Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

The Australian Democrats

Andrew Bartlett
From the Democrats' perspective, the 2001 election had many parallels with the 1998 election. This includes a turbulent 12 months leading up to the poll right through to a result that was similar to 1998 in most respects. In my chapter of the preceding volume of this election series on the 1998 election I started out by highlighting the difficult situation the Democrats faced at the start of that election year.While there were many differences in the political landscape at the start of 2001, one similarity was a range of headlines predicting the demise of the Democrats and an anticipated ...
Click here to read more.

Network Review of Books

Yarn Spinners: A Story in Letters. Dymphna Cusack and Florence James, Miles Franklin (2001)

Reviewed by Michele McFarland in the October 2001 issue.
In fifty or one hundred years from now, how will our descendants know what our lives were really like? As substitutes for the kind of letters collected here, ephemeral e-mails may not make it to the archives of libraries or be stored in private collections. Even if they do manage to be preserved, will the informal style of e-mails make for great edited collections, worthy of publication? These are not new questions but they struck me most forcibly while reading Yarn Spinners. Marilla North includes other documentary evidence of these women's lives, such as postcards, newspaper clippings and ... read more.

Body Trade: Captivity, Cannibalism and Colonialism in the Pacific (2001)

Reviewed by Max Quanchi in the November 2002 issue.
The anticipated audience for the thirteen essays in Body Trade is not clear and the cataloguing in-publication details reflect this uncertainty, listing 'cannibalism, colonization, indigenous peoples, human body, Australia and Pacific' as a guide, for librarians, at least. It is an ambitious project to tackle links between these fields, particularly without acknowledging the disciplines of history and anthropology that underpin the approach to the specific subject matter of several of the Body Trade's contributors. Body Trade is an uneven and diverse collection, as might be expected, ... read more.

Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (2001)

Reviewed by Ravi De Costa in the November 2002 issue.
Those familiar with the work of Mike Davis may be surprised to find that his latest opus does not deal with aspects of the American experience. In Late Victorian Holocausts, Davis has gone global. Here is not one, but multiple, interlocking histories of the late nineteenth century. First, a study of imperial capitalism (particularly of the British) is juxtaposed with a history of the social transformation of famines and ecological change in what is now the 'third' or 'developing' world. The primary focus throughout is on three regions: the Sert�o, or high plains of the Brazilian northeast; ... read more.

Parachute Silk (2001)

Reviewed by Iris Lowe in the August 2002 issue.
In this first novel by accomplished poet Gina Mercer, the reader is drawn into the personal worlds of forty-somethings Molly and Finn through their candid and eloquent letters to each other. There is an abundance to enjoy here and as a writer Mercer is both generous and passionate. Through the eyes of two long-term friends, Mercer explores a wide range of issues. What's more, she is not afraid to challenge stereotypes or cherished myths. Here are women of substance, painfully grappling with the contradictions and tensions of their lives and relationships. Finn, now in a monogamous ... read more.

Ride on Stranger (1943) (2001)

Reviewed by Cath Ellis in the October 2001 issue.
It is no great secret that the publishing of 'classic' Australian literature has dwindled over the last decade or so. Teachers of Australian literature have struggled to find enough works of Australian literature still in print with which to piece a subject together and interested readers must now rely on libraries and second hand bookstores. Few Australian novels from the first half of the twentieth century are now easily available. For many years, almost sole responsibility for the publication of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Australian literature has fallen to Angus & ... read more.

Australia and the British Embrace: The Demise of the Imperial Ideal (2001)

Reviewed by Daniel Oakman in the November 2002 issue.
The central proposition of Stuart Ward's Australia and the British Embrace is that Australian political culture did not defiantly cut the apron strings and reject the bonds of the British connection, as asserted in the radical-nationalist tradition of Australian history. Instead, Ward argues that since 1945 Australia was 'pulled along reluctantly in the wake of changing British policies and priorities'. The episode through which Ward pursues these questions is the United Kingdom's decision to seek membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) in the early 1960s. In the early chapters, ... read more.

Need to Contact Us?