Reorienting a Nation: Consultants and Australian Public Policy

Reorienting a Nation: Consultants and Australian Public Policy
Author: John F. Martin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2018-08-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429829159

First published in 1998, this volume examines how in the 1980s Australian governments experienced dramatic change in the policy-making environment. The use of consultants by successive Hawke Labour governments in the mid-to-late 1980s to facilitate reviews of public policy was a strategy important to dealing with the complexity of these issues. This book shows how the use of policy consultants complements traditional policy-making processes and the management of public policy change by government. In the 1980s Australian governments experienced dramatic and often unprecedented change in policy-making environment. Moves towards market-orientated, 'small' government in a context of worlds economic liberalisation created new and challenging issues for national governments. The use of consultants by successive Hawke Labour governments in the mid-to-late 1980s to facilitate reviews of public policy was a strategy important to dealing with the complexity of these issues. Using insights from a range of public policy literatures, the research investigated the hypothesis that the use of consultants to review important policy areas could be an effective strategy for devising major new directions needed in a context of economic turbulence. In this situation, the book suggests, use of policy consultants complements traditional policy-making processes and the management of public policy change by government.

(Re)Constructing Memory: School Textbooks and the Imagination of the Nation

(Re)Constructing Memory: School Textbooks and the Imagination of the Nation
Author: James H. Williams
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2014-08-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9462096562

This book examines the shifting portrayal of the nation in school textbooks in 14 countries during periods of rapid political, social, and economic change. Drawing on a range of analytic strategies, the authors examine history and civics textbooks, and the teaching of such texts, along with other prominent curricular materials—children’s readers, a required text penned by the head of state, a holocaust curriculum, etc.. The authors analyze the uses of history and pedagogy in building, reinforcing and/or redefining the nation and state especially in the light of challenges to its legitimacy. The primary focus is on countries in developing or transitional contexts. Issues include the teaching of democratic civics in a multiethnic state with little history of democratic governance; shifts in teaching about the Khmer Rouge in post-conflict Cambodia; children’s readers used to define national space in former republics of the Soviet Union; the development of Holocaust education in a context where citizens were both victims and perpetuators of violence; the creation of a national past in Turkmenistan; and so forth. The case studies are supplemented by commentary, an introduction and conclusion.

Reorienting Hong Kong’s Resistance

Reorienting Hong Kong’s Resistance
Author: Wen Liu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2022-01-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9811646597

This book brings together writing from activists and scholars that examine leftist and decolonial forms of resistance that have emerged from Hong Kong’s contemporary era of protests. Practices such as labor unionism, police abolition, land justice struggles, and other radical expressions of self-governance may not explicitly operate under the banners of leftism and decoloniality. Nevertheless, examining them within these frameworks uncovers historical, transnational, and prefigurative sightlines that can help to contextualize and interpret their impact for Hong Kong’s political future. This collection offers insights not only into Hong Kong's local struggles, but their interconnectedness with global movements as the city remains on the frontlines of international politics.

The Age of Silver

The Age of Silver
Author: Ning Ma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2017
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0190606568

The Age of Silver considers how commerce fueled the emergence of the novel around the globe, examining the evolution of epochal works of national literature from Don Quixote in 1605 to Robinson Crusoe in 1719.

Re-Defining Legitimate Statehood

Re-Defining Legitimate Statehood
Author: Obiora Chinedu Okafor
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2021-10-18
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9004482482

The purpose of this volume is dual. The first is to provide information about the question of the role that doctrines and practices of international law have played in the emergence and persistence of the phenomenon of socio-cultural fragmentation, and therefore of inter-group conflict, within African states. The second is to provide original thought about the ways in which, prompted by the emergent turn in our time to minority and group rights, international law and multilateral African states have begun the long journey toward modifying those doctrines and practices that have led to such unfortunate results, and have thereby begun to make very valuable contributions to the effort to prevent and/or reduce the incidence of inter-group strife in specific African contexts. The book is not, however, limited in scope by its utilisation of Africa as a case study. The book's core is based on analysis of traditional and contemporary international legal doctrines and practices, their effects in specific contexts, as well as on the role of multilateral institutions in the prevention of internecine conflict within established states. It is hoped that, with the use of African states as case studies, the book will be a contribution to the advancement of scholarly knowledge regarding the general question of the relationship among the doctrines of international law, the activities of multilateral institutions, and the management of the problems of fragmentation and internecine strife within established states the world over. This volume is relevant to international lawyers, specialists in international politics, diplomats, theorists, minority and group rights scholars, historians, and human rights activists in general. It is particularly relevant to the African studies specialist, the statesman and the diplomat.

After the Imperial Turn

After the Imperial Turn
Author: Antoinette Burton
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2003-05-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822384396

From a variety of historically grounded perspectives, After the Imperial Turn assesses the fate of the nation as a subject of disciplinary inquiry. In light of the turn toward scholarship focused on imperialism and postcolonialism, this provocative collection investigates whether the nation remains central, adequate, or even possible as an analytical category for studying history. These twenty essays, primarily by historians, exemplify cultural approaches to histories of nationalism and imperialism even as they critically examine the implications of such approaches. While most of the contributors discuss British imperialism and its repercussions, the volume also includes, as counterpoints, essays on the history and historiography of France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. Whether looking at the history of the passport or the teaching of history from a postnational perspective, this collection explores such vexed issues as how historians might resist the seduction of national narratives, what—if anything—might replace the nation’s hegemony, and how even history-writing that interrogates the idea of the nation remains ideologically and methodologically indebted to national narratives. Placing nation-based studies in international and interdisciplinary contexts, After the Imperial Turn points toward ways of writing history and analyzing culture attentive both to the inadequacies and endurance of the nation as an organizing rubric. Contributors. Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette Burton, Ann Curthoys, Augusto Espiritu, Karen Fang, Ian Christopher Fletcher, Robert Gregg, Terri Hasseler, Clement Hawes, Douglas M. Haynes, Kristin Hoganson, Paula Krebs, Lara Kriegel, Radhika Viyas Mongia, Susan Pennybacker, John Plotz, Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Heather Streets, Hsu-Ming Teo, Stuart Ward, Lora Wildenthal, Gary Wilder

From Country to Nation

From Country to Nation
Author: Gideon Fujiwara
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2021-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501753940

From Country to Nation tracks the emergence of the modern Japanese nation in the nineteenth century through the history of some of its local aspirants. It explores how kokugaku (Japan studies) scholars envisioned their place within Japan and the globe, while living in a castle town and domain far north of the political capital. Gideon Fujiwara follows the story of Hirao Rosen and fellow scholars in the northeastern domain of Tsugaru. On discovering a newly "opened" Japan facing the dominant Western powers and a defeated Qing China, Rosen and other Tsugaru intellectuals embraced kokugaku to secure a place for their local "country" within the broader nation and to reorient their native Tsugaru within the spiritual landscape of an Imperial Japan protected by the gods. Although Rosen and his fellows celebrated the rise of Imperial Japan, their resistance to the Western influence and modernity embraced by the Meiji state ultimately resulted in their own disorientation and estrangement. By analyzing their writings—treatises, travelogues, letters, poetry, liturgies, and diaries—alongside their artwork, Fujiwara reveals how this socially diverse group of scholars experienced the Meiji Restoration from the peripheries. Using compelling firsthand accounts, Fujiwara tells the story of the rise of modern Japan, from the perspective of local intellectuals who envisioned their local "country" within a nation that emerged as an empire of the modern world.