Abstract
Social movements emerged quickly in Australia and exerted a rapid and important influence on the development of politics and society. Not only were Australian men among the first to enjoy the privilege of the suffrage, they were also among the first to extend this privilege to women, to form powerful unions, to forge parties of labour capable of wielding national power, and to host movements of environmental protection. Indigenous people also used methods of petitioning and demonstration from the nineteenth century, though with notably lesser success. The precocious mobilisation of Australian social movements reflected the nation's history as a penal colony and a settler colony. The state was a powerful agent and the object of political claims. It acted to repress the most radical political agents, but also to incorporate and legitimate the demands of major political campaigns. This process was evident from the nineteenth century until the twenty first. It was jeopardised by the rise of neoliberalism, and the growing unwillingness or incapacity of the state to conform to past practices. In understanding the trajectory of Australian social movements, one therefore grapples with more general questions concerning the relationships between movement, state, empire, and economy.
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Notes
- 1.
This is an approach to social movements based on several sources. On opposition as central to the social movement: Alain Touraine, The Voice and the Eye: An Analysis of Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). For the role of institutions, see the ‘resource mobilization’ school, e.g., Mayer N. Zald and John D. McCarthy, Social Movements in an Organizational Society (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1987). For an emphasis on networks: Donatella della Porta and Mario Diani, Social Movements: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), especially Chaps. 5 and 6. The emphasis on displays of worthiness, unity numbers and commitment is drawn from the work of Charles Tilly, e.g., Charles Tilly, Social Movements. 1768–2004 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004). The emphasis on cultural identity is most fully expressed in the work of Alberto Melucci, Nomads of the Present (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989).
- 2.
On the rise of the state and the national social movement, see: Charles Tilly, ‘Social Movements and National Politics’, in Charles Bright and Susan Hardings (eds), Statemaking and Social Movements: Essays in History and Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984), pp. 297–317.
- 3.
On the importance of print: Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 43–47.
- 4.
The process of collective learning and slow change is emphasized in Charles Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
- 5.
On settler-colonialism, see: Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Introducing Settler Colonial Studies’, Settler Colonial Studies 1 (2011), pp. 1–12.
- 6.
Brian Fletcher, ‘Agriculture’, in Graham J. Abbott and Noel B. Nairn, Economic Growth of Australia 1788–1821 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1978), p. 191.
- 7.
On the earlier years of European settlement: Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia: a history (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997); John Hirst, Convict Society and its enemies (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983).
- 8.
Noel G. Butlin, Alan Barnard and Jonathan J. Pincus, Government and Capitalism: Public and Private Choice in Twentieth Century Australia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1982).
- 9.
John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788–1838, revised edn (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005).
- 10.
Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1996).
- 11.
Grace Karskens, The Colony: a History of early Sydney (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2009), pp. 280–309.
- 12.
Lynette Silver, The Battle of Vinegar Hill: Australia’s Irish Rebellion, 1804 (Sydney: Doubleday, 1989).
- 13.
Richard Waterhouse, ‘“… a bastard offspring of tyranny under the guise of liberty”: Liberty and Representative Government in Australia, 1788–1901’, in Jack P. Greene (ed.), Exclusionary Empire: English Liberty Overseas, 1600–1900 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 220–247, p. 225.
- 14.
Herbert V. Evatt, Rum Rebellion: A Study of the Overthrow of Governor Bligh by John Macarthur and the New South Wales Corps (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1938).
- 15.
See: Terry Irving, The Southern Tree of Liberty: The Democratic Movement in New South Wales before 1856 (Annandale: Federation Press, 2006).
- 16.
Sean Scalmer, ‘Containing Contention: A Reinterpretation of Democratic Change and Electoral Reform in the Australian Colonies’, Australian Historical Studies 3 (2011), pp. 337–356.
- 17.
John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007), p. 38.
- 18.
Kirsty Reid, Gender, Crime and Empire: Convicts, Settlers and the State in Early Colonial Australia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).
- 19.
Silver, The Battle of Vinegar Hill.
- 20.
Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1996); Henry Reynolds, A History of Tasmania (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
- 21.
Ross Fitzgerald and Mark Hearn, Bligh, Macarthur and the Rum Rebellion (Kenthurst, NSW: Kangaroo Press, 1988); Evatt. Rum Rebellion.
- 22.
Alistair Davidson, The Invisible State: The Formation of the Australian State 1788–1901 (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 102, p. 106.
- 23.
Major General Macquarie to Earl Bathurst, 27 July 1822, in Charles M.H. Clark (ed.), Select Documents in Australian History 1788–1850 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1977), p. 310.
- 24.
A Charge of Mutiny: The Court-Martial of Lieutenant Colonel George Johnston for Deposing Governor William Bligh in the Rebellion of 26 January 1808, introduction by John Ritchie (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1988).
- 25.
‘A Petition for the Redress of Grievances, 1819’, in Clark (ed.), Select Documents, p. 311.
- 26.
‘A Petition for Trial by Jury and Representative Government. 1825’, in Clark (ed.), Select Documents, pp. 321–322.
- 27.
Irving, The Southern Tree, p. 17.
- 28.
Waterhouse, ‘“… a bastard offspring”’, p. 228.
- 29.
Irving, The Southern Tree, p. 28.
- 30.
Fitzgerald, Big White Lie, pp. 37–38.
- 31.
Fitzgerald, Big White Lie, pp. 114–115, p. 123.
- 32.
Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: Black Response to White Dominance 1788–1980 (Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), pp. 70–81.
- 33.
E.g., the Sydney City Council Elections of 1842 returned six “practical men” from predominantly working-class backgrounds; only one-third of those elected were “gentlemen”—Irving, The Southern Tree, p. 87.
- 34.
People’s Advocate, 10 February 1848, cited in Waterhouse, ‘“… a bastard offspring”’, p. 235.
- 35.
Waterhouse, ‘“… a bastard offspring”’, pp. 237–238.
- 36.
Irving, The Southern Tree, p. 73.
- 37.
Irving, The Southern Tree, p. 42, p. 44.
- 38.
Henry Parkes, democrat of the 1840s and later long-serving Premier, had been inducted into Chartism in Britain, as had the leader of the ‘8-hours movement’, James Stephen.
- 39.
Charles Gavan Duffy, leader of the Young Ireland movement, later became a leading radical in Victoria.
- 40.
Johan Llotsky, an influential radical in Sydney in the early 1830s, had been a revolutionary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Raffaello Carboni, participant and historian of the Eureka Rebellion, had been a member of the Young Italy movement.
- 41.
Joseph Hamburger, James Mill and the Art of Revolution (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977).
- 42.
Irving, The Southern Tree, p. 146. On the presence of Chartists in Australian movements for democratization: Paul Pickering, “‘Ripe for a Republic”: British Radical Responses to the Eureka Stockade’, Australian Historical Studies 121 (2003), pp. 69–90.
- 43.
Wray Vamplew, Australians, Historical Statistics (Broadway, NSW: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon, 1987).
- 44.
The best study of Victoria in this period is: Geoffrey Serle, The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria, 1851–1861 (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1963).
- 45.
The leading studies of gold fields dissent is: John Molony, Eureka (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2001). A fascinating contemporary history by a rebel leader is: Raffaello Carboni, The Eureka Stockade (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1969). On British responses: Pickering, ‘“Ripe for a Republic”’, pp. 69–90.
- 46.
Robin Gollan, Radical and Working Class Politics (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1967), p. 1.
- 47.
The most sceptical of Australian agency is John Hirst, Freedom on the Fatal Shore Australia’s First Colony (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2008). The strongest recent support for local contention is evident in Irving, The Southern Tree, and Scalmer, ‘Containing Contention’.
- 48.
Sequentially, Mr. Deas Thomson, cited in ‘Electoral Bill’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 September 1853, p. 3; Mr. Murray, cited in ‘Electoral Bill’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 June 1858, 5.
- 49.
Mr. Forster, cited in ‘Electoral Bill’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 July 1858, 4.
- 50.
‘Representation of the Differs’, Argus, 19 May 1855, 4.
- 51.
‘Parliament Bill’, South Australian Register, 21 November 1855, pp. 2–3.
- 52.
Mr. Forster, cited in ‘Electoral Law Amendment Bill’, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July 1858, pp. 5–7.
- 53.
‘The Ballot’, Argus, 18 December 1855, p. 4.
- 54.
‘Public Disturbances Bill’, Argus, 2 February 1855, p. 4.
- 55.
Victorian Hansard, vol. IV, Session 1858–1859, 2 November 1858, p. 185.
- 56.
As detailed in Scalmer, ‘Containing Contention’, p. 353.
- 57.
‘Electoral Law Bill’, South Australian Register, 30 November 1855, p. 2.
- 58.
South Australian Register, cited in Carol Fort, Electing Responsible Government, South Australia 1857 (Rose Park, SA: State Electoral Office, 2001), p. 24.
- 59.
As recalled in Charles Jardine Don, cited in ‘The Late C.J. Don’, Argus, 29 September 1866, p. 5.
- 60.
Stuart Macintyre, A Colonial Liberalism: The Lost World of Three Victorian Visionaries (South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991).
- 61.
On the openness of the electoral system and the possible incorporation of social movements, see: Tarrow, Power in Movement, p. 84.
- 62.
George Rudé, Protest and Punishment: the Story of the Social and Political Protesters Transported to Australia, 1788–1868 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).
- 63.
The mobilization of Australian unions is described in Sean Scalmer, The Little History of Australian Unionism (Carlton North: Vulgar Press, 2006), pp. 16–24. The union leader cited is H.W. O’Sullivan, President of the Sydney Trades and Labor Council, p. 22.
- 64.
The strikes are summarized in Scalmer, The Little History, pp. 28–32; the instruction was given by Colonel Price, commander of at Melbourne’s Victoria Barracks, p. 30.
- 65.
On the major dispute, see: Stuart Svensen, The Sinews of War Hard Cash and the 1890 Maritime Strike (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995); declining wages, p. 229.
- 66.
A point made in Robin Archer, Why Is There No Labor Party in the United States? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), Chap. 5, wherein he notes the more complete repression of the American labour movement.
- 67.
‘Sydney Defence Committee’, cited in Noel Ebbels (ed.), The Australian Labor Movement 1850–1907 (Sydney: Australasian Book Society, 1960), p. 151.
- 68.
On the rapid rise of Australian Labor: Verity Burgmann, ‘Premature Labour: The Maritime Strike and the Parliamentary Strategy’, in Jim Hagan and Andrew Wells (eds), The Maritime Strike. A Centennial Retrospective. Essays in Honour of E.C. Fry (Wollongong: Five Islands Press, 1992), pp. 83–96.
- 69.
Judge Higgins, cited in Jack Hutson, Penal Colony to Penal Powers, revised edition (Sydney: Amalgamated Metals Foundry and Shipwrights’ Union, 1983), p. 236.
- 70.
Francis Castles, The working Class and Welfare: Reflections on the Political Development of the Welfare State in Australia and New Zealand, 1890–1980 (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1985).
- 71.
Ross Martin, Trade Unions in Australia, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth and Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1980), p. 6.
- 72.
Verity Burgmann, In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885–1905 (Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1985).
- 73.
Bruce Scates, A New Australia: Citizenship, Radicalism and the First Republic (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
- 74.
Verity Burgmann, Revolutionary Industrial Unionism: The Industrial Workers of the World in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
- 75.
Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1999).
- 76.
Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance in Australia (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1983), p. 205; Geoffrey Sawer, Australian Federal Politics and Law 1901–1929 (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1956), pp. 268–270.
- 77.
Macintyre, The Reds, provides the most authoritative narrative until the Second World War. The Cold War episodes are explored in Ann Curthoys and John Merritt (eds), Australia’s First Cold War, 1945–1953 (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1984).
- 78.
Bruce O’Meagher (ed.), The Socialist Objective: Labor and Socialism (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1983).
- 79.
Robin Gollan, Revolutionaries and Reformists: Communism and the Australian Labour Movement, 1920–1955 (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1985).
- 80.
On the role of these organizations, see John Rickard, Class and Politics: New South Wales, Victoria and the Early Commonwealth, 1890–1910 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1976) and the contributions by Sean Scalmer and Marian Quartly to Paul Strangio and Nick Dyrenfurth (eds), Confusion: The Making of the Australian Two-Party System (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2009). The best account of these groups is: Judith Brett, Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2003). An authoritative treatment of right-wing paramilitary groups is: Andrew Moore, The Right Road? A History of Right-Wing Politics in Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995).
- 81.
Marilyn Lake, ‘The Politics of Respectability: Identifying the Masculinist Context’, Historical Studies 86 (1986), pp. 116–131.
- 82.
e.g., George Higinbotham supported the female suffrage in the Victorian parliament in 1873. See: Marian Quartly, Susan Janson and Patricia Grimshaw (eds), Freedom Bound I: Documents on Women in Colonial Australia (St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1995), pp. 90–93.
- 83.
There were 57 branches of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union by 1891. See: Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism (St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1999), pp. 23–24.
- 84.
Susan Margarey, Passions of the First Wave Feminists (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001), p. 52.
- 85.
Audrey Oldfield, Woman Suffrage in Australia: A Gift or a Struggle? (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 16.
- 86.
This story is most fully outlined in Oldfield, Woman Suffrage in Australia. On ‘whiteness’ and the suffrage: Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly, Creating a Nation (Ringwood, Vic.: McPhee Gribble, 1994), pp. 192–193.
- 87.
The most prominent of the utopias was Catherine Spence’s ‘A Week in the Future’ (1888–1889). On this and on rejections of conventional family structures see: Margarey, Passions of the First Wave, pp. 77–78, pp. 111–113.
- 88.
This argument is laid out most forcefully in Lake, Getting Equal, Part II.
- 89.
The fullest study of the upsurge is: Sean Scalmer, Dissent Events: Protest, the Media and the Political Gimmick in Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002). On remaking of international forms see Chaps. 1 and 2.
- 90.
As discussed in Sean Scalmer, ‘Pressure Groups and Social Movements’, in Rod A.W. Rhodes (ed.), The Australian Study of Politics (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009), pp. 208–209.
- 91.
On these protests: Scalmer, Dissent Events, pp. 92–95.
- 92.
Classic works of ‘new social movement theory’ include: Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society, and many later works; Claus Offe, ‘New Social Movements: Challenging the Boundaries of Institutional Politics’, Social Research 52 (1985), pp. 817–868; Jürgen Habermas, ‘New Social Movements’, Telos 49 (1981), pp. 33–37.
- 93.
E.g., Verity Burgmann, ‘From Syndicalism to Seattle: Class and the Politics of Identity’, International Labor and Working Class History 67 (2005), pp. 1–21.
- 94.
Bob Brown and Peter Singer, The Greens (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1996), p. 65.
- 95.
Meredith Burgmann and Verity Burgmann, Green Bans, Red Union: Environmental Activism and the New South Wales Builders Labourers’ Federation (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1998).
- 96.
The argument for an ‘environmental movement’ stretching back to the nineteenth century is made in Drew Hutton and Libby Connors, A History of the Australian Environmental Movement (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1999). This argument rests upon accepting that distinct campaigns or ‘streams’ (e.g., biological preservation, national parks, urban issues) that were not linked by a common mobilization or language should nonetheless be accepted as expressions of a single movement (see p. 86). The book is a fine contribution; this argument less persuasive.
- 97.
On the rejection of ‘conservation’ and ‘preservation’ as a political language: Hutton and Connors, A History of the Australian Environmental Movement, p. 91.
- 98.
Amanda Lohrey, Groundswell: The Rise of the Greens (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2002).
- 99.
The Franklin Blockade, by the Blockaders, Hobart: Wilderness Society, 1983; Peter Thompson, Bob Brown of the Franklin River (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1984).
- 100.
It has been claimed that by the late 1980s, Australian membership in environmental organizations was nearly 300,000—the highest per capita level in the Western world. See: Hutton and Connors, A History of the Australian Environmental Movement, p. 1.
- 101.
Timothy Doyle, Green Power: the Environment Movement in Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2000).
- 102.
Brown and Singer, The Greens.
- 103.
Bain Attwood and Andrew Markus, ‘Introduction’, in The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights: A documentary history (St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1999), pp. 1–29.
- 104.
John Maynard, Fight for Liberty and Freedom: The Origins of Australian Aboriginal Activism (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007).
- 105.
Later expanded to the Federal Council of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. See: Susan Taffe, Black and White Together. FCAATSI: the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, 1958–1973 (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2005).
- 106.
Ann Curthoys, Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2002).
- 107.
Minoru Hokari, ‘From Wattie Creek to Wattie Creek: An Oral History Approach to the Gurindji Walk-Off’, Aboriginal History 98 (2000), pp. 98–116.
- 108.
On the centrality of land occupation to the symbolism of the Embassy, see: Scalmer, Dissent Events, pp. 98–99.
- 109.
Geoffrey Stokes, ‘Australian Democracy and Indigenous Self-determination, 1901–2001’, in Geoffrey Brennan and Francis Castles (eds), Australia Reshaped: 200 Years of Institutional Transformation (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 181–219.
- 110.
The decisions of the High Court (‘Mabo’ and ‘Wik’) required legislative clarification of the means by which Aboriginal people might claim ‘native title’ without recourse to the courts, as well as the circumstances under which ‘native title’ might be extinguished. To this end, a Labor government drafted and passed a ‘Native Title Act’ (1993). Amendments pursued by a later conservative government, and passed in 1998, strongly restricted Aboriginal rights. Legal authorities have argued that these amendments ‘may have so limited’ Aboriginal rights as to ‘discount the fairness of agreements reached’. See: Richard H. Bartlett, Native Title in Australia (Sydney: Butterworths, 2000), p. 62. On the broader conflicts and issues: Peter H. Russell, Recognising Aboriginal Title: The Mabo Case and Indigenous Resistance to English-Settler Colonialism (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006).
- 111.
Russell, Recognising Aboriginal Title, p. 312.
- 112.
Damien Short, Reconciliation and Colonial Power: Indigenous Rights in Australia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
- 113.
On the retreat from women’s liberation: Jean Curthoys, Feminist Amnesia: the wake of women’s liberation (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). On the action of ‘femocrats’: Anna Yeatman, Bureaucrats, Technocrats, Femocrats: Essays on the Contemporary Australian State (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1990). On gay and lesbian activism: Graham Willett, Living Out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Australia (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2000).
- 114.
The broad dimensions of these shifts are wonderfully captured in Wolfgang Streeck, ‘The Crises of Democratic Capitalism’, New Left Review 71 (2011), pp. 5–29.
- 115.
On the work of propagandists, see: Marian Sawer and Barry Hindess (eds), Us and Them: anti-elitism in Australia (Perth: API Network, 2004); Nathan Hollier (ed.), Ruling Australia: the Power, Politics and Privilege of the New Ruling Class (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2004). On the bureaucracy: Michael Pusey, Economic Rationalism in Canberra: a Nation-Building State Changes its Mind (Cambridge and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
- 116.
Carol Johnson, Governing Change: From Keating to Howard (St. Lucia University of Queensland Press, 2000).
- 117.
Timothy Doyle, ‘Surviving the Gang Bang Theory of Nature: The Environment Movement during the Howard Years’, Social Movement Studies 2 (2010), pp. 155–169.
- 118.
Kathy Muir, Worth Fighting For Inside the Your Rights at Work Campaign (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2008).
- 119.
On Australian ‘anti-globalization’ protests of the 1990s: Verity Burgmann, Power, Profit and Protest: Australian Social Movements and Globalisation (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2003), Chap. 5.
- 120.
For example, Australians helped to develop the software used by the radical media group, indymedia, as noted in Graham Meikle, Future Active: Media Activism and the internet (Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press, 2002). Julian Assange was one of a series of hackers who used computing skills to attack governments and corporations, and he later turned these skills to the WikiLeaks project. See: Julian Assange, Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2011).
- 121.
Sean Scalmer, ‘The Production of a Founding Event: Pauline Hanson’s Maiden Parliamentary Speech’, Theory and Event 3 (1999), available at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/toc/tae3.2.html.
- 122.
Sean Scalmer, ‘From Contestation to Autonomy: The Staging and Framing of Anti-Hanson Contention’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 2 (2001), pp. 209–224.
- 123.
New Zealand, in fact, represented the most advanced liberal experiments of these years, and they were also most fully elaborated by a New Zealander: William Pember Reeves, State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand (London: Grant Richards, 1902).
- 124.
On the notion of a ‘movement society’: David S. Meyer and Sidney G. Tarrow, The Social Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).
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Further Readings
Further Readings
There are good historical studies of most of the major Australian social movements. Labour’s history is covered in the long-running journal, Labour History and many individual works. The best synthetic study is probably still: R.W. Connell and T.H. Irving, Class Structure in Australian History (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1992). For book-length surveys of the history of the environmental movement: Drew Hutton and Libby Connors, A History of the Australian Environmental Movement (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1999); feminism: Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The history of Australian Feminism (St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1999). The history of the Aboriginal rights movement is examined in: John Maynard, Fight for Liberty and Freedom: The Origins of Australian Aboriginal Activism (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2007) and Jennifer Clark, Aborigines and Activism: Race, Aborigines and the Coming of the Sixties to Australia (Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2008), among other works. The best synoptic historical survey of contemporary movements is: Verity Burgmann, Power, Profit and Protest: Australian social Movements and Globalisation (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2003), but see also: Sarah Maddison and Sean Scalmer, Activist Wisdom: Practical Knowledge and Creative Tension in Social Movements (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006). The most sustained attempts to apply social-movement concepts to detailed historical study of protest cycles are Terry Irving’s study of nineteenth century democratization: Terry Irving, The Southern Tree of Liberty: The Democratic Movement in New South Wales before 1856 (Annandale: Federation Press, 2006) and Sean Scalmer’s examination of protest movements since the 1960s: Dissent Events: Protest, the media and the political gimmick in Australia, (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002).
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Scalmer, S. (2017). The History of Social Movements in Australia. In: Berger, S., Nehring, H. (eds) The History of Social Movements in Global Perspective. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-30427-8_12
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