Suchergebnisse

Spanning six decades from the formation of the Save the Children Fund in 1919 to humanitarian interventions during the Vietnam War, The Humanitarians maps the national and international humanitarian efforts undertaken by Australians on behalf of child refugees. In this longitudinal study, Joy Damousi explores the shifting forms of humanitarian activity related to war refugee children over the twentieth century, from child sponsorship, the establishment of orphanages, fundraising, to aid and development schemes and campaigns for inter-country adoption. Framed by conceptualisations of the history of emotions, and the limits and possibilities afforded by empathy and compassion, she considers the vital role of women and includes studies of unknown, but significant, women humanitarian workers and their often-traumatic experience of international humanitarian work. Through an examination of the intersection between racial politics and war refugees, Damousi advances our understanding of humanitarianism over the twentieth century as a deeply racialised and multi-layered practice.

'The most interesting experiment that has ever been made in a political democracy': conscription and the Great War / Robin Archer and Sean Scalmer -- 'A real heritage of the English people: British liberalism and 'continental despotism' / Douglas Newton -- Labour and liberty: the origins of the conscription referendum / Robin Archer -- Anti-conscription in Australia: individuals, organisations and arguments / Frank Bongiorno -- Universities and conscription: the 'yes' campaigns and the University of Melbourne / Joy Damousi -- The results of the 1916 and 1917 conscription referendums re-examined / Murray Goot -- Why was it easier to introduce and implement conscription in some English-speaking countries than others? / John Connor -- Conscription in the First World War: Britain and Australia / Ross McKibbin -- Legend and lamentation: remembering the anti-conscription struggle / Sean Scalmer.

"In an engaging and original contribution to the field of memory studies, Joy Damousi considers the enduring impact of war on family memory in the Greek diaspora. Focusing on Australia's Greek immigrants in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Greek Civil War, the book explores the concept of remembrance within the larger context of migration to show how inter-generational experience of war and trauma transcend both place and nation. Drawing from the most recent research in memory, trauma and transnationalism, Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War deals with the continuities and discontinuities of war stories, assimilation in modern Australia, politics and activism, child migration and memories of mothers and children in war. Damousi sheds new lights on aspects of forgotten memory and silence within families and communities, and in particular the ways in which past experience of violence and tragedy is both negotiated and processed"--

This innovative book marks a new way of looking at convict women. It tells their stories in a powerful and evocative way, drawing out broader themes of gender and sexual disorder and race and class dynamics in a colonial context. It considers the convict past in light of contemporary concerns, looking at the cultural meanings of aspects of life in the colony: on ships, in the factories and in orphanages. Using startlingly original research, Joy Damousi considers such varied topics as headshaving as punishment in the prisons and the subversive nature of laughter and play, as well as analysing the language of pollution, purity and abandonment. She also dicusses the nature of sexual relationships, including evidence of lesbianism. The book shows how understanding about sexual and racial difference was crucial for both the maintenance and disturbance of colonial society, and became a focus for cultural anxiety

Between 1957 and 1968, the Prime Minister Robert Menzies and several of his ministers, including Alexander Downer, the Minister for Immigration from 1958 to 1963, were inundated with hundreds of letters of protest demanding that action be taken to assist Japanese children fathered by Australian soldiers who had been stationed in Japan during the Allied occupation and beyond it between 1946 and 1956. The response from the Australian public forms the basis of this article to consider how attempts for the transnational movement of children in the postwar period point to understandings of humanitarianism at this time. The response to the predicament of the Japanese‐Australian children offers, I argue, an intriguing narrative of postwar humanitarianism that articulates the beginning of several historic shifts. The incident points to the growing challenge to the White Australia Policy, paradoxically on racialised and paternalistic grounds to bring white Australian children to Australia. The government shifted the discussion from one of immigration to foreign aid as a way of diffusing the public response and in doing so positioned itself in the new narrative about supporting rehabilitation and development. The media was crucial in evoking a response that depoliticized the issue of responsibility by reducing it to an emotional reaction.

This article argues that the assimilation policy adopted by the Australian government during the 1950s was based on a denial of a migrant's past. The assumption that the migrant would readily merge into Australian cultural life ignored the ways in which past stories and memories shape the self. Through an analysis of the Good Neighbour Councils I explore the nature of assimilation that was based on a neglect of collective war memories of immigrant groups. This perspective is distinguished from that adopted by several theorists of the day such as W.D. Borrie and Jean Martin whose studies were less crude and one‐dimensional. The experiences of Greek migrants are examined to consider how Greek war stories could not often find expression or recognition in the assimilationist climate of the post‐war period.

This article considers the way in which the Great War created unique conditions where medical intellectuals became part of a wider canvas of debate about psychology and medicine; mind and body; and, more broadly, crossed the artificial divide between the humanities and the medical sciences. Medicine has not been usually identified as a field for "intellectuals" as such. The nature of cultural and social analysis lends itself more readily to those working in the fields of sociology, political science, literature and history. But the medical intellectuals who are the subject of this article can be seen as extending our understanding of the relationship between the self and society. Such an intellectual engagement was considerably assisted, it is argued, by the advent of the Medical Journal of Australia a month before the outbreak of war. which initially served to document practices associated with medical science, but quickly evolved into a journal that connected medicine to the broader society and wider culture. The devastating impact of the war provided an extraordinary context within which these discussions took place, and radically challenged many assumptions held by the medical profession, especially with regard to the relationship between the mind and the body.