The Lucky Country?

Author: Ian Lowe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781458737212
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Book Description
Can we reinvent the Lucky Country? In 1964, Donald Horne described Australia as 'a lucky country run mainly by second - rate people who share its luck' in his iconic book. Now, more than five decades later, internationally respected scientist and environmentalist Ian Lowe shows that little has changed after generations of short - sighted leadership. In his frank and fearless way, Lowe assesses the state of Australia in four key areas: our environment, population and society, geographical position, and unrelenting pursuit of economic growth. Highlighting that the global economy and the environment are in crisis, Lowe illustrates the need - and the opportunity - to transform Australia into the world - leading model of sustainable development that we have the potential to become. A must - read, The Lucky Country? Reinventing Australia challenges us all to consider the kind of future we want for our country and communities.

Lucky Country?

Author: Ian Lowe
Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press
ISBN: 0702255467
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
Can we reinvent the Lucky Country? Fifty years ago author Donald Horne described Australia as 'a lucky country run by second-rate people', adding that our leaders are mostly unaware of events that surround them. The good fortune continued when our wide brown land proved to contain bountiful resources of saleable minerals, allowing successive generations of second-rate leaders to create an illusion of economic progress by liquidating those assets. But a crisis is approaching, driven by irresponsible encouragement of population growth rates typical of poor developing countries. In this polemic work, Ian Lowe will assess the state of Australia and whether we can retain our status of the Lucky Country.

Donald Horne

Author: Donald Horne
Publisher: La Trobe University Press
ISBN: 192543575X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
One of Australia’s leading thinkers for close to fifty years, Donald Horne was probably the best Australian non-fiction writer of his generation. This definitive collection of Horne’s writing, thoughtfully selected by his son, Nick, tells the story of his life and intellectual development. From a position of doubting whether change was possible, he eventually became a proponent of the sensible reform necessary for Australia to prosper in a changing world. Horne made the case for a more open, modern, intelligent Australia, most famously in his seminal book The Lucky Country. Selections from this work sit alongside pithy reflections on Australian history and culture, as well as vivid autobiographical writing. With an introduction by Nick Horne and a biographical essay by Glyn Davis, this important book honours and illuminates the man who helped the nation understand itself. ‘He was a great clarifier ... of many of the problems and dilemmas of society.’ —Frank Moorhouse ‘An independent, vigorous critic.’ —Malcolm Fraser Donald Horne AO was a leading public intellectual for nearly fifty years. He was the author of The Lucky Country and The Education of Young Donald, and many other books and essays. He edited The Bulletin, chaired the Australia Council, and, in a late career change, broadened the idea of what it means to be an academic. He died in 2005.

Urban Eco-Communities in Australia

Author: Liam Cooper
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811311684
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
This book offers one of the first detailed anthropological studies of emergent ecotopianism in urban contexts. Engaging directly with debates on urbanisation, sustainability and utopia, it presents two detailed ethnographic case studies of inner urban Australian eco-communities in Adelaide and Melbourne. These novel responses to the ecological crisis – real social laboratories that attempt to manifest a vision of the ‘eco-city’ in microcosm – offer substantial new insights into the concept and creation of sustainable urban communities, their attempts to cultivate ways of living that are socially and ecologically nourishing, and their often fraught relationship to the capitalist city beyond. These studies also suggest the opportunities and limitations of moving beyond demonstration projects towards wider urban transformation, as well as exposing the problems of accessibility and affordability that thwart further urban eco-interventions and the ways that existing projects can exacerbate issues of gentrification and privilege in a socially polarised city. Amidst the challenges of the capitalist city, climate change and ecological crisis, this book offers vital lessons on the potential of urban sustainability in future cities.

Climate Change and Capitalism in Australia

Author: Hans A. Baer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000455971
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
Recognizing that climate politics has been an increasingly contentious and heated topic in Australia over the past two decades, this book examines Australian capitalism as a driver of climate change and the nexus between the corporations and Coalition and Australian Labor parties. As a highly developed country, Australia is punching above its weight in terms of contributing to greenhouse gas emissions despite rising temperatures, droughts, water shortages and raging bushfires, storm surges and flooding, and the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. Drawing upon both archival and ethnographic research, Hans Baer examines Australian climate politics at the margins, namely the Greens, the labour union, the environmental NGOs, and the grass-roots climate movement. Adopting a climate justice perspective which calls for "system change, not climate change" as opposed to the conventional approach of seeking to mitigate emissions through market mechanisms and techno-fixes, particularly renewable energy sources, this book posits system-challenging transitional steps to shift Australia toward an eco-socialist vision in keeping with a burgeoning global socio-ecological revolution. Accessibly written and including an interview with renowned comedian and climate activist Rod Quantock OAM, this book is essential reading for academics, students and general readers with an interest in climate change and climate activism.

The Metrics of Teacher Effectiveness and Teacher Quality Research

Author: Andrew Skourdoumbis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000051021
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Book Description
Most developed nations measure the performance of teachers in audit evaluations of school productivity. Accountability metrics such as "teacher effectiveness" and "teacher quality" dominate evaluations of student outcomes and shape education policy. The Metrics of Teacher Effectiveness and Teacher Quality Research explores how these metrics distort analyses of student achievement, sideline broader contextual and systemic influences on learning, reinforce input-output analysis of schooling, and skew the educational debate. Focusing on recent phases of school education policy reform, this book utilizes qualitative data from classroom teacher participants to examine how and why issues of teacher effectiveness and teacher quality figure so prominently in policy reform and why pressing matters of social class, school funding, and broader contextual influences are downplayed. The authors use this information to suggest how teachers can develop their role as pedagogic experts in a highly scrutinized environment. This book will be of great interest to education academics and postgraduate students specializing in teacher performance, accountability and governance.

Intergenerational Education for Adolescents towards Liveable Futures

Author: David Lloyd
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527535991
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Book Description
This volume will provide eco-socially-oriented science and environmental educators with a diverse set of examples of how science and environmental learning for students and their co-learner teachers can be enacted in ways which contribute to their understanding of, commitment to and capabilities towards, living for a more eco-socially just and, therefore, more sustainable world. Science and environmental learning is set within a challenging framework, one that entails critical, transdisciplinary learning and acting, and values all the human and other-than-human beings sharing Earth’s rich, but finite, resources. The text asserts that ethical contemporary science and environmental education, which practitioners might find within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), will have at centre-stage not merely more factual knowledge, but also the development of learners’ affect and behaviour towards acting for eco-social justice. This will demand that learners more fully appreciate not only the necessity to transition swiftly to living within planetary boundaries, but also the requirements of ethical living—that humans share health and well-being more equally with their own and all other species. Further, the book proposes that eco-socially responsible science and environmental education must be set within a transdisciplinary and integral framework, one in which curriculum and pedagogy are embedded in everyday practice. In this transition project from unsustainable inequities to eco-social justice, teachers and community leaders need to work with their students/citizens in envisioning preferable futures, and developing shared knowledge, values, dispositions, courage and capabilities to work towards such futures, and in genuine attempts at affecting them.

Reinventing Healthy Communities: Implications for Individual and Societal Well-Being

Author: Jerry D. Marx
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3038422622
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Book Description
This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Reinventing Healthy Communities: Implications for Individual and Societal Well-Being" that was published in Social Sciences

Leadership after COVID-19

Author: Satinder K. Dhiman
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030848671
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 634

Book Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has permanently changed lives around the world and no dimension of life and leadership seems to have been spared from its wrath. It has also stirred us into thinking about novel approaches to lead organizations and societies toward a shared, sustainable future. This book offers novel perspectives on leadership and change management after the COVID-19 pandemic that take us beyond striving for thriving—perspectives that are grounded in emergent theory, research and practice. It highlights sustainable leadership and change management strategies to effectively deal with unpredictable and rapidly changing situations—particularly in a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). This book also highlights engaging perspectives by specialists from different disciplines such as business, psychology, education, and health care. It serves as a practical guide in identifying and responding to leadership challenges and opportunities in each of the four VUCA categories of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—and how they affect businesses, organizations, and societies as a whole.

Starting with the Spirit

Author: Stephen Pickard
Publisher: ATF Press
ISBN: 1925612392
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Book Description
Within the field of theology per se a fundamental issue is raised when we begin with the Spirit. This issue concerns the particular shape and trajectory of the Christian faith. How will the doctrine of God at the heart of theology be re-configured when the Spirit becomes the fundamental theme? To begin with the Spirit is to place such a question at the centre of the theological agenda.