How we got to where we are

Nice of the Armidale Express to give my Friday UNE seminar paper a plug! Nicer still that it's on-line.  I quote:

READERS of Belshaw’s World, a column that runs in The Armidale Express every Wednesday, will know that Jim Belshaw is passionate about this region and is currently writing a book about its history.

On Friday, he will present a paper at the University of New England drawing together some of the ideas he has discussed in his column.

Jim’s talk will explore the social and economic history of New England over the period 1950 to 2000, a time of dramatic change that he says falls into two halves.

During the first period there was considerable change, but also historical continuity.

By contrast, the scale of change over the second period was so great as to create a fundamental historical discontinuity.

He will argue that unable to exercise any real influence, let alone control, over the pattern of change, New England and its people could only respond to ideas and ideologies set by others.

The paper’s focus is threefold: challenge and response in Aboriginal New England; changes in societal values and attitudes; and economic and demographic change.

The discussion will be set within a context of global and national change, examining the way in which particular ideas and ideology that affected politics, policies and public administration spread with consequent local and regional effects, and will conclude with brief reflections on lessons for the future.

The seminar will start at 9.30 am in A3 – Arts Building and will be followed by morning tea.

Jim Belshaw has an honours degree in history from UNE and an M.Ec from ANU.

He is a strategic consultant, a member of the Heritage Futures Research Centre, and an adjunct Associate Lecturer in the School of Humanities."

I am still struggling to finalise the paper. I know what I want to say, but I have to reference everything and am caught in conflicts of time and priority. Still, I did get off this morning my next piece for the Museum of Australian Democracy on the history of the New England New State Movement in the 1910s and 1920s. I might be able to cannibalise this into part of my new state history.