Thesis (M.English and Comparative Literature)--Murdoch University, 2006. / Thesis submitted to the Division of Arts. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-129).

This thesis examines how the stevedoring industry at Fremantle was absorbed into a national framework of port cargo-handling services during the first half of the twentieth century. The process of change compelled a local industry with its own peculiarities to conform to standards imposed by central authorities with priorities which were not necessarily in harmony with local practice or custom.In part this was the result of the inexorable forces released by Federation. After the creation of the Commonwealth, there was no isolation for anyone from the Commonwealth government's powers to legislate change if it was deemed to be in the national interest. Power, therefore, would flow towards central authorities: for the shipowners and their stevedores this meant to a central organisation, the Association of Employers of Waterside Labour (AEWL); for the labourers it meant, eventually, to the national executive of the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF).The Commonwealth government had the power and the will to intervene in stevedoring when the national interest dictated. The Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court started the process in 1914. The Commonwealth government in the War of 1914-18, in 1928, made further inroads into curtailing the levels of local autonomy. In the 1939-45 War the process was completed by the creation of government stevedoring industry commissions and boards. The final impact to local autonomy came in 1950 when the policies of a new conservative Commonwealth government forced the Fremantle Lumpers Union to seek the protection of a national union, the WWF.This thesis follows the path taken by the Fremantle stevedoring industry on its way to complete integration and absorption into the national port cargo-handling service. It examines the resistance to the changes brought about by centralisation and the part played in that struggle by both ++ / employers and employees at Fremantle to retain some control over their respective destinies.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Victoria University (Melbourne, Vic.), 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis provides a study of book publishing as it contributes to the production of a regional literature, using Western Australian publishing and literature as illustrative examples of this dynamic. 'Regional literature' is defined in this thesis as writing possessing cultural value that is specific to a region, although the writing may also have national and international value. An awareness of geographically and culturally diverse regions within the framework of the nation is shown to be derived from representations of these regions and their associated regional characteristics in the movies, television and books. In Australia, literature has been the primary site for expressions of regional difference. Therefore, this thesis analyses the impact of regionalism on the processes of book production and publication in Western Australia’s three major publishing houses— a trade publishing house (Fremantle Press), an Indigenous publishing house (Magabala Books), and an academic publishing house (University of Western Australia Press). Book history, print culture studies and publishing studies, along with literary studies and cultural studies, roughly approximate a disciplinary map of the types of research that constitute this thesis. By examining regional literature in the context of its 'field of cultural production', this thesis maintains that regionalism and regional literature can avail themselves of a fresh perspective that shows them to be anything but marginal or exclusive. Regionalism has been a topic of peripheral interest, at least as far as scholarly research and academia are concerned, because those who are most likely to be affected by and thus interested in the topic, are also those who are most disempowered as a result of its attendant dynamics. However, as this thesis clearly demonstrates, access (or a lack thereof) to the field of cultural production (which in the case of print culture includes writers, literary agents, editors, publishers, government arts organisations, the media, schools, book clubs, and book retailers, just to name a few) plays a significant role in establishing and shaping an identity for marginalised 3 constituencies. The implications for this research are far-ranging, since both Western Australia and Australia can be understood as peripheries dominated in their different spheres (the 'national' and the 'international', respectively) by literary cultures residing elsewhere. Furthermore, there are parallels between this dynamic and the dynamic responsible for producing postcolonial literatures. The three publishing houses detailed in this thesis are disadvantaged by many of the factors associated with their distance from the traditional centres of book publishing, while at the same time producing a regional literature that serves as a platform from which the state broadcasts its distinctive contributions to the cultural landscape and to a wider understanding of concepts such as space, place and belonging. These publishing houses changed the way in which Australians and others have come to know and think about 'Australia', re-routing public consciousness and the national imagination.