Saturday Morning Musings - reflections on urban development and life style 1

I suppose it's inevitable but not universal that we become more reflective as we grow older. There is more to reflect on, good and bad, The iceberg under the present becomes just so much larger, the future shrinks. 

Is this increased reflection a good thing? I do wonder some times. I know some who have a unique capacity to live in the present, to enjoy what they have even if that is much reduced. Others have the capacity to reinvent themselves, to move forward in new directions.  In both cases, reflection may be put aside unless it adds value to the present.For still others, reflections on the past bring a sense of loss, loss of friends and loved ones, of lost opportunities, even guilt over past mistakes. This may lead to a sense of grievance, a feeling that life and especially people have let them down.

I'm not sure which group I fall into. I have elements of them all. I do know that I have become more reflective and I'm not sure that's such a good thing. How do I use that reflection in a positive way?

This brief meander was triggered this morning by an apparently unrelated event. I have long been fascinated by the dynamic elements in the patterns of human life. This morning there was a radio program  on the fifteen minute city. This included an interview with Carlos Moreno who promoted the concept. As you will see from linked Conversation article, the whole concept has somehow been caught up in those terminally boring culture war debates between right and left.  The article is written from something of a left perspective. Those sceptical of the concept are concerned that it will become another weapon in the armoury of those who wish to impose particular life styles on people for their own good and to preserve the environment. 

I can see why they might feel that, but it's really beside the point. It's quite possible to have an objective discussion on the pluses and minuses of a concept or approach including experience in practice without becoming too involved in possibly related but peripheral arguments. Mixing metaphors, there is little value in chasing a fine red herring down a rabbit hole. Unless, of course. you wish to use the smell to distract! 

This morning's radio discussion started reflections along two lines. 

Now that I am back in Armidale I have become much involved in thinking about life in this little city that is again my home. I walk or drive the streets and surrounding countryside, bike riding is a bit beyond me at the moment, looking at the changing pattern of life. I read the local media and attend activities and functions. And where I can, I talk to people both face to face and on-line.This is a fascinating place undergoing change, one with a unique lifestyle. What does this tell us about the process of urban, community and social development? My argument is that it is a microcosm, a case study, of the broader discussions usually dominated by the metros.  

The second line of reflection lay in a simple question; how did I come to be so interested in this area? What have I learned? How did I learn it? This question is a little self-indulgent. You must bear with me here.

Over coming weeks I will follow these two lines through, thus (hopefully) getting me back into writing mode.    

Falling out of the zeitgeist

I have often called myself a social analyst and indeed I am. I am also an historian. Over time, my focus has shifted from economic, policy and social analysis to the more historical. That's actually become a bit of a problem.

As a social analyst, I need to be in touch with the current. I have used various techniques to try to achieve this including talking to people, monitoring economic and other statistical data and reading widely including both current media and other people's research and analysis.  I also use other social media including Facebook and Twitter.

Just recently I realised  how badly out of touch I had become. I was listening to an ABC Radio National Program called Stop Everything presented by Beverley Wang and Benjamin Law. The program bills itself in this way: tune in for a savvy, critical look at pop culture and what's in the zeitgeist. Join our panellists each week for a discussion about what they’re reading, watching and listening to.

I have often found the program mildly annoying because the presenters' emphasis on the need for diversity seems really to mean anyone but me, an older heterosexual white guy. I never thought of myself as a "white guy" until quite recently when we became such a target for criticism. Now I have become a racial stereotype. Increasingly, I didn't properly understand what on earth they were talking about in particular segments. Yes, I could understand the words and indeed some of the tropes, Youngest does give me a window into their world, but the detail meant nothing to me.

Around five years ago, my old TV broke down. I was broke at the time and could not afford to replace it.. I decided that watching TV was a bit of a waste of time when I should be reading or writing, that if I wanted to watch a TV program I could look at it on the computer. That decision has had all sorts of side-effects.

I largely stopped using the lounge room. I used to go in there to watch TV some times for a break, sitting comfortably on the lounge. I used to watch TV while ironing or tidying, including sorting books. That stopped. I spent more time at my computer, adding to the curve in my back since I was now watching some TV there in addition to my other computer viewing. And with my size screen you have to sit to watch, you can't wander unless it's a podcast. Most importantly,  I got out of touch.

To explain this, consider Game of Thrones. I have never seen it. Indeed, I have rarely seen Netflix, never Stan. I am not going to subscribe to a streaming service when I have to watch it on my computer at my desk. Equally importantly, I stopped dipping in and out of TV programs in the way that I used to. This is quite important, for that was the way I identified new things, things I might want to watch.

It's not all bad. I have become a significant fan of YouTube even watching the ads! There are some good ones with high production values. I also mine the ABC and SBS sites for specific things I might want to watch. But these choices are all based on my current interests. My knowledge of things such as the prehistoric past has expanded, as has my knowledge of past aspects of Australian culture. However, my knowledge of the current has greatly diminished. I know nothing of most current programs. Yes, I could browse and check, perhaps I should, but I already spend far too much time stuck in front of my computer.

I have, it appears, dropped almost entirely out of the current zeitgeist. Should I rejoin, or should I just accept my new role as a boring old white guy, leaving social analysis to others more in tune? Perhaps not, because I have increasingly come to think of my research and writing as equivalent to an archaeological rescue dig seeking to preserve and present aspects of history, society and culture before they are submerged by the new cultural and historical high-rises. That's not a bad aim.

Still, I do want a new TV.. I hate being out of touch. I miss just sitting on the couch and watching TV. And I think that it helps to know the "enemy." I don't begrudge Beverley and Benjamin their views, nor do I think that those views are evidence of "progressive" bias within the ABC.

To my mind, my cultural warrior friends on the right miss the point in responding because they present stereotypes to match stereotypes. Both right and left go for the big hit, the re-assertion of views that will appeal to their own base and get the other side riled.

Twitter has not helped here because of the way that it has trivialised discussion. I may be unfair, but it seems to me that simply retweeting every story that agrees with your position, sometimes adding divine right pronouncements, is not an aid to discussion. Worse, the time spent is time taken away from substantive discussion that could actually advance the causes in question or, at least, ensure that issues are clarified. The sugar hit of instant response has replaced the hard thought that is really required to develop and present argument.

We live in a cluttered world. How we respond to that is a matter of individual choice. For my part, I will keep trying to make a difference on matters that are important to me, accepting that I may be out of tune with the times. That may sound pretentious, but it is all that I can do, regardless of whatever the current zeitgeists may be.

I ma still going to buy a new TV though!

Saturday Morning Musings - Return of Print

On the way home from lunch, I bought a copy of the Australian. I was barely a quarter of the way through before I left the bus.

Each morning I scan the news across across half a dozen outlets. I can do that in half an hour. I have decided to start buying print papers again.

At Christmas, I went book shopping as I do. My main bookshop was totally crowded. In that shopping center another bookshop has opened. At Eastgardens Pagewood a bookshop has opened. It's not very good, but it's the first for several years.

Globally and in Australia, Buzzfeed is retrenching staff.  In Northern NSW,  Fairfax Regional Media has introduced pay walls on main papers allowing you to access just three stories a month. I am not paid for my history columns, but I did have access to the e-edition of the paper. Then the paper began running my stories in the on-line edition, usually appearing well before the Wednesday Express Extra, the print version for my columns and often on the on-line front page. Then as part of the changes, I lost access to the e-edition and could not access my stories on-line

The limit is three on story access is three. I publish four and also want to check what I have published so I am rather stuffed. I complained to my editor, but there appears to be nothing he can do. He cannot even give me personal on-line access even though a subscription was part of the original deal. He also said that out-of -towners who wanted to read the columns would be okay because they could access three columns without charge.

This view suffers from two problems. Out-of-towners like to read more than three stories when they visit and, in any case, they can't read all my stories because there are more than three in a month. So I can't really promote the columns in the paper. That has to wait until they are on-line on my history blog.

Perhaps the most important problem in all this is the Fairfax pay rule has turned much of Northern NSW, my broader New England, into a news' black-hole so far as those living outside New England are concerned. Note that the News' papers brought from APN also have pay walls.We have an entire area of Australia that has largely become a news black-hole not just for those living outside the area but also for those within who live outside or are interested in more than their immediate area. And that's most.

I will return to this issue later. For the moment, I want to come back to my headline.

The question of on-line v print is not an either or, but one of balance and promotion. In this mix, print is coming back. let me give an example. D E Stevenson's books appeal to a niche. When we just had print, they dropped out of publication. Now, most are back in e-editions that can justify small runs. But as e-publishing has grown, so has print publishing for those who like the physical product. The totality of e and print means that almost all of her books are, once again, available to readers.

     

Saturday Morning Musings - reflections triggered by Hey Jude

In a comment on last week's Monday Forum, kvd referred me to Tim de Lisle's essay in the Guardian, Nana na naaa! How Hey Jude became our favourite Beatles song. It's a well written piece that attracted a large comment stream, 1548 as I write. Some agreed, many others did not listing their favourite Beatle songs in order. Some attacked the Beatles, including a few lone defenders of classical music!

I do remember Hey Jude coming out, but not really the exact year. Looking it up, it was 1968, roughly when I thought.

One of the difficulties of growing older is that dates tend to blur, along with the detail of events. I am not talking about the aging process as such, although that can happen. It's rather that the present is always more intense, an intensity lost as that present recedes further into the past. The more presents there have been, the lower the intensity of preceding presents, the more memory is lost. Certain things stand out like increasingly distant mountains, but the detail and often accuracy is gone.

This process is a good thing. How can people heal from tragedy or trauma if the details remain fixed in their memory carrying the same emotional intensity? We need distance to put things in perspective. We need new experiences with new emotions. Healing may not be perfect, scars may remain, but the process allows us to move forward.

I am reminded of all this from time to time because I write so much history, including stories from the relatively recent past. My last Armidale Express column began:

Life can sometimes become too much. On November 18, 1920, William Ogilvie was found lying on his bed at Sydney’s Usher’s Hotel with a bullet wound in his temple, a revolver clasped in his right hand. He was only 58.   

Near his body were found a letter to his solicitor and telegrams to his wife and children. 

“Good-bye, my darling wife,” one telegram read, “I shall never see you alive again. I have written you to Ilparran today, explaining everything. Fondest love, my dearest dear.”      

I felt sad reading the material on his death because here was a man with a loving family, without money worries, for whom it had become just all too much. Yes, he appears to have been drinking too much, this is often a feature in such cases, but this is not a sufficient explanation. Knowing something about he and his broader family, I can surmise far more than I could put in 500 words.

I think it goes back to the decision to send him away to school in England at an early age, separating him from home including his grandmother for whom he seems to have been a favourite. Then after those years in England came his father's decision after William completed Oxford to send him back to Australia to start preparing to take over Yulgilbar. William seems to have been happy in England and close to his brother who was also living there.

Relationships with fathers are often complex, Edward Ogilvie was becoming increasingly irascible and authoritarian. His daughters, poet Robert Browning's beloved octet, would shortly escape into marriage. His brother would remain in England. For William's part, he was sent back to a country he now barely knew to learn his trade from a station manger who continued to live in the big house, who excluded him. When William raised objections and concerns with his father about the way the manager was treating family interests, he was ignored.

Later, his father would be forced to take action, to put aside his extended idyll in Europe and especially Florence, a city Edward had fallen in love with, to return to stabilise the family fortunes. By then, the break between William and his father had become permanent. Now well-off in his own right, it seems that William was left without a proper anchor or degree of purpose.

All this is surmise. although (I think) reasonable surmise. What I had not expected is that the column would draw comments from people whose own fathers had committed suicide, where the wounds were still raw. That past was still very present.

While the passage of time does lead to sometimes necessary blurring, there are times when you would like to remember. Hey Jude is a case in point, That period of my life once so bright, so clearly delineated in bright light, has become vague. But this is where the historian comes in!

Following kvd's comment, I went back checking dates. I find that if I remember something to which I can attach a date, it becomes easier to remember and check events and feelings surrounding that. It was something of a trip down nostalgia lane, Maybe I will write something on that. But not today!
 

What is a literary historian?

In a brief discussion in comments on Tony Hughes-D'Aeth and Friday essay: Dark Emu and the blindness of Australian agriculture: a response (17 June 2018), marcellous talked about Tony D'Aeth as a literary historian. He is formally described in this way in The Conversation:

Tony Hughes-d'Aeth is a lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia, where he teaches and researches in the fields of Australian literary studies and cultural history, and contemporary and world literature. His latest book is Like Nothing on this Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt (UWAP, 2017).

Both my piece and the discussion continue to raise issues in my mind that relate to my primary writing task, a history of New England. I will deal with those in a post on my history blog. Here I briefly want to expose a confusion in my own mind that can be presented in this way: what, exactly, is a literary historian?

I had thought that a literary historian was one who studied the history of literature. This included studies of literature about a particular topic. So a literary history of the Western Australian wheatbelt was a study of literature about or in some way linked to the wheat belt. I now realised that in thinking about this there was already a confusion in my mind between the use of literary sources to study the history of the wheatbelt as compared to a study of literature about or connected in some way with the wheatbelt. These are two very different things.

I can illustrate this further using a current writing task as an example, one I referred to in an earlier post, Bogged down in growing up in New England..This story describes growing up on the New England Tablelands in the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of five people, four of whom described their experiences in book form, the fifth had his experiences recorded by others. Is this story a study of childhood, a literary history, a cultural history or some combination of the three? I am struggling to strike the right balance.

Tony introduces a third variable into the mix, that of the environment as occupying centre stage in historiography. This introduces a new complexity, for it gives us multiple dimensions: history of area as evidenced by literature, the literary history of regions, the history of changing attitudes to the environment as evidenced through literature and the literary history of certain types of writing. These things overlap, but are not quite the same.

Marcellous introduced a further element by suggesting that Tony was a bit of a post-modernist type. As I confessed to marcellous, I had to look post-modernist up to refresh my memory for it largely passed me by. This led me to this abstract of chapter 2 of Jonathan Culler's Barthes: A Very Short Introduction entitled literary historian. Barthes was an eminent French scholar.

‘Literary historian’ explores why Barthes was interested in history. By showing when and how various practices came into being, historical study works to demystify the ideology of a culture, exposing its assumptions as ideology. Barthes values history for the strangeness of other epochs and what they can teach us about the present. Moreover, history is useful because it can provide a story for making the present intelligible. All writing contains signs that indicate a social mode, a relation to society, and Barthes's first book Le Degré zéro is a brief history of these ‘signs of literature’.

Digging a little further, I found myself in the world of cultural studies and literary theory. I was reminded of my time back full time at University in 1981 and 1982  when I felt that I should refresh myself on the changes that had taken place in the study of history and also sociology. For two weeks I sat there and just sped read. I found some useful stuff - semiotics is an example, something that actually links to yesterday's post -  but at the end of two weeks I felt that if I met one more theorist I might do serious damage. In retrospect, that was probably a most efficacious inoculation against post-modernism!

Writing in 1994, Wendell Harris asked "What is 'Literary' History?" His core point was that the term had acquired so many meanings that clarity required that the meaning being applied should always be specified.to avoid confusion. I can see his point.  

Ramana on Hinglish and Indian languages

It's been a while, well a very long while, since I did one of my wanders around the blogosphere. My focuses have taken me in a different directions. It's time to resume. I did enjoy those wanders and the way they sparked new thoughts and now I'm feeling a little stale. Sort of like a Sao that's gone off! You know, or at least Australians would, a bit soggy and not very tasty!

Today's post is triggered by a post by Ramana, Language In India that looks at the complexities in countries with multiple languages including the rise of .Hinglish, a combination of Hindi and English. "You can also have Tamlish for Tamil and English, Maratish for Marathi and English and so on and so forth." So on and so forth is very Indian English, by the way.

I had forgotten how complex the Indian language scene is.with so many major local languages. Ramana talks about the difficulties of communication within a firm and between the field when the official language is English. I imagine similar problems would arise with other languages unless the firm dealt just with one language area. English has, I think, survived as an official language because other language groups are so fearful of Hindi language domination. The number of English first language speakers is small, but in terms of total speakers English is second after Hindi.

Language is a funny thing because its so associated with identity and culture. Eldest works for a large Danish multinational, the biggest company in Denmark. The official internal language is English. Most Danes speak English. I think that it's compulsory at school, yet if you want to become a Danish citizen you have to be able to speak Danish. Australia is going down the same route in a way that makes many of us uncomfortable.    

Ramana is sensibly relaxed and practical on these issues as am I.

Niko Ghika, John Craxton, and Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor and the allure of Greece - British Museum exhibition

John Craxton, Still life with three sailors 1980-1985 (detail) Tempera on canvass

I am still bogged down with other writing. Hopefully that is easing.

Interesting piece in Artdaily 21 March 2018, Exhibition explores the influence of Greece on the lives and work of three artists on a new exhibition at the British Museum this European spring. ,
Charmed lives in Greece: Ghika, Craxton, Leigh Fermor explores the influence of modern Greece on the lives and work of three influential artists, the Greek painter Niko Ghika, British painter John Craxton, and British writer Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor. The three met at the end of the Second World War and became enduring friends who all made their homes in Greece. The show brings together their artworks, photographs, letters and personal possessions in the UK for the first time.

It sounds like an interesting show about interesting subjects. I have given you the links to the Artdaily piece above and then the Wikipedia links to each of the three. If you are interested, I suggest you start with Artdaily and then go to the Wikipedia entries. From there, you can easily sidetrack into multiple directions!

 I have wondered before about the enduring love for Greece and the Greek Islands especially for writers and artists. In popular fiction, for example, Mary Stewart's thrillers The Moon-Spinners and My Brother Michael. The last includes a description of a hostel at Delphi occupied by archaeologists, artists and writers. The Australian writers George Johnson and Charmian Clift lived on the Greek island of Hydra for several years attracted by the low prices and other writers and artists. Johnson's Clean Straw for Nothing tells the story of a journalist (David Meredith) who relocates to a Greek island, but fails to find the answers he seeks after even 13 years.  

From my own trip, cheap wine, cheap cigarettes, cheap food, cheap rent, nice views and weather all provide  a possible answer. It's more than that, of course, for the romantic ideal of Greece is deeply entrenched in Western thinking.

Belatedly seeing Black Panther - a real romp

This post is also the Monday Forum post

Eldest has been back in Australia on a short visit so we went to the pictures Wednesday afternoon. She wanted to see The Post. I was happy with that, but made the mistake of saying that I had seen it before. That was a no-no. It had to be a film I hadn't seen before, so I nominated Black Panther.

As an aside, she had seen it but didn't tell me. Maybe just as well, because otherwise it would have been The Post.   That wouldn't have been bad, I really liked the movie, but I did enjoy Black Panther.

I knew it was a Marvell film. I could hardly not given youngest's interests! This meant that I broadly knew what to expect. I knew that it had been very successful at the box office, adding to Disney's now overflowing coffers. I did not know about all the hype surrounding the movie as a somehow significant "black" film.

I'm glad I didn't because I came to the film without preconceptions, treating it just as a spectacle and story. Had I known, I might have watched it differently; the message significance would have stood between me and the story.

As you might expect, the visual effects in the film are spectacular, the pace fast, sufficiently fast to conceal the inevitable plot weaknesses. The film also plays to various tropes

The idea of a hidden African kingdom dates back to the days of  European exploration when Africa was still an unknown continent to European eyes. King Solomon's Mines is an example. The broader idea of hidden kingdom or organisation that people search for is exemplified by the mysterious Second Foundation in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.

The meld between traditional African images and those modified by the Kingdom's history is instantly familiar in visual terms, while the good v evil battles are part of the Marvell trope as well as familiar to anyone who reads fantasy and especially young adult fantasy  Then, too, the film incorporates (pinches?) specific tropes/memes/images that will be instantly recognisable from car chases to Q in the James Bond series. Here I found myself musing on just how much fun the production team must have had in thinking about this.

This is not a serious film, but it is fun. If you haven't seen it, I suggest that you do so!  

Confusions over political correctness

This, the first of a series of short follow up posts I foreshadowed in Monday Forum - is modern political discourse just sound and fury signifying nothing?, looks at political correctness. It is a term I have used. Broadly, I know what I mean, but it is a confusing term that adds to the sound and fury that that marks today’s public discourse, a sound and fury that distracts from real discussion. Political correctness or PC has become a symbol of dividing views, one used to lambaste opponents.

This first cartoon shows one side’s view on the debate.

The Wikipedia article on political correctness provides a reasonably good overview of the history the term. Modern political usage is quite new, dating back to the 1990s. But what is political correctness? 

To try to clarify this, I have gathered together a number of definitions:

Definitions

Wikipedia: the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.

Merriam Webster: conforming to a belief that language and practices which could offend political sensibilities (as in matters of sex or race) should be eliminated.

Cambridge: Someone who is politically correct believes that language and actions that could be offensive to others, especially those relating to sex and race, should be avoided. A politically correct word or expression is used instead of another one to avoid being offensive:

Collins politically correct in British: demonstrating progressive ideals, especially by avoiding vocabulary that is considered offensive, discriminatory, or judgmental, especially  concerning race and gender

Collins politically correct in American: conforming or adhering to what is regarded as orthodox liberal opinion on matters of sexuality, race, etc.: usually used disparagingly to connote dogmatism, excessive sensitivity to minority causes, etc.

Oxford: The avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.

Dictionary.com: marked by or adhering to a typically progressive orthodoxy on issues involving especially ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or ecology:

This cartoon shows a second view of the PC debate.

Discussion

If you look at these various definitions, you can see what a minefield political correctness is. The first cartoon shows a left perspective, the second one from the right. 

As I said earlier, PC has become a symbol that marks a variety of underlying divides, The term has been especially helpful to the right because they have been able to attach a variety of concerns to it linked to social, cultural and economic change, to shifting power structures in society. The left has responded in turn, with both sides using stereotypes. The result is battle marked by heat, but very little content. 

This is a pity, for there are genuine issues in the debate that need to be explored in their own right. I will look at some of these as part of this series.  

Can English as an EU language survive Brexit ?

Brexit was one of the topics we discussed in the last Monday Forum.

As a piece in Nature points out, EU agencies based in the UK will now need to move. One such is the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Currently in London, the EMA assesses new medicines for suitability to enter the European market. But where should it go to?

There is more at stake than the prestige of being the headquarters of a major European institution. The EMA brings with it some 900 staff and holds an average of 10 meetings a week, which it claims draw 65,000 visitors a year, all of whom need somewhere to sleep and eat. So countries are lining up.

The Nature piece links the shift to a second question, the role of  English as an official EU language. The EU presently has 24 official and working languages, a real tower of Babel. The first official language policy of what was then the European Community identified Dutch, French, German, and Italian as the official working languages of the EU. Since then, other languages have been steadily added.

As I understand it, each EU country can nominate one official language. English is an official language because it has been nominated by the UK. The two other predominantly English speaking member states, Malta and Ireland, have nominated Maltese and Irish (Gaelic) respectively. This means that under current rules, English will cease to be an official EU language once the UK exits.

The apparent linkage between EMA and language policy appears to be that English is EMA's current working language. This may need to be phased out once English ceases to be an official language. The Nature article wonders if Ireland or Malta might be prepared to alter their official language nomination to English to obtain EMA for their countries. Probably not is the conclusion.

I hadn't thought of the impact of Brexit on the role of English in the EU until I read the Nature article. Language policy within the EU is a sensitive issue because of the way language interacts with national and ethnic divides.

English is currently the most common EU lingua franca. No doubt this will continue in commercial terms. However, there is likely to be some diminution in the use of English in an official sense, opening possibilities for other languages to expand their reach.  .

Is that Pepsi ad that bad?

Sometimes I think that we have all become just too precious and indeed bigoted. I am inclined to want to present counter views, but have learned on progressive topics in particular to be very careful for fear of getting my head bitten off.

Gay marriage is an example. I am on the public record, here and elsewhere, as supporting it. Yet when I very gently try to present the arguments against in conversation, my head disappears from my shoulders. You can see something of the same process in the campus disputes over who should be allowed to speak, to present views that may be counter (or may be seen to be counter) to the prevailing orthodoxy within some groups.

A case in point is the latest Pepsi ad. The wave of protest against the ad seems to fit with what I see as growing intolerance, the need to conform with what is seen as correct.    

With the exception of one scene, it's not a bad ad. Indeed, it is actually a quite effective presentation of multiculturalism. Yes, it attempts to identify Pepsi with protest and modern younger views, it is (to use a modern word I hate) appropriating a meme, but it also legitimizes the things that it presents.

The ad follows. What do you think? Perhaps its just another case of me being out of touch?

Sunday Essay - deaths of cartoonists Murray Ball and Bill Leak, the WA election results

I was saddened to hear of the death of New Zealand cartoonist Murray Ball, the creator of Footrot Flats. I really enjoyed Footrot Flats. As a part Kiwi with New Zealand farm connections I knew enough to understand the local allusions, More importantly, the characters were just fun.

I spent Saturday night watching the West Australian election count. That made for a very late night given the three hour time difference. Since it seemed pretty clear that the Barnett Government would lose the election, the three things that I focused on were the likely scale of the defeat, the size of the One Nation vote and the fate of the WA National Party.

It quickly became clear that a swing, a big one, was on, so my focus shifted to the other two.

Much has been written about the decline in the One Nation vote. If you exclude the lower house seats where One Nation did not contest, the One Nation vote would appear to be around the number suggested by the polls, a bit over 8%, with a higher vote in regional areas, lower in Perth Metropolitan. So well down on the peak poll forecasts, but around the final average poll numbers.

The Liberal decision to preference One Nation in the Upper House in return for One Nation preferences in the lower house clearly backfired. The scale of the backfire is subject to debate, but when you have both Liberals and Ms Hanson herself saying that it was a mistake that cost votes, I'm inclined to go with the professionals.

In practical terms, it looks to have delivered One Nation 1-2 upper house seats, reducing the Nationals by one.to four seats.  In the lower house, it looks as though it may transfer the previously National held seat of Kalgoorlie to the Liberals, although results here are still uncertain.

The results in National Leader Brendon Grylls's seat of Pilbara are too close to call, although it looks as though he will lose the seat to Labor  Here a special factor was in play, Gryll's proposals to increase mining royalties on Rio Tinto and BHP.

In this Footrot Flat cartoon, Dog plays the role of Grylls while you need to dress the two farmers in high vis clothing.

BHP and Rio Tinto are reported to have spent more than $2 million in anti-National advertising, while BHP reportedly tried to encourage its staff in the Pilbara to vote against Grylls. From their viewpoint, it was a relatively small (and successful) investment to avoid a bigger impost.

Listening to election night commentary from both Liberal and Labor spokesmen, they were both men, on the royalty issue, both said that Gryll's proposal was essentially silly because all it would do is to reduce WA's share of the GST. If you think about it, and its correct, that's a dreadful commentary on current fiscal arrangements within the federation, something that Premier Barnett rightly campaigned on. What's the point on taking fiscal action at state level if all that happens is a consequent fiscal hit at another level?  

The sudden death of another cartoonist, Australian Bill Leak, bookends this short post.

Leak was always idiosyncratic, attracting controversy and invective.Towards the end of his life, this seems to have weighed  on him.

Even at the end, he was still campaigning against what he saw as the dead hand of political correctness.

Both Australia and New Zealand have been very lucky in their political cartoonists over a very long period. Often controversial, they have presented political and social issues back to us in ways that make us pause. The pictures they present are something like those distorting mirrors that used to be popular at sideshows and amusement arcades, but they encourage us to look in new ways and, sometimes, just to share the fun.

This Sunday post will also act as tomorrow's Monday Forum. As always, go in whatever direction you like.

Feminism, prejudice and fear: the views of Kasey Edwards

I hadn't heard of Kasey Edwards. Investigating (here, here), I find that she is a feminist writer and columnist who specialises in provocation. Well, her piece in the Canberra Times Why I won't let any male babysit my children certainly provoked me!

"When our first daughter was born my husband and I made a family rule: no man would ever babysit our children. No exceptions. This includes male relatives and friends and even extracurricular and holiday programs, such as basketball camp, where men can have unrestricted and unsupervised access to children. 

Eight years, and another daughter later, we have not wavered on this decision. 

Group slumber parties are also out. When there is a group of excited children it is far too easy for one of them to be lured away by a father or older brother without being noticed. 

When my daughter goes on play dates I make sure that she will be supervised by a woman at all times. So far she has only slept at one friend's house."

To support this position, she quotes various statistics on the sexual abuse of children.

From time to time I have written here about the issues and difficulties that can arise when the father takes on the primary child care role. This includes suspicions held by the mothers of school friends, suspicions that have increased with time because of growing fears about pedophilia. While I don't regret the experience, I have many happy memories, I would hesitate now to recommend the course to others without at least full recognition of the costs involved, together with a strategy for managing them.

In another piece, School holidays are here. Mothers, get to work, Ms Edwards complains bitterly about the failure of men to step up the child-care plate during holidays. Again a quote from the start of the piece to give you a feel:

The first year it happened, I was in shock. Now I’m just pissed off. 

Before my daughter started school, I had no idea that school-aged children had 12 weeks of school holidays every year. TWELVE, people! And some of the private schools have 17 weeks, which just goes to show that you can pay more and get less. 

It was just too crazy to even contemplate. Who’s supposed to look after all these children for almost one quarter of every year? 

Oh, that’s right. Mothers.

Or later:

Don’t get me wrong. I love my daughters and enjoy spending time with them. Although, I’d be lying if I suggested that the idea of entertaining a seven year old for 42 days in a row doesn’t make me feel a little overwhelmed. Gone are the days of kicking the kids out of the house after breakfast and not seeing them again until dinner time. And sitting them down in front of a TV or iPad for hours on end is just a recipe for mother guilt. 

But this isn’t an issue about quality time spent with children. It’s an issue about the inequity of who does the caring. It’s about the invisibility of said caring work and the impact that has on women’s careers, aspirations and wellbeing.

Ms Edwards also notes:

Part of the problem with our schooling system lies in outdated assumptions. From volunteering expectations, school meetings in the middle of the day and school holidays, women’s time is not regarded as valuable. Too often it’s simply assumed that we’re all just sitting around idly waiting for the school to give us something to do between other domestic and caring responsibilities. 

The burden of school holiday care falls almost entirely on the shoulders of mothers. The short-term consequences are stress, frustration and financial inequality. But the long-term consequences, over 13 years of a child’s school life, can be devastating to a woman’s financial security and wellbeing. This is an inequality rooted at the heart of family life and all the equal opportunity legislation in the world will not solve it.

School holidays can indeed be demanding and I've been through the full thirteen year cycle with two girls plus university. There is daycare or camps or sporting activities. There are kids coming round or going to friend's places. There are the visits to parks, sleep-overs. The pattern changes over time as the children grow older, moving into secondary school and university, progressively achieving autonomy. For many primary child carers, there is actually a feeling of loss at the end as the routines that have been such an important part of life disappear. At least, I found this.  

In all this, responsibilities do need to be shared as they were in my case within and indeed between families. Mind you, Ms Edward's kids would not have been able to participate fully in this process with my kids, given that the ground rules laid down effectively preclude fathers in the absence of a female. In this context, when I first read the Canberra Times piece and before I investigated, I thought that Ms Edwards must be a stay at home mum or at least working from home since that was the only way she could make the ground rules work.

I do agree with Ms Edwards about the out-dated assumptions built into the school system, although I came at this from a different perspective. Whereas Ms Edwards has, I think, an institutional focus, my problem lay in the way that so many of the arrangements, informal as well as formal, were geared to and dominated by mothers, creating difficulties for male participation.

Finally, in writing I have tried from time to time to separate and discuss the various issues involved in increased male roles in shared parenting into those common to both parents, those that are especially female, those that are especially male. Change requires each group to be addressed.

In this context and despite her feminist proclamations, Ms Edwards approach as outlined in the Canberra Times  simply reinforces one of the barriers to increased male participation. I was left feeling sorry for her daughters. Only one sleep-over in eight years for eldest? Without sensible relaxation of the rules, this can only get worse with time.    


  

Saturday Morning Musings - the dark side of the Belle Époque

I have always liked Aubrey Beardsley's art work. This is a 1893 piece, The Climax, based on the story of Salome and John the Baptist. My liking dates from a particular period in my life that has become enshrouded in a certain nostalgia, if with an equal recognition of  just how young we all were!

I mention this now because of a very interesting BBC article by Fisun Güner, The dark side of the Belle Époque. The Belle Époque period of Western European history is usually dated from the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 to the start of World War. The period was named in retrospect, a golden age highlighted by and ended by the slaughter in the trenches.

While it was a golden age, Güner draws out its darker side characterised by some of the art of Fin de siècle, a French term that means the end of the century. There was a feeling of decadence, of despair, of things not right.  For some, things had to be torn down to be rebuilt,.for others, social order had to be preserved. For most, there was the excitement of the new, of progress. All this took place against a background of social Darwinism whose deep poison was working its way through intellectual and political life.

I leave you to read Güner's piece. I hope that you find it interesting.  

Saturday Morning Musings - selectivity, ethnicity and universality in Australian schools

Interesting piece in the Guardian by Christina Ho headlined Hothoused and hyper-racialised: the ethnic imbalance in our selective schools. I will just quote the first part of the article:

Growing up in multicultural Australia, I first really understood multiculturalism by going to school. Not via textbooks, but through my lived experience of making friends with kids from a dozen different cultural backgrounds, and being exposed to the range of different ethnic groups with whom I shared my suburb. I learned to get along with people very different from myself, or at the very least, I accepted their right to share my school community.

For young people, schools are unique in their ability to foster these cross-cultural communication skills, and for orienting kids to the realities of our globalising world. British geographer Ash Amin describes schools as “micropublics”, places where people from different backgrounds are thrown together on a daily basis to work together. In the process, they learn acceptance and cross-cultural understanding.

However, not all schools are equally well-placed to achieve this. As families increasingly turn away from the local public school in favour of private schools that are often restricted to particular religious groups, and of course, restricted to those who can afford the fees, Australian children are less and less likely to encounter the full range of our diverse society within their school communities.

The same can be said for selective schools, the focus of my latest research. As education policy increasingly emphasises competition, school choice and elite programs for the “gifted and talented”, a growing number of schools have become demographically unbalanced, so that they can no longer operate as “micropublics” or microcosms of the wider community.

I found myself nodding at certain places. Then, thinking about it, I concluded that I had problems with Ms Ho's analysis because of the way she mixed things together. Take the selective school example. These are government schools which base entrance on competitive merit measured in particular ways. By its nature, a selective school is unrepresentative. It should therefore not be surprising that particular groups with a particular ethos should come to be over-represented. Since Chinese parents, for example, are driven - the stories here are legion - by a desire for their children's success combined with a work ethic that would make the Puritans proud, it is not surprising that their children are disproportionately represented in the selective school intakes.

I saw this at first hand while working with a Chinese parent. The planning, the coaching, even consideration of moving to make it easier to access the school in question, was deeply thought through. As a child, I would not have wanted to go through this, I had enough problems with expectations as it was, but I could understand and even sympathise with what she was trying to do.

That says a lot about selective schools, a lot about the cultures and ethos of particular groups, but not necessarily a lot beyond that. To extend an argument based on the experience in selective state schools to the broader school sector is a stretch. That does not mean that it's wrong, rather that the argument is about the importance of the universality of the school system using the selective school system to provide an example.

Sidetracking

At this point, I sidetracked. I was curious first about Ms Ho. She is a University of Technology Sydney Senior Lecturer & Discipline Coordinator, Social and Political Sciences, within the Communications program, based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Christina researches migration, cultural diversity, citizenship and identity, and has focused particularly on Chinese migration, Muslim diasporas and migrant youth and belonging. She is currently working on projects investigating ethnicity and education and community building in urban areas.

She was also a Green's Senate candidate. Here we learn:

I migrated to Australia from Hong Kong with my family as a young child, and grew up in the northern suburbs of Sydney, surrounded by a rich mix of other migrants and longer-term residents. I’m now a resident of Sydney's inner-west, a colourful, multicultural part of the city. I’m inspired by the community around me, by the people who care about their local area and work hard to make it a vibrant, friendly place to live. I know that there are active local communities like mine all around the country and I believe they need to be strengthened and supported. .......

My older daughter started kindergarten this year at our local public school, and I couldn't be more impressed with the wonderful school community we have joined. My area is lucky enough to have some fantastic public schools, full of passionate staff and the resources students need to get a good start to their education. I’m a big supporter of public education and I believe that all kids should have access to quality education, like my daughter is lucky enough to have. .....

I’m a Senior Lecturer teaching social sciences and my work focuses on issues around migration, gender and cultural diversity, issues I have a personal passion for.

 I must say that she sounds a thoroughly nice, interesting and involved person. I also think that the excerpts provide the frame within which her opinion piece is written.

My next sidetrack took me to James Ruse Agricultural High School (and here), one of the selective schools Ms Ho mentioned. The school consistently out-performs every other school in NSW in the Higher School Certificate results.

The competition to enter is intense. According to the My School website, 86% of the school's students are in the top 25% academic student quartile (none are in the bottom half), 97% come from a non-English language background, while the school's ICSEA (Index of Community Socio-Economic Advantage) score is 1262. To put this last in context, the equivalent ICSEA scores for two of Sydney's most prestigious and high fee schools are The Kings School 1163 and Scots College 1166.James Ruse has no indigenous students.

James Ruse is clearly not your representative school! Interestingly, though, agriculture is still an important subject at the school, being compulsory to year 10. I have to say, though, that the art result in the photo is a strange amalgam. Given that so few modern Australians know anything about the country, less about agriculture, it is nice to think that newer groups are receiving some exposure!

The other thing I noted in my investigation is just how modern Australian the school felt. This is a point that I will come back to later, but the school teaches a common curriculum within a common framework. So the description of activities and ethos would fit most schools.To illustrate, this is a shot of part of the cadet corp on ANZAC Day.        

My next excursion was to a 2014 blog post, Will Girls And Asians Dominate HSC Results This Year? Probably. The post is written to entertain, it may annoy some, but it actually shows how HSC results are now dominated by relatively narrow number of schools and indeed of ethnic backgrounds.

My final excursion came after I had posted the first part of this post via a comment from Neil Whitfield pointing to an earlier posts of his, 07 — a controversy — For the record: the great SBHS race debate of 2002. Sydney Boys High School is both a member of the GPS (Greater Public Schools NSW) sporting competition and a selective school. The apparent genesis of the 2002 imbroglio was a feeling among some SBHS Old Boys that the selective school test had become unfair, preventing Old Boys sending their children to the school, thus breaking the nexus between the school and its past. The discussion that followed introduced many of the same themes that we have been talking about.

There is one really big difference between the two discussions, however. The 2002 SBHS discussion was set within a frame of then debates about multiculturalism. The discussion quickly shifted from a question of sport to one of ethnicity. Some of the same elements are there now, but Ms Ho (a committed multi-culturalist) has a very different focus. In a way, she has turned the argument on its head. Selective schools are, she suggests, in fact monocultural, suffering from lack of connection to the broader community.

Discussion

I accept that I have wandered all over the place, so perhaps time to pull this together.

I am sympathetic to the idea of schools as micropublics in the sense of meeting and mixing with a broad cross-section of people with different views and backgrounds. I know that with my girls when we came to Sydney that I was worried about the relatively narrow slice of the Australian population they were mixing with. I think that it's still true that they know a narrower slice than I did at their age. Mind you, eldest working at HO for a global multinational means that she has a detailed exposure to a very different and especially European slice.

I think the most important learning experience in mixing with different groups is learning when you have to shut up to maintain harmony. This doesn't mean that you have to change your views, but you do learn to deflect, to argue gently, to see the strong points in others even when you detest some of their views.

Perhaps the idea of the Australian public school as a micropublic was always something of an illusion, Australia was always more diverse than people realise, but in any event I think that it's gone beyond recall. I would still support moves to reduce Government funding of non-government schools beyond a certain minimum point with redirection of savings to the public sector, but I don't expect it to recreate a micropublic school system.

My general thinking has also changed here in two important respects. I am less supportive of diversity in education. More precisely, the more the school system moves away from the micropublic model, the more important is is that there is an imposed common core across schools to create a base uniformity.

The second and perhaps more important thing is a formed view that Australian popular culture is, for bad as well as good, far stronger than I once thought. That actually imposes a common world view on people regardless of variations in schooling and indeed parental influence. This was a point I hinted at in the context of James Ruse.

And on selective schools in general? Yes, I think that they should be more representative. SBHS would have been better of if there had been more recognition of Old Boys and the School's past. That view was shared by a James Ruse old boy (boy?) mentioned in Neil's 2002 post. However, in the end I don't think that it matters. A selective school is a selective school; by its nature its unrepresentative. If a small number of groups dominate because of their ethic, that's fine. It will also pass because the world changes.

Mind you, looking at the high socio-economic status now attached to those schools, I would charge fees and then use that money for scholarships to help poorer bright kids attend.

Reflections on the death of Richard Neville

I knew that Richard Neville was unwell, but I had not expected him to die so soon after I wrote Reflections on Richard Neville's Play Power 1. That was a critical piece, something that I shall come back to in a moment.

The long story on his death in the Guardian, this ABC piece, this piece in the Australian by Richard Walsh who shared large elements of the journey, this piece in the Financial Review, all draw out certain common themes. The photo is of the Oz London team, Richard Neville on the far right.

Reading the various pieces as well as the comment threads,  I was struck by the degree of liking for Neville as a persona as well as a sense of nostalgia.

Speaking on the ABC's Q&A program, and my thanks to kvd for the quote, Germaine Greer commented:

He looked forward to the new. I'm afraid I'm not really like that, I'm kind of a bit suspicious of the new. I used to tease him and say that he was the ad man for the revolution, because he didn't actually have any ideology. His ideology was endlessly supple, but in some ways that's important, that you are open to new ideas in that way, and not doctrinaire like me.

I said that my piece was a critical one.  I think that part of the reason was a sense of shock on reading the book, but part too lay in the difficulty of capturing, even sometimes of remembering, that brief past moment. While I am younger than Richard Neville, I too remember elements of that period. They are embedded in my memory because they are are part of a certain period of my life.  

My historical research has required me to look back, to examine patterns of social change in the second half  of the twentieth century. It makes me quite uncomfortable. Looking back, I am struck by the naivety, the innocence, of some of my own beliefs. It's quite difficult to explain because it is intimately connected not just with a belief that change was necessary and desirable, that new things could be done, but with the froth and bubble of events and life style at an impressionable age.

I was never a rebel in the sense that others were, wishing to break convention just because it was convention. But the idea of a different life style was deeply appealing even if I was enjoying the sybaritic present too much to really want to make the switch.

The period represented by Richard Neville was really very short, probably less than ten years, certainly less than twenty. While I no longer regard the 1950s as socially conformist and boring as I once did, it was fairly conformist as society re-asserted itself after the chaos of war. In 1955, the fifties were in full swing. By 1965, the wave of new ideas, of initial rebellion and change was well underway. By 1975 it had passed, although elements of course continued.

You can see the wave clearly in Australia's universities, something worthy of a piece in its own right. I sometimes think that in challenging conventions, in tearing down structures, all that grew from the resulting rubble were weeds, and that's ultimately a most depressing thought.      

Saturday Morning Musings - a changing Australia

As I write, ABC News 24 is providing rolling coverage on the results of the Northern Territory elections. In the words of Adam Giles, the Northern Territory's outgoing Chief Minister and the first Aboriginal to head an Australian Government, the Country Liberal Party received a real thumping.

With a population of just 245,000, the Northern Territory has the  smallest population of any Australian state or mainland territory. With 25 members in the NT Parliament, this means that it has the smallest population electorates in the country. Mind you, the Territory is not small in geographic terms - over 1,349,129 square kilometres or 520,902 sq miles.

I have never been to the Northern Territory apart from a brief transit stop at the old Darwin airport many years ago. No doubt I will get there at some point.

The Northern Territory is a reminder of just how large and diverse Australia is. It's not just varied geography, but variations in history and culture.

The NT has the only electorates in the country with majority Aboriginal populations, but also (I think) the only electorate named after a Chinese citizen, Fong Lin, carrying the name of a popular former mayor of Darwin.

One thing I learned a long time ago was the danger of making generalisations based on one's own experience. I feel this particularly strongly at the moment.

I live and work in melting post Sydney. The area I live in was once heavily Greek. Now the Greek population is aging and the children have moved. At Eastlakes, the older Greek men still gather for their coffees (photo), the Greek Church is just up the road, the traditional Greek barbershop is still there in Kingsford, but now the Greek population has been replaced by later migrants.

At Kingsford, the street scene is dominated by UNSW international students, especially those from China. The pop-up shops that I wrote about in Infant formula, pop-up shops and the future of Australian food are still there with students buying food and other goods to send home to China.

Just two and a half k away in Eastlakes, the Asian influence is there, as is a Middle Eastern flavour. However, the money isn't there, for many of those on the street live in surrounding social housing.

Each working morning, I catch the bus on the start of my journey to Parramatta. The bus takes me past Eastlakes, through the old Greek suburb of Rosebery and then though the sprawling apartment complexes of Victoria Park and Green Square where youngest lives. This is quite heavily younger (and better off) Chinese territory. Visiting youngest on a new street that carries an Aboriginal name, Gadigal, you will see no Aboriginal people. The street terrain is Chinese dominated.

A little further on as the bus passes through Waterloo you will see many more Aboriginal people in part because of the social housing estates nearby. The George Hotel with its barred windows is a route stop on the return trip.

At Central railway station the ethnic scene is more mixed, full of computers of all types. Here you will also find the homeless, as well as the buskers and the lady selling the Australian edition of the Epoch Times. We know each other by sight because I always take a copy of the paper.

She is not pushy. She stands there holding out the paper, ignored by most. As I walk towards her clearly coming, she smiles and holds the paper out.

From Central, the train runs first through the Inner West. This is Green, "progressive" country. Then the train rushes through the mixing suburbs where so many recent immigrants now live.  I have long meant to get off, to wander the streets flaneuring to my hearts content. But work or home beckons.

Parramatta bills itself as Sydney's second city. As indeed it is in historical terms. Yet it is only in the last few years that Parramatta has begun to acquire a metropolitan feel.

This shot of Parramatta is a  a few years old now before the new tall buildings started to go in. The place is in the process of transformation, of fundamental change. In ten years, it will be a genuinely metropolitan centre.

In thinking of divisions in Australia, it is important to remember that they are as much geographic as cultural. Darwin is very different from Sydney, but what is Sydney?

The difference between Parramatta and the Sydney CBD and inner suburbs is quite profound. As one simple measure, almost no-one who works in Parramatta lives in those areas that we tend to think of as Sydney. Indeed, they rarely visit. They all live and play in the outer suburbs linked to Parramatta by rail. There are practical reasons for this. It takes me over three hours each day just to get from home to work and back.

Parramatta is melting pot Sydney.

Each day, I walk past Arthur Phillip High School and the adjoining public primary school. Arthur Phillip is due to go high rise. For the moment, the school operates from a mix of old and temporary building.  

Arthur Phillip is mixing pot Sydney. I watch the kids playing on the concrete basketball and soccer courts. There is barely an Anglo in sight. I watch the Indian parents, mainly mothers, bringing their children to the primary school. Insatiably curious, I watch and listen, trying to work out the the relationships. Listening is important, for it tells you about cadence, structure, attitudes.

Our own small office is very mixed. There is one Chinese Cambodian, one Australian Indian, one Torres Straight Islander, one long standing Polish migrant, two Anglos. I learn about different customs. Yet I am conscious of one difference from my past.

Listening to the kids from Arthur Phillip, I am conscious that I have absolutely no idea about their lives. I can surmise, but I don't know. At the office, while we are all friends my geographic distance makes social mixing outside work very difficult. Each person mixes with their own group in their own area.

That, in turn, made me realise that outside work, I have less exposure now to other cultures and the variety of Australian life than I did in either Armidale or Canberra. In fact, I have less exposure now than I did when I was just nineteen. I think that's a problem. Certainly its a problem when I claim to be a social analyst.

 The difficulty lies, I think, in the absence of social interaction outside of work. But that's very hard to obtain.          

 

Sunday Essay - reflections on culture, society and early Australian history

When I first read A C V Melbourne's Early Constitutional Development in Australia (First published 1934. My copy edited by R B Joyce, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1963), I thought that it was as dull as bat shit. Yes, I am sure that there are specialists in bat shit who find the substance quite fascinating, but you know what I mean!

The difference now is that I know just so much more. The names and events are familiar, that certainly helps, but I also have patterns in my mind that are deepened or sometimes challenged by the new material I read. No doubt you will hear more of Melbourne, but tonight I want to use it as an entry point to another discussion, the importance of culture. Not "high" culture, but culture in the sense of patterns and dynamics in society.

I'm not sure when I first became interested in culture. Growing up in Armidale sensitized you very quickly to social structures. Armidale and the surrounding district had at least six quite distinctive social groups that mixed and overlapped in complex ways.

You had the basic divisions of town, gown and country. But they were subdivided in turn. In country, you had the division between farmer and grazier. Gown was the academics, but you also had the large number of non-academic staff who were not gown, formed part of town, but were also distinct. In town, you had social and economic divides linked to what people did, to their education and social status. Some of the wealthier merchants or professionals, for example, interlinked with the grazing community or with gown.

Religion and politics sat as a layer over all this. Where you went to church or to school reflected, affected, the groups that you belonged to. There were considerable sectarian divides, not just Roman Catholic versus protestant, but within the protestant churches themselves. Then there was another layer linked to community activism. There is almost a universal truth in smaller communities where cooperation is central to the maintenance of the fabric of life that involvement brings acceptance and recognition that crosses divides. The CWA (Country Women's Association) is a good example.

I straddled divisions, but was obviously very aware of them since I had to navigate my way through. It gave me a good understanding of social analysis.

The first academic sociology work that I can remember reading, I was still at school, was a book I plucked from my father's shelves. It was, I think by an American sociologist called Harrison White. I think that it was White. It certainly sounds like him. According to the Wikipedia piece linked above, White emphasised the importance of networks and social interaction in the formation and working of culture.

The book in question included the story of two new American suburbs founded about the same time drawing from similar demographics. The residents in one formed bonds, welcoming new comers, creating a positive culture. The residents in the second, partly because of urban design failures, became fragmented, isolated, creating a very different culture. Decades later, the first suburb had grown in cohesion, prestige and wealth, the second suffered from problems of crime and social disunity and was in economic and social decline, slipping into social decay.

New South Wales began as a penal colony. It was partly, in fact, a large scale penal reform experiment and one that proved to be a considerable success. The institutions and cultures that we know today formed during the earlier colonial period. Some were not so good, certain aspects of the Rum Corp come to mind, but others were. The sheer exigencies of running an open penal colony created a higher degree of local freedom, greater possibilities of  advancement, than was the case in the United Kingdom. The strong executive power exercised by the earlier governors may have been necessary just because it was a penal colony, but it also acted to check the power of emerging wealth and status based on the civil and military officialdom.

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Early politics in the colony centred on two emerging groups, the emancipists or ex-convicts and the exclusives, the civil and military officials who had built their own private wealth largely from their official positions.

Initially the exclusives lead by people like John (image) and James Macarthur had power and especially the access to London provided by their wealth. They were active in promoting their interests including their access to land. But the emancipists were also becoming wealthy and, with time, proved reasonably capable lobbyists with both sides using employed agents within the House of Commons.

In the beginning, there were few free settlers in the new colony. As early as 1792 Governor Phillip, anxious about the food supply, had asked for some free settlers. The first group arrived on the Bellona on 6 January 1793 attracted by inducements that included a free passage, grants of land, tools and implements from the public stores and the services of assigned convicts, fed by the Government for two years and clothed for one.

The number of free settlers increased slowly from that point, but by the time Governor Macquarie arrived in 1810 there were perhaps still only 1,000 as compared to 1,700 officials in the civil and military departments and perhaps 5,000 convicts. There were also some 2,500 children.

Macquarie did not favour free settlement. He saw NSW as a place of redemption where offenders might re-establish their place in society. He did not mind men with capital who might establish themselves in agriculture, but was vehemently opposed to those with connections who expected to acquire wealth from the exploitation of Government privilege. This made him a natural target for the exclusives who campaigned against him in London.

The exclusives gained their name from the way they excluded people, even most free settlers, from their society. They had position and wished to protect it. In so doing, they created a bond between the ex-convicts who were achieving success and free settlers, between merchants and artisans who might otherwise have been drawn to the order and social hierarchy the exclusives represented. This gave the emancipists added numbers and, in time, influence.

The political divide between exclusive and emancipist was inherently unstable because it was based on social class, on concepts of order and status, in a rapidly evolving colony. The accumulation of wealth by the emancipists, ex-convict and free, could not be ignored. The tipping point came with the pastoral expansion.

On their estates on the outskirts of Sydney and in the Hunter, exclusives were attempting to recreate the social order of a home country that was itself undergoing fundamental change. They had a vision of broad estates farmed by tenant farmers, of country houses and an ordered country side. Their wealth was based on land acquired by grant and purchase, on farming and the sale of farm produce.

The explosion of settlement outside the boundaries of settlement – the nineteen counties - imposed by Governors concerned about the management of a penal colony changed everything. Initially the squatting rush was opposed by many exclusives. It threatened the value of their estates within the settled areas, it threatened their life style and position, but they soon joined in. There was money to be made.

One product, wool, was central to the rush. It was a high value product that could bear the very high shipping costs associated with slow land transport. But once the pastoral expansion began, other factors came into play. The pastoral rush created a demand for horses, for sheep, for cattle, to stock the new properties.

Beyond the frontier, land had no direct value because there was no ownership. The value lay in the value of the increasing stock of animals, of the returns that might be gained from those animals. The wool clip provided an external source of income that underpinned the whole process, but it was the animals that were important. You didn’t have to sell your stock to the final point of sale such as the abattoir, you could sell them to the squatters moving to the next point of occupation who needed stock to do so.

The end result was a long boom that finally culminated in the crash of the early 1840s. Both exclusives and emancipists participated in this rush. In so doing, the old divisions disappeared, new ones emerged.