Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

The Changing Academic Workplace: Public and Private Transformations

Teresa Moore
The workplace is changing from primarily being a site of production to one focused on knowledge creation, where there has been a re-engineering of work in what has been termed post-Fordism.1 This changing workplace has experienced what some term a feminisation, as women have been entering the labour market in increasing numbers.2 As Ian Watson, John Buchanan, Iain Campbell and Chris Briggs highlight in their recent book, Fragmented Futures, changing workplace participation has had both positive and negative effects.3 Indeed, with all the talk about feminist theorising, workplace reform and ...
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Network Review of Books

Global Sex (2001)

Reviewed by John Sinclair in the March 2002 issue.
Since globalisation is a cultural as well as an economic and political phenomenon, and all cultures have their modes of regulating gender and sexuality, a book on globalisation and sexuality seems a useful medium to approach questions of how the global interconnectedness of cultures today is exerting its influence on sexual mores, behaviour and identities everywhere. This is the rationale Altman makes for Global Sex, though he is also explicitly concerned to keep cultural changes firmly within the perspective of a 'political economy' of sex. In particular, he sees the structured inequalities ... read more.

Heart Country: A Woman's Inspiring Life in the Outback (2001)

Reviewed by Melissa Bellanta in the November 2001 issue.
Kerry McGinnis published Pieces of Blue, a book of autobiographical stories, in 1999. The book told the story of the four McGinnis children raised by their father as a drover's team in the 1950s. McGinnis' latest offering, Heart Country, takes over where Pieces of Blue left off. Set in northern Queensland in the early 1960s, it tracks the McGinnis family over drovers' trails, cattle stations and missions, finishing up at Bowthorn, the property where McGinnis still lives. At first glance, there is much to be reserved about in Heart Country. In 1999, for example, the Bulletin published a ... read more.

Splitting the World Open (2001)

Reviewed by Rebekah Crow in the April 2003 issue.
Mitchell has written a follow up to her books, Tall Poppies and Tall Poppies Too. However in this book she includes vignettes of her own life in the form of a narrative on the genesis of the book. Interspersed throughout the chapters on individual women are events in Mitchell's life and her relationships with the women she interviews for the book. She has gathered together a formidable collection of high achieving women at the turn of the millennium. This is the book's great appeal, as is the informal writing style which makes it possible to imagine oneself being in conversation with each of ... read more.

Radical Melbourne: A secret history (2001)

Reviewed by Rick Rutjens in the July 2002 issue.
Radical Melbourne is the work of the brother and sister team Jeff and Jill Sparrow. The first thing that strikes the reader of Radical Melbourne is that this pair make no effort to conceal the hearts they wear so prominently upon their sleeves. This is not the work of academic historians, it is more the work of passionate 'lefties' who have gone to great lengths to document the history of their politics in their city. From that perspective it seems to be a book aimed squarely at a like-minded audience, rather than any bold attempt to allow the site-specific anecdotes to tell their own stories. ... 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.

The Coldest March (2001)

Reviewed by Christy Collis in the Aug/Sep 2003 issue.
The Coldest March is a meticulous narrative of the physical aspects of Captain Robert Scott's two Antarctic missions: the National Antarctic (Discovery) Expedition of 1901-4, and the fatal British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition of 1910-13. Solomon painstakingly retells the stories of these famous polar missions in economical and engaging prose: these may be familiar narratives, but Solomon's account ensures their continuing interest. Solomon's focus on the 'secondary' treks performed by team members -- that is, treks which were not the final Pole missions -- usefully highlights ... read more.

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