• Site Map
• Campus Map
• A-Z Index
• Staff Intranet
• Contacts

CAPSTRANS authors celebrating the triple book launch are (from left) ...

Participating in the triple book launch are authors and presenters at...

CAPSTRANS celebrates a triple book launch

The depth and breadth of CAPSTRANS’ (Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies) interdisciplinary research featured strongly at its triple book launch event held on 26 March.

More than 80 people attended 67 Dining to celebrate the recent publications of:

• “Imposing Peace & Prosperity: Australia, Social Justice and Labour Reform in Occupied Japan” (Australian Scholarly Publishing) by Dr Christine de Matos (launched by Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki of the ANU)

• “Postcolonial Literary History and Indian English Fiction” (Cambria Press & Prestige Publishing) by Associate Professor Paul Sharrad (launched by Dr Tony Simoes da Silva, UOW) and

• “Globalisation and the Middle Classes in India: The Social and Cultural Impact of Neoliberal Reforms” (Routledge) by Dr Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Associate Professor Tim Scrase (launched by Professor Philip Kitley, UOW).

Dr de Matos’ book is the culmination of many years intensive research in Australia and Japan focusing on the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) and the US-Australia relationship.

Australia and the United States often disagreed over contentious issues related to Japan’s postwar reforms, particularly in regard to labour reform policy and on issues of social and economic justice.

Comparisons with Iraq and Afghanistan are perhaps inevitable, and Dr de Matos’ narrative illuminates the paradox of the imposition of democratic reforms via military occupation.

In his collection of essays, Associate Professor Sharrad also reconceptualises postcolonial studies.

His book is a significant contribution to postcolonial studies and advances the ever more richly complicated discourse that has emerged in the field.

Professor Sharrad considers the way in which the theoretical positions are meaningfully explored in the context of imaginative literary texts.

The book by Dr Ganguly-Scrase and Associate Professor Scrase had its genesis in the late 1990s and is the culmination of eight years ethnographic research and detailed interviews in India.

It reveals the complexity of the globalisation process and describes and accounts for the contradictory attitudes of the lower middle classes.

The authors challenge the notion of a homogeneous Indian middle class as being the undoubted beneficiaries of all facets of recent neoliberal economic reforms.

Significantly, they discuss and analyse both the economic and cultural sides to globalisation in India, providing much-needed data in relation to: the changing costs of living, household expenditure, debt and consumerism, employment and workplace restructuring, gender relations and girls’ education, global media and satellite television, and the significance of English in a globalising India.