It's ironical to see people have nothing to say about the text over last 6 hours since posting. Those who got something from it, what's all that mental and verbal juggling is about? Is there anything more than author self-entertainment? I'm curious.
Is the reviewer having a bit of a go at the book’s superficial exploration of group membership and social cohesion? I know the social sciences deal in a lot of questionable science-like work, so it’s hard to tell from the review if the book has a proper point (or two) and if the reviewer is making light of that meandering, albeit fascinating, incoherence.
The functionalist view does have it's attractions for describing the colonial interactions that occured in Australia.
The ideas explained need more meat on the bone, via some big lateral moves to flesh out the prexisting structures..
But the narrative it paints about Australian history is a little awkward...
Pinning Gallipolli on the failings of remittance men and other-such pharisaic characters waters down the Digger archetype that sprung out of that misery and also voids the average australian from final responsibility in their deaths, because it implies they too were simply following orders.
Aussie men may follow orders, but the core ethos is a permanently half-hearted commitment to governance, and particularly 'management'. The knowledge and management worker/class is not in final command as they could be in Britian, they are the punching bag and institutional communication structure for the government's centralized authority. Sickening, but true.
The aussie among mates rejects orders from above, if the two-hearts in his feelings, do not connect together with management and authority, and it cannot be any other way. Aussie soldiers are written of, as being liable to excessively exaggerate problems and otherwise make a dog's dinner of plausible, but minor problems as a method of gaining 'breathing room' for potential disagrement (now and in the future).
Ned Kelly's phrase 'let's see what a native can do', describes the split effectively, as if the guy on the ground is not actually governed or owned by the ruling class/classes.
This is why aussies will always respond positively (rarely spoken) to the idea that gallipoli was Churchhill's fault. It not only supports the idea that all decisions in the British heirarchy are made from the top down, but also retrenches the facts that aussies reserve the right to disagree with upper classes, no matter what.
And also the idea of remittance men being the prime movers/most signficant forces in the colonizatikn of australia, is not sastifying. The first fleet went through incresibly difficult and dark times to scrape a living out of hard conditions and the ruling classes (lords, ect) actually invested in, and wanted the emancipated criminals and aussies to flourish.
The deportation of criminals and the incredible reluctance for the British leadership to actually send out the First Fleet and colonize thenplace, had to be tipped over with promises of flax, a tree suitable for building warships and contributing to the navy. Probably similar to today's reuctance to colonize mars.
To hand over the reigns of success to remittance men, cuts out the kalgoorlie gold rush, the work done by explorers and CYO Connor and many european immigrants.
So yes, the structure of this essay is somewhat valuable and holds good concepts in the way it is structured and the way it describes some functionalist structured.
But it is not even a full wank in terms of content, it is just the suggestion of... and the bits it does mention don't really line up as well as the author might have hoped.
