A gripping and inspiring space adventure for kids of all ages from popular author Tristan Bancks. Dash Campbell has only ever had one dream. To go to space. Now he and four others have been given the chance to become the first kids ever to leave our planet. From building rockets behind his family's laundromat in Australia to attending a hardcore Space School in the US, Dash is a long way from home. And he still has an intense month of training ahead before he can even think about that glorious moment of blasting out of Earth's atmosphere and living his dream. But does Dash have what it takes t.
Larrikins, Rebels, and Journalistic Freedom is a cultural history of Australian journalism. In a democratic nation where a free news media is not guaranteed, Australian journalism has inherited what could be described as a ‘Larrikin’ tradition to protect its independence. This book mines Australian journalism’s rebelliousness, humor and distinct disrespect for authority in various socio-historical contexts, to explore its determination to maintain professional independence. Beginning with a Larrikin analysis of Australian journalism’s inherited Enlightenment tradition, Dr Josie Vine takes the reader through the Colonial era’s hardships, Federation, two World Wars, the Cold War’s fear and suspicion, the swinging sixties, a Prime Minister’s dismissal, 1980’s neo-liberalism, post-9/11 and, finally, provides a conclusive synthesis of current Australian journalism culture. Throughout, the book highlights the audacious, iconoclastic and determined figure of the Larrikin-journalist, forever pushing boundaries to protect democracy’s cornerstone – freedom of the news media. “Book-length histories of Australian journalism are still relatively rare, but what makes this new arrival particularly welcome is the way in which it is structured around an exploration of the ‘Larrikin paradox’. This refers to the fact that although Australian journalism may profess to be ‘professional’ and ‘reputable’, it can also be raucous, unruly and disrespectful in pursuit of what it sees as its democratic purposes. The Larrikin may be a uniquely Australian figure but the paradox is far from confined to Australian journalism (not least because of the influence of erstwhile Australian Rupert Murdoch on journalism in the Anglosphere), and this book should be of considerable interest to those concerned with the means whereby journalism performs its democratic, Fourth Estate role in modern democracies. This is an extremely very well-informed and highly insightful work which ought to appeal equally to those interested in journalism and in Australian politics.” — Julian Petley, Professor, Brunel University London, UK
From recruitment and training and the battlegrounds of Palestine, North Africa, Thailand, Burma and beyond, here are the highly individual stories of Australia's World War II Diggers told in their own voices - warts and all. With a reputation for being hard to discipline, generosity to their comrades, frankness and sticking it up any sign of pomposity, Australian soldiers were a wild and irreverent lot, even in the worst of circumstances during World War II. In Larrikins in Khaki, Tim Bowden has collected compelling and vivid stories of individual soldiers whose memoirs were mostly self-published and who told of their experiences with scant regard for literary pretensions and military niceties. Most of these men had little tolerance for military order and discipline, and NCOs and officers who were hopeless at their jobs were made aware of it. They laughed their way through the worst of it by taking the mickey out of one another and their superiors. From recruitment and training to the battlegrounds of Palestine, North Africa, Thailand, New Guinea, Borneo and beyond, here are the highly individual stories of Australia's World War II Diggers told in their own voices - warts and all.
Summary: Four social scientists from the University of Western Sydney explore management and organizations today, along with their theories and practices, as the 2008 worldwide financial crisis continues, from a perspective that questions much of the intellectual trappings of neo-liberalism. They cover what is wrong with business education, the Larrikin Principle, managerialism, neo-liberalism and its discontents, corruption, power versus goodness at the edge of chaos, soft capital and the informal polity, and culture and organizations in a global world.
Australia's reputation as a successful large scale immigrant-receiving nation is well formed. In the latest wave, not only have millions of diverse people arrived in the post-war period from 1945 to a growing, high income, good employment economy; but the society absorbing them has remained stable and cohesive. This is not to say that it has been entirely plain sailing - sensitive debate, isolated interethnic violence, and the degree of migrant ghettoisation have been prominent, though varying in intensity over time. But overall, the planned program of immigration and settlement by Australia's governments over the years has been successful. This volume examines key elements of the means by which social cohesion can be constructively sought in Australia. With contributions from some of Australia's leading experts in this field, this book addresses the key concern: what are the threats to Australia's social cohesion and how can they be countered?
A lively linguistic analysis of our distinctive forms of speech drawn from a range of everyday experiences, including work, relaxation, gambling, drinking, family life, sport, crime, war, politics and sexual relations.
Baby booms have a long history. In 1870, colonial Melbourne was ’perspiring juvenile humanity’ with an astonishing 42 per cent of the city’s inhabitants aged 14 and under - a demographic anomaly resulting from the gold rushes of the 1850s. Within this context, Simon Sleight enters the heated debate concerning the future prospects of ’Young Australia’ and the place of the colonial child within the incipient Australian nation. Looking beyond those institutional sites so often assessed by historians of childhood, he ranges across the outdoor city to chart the relationship between a discourse about youth, youthful experience and the shaping of new urban spaces. Play, street work, consumerism, courtship, gang-related activities and public parades are examined using a plethora of historical sources to reveal a hitherto hidden layer of city life. Capturing the voices of young people as well as those of their parents, Sleight alerts us to the ways in which young people shaped the emergent metropolis by appropriating space and attempting to impress upon the city their own desires. Here a dynamic youth culture flourished well before the discovery of the ’teenager’ in the mid-twentieth century; here young people and the city grew up together.
Tracing the impact of Australia’s #MeToo moment In 2021, Australia saw rage and revelation, as #MeToo powered an insurgency against sexism and sexual violence. From once isolated survivors to political staffers, women everywhere were refusing to keep men’s secrets. In this electrifying essay, Jess Hill traces the conditions that gave birth to #MeToo and tells the stories of women who – often at great personal cost – found themselves at the centre of this movement. Hill exposes the networks of backlash against them – in government, media, schools, and in our national psyche. This is a powerful essay about shame, secrecy and, most of all, a revolutionary movement for accountability. “Here’s what men like Scott Morrison don’t understand: political spin has no power against the rage unleashed by #MeToo. At its heart, this is an accountability movement . . . The cultural revolution of #MeToo is not just about sexual violence. It is taking aim at patriarchy’s most sacred compact: the keeping of men’s secrets.”—Jess Hill, The Reckoning
The originality and depth of Gramsci's theory of hegemony is now evidenced in the wide-ranging intellectual applications within a growing corpus of research and writings that include social, political and cultural theory, historical interpretation, gender and globalization. The reason that hegemony has been so widely and diversely adopted lies in the unique way that Gramsci formulated the 'problematics' of structure/superstructure, coercion/consensus, materialism/idealism and regression/progression within the concept hegemony. However, in much of the contemporary literature the full complexity of hegemony is either obfuscated or ignored. Hegemony, through comprehensive and systematic analyses of Gramsci's formulation, a picture of hegemony as a complex syncretism of these dichotomies. In other words, hegemony is presented as a concept that is as much about aspiration and progressive politico-social relations as it is about regressive and dominative processes. Thus, the volume recognises and presents this complexity through a selection of contemporary theoretical as well as historico-social investigations that mark a significantly innovative moment in the work on hegemony.
"Youth culture is not an invention of 20th-century movies and television; youth have been forming their own cultures from the moment they were given space to invent their own ways of relating to one another and to their parents and communities. Taking a global approach and beginning in early modern Europe, the essays in the Oxford Handbook of the History of Youth Culture provide broadly contextualized case studies of the ways in which the meanings and expressions of both "youth" and "culture" have evolved through time and space. The authors show that youth culture has been shaped by geography, ethnicity, class, gender, faith, technology, and myriad other factors. Examining subjects ranging from monastic schools to online communities, from enslaved youth in the Caribbean to Indigenous students at government sanctioned boarding schools, from youthful entrepreneurs to youthful activists, from war to sexuality, and from art to literature, the essays show that there have been many youth cultures. Throughout, authors emphasize the ways in which the idea of youth culture could become contested terrain-between youth and their families, their communities, and the culture at large-as well as the importance of youth agency in carving out separate lives. Among the tensions explored are the struggle between control and independence, as well as the explicit and implicit differences between male and female constructions of youth culture"--
