Papers from Marrakech : a post-colonial reading of western women's travel writing in North Africa and the Middle East

This thesis takes the form of a collection of theoretical and fictional documents comprising a journal, letters and essays sent home to Australia by a woman travelling in Morocco. In different modes, these papers examine issues of colonialism, gender and desire in western women's travel writing about North Africa and the Middle East.

Missionary Albert Kruyt and colonial modernity in the Dutch East Indies

Intense debates emerged in the Dutch East Indies during the course of the third decade of the twentieth century concerning the role of missionaries in the development of the Outer Islands of the Indonesian archipelago. Ostensibly concerning “native welfare”, disagreement fundamentally reflected underlying fractures within the Dutch nation, projected through its “colonial mission” concerning the nature of modernity. While the main focus appeared to be a disagreement concerning the goals of mission and government agencies, it would be too simplistic to characterise the debate as one between adherents of a secular versus a religious world view. This paper considers the question of “missions and modernity” in the context of this debate about “native development” in the Dutch East Indies through the prism of the Poso mission in Central Sulawesi, headed by missionary Albert Kruyt, one of the foremost missionaries of his day.

The colonial museum and UNESCO in the Asia-Pacific region

This thesis is an account of the role of UNESCO in promoting museology in the Asia-Pacific region after World War II. It shows how the strategy to advance cross-cultural mutual understanding through museum programmes built upon the British colonial museum system and facilitated new professional networks.

From colonial superstition to the hairyman : Aboriginality and the politics of race

This is an examination of the changing representation of Aboriginality with particular focus on the characterization of Indigenous protagonists, in three twentieth century Australian narratives from the legend genre. The colonial and assimilationist discourses which inform the earlier narratives are contrasted with a recent radical alternative.

The coming republic : citizenship and the public sphere in post-colonial Australia

The 'coming republic' (Home, 1992) is a reference point in a public discourse about Australian citizenship and national identity. An analysis of this debate raises questions about the degree to which the mass media, as the site of a contemporary public sphere, facilitates democratic change and promotes or demotes the various interests competing for scarce speaking positions. This paper uses the Australian experience to question the ideologies that support the media as marketplace, and suggests the need for an alternative to liberal-democratic and pluralist approaches to theorising the public sphere.

Gender inequality and education : changing local/global relations in a ‘post colonial’ world and the implications for feminist research

This article explores the relationship between education reform and gender equity, both within and between nation states. Utilising feminist critical policy analysis and post-colonial theory, it examines how education reform over the past decade has impacted on gender equity, and how educational reform is itself gendered. It considers the nature of gender restructuring; maps significant shifts in gender equity policy in the wider context of educational and social inequality debates; and through an analysis of recent research on gender identity, schooling and leadership argues that gender can no longer be privileged when identifying and responding to educational inequality. Key assumptions underpinning how social change and education reform delivers equity are questioned, concluding with feminist theorising about how social justice may inform equity policy and practice in culturally diverse educational contexts.

Post-colonial states, ethnic minorities and separatist conflicts : case studies from Southeast and South Asia

Post-colonial states in the Asian region have frequently been subject to political tensions derived from their multi-ethnic make-up and, what some have argued to be, the failure of states to adequately represent the interests of their ethnic minorities. This article will look at examples of where states in Asia have failed to adequately represent or otherwise incorporate their ethnic minorities as full and equal citizens. It also considers the range of responses to such perceived or actual state failure in adequately incorporating all citizens, including inter-ethnic and racial violence and separatist conflict. The article will conclude by considering conceptual and actual models of state organization intended to resolve racial and ethnic tensions in the Asian region.

The case of children's literature : colonial or anti-colonial?

Since Jacqueline Rose published The Case of Peter Pan in 1984, scholars in the field of children’s literature have taken up a rhetorical stance which treats child readers as colonised, and children’s books as a colonising site. This article takes issue with Rose’s rhetoric of colonisation and its deployment by scholars, arguing that it is tainted by logical and ethical flaws. Rather, children’s literature can be a site of decolonisation which revisions the hierarchies of value promoted through colonisation and its aftermath by adopting what Bill Ashcroft refers to as tactics of interpolation. To illustrate how decolonising strategies work in children’s texts, the article considers several alphabet books by Indigenous author-illustrators from Canada and Australia, arguing that these texts for very young children interpolate colonial discourses by valorising minority languages and by attributing to English words meanings produced within Indigenous cultures.