The haystack that got away

The National Library and the National Folk Festival have joined forces to foster a tradition-bearers oral history project aimed at recording the practical skills and knowledge of those engaged in traditional Australian crafts.

Biography and the project of labour history: Marxist anticipations and Australian examples

The popularity of biography among the general public and historians has been despite a theoretical ambivalence among historians about the validity of the project. This has particularly been the case for labour historians who aspire to write the history of a class rather than that of individuals. This article identifies two divergent traditions within labour biography, broadly defined as reflection on the role of the individual in historical movements. One, uniting traditional Marxists and labourists, regards individuals as no more than the symbol of a class. Examples are Karl Kautsky and in Australia Fin Crisp. Another, unites activist revolutionaries and revisionist social democrats, and argues that the individual can make a difference. Examples include Trotsky and in Australia the young Evatt and Gordon Childe. Political disillusionment encouraged both Childe and Evatt to move towards the determinist position. This article suggest that recent discussions of the inherently divided nature of the self may offer an alternative to both these positions.

The natural history of internalizing behaviours from adolescence to emerging adulthood: findings from the Australian Temperament Project

BACKGROUND: The aims of the study were to describe the patterning and persistence of anxiety and depressive symptoms from adolescence to young adulthood and to examine long-term developmental relationships with earlier patterns of internalizing behaviours in childhood. METHOD: We used parallel processes latent growth curve modelling to build trajectories of internalizing from adolescence to adulthood, using seven waves of follow-ups (ages 11-27 years) from 1406 participants of the Australian Temperament Project. We then used latent factors to capture the stability of maternal reported child internalizing symptoms across three waves of early childhood follow-ups (ages 5, 7 and 9 years), and examined relationships among these patterns of symptoms across the three developmental periods, adjusting for gender and socio-economic status. RESULTS: We observed strong continuity in depressive symptoms from adolescence to young adulthood. In contrast, adolescent anxiety was not persistent across the same period, nor was it related to later depressive symptoms. Anxiety was, however, related to non-specific stress in young adulthood, but only moderately so. Although childhood internalizing was related to adolescent and adult profiles, the associations were weak and indirect by adulthood, suggesting that other factors are important in the development of internalizing symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Once established, adolescent depressive symptoms are not only strongly persistent, but also have the potential to differentiate into anxiety in young adulthood. Relationships with childhood internalizing symptoms are weak, suggesting that early adolescence may be an important period for targeted intervention, but also that further research into the childhood origins of internalizing behaviours is needed.

An Australian experience of managing pressure ulcers in persons with SCI

Pressure ulcers are a difficult and complex problem, frequently resulting in poor patient outcomes ,and significantly increased cost of care. This project evolved from a desire to improve the management and subsequent outcomes for persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) who experience pressure ulcers acquired in the community. The vast body of work related to pressure ulcers has focused on risk assessment and prevention. However, there has been little interest in the management of prevailing pressure ulcers. Using a retrospective case history audit and interviews with patients and health care workers from an Australian spinal services unit, current practices associated with the care of pressure ulcers are described. A number of issues are identified that relate to funding, diet, attitudes, consistency of care, and low levels of staff interest in pressure ulcer management. This work provides baseline data from which current management practices can be reviewed, revised, and empirically evaluated.

`This was a great project!`: reflections on a `successful` mental health promotion project in a remote Indigenous school

Issue addressed: The complexities encountered in an Indigenous community when a white project support team assisted a school (Bwgcolman on Palm Island, Queensland) to implement MindMatters, a centralised, national project aiming to promote the psychosocial health of young Australians through the development of a comprehensive, school- based mental health promotion program. Approach: The MindMatters consortium offered pilot schools curriculum materials, professional development for staff, funding and ongoing support at a local level in return for their participation in the project. The support team flew to the island on two occasions to provide support. Conclusion: Whether or not MindMatters constituted a community project at Bwgcolman is debatable. Nevertheless, the project at Bwgcolman was considered a 'success' by key players since initial aims identified by the school were tangible (eg, professional development, curriculum development) and met in a way that the school could take ownership of. Additionally, behavioural management policy was implemented in a manner that was cognisant of a history of coercive relations with Indigenous communities. So what?: It is important in the telling of the success story at Bwgcolman that even though MindMatters endeavoured to be culturally sensitive, it was nevertheless a centralist mental health promotion program. Future mental health promotion initiatives need to be aware that the approach of the support team in attempting to hand back some community control at the local level may have played a role in the school succeeding.

A house in history, heritage and tourism : shifting times at Blundell's Cottage, Canberra

The history of history's institutions can offer a gritty context in which to understand historical production. A wide spectrum of influences, from the personal to the intellectual to the political, can be seen at work in shaping the history made and communicated at Blundell's Cottage over the years. Even though it has always been a humble participant in the project of history, its products probably reach some of history's larger audiences. Hence it is worthwhile to review fifty years of historio-museography.

The relationship between quality of life and perceived body weight an dieting history in Dutch men and women

OBJECTIVES: (1) To study the relationship between quality of life (QoL) and measured and perceived weight and dieting history in Dutch men and women; (2) to assess the effect of weight loss over a 5 y period on QoL.

DESIGN: A cross-sectional study, in a sub-sample longitudinal over 5 y.

SUBJECTS: A total of 2155 men and 2446 women, aged 20-59 and recruited from the general population from three towns in The Netherlands.

MEASUREMENTS: Body weight, height, self-administered questionnaire including questions concerning demographic variables and weight loss practices as part of the Dutch Monitoring project on Risk Factors for Chronic Disease (MORGEN). The Rand-36 questionnaire was used as the QoL measure.

RESULTS: In men, measured overweight (body mass index, BMI>25 kg=m2) was not associated with any dimension of QoL after adjustment for age, educational level and perceived overweight. Perceived overweight was related to reduced scores for general health and vitality. This relationship was independent of measured obesity. A history of repeated weight loss was associated with reduced scores for role functioning due to both physical and emotional problems. In women, measured overweight was significantly associated with lower scores for five out of eight QoL dimensions and perceived overweight with three: general health, vitality and physical functioning. A history of frequent weight loss was related to significantly reduced scores in six dimensions. However, only with history of frequent weight loss, and uniquely in women, was there a significant reduction in
scores on mental health and limited emotional role functioning. Measured and perceived overweight and frequent weight loss were all related to reduced scores for physical functioning. Longitudinal data indicate that in older women weight gain of 10% body weight or more was associated with a significant deterioration in QoL.

CONCLUSIONS: When looking at measures of QoL in relation to overweight it is important to separate the effects of perception of weight status and history of weight loss. We observed that the latter two factors were associated with reduced scores on several dimensions of QoL, particularly in women. These associations were observed to be independent of body weight. International Journal of Obesity (2001) 25, 1386 – 1392

Round the bend : a brief history of mental health nursing in Victoria, Australia 1848 to 1950's

This paper presents a history of mental health nursing in Victoria, Australia from 1848 to the 1950's, or the asylum years to the era of the mental hospital. The research for this historical overview was conducted as part of a literature review for a mental health nursing doctoral thesis, which included an account of the evolution of the profession from asylum attendant to the present time. The literature reviewed for this project revealed a distinct lack of a coherent, chronological account of the historical development of mental health nursing in Victoria, and this paper seeks to address that knowledge gap.

Project management practice in transition of old residential region

With the rapid urbanisation worldwide, the transitions of old residential regions inside or close to the urban districts have been challenging both governments and professionals. The sustainable maintenance, innovation and construction of these regions incorporate the history, culture, environment and policy factors into the economic objectives. Over the long and complex process of a transition project, the dedicated project management crew are frequently confronted with diversified novel issues and obliged to contribute appropriate solutions urgently. In this paper, the authors first analyse the state of the art of transition projects of old residential regions based on their practices in real projects. Furthermore, the authors explore the sustainable alternatives of transition projects from the reservation and development perspectives of culture, environment, society and infrastructure. Finally, the authors develop a multi-dimensional implementary framework for guiding the practices of management of transition projects.

Vigilant pleasure as autoethnography : the life of the tea mind as critical history

I examine tea as cultural practice by exploring how it is implicated in the formation of individual subjectivities and national identity. While using the experience of learning and consuming tea lore as a foreigner as my explicit point of entry, I analyse how tea transmission practices are represented in Japanese films. My readings of these films are supported by a survey of the historical applications of tea as part of a project of national invention. Against tea's self-representation as purely cultural, I draw attention to this ideological silencing of its economic and political effects by claiming that institutionalised tea pedagogy has been a major player in a nationally distinctive discourse of transience. My thesis argues that autoethnography can be used to bring into view the ideological foundations of various social practices organised around tea sites and texts. Once ideology is visible autoethnography may mediate the effects of dominant discourses by making a modest form of private resistance possible. As a performance of critical and effective history, I explore the limits of consciously resisting institutionalised power by reflecting on how discourses of tea and social theory intersect in my autoethnographic account of tea experiences. I begin by locating my subjectivity in tea. After outlining how tea is useful to me in psychological, domestic and professional contexts, I survey autoethnographic writing and critical forms of textual analysis. Given that traditions of textual analysis set limits to what can be comprehended, I note that considerations of the role of subjectivity are sometimes absent from several modes of textual analysis. I contend that more delicate forms of textual analysis are possible when multiple forms of subjectivity are explicitly addressed. Subjectivity is emphasised as I move between performances of being a cultural insider of tea subculture and an ethnic and linguistic outsider of daily life in Japan when I examine the connections linking tea anecdotes, film narratives, individual tales and national myths. From the position of tea culture insider and consumer of social theory I examine the relationship between national culture and individual subjectivity. I identify internal contradictions in tea transmission practices and consider how tea pedagogy and its cult of personality are addressed in tea films. The thesis concludes by considering the utility of identities in a global economy and comment on recent theories addressing the ethical self and social practices. It is on this basis that I claim the readings advanced in the earlier chapters map the pleasures and limits of employing autoethnography as a form of private resistance against the dominant discourses of tea, nation, and leisure.

Lunchroom to boardroom : an audio digitization project

The University of Queensland Cybrary in partnership with the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC), has created a searchable, web based digital oral history resource, based on a collection of stories of women involved in the Queensland Labor movement. A Trades and Labour Council of Queensland oral history collection was used to develop a framework for retrieval of audio materials on the web. A system for linking digitized media files to indexes created from transcripts (Meggie) has been developed. This allows the media file itself to be searched via key words. A trial was conducted and work is now proceeding on completing the collection. The final product will be made available via the Library's web site. The process followed, the choices made, the problems overcome, and the results achieved, will be outlined.

Wootz steel project by electron backscatter diffraction

The data is from an electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) study of the microstructure of high carbon ‘Wootz’ steel. The objective of the study is to infer an unknown thermomechanical history from observation and analysis of the final microstructure in various ancient artefacts (swords and tools), and then compare the findings with heat treatments of the ancient artefacts and modern attempts at duplication of the structure. Electron backscatter data reveals the orientation relationships between various phases in the material, particularly cementite and ferrite.

The Edinburgh companion to the history of democracy

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The 45 original essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. It sets a benchmark as the first collection on the history of democracy to present lesser known examples, such as those of ancient China, medieval Islam, colonial Africa or today's Burma, alongside more familiar cases like Athens, the English Parliament, the French Revolution and Women's Suffrage.

Undersdtanding where democracy comes from, and where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy's project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace and freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.