Back to deakin.edu.au

Books

Books

Featured Book

A Toolkit for Effective Everyday Activism book cover

A Toolkit for Effective Everyday Activism

Leanne Kelly and Alison Rogers unpack theories from the social sciences to help find meaning, explain these feelings of inertia, and provide strategies to overcome them. Through lessons learned over their careers as evaluators in non-profit organisations, Kelly and Rogers provide tools and strategies for measuring, improving, and sharing the effectiveness of planet-saving activities. They draw upon interviews with everyday people who are contributing to change in their homes, community groups, workplaces, and social settings to understand how they motivate and encourage others. The book concludes with a realistic look at individual expectations and focuses on how to prioritise self-care to ensure that activists can keep contributing in a way that maintains their wellbeing and balance.

A Toolkit for Effective Everyday Activism empowers people to use theory, research, and practical tools to leverage their power so they can make the maximum contribution possible and sustain their efforts over the long term. It will be a great resource for individuals working and volunteering in community groups, NGOs, and non-profit and corporate organisations with an environmental focus.

China's Galaxy Empire Front Cover

China’s galaxy empire: Wealth, power, war, and peace in the new Chinese century

In China’s Galaxy Empire, John Keane and Baogang He target a development of enormous significance: China’s return, after two centuries of decline and subjugation, to a position of prominence in world affairs. The daring thesis is that China is a newly rising empire of a kind never before witnessed: a galaxy empire. The first to be born of the digital communications era, this young empire is economically and politically powerful, and heavily armed. Its gravitational, push-pull effects are impacting every continent–and even outer space, where China is competing with the United States, India, and Europe to become the leading power. The galaxy empire interpretation rejects clichéd misdescriptions of China as a “big power” or monolithic “autocracy”, and it explains why China defies older definitions of land, sea, and air-based empires. The book charts the developments that have made its rising empire so novel, including the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative, the rapid rise of a global Chinese middle class, and internal colonialism in Tibet and Xinjiang. The book notes the protean, shapeshifting qualities of this young empire. It therefore warns against the political and military perils of simple-minded, friend-versus-enemy thinking and “Big China, Bad China” politics. But it also proffers a forewarning to China’s rulers: while every rising empire aims to shift the balance of power in its favour, no empire lasts forever, and some are stillborn, because they indulge illusions of greatness and reckless power adventures.

He B.
Sharia as Informal Law

Sharia as Informal Law: Lived Experiences of Young Muslims in Western Societies

This book takes a comprehensive approach to investigate how Sharia influences and manifests in the everyday lives of young Muslims, aiming to unravel the meaning and relevance of Sharia-driven laws and practices in English-speaking Western societies. By focusing on the grassroots level, it provides a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of Muslims and their relationship with Sharia. The presence of Muslims in Western countries has a long history, with recent waves of migration and conversions contributing to their increasing numbers. This study recognizes the diverse nature of the Muslim community, comprising both migrants and local converts, who have become integral parts of the pluralistic fabric of multicultural societies. The research draws on in-depth interviews with 122 young Muslim individuals from diverse backgrounds representing three different Western countries: Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Diversity of participants allows for a broader exploration of the Muslim community and the inherent diversity of opinions, interpretations, and practices regarding Sharia. This approach moves beyond theoretical debates, providing concrete insights into the practical implications of Sharia for young Muslims in their respective Western contexts. The book also sheds light on the evolving landscape of information and knowledge acquisition in the age of digital technologies and cyberspace. It explores how young Muslims access and seek knowledge in the twenty-first century, recognizing the impact of changing sources and modes of information on their religious practices and beliefs. This aspect adds a valuable dimension to the study, capturing the dynamic nature of knowledge dissemination and acquisition among young Muslims in Western societies. The book will be fascinating reading for academics, researchers, and policy-makers working in the areas of Law, Political Science, Minority Studies, Religious Studies, and Islamic Studies.

Yilmaz I.

Love Across Class

What does it mean to partner across class difference? This lucid and original book is the first to explore cross-class relationships in contemporary Australia, a society long-invested in the myth of egalitarianism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with people from a range of class and cultural backgrounds, Love Across Class brings to life the role of class in shaping people’s childhoods, as well as the adult lives couples have built together. These stories move between the mundane, the profound and the taboo, as interviewees reckon openly with the pain, pleasure, humour and contradiction that comes with forming a close relationship across class. From escaping one’s class background and confronting class dissimilarity, to managing money and negotiating holidays, this book offers rich accounts of personal worlds shared across class as they are lived. Yet not only do those interviewed reflect on the classed dynamics and tensions present in their relationships and family life, they also strive to grasp the concept of class itself. Conversations about class at home ultimately led to scrutiny of other areas of society deeply implicated in class experience in Australia. Education, work, migration and assets are all examined here amid the backdrop of growing inequality. For many, forming a relationship across class brought these stark realities to the fore. This engaging book will stimulate readers to think about class in intimate, emotional and society-wide terms.

Butler R, Vincent E.
Racism and anti-racism today book cover

Racism and anti-racism today: Principles, policies and practices

Acknowledging efforts to dismantle racism at multiple levels, Racism and Anti-Racism Today examines racism and anti-racism as interconnected rather than isolated issues and proposes a framework for effective anti-racist policy and practice.

Providing a unique side-by-side view on current conceptualizations, debates, and policy-praxis, the ten thematic chapters examine the impact of race, racism, and intersecting inequities on contemporary society. They highlight the enduring significance of racial identity politics in shaping social divisions. Engaging in interdisciplinary theoretical debates, Amanuel Elias’s scholarship adopts a comparative perspective, incorporating research findings and examples from different geographic contexts. Offering policy recommendations and directions for further research, he contends with fundamental questions that continue to plague the study of racism and its social and economic impact. Why does racism continue to exist and affect societies today despite apparent progress in the acquisition of knowledge, digital connectedness, and human rights discourse? What challenges across societies are blocking efforts to racial equity? What promising anti-racism policy-praxis can we envisage for tackling the impact of racial inequity?

Drawing on over a decade of interdisciplinary research, Racism and Anti-Racism Today provides cutting-edge discussion about the present relevance of prejudice to envision an anti-racist future.

Elias A.
The Dark Social book cover

The Dark Social: Online Practices of Resistance, Motility and Power

Edited Book

This book explores how people interact online through anonymous communication in encrypted, hidden, or otherwise obscured online spaces. Beyond the Dark Web itself, this book examines how the concept of ‘dark social’ broadens the possibilities for examining notions of darkness and sociality in the age of digitality and datafied life. The authors take into account technical, moral, ethical, and pragmatic responses to ourselves and communities seeking to be/belong in/of/ the dark.

Scholarship on the Darknet and Dark Social Spaces tends to focus on the uses of encryption and other privacy-enhancing technologies to engender resistance acts. Such understandings of the dark social are naturally in tension with social and political theories which argue that for politics and ‘acts’ to matter they must appear in the public light. They are also in tension with popular narratives of the ‘dark recesses of the web’ which are disparaged by structural powers who seek to keep their subjects knowable and locatable on the clear web. The binary of dark versus light is challenged in this book. The authors’ provocation is that practices of ‘dark’ resistance, motility and power are enacted by emerging data cultures. This book draws together scholarship, activism, and creativity to push past conceptual binary positions and create new approaches to darknet and dark social studies.

The Dark Social: Online Practices of Resistance, Motility and Power will be a key resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of media studies, cultural studies, communication studies, research methods, and sociology. This book was originally published as a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies.

Cinque T.

Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage: Experiences of Return in Central Australia

Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage examines how returned materials – objects, photographs, audio and manuscripts – are being received and reintegrated into the ongoing social and cultural lives of Aboriginal Australians.

Combining a critical examination of the making of these collections with an assessment of their contemporary significance, the book exposes the opportunities and challenges involved in returning cultural heritage for the purposes of maintaining, preserving or reviving cultural practice. Drawing on ethnographic work undertaken with Aboriginal communities and the institutions that hold significant collections, the author reveals important new insights about the impact of return on communities. Technological advances, combined with the push towards decolonising methodologies in Indigenous research, have resulted in considerable interest in ensuring that collections of cultural value are returned to Indigenous communities. Gibson challenges the rhetoric of museum repatriation, arguing that, while it has been tremendously important to advancing Indigenous interest, it is too often over-simplified.

Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage offers a timely, critical perspective on current museum practice and its place within processes of cultural production and transmission. The book is sure to resonate in other international contexts where questions about Indigenous re-engagement and decolonisation strategies are being debated and will be of interest to students and scholars of Museum Studies, Indigenous Studies and Anthropology.

Gibson JM.

Australian Public Opinion Defence and Foreign Policy: Attitudes and Trends Since 1945

This book examines the impact of Australian public opinion towards defence and foreign policy from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. For most of this period, the public showed little interest in defence and security policy and possessed limited knowledge about the strategic options available. The principal post-war exception to this pattern is, of course, the Vietnam War, when political divisions over Australia’s support for the U.S.-led action eventually resulted in the withdrawal of troops in 1972. The period since 2001 has seen a fundamental change both in the public’s views of defence and foreign affairs, and in how these issues are debated by political elites. This has come about as a result of major changes in the strategic environment such as a heightened public awareness of terrorism, party political divisions over Australia’s military commitment to the 2003-11 Iraq War and the increasing overlap of economic and trade considerations with defence and foreign policies, which has increased the public’s interest in these issues. Combining the expertise of one of Australia’s foremost scholars of public opinion with that of an expert of international relations, particularly as pertains to Australia in Asia, this book will be a critical read for those wishing to understand Australia’s alliance with the U.S., interactions with Asia and China, and the distinctive challenges posed to Australia by its geographic position.

Chubb D, McAllister I.

Everyday Multiculturalism in/across Asia

What does it mean to bring Asia into conversation with current literature on everyday multiculturalism? This book focuses on the empirical, theoretical and methodological considerations of using an everyday multiculturalism approach to explore the ordinary ways people live together in difference in the Asian region while also drawing attention to increasing trans-Asian mobilities. The chapters in this collection encompass inter-disciplinary research undertaken in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea that explores some core aspects of everyday multiculturalism as it plays out in and across Asia. These include an increase in intraregional movements and especially labour mobility, which demands regard for the experiences of migrants from Burma, China, Nepal, The Philippines and India; negotiations of cultural diversity in nations where a multi-ethnic citizenry is formally recognised through predominantly pluralist models, and/or where national belonging is highly racialized; and intercultural contestation against, in some cases, the backdrop of a newly emergent multicultural policy environment. The book challenges and reinvigorates discussions around the relative transferability of an everyday multiculturalism framework to Asia, including concepts such as super-diversity, conviviality and everyday racism, and the importance of close attention to how people navigate differences and commonalities in local and trans-local contexts.

Walton J, Harris A, Iwabuchi K.

Looking to partner with Australia's leading social sciences 
and humanities research institute?

If you are interested in partnering or studying with us – we're keen to hear from you.