of means and ends, socialism can be seen to be part of Labor's historic mission. Far from being a defence of the Hawke administration, however, the case is made that there has been, under Hawke, a fundamental break with the democratic socialist tradition; that the difference is in kind, not degree.