Books
Browse or search ANU Press' range of books or find out more about the publications' authors and co-publishers. Download the book for free or buy a print-on-demand copy.
Displaying results 681 to 690 of 771.
History as Policy »
Framing the debate on the future of Australia’s defence policy
Edited by: Ron Huisken, Meredith Thatcher
Publication date: December 2007
The fortieth anniversary of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre’s founding provided the opportunity to assemble many of Australia’s leading analysts and commentators to review some of the more significant issues that should define Australian defence policy.
In the first 20 years after its establishment, SDSC scholars played a prominent role in shaping the ideas and aspirations that eventually found official expression in the 1987 Defence of Australia White Paper. This policy sustained a coherent balance between strategy, force structure and budgets for well over a decade. In recent years, however, the cumulative effects of the end of the Cold War and watershed events like the East Timor experience; the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., in September 2001; the Bali bombings in October 2002; and the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 have fractured the former consensus on defence policy. These developments have eroded acceptance of the core judgements underpinning defence policy. This has led to a more tenuous connection between some recent major equipment acquisitions and declared policy.
The unravelling of the consensus on the ‘defence of Australia’ policy means that we must again undertake a balanced, long-term assessment of the nature of Australia’s strategic interests. Only by doing so can we determine the kinds of armed forces that would contribute most effectively to protecting those interests. The papers collected in this volume are not informed by a common view of where Australia should focus its defence policy, but all address themes that should figure prominently in this difficult but essential task.
Agency, Contingency and Census Process »
Observations of the 2006 Indigenous Enumeration Strategy in remote Aboriginal Australia
Edited by: Frances Morphy
Publication date: December 2007
The Indigenous Enumeration Strategy (IES) of the Australian National Census of Population and Housing has evolved over the years in response to the perceived ‘difference’ of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations. Its defining characteristics are the use of locally recruited, mostly Indigenous collector interviewers, and the administration of a modified collection instrument in discrete Indigenous communities, mostly in remote Australia.
The research reported here is unique. The authors, with the assistance of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, were able to follow the workings of the IES in the 2006 Census from the design of the collection instrument to the training of temporary census field staff at the Northern Territory’s Census Management Unit in Darwin, to the enumeration in four remote locations, through to the processing stage at the Data Processing Centre in Melbourne. This allowed the tracking of data from collection to processing, and an assessment of the effects of information flows on the quality of the data, both as input and output.
This study of the enumeration involved four very different locations: a group of small outstation communities (Arnhem Land), a large Aboriginal township (Wadeye), an ‘open’ town with a majority Aboriginal population (Fitzroy Crossing), and the minority Aboriginal population of a major regional centre (Alice Springs). A comparison between these contexts reveals differences that reflect the diversity of remote Aboriginal Australia, but also commonalities that exert a powerful influence on the effectiveness of the IES, in particular very high levels of short-term mobility. The selection of sites also allowed a comparison between the enumeration process in the Northern Territory, where a time-extended rolling count was explicitly planned for, and Western Australia, where a modified form of the standard count had been envisaged.
The findings suggest that the IES has reached a point in its development where the injection of ever-increasing resources into essentially the same generic set and structure of activities may be producing diminishing returns. There is a need for a new kind of engagement between the Australian Bureau of Statistics and local government and Indigenous community-sector organisations in remote Australia. The agency and local knowledge of Indigenous people could be harnessed more effectively through an ongoing relationship with such organisations, to better address the complex contingencies confronting the census process in remote Indigenous Australia.
Information Systems Foundations: Theory, Representation and Reality »
Edited by: Dennis Hart, Shirley Gregor
Publication date: November 2007
This volume contains the papers presented at the third biennial Information Systems Foundations (‘Theory, Representation and Reality’) Workshop, held at The Australian National University in Canberra from 27-28 September 2006. The focus of the workshop was, as for the others in the series, the foundations of Information Systems as an academic discipline. The particular emphasis was, as in past workshops, the adequacy and completeness of theoretical underpinnings and the research methods employed. At the same time the practical nature of the applications and phenomena with which the discipline deals were kept firmly in view. Accordingly, the papers in this volume range from the unashamedly theoretical n their focus (Designing for Mutability in Information Systems Artifacts; Towards a Unified Theory of Fit: Task, Technology and Individual) to the much more practically oriented (An Action-Centred Approach to Conceptualising Information Support for Routine Work).
The contents of this volume will be of interest and relevance to academics and advanced students as well as thoughtful and reflective practitioners in the Information Systems field.
Oceanic Explorations »
Lapita and Western Pacific Settlement
Edited by: Stuart Bedford, Christophe Sand, Sean P. Connaughton
Publication date: November 2007
Lapita comprises an archaeological horizon that is fundamental to the understanding of human colonisation and settlement of the Pacific as it is associated with the arrival of the common ancestors of the Polynesians and many Austronesian-speaking Melanesians more than 3000 years ago. While Lapita archaeology has captured the imagination and sustained the focus of archaeologists for more than 50 years, more recent discoveries have inspired renewed interpretations and assessments. Oceanic Explorations reports on a number of these latest discoveries and includes papers which reassess the Lapita phenomenon in light of this new data. They reflect on a broad range of interrelated themes including Lapita chronology, patterns of settlement, migration, interaction and exchange, ritual behaviour, sampling strategies and ceramic analyses, all of which relate to aspects highlighting both advances and continuing impediments associated with Lapita research.
Public Sector Employment in the Twenty-First Century »
Edited by: Marilyn Pittard, Phillipa Weeks
Publication date: November 2007
This book addresses the transformations which have occurred in employment arrangements and practices in the Australian public sector over the past decade and the changes in responsibilities and accountability through employment contracts, whistleblower legislation and partnerships between government and the private sector. It provides a comparative context through studies of reconstruction of the public service in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Themes of contractualisation, privatisation and outsourcing are explored and critically examined, as well as influences of the industrial relations legislative framework including the Work Choices legislation.
Talking and Listening in the Age of Modernity »
Essays on the history of sound
Edited by: Joy Damousi, Desley Deacon
Publication date: November 2007
Historians have, until recently, been silent about sound. This collection of essays on talking and listening in the age of modernity brings together major Australian scholars who have followed Alain Corbin’s injunction that historians ‘can no longer afford to neglect materials pertaining to auditory perception’.
Ranging from the sound of gunfire on the Australian gold-fields to Alfred Deakin’s virile oratory, these essays argue for the influence of the auditory in forming individual and collective subjectivities; the place of speech in understanding individual and collective endeavours; the centrality of speech in marking and negating difference and in struggles for power; and the significance of the technologies of radio and film in forming modern cultural identities.
Conflict and Resource Development in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea »
Edited by: Nicole Haley, R.J. May
Publication date: November 2007
The Southern Highlands is one of Papua New Guinea’s most resource-rich provinces, but for a number of years the province has been riven by conflict. Longstanding inter-group rivalries, briefly set aside during the colonial period, have been compounded by competition for the benefits provided by the modern state and by fighting over the distribution of returns from the several big mining and petroleum projects located within the province or impinging upon it. Deaths from the various conflicts over the past decade number in the hundreds. As a result of inter-group fighting, criminal activity and vandalism, a number of businesses have withdrawn from the province. Roadblocks and ambushes have made travel dangerous in many parts and expatriate missionaries and aid workers have left. Many public servants have abandoned their posts with the result that state services are not provided. Corruption is rife. Police are often reluctant to act because they are outnumbered and outgunned.
This volume brings together a number of authors with deep experience of the Southern Highlands to examine the underlying dynamics of resource development and conflict in the province. Its primary purpose is to provide some background to recent events, but the authors also explore possible approaches to limiting the human and economic costs of the ongoing conflict and breakdown of governance.
Caretaker Conventions in Australasia »
Minding the Shop for Government
Authored by: Anne Tiernan, Jennifer Menzies
Publication date: October 2007
A revised and updated 2014 edition of Caretaker Conventions in Australasia is available.
In this monograph, Anne Tiernan and Jennifer Menzies capably chart the often hazardous terrain of the ‘caretaker period’ that ensues from the time an election is called until a new government is formed. This is a landscape fraught with political and administrative dangers – particularly for public servants who are required to ‘mind the shop’ and keep the basic machinery of government going. The conventions represent an historical accretion of custom, practice and rules, often leavened with uncertainty. In tackling their subject, Tiernan and Menzies draw upon their shared past experiences as public servants and ministerial ‘staffers’ as well as the highest standards of academic scholarship – this is a ‘must read’ for politicians, public servants and students of government.
The Cult of the Market »
Economic Fundamentalism and its Discontents
Authored by: Lee Boldeman
Publication date: October 2007
The Cult of the Market: Economic Fundamentalism and its Discontents disputes the practical value of the shallow, all-encompassing, dogmatic, economic fundamentalism espoused by policy elites in recent public policy debates, along with their gross simplifications and sacred rules. Economics cannot provide a convincing overarching theory of government action or of social action more generally. Furthermore, mainstream economics fails to get to grips with the economic system as it actually operates. It advocates a more overtly experimental, eclectic and pragmatic approach to policy development which takes more seriously the complex, interdependent, evolving nature of society and the economy. Importantly, it is an outlook that recognises the pervasive influence of asymmetries of wealth, power and information on bargaining power and prospects throughout society. The book advocates a major reform of the teaching of economics.
Myanmar »
The state, community and the environment
Edited by: Monique Skidmore, Trevor Wilson
Publication date: October 2007
Despite deteriorating economic and developmental conditions, worsening environmental problems, and troubles arising from the unresolved status of its ethnic minorities, Myanmar seems no closer to a political resolution. Myanmar’s economy continues to stagnate, with severe implications for its people. Low levels of international assistance have exacerbated the situation.
Myanmar—the state, community and the environment examines the missed opportunities by government and opposition groups to find a way out of the political impasse and improve the standard of living of the people of Myanmar.
This collection provides insights into the country’s economic development, in particular the vital rice-marketing sector and the attempts to expand existing industrial zones. It focuses, for the first time, on Myanmar’s environmental governance with in-depth case studies, and on the increasing need for effective environmental protection and sustainability.