To contemplate class in Australia is to be confronted immediately by paradox. Australia has over the past forty years become much more unequal, and yet those institutions formed to contest class inequality – the trade unions and the Labor Party – have become weaker and less militant. The labour movement has largely avoided a language of class as divisive and old-fashioned, and yet right-wing p ... (read more)
Sean Scalmer
Sean Scalmer teaches at the University of Melbourne, where he is a Professor of History. His work is especially concerned with social movements, class, and democracy. His latest books are Democratic Adventurer: Graham Berry and the Making of Australian Democracy (2020) and the co-edited Remembering Social Movements: Activism and Memory (2021).
Writings on globalisation have so far been of three principal types. First came the fables of discovery: bold, confident and romantic. Next came the stories of resistance: variously decrying the consequences of the new order, or denying that there was anything particularly novel about this globalisation malarkey. More recently, however, we have entered the age of elaboration. These fresher writing ... (read more)