Professional Historian and History Consultancy Services Brisbane
Category: Intellectual History
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C. Wright Mills’ The Power Elite, the Old-New Left, and Queensland lived Ideologies
Wright Mills’ The Power Elite (1956) has been a major sociological work that has repeatedly been the right framework to understand the political and social chaos I have experienced and witnessed in my lifetime. It is not a perfect work and not a perfect model. The sociologist examines three firmly interlocked prongs of American power:…
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The Language and Ignorance of the Culture Warrior and Knowledge of Religion & Culture in Late 20th Century Queensland
This is a blog post to set everyone straight, which makes me open to the critique of being one of Manning Clark’s ‘straighteners’; but that’s another story. My arguments, as a general framework, is based on a basic critique of the neo-conservative paradigm. The paradigm is a defence of a cultural position(s) which has become…
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Who is objecting to the Voice of the Historian?
“History and historians play a crucial role in Australian culture. They are foundational to other fields in the arts, with historical research often underpinning film, theatre, literature and even, on occasion, dance. A government serious about implementing a cultural policy for the future must make space for history and historians in the formulation of that…
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Please Read Carefully
I was recently shocked by email replies to a short comment I made, as what I thought was a extending out a hand of friendship with an intelligent comment. The replies were hostile in the first case, and extremely annoyed in the second. Both replies misunderstood my intent for the comment, and misunderstood the…
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D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo (1923): One Hundred Years On, Questioning Social Philosophy and Policy for Today
THREE ESSAYS (REVIEW COMMENTS) IN ONE ESSAY An examination of D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo (The Cambridge Edition) in social philosophy, and demonstrating a fundamental policy problem in Australian political history. Image: Sydney Region and Central-South Coast Staging of Kangaroo (1923). ***** List of Site Markers. Order from north to south Narrabeen New South Wales 2101…
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The Falseness of the ‘Woke’ Outrage: Sleepwalking into Present History
There has been outrage in recent years from right-wing media about a ‘woke’ pandemic, as a politically incorrect stance from a neo-conservative framework of thought. It has many academics and ‘non-school’ scholars perplexed. It has only been recently and systematically articulated as outrage in James Lindsay and Charles Pincourt’s (2021) Counter Wokecraft: A Field Manual…
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Discussion: Religion, Culture, and Political Parties: The Silent Response to Zachary Gorman ‘s One Direction and Mike Seccombe’s Part 1 & 2: Collapse of the modern Liberal
Dr Neville Buch challenges a discussion with the views of Mike Seccombe, Zachary Gorman, John Warhurst, and Nick Cater. “I never got from Menzies what I feel about listening to modern Liberals, which is a contempt for the other. It’s a really, really harsh, harsh attitude – that your political opponents are the enemy. It’s…
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What are five facts about Australian History that you wish Americans knew?
I was invited to answer a Quora question, on ‘facts’ that I would like Americans to know. Here are my answers. Facts in chronological reverse order, all of equal importance. The Culture-History War from Prime Minister John Howard had obscured an adequate understanding of Australian History, but also this has been a longer path…
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Exceptionalism and Conceit
You have to ask American Senator Ted Cruz, who’s propaganda is he and the gun lobby defending? Do we ennoble savagery, and do we falsify civility? These are the questions for the times, and it goes to exceptionalism for personal and national conceit. Exceptionalism is the condition of being different from the norm. For nations,…
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A Call for Cultural Education, Intellectually Famed in the Global Dialogue
The key words here, in President Biden’s response, is ‘other countries.’ Why do American scholars struggle to get their messages across in this climate of violence? I suggest it is more than the category of religion, and it is about the way the category of culture is framed for the internal dialogue. To de-frame…