Disorderly categories in picture postcards from colonial Papua and New Guinea

At the turn of the century in Melbourne, a notice typed on the verso of a postcard stated that the South Yarra Baptist Young Men's class was meeting on the following Sunday at 2.45 p.m. The card, published in the United Kingdom, was numbered 51828 in the Valentine series of Papuan postcards.1 The image, a photograph of Hanuabada village taken in the early 1880s, and the text, written early in 1900, are contradictory and constitute separate realms of evidence that invite a renegotiation of meaning, analysis, and interpretation of the relationships between images, tourism, colonial rule, and ethnographic knowing. The visual evidence suggests the postcard may have played an ethnographic, educative role in the public understanding of Papua, which had just become an Australian Territory and was not yet well known. It is also suggestive of educative roles related to mission endeavours, subimperialist ambitions and the new tourist traffic through the ports of Port Moresby, Samarai, and Rabaul.

Post-colonial law : legal establishments from past empires are illegitimate

The extant literature covering the plights of indigenous people resident to the African continent consistently targets colonial law as an obstacle to the recognition of indigenous rights. Whereas colonial law is argued to be archaic and in need of review, which it is, this article argues the new perspective that colonial law is illegitimate for ordering the population it presides over – specifically in Africa. It is seen, in five case studies, that post-colonial legal structures have not considered the legitimacy of colonial law and have rather modified a variety of statutes as country contexts dictated. However, the modified statutes are based on an alien theoretical legality, something laden with connotations that hark to older and backward times. It is ultimately argued that the legal structures which underpin ex-colonies in Africa need considerable revision so as to base statutes on African theoretical legality, rather than imperialistic European ones, so as to maximise the law’s legitimacy.

Eucharistic rituals in Catholic primary schools in the Archdiocese of Brisbane : a study of administrators' conceptions

The focus of this study is the celebration of Eucharist in Catholic primary schools within the Archdiocese of Brisbane. The context of the contemporary Australian Catholic primary school embodies certain 'problematical realities' in relation to the time-honoured way in which school Eucharistic rituals have been celebrated. These contemporary realities raise a number of issues that impact on school celebrations of Eucharist. The purpose of this study is to explore administrators' differing conceptions of school Eucharistic rituals in an attempt to investigate some of these issues and assist members of individual school communities as they strive to make celebrations of Eucharist appropriate and meaningful for the group gathered. The phenomenographic research approach was adopted, as it is well suited to the purpose of this study and the nature of the research question. Phenomenography is essentially a study of variation. It attempts to map the 'whole' phenomenon under investigation by describing on equal terms all conceptions of the phenomenon and establishing an ordered relationship among them. The purpose of this study and the nature of the research question necessitate an approach that allows the identification and description of the different ways in which administrators' experience school Eucharistic rituals. Accordingly, phenomenography was selected. Members of the Administration Team, namely the principal, the APRE (Assistant to the Principal Religious Education) and, in larger primary schools, the AP A (Assistant to the Principal Administration) share responsibility for leading change in Catholic primary schools in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. In practice, however, principals delegate the role of leading the development of the school's religion program and providing leadership in the religious life of the school community to the APRE (Brisbane Catholic Education, 1997). Informants in this study are nineteen APREs from a variety of Catholic primary schools in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. These APREs come from schools across the archdiocese, rather than from within one particular region. Several significant findings resulted from this study. Firstly, the data show that there are significant differences in how APREs' experience school Eucharistic rituals, although the number of these qualitatively different conceptions is quite limited. The study identifies and describes six distinct yet related conceptions of school Eucharistic rituals. The logical relationship among these conceptions (the outcome space) is presented in the form of a diagram with accompanying explication. The variation among the conceptions is best understood and described in terms of three dimensions of the role of Eucharist in the Catholic primary school and is represented on the model of the outcome space. Individual transcripts suggest that individual APREs tend to emphasise some conceptions more than others. It is the contention of the present study that change in the practice of school Eucharistic rituals is unlikely to occur until all of a school community's conceptions are brought out into the open and articulated. As leaders of change, APREs need to be alerted to their own biases and become aware of alternative ways of conceiving school Eucharistic ritual. It is proposed that the different categories of description and dimensions, represented by the model of the outcome space, can be used to help in the process of articulating a school community's conceptions of Eucharist, with the APRE as facilitator of this process. As a result, the school community develops a better understanding of why their particular school does what it does in relation to school Eucharistic rituals.

Watching football in marvellous Melbourne : spectators, barrackers and working class rituals

A study of crowds drawn to Australian football matches in colonial Victoria illuminates key aspects of the code's genesis, development and popularity. Australian football was codified by a middle-class elite that, as in Britain, created forms of mass entertainment that were consistent with the kind of industrial capitalist society they were attempting to organise. But the 'lower orders' were inculcated with traditional British folkways in matters of popular amusement, and introduced a style of 'barracking' for this new code that resisted the hegemony of the elite football administrators. By the end of the colonial period Australian football was firmly entrenched as a site of contestation between plebeian and bourgeois codes of spectating that reflected the social and ethnic diversity of the clubs making up the Victorian competition. Australian football thereby offers a classic vignette in the larger history of 'resistance through ritual'.

The Corio Oval tribe: Geelong Football Club in colonial times

Geelong, Victoria’s second city, has an AFL football club whose culture and identity is closely tied to the city itself. An analysis of its playing group for the colonial period demonstrates that this local tribalism began early. As football became professionalised towards the end of the nineteenth century, country Victoria lost power in relative terms to metropolitan Melbourne: for example, Ballarat’s three main clubs lost their senior status. But Geelong, with its one remaining senior club, prospered and was admitted to the VFL ranks in 1897. The Geelong players were the sons and nephews of the Western District squattocracy and so had access to networks of power and influence. Many attended the prestigious Geelong Grammar School and the worthy Geelong College (in surprisingly equal numbers). They pursued careers both on the land and in professional roles, and maintained the social connections they had built through the club and other local institutions. Despite their elite standing, however, they continued to be regarded by the supporter base as an embodiment of the city and a defence against the city’s Melbourne critics that Geelong was a mere ‘sleepy hollow’.

The identity of the empire : the Italian colonial experience in the design of places

The Italian Colonial Experience in the design of the built environment is analysed as a case study of State image promotion.

Debts “incurred” by receivers, administrators and liquidators : the case for a harmonised construction of ss 419, 443A and 556(1)(a) of the Corporations Act

This article analyses the inconsistent approaches taken by courts when interpreting provisions of the Corporations Act which address debts or expenses “incurred” by receivers, administrators and liquidators. The article contends for a consistent construction of these provisions which will enable the legislation to operate (as was intended) for the benefit of persons who supply goods, services or labour to companies in external administration. The article explains how and why debts can be “incurred” by insolvency practitioners continuing on pre-existing contracts. Specifically, the article contends for a construction of ss 419 and 443A of the Corporations Act which renders receivers and administrators personally liable for certain entitlements of employees (eg, wages and superannuation contributions) which become due and payable by reason of the decision of a receiver or administrator to continue a pre-existing contract rather than terminate it.

The ethical demands of settler colonial theory

This article explores the strengths and limitations of settler colonial theory (SCT) as a tool for non-Indigenous scholars seeking to disturb rather than re-enact colonial privilege. Based on an examination of recent Australian academic debates on settler colonialism and the Northern Territory intervention, we argue that SCT is useful in dehistoricizing colonialism, usually presented as an unfortunate but already transcended national past, and in revealing the intimate connections between settler emotions, knowledges, institutions and policies. Most importantly, it makes settler investments visible to settlers, in terms we understand and find hard to escape. However, as others have noted, SCT seems unable to transcend itself, in the sense that it posits a structural inevitability to the settler colonial relationship. We suggest that this structuralism can be mobilized by settler scholars in ways that delegitimize Indigenous resistance and reinforce violent colonial relationships. But while settlers come to stay and to erase Indigenous political existence, this does not mean that these intentions will be realized or must remain fixed. Non-Indigenous scholars should challenge the politically convenient conflation of settler desires and reality, and of the political present and the future. This article highlights these issues in order to begin to unlock the transformative potential of SCT, engaging settler scholars as political actors and arguing that this approach has the potential to facilitate conversations and alliances with Indigenous people. It is precisely by using the strengths of SCT that we can challenge its limitations; the theory itself places ethical demands on us as settlers, including the demand that we actively refuse its potential to re-empower our own academic voices and to marginalize Indigenous resistance.

Caribbean schooling and the social divide – what will it take to change neo-colonial education systems?

When Professor N’Dri Assie-Lumumba asked me to reflect on what ‘ubuntu’ might mean in the context of education in the Caribbean, the first thing that came to mind was an image of pit latrines in impoverished primary schools in poor countries. In this essay, I argue that the continuing problem of pit latrines in these schools symbolizes the failure to solve the problem of poverty, neglect and inadequate provision of education services for people at the bottom rungs of Caribbean and other decolonising societies. I ask what implications the ‘ubuntu’ concept chosen for the 2015 CIES conference would have for reforming education in a direction that combines global reform, ethics and good sense. Educators rarely consider toilets when they are thinking about what is needed to reform the system. But talking about toilets draws attention to the entrenched inequity that persists in education systems across the globe – an inequity that forces many schools and young people to remain at the base of the social pyramid, and that perpetuates a dysfunctional model of education holding back many societies. Starting from the twin images of social pyramids and toilets, we can ask some pointed questions about education reform.

Consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in early childhood education: The impact of colonial discourses

In Australian early years education, consultation and partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are central to embedding Indigenous perspectives. Building sustained and reciprocal partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people supports access to local knowledges and perspectives to inform curriculum planning, as well as protocols and community processes, and contemporary responses to colonisation. Drawing on data from a doctoral study about embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in early childhood education curricula, this paper examines interactional patterns in consultations between non-Indigenous early childhood educators and Indigenous people in real and supposed form. Data is read through whiteness studies literature and related critiques to identify how the educators positioned Indigenous people in interactional patterns and how the mobilisation of colonial discourses impacted the potential for reciprocity and sustained partnerships, despite the best of intentions. Colonial traces of positioning Indigenous people as informants, targeted resources or knowledge commissioners were shown to be most salient in interactional patterns. While these findings are contextualised within Australia, I suggest they have applicability in examining approaches to embedding Indigenous perspectives in education curricula in other colonising contexts such as Canada and New Zealand.

J.W.Lindt’s Colonial man and Aborigine image from the GRAFTON ALBUM : “On chemistry and optics all does not depend, art must with these in triple union blend”

J.W.Lindt’s Colonial man and Aborigine image from the GRAFTON ALBUM: “On chemistry and optics all does not depend, art must with these in triple union blend” (text from J.W. Lindt’s photographic backing card) In this paper, I follow an argument that Lindt held a position in his particular colonial environment where he was simultaneously both an insider and an outsider and that such a position may be considered prerequisite in stimulating exchange. A study of the transition of J.W. Lindt in Grafton, N.S.W. in the 1860s from a traveller to a migrant and subsequently to a professional photographer, as well as Lindt’s photographic career, which evolved through strategic action and technical approaches to photography, bears witness to his cultural relativity. One untitled photograph from this period of work constructs a unique commentary of Australian colonial life that illustrates a non-hegemonic position, particularly as it was included in one of the first albums of photographs of Aborigines that Lindt gifted to an illustrious person (in this case the Mayor of Grafton). As in his other studio constructions, props and backdrops were arranged and sitters were positioned with care, but this photograph is the only one in the album that includes a non-Aborigine in a relationship to an Aborigine. An analysis of the props, technical details of the album and the image suggests a reconciliatory aspect that thwarts the predominant attitudes towards Aborigines in the area at that time.