CASS wins $4.5 million in ARC Discovery & Linkages Grants

The ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences (CASS) was awarded 15 Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery and one Linkage Grant in the October 2010 round of funding released today, totaling approximately $4.5 million towards research projects in the social sciences, humanities and the arts.

“Congratulations to all the various people involved in each of the successful ARC applications from across the College” says CASS Dean and Director, Professor Toni Makkai.  “Today’s results again showcase the diversity and depth of research done across the College and the excellence of our academic staff who undertake these projects” adds Professor Makkai.

The full list of successful ARC Discovery and Linkage grants and their lead researchers are:

ARC Discovery Grants

From welfare to work, or work to welfare: Will reform of the Community Development Employment Program help close the employment gap?
Professor Jon Altman, Associate Professor Boyd Hunter, Dr Kirrily Jordan, Dr William Sanders

This research will explore the effective dismantling of the Community Development Employment Program CDEP) established in 1977. Billed by government as central to Closing the Gap, Indigenous organisations have raised concerns that the changes will cause rising unemployment, loss of services and the collapse of enterprises previously underpinned by CDEP. It is crucial to document and understand these changes: a task that this research team is uniquely positioned to undertake. With ground-breaking empirical research and a pioneering application of theories of work and the state, the project will track the impacts of this policy change and elucidate the workings of the state that have led to it.

Saving the World the First Time: Global climate theory and dessication 1765-1960
Dr Gregory Barton,

Advocates of the world’s first global climate theory asserted that deforestation caused desertification.  Understanding how this theory, called desiccation theory, launched and guided the world-wide environmental movement helps us to better understand the benefits and problems associated with our present-day climate theory--global warming.

The archaeological and biological foundations of Southeast Asia, 2500 to 1000 BC
Professor Peter Bellwood, Dr Marc Oxenham, Dr Hsiao-Chun Hung

This project investigates the origins and ancestral migrations of the populations of Southeast Asia. It focuses on the period around 2000 BC when “Neolithic” societies, populations and languages spread across the region. We will examine evidence for migration, food production and population ancestry in Vietnam, the Philippines and adjacent regions.  About 4000 years ago, the human landscapes of northern Southeast Asia began to be transformed by the spread of food producing societies ancestral to the major modern populations of the region. These people inhabited large settlements, several excavated recently by the research team in Vietnam and the northern Philippines. This project will expand this research with particular attention to a better understanding of the drivers of these population expansions, including an increasing dependence on food production, demographic growth through settlement stability, and major developments in maritime exploitation and ocean-crossing abilities. Our research concerns a crucial period in the history of many millions of Australia’s neighbours.

Policy Agendas in the Australian Commonwealth Government
Professor Keith Dowding, Mr Aaron Martin

Who leads the agenda: the government; the public or the media? Is legislation ‘normal business’ or a response to crisis? Does changing the government really change much?  By systematically analysing legislation, the media and public opinion over a forty year period this project can answer these questions more thoroughly than ever before.  This project will systematically analyze the political agenda of Australia over a forty year period by analysing Australian federal legislation, questions asked in parliament, newspaper discussion, budgetary data and public opinion to examine trends over time. It will examine how far the government leads the agenda and how far public opinion and the media tend to lead legislative intent. It will delve deeper into radical policy change through a series of case studies. It will form part of the highly influential international Comparative Agenda’s project.

Nineteenth-Century Climate Change: Atmosphere and Culture in Romanticism
Dr Thomas Ford

To understand and adapt to climate change, we need to understand its cultural history. My project identifies a formative moment in this history in Britain in the nineteenth century, when climate was linked to culture in new ways, allowing social changes to be understood as having climatic effects. This project investigates the cultural history of climate change. It identifies a formative moment in this history, the early nineteenth century in Britain, when the modern sciences of atmosphere first came into being and when atmosphere and weather became newly central to Romantic art and literature. Climate was a central mechanism for representing and understanding how these disparate scientific and artistic activities belonged to a common cultural field. Because atmosphere was positioned as a medium of culture in this way, cultural changes could then be seen to lead to climatic changes. By shedding new light on these historical links between climate and culture, my project re-engages the humanities with the climate change debate today.

The world novel, distant suffering and humanitarian sensibility after 1989
Associate Professor Debjani Ganguly

As war and terror flicker across our TVs, writers like Rushdie, McEwan and Hosseini have turned the novel into a global form, expressing a new humanitarian ethic. This project explores the makings of these World Novels across sites of ongoing global conflict, and traces their plea for sympathy back to the novel’s beginnings, in the 18th century. With the impact of globalisation, the idea of literature as a world system of production, distribution and consumption has gained considerable currency. This project identifies a key conjuncture of forces since 1989 that have given rise to a new World Novel in English. These are: global violence, instant world communication through digital technology and a new humanitarian sensibility. This project will: i) theorize the momentous transformations undergone by the novel form in our information age, ii) offer a radically new perspective on the traditional relationship between the novel and the humanitarian imagination, iii) contribute to emerging world literature scholarship on the 'human' and 'distant suffering'.

Childbearing within cohabiting unions in Australia: trends, explanations and comparison
Dr Ann Evans

This project will explore the trends and determinants of childbearing within cohabitation in Australia. The project will contribute to our understanding of modern family dynamics and change. By comparison with other countries we will learn more about the policy settings that assist and support couples to realise their family formation plans.  Cohabitation, delays in marriage and childbearing, and increases in divorce rates have had a profound effect on the demographic biographies of Australians over the past 35 years. This project aims to contribute to our understanding of modern family dynamics by exploring the relatively understudied area of childbearing within cohabitation.
This project will contribute to a larger international study and will place Australia, and Australian researchers, at the forefront of family demography internationally, while also offering an invaluable backdrop against which a significant national demographic trend can be analysed and understood.

Hidden relationships: living apart together in Australia
Dr Ann Evans, Dr Edith Gray

Australians who are in a relationship but do not live together pose a challenge to social surveys and scholarship, which qualify people as cohabiting, married or single. We will study how many Australians 'live apart together', and why, to produce a better understanding of the complex and dynamic factors behind modern Australian relationships. Living apart together (LAT) relationships are an important type of current-day relationships, yet we know little about the extent of these relationships due to their status being hidden in official statistics. This project will employ a mix of combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to determine the level of LAT relationships in Australia; discover how LAT relationships are different to being single or living with someone; develop a classification of LAT relationships; and provide a theoretical framework for understanding LAT relationships. This project will highlight a previously unexplored factor in relationship decision-making and contribute to our understanding of couples in non-residential relationships.

Benefiting from injustice
Professor Bob Goodin, Dr Christian Barry

We argue that people can acquire duties to compensate victims of injustice when they benefit from these injustices, even when they neither caused the injustices nor could have prevented them. We
explore the implications of this argument for the treatment of colonized peoples, and for policies on climate change and international trade. Three relations are ordinarily thought to ground moral duties to help victims of injustice. You have these duties if you have contributed to the victims' plight, if you can alleviate it at moderate cost, or if you share valued associative or affective ties with them. This project explores a fourth and hitherto neglected relation: that you have duties to help victims of injustice if you benefit from that injustice. We plumb the significance of this relation for the treatment of colonized or formerly colonized peoples, and policies of affluent societies on climate change and on international trade. This research contributes to moral philosophy and helps guide Australia’s policy on controversial and important issues.

Exploring the Middle Ground: New Histories of Cross-Cultural Encounters in Australian Maritime and Land Exploration
Dr Shino Konishi, Dr Maria Nugent

This study proposes the concept of the middle ground to describe and represent the nature of cross-cultural encounters and relations within the history of Australian maritime and land exploration. Through a series of detailed cross-cultural historical studies of key exploration expeditions, the study seeks to re-establish the critical importance of exploration as a site in which relations between Indigenous people and others developed, including in ways that were influential in shaping later race relations within the context of occupation and settlement. In this way, the concept of the middle ground is also presented as a means by which to unsettle Australian history's conventional periodisation into pre-settlement and settlement phases.  We seek to reinvigorate Australian exploration history by examining it through the lens of cross-cultural encounters and relations. This will bring to the fore the experience of Aboriginal people who came into contact with explorers, as well as the experience of Aboriginal people who participated in exploration parties.

The Two Lakes Project: A Research History of Lakes Mungo and Gregory
Professor Ann McGrath, Professor Peter Veth

This project investigates the history of research relations between scientists and Traditional Owners at Lakes Mungo and Gregory. Connecting recent histories of agency and reconciliation with deep time, it will produce a publicly accessible narrative that increases national understanding of significant stories in the peopling of our continent. The Two Lakes Project addresses knowledge gaps and stumbling blocks in narrating Australia's past. A plethora of scientific, cultural and management research into deep-time landscapes has been compiled, but 'peopled' pasts are still difficult to imagine. The Two Lakes project investigates the history of collaborative research conducted at Lake Mungo in western NSW and Lake Gregory in the SE Kimberley since the 1960s. It deploys history and archaeology to investigate the context in which significant discoveries were made, and it tracks the changing collaborations between researchers, Traditional Custodians and managers. This project ultimately delivers an accessible history that bridges modern and ancient Indigenous histories.

The Queen gave us the land: Aboriginal people's histories and memories of Queen Victoria
Dr Maria Nugent

Queen Victoria is a potent figure in Aboriginal people's histories and memories. The study examines Aboriginal people's interactions with and interpretations of her as a means by which to chart their changing understandings about such matters as sovereignty, the authority and morality of the British Crown, and their relationship to it. By examining both interactions and interpretations, a key aim is to explore and theorise the relationship between historical experience and historical remembrance or storytelling. As such, the study will contribute to knowledge about the ways in which Aboriginal people sought to endure and to make sense of their experiences in imperial and colonial contexts by telling richly symbolic historical stories.

Family, violence and honour: the Walworth Murder
Dr Carolyn Strange, Dr Rosanne Kennedy

Australian statistics confirm that violence within the family is an intractable problem. Real-life narratives of spousal abuse and murder, including historical cases, provide compelling evidence of the causes and costs of family conflict.Our project underlines the ways in which power asymmetries within families can become risk factors for violence.  This project uses a notorious 1873 patricide to explore wider tensions surrounding the ideals of family and honour in the 19thC U.S. Intimate violence existed at all levels of society, including elite white families, like the Walworths, in which expectations of respectability typically cloaked conflict. Because Frank Walworth killed his abusive father to protect his mother, and because the murder touched off a storm of debate, we have a unique opportunity to analyse legal and popular understandings of violence, honour and criminal responsibility. We will interpret this case through a monograph, a radio documentary, two journal special issues and a conference on honour killing in historical and cross-cultural perspective.

Philosophical progress
Professor Daniel Stoljar,

Understanding the nature and possibility of progress in philosophy will shed light not only on philosophy as a funded research discipline within the university system in Australia, but also on the nature of research within the humanities and social sciences more generally. Can there be progress in philosophy? It is often said that philosophical problems are perennials for which it is pointless to expect a solution. On the other hand, professional philosophy seems to have organized itself, perhaps unconsciously, around the opposite view: how else to explain the panoply of conferences, graduate programs, journals, websites etc? Who is right? This project asks what philosophical progress might be, and whether it is rational to think that there is (has been, will be) any. To answer this question we will use a combination of techniques: clarification of the issues, comparative analysis of notions of progress in the sciences and philosophy, and interviews with prominent people in philosophy.

World War I Refugees in Austria-Hungary and the International Community, 1914-1923
Dr Julie Thorpe

This project is the first international study of WWI refugees in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This project investigates how refugee movements in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during WWI contributed to the empire’s collapse in 1918. It explores the impact of war, forced migrations, nationalism and the international community on the breakdown of modern state and civil society structures in Central and Eastern Europe.

ARC Linkage Grant

Engaging Objects: Indigenous communities, museum collections and the representation of Indigenous histories (with National Museum and British Museum)
Professor Howard Morphy, Dr Maria Nugent

This project centres on the research process leading up to a major exhibition in Australia of the British Museum’s Australian Indigenous collections. By exploring the historical and representational issues evoked in creating this exhibition, new understandings of these collections and their historical and contemporary significance will result. This partnership between the Australian National University, the National Museum of Australia and the British Museum, in collaboration with Indigenous research participants and communities, centres on the research process leading up to a major exhibition of the British Museum’s Australian Indigenous collections, and the post-exhibition impacts. It analyses historical and representational issues evoked in researching and creating the exhibition. It will result in new understandings of foundational Australian Indigenous collections and their historical and contemporary significance for scholars, Indigenous peoples and museums. It will contribute to the development of new museological paradigms about the display of Indigenous collections.