Society & Social Sciences Books

In March 2020, schools and childcare centres across Australia were forced to close to control the spread of the recently arrived novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Families and carers suddenly had to adjust to long periods of home-schooling, disparities in...

Courts aren't just there to settle divorces, sentence law-breakers and resolve corporate disputes. A healthy legal system, one that ensures access, transparency and accountability, is fundamental to democracy. When the system works, the courts act as a...

My father, political activist Samuel Mark Goldbloom, was my hero and my nemesis all the days of his life.Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo grew up in thrall to her father, a prominent socialist and covert member of the Communist Party. From an early age, she...

In 1946 Aboriginal people walked off pastoral stations in Western Australia's Pilbara region, withdrawing their labour from the economically important wool industry to demand improvements in wages and conditions. Their strike lasted three years. On Red...

Human rights come into question in times of crisis. But should we wait for crises to arise before we discuss these rights? Advancing human rights should be everyone's business, not just that of a select group of public interest lawyers, conspiracy...

What does reconciliation and truth-telling look like, and how do we as a nation find justice for Indigenous people?In this deeply personal work, Inala Cooper shares stories of her family to show the impact of colonisation on the lives of Aboriginal...

Rarely is the public taken deep into the inner sanctum of major news organisations. In this extraordinary book, award-winning journalist John Lyons goes to the heart of how the media reports - or does not report - one of the biggest stories of our time:...

Long-term population directions, in terms of both size and age composition, drive the destiny of all nations. While for decades we have worried about global overpopulation, it is far more likely that the period 19502050 will be an extraordinary...

Over the past thirty years, the internet has transformed virtually every area of human activity, social and economic. The bulk of these changes have been positive, allowing people to work, imagine and connect with each other in new ways. The boost to...

One in five Australian women has been the victim of a sexual assault. For these women, there is less than a 1 per cent chance that their rapist has been arrested, prosecuted and convicted of the crime. These are the bare numerical facts of system failure...

How much do you know about the history of Australia's oldest political party, the Australian Labor Party? You know the big names: Curtin, Chifley, Whitlam, Hawke and Keating. But what about the names behind the big names? The unsung and overlooked True...

The exposs in early 2021 of sexism and sexual violence in Parliament House prompted women (and some men) across the country to take to stages, lecterns and social media to express their rage and demand action. However, while these events highlighted that...

The recent revelations and allegations of sexual harassment and assault in the Australian Parliament have prompted furious responses. Political leaders have attempted to limit the damage by referring to the lack of criminal charges, resisting a...

Why does Australia go through cycles of public policy boldness and timidity? The COVID-19 crisis has shown that the Australian political system has much more tolerance for policy innovation than appeared to be the case on the evidence of the previous...

As the many nations of the Pacific deal with the threat of climate change, including rising sea levels and lessening access to fresh water, they are also suffering from some of the slowest rates of development of any region on earth. Now more than ever,...

In Australia, corruption spends public funds in pursuit of power, rewards favour, and strips support from worthy programs. It silences journalists and those charged with upholding standards of integrity by depriving them of funding. Grift and stacking...

Fatal Contact explores the devastating infectious diseases introduced into the Indigenous populations of Australia after the arrival of the British colonists in 1788. Epidemics of smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza, measles and sexually transmitted...

*Victorian Community History Awards : History Publication Commendation*At the height of the Victorian gold rush, between July 1852 and June 1853, hundreds of government-assisted migrants from Lancashire, England, made their way to Australia and...

The post-digital publishing paradigm offers authors, readers, publishers and scholars the opportunity to engage with the production and circulation of the book (in all its forms) beyond the conventional boundaries and binaries of the pre-digital and...

For some time, Australia's democracy has been slowly sliding into disrepair. The nation's major policy challenges go unaddressed, our economic future is uncertain and political corruption is becoming normalised. It's tempting,...

The scandal involving Dyson Heydon, former justice of the High Court, confirmed that the scourge of sexual harassment in Australian workplaces was also to be found in the chambers of one of the seven most senior judges in the country. An unquestioning...

The erosion of public trust in government has been a characteristic of liberal democracies in recent years. How much have the twists and turns in climate change policy over the past decade contributed to this in Australia? As a senior public servant...

The essays in this collection explore transcultural events to reveal deeper understandings of the dynamic nature, power and effect of performance as it is created and witnessed across national and cultural boundaries. Focusing on historical and...

Australian archaeology has been involved in a great enterprise over the last sixty years, uncovering the deep past of a desert continent and the history of its first people. This book is a guide to the catchphrases of the discipline. It is a meditation...

1860. An Aboriginal labourer named Jim Crow is led to the scaffold of the Maitland Gaol in colonial New South Wales. Among the onlookers is the Scotsman AS Hamilton, who will take bizarre steps in the aftermath of the execution to exhume this young man's...

Governments everywhere have advocated the use of computers in schools as an essential learning technology. Over the years the view that computers can enhance student learning has gained broad acceptance. When schools promote the use in their classrooms...

This book tells the history of adoption in Australia from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to its decline at the beginning of the twenty-first. The authors find that a market in babies has long existed. In the early years supply outstripped...

This book brings together essays from leading Australian and international historians, in an analysis of the monumental Friendly Mission: the Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829-1834, edited by NJB Plomley and republished in...

Everyone knows what intoxication and drunkenness are, what they look like, how to define and measure them and what their consequences are. At least we might assume so given the ways these words are used by the media, by politicians and policy makers and...

A pedagogy of place refers to an alternative vision for outdoor education practice. This timely book, A Pedagogy of Place, calls into question some of the underlying assumptions and truths about outdoor education, and in turn offers alternatives to...

Timor-Leste's independence was forged at a time international developmental theory had rejected top down approaches and recognised the importance of participatory approaches informing developmental strategies. When the arrival of the United Nations and a...

In the late 1990s, Carolyn Landon collaborated with Daryl Tonkin to write his memoir of life at Jackson's Track. It was the story of a White man and his Aboriginal family, of family ties, hard work, happiness, betrayal, racial prejudice and ultimately,...

Australia's higher education sector was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Student and staff numbers declined, and the government assistance afforded to other sectors was all but missing for universities. In a callous example of abandonment in an hour of...

The lives of non-human animals, their ways of being and seeing, their experiences and knowledge, and their relationships with each other, continue to be ignored, discounted, written over and destroyed by anthropocentric practices and endeavours. Within...

In the face of escalating water scarcity, effective water management has become a central concern globally. The MurrayDarling Basin, spanning over a million square kilometres across four states and one territory, is a lifeline for Australian agriculture...

Animal Activism On and Off Screen examines the relationship between animal advocacy and the film and television industries. Leading scholars, activists, and film industry professionals critically analyse the ways in which animal activism has been...

Natural history television on the ABC has been one of the public broadcaster's most popular formats. For many viewers, TV has been an important contact zone for engaging with animals they would never encounter in everyday life. These animals have also...

The Climate Crisis and Other Animals is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of our planet and the animals who live on it. Twine examines the impact of the climate crisis on non-human animals and argues for the importance of a climate and...

This book analyses the stories of white fathers, men who were positioned as key players in the plans to assimilate Aboriginal people by 'breeding out the colour' and attempts to put textual flesh on the bodies of these white fathers, and in doing so,...

Aboriginal people of New South Wales carved trees as a form of visual communication for thousands of years. These elaborate designs carved into the sapwood and heartwood of trees once a section of external bark was removed - were meant to last. Sadly,...

Richard Parkinson's Thirty Years in the South Seas was first published in 1907. In this 900-page work, Parkinson drew together and expanded on the scientific and popular papers he had been publishing since 1887, creating in the process a landmark...

This Chinese edition of the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, edited by Lily Xiao Hong Lee and assisted by Ms Yuk Ping Chan, is published in full Chinese characters.This volume provides biographical information on the lives, work and...

The New South Wales club gaming industry is a multi-billion dollar business with some of the largest registered clubs in the world operating more poker machines than many casinos but not subject to the same scrutiny. Their status as 'mutuals' allows them...

Delivered during the years of heightened national security of World War II these lectures present Anderson's views on the major questions in political theory in relation to the major influences upon his own early education: modern Idealism and Marxism.In...

Demand for childcare has soared over the past decade as Australian families seek to reconcile work and care responsibilities. But the cost of care keeps rising, waiting lists in many metropolitan centres are long, and high quality services are not always...

Invasion to Embassy challenges the conventional view of Aboriginal politics to present a bold new account of Aboriginal responses to invasion and dispossession in New South Wales. At the core of these responses has been land: as a concrete goal, but also...

**Winner, 2024 Chief Minister's NT History Book Award**Fully illustrated, Jakarda Wuka (Too Many Stories) draws on a combined 70+ years of collaborative research involving Yanyuwa Elders, anthropologists, and an archaeologist to tell a unique...

This book approaches the study of animal law topics through the lens of the legal and regulatory framework governing the interaction between humans and animals. The key characteristics of the framework are identified and explored throughout, starting...