vi, 341 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Politics, 1980

Within a context of recent and rapid transformation in authorship and participation practices on the Internet, this thesis explores the implications of an emerging digital culture for heritage institutions, such as museums and archives. Combining insights from internet, education and museum theory it explores different experiences of participation and meaning making around digital heritage collections opened to public engagement and contribution. In particular, the investigation analyses and contrasts the online activities of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), partner in the research, with alternative approaches. The thesis applies ethnographic research methods to investigate embodied and virtual settings. Based on the empirical findings, it identifies different theoretical models of online engagement with heritage content. It then extrapolates from these models a conceptual framework that could be used by heritage institutions to analyse and re-assess their online practices, intellectual positioning and strategic ambitions in the context of the paradigm shift brought about by digitality.

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This study documents a process of planned social change. In 1967, the Canadian government appointed the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW) following a campaign mounted by a coalition of women's groups to promote women's rights. The Commission helped to define the status of women as a legitimate social problem, recommended changes in social policy, and helped to mobilize a constituency which pressed the government to implement the recommendations. The existence of an organized and vocal women's movement strengthened the Commission's demand for "simple justice." / The Report of the Commission was tabled in 1970, and the government responded to it by creating a federal policy system for promoting women's rights. The study assesses the different outcomes of the 167 RCSW recommendations over a ten-year period and it discusses the relationships between the women's movement, a governmental commission of inquiry (RCSW), and public policy on the status of women in Canada.

The Dominion government appointed a Royal Commission in April 1903 to investigate the causes of strikes that began in February between the Canadian Pacific Railway Company and the United Brotherhood of Railway Employees at Vancouver and the Wellington Colliery Company and the Western Federation of Miners at Extension and Cumberland on Vancouver Island. The Boyal Commissioners were instructed to report whether in their opinion these and other American unions should have their activities in Canada curtailed. After a month of hearings the Commissioners reported that the United Brotherhood and the Western Federation were undesirable unions for Canadian workingmen to join. The Commissioners concluded that both unions had conspired to bring about strikes in the Wellington Colliery mines. The Nanaimo Miners' Union, Local 177 of the Western Federation, was accused by the Commissioners of assisting in the conspiracy to tie up the coal mines in the adjacent towns. As the Canadian Pacific Railway Company depended in part on the Wellington mines for steam coal for its trains at Vancouver, it was apparent that the unions concerned tried to break the strike for recognition between the railway company and the union in favour of the union. The Commissioners also reported that these American unions were spreading revolutionary socialism in British Columbia. The main result of this political action, concluded the Commissioners, was to instil in workingmen a belief in the inevitability of class conflict between themselves and their employers. The transportation and mining industries of the province were in danger of having their businesses seriously disrupted if these foreign unions remained in Canada. The Commissioners stated that a few socialists in Vancouver, Nanaimo, Extension and Cumberland were responsible for encouraging these radical unions to organize the workers. The question as to whether the Western Federation actually caused the strikes on the island has never been seriously explored. Historians have been divided on the question and on their assessment of the validity of the Commissioners' Report. The official hearings disclosed that James Dunsmuir, the president and owner of Wellington Collieries, locked out his miners once they had formed unions. The Commissioners argued that the conspiracy plan depended on the predictable reaction of Dunsmuir to the formation of unions in his mines. In the past he had never permitted unions to exist for long in his mines before he dismissed the union leaders. It has never been satisfactorily demonstrated whether the miners joined the Western Federation for reasons of their own and then struck for union recognition or whether they were, as the Commissioners alleged, tricked into the Federation only to find themselves locked out. The Commissioners admitted in the Report that Wellington Collieries and other large employers of labour bore some responsibility for the fact that working men organized unions in order to protect themselves from the arbitrary and unjust treatment they often received from managers and foremen. Although the Commissioners stated that shorter hours and higher wages would make workingmen more content, they did not report that grievances over working conditions and wages were the real reasons why the miners joined the Western Federation. Yet the official hearings of 1903 contained ample evidence that the strikes at Extension and Cumberland occurred for reasons that lay primarily within and not outside the coalfield. The Commissioners misinterpreted the reasons why the miners joined the Western Federation because their attention was directed solely to the issue of the advance of American unions into Canada. An analysis of the official evidence of the Commission reveals that the miners formed unions at Wellington Collieries in 1903 in order to resolve problems that had become traditional sources of dispute on the coalfield. The traditional problems that embittered relations between miners and companies were geological, social and economic in character. The faulted condition of the coal seams made mining both difficult and dangerous. Since 1871 Wellington miners had organized unions to fight for improvements in safety and working conditions underground. However, the increased employment of illiterate and inexperienced Oriental workers increased the dangers of mining to all concerned. Miners demanded the exclusion of Oriental workers from the mines for another important reason than the question of safety. Oriental workers competed for the jobs of mine labourers and were often used in place of white miners during strikes. During strikes in 1877, in 1883 and in 1903 Chinese workers kept the mines running while white miners were locked out. In contrast to the Wellington mines, unions emerged at the Nanaimo mines and working conditions steadily improved after 1883. A miners' union grievance committee was established in the mines by 1883. An eight hour day, oriental exclusion and union recognition were in effect in the Nanaimo mines by 1891. Attempts by union leaders from Nanaimo in the years 1890 to 1901 failed in their purpose of organizing the Dunsmuir mines. When the Nanaimo miners joined the Western Federation of Miners in 1902 in order to improve their weak bargaining power, miners in the adjacent Dunsmuir mines saw their opportunity to join the Federation. With the financial and moral support of a large union behind them the Dunsmuir miners demanded union recognition as the first step in their plan to negotiate improvements in wages and working conditions. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

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This thesis examines the development of vivisection as a method of physiological research between 1875 and 1901 in Great Britain, by examining some of the arguments, discussions, and ideas put forth by physiologists for the utilisation of vivisection in their research. Because this study operates within the context of medical history, questions of legitimacy, scientific development, and professional image are lifted. The development of vivisection during this period took place with a larger shift in scientific practice playing out in the background, where experimentalism began overtaking the previously more analytical approach to medicine and the sciences. The First Royal Commission on Vivisection in 1875 marks the beginning of this study, and the discussions within allow for a more nuanced picture of the professional debates on the practice, where both proponents and sceptics at times found common ground. Technological and societal aspects were central to much of the argumentation for the further development of vivisection, with technology easing the practical aspects of the method, and the concept of the "gentleman" allowing British "vivisectors" to argue against charges of cruelty, pointing rather to continental schools of physiology as the culprits, whilst lifting the "humanity" behind animal experimentation in Great Britain. In conjunction with pointing out the importance of the method for the development of medical science, the Cruelty to Animals Act and the lobbying on behalf of the professional journals British Medical Journal and The Lancet helped legitimise the practice in Great Britain. The Act allowed vivisection under set circumstances, and the two journals served as megaphones for scientific development on behalf of vivisection, at times even openly criticising sceptical opinions. At the same time, some saw experimental research through vivisection as merely one aspect of medical practice. One which needed to gain foothold in order to help advance medical science for the larger benefit of all humanity.

The Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies developed rapidly in Canada after the birth of world’s first “test tube baby,” Louise Brown, in 1978. Canadian feminists, propelled by the women’s health movement, perceived these technologies as a threat to women’s control over their bodies, the gains made to redefine the identity “woman” against the biological tradition of “mother,” and against the safety and freedom of women based on race, disability and class. In response to the lobby efforts of the women’s movement under the Canadian Coalition for a Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, the Mulroney government established a commission in 1989 to study the medical, legal, and social implications these technologies would have on Canadian society. Through a qualitative analysis of manuscript and printed sources, this thesis explores the debate surrounding new reproductive technologies (NRTs) before and after the mandate of the Royal Commission (1989 to 1993). It discusses the views and positions of some of the key stakeholders such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the Canadian Medical Association, the DisAbled Women’s Network, as well as adds the voice of infertile women through the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada. This thesis also examines the controversy and discontent created by the Commission’s dismissal of several members, by the management’s style of its Chair, and by the final report’s narrow scope. In the end, the reaction to the report was one of considerable disappointment amongst all major stakeholders, starting with NAC, which claimed that its voice had not been heard. At the same time, the debate over NRTs illustrates NAC’s ongoing internal problems as it faced the challenge of “identity politics.”

The Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies developed rapidly in Canada after the birth of world’s first “test tube baby,” Louise Brown, in 1978. Canadian feminists, propelled by the women’s health movement, perceived these technologies as a threat to women’s control over their bodies, the gains made to redefine the identity “woman” against the biological tradition of “mother,” and against the safety and freedom of women based on race, disability and class. In response to the lobby efforts of the women’s movement under the Canadian Coalition for a Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, the Mulroney government established a commission in 1989 to study the medical, legal, and social implications these technologies would have on Canadian society. Through a qualitative analysis of manuscript and printed sources, this thesis explores the debate surrounding new reproductive technologies (NRTs) before and after the mandate of the Royal Commission (1989 to 1993). It discusses the views and positions of some of the key stakeholders such as the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the Canadian Medical Association, the DisAbled Women’s Network, as well as adds the voice of infertile women through the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada. This thesis also examines the controversy and discontent created by the Commission’s dismissal of several members, by the management’s style of its Chair, and by the final report’s narrow scope. In the end, the reaction to the report was one of considerable disappointment amongst all major stakeholders, starting with NAC, which claimed that its voice had not been heard. At the same time, the debate over NRTs illustrates NAC’s ongoing internal problems as it faced the challenge of “identity politics.”