School of History and Politics

Spring 2008 Seminar Series
Where: 19:1003
Time: Fridays 10:30-12:00

15^th August
29^th August
12^th September
17^th October

All Welcome, BYO tea and coffee, cake provided. For further information contact: Dr Charles Hawksley x3087 charlesh@uow.edu.au

Abstracts

Friday 17th October

Title: The Special Sovereignty of Settler Collectives

Dr Lorenzo Veracini

Abstract:

Part of a wider project dedicated to a global analysis of settler colonial forms and their political traditions, this paper outlines a number of possible approaches to the analysis of settler colonial sovereignties. While settlers see themselves as founders of political orders, they also interpret their collective efforts in terms of an inherent sovereignty that travels with them and is ultimately, if not immediately, autonomous from the colonising metropole. Specifically, this paper argues that the idea that citizens of a polity residing in a colonial locale would enjoy special rights has a very long lineage and even precedes the inception of clearly recognisable colonial relationships. At the same time, this paper focuses on the corporate nature of settler political traditions and suggests that a settler sovereignty should not be seen as principally concerned with establishing state institutions. This paper finally suggests that settler colonial political traditions privilege isopolitical relations between colonising metropoles and settler colonial peripheries. This non-state corporatist self-constituting sovereignty is outlined here through time and space. Often operating on a different plane, settler understandings of a localised corporate sovereignty can coexist besides, within, and in conjunction with colonial, imperial, national and even postcolonial sovereignties.

Friday 12 September (Week 8)

Title: ‘Subaltern space, Australian commons
and the challenges of native title’

Dr Ben Maddison

Abstract:

During the 19th century millions of acres in Australia were officially designated as common land. While in theory Australia’s colonial commons were to operate as the closely-regulated, orderly spaces of British imagination, examination of their actual use shows that in practice they were far–less controlled than the colonial state envisaged. They were places of refuge and transgression for a range of the colonies’ marginal, disrespectable and disorderly ‘subaltern’ inhabitants: animal, vegetable and mineral. Their very subalternity also meant that commons were frequently spaces of conflict, tension and politics. Yet despite their tendential egalitarian character, Australian commons were also colonised spaces, and those who used them were colonial subjects. That this was the case highlights Eurocentric assumptions embedded within old and new commons historiography. On the other hand, because commons were a form of public, non-commodifed land, they preserved into the present some redemptive possibilities in terms of native title, as seen in the case of Wellington (NSW) Common, 1995-2007.

Friday 29th August (Week 6)

Title: “Lying tactics”

Professor Brian Martin

Abstract:

Lies are commonplace in personal as well as public life, yet are seldom analysed as tools in power struggles. Lies are central in perpetrating genocide, corruption and sexual harassment, among other arenas. Case studies reveal tactics of lying, methods of detecting lies and ways of preventing them.

Friday 15 August (Week 4)

Determinants in the history and transmission of ideas:
An exploration of the emergence of academic industrial relations
at the University of Sydney

Associate Professor Di Kelly

Abstract:

Although the practice and institutions of industrial relations have a long and important history in Australia, the emergence of coherent academic industrial relations scholarship is arguably not much more than fifty years old. Despite some important earlier precursors, the first coherent teaching and research programmes, as well as the first journal, came out of University of Sydney in the 1950s and 1960s. This paper explores the emergence of academic industrial relations and asks what factors most influenced that emergence – place, time or people – and what affected the nature of the discipline as it became more firmly established as a recognised academic field of study.

Autumn 2008 Seminar Series
Where: 19:1003
Time: 10:30-12:00

Friday 11 April (Week 6)

"New states, recognition and sovereignty: Kosovo, Timor Leste and Solomon Islands"

Charles Hawksley, Margaret Hanlon, Joakim Eidenfalk,

Dozens of breakaway and disputed territories in the world desire to be accepted as states, but most are not recognized. They may control their territory, have a permanent population and a legitimate government, but ultimately statehood depends largely on the politics of whether existing states accept it as part of the "club". Charles will address the recent declaration of independence by Kosovo, focusing on the international process of state recognition, the respective claims of Kosovo and Serbia, and why some European states are not keen to recognize Kosovo. Margaret will then discuss Australia's non-recognition of East Timor's claims for independence in 1974/75 and the subsequent recognition of Timor Leste from 1999. Whether Timor Leste or a future Kosovo, new states often require considerable international aid and military support, and Joakim will examine the Regional Assistance Mission Solomon Islands (RAMSI) to highlight some of the paradoxes of modern statehood.

Friday May 9 (Week 10)

Writing History: Doing Theory

Julia Martinez; Kylie Smith; Georgine Clarsen

Cultural historians, in declaring theory to be central to the historical enterprise, have precipitated a return to questions of theory in the history profession. But incorporating theory into our research and writing in ways that produce good, interesting, readable, publishable histories is not a simple matter. In this panel we will explore the ways that members of the panel and other historians that we admire have sought to produce theoretically informed historical writing.

Last reviewed: 3 September, 2008