Applied aspirations : design and applied art at the Ballarat Technical Art School during the early twentieth century
- Authors: Whetter, Elise
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
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- Description: Applied art and design schools operate at the nexus of art, industry, and education. During the early decades of the twentieth century, the regionally located Ballarat Technical Art School (BTAS) was the leading institution of its kind in Victoria, Australia, amid shifting economic, cultural, and pedagogical conditions. Emerging from a 1907 amalgamation of institutions, and subsequently administrated by the School of Mines Ballarat (SMB), BTAS was equipped with the assets, experience, and historic reputation necessary to surpass its provincial and metropolitan rivals. This micro-historical case-study employs qualitative analysis of primary sources to investigate the aims, outputs, and importance of BTAS, contextualised by the expectations and influences it operated under during the inaugural principalship of artist and educator, Herbert Henry Smith. Smith oversaw the training of designers, craftspeople, artists, and teachers from 1907 until his retirement in early 1940—a period of tumultuous events, fiscal obstacles, and social and cultural debate. The institution was accountable to diverse stakeholders and arbiters of taste, and successive cohorts learned in a contested space between tradition, origination, and modernisation. Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural theory serves to navigate this web of hierarchies, assumptions, and tensions, while secondary sources help contextualise findings. This thesis also discusses the suite of drawing, design and material-based disciplines delivered at BTAS as single subjects, full courses, and supplementary art-trade training. Throughout, featured students provide examples of regionally trained, Australian designer-maker and artist-teacher experiences. BTAS students learned from ambitious and skilled men and women, benefited from strong professional networks, and fostered a notable esprit-de-corps. The school was significant for its contribution to female technical training. The school’s pre-eminent position was modified during the late 1920s, when much art and art-teacher training was re-centred in Melbourne. Yet, the valuable, compelling, and widespread influence of Ballarat Technical Art School graduates resonated for decades.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
Indigenous women's voices : 20 Years on from Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s decolonizing methodologies
- Authors: Tebrakunna Country , Lee, Emma , Evans, Jennifer
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Book
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- Description: This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. When Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies was first published, it ignited a passion for research change that respected Indigenous peoples and knowledges, and campaigned to reclaim Indigenous ways of knowing and being. At a time when Indigenous voices were profoundly marginalised, the book advocated for an Indigenous viewpoint which represented a daily struggle to be heard, and to find its place in academia. Twenty years on, this collection celebrates the breadth and depth of how Indigenous writers are shaping the decolonizing research world today. With contributions from Indigenous female researchers, this collection offers the much needed academic space to distinguish methodological approaches, and overcome the novelty confines of being marginal voices.
The women’s shed movement : scoping the field internationally
- Authors: Golding, Barry , Carragher, Lucia , Foley, Annette
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Adult Learning Vol. 61, no. 2 (2021), p. 150-174
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- Description: Our paper focuses on delineating and scoping international Women’s Sheds, a movement that has emerged within the past decade, mainly in Australia, Ireland and the UK. It addresses two main research questions. Firstly, what is the origin, distribution, nature and intent of Women’s Sheds internationally to March 2021? Secondly, how might Women’s Sheds be located within a typology inclusive of Men’s Sheds and a range of community development models? We employed a systematic search via the internet in 2020-21, followed up by attempted email or phone contact to publicly reported Women’s Sheds and like organisations internationally. In the process, we created a publicly shareable blog including a database of 122 existing, previously active, developing or planned Women’s Sheds and like organisations to 13 March 2021. We identify four nations where self-identified Women’s Sheds have operated or commenced within the past decade: Australia (61), the UK (30), Ireland (28) and New Zealand (3), particularly during the five years between 2014 and 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic seriously curtailed this previous momentum and development after March 2020. We identify some similarities but also important differences between Women’s and Men’s Sheds. We propose a typology that accounts not only for the different ways in which Women’s Sheds operate and women participate within their communities but also the different ways in which they locally collaborate (or not) with Men’s Sheds in different countries. We conclude that Women’s Sheds have largely been created by women in order to claim the shed as a positive female gendered space, in order to create an alternative community of women’s hands-on practice. © 2021, Adult Learning Australia. All rights reserved.
Getting serious: The national ‘vision splendid’ for adult education 60 years on
- Authors: Golding, Barry
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Adult Learning Vol. 60, no. 3 (2020), p. 365-398
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- Description: This paper poses three research questions, based primarily on evidence from six decades of the Australian Journal of Adult Education (AJAL, 2000-present) and its antecedent journals dating back to 1961. Firstly, it asks what was the context for establishing a national adult learning association, Australian Association of Adult Education (AAAE) in 1960, renamed the Australian Association for Adult and Community Education (AACE) in 1989, and Adult Learning Australia (ALA) in 1998? Secondly, it asks how the association, the research in its journals and the field of adult education adapted to the rapidly changing context, opportunities and needs for lifelong learning in Australia? In doing so, the paper critically examines evidence of ongoing tensions and difficulties delivering on ALA’s 2020 vision of ‘lifelong and lifewide learning for all Australians’. It also asks what the current situation is for Australian adult education, and what possible new courses for the future ALA and AJAL might take. The first two research questions are addressed in the body of this paper. The third question is addressed primarily within the Discussion. © 2020, Adult Learning Australia. All rights reserved.
Kurrburra the Boonwurrung 'wirrirrap' and bard (1797-1849)-a man of high degree
- Authors: Clark, Ian , Schlagloth, Rolf , Cahir, David (Fred) , McGinnis, Gabrielle
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Biography and History Vol. , no. 4 (2020), p. 73-91
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- Description: Kurrburra (aka Mr Ruffy) (1797-1849), Aboriginal wirrirrap (doctor, healer, bard), sage counsellor of his people, consultant with koalas, and heroic slayer of a feared orangutan-like cryptid that lived in the ranges north of Western Port, is believed to have been born in 1797, and was a member of the Yawen djirra clan, the eastern-most group of the Boonwurrung People whose Country stretched from Wirribi-yaluk (Werribee River) to Wammun (Wilsons Promontory) in Victoria. His moiety was Bunjil and in the early 1840s he had 2 wives: Kurundum (1819-?) and Bowyeup (1823-?), and 2 children, whose names are not known. Kurrburra's traditional Aboriginal name is the Boonwurrung word for the iconic marsupial Phascolarctos cinereus, more commonly known as the koala.
"My Country all gone the white men have stolen it" : The invasion of Wadawurrung Country 1800-1870
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred)
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book
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- Description: "The Wadawurrung are the Aboriginal people whose Country includes the cities now known as Ballarat and Geelong. Fred Cahir examines the contact history in the period 1800-1870 of the Wadawurrung and the ngamadjidj (generally translated as white stranger belonging to the sea). Divided into chronological and thematic section, the book chronicles three waves of invasion: the early invasion period incorporating trespassers predominately from the sea, the sheepherders or squatters who followed in their wake and usurped the Wadawurrung of all their Country for sheep runs, and the third wave of invaders - the gold seekers. This historical study is transformative as it presents a compelling argument of how the Wadawurrung were active agents of change and sought cultural enrichment in the midst of the frontier war on their Country." --back cover.
Histories of the Ballarat District Orphan Asylum, Ballarat Orphanage and Ballarat Children’s Home, 1866-1983
- Authors: McGinniss, David
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
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- Description: The thesis outlines the development of three children’s residential institutions on the site of 200 Victoria Street, Ballarat East: the Ballarat District Orphan Asylum (1866-1909), the Ballarat Orphanage (1909-1968), and the Ballarat Children’s Home (1968-1983). These institutions are the historical precursors to the contemporary community service organisation now known as Child and Family Services Ballarat, or simply Cafs. The thesis focuses particularly on the shifting cultures of these institutions, to identify waves of change, surging and receding to form long patterns of alternating reform and repose. Established ways of operating overlapped with new and developing ideas, to create a dynamic environment constantly negotiating its relationships with government, communities and of course the families and children who came to rely on them. As a result, when transformative change occurred, it was difficult for leaders and policy-makers to recognise it as such at the time, as it was often experienced more as crisis and response. This provides a useful set of historical examples for current leadership and practitioners to learn from. Most critically, however, it locates the thousands of children who were institutionalised - eating, sleeping, playing, learning and working – as central to the narrative formation of identity for the historic institutions themselves, the contemporary organisation they have become, and the communities of Ballarat and beyond. Children were sent to these institutions from all over Victoria and Australia and made their homes in many different places when they left. Nevertheless, the stories and lives of the children from these institutions and the adults they have become are a key part of contemporary collective identity. The institutions are remembered with complex and contradictory mixtures of regret, loss, trauma and fondness, reflecting the mixed legacies that these institutions have left in contemporary Ballarat and beyond.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
In and out of place: Civilizational interaction and the making of Australia in Oceania and Asia
- Authors: Smith, Jeremy
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Comparative civilizations review Vol. , no. 80 (2019), p. 37-49
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- Description: The making of Euro-Australia occurred against the backdrop of two dimensions of its historical constitution. First, it occurred on the back of Britain's entry into the Oceanian world and its intercivilizational encounters with Pacific cultures. The second dimension was the appropriation of the land of a complex and internally diverse Aboriginal civilization and suppression of its social world view. This was vital to a lasting sense of ambivalence in Australian identity and in the relations of the Commonwealth of Australia with island states in the Pacific. After Federation (1901), Australia became more independent in the context of devolution of the Commonwealth. Engagement in the Pacific War heralded a turn from allegiance to Britain to alliance with the United States. A new orientation to the Asia-Pacific was not a chosen course, but one compelled by geo-political conditions and a growing dynamism in this multicivilizational world region. From the 1970s to the end of the twentieth century, engagement in Asia accelerated with the onset of a policy regime of multiculturalism and a process of neo-liberal modernization. This essay argues that Euro-Australia emerged out of complex intercivilizational interactions entailing colonialism, diverse migratory and cultural flows, and the creation of a homogenizing collective memory. I contend that Australian modernity, due in part to its suppression of its indigenous civilization and accompanying denial of that suppression, has borne considerable cultural and political ambivalence about its place in the region - an ambivalence which structures its economic and political relations with neighbouring countries. In this essay, I focus on Pacific relations. I compare developments and turns in Australian foreign policy with patterns of cultural engagement since the 1970s. Towards the end, I raise the Australian regime of refugee detention in relation to climate refugees. The essay concludes with notes on the merits of civilizational analysis in understanding the Oceanian constellation and its potential futures and points for further research on Australia in a multi-civilizational context.
Introduction
- Authors: Reeves, Keir
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Before/Now : Journal of the collaborative Research Centre in Australian History (CRCAH) Vol. Vol.1 , no. 1 (2019), p. 3-4
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- Description: The start of a new academic journal is always an exciting initiative for all involved and it is with great pleasure I am able to introduce Before/Now. In doing so it is important or me to formally acknowledge the tireless work of the founding editorial collective who have been working on this new scholarly publication for almost two years at Federation University Australia. Can I also acknowledge the support of the School of Arts in enabling this initiative. Before/Now is a welcome addition to the postgraduate journal landscape in Australia where postgraduate history journals have enjoyed something of a recent revival against broader trends in publishing
Malmsbury bluestone and quarries : Finding holes in history and heritage
- Authors: Walter, Susan
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
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- Description: Malmsbury bluestone was used widely from 1856 in buildings in Victoria, throughout Australia, and in New Zealand. It features in many structures listed on heritage registers, yet its presence is barely recognised. This largely results from the stone quarries, buildings and the men who laboured with it being absent from modern Australian historiography. The fame previously associated with the stone was lost when stone use for structural purposes, and the associated stone skills, declined; a situation exacerbated by poor recognition of the stone industry’s role in building our nation through heritage citations of structures. Inspired by E. P. Thompson, this thesis uses Critical Inquiry though microhistory and landscape analysis to regain the stone’s fame and rescue stoneworkers from the condescension of history. A detailed analysis of quarries, structures, the bluestone industry, and a rarely-attempted total reconstitution of the lives of 194 vital stoneworkers, reveals a valuable cultural heritage currently undervalued and at risk. Malmsbury stoneworkers came from diverse backgrounds but worked co-operatively to promote and sustain a local industry which supplied a nationally-vital building material, despite the absence of a regulatory framework to protect their lives and rights. Scientific methods document the geological properties of the stone and demonstrate how, in the absence of science, skilled stoneworkers nevertheless identified and worked a valuable resource. Modern science could however be used to test building stones in a non-destructive manner to determine the sources of currently unidentified building stones. This thesis significantly contributes to the limited discourse on the history and heritage of Australian stone use through the perspectives of cultural landscapes, labour history and built and cultural heritage. Malmsbury bluestone truly was the standard of excellence and, along with stoneworkers, warrants more extensive recognition in Australia’s Heritage registers.
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
The Esoteric Osteopath : Thomas Ambrose Bowen (1916-1982) and his contemporaries : exploring influences, networks, creativity and embodiment
- Authors: Strachan, Shirley
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
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- Description: This PhD is the first prosopographical study of two generations of Australian manual healers in the twentieth century. The central historical figure is Thomas Ambrose Bowen (1916-1982) a self-titled Australian osteopath and arguably a therapeutic genius turned victim of health politics of the twentieth century. Bowen was stripped of his osteopathic identity as a result of political machinations that occurred during regulation of the industry in the late-1970s and early-1980s. This thesis reveals the legitimacy of Bowen’s claim to osteopathic stature and how his career is representative of the experience of a number of osteopaths during regulation of chiropractic and osteopathy. Bowen’s career was obscured in two respects. Firstly, in the lead up to the Chiropractors and Osteopaths Act 1978, overseas educated interests sought to disenfranchise Australian practitioners. This was offset by a successful response from the Australian chiropractic lobby. Secondly, posthumous commercial popularisation of Bowen’s claimed work, absent observer consensus and historical research, has further served to obfuscate Bowen’s prowess and marginalised his legacy. This thesis is the first to link Bowen’s practice to the influence of F G Roberts, an early Australian pioneer of naturopathic osteopathy. It explores Bowen’s emergence from a network of prominent football masseurs to his professional engagement with osteopathic advocates. This thesis is the first historical study to present the clinical life and times of Bowen among his contemporaries. In doing so it examines his broader significance as a consummate Australian osteopath. New historical narratives founded on extensive primary sources, oral histories as well as discourse analysis, ethnography, biography, hermeneutics and cultural mapping are used to place Bowen in context with his peers on the Australian osteopathic stage. Posthumous narratives that underpin commercial global marketing are challenged to the extent they obscure a clear historical view of Bowen and his marginalised contemporaries as unique actors in their struggle for recognition
- Description: Doctor of Philosophy
The role of trauma and partner support in perinatal depression and parenting stress: An Australian pregnancy cohort study
- Authors: Galbally, Megan , Watson, Stuart , Boyce, Philip , Lewis, Andrew
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Social Psychiatry Vol. 65, no. 3 (2019), p. 225-234
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- Description: Background: Improving our understanding of the relationship between maternal depression and parenting stress is likely to lie in the range of additional factors that are associated with vulnerability to depression and also to parenting stress. Objectives: To examine the role of trauma and partner support, in understanding the relationship between perinatal depression and parenting stress. Methods: This study utilises data from 246 women in a pregnancy cohort study that followed women from early pregnancy until their infant was 12 months. Included were both women with a diagnosis of depression and those without depression. The measures included Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Social Support Effectiveness Questionnaire and the Parenting Stress Index. Results: We found women with depression were more likely to report a history of childhood trauma. Depressive symptoms were positively associated with parenting stress while partner support was negatively associated with parenting stress. The protective role of partner support for parenting distress was observed in those with no history of childhood abuse and low depressive symptoms, but not in those with a trauma history and high depressive symptoms. Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of early trauma in understanding the protective role of support on the relationship between parenting and depression. These findings can inform future studies and the refinement of future interventions aimed at both perinatal depression and parenting.
Uncovering Hidden Histories: Evaluating Preservice Teachers' (PST) Understanding of Local Indigenous Perspectives in History Via Digital Storytelling at Australia's Sovereign Hill
- Authors: Weuffen, Sara , Cahir, David (Fred) , Barnes, Alice , Powell, Bryon
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Diaspora, indigenous and minority education Vol. 13, no. 3 (2019), p. 165-181
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- Description: Non-Indigenous-led organizations and education programs have long been criticized for sanitized teachings of Aboriginal perspectives in history, while scholarship touts the transformative benefits offered up via decolonial and immersive pedagogical approaches. In this case study, we explore the impact of a cross-cultural venture, titled Hidden Histories: The Wadawurrung People, between a living history museum, the local Aboriginal community, and a regional university on teacher preparedness to incorporate Aboriginal perspectives in history curricula. Through a cultural interface lens, we examine the ontological and epistemological developments of 112 preservice teachers postinteraction with an intercultural digital-kinaesthetic education tool. Our findings suggest that PSTs enjoy engaging with the tool, yet while on site, they prefer to immerse themselves in the museum environment. Our findings indicate also, however, that the tool is an accessible cross-cultural predatory tool that encourages a lifelong commitment to integrating Aboriginal perspectives in history curricula.
"All that appears possible now is to mitigate as much as possible the trials of their closing years"
- Authors: Cahir, David (Fred) , Tout, Dan
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Journal of Politics and History Vol. 64, no. 2 (2018), p. 177-193
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- Description: This article examines Alfred Deakin’s attitudes towards, and impacts upon, Aboriginal people during the period 1880-1910, drawing on newspaper articles and parliamentary debates as principal source materials. The discussion begins by charting the long, influential and often positive relationships Deakin had with several Aboriginal communities during a period as a Victorian MLA between 1881 and 1884. It then proceeds to document Deakin’s extraordinary descent into paternalism and racially-based fatalism which pervaded his later association with Aboriginal affairs whilst Victoria’s Chief Secretary (1886–1890), Victorian MLA for Essendon and delegate to Federal conventions (1890-1900), as the Federation debates took shape. And finally, the article outlines the attitudes Deakin expressed towards Aboriginal people in his various post-Federation political roles, including Attorney-General, Prime Minister and Minister for External Affairs. In doing so, the discussion draws out the connections between Deakin’s advocacy of a white Australia and his attitudes towards Aboriginal Australia, and demonstrates the extent to which the creation of a new nation both informed and responded to socio-racial ideologies that mandated the exclusion of non-white identities from the nation-to-come
McKay's 1891 journey : A window into the Victorian Mallee back country
- Authors: Burch, John
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Victorian Historical Journal Vol. 89, no. 1 (2018), p. 45-65
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- Description: In 1891 Nathaniel McKay travelled south from Mildura across the Mallee back country to Yellumjip, south-west of Ouyen. He described his journey in the Mildura Cultivator and his articles provide a rare description of the back country, also opening a window into colonial and Aboriginal use of that land. They document the squatters’ attempts to develop the land, and their reliance on Aboriginal labour. In combination with other colonial sources, McKay’s observations also suggest extensive pre-colonial use of the back country by Aboriginal people. That Aboriginal land use then provides a framework that explains the settlement patterns of the squatters.
Soldier settlement at Yanakie : The making of a model post-war rural community
- Authors: Glowrey, Cheryl
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Victorian Historical Journal Vol. 89, no. 1 (2018), p. 89-112
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- Description: Recommendations made by the Commonwealth Rural Reconstruction Commission in 1944 were influential in shaping new policies for post-war land settlement. The Victorian Soldier Settlement Commission applied these ideas, hand-picking settlers who would make successful farmers. At Yanakie, in South Gippsland, a decision to turn crown land into a group soldier settlement scheme resulted in a model rural community where post-war technology transformed the environment into productive dairy farms. Interviews with those involved locally look beyond the policy to the experiences of the settlers and employees of the Soldier Settlement Commission during the 1950s and 1960s.
The Australian Assistance Plan and the Canadian connection : Origins and legacies
- Authors: Oppenheimer, Melanie , Collins, Carolyn , Eklund, Erik
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian Historical Studies Vol. 49, no. 3 (2018), p. 324-340
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- Description: Within the context of the war on poverty and an acknowledgement of the wider global phenomenon of a ‘post-industrial society’, the Australian Labor Party under Gough Whitlam sought out a range of reforming and innovative social policy programs. This article explores the origins of one such program, the Australian Assistance Plan (AAP), and its connections, similarities and differences to the Canada Assistance Plan. Drawing on extensive archival and oral history sources, it offers a comparative analysis of both national programs, then outlines how international social planning and community development ideas, especially from Canada, infused the AAP and its predecessor, the Geelong Experiment.
The disputatious protector - William le Souëf : A history
- Authors: Clark, Ian
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book
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- Description: This book is the first detailed biography of William Le Souef and, amongst other things, explores his relationships with Aboriginal people and with his superiors - Robinson and La Trobe - when he was employed as assistant protector. It does this using the qualitative research methodologies of interpretive biography and thick description. It makes use of contemporary publications, protectorate records, personal diaries, familty records, and newspaper articles.
Wayanha: A decolonised social work
- Authors: Green, Sue , Bennett, Bindi
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian social work Vol. 71, no. 3 (2018), p. 261-264
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- Description: After much careful consideration of what we would like to say to social workers and the social work profession, we wanted to start with the acknowledgement that social work, for the most part, has owned its own actions of the past and is taking steps to make amends for past actions and to learn and grow from past mistakes. However, there is still something missing. As a profession, whether that is in the field, within education and training, or as the professional body, we do not seem to be able to quite get there. So, what is it that we are missing?
A history of Australasian economic thought
- Authors: Millmow, Alex
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Book
- Relation: Routledge History of Economic Thought Vol. 14
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- Description: This overview of Australasian economic thought presents the first analysis of the Australian economic contribution for 25 years, and is the first to offer a panoramic sweeping account of New Zealand economic thought. Those two countries, both at the start of the twentieth century and at its end, excelled at innovative economic practices and harbouring unique economic institutions. A History of Australasian Economic Thought explains how Australian and New Zealand economists exerted influence on economic thought and contributed to the economic life of their respective counrtries, in the twentieth century. Besides surveying theorists and innovators, this book also considers some of the key expositors and builders of the academic economics profession in both countries. The book covers key economic events including the Great Depression, the Second World War, the post-war boom and the great inflation that overtook it and, lastly, the economic reform programmes that both Australia and New Zealand undertook in the 1980s. Through the interplay of economic events and economic thought, this book shows how Australasian economists influenced, to differing degrees, economic policy in their respective countries. This book is of great importance to those who are interested in and study the history of economic thought, economic theory and philosophy, and philosophy of social science, as well as Australasian economics.