Part travel writing, part social history and part personal reflection, Messing About In Earnest is a real gem. Using Governor Stirling's historic 1827 voyage up the Swan and Canning Rivers as his touchstone, Nick Burningham takes us on a fascinating trip up the river and back in time. On his way he beguiles the reader with comment and anecdote about people, places and subjects that he finds particularly interesting. Published in a popular small hardcover format complete with maps and drawings, Messing About In Earnest is perhaps the most witty and erudite history of Perth and the formation of the Swan River Colony that you will ever read.
Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free—it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit. The Costs of Connection uncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives—our ways of knowing; our means of production; our political participation. Colonialism might seem like a thing of the past, but this book shows that the historic appropriation of land, bodies, and natural resources is mirrored today in this new era of pervasive datafication. Apps, platforms, and smart objects capture and translate our lives into data, and then extract information that is fed into capitalist enterprises and sold back to us. The authors argue that this development foreshadows the creation of a new social order emerging globally—and it must be challenged. Confronting the alarming degree of surveillance already tolerated, they offer a stirring call to decolonize the internet and emancipate our desire for connection.
A forgotten singer from the early days of jazz is at the center of this riveting book -- a narrative that is part mystery, part biography, part meditation on the meaning and power of music.
Voters need to be informed to make political decisions, but what if their media diet not only prevents them from getting the information they need, but actively shapes inaccurate perceptions of the world? Drawing on examples and evidence from around the world, this book aims to make a timely intervention to the debate about the concept of fake news. Its underlying argument will have three objectives. First, to offer more precise definitions for a term that is often loosely used. Second, to offer a less technologically determinist view of fake news. New social media platforms, such as Facebook and WhatsApp, are clearly an important part of the story, but they exist in wider social, political and institutional settings. Third, to situate the idea of fake news (and our concern about it) in broader arguments about an ongoing crisis and loss of confidence in liberal democratic institutions. Only with this perspective, it will be argued, can we possibly address the question of what we should do about fake news.
How do multicultural children and their parents experience the very beginning of their school careers? How do teachers mediate the demands of the educational system, and how do the children adapt? What kind of access to the National Curriculum is offered to multicultural children? Originally published in 1999, the authors answer these questions by drawing on two years’ intensive research in three multi-ethnic institutions. They explore teachers’ values and beliefs and how they attempt to put them into practice. They describe how, at times, teachers were constrained to get things done because of pressures operating on them, but at other times, taught creatively in a way particularly relevant to the children’s concerns and cultures. The authors studied the children’s experiences on their transition into school, and argue that they were inducted into not only a general pupil role, but also one based on an anglicised model of pupil. Opportunities for learning which children found most meaningful came notably from free play, but these became gradually more limited as they engaged with the National Curriculum. These young children were forming complex identities as they sought to respond to the varying influences operating them. Their parents saw a cultural divide opening up between home and school. Many suggestions for practice and policy are made in the course of the book and are still relevant today.
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